You're Invited to the Pants Party

I’ve been wearing pants for a long time, and as long as I can remember they have always been worn at or around the same area. I like to keep them a few inches below the belly button, sitting right on the hips. I don’t think I’m alone in wearing my pants in this general area. Sure there are different trends; some people (myself included) have a pair or two of lower rising jeans, some people have some pants that fit a little higher up on the waist, but it never really very varies more than an inch or two. So here’s my question, why does this all change when you reach a certain? A man got on the elevator today as I was leaving work, a conservative estimate of his age would be around 78ish, and his pants were resting snuggly around the lower nipple. I say resting snuggly but really there was no resting at all, his belt was cinched pretty darn tight to get them to stay up this high. This is a good 13 to 15 inches from were my pants like to hang out. I don’t get it. Unless he was Ed Grimly or Lou Diamond Phillips from Stand and Deliver there is no way that he always rocked that style. So what made him change? Am I being insensitive about some old person’s issue that I don’t even know about? Maybe he had arthritic hips and having pants hanging from them cause undue may. Or maybe it’s due to the fact that you tend to lose all discernable shape and get doughy at a certain age which means you have to make a choice, over the paunch or under, and he chose over. I don’t know, and I want to, can anyone help me with this issue? Am I going to be dressing like this in 50 years? If I do it’s going to be because I’ll be getting a kick out of people thinking about how crazy I look, and I’ll probably pull them extra high and snug so that people will accidentally see my balls and I’ll laugh at them thinking I don’t know and trying not to look but not being able to look away.

Maybe I'm Just the Outdoorsy Type

I like to think I would be more resourceful than the usual lot if I were a homeless person. I lived in a city long enough to see how they are treated by the general public, not very well. I think most people are fairly cynical when it comes to a homeless dude, not that we’re all evil heartless people who are completely unsympathetic to the plight of our fellow man, but pretty much everyone just assumes that they’re going to use your money for something rather unsavory (see: Crack) that you’d rather not be a part of. Not to mention that multiple times I’ve had food with me that I offered and had that turned down by someone. It’s hard to feel bad for someone who says they’re hungry and then turns down food. Beggars can’t be choosers, literally. So experiences like this lead to the majority of people to be not very trusting of anyone who asks for money on the street, which sucks because there are probably many people who are genuinely having a rough go of it and could use all the help they can get. That’s why you gotta have a gimmick. I would treat like I was an actor trying to make it Hollywood or something; have a stunt to grab people’s attention. One time I was walking in Georgetown, as I crossed a bridge there was a man leaning over the side of the bridge holding a pole like he was fishing. When someone walked by he swung the pole around and at the end was a big cardboard arrow hanging over a bucket that said “Gimme a dollar.” It was hilarious and guess what, I gave him a dollar for making me laugh. I hear there is a guy in New York who hangs a sign over his neck telling people they can cuss him out for a dollar. Now that’s the kind of ingenuity and imagination I’m talking about. I bet that guy makes more money than I do. You’ve got to have some pizzazz, a little added flavor, just getting in someone’s face tend to scare them and turns them off.

I think another important thing would be to never turn down any opportunities. I mean, when somebody offers you some food take the food. Then you also have to be aware of your surroundings. For example, a new 7-11 just opened a block from my office building (which by the way also seems to be a hotbed for homeless people in Baltimore). On opening day a person was outside handing out coupons for free sandwiches. If I was in the unfortunate situation of being homeless you better believe I’d have figured way to get my hands on about 40 of those coupons, I’d be eating like a king for weeks.

The reason I bring this all up is because of something that happened this morning that I found very strange. Brian and I were walking to our office this morning and there was a homeless guy a few feet in front of us. As I’m walking I look down a see ahead of me a sandwich all wrapped up in plastic wrap just sitting on the ground, someone must have dropped their lunch at some point. It actually looked pretty good and perfectly clean, hell I considered picking it up myself. So what did the guy do? HE WALKED RIGHT BY. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t see it but damn man, keep your eyes peeled. When you don’t know when your next meal is coming you may want to be on the lookout for sandwiches falling from the sky.

Knocking Down Walls

Tonight I did something unprecedented in my world. I’m sure to most people it is a fairly common occurrence and not weird at all but for some reason it is totally foreign to me. Not only have I never done this before but the possibility of ever doing it never crossed my mind. That’s right folks; I used the grocery store bathroom. I have absolutely no idea why the thought of peeing in the supermarket seems so strange to me but it always has. I can remember many an instance where I was bursting at the seams, I think you could see my bladder through my shirt, and yet the thought never arose that I could just use the restroom there. Well no more, I’m breaking down barriers in my life, and I started tonight by urinating in at Giant. In case you were wonder the muzak playing during this momentous event was Sting, Desert Rose. Sting from now on always have a special place in my heart.

