Inauguration Joy

Barack Obama and Joe Biden were inaugurated yesterday. Change has finally come to America. It will take time for our country to turn things around, but now, we finally have an administration in place that can and will effect those much-needed changes.

Now, what America needs more than anything is to take the hope and promise of the new presidency, add a healthy dose of patience to it, and, no matter what, just continue to believe that we can take our country and make it what we want it to be.

We're gonna be all right, America!

Twins and Rays in the World Baseball Classic!

Several players on my teams active rosters have been announced for the provisional rosters for the World Baseball Classic. Congrats to everyone! (Not long 'til baseball begins again........and I can't wait. :)

Rays:
Matt Garza (Mexico)
Scott Kazmir (USA)
Evan Longoria (USA)
J.P. Howell (USA)
Dioner Navarro (Venezuela)
Carlos Pena (Dominican Republic)
Grant Balfour (Australia)
Akinora Iwamura (Japan)

Twins:
Joe Nathan (USA)
Justin Morneau (Canada)
Nick Punto (Italy)
Francisco Liriano (Dominican Republic)
Jesse Crain (Canada)
Jose Mijares (Venezuela)
Luke Hughes (Australia)

Lost One to the Dark Side........

Rocco Baldelli is going to the Red Sox.

This sucks.

I wish him all the luck in the world, but the freakin' RED SOX?????

He's so much better than they deserve.

Love you & will miss you, Rocco.

Year Fading........

So, here we are--just a little over an hour until the new year begins. I feel like I should say something inspiring and sappy, but I don't know what that would be. So, by the light of my multicolored C'mas tree, I'll just say what's on my mind instead.

2008 was an odd year. I lost my mother this year. That should make it a bad year.

But good things also happened. I proved to myself that I'm much more capable of dealing with adversity than I thought I would be. I also learned that, if I really want to do something, I can accomplish it just through sheer force of will. I wrote 50,000 words on a novel for NaNoWriMo this year, and the last 25,000 of those were written in only 3 days.


I've reconnected with a couple of old friends, which I thought would never happen. I'd already placed those relationships in the past because I thought they were irretrievable. Life threw me a curve ball on that one. But that's OK. I've gotten used to those, and I can hit them out of the park pretty easily.

(I'm using baseball metaphors. Now I know I'm addicted to the game.)

Speaking of baseball, both of my teams did rather well this year. The Twins made it to the playoffs, and my Rays damn near won the World Series. (In my heart, they did win, so take that, Philly!).

And, best of all, America elected a new president. A smart president. A competent president. One who's inspiring, and made me care again about this country in a positive manner. One that makes me feel like it still might be possible to get this country on the right track again. We need to turn this nation around, get it moving in the right direction (and by that, I mean, to the left) again. I don't want to forget the last eight years because that would be dangerous, but I do want to prove to the world that, despite the Bush/Cheney fiasco, most Americans know how to correct even the most grievous of mistakes. And that is what President Obama signifies for me (and, I hope, for the rest of the world)--course correction.

This year also served as the year where I finally discovered what I really wanted to do at school, and I've joined the sociology grad dept. to work on my Master's. Most (but not all) of the coursework is interesting to me, which is more than I can say for any other dept. I was in.

Personally, I've learned to speak my mind a little more than I used to. I realized that shutting up and giving in wasn't getting me anywhere that I wanted to be. I've lost some of my shyness and nervousness about speaking my mind, and that's improved things for me quite a bit. I still have issues with public speaking and giving presentations, but at least I can do them without completely freaking out now.

So, what's on tap in 2009 for me? I'm not really sure, and I'm all right with that. There are things that I'm hoping for, but we'll just have to wait and see how things work out. Right now, I just want to live in the moment, not overthink things, and just go with the flow for a little while. That's been working for me lately, so I'm gonna stick with it for a while.

What's 2009 hold for you????

Love you all, my friends, and Happy New Year!

Take care of yourselves,
Christy

My predictions....

Rays win vs. the Red Sox in 5 games.
Phillies win vs. the Dodgers in 5 games.

Then, Rays win vs. Phillies in 5 (maybe 6 games.)

GO RAYS!

Ever have one of those days........

......where you just feel like you can't please anyone about anything? When, no matter how much you offer to do, it just gets thrown back in your face because you're not doing what everyone else thinks you should do? And, while trying to do all of that, you end up making yourself completely miserable?

Well, I'm having a whole succession of those days right now. So, you know what I've decided? I'm going to stop worrying about how everyone else is and just try to do what's right for me, and the rest of the world can just learn to deal.

Grrr........

I'm just saying.......

Watching this debate is excruciatingly painful.........that woman goes out of her way to showcase her clueless idiocy. I feel sick, and it's only been 10 minutes.

Ohhh........OK. Now I get it!

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well-grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become Chairman of the Illinois state senate's Health and Human Services Committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 136 bills, creating legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel, and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment andPublic Works and Veteran's Affairs committees - you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a good Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the how to teach kids to identify and resist sexual predators and the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence-only with no other option in sex education in your state's school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant - you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWIconviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.


****I don't know who originally wrote this, so I can't give credit, but whoever you are, THANK YOU!****

Jammin' to some Iffy.....

