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.

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.

Done with media guides for the year!!!

I am FINISHED making media guides for the 2009-10 school year! And it is a good feeling. With that, baseball season is here in one week. Here's the cover of my guide as well as the interactive entire guide, designed, written and compiled by yours truly.

It feels nice to be done :) My days might be a little bit more free now....?

I may slip up

I just realized that I've now blogged for one straight week.

So far it's been pretty easy, but now I'm running out of gas. I'm not that exciting of a person. And my work schedule is getting to be quite hectic.

For example, this week we had women's basketball last night, three men's volleyball games this afternoon/tonight and then another women's basketball game tomorrow afternoon (not to mention my 9-to-5 work schedule... but let's be honest, it's more like 10-10:30-to-5).

And check out my upcoming road trips:
-at UC Irvine Friday-Sunday
-at UC Davis Jan. 23 (but it's only an hour drive, so that's really just a day trip)
-at UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly Feb. 3-7 (booo, traveling on Super Bowl Sunday!!)
-at Sacramento State (day trip) Feb. 13 (ha, working against my boyfriend's team, we might be enemies on Valentine's Day)
-at UC Riverside and Long Beach State Feb. 24-28
-Big West Tournament (if we finish in the top 8) March 10-13

Yikes... that's only basketball season, let's not forget about baseball which kicks off at the end of February. If you live in any of these areas, let's hang out when I'm down there!

And I'm really nervous about every weekend from Feb.-Mar. ... here's a small glimpse why:

Saturday, Jan. 20:
Softball vs. Santa Clara, 12:00 PM
Women's Tennis at San Francisco, 1:00 PM
Softball vs. Santa Clara, 2:00 PM
Baseball vs. San Francisco, 3:00 PM
Women's Basketball vs. Long Beach State, 5:00 PM
Women's Swimming at Big West Championships, All Day
Women's Water Polo at Cal State Monterey Bay, TBA
Men's Basketball vs. TBA, ESPNU BracketBusters
and
Men's Swimming at Big West Championships, All Day

That's taken straight from our website, folks. Realize that each game at home requires 2-3 people there working. And we only have six of us total in the office. Eek!!!

(P.S. I apologize for the cop-out post. Maybe I'll write about my progress on the book club soon, it's getting kinda good!)

Final post of 2009

The countdown begins....

Wow. It's almost 2010. That sounds insane. Like super futuristic and crap. Like way older than the Jetsons. Like.... I'm going to turn 25 this upcoming year...... (pause several months for quarter-life crisis, kids. I'm getting that two year itch again, like usual, telling me to up and leave out of the country again. Will it happen? Stay tuned to find out)

Anyways, 2010. It's been TEN YEARS since the whole Y2K debacle. Yeah, seriously. I get a French channel here in Stockton, TV5 Monde Etats-Unis, and I was watching the journal télévisé (again, snooty way of me saying French newscast) and they were looking at the past decade in review. BTW, happy new year for those of you on the other side of the planet! Anyways, they were showing a side-by-side video comparison of cell phones from now and 2000, computers, Internet user stats (users have increased 6x since 2000 - I blame it on all the 10 year olds who were born in 2000 and came out of the womb texting and myspacing.) Even the picture quality from the video of last decade is unbelievable.

So with that, here's what I've been thinking about lately. I've never been one for resolutions, so let's just call these my goals for 2010, shall we?

a.) write more often ... not blogging, per se, but creative writing. Short stories, long stories, poems, crap, it doesn't matter. I want to write more. I always have.

b.) exercise more ... if not daily, then every other day. I used to be super good about this over the summer, but the lack of sunlight when I get home really puts a damper on my willingness to run. So that's where Wii Fit and my new EA Sports Active Wii video games come into play. I hate to sound lame, but those games really give you a frickin workout. And hey, whatever gets you moving, right?

c.) read more ... starting up that book club means I have to finish at least one book a month. That's usually never been a problem for me, but I'll get back into it.

d.) travel ... It's been over two years since I left the country. I want out again! I'm currently planning a D.C. (I realize that's still in the U.S., just bear with my random tangents) trip to visit my college roommate in June. Free Delta miles and a place to crash? What the heck would be stopping me???

