67 degrees and breezy

April 20, 2005


It’s been beautiful these last few days. And I, for one, appreciate it more than I ever used to. It’s like I’ve come through my more immature days of staying inside on warm sunny days and playing Nintendo into a new mindset where, finally, I value a breeze and the warmth of the deck chair after a morning of sun exposure.

In fact, here in Sioux Falls it’s been at that perfect 65-75 degree range, with a little wind (enough to keep the heat from being stifling) and a little rain (mostly at night, so mornings are wet and soggy). I love it.

And, with my newfound hobby of “reading” the books I buy instead of just putting them on the shelf to look at, I’ve found a brand new way to spend my day before I drag my feet off to work at three. Or in the case of Wednesday, two.

I even enjoy kayaking, though I’m certainly not that good, yet.

I guess it might seem weird, but I was raised a little awkward to the joys of outdoor living, and therefore have spent life being unforgiving of nice days. I’ll still play around indoors too much, but I have a feeling that the traffic on Seventh Ave will be seeing my rounded body lounging on our helicopter pad a lot more than they had bargained for.

__________________________

Coming soon: I’m working on a quick essay based one of the most asked job interview questions — please explain your worst or most difficult work experience. However, I’m just narrowing it down to “My Worst Boss.”

John and Doug know who THAT is.

Tags: Outdoors |

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Google Sightseeing

April 18, 2005


Devils Tower
(Devils Tower, WY)

My favorite coffee table books are the “CITY From Above” series, where helicopters are taken into the air and pictures are snapped of the top of great cities. I have one for London, and Paris, and I’ve always wanted to get the one for Seattle, but I’ve refrained.

Well, now I don’t have to worry about it. I’ve found the greatest blog of all time — Google Sightseeing. Based on the wildly popular Google Satellite map feature, readers submit thier favorite satellite images, or ask for specific areas, and they are posted in one easy to find place.

Go here to see it. It’s also on my blogroll now as well.

Tags: Random Links, Travel |

2 Comments

Lottery bound

April 18, 2005


Sprewell, Wally, Lottery

I don’t know what’s more disappointing: That the Timberwolves, who last year ran into the playoffs with the leagues’s best record, was completely shut out of the post season last night, or that Kevin Garnett played his ass off on a bum knee all year to help support the rest of these losers.

On the bright side — the last time the Wolves had a lottery pick, they drafted Ray Allen.

Oh…wait.

Tags: Basketball, Sports |

4 Comments

A box of books

April 16, 2005


Yesterday (Thursday) I thought it would be nice to leave the house. I’d been a hermit for too long, so, I suppose, it was high time that I went out the door and into the world.

So I went to the Augustana College library book sale.

Hey, I never said how far into the world I was going.

I got there at five minutes past noon. Since it opened at noon, I had thought I would be venturing in during that quiet, half-assed retail time that I had grown to love while working at the mall — the time shortly after opening when nobody in the city really even knows that your store is open. Unfortunately, this was no ordinary sale. This was a book sale. And it had been advertised.

Aside from nearly becoming lost (I had to enter through the “back door” and walk through a hallway lined with offices; about half way down I had to double back and make sure I was in the right part of the building) I found that this book sale was more than I had bargained for. Meaning: there were a lot of people there.

A lot? This room is no bigger than the typical college classroom, though 50-60 people were already swarming around thirteen odd tables, each person with a box, and each box with ten to twelve books already claimed. After five minutes, this place was already seeing the ravages of hungry book-lovers. Everyone, from young to old, was grabbing books, stashing them away in their short boxes and reaching over each other to glance at a book across the table. Clerks were frantically pulling more boxes (more boxes!) from under tables and presenting them to those whose arms were already overfilling. Every table was swarmed – two tables of paperback fiction were reduced to one in the time I was there, and a travel book section had been picked over so all that was left was a handful of texts in German.

I noticed a wide array of people, a true cross section of the type of people who, I guess typically, attend these random sales. Over in the corner was “Old Man Book Buyer,” a hobbled seventy-ish grandpa with a single western in his hand. And over by the soft-cover bodice rippers was “Serial Romance Lady,” who, if rumors are correct, has every Harlequin romance from #132 and on (but you’d better believe she’s got a list in at every used book store in the region requesting the ones she’s missing.)

