Long Day

The last time I rode a plane was when I came back from Europe in April 2008.
The last time I rode a plane was Sunday night.

Boy was it a long day. For some reason I woke up at 6:30 a.m. on my own without the help of my alarm, phone or wake-up call from the front desk. The athletic trainer and I happened to both be up obscenely early and met up in the hotel restaurant where we enjoyed our final breakfast of the weekend, mine was the granola supreme. Granola gondola is what it should have been called seeing as how I was served a boat-sized bowl filled to the brim with at least three servings of granola layered with mixed berries, sauce and vanilla yogurt. So essentially five bites into the damn thing, I had enough. From there, I went down into the lobby to print out stats for my coaches who were also enjoying their breakfasts before 8:30 a.m.

Because of the ever-present drizzle that kept falling since 11 p.m. Saturday night, both teams decided to forgo batting practice, as Gonzaga left the tarp over the diamond up until about 10 minutes before game time. The rain kept steadily falling when we arrived at 10:30 a.m., and Gonzaga staff frantically ran around worried because the Doppler maps showed dense patches of rain storm headed our way.

But the show went on as originally scheduled with a 12:00 first pitch and lots of rain.

I don’t feel like talking about the game much, mainly because I broadcast the whole damn thing and then wrote about it so if you’re looking you can find it on the website. Not a pretty weekend in short.

So we pack up around 4 p.m. and get to the airport on time for a 5:50 departure from Spokane to Seattle to Sacramento. Much to our long-awaited surprise, who should be on the same flight as us but three more high school girls’ volleyball teams?

Remind me never to be around high schoolers again. Lots of excited talk, general disregard for everyone else on the plane, high-pitched giggling and craziness. Glad it’s over. But I can’t really talk, because I was part of a different “annoying” crowd as I was with my suited baseball boys. So instead of being super loud shrill and obnoxious, we were telling dirty jokes and being rude/sarcastic/witty to one another. Just how I’d like it.

Oh, I feel like I should mention that for the second time, I traveled on a Southwest flight with a comedian crew again. As we start to take off, the pilot flips on “Danger Zone.” It was really bizarre and the first time I’d ever heard something like that happen. The only thought racing through my head was if someone was afraid of flying, this is a really twisted joke. But two of the guys next to me took my mind off that thought quickly when the started reenacting scenes from Top-Gun. Well worth it.



As the flight attendants started going through the safety measures, the PA announcer started explaining where to stow baggage, both emotional and physical. Then she went over the flotation device protocol, and I quote, “Should your Southwest flight become a Southwest CRUISE.”

Sick. Cole apparently didn’t approve either.

But the male flight attendant was nice enough to come back and greet the boys, giving them pairs of wings to take home and brag about to all their friends on the playground.

As amused as I was with the whole travel experience, I’m still exhausted. We hopped on the bus in Sacramento with all 80+ pieces of luggage and made the hour drive back to Stockton. By the time we arrived, it was well past 10 p.m. and I still had work to do.

All-in-all, I’m really glad I got to make the trip up to Gonzaga. I’m having an absolute blast with this team and coaching staff, but am still not sleeping enough.

I’ll probably get more sleep now that J.D. is on the road with his baseball team to University of Oregon this week. Now when I get off work, I’ll have nothing to do all night, since we pretty much have dinner and go out and do something every other day. Maybe I’ll catch up on the homework and research I’ve been neglecting.

Oh well, summer’s just around the corner…..

It does get a little better, however. I tried to finish all my homework yesterday and somehow ended up with food poisoning, vomiting for nearly two hours in the middle of the day. Then I passed out for five, woke up very late into the evening, finished my homework and couldn't sleep or eat since I'd been sick and sleeping all day. This just keeps getting better and better!

New Year, Old News.

Now that 2009 is here, stories are starting to come out in retrospect analyzing some of the 2008 calendar year.

The first one, I obviously can't avoid. Everyone's talking about it.


The 2008 stock market figures show that last year was our worst financial year since the Great Depression. That's promising, that's really promising. I know I didn't major in economics or anything, but I feel like the stock market is all a virtual indicator that somehow predicts real life. So unless someone smarter wants to fill me in, here's my take on it.

Much like gas prices, everyone is so scared about a stock market crash. People have stopped investing because "stocks are down" and companies are going stale or laying off employees. So why don't we embrace the low stocks and start buying?? If prices are low, that should encourage more spending activity. And wouldn't that in turn raise stock prices and the overall economy? It just seems like such an easy fix that people aren't willing to latch onto. And so what if the dollar's weak? Let's just spend the hell out of it and try to get back up to par.

But then again, that's just my opinion. I'm at least enjoying all the ridiculous year- and season-end sales and plummeting oil prices.

The other thing I can't not talk about is..... Barry Bonds. Quite possibly the bane of my baseball existence. I think Derek Jeter and the Angels used to don that title, but I'm giving it to Mr. BALCO himself today. Unappologetically.

Apparently the all-time home run leader is undergoing hip surgery so that his hopes of playing in 2009 can be satisfied. Look dude, you've been accused, by a federal court no less, of lying under oath for having taken steroids illegally. So maybe he wasn't the biggest user of them all, but for some reason Mr. Bonds won't own up *cough*asterik*cough* I'm sorry, I think I'm getting sick. (Please note, that article is taken from The Onion, and is minorly satirical.)

But I digress. He went without a team in the 2007-08 offseason when the Giants finally broke up with their home run love affair, I mean for God's sake, AT&T park (are we still calling it that now?) was built for him to tee off the cove in right field. Shockingly, not a single team was lured into Barry Bonds last year. So why the F does he think someone is going to do so in 2009? That's quite the New Year's resolution Barry Bonds, quite the resolution.

And I better not have to eat my words in the future (meaning Oakland, I swear to God, if you snag Bonds this year, I might just have to become a full-time Dodgers fan or something).

C'est le moment de vous prendre le mur

"Now's the time for you to face the wall."

Those were probably my eight favorite words when I was living in France. I'm talking about the bizarely amazing show, Le Mur Infernal. Almost as good as French Wheel of Fortune.

Anyways, a bunch of my coworkers were talking over this new Fox show earlier at work, and I thought their conversation sounded vaguely familiar. Then I realized, LE MUR INFERNAL has come to America! And my mom reminded me about it tonight. So I got to watch it for myself.

Except it's called Hole in the Wall here. And "It's time for you to face the hole," just sounds a bit more raunchy than the French version. Yikes.

Either way, they've kept most of the game intact, minus the hideously amazing French host. So watch the show for yourself. And for those of you who haven't yet been blessed by the French host, here's a little visual treat for you all. C'est parti: