Catching Up

Obviously I've been neglecting this blog for a while, so I figured it was time for an update. Not that anyone's been missing much...

I've been swamped at work - basically just scrambling every day and resigning myself to the fact that I will never actually get caught up. Which is depressing, since my goal was to get ahead before I took a bunch of vacation time for Christmas. We will be up in Idaho from the 17th of December until the 5th of January, so that's a pretty good chunk of time and I'm looking forward to it.

Other than work, I haven't been doing much. Mostly just hanging around the house and trying to keep up with Cohen...he keeps us both pretty busy. Sure, I have lots I should be doing. For example my car's not really running right now (Vivian, not the Olds) so I should work on her, but by the time the weekend rolls around, I always just feel like I need to recover from the week and I never get very motivated.

I've been having a really good time watching the Ray's kick tail all the way to the World Series. I'm definitely a bandwagon fan, but I'm okay with that. I'm glad I can have an AL team to root for this year, instead of just whatever team happens to be playing against New York or Boston. It's just nice to see a well run, young, small market team turn it around so quickly and have success. They are an extremely well built organization, and are easy to pull for. It gives me hope. In related news, the M's announced their new GM pick this week, Jack Zduriencik. He's not the complete new approach I was hoping for, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. And I figure they can only improve from here.

I've been meaning for a while to start a semi-regular series of posts highlighting all the great music that I've been listening to. Seems like I'm always getting turned on to something new via Pandora, or just recommendations from friends - I thought I'd just pick some of my favorites and share them. So perhaps I'll get the first one up later today... But until then, I have a poopy diaper to go change.

(Cohen's, not mine.)

Happy Birthday, Cohen!

Well of course it's old news now, but yes, Cohen finally made his appearance on August 14th - thus effectively putting to rest my theory that Jess was just faking the pregnancy so she could quit working and get fat. :)



Things have pretty much been a blur around here since... I just took Julie and John back to the airport this morning, and Tricia just got in Wednesday night. I was only able to take a few days completely off of work right after he was born, so now I'm making up for that by taking a couple more days off in addition to the long holiday weekend. I'm on day 2 of 5 days in a row and I'm loving it. Still not getting any sleep, but glad I'm not going to work on top of it... Coffee can only take you so far. And it makes my eyes twitch.

Naturally Jess updated her blog/myspace etc. way before me and already has lots of pics up, so I won't bother duplicating her efforts. But it's quite obvious that he's the cutest baby in the world. What can I say...he gets it from his mom. :)

Major Holidays Of The Western World

I'm speaking of our anniversary, of course. Yes, a couple of weeks ago we celebrated our 2nd anniversary. Sure has been an eventful two years...seems like much longer than that - but in a good way, of course. There were no extra days off and fun trips to the Palm Springs this year. No sir - just a nice dinner at quaint little Italian place at La Jolla Shores. The food was incredible though - I had this stuffed chicken dish with mushrooms that just melted in my mouth. We even managed to stay awake through the meal. Funny how having kids can change things before you even have them.

One of the other holidays you might have noticed recently was the 4th of July. We enjoyed the long weekend, but didn't really do much. Jess and I just sat at home and relaxed most of the day, then barbecued burgers and made homemade ice cream. We did end up going out that evening with Adam and Shonna to watch fireworks down in Pacific Beach. And for whatever reason, it's tradition in PB to follow the fireworks show with a gigantic marshmallow fight. Picture thousands of people all over the beach and adjacent streets just hucking marshmallows at each other like crazy. People just bring bags and bags of them to the beach. They even had these huge, jumbo marshmallows that can apparently be found at Costco. It was entertaining, to say the least. Here's a (rather poor) clip of the show...

And here's some of the marshmallow action happening at one of the bonfires...

Although, by all accounts, it was pretty tame this year since they recently enacted the hotly contested "booze ban" at all the public beaches.

Anyway, not much else going on...My wife is officially "retired" now from both of her jobs - we're both pretty stoked about that. Her friend Jessica Porto came down for a visit last weekend, and some of her other friends down here threw her a baby shower. I cooked burgers for them before splitting to catch the Padres-Braves game with Mom and Aunt Kathy. Today is our last Sunday volunteering in the nursery at church. In other words, everything is just winding down in preparation for the big day...And you can now follow all the exciting baby action on my wife's new blog, started expressly for that purpose. Check it out! Cheers.

Cohen's First Game...

And I've got the pictures to prove it! Oh, and we were there too, of course. Although the gentleman over my left shoulder does not seem very approving our presence.
















And in spite of the M's best efforts, (Silva pitching, Vidro in the lineup, etc.) they actually won! 4-2! And thus continues my streak of never having attended a game that they lost. This all happened a couple weekends ago - we went with Mom and Bill and Adam and Shonna. Petco really is a nice park, it was a beautiful day, I had hotdogs and beer, and the M's won. What more can you ask for in life? Here are a few more pics...

Jeremy Reed getting to know some Padres fans...
("Hey, death-metal-tshirt-dude...nice to meet you.")

















Ichiro sizing up the pitcher...
(who just happened to be Unnecessary Mariners Castoff Cha Sung Baek)

















Adrian Beltre - probably getting ready to do something totally awesome, as usual...
(While JR casually checks out his butt - "Yeah, he must work out!")

















And for the sake of my wife, her favorite old bald guy, Rauuuuuuul.
(He's checking in for the signs, which probably included something along the lines of "Just try to hit a home run. Cause, you know, Vidro's batting behind you...Sooo it doesn't really matter if you get on base.")

















So there you have it - Fun times at Petco Park. I'm sure Cohen will cherish the memory.

















