Hopeless

"You know it's hot when the highlight of your day is someone bringing you a freeze pop..."
 -Destiny Perez-




Good afternoon everyone.  It appears that this is going to be my SIXTH post since my entry on March 31st.  I definitely have to start pacing myself...  Ironically, this will also be the post where my total pageviews go over the 90,000 mark, which is an incredible milestone considering the fact that I don't write.

As a potentially classic Men's Final at Wimbledon plays out of the t.v. beside me, I guess that I'll write a little.  I'll begin with work, which has been extremely busy since I took my new job at the start of March.  In my job with ITS, we see a huge number of projects during the summer as you might imagine, because that's when the students are gone and we can do more work without disturbing them.  We do work in preparation for their return to campus, in addition to everything that happens in and around the football stadium, for the return of Longhorn Football in early September.  We already had several ongoing projects this year before the summer rush hit, so I've been working quite a bit.  During the past week, I worked 3.5 hours of overtime on Tuesday and Wednesday, 3 hours on Thursday, and 2.5 extra hours on Friday.  I also expect a lot more overtime before the students return to campus.  Don't get me wrong, UT has summer school, but there are over 50,000 students wandering around here during the long semesters...

In the world of sports, I still plan on doing football picks again.  These will be moved to one of my newer blogs (don't worry, you haven't missed anything - I don't write in my newer blogs either), Coach's Parlay Card.  I believe that Joey still plans on making picks with me.  I've barely cracked the covers on my college and pro football magazines, for what you'd expect from me anyway.  In baseball, the Red Sox and Yankees will be on TBS in about five minutes.  The Sox are 5 1/2 games back if I'm correct (the Yankees in first), so the whole division will be within 4 1/2 games of the lead at the All-Star Break should Boston win today.  The Sox were favored to win the division (and more) coming into the season, so the second half could be very interesting...  And of course, there's the Spurs offseason.  It's interesting to see where free agents want to sign, and the jerks on the teams that they're deciding not to play with...

Despite the moniker of this blog, I've spent nearly all of my free time at home recharging from work, so I don't have tons to report about San Marcos or Austin.  My friend Cindy from campus put her house up for sale recently, and has had people coming to look at it virtually IMMEDIATELY after it listed, so the housing/rental market here in Austin is still ridiculously strong, a fact that I curse every time that I write my monthly rent check.  Following along on facebook, it seems that people were incredibly generous in the wake of the late spring flooding in San Marcos and Wimberley, as I saw that all kinds of benefits were held for victims.  In some San Marcos and sports news, the Texas State Bobcats will be opening up their football season at Florida State University.  That should be interesting...  :)

Hopefully that's enough to tide you over for a week, or a month, or longer...  :)  Have a great week and I'll talk to again sometime...  ;)

    

The Memorial Day Weekend Flood Of 2015

"The trick is to not let people know how weird you really are until it's too late for them to back out..." -via Bianca Edwards-

"Why can't taco rhyme with Waco?" -HalleyAnna Finlay-



Good afternoon everyone.  I know, two posts in a month - somebody stop me...  ;)  The big news in this area today is the flooding that's taking place due to the recent rain that we've had.  Thanks to my friends, I have several photos to share with you today. We'll start down south, with my sister Whitney...

This comes to you from Schertz, which is just north of San Antonio.  Next we arrive in San Marcos, where all sorts of havoc has taken place.  We'll begin with the photos in and around Sewell Park, which is the home of 'Bikini Hill.'

My friend Courtney shared this one, and yes, that is a regulation basketball hoop...

My friend Katie shared this photo earlier in the morning...

This a different vantage point of the park from my friend Alma.  As we move around San Marcos, you'll see that there is no shortage of photos, and these are just a fraction of what I've seen on facebook today...

This shot comes to you from my friend Keith...

And this picture was taken by my friend Valerie in front of a strip mall that's just east of IH-35...

This photo from my friend Scott was one of the first that I saw this morning, and comes from a local apartment complex...

Cyndi's photo also shows another apartment complex in San Marcos...

J.J.'s picture shows us an access road submerged alongside the aforementioned IH-35...

Monica's shot comes to us from near Highway 80...

This picture was taken to the west of Austin and was shared last night by my friend Hunter.  The Austin-area had several tornado watches and warnings last night, and this restaurant obviously experienced some of the strong winds...

And this morning at my own apartment complex, I saw where the storms were successful in snapping off a big part of this tree last night (the tree on the right, behind the blue dumpster)...


So yeah, the flooding is a pretty big story down here in south Texas.  Before all of this happened last night and into this morning, the local graduations were the big story. My friend Lauren shared a pre-flood photo from Texas State (same Sewell Park) earlier in the week...

Several graduates celebrate by jumping into the river after the ceremony.  You'll notice that you don't see any of the steps in the background in the previous photos, as they're all underwater right now...  And this gem comes to you from Lubbock, where one of my former softball players received a bit of recognition from Texas Tech...

I may have gone to medical school if I would have known that I get could my name put up on the big screen after I finished.  Well..., probably not...  ;)  Congratulations Amanda!  I'll even spare y'all the story where I was pitching batting practice and as a freshman, Amanda NAILED MY THIGH with a line drive, giving me a bruise that I sported for well over a month.  I'm SURE that the guilt from that experience encouraged Amanda to complete medical school...  :D

To go along with that throwback story, I have a throwback photo of myself that I put on facebook earlier in the week...

This was taken just before the finish line at the site of my first marathon in San Antonio.  I was a pound or two lighter back then...  AND I've got a photo for you from Las Vegas...

A sneak preview from the upcoming World Series of Poker, as my brother is attending his new employee orientation today...  I know that I haven't posted much lately, but when I do post, I make them count...  ;)

I hope that all of you have a tremendous Memorial Day Weekend, and I'll see you soon (maybe)...

South By Southswim

"If someone's not getting their face beat in, I don't stay interested long..." -Leanne Calderon-


Good afternoon everyone.  I decided that I had to take a few minutes and make sure that I caught y'all up on things today.  I've been so busy with my new job that I've been neglecting all of my blogs, but I'm going to post at all of them today.  I already have my basketball picks for the day up at 'Coach's Parlay Card' , and I'll later be posting at 'Coach Goes Viral' and 'Three Chips Poker'  As you could guess, I've already got the t.v. tuned into the NCAA Tournament, watching the media darlings in the Kentucky uniforms that are struggling with a #8 seeded Cincinnati team, IN KENTUCKY...  Yeah..., they're gonna CRUISE to a 40-0 record - WHAT EVER...  Anyway, that's for another blog, and some people CLAIM to have never even heard of 'March Madness...'  My friend Leanne posted that as a status last night, which made me laugh and recount the tale of how when I used to coach softball in San Marcos, the umpires at our annual spring break tournament (Leanne played for us) would have the t.v. tuned into the tourney up in the hospitality room at our softball complex...  :)  That's where Leanne's quote from the very top of this page came from, as she's not so much of a basketball fan, but more of a fighter...

I still think that we could bring Calderon in to intentionally foul people, but I guess that we'll just let her keep training...  :)  I joked with Leanne about airbrushing muscles onto legs, and she said that would take more effort than the actual working out...  :D  I'm extremely proud of Leanne's dedication, and I have to get myself back into shape someday (a shape other than round)...

Speaking of friends and former student-athletes, and one who did play basketball for me, it's South By Southwest time here in Austin again, except that there is A LOT of rain in the forecast...  We're actually under a flood watch until 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I'm wondering how much money that's going to cost the good people of our fair city.  Well, the city is exactly fair...  My aforementioned friend Jessica was in town to make some money this week...

Jessica does a little bit of modeling, and what initially got my attention from her facebook page this week was a hashtag to one of her statuses, where some genius evidently thought that her time wasn't worth any compensation...  The hastag was #worthmorethannothing (which I really liked), and I chatted about this with Jess a little earlier today.  I told her that I had planned on likening the situation here to one where a bar letting a drunk girl get up and dance on the bar was some sort of privilege, like letting Jessica work as a model at their event was doing her some sort of favor.  Then Jessica told me that this genius actually told her that the models were not doing an actual job.  Jessica replied, "It is a job.  It's my job.  If it wasn't a job, why can't any of you do it?  Why do you even need us?  Oh..., because you need someone else's skills to accomplish a task for your own personal agenda.  That's called a job, buddy..."  Yeah, I like Jessica...  :D  Again, #worthmorethannothing..., a very appropriate hashtag.

Like I said, a lot of rain forecast here, so I'm not sure how the rest of South By Southwest is going to play out, but I plan on watching a lot of basketball.  Joey and I will be back with our predictions for the 'Sweet 16' over at 'Coach's Parlay Card' sometime before the games tip next Thursday, and we'll give you our picks for the rest of the tournament from there on out.  Speaking of basketball, not everyone agrees with me about Kentucky, as Joey posted his "bracket" on facebook earlier this week...

Considering that the Wildcats are letting Cincinnati hang around, I still think their prospects for sweeping the rest of the tournament are pretty bleak, but we shall see...

I never did make that crawfish boil last Sunday, which was a mistake considering how this weekend is getting poured on, but I still have these 14+ basketball games ahead of me.  I hope that all of you enjoy the rest of your weekend and the start of spring as this tournament kicks into full gear, and I'll see ya soon...

BRING ME ANOTHER SMURF!

"And whenever you're dark inside, don't let go, no, don't let go, remember there's rain, and there's candy, and Christmasy winter snow, snow, snow..." -Blue October- (For My Brother)

"And this is how you remind me..., this is how you remind me of what I really am, this is how you remind me of what I really am..." -Nickelback- (This Is How You Remind Me)

"Being polite is so rare these days that it is often confused with flirting..." -Spirit Science- (via Chris Abramski)




Good evening everyone.  We have a lot to cover on this Tuesday night, with the usual segues and stolen material from my friends showing up in force.  Let me start off by mentioning that my friend Chris brought his "'A' Game" to facebook this week, and that I'm stealing from him twice in this post.  That quote right above this paragraph was shared by Chris earlier in the week, and it was just SPOT ON...  I'm a pretty good guy (despite what you may have heard), and I've seriously had girls go so far as basically flipping out on me because I was nice to them, and I was just like "WOW..."  We'll get back to Chris later in this entry...

My friend George posted a Nickelback status today, and it reminded me (pun intended, but not initially) of the lyrics quoted above.  Back when I used to run (I completed three marathons back in the day - presently my brother and I let our sis Whitney do the majority of the running in our family), I'd often have the lyrics of that song playing in my mind as I strode around 'Bikini Hill' and the rest of San Marcos, America.  As it turns out, I may be able to hang out with George and an all-star cast (including, but probably not limited to, Jackie, Nick, Floyd, and Beau) this weekend at a crawfish boil as South By Southwest (SXSW) kicks off here in the ATX.  SXSW is a little festival held in Austin during spring break every year that includes a little music, movies, celebrating, etc...  Oh, and CRAWFISH, which I happen to love...

Speaking of spring break, the weather here earlier in the week had me recalling that set of Blue October lyrics above.  BOY did we have some rain here yesterday!  I have complained countless times about the winter weather in my hometown in New Hampshire, but I don't think that I'm cut out for living in Seattle either.  Rainy and dreary and rainy and dreary...  It's great when you want to sleep in on a Sunday morning, but it gets old pretty quick.  Well, I'm more than happy to inform you that the ten-day forecast for Austin has our highs in the low 70's and our low's in the low 50's...  :D  That should make for great weather as SXSW kicks off, and I'm ready to celebrate, only having my 'New Employee Orientation' to attend on Monday...

As poker players and sportsbooks throughout the desert cry, I'm probably not going to be moving to Las Vegas anytime soon because I received a job offer that was too good to resist.  The change in my job classification will have me attending the orientation on Monday, so some low-key partaking of crawfish with friends this weekend is probably in order.  While we're on the subject(s), we can't mention crawfish or new jobs without congratulating our friend Alyssa (remember, she's the one who doesn't peel crawfish quite as fast as me - that's my story and I'm sticking to it) on her new job.  Congratulations Alyssa!  :D

Okay, let's see what else my friends have done this week...  Well, we were talking about food.  My friend Claudia shared this little peanut butter cup the other day...

"Reese's who?" was all that I could think to ask, as this thing weighed in at 230 pounds.  Turning our attention to breakfast, my friend Susan shared this photo this morning...

Susan's description was "Something does not belong here.  #boys #dinosaursforbreakfast"  My immediate thought was "fossil fuel."  Do you see what I did there?  I can be semi, sort-of-clever every once in a while, kinda...  ;)  And then there's Brittany, who has probably managed to get herself in this blog almost as many times as Alyssa.  Although we don't have Brittany posing with Emmitt Smith this time around, she did share this informative photo about beverages...

And that's why we keep Brittany on the payroll...  ;)  I told you that we'd get back to Chris, and if you were wondering about the title of tonight's post, here ya go...

This is another photo that Terrell Suggs (Baltimore Ravens) posted, and I don't know who initially looks at this photo and comes up with that caption, but it did make me smile (however unfortunate that may be)...  :)

As Gonzaga just handily disposed of BYU in the West Coast Conference title game, let me take this timely opportunity to remind you about one of my other blogs.  You can find yesterday's post, 'Kentucky Is Going To Lose (& Gonzaga Will Too)' at 'Coach Goes Viral'  In this entry you can read my thoughts as to why Kentucky won't go unbeaten this season, and why Gonzaga shouldn't be a #1 or #2 seed (and will also lose).  Currently I'm chatting daily sports with my brother, but Joey and I will be back at 'Coach's Parlay Card' with basketball picks once the 'Sweet Sixteen' begins.  I'm actually making almost nightly picks there now, but visitors are still struggling to find my fledgling site...  :)

That's it for tonight, but I hope that all of you have a good one, and I'll see you soon!