While rummaging through the history section, I came across “Over-Loaded College Kid,” the Augie freshman who had a box full of “smart” books that he may or may not ever read. This was a phase I also went through in college, where I would raid the used bookstore my mother ran (a perk was free used books of all genres) and grab Dante’s The Inferno and some obscure Elizabethan history textbook and put them on my bookshelf as if I actually had the balls to start reading them.

Actually, I think I still do that.

Anyway, this guy had a stack of Russian poetry, a couple books on Western civilization and its ills, and, of course, a copy of the Torah. If he weren’t wearing glasses, I would have thought he was posing.

“Middle-Aged Bargain-Hunting Soccer Mom” who asked, predictably, if there were any copies of The DaVinci Code, caught my attention next. There weren’t any, somebody told her. “Eager Science Nerd” got excited when she found some old chemistry textbooks, while “Grandma ‘Cooks-For-Twenty’” rustled through some church cookbooks. I scrambled from table to table, hoping, in vain, that I would be able to still find something worthwhile, all the time thinking “I’d better get here at 11:30 in the morning next year.”

Eventually, after looking at every table twice (some three times, I swear!) I headed to the checkout, where my seven books came to the bargain-busting price of $4.50. I had seen some great books that I had regrettably left (knowing I would never have read them) but I was afraid of looking like those I have just ridiculed – like someone who would stop at nothing to get the book that was two tables away.

I guess, maybe I’m afraid that I’m going to, someday, become one of them, one of the teeming masses whose names I make up and put in quotation marks. Someday, I fear, I will be at the 20th annual Augustana College Library book sale, with box in hand, fighting through the hordes in an effort to secure that dusty copy of Dave Eggers’ And You Will Know Our Velocity, a book I may, by that time, have already read, but still… I’ll really need to have it.

Ah… whom am I kidding? I’m already half way there. I mean, really – I actually went to the book sale in the first place.

_________________________________

As you may have already noticed, I have an official “blog name,” one that’s more than just “MYNAMEblog.” I was looking for something that was descriptive of what I’m trying to do – trying to write for writing’s sake with a hope that someday I’ll be able to do something with whatever skills I develop. So I took a short line from a quote:

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

I liked it – and really, if I write stuff and nobody reads it, it’s not worth anything. And it’s not worth my time, I guess. So I appreciate the feedback I’ve gotten. Maybe someday I’ll be doing this full time.

Tags: Books, Meta |

1 Comment

At least they’ll be able to vote…

April 14, 2005


An NBA age limit.

*sigh*

Jermaine O’Neal, who will become my favorite active player once Reggie Miller retires, is doing what he can to emulate teammate Ron Artest – more specifically, he’s sticking his foot in his mouth with what seems like an out of nowhere statement.

In response to NBA Commissioner David Stern, who has made it widely known that, during the upcoming NBA labor negotiations, he wants an age limit of 20 years for the NBA added into the verbiage, O’Neal said;

As a black guy, you kind of think [race is] the reason why it’s coming up. (…) You don’t hear about it in baseball or hockey. To say you have to be 20, 21 to get in the league, it’s unconstitutional. If I can go to the U.S. Army and fight the war at 18 why can’t you play basketball for 48 minutes?

Sorry. I don’t get it. How can this be a race thing? It isn’t like the age limit is only going to effect one race – it’s going to affect EVERY race, and every country. Sure, LeBron James would have had to go to college, or found somewhere else to go for two years. But so would Darko Milicic (and god knows he could have used a few more years of practice). For every Amare Stoudemire, there are countless players, like Rob Swift and DeSagana Diop, who are not ready for the NBA. This has to do with the quality of play, the fundamentals of basketball, and not the color of skin. The fact that many of these high school players are black is a product of the sport – but not the reason for an age limit. Scoop Jackson says

It is not race at the base of Stern’s quest to install an age limitation for entrance into the game, but it is race at the base of who that rule will directly affect.

And how is it unconstitutional? You need to be 16 to legally use sharp objects at a job. You need to be 18 to vote, and to join the military. You need to be 21 to imbibe alcohol. You need to be 25 to rent a car. These are not unconstitutional — these are age limits. If you are saying that this is unconstitutional, then you are also saying that it’s unconstitutional to have an age limit on the Presidency. And if it’s so unconstitutional, why are the courts still striking down anyone who tries to enter the NFL draft early? And, in the court of public opinion, I wouldn’t doubt if many feel that Kwame Brown’s shortcomings are more unconstitutional – it’s unjustified punishment to watch him flounder on the court.

