A full brain

There are so many things I want to talk about. So many things are circling around in my head that I just want to get them out. But I don't want to talk about some of them because I really want to stop thinking about them.

I want to talk about the new apartment, and how being in a new place physically is helping me try harder to get in a new place mentally and spiritually. Not to mention making me try to organize my life in all the other mundane daily stuff.

I want to revisit and finish the drafts that I have tucked away.

I'm really curious as to how soon I'll get a calling in my new ward. I certainly wouldn't mind doing something musical, but I would really love to teach again. Except I really wouldn't want to teach the youth or in the primary. Whatever, I'll be happy doing what I'm asked to do. Ok, I'll try to be happy in whatever I'm asked to do.

Everyone always says that you can say no to a calling. I've never been in a spot that I felt that I could turn one down. Although there was that one time that I think I was extended a calling in order for me to introduce the fact that I needed to talk to the Bishop before accepting it...

My room is filled with boxes that I have to go through, yet I want to go to my parents' storage and get more. I miss having all my belongings around me.

I need more furniture. Not that I have place for anything right now (due to the plethora of boxes), but once I parse through the boxes I have, there will be lots of empty space.

I want a brownie. And a camera.

Yeah, I don't think this post made much sense either.

A New Addition

This is my new niece. She was born on 20 January, at 4:20 am, at 7 pounds, 10 ounces.

Funnily, I had a conversation with my sister Jenn (the mother) just the night before about the baby and due dates and how she was hoping that the baby would wait until February to make her appearance. Evidently she had other ideas. (Actually we had that discussion about 4 hours before my sister woke up with contractions.)

I love little babies and being able to hold them when they're still so tiny. I visited baby and parents early this morning, and got to hold her. Holding a six-hour-old baby is quite an experience. I'll get to watch the older children tonight so my parents can visit. My niece called me this morning to tell me that she had a new baby sister. She was very excited about the news.

Random

So there's lots of things that I want to blog about but they kept getting jumbled or pushed aside. So I'm going to just do a little infodump and we'll see what happens.

1. I really want to blog more, but I talk too much. I ramble on and on and can't tell a coherent story. Or I take too long to write a response or a comment. And then I think and think about what I want to say, but then have run out of time or I forget. Or I keep wanting to edit what I write and have to just walk away from it.


2. I totally wanted to post some Get Fuzzy cartoons from this week, but when it saves the picture it saves as a file type that I can't open. It makes me sad because this last week has been hilarious. Check out the entries for the 13th, 14th, and 15th of this month. Anything that pokes fun at the BoSox I love. And these are clever.


3. I overuse the words "so" and "well". Most times I don't care, but it's starting to bug me.


4. I want to do more tags, but I save them to do another day and then I forget them.


5. I love reading webcomics. Problem is when I find new ones and have to do an archive binge.
6. I get distracted very easily whenever I visit tvtropes. (I just spent a half hour looking for the link for #5, beacuse I kept reading other entries.)


7. The downside of spending so much time on the internet is the very short attention span I now have. I have had up to 6 tabs open and switch back and forth whenever I feel the slightest bit bored.

Heh, so 6 of those 7 things are about the internet. And as I only noticed # 3 because of the blogging, it could be argued that all 7 are about the internet. Totally didn't plan that, as I meant to mention baseball. Oh well, maybe another day.

People are strange

I just don't understand people sometimes.

I was recently surprised by the fact that a person has been mad at me for about a month and yet had done nothing to make me aware of that fact. The person just stayed angry, and everytime I did or said something it would just feed into the anger. I can't apologize or explain or try to change my behavior if I have no idea that I'm offending anyone.

In my daily perusal of the internets, I happened to read some end-of-the-year lists, mostly about movies. Most lists were rather positive and fun and interesting, but one was pointing out humor in movies that weren't intended to be funny. Or bad movies that had moments that were laughable. Now, I'm all for finding the funny whenever and wherever you can, but this list seemed to be rather more mean than I was comfortable with.

Another list was the most horrible person list. That was written by a very angry person. Granted a list about horrible people isn't going to be cheerful, but a lot of the language was bitter and crude. At first I was offended by the author's mocking of my religion, but then the author went ahead and abused the Catholic Church too, so I guess they're an equal-opportunity type religion basher. And that last sentence makes me sound just as bad as that author.

I don't understand. I have my hard days, and my angry days, but I don't really want to dwell on them. I much prefer to laugh, to be in a good mood. I've been trying to be nicer to people, to not take my bad moods out on others. And trying to avoid those things that will encourage me to be in a bad mood. So I really don't want to read an angry diatribe about how awful life is.

I like my life. Grated, it's not what I thought it would be 10 years ago, but really, who can predict exactly what's going to happen. And I've decided to make the best of this life that I have. And while there are some parts of my life right now that are uncomfortable, I'm going to get through them.

Anyway, I guess I'm done with the ramble for now.

Oh wait, there was a reason I started off with someone being mad at me. I have been trying to be nicer and positive, like I said, but sometimes I don't quite succeed. I would really appreciate it if instead of going a month (or more) without talking to me, why don't you just talk to me, let me know if I've hurt you. Thanks.

Baseball Ups and Downs

(Note: This is a very baseball-geeky entry. Just so if you don't want to read about baseball, stop here.)

John Smoltz is going to play for the Red Sox this season. That makes me sad.

Tim Lincecum is on Hot Stove tonight, and is just adorable. He has no problem talking about the game, and his awards, and his pitching. But he got uncomfortable when it was mentioned that he does impersonations of voices from a tv show, Family Guy I think. He didn't want to give a demonstration of that, but he has no problem getting on the mound in the studio and breaking down his pitching. Shows that ballplayers are used to dissecting the game, but also know how to seperate their private self from their public self. Also, he speaks very well. Knows his mechanics, and how his motion works. Very self-possessed for a 24-year-old.