DISCLAIMER: I know this is retarded, but I'm kind of anal about these things... My Mac has a 17" widescreen, so when I post pictures within text on my blog, I can either format it so it looks right on my computer, but will have extra long gaps between the pics and text on regular monitors; or I can post it as is, and on a widescreen monitor, the text will wrap the pics in funny places and generally look funky and wrong. Either way bothers me, but should you encounter one of these views, know that it is not because I'm an idiot. (Not for that reason, at least.) ALSO, because I still don't have Photoshop at home, and because I'm too lazy to learn any other program right now, the pics I post are straight from my camera, and generally semi-large files. So when you click on one for a bigger view...well, you really get a bigger view. Again, not stupidity in this case, just laziness. Please forgive me, and enjoy nonetheless.

I Own a Stroller.

And a carseat. An entire travel system, as I understand they're called. And it's a nice one too, let me tell you - a Graco Quattro Tour Dee-luxe. But nonetheless, I am slightly weirded out by the fact that it's all sitting in my living room. And I own it.

Anyway, so Jess had her 21st birthday a couple weeks ago. (I'm pretty stoked that she can buy me beer at the grocery store now, and I don't have to make an extra trip!) We went to Seaworld again to celebrate, and we took the "sky-ride" lift around the bay while we were there. Then we hit Olive Garden for dinner. Oh, and I made her a cake.








































So other than that excitement, we're just busy little bees. We're both working alot, I'm studying for my Series 24 securities license for work, and we're taking a birthing class every week, while attempting to get things sorted out before the big day arrives. Only 7 1/2 weeks to go. Yikes.

While going through my phone pics for the ones above, I found a couple more I might as well share...The first one is a pic I took forever ago of the seals down at La Jolla Cove. And the second is a recent sunset as seen from our office windows. I have a whole bunch of San Diego pics that I've taken with my real camera, I should upload some of those some time. But not now....I'm going to bed.












































P.S. Yes, the Mariners fired Bill Bavasi. Yes, I was surprised it happened this early. And yes, I'm very excited, although only cautiously optimistic about who they will land on for his replacement.

Roll Out The Barrels...

"Playing on this team and seeing what is happening around me, I feel that something is beginning to fall apart,” Ichiro said, through a translator. “But, if I was not in this situation, and I was objectively watching what just happened this week, I would probably be drinking a lot of beers and booing."

I heart Ichiro. Seriously, the guy is one of the most amazing players in the game, and one of the funniest. At any rate, it's good to know I've already been following Ichiro's prescribed method of being a Mariners fan in 2008. The M's season was done weeks ago (if not before it started.) No, this is not a "good team playing bad baseball" - this is a "bad team playing horrible baseball." Although I continue to watch with morbid fascination - as though watching footage of a most gruesome train wreck. My only hope is that 2008 serves as reason enough for a major Front Office purging - and soon. Of course I want McLaren gone too, but I don't really care if that happens mid-season or not. It's not like he could do much damage now. I had high hopes for Johnny-Mac, thinking that perhaps all those years with Sweet Lou would have rubbed off on him. But unfortunately, he's made it painfully obvious that he has no business managing a Major League team. I'd probably be disappointed if he were managing my son's little league. Bavasi, on the other hand, needs to go before the season is over. I'm way too nervous that he's going to make some last minute desperation moves and further decimate our farm system by bringing in some more gritty, washed up veterans to help "turn the season around." But he's definitely not going to get canned before the draft, so we'll see that happens. I'm also hoping beyond hope that Pres. Chuck Armstrong disappears, and that whoever they get to replace all these guys has at least a basic understanding of how to evaluate players and build a good team. A boy can dream right?

DISCLAIMER: As much as this team sucks, we do have some great players. Felix is phenomenal (he's young - give him time.) Ichiro is amazing. Beltre is awesome, and highly underrated. Our middle infield really isn't that bad - I like what I've seen offensively from Lopez so far, and I'm hoping that he and Betancourt are young enough to still develop their game on the field. Ibanez is a good hitter - he just needs to get his slow butt of the field and DH. Bedard is awesome when he's healthy, we might as well keep him. And Putz (also when healthy) is still one of the best closers in the game. There, I'm being positive.

Well, the M's are starting their game against the Yanks (their rear-ends no doubt still smarting from the spanking they received last night) and looking at the lineup Mac has put together, I'm not sure if I want to laugh or cry. I think I'll go with "laugh" and read some more Ichiro quotes...

After being asked what kind of beer he would drink (see quote above):

"Usually, I enjoy Japanese beer, but given the situation, I wouldn't care if it was Japanese beer, American beer or beer from Papua New Guinea."

And on going 0-4 in last night's game with two highly disputed 3rd strike calls (they were bad calls - Ichi rarely argues, and McLaren got ejected from the game over it):

"If you consider those at-bats strikeouts, then what you say [0-for-4] is true," Ichiro said. "They were non-existent to me."

Classic.

So Long Scooter, Hello Vivian

So in other major world news, I sold my beloved scooter so I could purchase a car. A 1975 Mercedes 280 named Vivian, to be precise. She also goes by "The Benz." A lady at my work was going to sell this off cheap, and I couldn't resist. So as much as I loved my scooter, I decided this was a slightly more practical commuter solution. I can drive it in the rain and do other useful things such as picking up my shirts from the cleaners. It definitely wouldn't be a dependable long-commuter car, but for tooling around the greater La Jolla/UTC area, she will suit me just fine. For a 1975, it's a pretty smooth running ride. Here she is in all her glory...



























The interior is a little more rough than the exterior, but still not in bad shape. And the seat covers alone make up for that. Also, as you can see, it apparently comes with an inherited membership in the St. Jude Travel Club, so, you know, that's pretty cool.