But, though it makes perfect sense, in my mind, to set an age limit, others do not agree.

Some are saying that it would be a better idea to set up the NBDL and CBA as minor league systems. Others are claiming that this is happening for money only – that nobody cares about the plight of the 18 year old who wants to jump to the NBA.

First of all — the NBDL would never work as a minor league system, for two reasons; players are afraid that they would be sent down to the minor leagues as punishment, and owners don’t want to draft a first round player, pay him first round money, and then have him learn the game at a lower level. It’s a great idea, but the way the NBA’s contracts are set up it would never work.

Second — the NBA is doing this to make money? Of course they are… but they’re not doing it for the sole reason of making money — they are suggesting this because they want the quality of the NBA game to raise. I don’t care if you are a big fan or not, you have to admit that the level of play in the past 5-6 years has been much poorer than what many of us grew up with — the Jordan, Bird, Magic era. By keeping these players in college — and teaching them the fundamentals of the game — it will not only make the NBA a better league, with rookies who make an immediate impact, but also it will make college basketball even better than it already is. If anything, it could harm the NBA’s ability to make money off of young phenom’s, like Sebastian Telfair (who’s book, The Jump: Sebastian Telfair and the High Stakes Business of High School Ball, chronicles the strain on Telfair’s life while he was trying to jump to the NBA, sign shoe contracts, and struggle through high school all at the same time) and LeBron James.

We need to remember that this rule is being suggested by Stern, but is being backed up by many league veterans. According to Adrian Wojnarowski;

It shouldn’t be the NBA’s responsibility to protect the slight percentage of ready-made kids who are candidates for the prom-to-the-pros leap, but rather protect the greater good of a sport in crisis, the coming to a roost of an AAU and And1 generation.

Grant Hill agrees;

“I always thought that it was the purpose of the union to protect its members, not potential members,” Grant Hill was quoted as saying in the New York Times. “I think if anyone gets left out, it’s the older players, guys who put equity into this league, card-carrying members paying their dues to the union. I would hope they would be protected.”

O’Neal’s words, according to Jason Whitlock, are coming from the mouth of;

the stereotypical NBA Million Dollar Baby. His youth, lack of formal education and bank account all stand in the way of his grasping the bigger picture. The NBA is headed toward making a good business decision in its next collective bargaining agreement – the players’ union is likely to agree with Stern – but O’Neal can’t see beyond his own interest

Really, I think O’Neal’s a little defensive about his own place in NBA history – as a player who was drafted straight out of high school (and straight to the end of the bench) he sees how his life could have been different had he been required to wait two years after graduation to enter the league. Perhaps he would have been exposed as a mediocre college basketball talent, and maybe he wouldn’t have received a lucrative contract. Maybe it’s true that nobody is holding a gun to these GM’s heads, telling them to draft unproven young prospects that will, ultimately, sit the bench and slowly develop for four years, at which point many of them may jet off to other teams. But David Stern, and the Players Union, are looking out for a little more than the rights of a handful of high school prospects.

They’re looking out for the life and livelihood of the game itself.

Tags: Basketball, Indiana Pacers, Sports |

Comment

Boy, it’s late.

April 13, 2005


I hope this isn’t proprietary information.

I’m currently waiting. The end of every night at work for me, here at the Sioux Falls relay center, is a waiting game. We’re down to two operators , and they can’t just get up and leave, even though the center closes at 1:00 am. We’ve got to finish out these calls.

And this is where I wait.

My job, at the end of the night, is to relieve the last CA (which stands for communications assistant, a name that, much like many titles, sounds more impressive than it is) from the final call. If there are two CAs remaining, I wait. I obviously can’t take over one persons call, because the other person would be stuck there as well.

It’s already 1:05 am.

Here’s what I’ve already done. I’ve sorted all of the off-lines (which are sheets that keep track of each employee’s time off of the phones), I’ve updated the schedule and printed off-lines up for the next day, I’ve checked all of the work, I’ve lowered and straightened all of the stations, and I’m now waiting.