Also, he is just cute. And is slightly star-struck about being teammates with Randy Johnson.

Which Randy pitching for SF also makes me sad, but not as sad as if he had gone to the Dodgers.

Made the 4th of 5 payments for my tickets today. I am so looking forwards to the season and our new seats.

I love love love the MLB Network. It's now the default channel I turn to when I'm watching tv. It's not offered by qwest at our new place just yet. I'll have to request it.

Bob Melvin is in an interview now. It's really nice to hear about my team in a nice extended and relaxed way.

I love baseball.

Dancing and Music

So I've been watching a lot of musicals recently. (I love TCM.) Last week BYUtv had The Gathering, BYU's annual Christmas program. I recorded it and am just now getting around to watching it. Dancing and music and stuff. I really wish I could dance like that. Tap and clogging and all sorts of stuff. I used to take dance lessons, way long ago. I really enjoyed them, I think. I don't really have the shape of a dancer anymore. It would be slightly awkward for me to be bouncing up and down now. But I think I could do ballroom dancing. That would be awesome, learning to dance like that. One day I'll find a man who wants to learn to dance like that with me.

So I just watching a number that was like "Me Old Bamboo", but in Romanian. Weird. The group playing the music for the performance is just fantastic. I wish I still played in a group.

And now the best of Ireland. Step dancing is so awesomely fantastic.

Bagpipes and kilts. I love a good bagpiper. Bagpipes in harmony! Can you believe that? With the gorgeous snare drum line.

Is that a guarantee you're offering me?

One of things I do every day is read the comics. Peanuts is on my list of daily reads. At first I found the installment for 1 January funny. Then I started thinking about it. See what you think:





Poor Charlie Brown. All he's doing is offering a simple wish that I'm sure that all of us hear and say to many people, especially in the last two days. And here Lucy is just being her obstinate and belligerent self. But really, just because you say "Happy New Year" doesn't mean that I'm actually going to have a happy year.

On another site that I visit daily, sluggy.com, the author has a New Year's wish: "Happy 2009! May it be even more unbelievably fantastic than 2008 was! (Take that as earnest or sarcastic depending on how your year went)"

2008 was pretty good for me. (I was going to look back over ’08 and look ahead to this year, but I find that I talk too much. Type, write, whatever. The entry then got a little long.) There were some difficulties, but for the most part, I had a good year. I’m sure that I’ll have some difficulties this year. I know that good things will happen this year. But whether I have a good year or not is going to depend more on my attitude than the things that I can’t control. So if I expect that this year will be “unbelievably fantastic”, then it will be. I don’t know what will happen, but I know that if I just look to the positive side of things, I’ll end up having a good year. That’s not quite a guarantee of a happy year, but I’ll do my best to have one.

Perfection

So all week long I've been waiting for the launch of the MLB Network. They'd been playing about an hour of clips and highlights over and over in preview of what was coming. Every time I was bored with what was on tv I'd turn to the MLB channel and check out where they were in the highlight reel.

Today was the actual launch of real programming. The first hour was ok. It's interesting to see anchors and analysis guys figuring out their dynamics. Hopefully that will smooth out in a little bit.

But the special part came in the 2nd hour. For the first time since the original broadcast of it, they show the 5th game of the 1956 World Series, Don Larson's perfect game. The only perfect game in World Series history.

It's very interesting watching. Bob Costas has Don Larson and Yogi Berra in the studio, and he's interviewing them in between the innings. I've been to countless baseball games, and have seen some great and wonderful things. But I couldn't give you a play-by-play of any of the games. I couldn't say who was pitching on which day unless I looked it up. But these 2 gentlemen sat in the studio, 52 years after playing that game, and could remember it. They knew who they were playing against, they remember the conversations they had in the dugout during the game, conversations they had earlier in the day. Now, I'm sure that that day was burned into their memories, but it is fascinating to see what they remember and watching them talk about it.

Bob Costas made an observation early in the broadcast about the game, and how different the broadcast is from watching a game today. This game is in black and white. There's only one broadcaster at a time. And that broadcaster does not feel the need to fill in every second of airtime with talking. (That I think is one of the oddest things. Nowadays every second has to be filled with talk. There's hardly any personal commentary or speculation on this broadcast.) Very few graphics are used. No on-screen graphic that keeps you informed of the count or number of outs or the inning. No replays. There's only a few cameras, and basically the only view of the game is from the camera behind home plate. The game itself moves faster. Batters stay in the box and don't step out as much. Pitchers move faster. The commercial breaks are much shorter.

Over and above the broadcast, there's still some odd differences to see. The uniforms are big and baggy on everyone. The spectators are mostly dressed up. Women in dresses and skirts and men in suits with hats on. Not many kids in the crowd. Of course, it was a day game, and the kids are most likely in school.

But the similarities are there too. The game is the same. Great plays are still made. Long hits are still made. Bunts and sacrifices and relays and double-plays and rundowns. Luck still plays a major part in the game. A catch barely made could have been missed or a long foul ball could easily have hooked fair for a home run.

It's very interesting viewing. This game just shows me how much I love this sport. I'm willing to spend two hours watching a game that happened more than 52 years ago, even though I know the result. (But how is that any different than watching a favorite movie that you've seen multiple times and know the end of?) Not to mention watching the same hour over and over this last week while waiting for the programming to go live.

Ah, baseball. I love this game. I can't wait for the season to start. But until then I have a channel devoted to baseball to slake my thirst for the game. Life just doesn't get better than that.