Free food & drink!

Twice last month (on St. Patrick's Day), I had drinks purchased for me by complete strangers!!


It all started at Pacific's softball doubleheader in the afternoon. My friend Michelle and our former HS teacher (and current mayor of Dublin, CA!) came out to Stockton for the games since one of our friends is Princeton's assistant coach.

In between games, Michelle and I left to the University Center in search of food. Oh, also I took little Woodstock along for the day outside :) well I couldn't go in the dining area with the puppy and opted to wait outside instead. A couple of sorority girls ran up and awwwwwed while petting him and slathering on the attention. Michelle then stepped outside to ask what kind of drink I wanted from Starbucks, before the two girls insisted on purchasing my beverage. I wasn't one to deny them of that experience. Bringing out my iced chai, they thanked me for letting them play with Woodstock.

"Sure," I smiled, unsure of how playing with a puppy for 10 minutes warranted a free drink...

Then later in the night a bunch of us made it out to an Irish (dive) pub in the evening. It was sooo busy a regular (who looked like Zach Galifianakis) told me to step up to the bar. After 10 mins he informed me his friend was the bartender and if I told him my drink orders, he'd get them for me. What he failed to mention was that he told his friend to add it to the tab... I didn't complain, especially because I'd requested beers for my boyfriend and one of our friends as well!

Even more recently, I scored a free dinner at Chevy's! Working the NCAA women's basketball regional last week, a group of us opted for margs and Mexican food so we went to the Chevy's on the river in Sacramento. Long story short, my dinner was forgotten. Even though I had my food 15 mins after everyone else, mine was comped on the house.

Love free stuff!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Yeah, whatever....

So people really get into this whole "March Madness" thing a little bit, don't they??? I personally have a really hard time being all gung-ho about basketball when spring training is going on and the Major League Baseball season is only 10 days away!! (My birthday, btw, is 11).

But Pacific is hosting the NCAA West Regional up at ARCO Arena (home of the Kings) in Sacramento. So that'll be my home for the next three days. And man, hosting a Regional takes a lot of work! But it's been a neat experience so far.

....Especially wandering the halls before anyone else really arrives ;)

Note the bags under my eyes, ew.

Goona keep this brief

But I'm so stoked we'll soon have a national health care bill! As someone who's been denied twice by insurance companies (and it's not like I'm a huge health liability, just have a few nagging problems), it's nice to know there'll always be a safety net. Or maybe in a few years a cheaper solution. I imagine it's going to be a giant administrative mess at first (kinda like how France's system is.... X amount of years in the making), but it is nice that we finally got around to it!

....And I'm a republican! I feel like national health care is a life necessity, geez. I mean if Canada already got on board with that, how hard could it actually be?! (Sorry for the shot at Canada, eh).

Birthday Wish List!

With my birthday coming up in19 days, I've started thinking about another wish list! Actually, what's really driving this post is my cell phone contract's upgrade on April 14.

My current iPhone was a gently-used gift about a year ago. Currently the phone has reached the two-year life span and craps out on me nearly every day. Whenever it freezes, I can't receive/send calls/texts/e-mails and there is zero function on it. The battery drains hecka fast and it's essentially dying.

So in April, I'm hoping for an iPhone 3GS! Unless purchased for my birthday, looks like I'm going to suck it up and buy one when the contract expires. I like the white one and I really like this phone cover:

And hey, if I don't end up getting a new phone, I have a back up wish:

LASIK!!! Pay me for half of it, I don't care!! But my glasses give me massive headaches and now that we're approaching the spring my eye allergies are affecting my contacts and subsequently, vision. I think I'm limited to wearing contacts for less than five hours a day, and glasses for no more than two. In the evenings, I've resorted to stumbling around or creating more face wrinkles by severely squinting to see things sans corrective lenses.

What should I do?!? If I had some financial assistance, I'd sign up for LASIK in the summer ;) They can do it without the use of knives now, so it's purely laser-driven.

.....That, or I'm ready to have a quarter-life crisis in a few weeks! :)

Woodstock Update!

Woodstock, eating out of my parents' dog, Lilly's bowl. Keep in mind, she's a 50-lb six month old Aussie Shepherd.
Way to go little Woody!