And those are four things I'd love to see myself accomplish over the next 365 days. Wish me luck.

For now, I have a lot of shit to do before the year's even over. I've been slaving away at my basketball notes because we leave for our first conference road trip tomorrow. Flying down to Los Angeles so we can play Cal State Northridge on Saturday and Cal State Fullerton Monday.

That means Monique has a lot of laundry/cleaning/Christmas deconstructing/book shelf assembling/NYE dinner cooking to do. (I'm making a shrimp, bacon and spinach quiche for dinner tonight and splitting a bottle of champagne with J.D. for the end of the year meal. He works tonight and I have to leave at 10 a.m. for work tomorrow. What a pair we are).

Which reminds me.... another goal I've set for myself is NOT TO DRINK TOO MUCH (hmmm, can you imagine what over the past few days has brought this on?)!!! Unless I'm going wine tasting, which doesn't happen too often these days, I'm trying to stick to about a drink a month or less. I don't need alcohol. It messes me up all the time :)

Happy New Year, everone. If you're going out, please drive safe. If not, have a little extra for me ;)

One more for the day, then I'm out.

I've got a half day going at work today.... and this is what I've been up to:

2010 Baseball Media Guide Covers!!

Thanks to my good friend, Meghan for the photos! The season starts in less than three months, which means I've got about two months to tackle this project. All the player/coach biographies have been done for about a month now and I've made my design for the interior. At the end of last season I also updated all the records, etc.

So it shouldn't take me too much longer :) Just have to wait and see how big the final roster is going to be and then lay it all out.

Is it spring yet?! (P.S. Obviously it's not, because I found CHRISTMAS RADIO STATIONS AT WORK ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

2,833 Miles Later....

I made it to New York, in case you were curious.

And boy what a trip it's already been. Have I mentioned that we've only been here for just under four hours?

As I mentioned earlier (or Tweeted, I can't remember anymore) our women's basketball team hosted Southern Utah last night. I did my radio broadcast of the event and then stayed after the game's conclusion to write up my story and update stats on the website. At about 10:45, I was ready to leave my office, until a number I didn't recognize called my work phone. Normally, I would have ignored it since I don't like taking calls from numbers I don't recognize on my cell phone, or after 5 p.m. at the office. If it's important enough, someone will leave me a message.

Well that person did. And I decided to check it instead of going home to pack. Lucky for him, it was the media contact at Southern Utah with desperation in his voice, asking if I'd go into our gym and get his computer charged and bring it to their hotel since he'd forgotten to pack it.

Oh yeah, they also left at 7 a.m. this morning. Apprehensively, I called him back and said I'd go search for it, but as I made my way down to the arena at 11 p.m., the lights were all off and it was locked. So I had a coworker come let me in, who generously agreed to take the charger himself. I owe ya, Ben.... :)

Then I get home just after 11 p.m. and frantically try to finish my packing for our East Coast road trip. I take a shower at 11:20ish and realize I'm starving. So J.D. made me some food while he was watching TV downstairs. After eating, we finish watching Chopped and for the life of me, I can't fall asleep. Every hour it felt like I was fruitlessly rolling around in bed, only to find another one of my four precious hours of sleep has disappeared.

When my alarm finally sounded at 3:35 THIS MORNING, I was already laying in bed, dreading its noise. Having no other choice, I gathered my belongings and made it to the athletics department.

We had about an hour and a half drive to the Oakland Airport, but I couldn't sleep and felt ill from my less than two hours of sleep and lack of food. But we finally made it. And I had to pay for my second checked bag, but I'm hoping for reimburstment.

With less than 30 minutes to go, I scurry through security and conveniently find a Chili's right in front of my gate serving breakfast. I order a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes and wheat toast to go as to make our 7 a.m. departure. However, I become a nervous wreck as the preparation takes nearly 10 minutes. And cost me $12!!! But as soon as I grabbed my meal, my seating group was called to board. Lucky me.