I put in "Biota Bondo" earlier today because it's Kirk Johnson's birthday, and I'm gonna follow that with some old school Run Westy Run.

Maybe I'm a bit of a nerd to mark the birthdays of my favorite musicians, but I'm OK with that.

Besides, isn't any reason to celebrate a good reason? Even if it's not my birthday? I think so.

So, Happy Birthday, Kirk Johnson.........wherever you're keeping yourself these days.

Hope it rocks!

Long time, no blog........

What to say? So much has happened lately that I almost don't know where (or when) to start. I suppose the biggest thing is that my mother passed away almost a month ago. I won't say much about it--mainly because I just don't know what to say, and it's very difficult for me to talk about. My feelings about the whole situation are difficult, and they're almost impossible to explain in any coherent fashion to anyone else. Right now, I'm dealing with it--sometimes in my own way, and sometimes I'm refusing to deal with it, whatever that means.

Otherwise, my life has been basically school and work, with quite a bit of baseball and tons of music thrown in for stress relief. I just finished my classwork for summer about 10 days ago, and fall semester starts again in 2 days. I don't feel like I got any sort of break at all, and for the first time in a very long time, I'm just not ready to start the school grind again so soon, but I have no choice, really. Hopefully, it will be better once I actually get into the routine again. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Baseball--My Twins are swinging between #1 and #2 in the AL Central and my Rays are solidly #1 in the AL East. They're both doing so well that my biggest fear at this point is that I'm going to have to watch them battle it out with each other in the playoffs. Ouch! I wouldn't want either of them to lose!

I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again. MATT GARZA!!!!! The Twins were crazy to let him go--he's got a passion for this game that's extraordinary, and the skills to back it up. He may only be 24, but look what he can already do! I'm gonna be watching him for years--the guy's electric. I plan on being there the day he's elected into the Hall of Fame. Not that I think he'd ever read this, but, just in case---Mr. Garza, how does Cooperstown sound to you???

Work is just work, with all its corresponding joys and annoyances. Not much to say there.

I have a new crush on someone that's been developing for quite a while--before I even realized it, I think. It's not exactly a crush, though. I think it may be more serious than that. I'm too afraid that I'll screw up a friendship if I told him though, so I don't know what's going to happen about him, if anything at all. You'll probably be hearing about him again, no doubt. (Really, I thought I was too old for all this teenagery stuff........sigh).

It's been a rough summer. Looking forward to autumn, and hoping it's going to be a good time of my life. Things always look better to me in the autumn. Something about cool breezes, colorful rustling leaves, Halloween, and jacket weather really improves my outlook on the world.

Please vote!

Help me get Evan Longoria and Corey Hart to this year's All-Star Game in NYC!!! Vote often!

A Gem From the Past......

I was looking at a friend's site, and found a link to my old blog account. There were only two posts on there--one a complete throwaway. The other one, however, still strikes a chord with me. So, as a tribute to my 2005 self, and so it doesn't get lost forever: here's that post.

Monday, January 03, 2005 (originally):

The Nature Of Imagination or, alternatively, "I Want My Childhood Back!"
I
hate being a grown up, but I haven't truly been a kid since my 10th birthday. I do remember it, though. All the poetry of being a kid is lost on my grown-up self, and I don't think I'm alone in this. It's something that happens to everyone, I think. Something that happens when you're young and thinking about all the things you're going to do when you "grow up." You never realize how much fun stuff you're going to miss out on when you're older. Things that I used to enjoy all those years ago are now just inconveniences. Like snow. I used to love getting the day off from school when it would snow and then spending the entire day outside--sledding, making snowmen, snowball fights with my Dad, all of that. When you're 7, what could possibly be better than that? Now, snow's just something that gets my car stuck in the parking lot, makes it difficult or impossible to get to work, and is a terror to drive in. And trains? Remember when a train was almost a magical thing? I remember cheering when we'd get stopped by a train, trying to guess how many cars there would be, and then gleefully counting the cars out loud. It's just not like that anymore--trains are just things that get between me and where I needed to be 10 minutes ago. I hate that. I want those feelings back. I want to live with a kid's sense of wonder and fun and joy in the world. I don't know if it's possible, but I want it to be. And doesn't that count for something?

Baseball Season is soooo gooood right now!

Matt Garza got his first win for the Rays last Thursday.
Boof Bonser pitched a game on Tuesday that was an absolute joy to watch.
Minnesota is now #1 in the AL Central, and Tampa Bay is tied for #2 in the AL East.

It's been a damn fine week to be a Twins and Rays fan.

Tampa Bay 1, Minnesota 0.

Matt Garza working a Rays uniform.

Good for Tampa Bay.

Good for Matt Garza.

Still love Minnesota, but now they've got Floridan competition for my baseball heart, because I just love watching Garza pitch.

It's like watching a storm building in the distance, then seeing it break in a flurry of thunder and lightning. The man just rocks the game. It's that simple, and that exciting.

Oh no, Not Again!

I can only hope that whoever said "history tends to repeat itself" is very wrong in this case.

This may be the beginning of yet another national nightmare, I'm afraid.