I guess it's time for another venting sesh :) Last weekend I was able to go home and take a REAL weekend free from work. It was incredible, but just makes me yearn for a typical 40-hour a week job with weekends free. I digress. I was able to bring Woodstock home and let him play with Lilly and give him the first real day with me.

So for the first time, I didn't have to work and leave him alone for a few hours! And I got to do so for about four days. Meaning I tried to train Woody to do his business outside. He's completely puppy mat trained, but wouldn't go anywhere but his mat before. Well, now he kind of understands that he's supposed to go outside - or in the very least that he's allowed to go outside. He'll sit at the back door and wait for me to open it. His first instinct is still to bolt for his pads, but if I catch him and put him outside instead, he'll go.

I think it's a good start, but I'm confusing the hell out of him! Because now when he's alone, I think he forgets he can go on his pad since I made him go outside. So he had 3.5 (don't ask) accidents on Monday and only two accidents yesterday. I've actually halted the making him go outside training part because I think I want to get a crate finally! Everything I've read says to wait until a puppy reaches 10 weeks to crate train him. Well, Woody's now at that mark.

So my hope is that he won't go in his bed. Therefore, I'll leave him in a crate (once I buy one) for three-ish hours then come home and let him go outside for lunch. Then back in the crate he goes for another four hours and I let him out all evening to play and run around. When I'm with him, I can actively make sure he goes potty outside and not anywhere his confused little mind tells him to.

Now if only I can get him to stop chomping on everything.... (tried making hurt puppy noises, squirt bottle, saying a firm "no", flicking his snout, closing his snout, ignoring it, giving him hard chewy toys.... little guy's teeth just bug the crap out of him and he does nothing but bite anything around including my hands all day long!)

They're so tiny!

After my workout today, I went home to feed clean up after Mr. Woodstock (he's still getting the hang of this potty training thing, it's getting difficult since he almost was perfect at it earlier this week). On the way back to work, I drove by two schools in the one mile it takes me to get home. And both were letting out for the afternoon.

I couldn't help but think how tiny they all looked! I swear, the middle schoolers here look like six or seven year olds! Not sixth or seventh graders. And high school students, don't get me started on how young new drivers look.

I couldn't help but think how awesome it would be to go home at 2:15 every day. Bring a bagged lunch to class, hang out with your best friends and worry about nothing at all. Well, except how much you hate Mr. X and that "yard" lady who always yells at you.

But then I realized something. Middle school - well mine at least - was the point in which girls started calling each other bitches and sluts, boys start making sexual jokes and began using marijuana.

Which BLOWS my mind! How do people that tiny get into that mentality?!?! I realize I was slow in my maturation process (first drink and first kiss in college), but seriously?!?!?!

It's so weird to think about that when you frame it into such a perspective.

Happy Pi Day

Today is J.D.'s favorite "holiday" and I say that in quotes because celebrating this day never, ever occurred to me. Today, March 14 (3-14), is Π Day, the Greek mathematical symbol that roughly rounds to 3.14.

So weird. But in honor of today, I suggested that we frequent the establishment a few blocks from our house - Marie Calendar's. Because who doesn't want a slice of pie on Pi Day?! And we've only eaten there once the 10 months we've lived here ;)

I have no idea what kind of pie I want! Fruity, chocolate-y, creamy, who knows?

We're such dorks, it's awesome. What weird/different holidays/festivals do YOU celebrate??

No one hates me more than roadtrips

While I was tending to my Pacific baseball official scoring duties, I escaped some pretty gnarly travel as the women's basketball team headed home from their double overtime win at Long Beach State. The ride in itself is over six hours, so I was pretty excited about only having to make the hour and a half drive out to Stanford instead. But on the way back, the Long Beach road gods struck again.... flat tire for the Pacific travel bus.

Despite the team's recent success - having won two out of their past four games, despite only winning six the entire season - it seems their luck on the road would go to hell for the rest of the season.

While they were to play UC Santa Barbara on Wednesday afternoon, the Pacific women's basketball team headed for Anaheim, Calif., two days earlier, this Monday. The thinking was a few extra days' rest would help the team, but I can't help but think that in the back of everyone's mind was the thought that if we lose Wednesday and would have left Tuesday, that would be a hell of a lot of travel for not even one full 24-hour period spent down there.

I digress. After I got to stand in as part of the practice squad on Tuesday afternoon, we showed up ready to roll for Wednesday's game just blocks from Disneyland. Although we had our hotel booked until Thursday morning, our loss yesterday afternoon sent us back on the road for Stockton, Calif., a lovely six-to-seven-hour trek. Passing through the usual Los Angeles traffic at 4 p.m. on a weeknight, I figured the ride would take a bit longer than usual, but nothing too strenuous. Anyways, half the girls' families were down in SoCal watching the tourney, so they ended up staying with the parents for the remainder of spring break. Meaning there were only 10 of us on the bus, including staff.

Before we even reached the sign for the Grapevine - about an hour north of Los Angeles - we hit a massive amount of wall-to-wall traffic. No one was budging, save for the assholes trying to drive through the median and merge into stopped traffic. As we pulled up to a big rig, our associate head coach begged the bus driver to open the passenger side door, so she could ask the semi's drive (who must have had a CB radio) if he knew what was going on. Apparently he had no clue, but heard on the news a few trucks had flipped due to windy conditions and ignited a fire on the freeway. Awesome.

I don't believe we were stuck in two miles of traffic for any more than two hours. You know, no big deal. Instead of reading my latest French book - which gets me carsick - or sleeping awkwardly on the bus - which hurts my TMJ-laiden neck - I decided to head to the back of the bus and mingle with the players for the first time all season really. And, now it's the last time since their season came to an abrupt end. Long story short, we exchanged musical tastes, played a ridiculous game of truth or dare on one of our student trainer's phones and all-in-all had a fun time joking and teasing. At one point, Kyle broke out his training tape and started taping McKenzie's feet together. His student trainer, Mark, let CT tape his ankle because she assumed she was a pro now that hers had been taped so many times. Anyways the tap fiasco ended when I couldn't wait any longer and did something I promised I'd never do in my life - I used the bus's restroom. Everyone knew that was my worst nightmare and I was deathly afraid of it, but still, the trainers decided to tape the door shut and I about cried/vomited. But it was a good laugh, looking back on it. Welcome to road trips.

When we finally made it back to campus it was nearly midnight on a trip that should have had us back no later than 9:30 p.m. I booked it over to my friend Zach's house, as he was watching little Woodstock and picked up my puppy. Instead of waiting until I woke up the next morning - probably would have been close to noon - I decided to just go straight home since I was already in a driving mood. Plus, the drive from Stockton to Alamo usually takes me around 45-50 minutes.

But disaster struck on the way home once more. As I hit Livermore, a semi decided to swerve out into my lane, around 12:30 a.m. I had no choice but to veer in the opposite direction, which was directly in front of a CHP - little to my knowledge. As soon as I made the switch, the blaring lights went off and I nearly went blind. This fucker was fast and in a Charger, so he had to be an ass. See the type of cop car below:

Anyways, I pulled off the off-ramp and into a safe stopping place and this younger guy came out, with his flashlight all up in my face. He asked me if everything was alright, and if I had been drinking, but I calmly explained that my swerve was self-protection instead of intoxication. Before ever asking for my ID or any proof of anything, the officer looked down into my lap, saw Woodstock and began asking me a billion questions about my puppy. He was smiling, saying how cool it was that he was so tiny. After he had been satisfied with answers, the officer told me to be careful and have a good night.

No ticket. No DUI despite my full-fledged sobriety. And no nervousness. The first and last time I was pulled over, I cried my eyes out for the officer and the world to see. This time, I remained calm even though my heart was thrashing inside my chest.

But no harm done. And now I'm only down to one season - baseball. I was reminded a few days ago how much I miss baseball and baseball writing. So I'm going to try to make it my goal to pay a bit more attention and get back into that a bit.

I'm also not let down in the least that my next road trip isn't until the weekend of my birthday - Easter weekend - when we travel to Long Beach State for baseball. The few weeks home and away from a bus will be nice.

Me and my little Bubba :)

It's always so hard saying goodbye to this little guy every morning when I go to work!

Let the rain come down

With all the rainouts we've been having at our baseball games here on campus, we filled time during Saturday's 46-minute rain delay in very interesting fashion.

While all the players hung out in the dugouts and the fans flocked underneath the umbrellas on the concourse, I played the following clip on my stat laptop, and we projected it with sound on the giant video board out in right field.



Such a fun day! (We ended up winning both games on Saturday even with the rain delay!)