Once we take off, I open up my breakfast box and quickly consume it all, only to feel slightly ill from the poor quality of ingredients. As is my usual reaction, I tried to sleep it off. But my head kept falling down the aisle pillow waking me up. And my foot fell asleep.

So I finished my notes on during the three hours my battery lasted me. For the final hour and a half, I tried a combination of reading and watching DirecTV (I <3 Jet Blue!) before I started feeling motion sickness. I really have the world's worst stomach.

When we land, we board our charter bus to take us to the hotel (aptly named Luck of the Irish Lines), before one of the freshmen players finds $20 on the seat near her, shrieking "It's the Luck 'o' the Irish!" Well, turns out it wasn't, our trainer had lost $20 from his pocket. Or so he claims. Our associate head coach caught on and said the staff would be sharing that money for an evening out. $20 in New York for seven people.... good luck :)

All is well and fine to set forth, except our driver had awesome road rage. And I became enraged because he kept giving us spiel after spiel about why the "New York Yankees are the greatest team in the world, from the greatest city in the world." Whatever, dude. If they're so great, where have they been the past nine years?? I guess money can't buy you everything, afterall.

However, it was a pleasant trip, because this crotchety driver was a riot. And I was quite impressed how in tune he is with current events, sports, politics, history and local tourism. Needless to say, we got a mini tour on our way up to White Plains, N.Y., where our hotel is located. Apparently he'll be taking us on a bus tour of New York City on Monday, so I'm certainly looking forward to that.

Close to 5 p.m. EST, we arrived at the hotel and within seconds of spotting the name, I shouted out, "I've stayed here before! They give you free cookies!"

Turns out, this is exactly where we camped when I worked with the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour and had a weekend tournament on Coney Island. Kind of an inconvenient commute, but fun nonetheless. I got to spend two days in the City with my mom two years ago.

But back to the present stay.... I seemed to impress some of the other coaches, because as we made our grand entrance (how do 13 college girls in matching Pacific Tiger sweats, along with five similarly-clad coaches not make a grand entrance?), what should appear other than a large, inviting plate of warm chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies.

And a free "social hour" complete with booze, salad bar, hot wings, fries and my personal favorite, hot chocolate and marshmallows.

Awesome! I think it's going to be a good trip. Now about getting some sleep....

Life keeps getting in the way

Despite my efforts, for the life of me I can't commit to blogging/writing each day. At least the intention's there....

In the upcoming weeks, I've got a lot on my plate. Tonight marks our athletic department's fourth game in a row. Friday and Saturday night we had women's volleyball, yesterday I did a (sub-par) radio broadcast for our women's basketball game, tonight is men's basketball and we close out the "weekend" with women's basketball on Tuesday night. Generally I'm needed to be at as many home games as possible since I'm one of only three or four people who know how to run the stats program on our official computer. If I'm not running stats, then I'm calling for someone else who is or, better yet - on air.

But that's just the start. After the rush of this five-straight, I get to hit the road with women's basketball (WBB from here on out) for the first time this season. We're headed towards Oakland to board a non-stop JetBlue flight to NYC at.... get this.... 4:30 a.m. Need I remind you that we have a WBB game the night before that probably will wrap up entirely around 10 p.m.?

I get the feeling that I'm going to attempt to stay up all night and sleep on the plane. Otherwise, I might not wake up from a three/four-hour "nap" at 3:30 a.m.

But after our New York/New Jersey trip this weekend, we arrive back in California Monday night-Tuesday morning. Wednesday night I'm headed back home for the ENTIRE Thanksgiving weekend off - free - no work. It's amazing.

However, once I return to Stockton, I get to turn right back around and trek out to Portland, Ore., with WBB.

Then maybe I can take a breather! ...Or write on all my plane trips. At the very least, I hope to catch up on some reading/sleep.

Well, with all said and done, I realized I won't have much time to start decorating for Christmas.

So, J.D. and I put up our tree last night. It's still fairly bare, just has three strands of lights. The ornaments can be hung later, but for now, at least we got the labor-intensive part out of the way.

Does that mean I'm allowed to start listening to Christmas music now?!? :)

Women's Basketball Media Guide!

My work for the past three months is finally done! And I CANNOT believe that college basketball season is here this week already.....

So here's my women's basketball media guide!

2009 Basketball NorCal Media Day

We hosted the inaugural 2009 Big West Baseball NorCal Media Day at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Sacramento yesterday. My boss and I made the 45-minute drive North and helped set up, then partook in the event from 2-3:30 p.m. and headed back to Stockton for the final 25 minutes of the work day.

In attendance at our media day were UC Davis, Sacramento State and my employer, Pacific. Each school's head women's and men's basketball coaches had about a five minute talk to the media (including TV!) and the student-athletes were there for one-on-one questions with the media. I was just there to help moderate and facilitate interviews with my players and the media. Our beat writer put up his story on the event here.

I was at my photographing ways again, so here are some more pictures as I continue to try and supplement my sports writing with my own photos ha.

New jerseys for our "Stockton Showcase" game downtown against Cal in December.

Old Spaghetti Factory

UC Davis women's head coach Sandy Simpson


Simpson


UC Davis men's head coach Gary Stewart


Stewart


Sacramento State women's head coach Jamie Craighead


Craighead

Sacramento State table


Sacramento State men's head coach, Brian Katz


Pacific men's head coach Bob Thomason

Coach T and our new Stockton jerseys

Pacific women's head coach Lynne Roberts (this is the team I will be traveling with in the winter)
Coach Roberts


Davis and Pacific tables

Setting up for the event at 12:30 p.m. yesterday

Monique finally figured out how to use PhotoShop!

And this is the result of me aimlessly playing around (who knows if it'll ever end up getting published!)...

What I've been working on this summer....

First soccer game of the year took place last Friday. And it only gets busier!

With the year here and in season, take a look at the media guide I made (designed/wrote/edited) this summer for the 2009 women's soccer season:

(Click on the guide for the full-screen view)

Open publication - Free publishing - More womens soccer

Hope you now forgive my lack of posts :)

Wrapping things up

Well graduation for all the undergrads was on Saturday, but that never hit me or mattered really since a.) I completed my time as an undergrad in March of 2007, b.) I'm essentially done with grad school for a bit (think about one year or more), c.) I was on the road with the baseball team in Northridge, Calif., and hanging out with Lisa in Santa Monica.

So while school is out, the athletics department at our university is still humming with activity. That includes yours truly, who has been quite busy. However, I only have one more week left of baseball! It's crazy to think that I'm almost through my first year here working in athletics. Even more crazy, I made it through baseball season with all kinds of compliments and requests for next year. Kind of related to that, I'm super ready for the summer! I'm going to be a back-up official scorer for the Ports here, who are the OAKLAND A'S Single-A minor league affiliate!!!

I start on Thursday night! This is big time, I'm semi-working in professional baseball now! How awesome is that?! Next up, Major League Baseball.

Also relating to work, I've officially started full time! Monday was my first day and I spent the majority of it moving from my three-way shared office into my own personal office alone! Let the decorating begin :) Well, my focus is going to be split between the new house and the new office. So it's going to be a busy summer, there is still much to do.

As for my class, I got an A! So I get to keep my all As streak alive from undergrad work. But again, I'm not sure how much this matters. Since I'm a full-time employee now and not a "graduate assistant" I'm actually getting a salary instead of tuition. And at a private university, tuition is NOT something I can afford to purchase all on my own right now. But on May 18, 2010, I will have been hired full-time for one full year, thus eligible for 90% tuition remission from the university. So that's like, what, $1,000 per semester if I take a full load? And I most likely won't be taking a full load ever, since I work three overlapping sports.

Which in 2009-01 are going to be (drumroll, please): soccer, women's basketball and baseball.

Bring it on!

Some of my FAVORITES!

I'm still on this really high "I love baseball" kick. And since I just finished my final in my only grad class this afternoon, I'm not quite ready to do work yet.

So on my lunch break, here are some of my favorite photos from this spring, of my favorite boys with whom I am fortunate to travel across the state every other week!

#2 Ben Gorang

#5 Jake Sylvester

#7 J.B. Brown

#15 Nick Longmire

#23 Joey Centanni

#40 Tye Davis

The 2009 Pacific Baseball Team:

And credit where credit is due.... special thanks to Matt Brown, Meghan Camino and George Steckler for their dedication behind the lens this year! Without whom, none of these photos would exist.

"Work Trip"

This last weekend was such a blast! I'm so grateful my final paper was moved back a week, otherwise I would not have been able to have had the opportunity to go down to Orange County this weekend!

First of all, I've always wanted to go down to Cal State Fullerton because that baseball team's almost like a legend among all D1 collegiate teams. They just have so much history, and for an A's fan, have had a lot of players go professional. The field was beautiful, it was extremely hot all weekend long, culminating with a 95-degree day game on Sunday. It almost had a minor league feel, so again, I'm really excited I got to see the park!

But that's not entirely the whole story.... I sort of got to see history in the making! See my article and read the PDF I made to understand what I'm talking about :)

Other than that, get ready for a brief recap of the weekend.

THURSDAY: My sister came and picked me up and I got to check out her house in Newport Beach for the first time. I'm really jealous of where she gets to live! Only one block from the ocean she lives and to kill time while we were waiting for our friend Gianna, we walked a couple of blocks down the street to this small dive bar on the ocean. It was a neat little sports bar with a Mexican theme, so of course we each had a margarita to start things off. While waiting, this group of guys from Jersey (just imagine the accents already...) stopped at our table and "had to find out who we were." Small world, one of them went to UCSB. But a cute awkward and tall guy started talking to me since I was getting so heated with the Angel's game on tv. In the land of the Angels, I was actually cheering when they started getting pounded!

Long story short, they invited us to come over and take shots in Huntington Beach (where we were ironically headed for dinner), but to our better judgment we turned down the offer from what would have been a drunken chauffeur. Then Gi finally arrived and we headed out to a delicious Mediterranean hole in the wall restaurant in downtown Huntington. We stayed there for hours, as the waiter flirted with us all night and gave us free appetizers and baklava after dinner. The baklava, he said, was a gift after I correctly guessed that he was originally from Turkey, and not Greece, as my sister surmised.

This is where it gets weird, "Max," he said his name was, started to develop a little crush on my sister and then he started showing us pictures of Istanbul, saying we should go visit soon. While it is much prettier than I'd ever imagined, his next suggestion was proposterous. He told us to go and his parents would pick us up from the airport, house and feed us the entire time. Wow..... As the night began to dwindle away, he suggested we go to bars with him. Instead we booked out of there and went to a bar where I met my friend Chris, who works at our athletic conference office and who I have almost daily contact with, but I had never met up until that point. It was a good night made that much better when our friend Max randomly showed up. Needless to say, Aimee was quite unhappy about the whole thing, especially after I kept saying she'd dance with him.

FRIDAY: Oh yeah, did I mention I was on a work trip? We didn't have to be at the field until 4ish, with game time set for 7 p.m. So Aimee and I took our time waking up, then quickly showered and hopped on bikes and rode around Newport all afternoon. About lunchtime, I decided I wanted to go to a little diner and find some kind of brunch food, so we found this cute little surf shop-inspired diner and got egg white omelets with all kinds of fruit and veggies. And I indulged my inner child by ordering a tall, cold glass of chocolate milk.


After riding around a bit, we stopped at the harbor and then made our way back to her house, packed up and watched tv at my hotel suite in Brea before it was time to head back to the field. That was an exciting night, as my Tigers defeated Cal State Fullerton, the NO. 6 TEAM IN THE NATION!!! 5-4 in the top of the ninth inning, after we put up four runs in that inning! It was also my first time on radio since all the broadcasts prior were broadcast solely on the Internet, and the person working in the studio for the radio station had nothing but good things to say about my broadcast. So that was an exciting moment for me.