Really… what can someone have to talk about this early in the morning? Or is it late at night?

*yawn* All I want to do is go home and read about an abbey of monks that are being murdered, one by one.

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I want to do a roll call of all of my “readers.” Please post something to let everyone else know who you are. There are about 10 of you, I suspect, if I’m lucky. Just respond below. Thanks for stroking my ego; I fear that my hits are down, and that Chris will start charging me for the site due to a lack of traffic.

Tags: Career |

4 Comments

A life of mowing

April 12, 2005


There’s not much more in life that I enjoy than the smell of freshly cut grass on a rainy day. And, while that sounds incredibly typical and sappily poetic, the smell always seems to kindle whatever longing I may have at the time to throw my knees in the dirt and dig rocks out of the ground. In fact, if it wasn’t for the work involved in arranging someone else’s flora and shrubbery, I think I would have made a hell of a landscaper.

Let’s go back a few years – to a time when I was, I guess, an amateur landscaper. Or, more specifically, part of the St. Cloud Parks Department’s mowing crew. These are the memories that are thrown to the front of my mind when my olfactory catches a whiff of grass, of mud, of gasoline – of a time that, in all reality, I was still searching for someplace to land.

I was still a bit fresh out of college: I had graduated with my education degree in December, and, though I was certainly trying (to no avail) to secure a position in a Minnesota school (any school, actually,) I found myself substituting – rarely – and working at a craft and hobby store. My days of slinging video games and bar-rush food were behind me. I had visions of a future. But I needed someplace to work during the summer, a time where there was no subbing, because I sure couldn’t share rent with only 20 hours a week in a weak retail building.

Doug, my boss at the Parks Department, adored me, I think. I came as a breath of fresh air to someone who had interviewed his fair share of college freshmen. Full time employees, or as we were wont to call them: the “old-timers”, aside, I was like an elder statesman on the mowing crew. Never mind that I’d never ridden a lawn mower, or operated a gas-powered trimmer, or driven a truck with a trailer on it – I was hired immediately.

I loved it. I felt like one of the guys. I got dirty at work. I came home smelling of gas, or grass, and dirt – always dirt. I took pride in the parks I would mow; trim; sculpt. I took pride in taking one-and-a-half-hours of breaks during my eight-hour workday. I learned to play Hearts, and 500, and became successful at them both. I enjoyed my job, for the most part, and aside from working at FuncoLand (which, really, never felt like a “job” in the sense of going to a place where you work and earn a paycheck, and instead had the feel of an exclusive club that required some basic dues and gave a tenfold refund check on whatever you bothered to put in) it’s the best job I’ve ever had.

Really, though, there’s a lot more to it than that. I feel like I actually learned something working for Doug – more than just how to mow. I was a city boy; I never did as much as mow more than the one-eighteenth sliver of a city block that we called our yard. But, at the Parks Department, I found myself cutting my teeth on basic landscaping; trimming trees and around fences successfully; applying paint to work vehicles; driving trucks (diesel; with or without trailers; dump;) building fences; affixing siding to garages. I spent much of my time practicing disk golf while I was standing (or at times, sitting) watch at the park shelter at Riverside. I got a great tan. I even lost a little bit of the ol’ paunch (don’t worry, I’ve put it right back on.)

But what I really enjoyed was the mowing. I learned to take a great satisfaction in a smooth lawn, or a perfectly trimmed chain link fence. The tracks the mower blades made would steer me in a spiral, circling constantly until – at last! – I spun tight circles around the final patch of long grass. I understood the art in slicing bluegrass around a baseball field in patterns that signify a home team’s logo, or a special anniversary, or the first game of the World Series. Even now I can feel myself growing, in a purely horticultural sense, older and older, as if at the age of thirty I will already be at that stage where I fertilize my garden three times a summer, keep even the hidden patches under a constant blanket of moisture, and curse those “damn kids” that keep riding their bikes over the front corner of my lawn.

But I’ve got a few years until that happens. Until then, I’ll just be content to float back to those days on the Toro, with fresh oil (that I put in myself) and sharp blades (which I grinded down on my own). When I worked – worked – for a few months outside, within the elements, as a lackey on a mowing crew.

Who ever imagined that muddy grass would bring that sort of memory?

Tags: Outdoors, Vilhauer |

2 Comments

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