Like Anyone Cares About My Opinion

I ride to work each morning with my roommate and usually his girlfriend (actually I guess it’s just my roommates now that she has moved in). I’m eternally grateful for the free ride since I’ve been having a little car trouble for the last say 2 years, but there is one downside to this. Occasionally I am subjected to music that some might say is questionable, and I might say sucks. I don’t complain because what kind of douche bag gets a free ride then complains about the music the driver is listening to, also I don’t really care, I’m not a music snob so whatever people are into is fine with me, I listen to a lot of music that a lot of other people would hate so who am I to talk. This morning I got to check out something extra special though, so with out further ado here is my very short, very unintelligent review of Clay Aiken’s new album A Thousand Different Ways:

It sucked. I don’t know how many songs were on the album but it breaks down to about half new songs and half covers. The new songs were all just really cheesy, dreadful ballads. Clay Aiken makes Nick Lachey seem like Elton John. Then there are the covers. He covers the likes of Richard Marx, Mr. Mister, Bryan Adams and more. At least these are a little better because they weren’t written by whoever writes Clay Aiken’s music. They aren’t exactly classics but I think a lot of people enjoy these songs. It sort of comes off as if he is taking some 80’s pop songs and gaying them up a little bit for the Clayniacs. And by a little bit I mean a lot. I’m not suggesting the he is or isn’t gay, and it doesn’t matter to me either way, but there is something wispy and ethereal about Aiken’s voice along with a forced power and the production so overly perfect, clean and obsessive compulsive that the whole thing just comes off as incredibly gay. Basically Clay is a male Celine Dion, only Dion is way more manly than Aiken and could probably kick his ass.

All in all I highly recommend purchasing this album. But not to listen to, I think you should buy it so that you can throw it away and prevent someone else from having to hear it.

p.s. this is just my opinion, if you like Clay Aiken more power to you, clearly, I don’t. I wanted Carmen Rasmusen to win.

p.p.s. Wendy, even though it’s almost next weekend I’ll still put up a summary of last weekend for since I know how badly you want to read it.

This Racism is Killing Me Inside

· Survivor: Racist started last night and I’m pretty excited about it. This is shaping up to be a great season. I love Survivor, and I love stereotypes so this is right up my alley. Every season a few characters emerge and become the “main characters” or stars of the show. This season is being no exception so far. The teams are broken up into 4 different ethnic groups and it seems as though one person surfaced from each group. What cracks me up is that it doesn’t seem like any of these people represent the majority of there culture in anyway. First off the dominating personality in the Hispanic tribe is a big fat, heavy metal musician. Not exactly what I first think of when I think Latino. Then there’s the hippy Asian guy, he even said himself that he’s not really accepted by other Asian folk. The lead black got bounced already so a new personality will have to emerge from that group. Then there are my people. They actually seem to perpetuate stereotypes. I’m just a little disappointed that the one who seemed to take the leadership role and got the most camera time was such a douche. He stole a chicken from the other tribe and he kind of just came of like an overall ahole. He probably wouldn’t have been my first choice if I were in charge of picking people to represent my race is all I’m saying.

· Why do people feel the need to run and jump on an elevator when the doors are closing? This really pisses me off. Our building is only 19 floors, we have 9 elevators. Do you really have to jam yourself through a 13” gap in the doors to get on my elevator? This is annoying in a couple of ways. The first being that I work on one of the top floors so it’s another floor I have to at stop at which sucks. The second being that the doors have sensors on them so when you do your little superhero act and dive in, the doors sit open for another minute so 50 more people can get on. Mainly though it’s just the principle of how infuriating it is. What’s even worse are the people already the elevator who freak out and jam there arm in between the closing doors trying to save the world because they thought they might have heard someone coming a mile away. Let them get the next elevator so I don’t have to murder you for sucking at life.

· The defense of our BSSC football championship starts tomorrow and I couldn’t be more pumped.

· Hitting up NYC this weekend, the highlight of the trip being a Yankees-Red Sox game Sunday night. It would be pretty cool if the standings were a little tighter and the game meant more, but it’s still awesome. Plus if everything works out the Yankees might be able to clinch Sunday and I can’t think of anything better than doing against the Sox in New York.

Sounds like a personal problem

Am I only the only one who has this problem? It seems like everytime I have to wake up earlier than my normal routine I can't sleep the night before. It never fails and the following day is subsequently ruined as a result.

I usually wake up around 7:30 and roll into work around 8:30. This morning I had some lame training session to attend meaning I had to be at work at 7:30. The training was pretty much a complete waste of time in case you were wondering, but there were donuts and it's never wrong to pretend like you care about advancing your career when you know the boss will be there. Anyway, waking up earlier enough to make it in at 7:30 is not a big deal to me. Due to my poor diet, lack of fitness, and just overall malaise I find that I'm tired all the time. This sounds like a bad thing, and it probably is with one exception, I can fall asleep whenever I want. So if I have to go to bed at 10:30 because I have to get up early it's never really an issue. Then Eric Syndrome comes into play.

I talked extensively about Eric Syndrome in an earlier post but I haven't figured out how to link to individual posts on my own blog yet because I'm dumb. Eric Syndrome, briefly, is my innate ability to mess things up, not on a catastrophic level, just enough to make my life more annoying than it has to be. So how did it come into play yesterday? I'll tell you. My roommate/coworker plays on a softball team with another coworker. Occassionally when they're going to be missing a few players they ask me to play because they know it will be easy for me to just catch a ride with my roommate (also I like to think it's because I'm money at softball, but I doubt that's the case.) Yesterday he asked me if I could play. The correct answer would have been, sorry Mitch, I can't tonight, Monday Night Football is on and the Redskins are playing and I've been super excited about this game for the last 8 months. Naturally I said I would play. Why? Because Eric Syndrome kicked in right at that moment and I turned into and absent minded tard and forgot that I love football and rarely, if ever, miss a Redskins game, much less a Monday night game, much less the first game of the year. Lucky for me I have mans greatest achievement of the last half century to save me, Tivo. I can still watch the game but my plan of going to bed at 10:30 is shot.

So I get home and watch the game, finally get to bed around 12:30 or 1:00 which gives me about five and a half hours of sleep if I'm lucky, not bad. Of course now I'm kind of pissed because the Redskins lost and I don't fall asleep right away. Once I can't fall asleep immediately it usually means I'm not going to fall asleep for a while. I think that I start concentrating really hard on getting to sleep because I know I only have a few hours and the act of intense concentration actually keeps me awake longer. Then the bed starts getting hot, so I get uncomfortable and start squirming around trying to find a cool spot on the bed. Then I have to turn the pillow over, then switch pillows altogether, then the the blankets off, it just an endless cycle of uncomfortableness. It really just turns into an abject sleep disaster. I'm actually a very sound sleeper, I usually fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and sleep straight through the night and wake up ready to go in the morning. Last night I tossed and turned eventually falling asleep sometime around 4 a.m. for a little under 3 fitful hours of sleep. Which is probably why I'm about to stab myself in the ear with a pencil just so I can leave work and take a nap.

Up to some of my old tricks

So you've probably been thinking to yourself, Eric has done anything really stupid and written a blog post about it in a while. Well I took care of that for you. While playing poker this afternoon I couldn't help but notice that I was starving. I was right in the middle of a tournament, and doing fairly well I might add, so it's not like I could just stop playing. But I was really hungry. Then I remembered that it was situations like this that led me to buy a laptop. So I carried the laptop over to the kitchen to make myself a turkey sandwich. I finish making the sandwich, but I don't want to eat in the kitchen, there's college football on TV. So I grab everything (the sandwich, my laptop, a glass of delicious V8 Splash and a box of Taco Fiesta Cheez Its) and take it over to the living room. Now I know what you're thinking, Eric that's what to much to carry, you're asking for trouble, make two trips. You're right, but I'm both lazy and an idiot, so I'm carrying everything at once, leave me alone. I should've listened. As I'm walking the laptop starts to teeter. Everything is going in slow motion and there's nothing I can do, I have a plate and a glass in one hand and a box of damn Cheez Its tucked under my right arm (it's the Cheez Its fault too, if they weren't so f'ing tasty I wouldn't have had them shoved under my arm thus comprimising the integrity of the whole system). Needless to say, the laptop fell and I no longer have a laptop. The thing that pisses me off the most is that its just the screen that's broken, everything else works fine, if I could see what I was doing. To add insult to injury I couldn't get back into the poker tournament in time therefore losing my $50 buy-in. This has pretty much ruined my weekend. I think there are 13 or 14 stray beers in the refrigerator, I'm going to try and drink them all in the next hour or two and hopefully forget everything that happened today.

Sports Are Frustrating

But more to the point, sports fans are frustrating. Everyone loves to argue about sports, that's one of the fun parts of watching grown men play childrens games. What bothers me is that no one knows as much as they think they do (myself included) yet everyone expresses their opinion as if it's absolute fact, when most of the time theyre wrong. And the people who argue the loudest are usual the most clueless. A few weeks ago I was in Atlantic City and a guy from New York railed for a solid twenty minutes telling us why Derek Jeter was by far the best player in baseball. This is a ridiculous statement, and I'm a Yankees fan, I love Derek Jeter. There was no convincing this man otherwise. It never ceases to amazing how otherwise rational people let their biases take over when it comes to sports. I understand being passionate, I almost threw a chair at a friend once when we got into an argument over whether or not Koy Detmer was an asshole (I say yes by the way). I guess what I'm saying is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but a lot of fans seem to lack objectivity and if that's the case keep your opinion to yourself, you're probably wrong. Also if you can't express without being douche bag about it just don't say anything.

Here is another sports fan phenomenon that gets to me, bandwagon jumping. I don't mean in the traditional sense of changing your allegiance to a team based on their success or lack thereof. Although that is annoying too, I've never seen more Red Sox fans than right around the beginning of spring training in 2005. Then again, like I said earlier, I'm a Yankee fan so it's not like I haven't been accussed of this a million times over. The sense that I mean bandwagon jumping is when people jump onto someone else ideas and run with them, and try to pass of these idea as there own. Oh Notre Dame is overrated cause there defense is bad huh, USC won't be good this year because they lost to many players to the NFL. Guess what, it's college football and USC is a football factory, you don't think they've reloaded again already. You're sick of the media talking about T.O.? Well I'm sick of people saying how their sick of hearing about T.O., and the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry be covered all the time, and whining about East Coast bias, and Barry Bonds, and steriods, and all the other stories that are covered to death. I don't want to hear about these stories either, they're vapid and redundant, but so is everyone in America expressing that fact. ESPN's main goal is ratings I think, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how the stay in business. I would guess that they cater to what people want to see, not try to force feed us stories that they think are interesting. When I see a story about T.O. you know what I do? Change the channel. And when i see an article online, I just don't read it. The problem is that while people have had enough of these stories they continue to watch in order to have something to complain about. If everyone stopped talking about T.O. we'd probably stop hearing about him. Also the Tigers are not going to win the World Series, get over it. They're 28-30 against teams currently in playoff contention, and that's only because they're 10-5 against the Twins, who waited until late June to start playing well. By comparison, the White Sox are 29-24, the Yankess are the same. The Tigers are 26-4 against the Royals and the national league. They have an excellent pitching staff, but you don't get to face the Royals in the playoffs. The Tigers don't walk, don't have a high on base percentage, and strike out a lot. Which means they don't work the opposing starter and don't get into the bullpen early. Which is absolutely crucial to playoff success. The also have a closer with an ERA pushing 5. That's a scary propositon in those tight playoff games. All this leads me to believe, in my opinion, that the Tigers, if they do make the playoffs, won't have a lot of success. And Arod is very good at baseball.

There are a lot of people who have an amazing knowledge of sports and it's intricacies. I'm probably not one of them. But there are a lot more people who have no idea what they're talking and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is when some jackass who thinks he's Peter Gammons, John Clayton, and Chad Ford all rolled into one. I don't have a problem having an opinion, it's not be open to someone possibly changing you're mind thats the problem.

Basically here is what I would like to happen, because everyone loves to ride these opinions, and I like to go the opposite route. I want the Tigers to miss the playoffs, even though it really is a good story and they have a likeable team. I want to the Red Sox to make a miraculous comeback to win the wildcard, just so we can here a lot of great stories about the best rivalry in sports. But I want them to lose to the Yankees in the ALCS because everyone still hates the Yankees more. Then I want to see a subway series with the Mets so we get bombarded with stories about how great New York is. I want T.O. to have 2,000 yds recieving all the while talking about how he is underpaid and hates Bill Parcells and the rest of the team, except for Mike Vanderjagt. I want the Packers to go 11-5 and Brett Favre to play for 3 mores years. But then the Redskins have to play the Colts in the Super Bowl. But only if Peyton Manning throws for 500 yds and 12 touchdowns in the NFC Championship game against the Patriots. Notre Dame wins the BCS title game 17-6, only winning because of a stellar defensive effort. Also J.J. Redick should score 15 ppg his rookie year and Duke should win it all. It would be fun if Micheal Vick had an amazing pro bowl caliber year while spreading herpes in every city he visits. I still don't want Barry Bonds to break the home run record though. That guys a dick.

I realize that I just wrote an entire posts doing the very thing I complain about in the post. You, my reader, probably think I'm an asshole. Whatever, shut up, I hate you. Just kidding, I love you, you know I can't stay mad.

What A Beardo

I think I might grow a beard. There are, by my count, zero bad reason to do this. There are several great reasons. Here they are:

1. Summer is almost over, the temperature is dropping quickly, the leaves are changing color, and my face is getting colder. A beard solves that problem.

2. My look becomes very adaptable. I can go from ruggedly handsome, to sexy, to distinguished, to badass, to crazy in a matter of days.

3. If I'm lucky I can be considered a Man Beard.

4. November is National Beard Month. I celebrate all holidays (including this one), and it's going to take a while to grow a beard worthy of National Beard Month.

5. I didn't shave whilst at the beach this weekend therefore my beard blocked the bottom half of my face resulting I a some unattractive two-toned action.

I'm not sure how long this whole beard thing will last, but I'm guessing it will be until my face is all the same color.

I grew up at the beach. Until I went to college I had never lived more than ten miles from the beach (with the exception of the year or two I lived in Fayetteville, NC but I was to young to remember that.) One summer after college I went to the beach literally everyday for almost 4 months straight. I'm not trying to brag or imply anything by this, I'm merely try to point out that I have spent a considerable amount of time at the beach, much more than most people I would think. So that would lead you to believe that I've got this whole sunblock thing down right? Wrong. I forgot to very important rules while visiting Virginia Beach this weekend. Those being:

1. When at the beach for over 9 hours, reapply sunscreen multiple times.
2. Don't fall asleep, you're just asking for trouble.

Actual rule number two should be ammended, because I actually love falling asleep on the beach, it's extremely relaxing. It should say don't fall asleep on your stomach after coming out of the water and washing away all the sunscreen then stay asleep while all your friends go to get lunch and you stay behind because you're not hungry because when they're gone for two hours you lose track of time and get super sunburned on your back. That doesn't sound as good, I think it's a run-on sentence. Anyway, to my credit I only got sunburned on my back, and face, and I applied sunscreen twice so it isn't the worst burn ever. Not to my credit, it's easily the dumbest looking sunburn in history. Since I fell asleep with my head facing left I only have a burn on the left side of my face, it looks like someone smacked my in the face with a ham. My back is worse. When you don't use suncreen you get a horrible sunburn but at least you get full coverage so you're all the same color. I have the "you obviously attempted to protect yourself but you clearly missed a few spots so now you look like all splotchy and weird" burn. I have all the streaks and lines going everywhere. It looks like a rorshach test. Only instead of black and white it's red and pasty.

Booooooooring

Sometimes your life is exciting. Your days are filled with a plethora of fun and stimulating activities. You’re always on the go, it can be exhausting, but you don’t really care, because you’re consistently having a great time. Then you have weeks like this one, where you’re so mind numbingly bored most of the time you don’t know what to do with yourself. And this is coming from one of the biggest homebodies you’ll ever know. I never have a problem spending a night at the house watching a movie or something equally lifeless. This week though exceeded even my staggering capacity for boredom.

Here are the highlights:

Monday:
Woke up at 7, went to work from 8:30 – 6:00, and then went over a friend’s house for a Fantasy Football draft. This was probably the most exciting part of my week. Before you start thinking that this is incredibly sad and banal because fantasy sports are for nerds just wait, it gets worse. I wasn’t actually participating in this draft; I just went to watch my friends do this because I had nothing better to occupy my time.

Tuesday:
Work, home, online poker for and hour or two. Fell asleep around 10 p.m. Why? Because why not.

Wednesday:
Work, home for another fantasy football draft. This time I actual was in this one, so it’s only slightly less lame.

Thursday:
Work, home to watch the VMAs. Revise an earlier statement; this is now the most exciting part of my week. Was every celebrity appearing on the show at the bar 4 hours beforehand getting completely plastered, because this is a disaster. And how old is John Norris, seriously, can he really be the best guy to tell 14 year olds what to think is cool. MTV is losing it. Why not bring back Kurt Loder while you’re at it.

That’s my week thus far, about as boring as it get. I forget to mention I somehow managed to watch about 7 episode of Big Brother in that timeframe, and I don’t even like that show. Chilltown you are so devious.

Now I know what you’re thinking:

You: But Eric it’s the work week it’s supposed to be boring and this is a holiday weekend so I’m sure you have something super exciting on tap.
Me: Actually me and few friends are heading down to Virginia Beach.
You: Awesome, that sounds like a kick ass time.
Me: Wow you talk an awful lot like I do.
You: Well that’s because you’re projecting your voice on to a fictional character. It’s a pretty weak literally device to try and make a point and take a stab at humor.
Me: It is a bit cliché isn’t it.
You: Yep, it’s very reminiscent of a few popular authors’ styles. In fact if this weren’t a totally meaningless blog that no one reads anyways you might be accused of plagiarism.
Me: Ummmmm….
You: Anywho, Virginia Beach, that sounds fun.
Me: Oh yeah, except for one slight problem, my chosen vacation destination for Labor Day weekend is currently being pounded by a hurricane. In fact the current forecast is a 100% chance of strong thunderstorms. So unless things clear up fast it’s shaping up to be even more boring than my week. A whole lot of drinking inside and playing Jenga or something equally lame while watching the rain.
You: That sucks.
Me: Tell me about it.

Sometimes my mind wanders when I’m bored.

I Don't Still Got It

There was a time in my life when I was considered fairly athletic. That time has passed. I played three sports in high school, one of them well enough to move on to the college level, kind of. There was a time when I would go to track practice in the afternoon, follow that up with an off-season lifting session for baseball, play a few games of pick-up basketball and still wake up at 6 the next morning feeling great, ready to do it all again. That time has passed. Now I play one 40 minute game of coed flag football and I hobble around like Kirk Gibson in the ’88 World Series for 3 days. Only with less fist pumping, except at the bar afterwards of course. PS I probably could have used a much better analogy but I wanted a reason to link to that clip, because it’s awesome.

From the age of 5 when I started playing baseball to the age of 24 I sustained exactly two injuries that required a doctor’s attention and they were both freak occurrences. The first was when I was 12 and my brother and I both went for a loose ball in my backyard and he threw an elbow knocking my bottom front tooth out. I had to have a root canal in the morning before playing in my Little League game that night, which in my opinion is pretty badass for a 12 year old. That tooth ended up being pulled 2 years later when I got braces, I was pretty pissed. I still think my brother did it on purpose also, that dick. The second injury happened when I lost a fly ball in the lights and it hit my bare hand bending my fingers in directions fingers were not meant to be bent. I thought I broke something so I went to the emergency room. Turns out it was only a “severe sprain” so the doctor tossed a splint on it told me to sit out two weeks, but I had a game the next day so I just took the splint of and batted with that finger off the bat since it wouldn’t bend. All in all in the hundreds of baseball games, track meets, cross country races, road races, and pick up games I’ve been involved in I missed a grand total of three innings due to injury.

Then this year happened. It’s like I turned 25 and became frail and brittle. You get old fast apparently. I’m a threat to fall down and break a hip at any point. So far in this calendar year I’ve pulled a hamstring causing me to have to sit out about 3 weeks, got drilled in the chest resulting in the inability to breathe with out pain for at least a week, dove and fell on my wrist, that one really sucked, I couldn’t turn a doorknob with my right hand for a while, and totally destroyed my shoulder, I can’t throw with any velocity without feeling an intense pain (this one scares me the most, I don’t want to find out what’s really wrong, I don’t like surgery). That is just the big stuff, there’s a never ending list of minor aches and pains. For example, my left big toe has been hurting for a while now, causing me to walk flat footed so I don’t bend it, this, I think, is the cause of the hip pains I’ve been feeling. What the hell happened to me, I was so glorious, now I’m a shell of my former self.

There are obvious reasons for my slow decay into unathleticism. The major one being that a year ago my new job resulted in a move from D.C., where I had easy metro access to the gym, to the suburbs of Baltimore, where I have no access to anything. Also I went from walking a half a mile to and from the metro to a job where I was on my feet all day to a job where I spend all day wallowing in front of a computer eating. I can actually hear myself getting fatter as I type this.

This is a light on the horizon though. My roommate’s girlfriend is moving in soon, signaling that it’s time for Eric to move out. The first order of business after the move is to join the gym two blocks from my new place. Then the former, in shape Eric can rejoin society saying goodbye to fat Eric forever. Well maybe not forever, but at least postponing the inevitable. Also I have a bet to win. A few months ago Jake and I got into an argument about how fast I could run a marathon. Based on past glories (see: High School) I grossly overestimated my abilities and proclaimed that I could run one in three and a half hours. Jake was so confident that I couldn’t that he bet me his house. Seriously. The problem is that he doesn’t doubt my ability to run it in that time; it’s that he thinks I’m way to lazy to ever train hard enough to achieve that goal. He’s probably right but I intend to at least try and prove him wrong. I would never actually take his house of course but I certainly would take the $1200 Frese said he would give me if I pulled it off, so get ready to pay up friends. Ok so I’ve only run approximately 10 times in the last few months, but there’s still time to turn it around.

Ouch

I'm enacting a new rule of thumb effective immediately. From now I will make sure to always have a spare set of clothes at work just in case. I'll save a drawer in one of my filing cabinets specifically for this purpose, it will henceforth be known as the spare clothes drawer. I think I'll use the one that has only had a bag of Doritos in it for the last year or so.

There is a very good reason for my new rule. Generally when you show up to work late, looking like someone unleashed hell on your face, it would be helpful to not being wearing the same thing you wore to work the day before because you got to shitfaced the night before to make it home and change. Smelling like booze is not very professional. I really could've used the spare clothes drawer this morning. Now if only there was a shower at work too.

No More Pizza

My whole world is in a tailspin today. Or do I even have a world? I'm not sure. I feel like everything I thought I used to know has been turned upside down. Up is down, left is right. What could be the cause of such inner turmoil and chaos you ask? Pluto is no longer a planet? One of the first things you learn in science class in elementary school is that there are nine planets. My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. You couldn't even read or pronounce the word mnemonic but you some mnemonic device to remember all the planets. Well moms not serving pizza ever again and frankly this upsets me. How can you just have a vote and decided to change something like that? Oh plutos is large enough to pull itself into a round object but not large enough to be called a planet. Whatever astronomer, I hope happy for ruining my childhood. Whats next, are you going to cancel Christmas?

Here's the consolation for poor old Pluto, it gets to be put into a new catergory called dwarf planets. That just seems insulting. You're a midget, you can't be a planet. Don't astronomers have better things to worry about? How about instead of having week long conferences about whether Pluto is a planet you make sure nothing crashes into Earth and wipes us out like the dinosaurs. That seems like a much better use of your time, and I'm sure most people would be very appreciative of those efforts.

John Gibbons: American Badass

John Gibbons, manager of the Toronto Bluejays, is awesome. He has been known to describe himself as a "players manager" and loves to prove that point. It's hard to argue against him being the best manager in all of baseball today, if not the history of baseball. Lets look at the facts, after being hired as a bullpen catcher in 2002 he mediocre, I mean metoeric, rise to interim manager in 2004 after Carlos Tosca was fired. Taking over full time in 2005 he led the team to an 80-82 record. Not quite underachieving, certainly not overachieving, lets just saying achieving. This offseason general manager J.P. Ricciardi went out and spent wildly on free agents putting together a very talented team to compete with the likes of the Yankees, White Sox, and Red Sox. And Gibbons has managed the hell out of that team to the tune of 66-59, 10 out of the division, and 7.5 games out of the wild card. He seemed to be doing just enough to give the impression of improvement while still not quite living up to expectations. Some people call that underachieving, I call it a survivor. Keeping hope alive is a skill you can't learn, you just have it.

Really though it's not like you can lay any blame on John, look at the collection of pussies on his roster he has to deal with. Shea Hillenbrand, team cancer. Gibbons dealt with him the way any of the true greats would. The Bluejays have a chalkboard in the clubhouse that the players like to right jokes on from time to time. A good way to keep things light and loose in the clubhouse. After the team hit a bit of a rough patch Hillenbrand wrote, "the ship is sinking." Most would just take this for the lighthearted joke that is was. Not Gibbons. He sees through those sort of antics and knows that Hillenbrand is a team deserter, and he's not going to let that loser bring everyone else down with him. He dealt with it Gibby style by calling a team meeting, calling him out in front of everyone, and challenging him to fight. Hillenbrand naturally backs down, some might say showing a bit of maturity and professionalism. John on the other hand knows that this is the perfect motivational tool: he shows everyone whos boss, lights a fire under their asses, and proves that Hillenbrand is weak. After the that he runs Shea out of town by threatening to resign if the team doesn't trade him. Sure at the time he was hitting .300 with 12 hrs and 40 rbis but who cares the teams better off.

Now there is another incident. Ted Lilly had a bit off a rough outing yesterday. Not enjoying the way he was pitching Gibbons went out to remove him from the game. Obviously this guy knows how to deal with players, and one of those ways is to start an argument with them on the field in front of 30,000 people. Lilly fought back for a while before finally leaving the field and walking down into the tunnel to the clubhouse. John Gibbons is from Great Falls, Montana. A heartland badass like him is not going to put up with that kind of insubordination. So he followed Lilly into the tunnel and started a fist fight. Not exactly a big risk, the guys name is Lilly after all. Apparently it resulted in a bloody nose for John, but he doesn't care, it had the effect he wanted. Lilly, a very solid #3 starter, is a free agent after next year and thanks to Gibbons' mastery of player/manager relations most likely will not resign with the team.

I salute you John Gibbons, total hardass, thanks to your brash managerial style you've managed to run out of town a .300 hitter and a good starting pitcher thus ensuring that the Bluejays won't be challenging the Yankees for the division title any time soon. Job well done.

A Few Other Things That Happened Recently

* Our BSSC softball team won five games this week to take home the championship. That makes two championships this year, we won football a few months ago. Apparently Don't Stop Believin' (our team name, because Journey is awesome) is the first team in the history of BSSC to win football and softball. I think that can mean only one thing; we are obviously the best athletes in Baltimore and the surrounding counties. That's the only real conclusion I can draw.

* We bet the new guy at work that he couldn't eat a Taco Bell Grande Meal for lunch. In case you were wondering what that consisted of it was 4 Original Tacos, 3 Soft Tacos, and 3 Bean Burritos. Needless to say he lost that bet. He finished 8 1/2 of the 10 items, but in the end the Taco Bell Bean Burrito is just to disgusting to ever have completed the task. We did surmise that he could put down 15 to 20 regular tacos though, which is impressive.

* I realized this week why I never played football. In the third game of our championship run I had a little colision. I hit a ground ball to the shortstop, I was hustling because I thought I could beat it out. The throw led the first baseman into the baseline and I had no time to react and ran through them. I took an elbow or shoulder square in the chest and breathing has been painful for the last few days. What I mean by that is that every time my lungs expand I feel a sharp pain in the vicinity of my heart. Not good times. I definitely bruised or possibly cracked a rib. In my defense though that was a pretty big girl playing firstbase.

* I discovered two delicious treats on Saturday that might have changed my diet forever. The first one being this. Are you serious? I love sausage, I love pancakes, and now you've combined them and put them on a stick. I can't think of anything that could be better than that. Jimmy Dean may have just changed my life forever. The other is something I can't believe I hadn't thought of before. Just think, what is the most fool proof way to take anything already totally appetizing and make it even better? Answer: deep fry it. I was watching a cooking show and the woman deep fried ravioli. That is awesome. I had to try this, and as suspected, it was divine.

Here is some things that have happened recently...

I was walking back to work from lunch yesterday and had something fun happen. I work in downtown Baltimore, we often eat lunch right in the inner harbor. There are a lot of tourists there, especially in the summer. Tourists walk very slow, often stopping at random points to look around without any regard for who is walking behind them or who they are blocking, i hate this. I walk at a fairly brisk pace, if I have somewhere to be I don't mess around, so tourists cause problems for me sometimes. On the way back to the office we get stuck behind a group of extremely slow walking people, obviously we're going to have make a pass. When we get to the point where can make this pass it happens to be the same spot in the sidewalk with two fairly large planters cause it to narrow. We can't all get through at the same time, but since we were already passing them we continue to pass (which I didn't think was in anyway rude) but since the sidewalk narrowed they had to stop for a few seconds while we went through. Did I mention that this group happened to be a group of middle age and elderly black women. Well i was the last one to walk by and I said excuse me but as I walk by I hear this, "why you stopping from a bunch of white boys, I wouldn't let no white boys through. I wish my grandson D were here so he could kick there ass." Thats a direct quote by the way. This was totally unbelievable to me. How racist is that? She wasn't mad about having to stop, we hadn't affronted her in anyway by our actions. She was just pissed that she had to stop walking at her ridiculously slow pace because of a few white people. And apparently because of our whiteness we deserved to be beat up by her all-world, ass kicking grandson D. I can't believe that there are people in the world that still think like that. I feel like there is a huge double standard in this country also, because had I turned around and told her how absurdly racist she was being it would somehow be turned around into me being racist. Oh well, when things like that happen you have to just let it go and realize it's really difficult to fight ignorance of any kind, it's something that is really independent of race.

I realize that the title of the post says things that have happened recently, it was my intention to talk about some other stuff, much lighter stuff, but I rambled on longer than I thought I would about this so I'll save it for the next post. Save you from having to read one of my way to long posts. I guess I was a little more fired up about that than I thought.

New Name

I changed the title of my blog. There is no real driving reason behind it. I just didn't like the name anymore. I'm very fickle, it's a personality flaw of mine, I change my mind a lot. I still hate a lot of things, and I still enjoy talking about why I hate those things, but I didn't like the name anymore.

You're probably wondering why I chose the new name, what is the meaning of this title (actually I'm certain no one is wondering this but I think I need a second paragraph.) Well I mentioned to Mike that I wanted to change the title and asked if he had any suggestions. In usual Mike fashion he had plenty of suggestions. They all kind of sucked, which is also in usual Mike fashion. To the point were I said, "Can you just stop thinking of names, I'll think of something." That's when the lightbulb lit over my head. That's gold. It has absolutely no meaning, although I'm certain I could make up some sort of metaphor and maybe I will in the future. I just think it's kind of cool name. It sounds like something a blog should be named so I'm going with it.

Have no fear though, I may have changed the title, but with the help of Justin Timberlake, I'm still bringing sexy back.

China Can I Talk To You For a Second

A few years ago there was a problem in a few ponds in the Crofton, MD area with the snakefish. An alien species, native to China, had invaded and was killing all the fish. My friends and I were riveted, a fish that breathes air and walks on land. What kind of magical dragon fish have you released upon us? Seeing as the snakefish can walk on land there was worry that it would migrate to other bodies of water, eventually making its way to the rivers and Chesapeake Bay. Fear of the snakefishs' effect on our fragile local environment got so out of hand the decison was made to just go ahead and poison the entire lake where the fish were spotted, killing everything. This seem to have the desired effect, quelling our concerns that the snakefish would breed like rabbits and kill every fish on the eastern seaboard.

Now this is happening. Seriously? Mitten Crabs? That doesn't even seem like a real animal, but apparently it is. The fear no is that the mitten crab population will grow eating up all the oysters and other small shellfish like ceatures and leave nothing for the precious bluecrab.

What's up China? Did Maryland offend you? If so we're sorry. Is this some sort of weird Chinese terrorism, or are you just try to mess with people. Can you please stop releasing crazy, viruslike animals in our water. We'd appreciate that. I'm not sure you realize what would happen if Maryland didn't have anymore more blue crabs. The entire state would implode. For real. That's their entire identity. I'm not kidding. You've seen Wedding Crashers, crabcakes and football, that's what Maryland does.

Let Me Tell You Why I Suck

I've discovered a new trend in my life. Well that's not true it's actually a very old trend that I just realized was happening this weekend. For lack of a better term I'm going to steal a name from Brian and call it Mack Syndrome. Mack Syndrome is when you take a perfectly good, enjoyable situation and make it suck somehow. Not sucky enough to ruin everything mind you, just enough to make it not nearly as fun as it should have been. Also by situation I don't necessarily mean big things like relationships, or jobs, or cars (although my track record with those is pretty awful too). I'm talking about smaller things like a night out, something along those lines. This weekend I was 3-3, the Mack Syndrome came into effect all 3 days.

Friday:

Friday I agreed to play in a poker tournament that a coworker had put together. It seemed like a pretty good time, $50 buy-in, no-limit hold 'em tournament. He predicted there to be enough people to have a 3 table tournament meaning the prize pool would be decent. Well we got there and only 10 people showed up so instead of the tournament it was decided we would play a regular cash game. This was fine with me, I consider myself to be a pretty solid poker play, and in any regular cash I like my chances. As predicted I was doing fairly well about an hour or so into the game, I was up just about twice what I bought in for without getting any thing close to a decent hand, just outplayed a few people in a few key pots. Then Mack Syndrome kicks in. All night my left contact was really irritating my eye, and getting progressively worse because I'm an idiot and I keep rubbing it even though I've worn contact lenses for almost 10 years now and know the worst thing you can do is rub it. Eventually it gets to the point where I have to take them out becuase I can't stand it anymore, the pain is unbearable. Luckily one of the guys had an extra case to store them in, and Brian brought his glasses and he wasn't using them so I thought things would be cool. They weren't. I don't think I've ever realized how bad my vision is until now. I think Brian's glasses actually made things worse. I couldn't see a thing, I'm like Mr. Magoo blind. I had to hold my hole cards literally 2 or 3 inches from my face just to see what I was dealt. After that I was done, I couldn't even see the flops that I dealt directly in front of me. Eventually I just had to stop. Playing poker is much more visual then I thought, it's hard to get a read on someone you can't see, and it's even hard to think about your next move and the moves of others when you're constantly playing catch up because you have to have someone calling play-by-play for you just to know what is going on. Night 1 of the weekend, botched because of contacts, dagger.

Saturday:

On paper Saturday looked to be a perfect day. Frese got his companies' Orioles tickets for the game that afernoon. Four tickets a few rows behind home plate, pretty sweet. Add to fact that the Yankees are in town, even sweeter. My favorite team is only in town a few games a year, and I can't get to all of them, so when I get to go, for free, with some of the best seats in Camden Yards I'm pretty pumped. The weather was perfect too. It had all the makings of a good day. Three of my favorites in the world are: going to a baseball game, drinking outside on a beautiful day, and gambling. Well I already had to out of three so I thought, why not mix in the third? Mack Syndrome thats why. I actually haven't bet on sports in a fairly long time, I'd say it's been about 2 months, so I decided to reload the sportsbook.com account just to place a few wagers on the game. It couldn't have been more of a lock, the Yankees are playing well, a rookie pitcher on the mound, this will be great. Wrong. Yankees get one hit, I lose 6 seperate bets, I'm pissed, day botched, I suck. It was somewhat salvaged though by the girl at the bar later calling Frese the scum of the earth, that was funny.

Sunday:

Most Sunday's during the summer everyone gets together and hangs out at our friends pool. It's a great time, 15 or so friends just being lazy, playing random sports and the like. Well this one was a double Mack Syndrome. The first wasn't so much a Mack Syndrome because I think it happened to everyone. When it's been floating around 100 degrees for about 2 weeks straight the ground is going to be pretty hard. And by hard I mean like concrete. Playing soccer barefoot on said ground is not a great idea. The result is that my feet still hurt today and I have a mystery hip injury that causes me to have to use my arms to lift my leg up and put it in my pants when getting dressed in the morning. The second thing is a little more obvious if you know me. No suncreen, now I have a wicked sunburn. Which is just plain stupid, I'm a pale, Irish, super freckly, redhead, who has lived at the beach his entire life. You would think I know better at this point, and I do, I've been to the beach/slash pool a bunch of times already this summer with no sunburn to speak of. Sunday I just never even thought about it, because Mack Syndrome kicked in to cloud my thoughts.

There you have it, a whole weekend's worth of examples of my suckiness. Please don't let Mack Syndrome affect you and your loved ones.