SATURDAY: Taking our time waking up again, we headed down to the lobby and had breakfast with Ben, my co-worker since the softball team was also playing at Fullerton last weekend. After breakfast, Aimee and I met our student team manager, Antonio, and headed to Downtown Disneyland! It's been about five-six years since I last went to Disneyland, so that was fun to come back to the area again. We first went novelty shopping and then found ourselves in the ESPN Zone. Antonio treated us to a game card and we played sports/arcade games for the better part of an hour. My favorite part was actually striking out Alex Rodriguez of the NY Yankees in a pitching simulation. But I won't tell you that my fastball only clocked at 43 mph. Embarrassing.... the gun must have been off. That's ok though, because I get bragging rights since Aimee walked A-Rod on four-straight pitches and Antonio gave up a home run ot Jason Bay. After we ran out of points, we headed to the House of Blues for lunch and then drove back to campus to catch some of the softball game that afternoon. About an hour later, it was back to work for me, so I went up the concourse and on the other side to the baseball diamond, where I got to broadcast another win for Pacific!!! This time it was 14-10, after we posted four runs in the sixth, seven in the seventh and two in the eighth for our FIRST series win EVER against the Titans. Super exciting.


SUNDAY: Wasn't all that exciting, as we woke up and went straight to the field for the only day game of the weekend. Actually, scratch that. Baseball games always make for a fun day. Can't win 'em all though, but we fought hard and almost pulled out the sweep with a 4-3 loss before making the 6.5 hour bus ride back up to Stockton.

Again, it was a great weekend and I'm so glad I got to go! There's nothing better than baseball, except maybe baseball in warm weather, no, how about baseball in warm weather in Southern California on the beach?

Heaven.

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!

Addressing a request for more :)

Alright, to be honest, I haven't been blogging much lately because I really haven't been doing that much. I'm a fairly boring gal these days with work, class and the boyfriend. Sometimes I can't find enough hours in the day for all three!

Priorities I guess :)

But we arrived in Spokane last night and this is my first trip to Washington. It was about 50 degrees when we landed, me in my pinstripe dress and all the players/coaches in their suits. Someone walked past us and asked if we were going to a CIA convention. Surprisingly enough, for how different the weather is from California, I really wasn't cold at all with my bare legs.

We were all seated in the back of the plane near a high school girls' club volleyball team that will be playing at the convention center right next to our hotel. So not only did that make for an interesting plane ride, but the flight attendants got all into it cheering for both teams. As we made our final descent, the head flight attendant wished the Pacific Baseball Team good luck, and then she proceeded to go on by saying score a touchdown! That created a huge uproar of laughter from all the other passengers, except for the guys. Not so amused I guess. But honestly, they were joking all flight... think it's the first time I've ever flown with a crew of comedians. Then I topped my day of travel off when I went with the coaches and staff to a bar/restaurant called Shenanigan's last night, yup, just like in Super Troopers.



Anyways, I have most of the day off as we don't play at Gonzaga until 6:30 tonight. Word on the street is I don't have a spot in the press box, so the possibility exists that I may have to spend four hours outside in 30-degree weather. Fingers crossed I get a spot in that press box! Otherwise my radio broadcast's going to be difficult to hear over the teeth chatter. I do have boots, jackets and a scarf just in case.

As I've done all year, this is where I'm writing all of the Pacific Baseball information. Definitely am enjoying this a ton!

Also, since I'll be in Stockton for at least another year (maybe longer?) it's time to start house-hunting since my lease is up in May. Craigslist here I come....

Wish me luck!

It's almost 1 a.m., yay!

Brief update as to why I've been so busy lately. (And you know you're a full-time employee and grad student when the only time you have to yourself is this late into the night/early morning.)

But we did have our women's intramural basketball championship play off game tonight, which we won handily actually. That was a nice little study break.

However, most of my time is being eaten up with two major projects, though one I'arguably finished a few weeks ago. They are my current 23-page marketing and promotions proposal for a newly-created, hardly-existent summer baseball team. I'm in the process of compiling a binder that's nearly full to capacity of information. It includes 57 research surveys I asked people to fill out, detailing their thoughts on baseball marketing and how they would respond to hypothetical situations. It also includes three interviews with minor league baseball employees and the coach of the team I'm marketing for. Then there are several scholarly articles on what has worked for other minor/major league baseball teams, and finally, my 23+ page proposal on what has worked for other teams, what potential fans want to see, and what I think will work for this baseball team.

Almost there. It's due on Monday and I'd say I'm about 3/4 done. The other "project" is my research thesis. We're supposed to create a power point and present that to the Sport Sciences staff next Wednesday. I'm done with my proposal, so all I need to do is pull together a few slides, get over my fear of public speaking, and own that presentation.

And then I have a few sporadic days off throughout December to enjoy my winter break! It's going to be a lot of work here in the final push, but I say bring it on. (Oh, and I enrolled in my courses for next semester, I'm finally in my fifth year of higher education going to take a communications class. I've avoided it like the plague as much as I can, but I'm super open to this class on Public Relations because a.) it's my job so I think I have a fairly good idea about it and b.) it's cross-listed as an undergrad class, so lectures will be easy I forsee.)

What a weekend!

This was one of those weekends that seemed to keep going, no matter what day it was. Friday seemed like a Saturday, and yesterday a Sunday, so today's lazy and exciting.

But I worked for the Kings on Friday night and had such a great time! I ended up keeping stats for the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves radio announcers, and they mentioned my name on the radio as the "official statistician" a number of times. However, no one really heard it, because it was broadcast in Minnesota, but whatever. Hopefully I'm developing contacts now and I can for sure put the NBA on my resume as an employer. I believe more opportunities like this are going to come up in the future, so I'll get other chances to go work for them.

My cousins live up in that area, so they were able to see me on tv often! I guess every time the camera would pan to the visiting bench, coaches, referees, I'd be on it. I was essentially sitting at the end of the visitors' bench, so I got to meet a few players and listen in on all their group huddles, etc.

(That's my very concentrated, stretched out widescreen face down in the left corner! Photo thanks to my cousin.)

One player's famous uncle, Mike Love of the BEACH BOYS! was actually sitting near me to watch his nephew play. So that was a whole range of excitement, possibly too much for one lone weekend.

Then I got to visit some friends and family from the area, all of whom I haven't seen for over a month, so that was all really relaxing and enjoyable.

Yesterday I worked our Pacific basketball games in the evening, then went out with a bunch of coworkers and assistant coaches into the early morning hours. This was a really fun weekend for me, one I've been hoping to have for a long time.

I haven't always been so sure that Stockton is the place for me to be, but little glimpses like this are making me glad I've ended up here for now. I know I won't stay long term, but I'm really starting to come into my own here. Hopefully, this continues to happen and wasn't just a one-time-accidental thing.

Only time will tell :)

Big day!

Even though I'm crazy busy (wow, I'm going to try and blog just one time without saying anything about how busy I am), work is getting better by the day!

I'm slowly collecting more and more responsibilities as time goes on. For example, today I was told I'm going to be the primary contact for baseball! Meaning I get to be in charge of the media guide. Which, really won't change that much because I was already working on baseball anyways, just not as the official SID. But now it's mine.

So that means I get men's and women's swimming, men's tennis, women's water polo and baseball all to myself.

Apparently I'll get to do some radio for women's volleyball in the near future, so I'm hoping I get better at calming my nerves on the radio. I don't know why, but it makes me so nervous!

And finally, remember how when they came to play at Pacific, I got to work for the Sacramento Kings? Well, they're playing the Minnesota Timberwolves tomorrow night and guess who will be working at ARCO Arena?

That's right, I'll be back on the Kings' media team. I would not be opposed to this becoming a regular occurrence.

On to politics (because everyone seems to have an opinion right now). I heard a lot of people saying that if Obama won the election, gas would finally start to drop. Here in Stockton it's been steadily doing so over the past month, little by little.

Today, I almost died of shock when I filled my entire gas tank for under $35!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gas here has almost fallen below the $2 threshold. I say give it another week or so and we'll be back in the $1-range.

Now that is a welcomed change. I don't know if you had anything to do with it or not, Obama, but thanks and I'm looking forward to the next four years with you.