My life -- a month in review

Hmm... I think I've realized something.

Whenever I make a pledge to update the blog every two weeks, that pledge usually lasts... oh, about... two weeks.

So perhaps I should give up. Not on writing here altogether, but on expecting myself to maintain any kind of regular schedule. It just doesn't work for me... sometimes I feel like writing, and sometimes I don't. It's not something I can plan for. So, from now on, I pledge... to write whenever I feel like it. Mmmkay?

To make it up to all the complaining masses who haven't gotten to read anything here in the past 3+ weeks, I've decided to go all out for a special New Year's Eve edition. What follows is pretty much a description of everything that's happened to me in the past month. Enjoy.

I suppose our journey begins at the beginning of reading period, where I start my mad scramble to complete a massive amount of time-consuming, procrastinated-upon work.

Wednesday, December 7. I attend my last real classes of my first semester at college. A 4:00 lecture in poli-sci makes for good last-minute review on final paper material, and a 5:15 English class is good for unwinding, as I have pretty much nothing left to do but hand in the paper I had just finished the night before.

Thursday, December 8. Two more classes, neither of which counts as a "real class" if you ask me. One is a psych test, and the other is my baseball analysis class, which consisted of nothing but sitting through nine presentations (I had done mine the week before). No note-taking required for either, so it was a joyous day.

Friday, December 9. Speaking of joyousness. Friday marked the end of the semester for most people in the Tufts student body. By most, I mean those that have classes on Friday. Those poor suckers. For me, however, the only work I had left to do was finishing my basketball article for the Daily. Which, by the way, is really cool. The men's basketball team was the lead sports story on the last day of the semester, which means that anyone who looks at the Daily sports page over the following month and a half sees my article first. I feel special. Or lucky... whatever.

So anyway, long story short, the semester ends. Happiness spreads and good times ensue.

Saturday, December 10. I suddenly realize that with my flight home booked for the following Thursday, I have five days to write somewhere in the range of 25-30 pages, as well as study for a psych final. Plus I'd like to have a bit of time to say goodbye to people around the dorm, and my plan was to be done with everything by Wednesday so I could take the T into the city and crash at my grandparents' house the night before my flight. I had work to do.

So I start out by attacking my final poli-sci paper. And of course, all I manage to accomplish on Saturday is... well, understanding the question. For your reading pleasure, here it is...

"In Emile, Rousseau argues that 'the essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious, avaricious, iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within his walls. Distrust those cosmopolitans who go to great length in their books to discover duties they do not deign to fulfill around them. A philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared having to love his neighbors.' Do you agree or disagree with this view, and why? In addition to Rousseau, your response should include references to Gellner and at least two other sources from the syllabus."

Parts of the question made sense to me, and others didn't, at first. I spent about an hour leafing through a dictionary making sure I understood every last word of the Rousseau quote, and then another hour reading other bits and pieces of Emile, trying to understand the context of that quote. Then, a third hour was spent walking across Somerville to pick up takeout Thai food for dinner, carrying Rousseau's Political Writings and Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism with me, one in each coat pocket, and reading as I walked. I went back to the dorm and started planning, and by about midnight, I had a rough outline of a ten-page paper, including what sources I would cite for each point in my argument. I wrote an introduction (we're talking about a page and a half of writing here... one-paragraph intros are for wusses), and then went to bed.

Sunday, December 11. About four more pages on Rousseau, and an intro to my baseball paper, followed by two loads of laundry, and the rereading of two psych chapters. Other highlights of that day included watching certain fanatical Redskins fans on my floor breaking down in tears while watching both New York and Dallas pull off thrilling victories, within minutes of each other. In addition, there was a midnight Risk showdown that turned out to be one of the most exciting five-hour periods of my life. (I don't care how pathetic that sounded -- Risk, as a six-player game, being played by six people who all know what they're doing, is an incredible amount of fun. The Australians always win, by the way.)

Monday, December 12. Sunday was as close to a day off as I got, what with the occasional football-watching (or should I call them football-watching-watching?) breaks, and the Risk game. Monday was nonstop writing, as I knocked out the rest of the Rousseau paper and the next eight pages of the baseball project.

Tuesday, December 13. All of a sudden, on Tuesday morning, it set in -- oh my god, I have a psych exam tomorrow. All writing was put on hold, and I reviewed my psych book (oh, how I hate it) for much longer than I care to remember.

Wednesday, December 14. I had stayed up way too late the night before, so I ended up sleeping until 11:53 Wednesday morning. Somehow, I found my way to psych a minute early, and was in my seat, brain crammed and #2 pencils in hand at 11:59, ready to take my final.

It started off with 40 insanely difficult questions, and followed those up with 20 insanely easy ones, leaving me very confused as to how the test went. In any event, I was out of there by 12:45, I had practically inhaled a turkey sandwich by 1, and I set out toward my next goal: finishing my baseball project in the next four hours.

Just barely, I succeeded, but not without having to deal with a printer malfunction and a buggy email inbox along the way. I sent in the baseball paper, and printed out the nationalism paper and walked it up to the political science building around 5:15. I went back to my room and took a minute to reflect: I had written 2,654 words on Rousseau's theory of nationalism and 4,204 about managers' use of relief pitchers. All in all, it's almost seven thousand words, in about three and a half days. (That doesn't include my final paper for English, my Daily article, or the abstract for the baseball paper... those were done a few days earlier.)

My point is, I kinda have an excuse for not writing anything in this blog until now. I was absolutely positively undeniably SICK of writing. I am only now beginning to overcome this sickness. Please bear with me.

Thursday, December 15. I was supposed to fly from Logan to Dulles at noon. The weather in DC was lousy, so I didn't. Instead, I went back to Tufts to say goodbye to people (or rather, to reiterate the goodbyes I had already said the day before), and spent some time in Boston doing Christmas shopping.

Friday, December 16. I actually did fly from Logan to Dulles at noon. I was overjoyed to be home, until I actually got there. At six o' clock, I walked in the door to realize that the power was out. Unable to take a shower, do my laundry, recharge my dead iPod, or... well, see where I was going, I wasn't too happy. But the night got better from there, as much-anticipated reunions were enjoyed, Thai food was consumed, and High Fidelity was watched (for, I believe, my fourth time in the past month, but it's an amazingly good movie). Good times.

Saturday, December 17. The power comes back on, and there is much rejoicing. I spend a lot of the day browsing through everything that was Tivoed in the four months I was gone, and then spent the night playing poker, which brought with it reunions with countless friends. I was expecting at least a moderately sentimental mood that night, but there was about five minutes of kindness followed by five hours of everyone being jerks to each other again. I don't think any of us have really changed all that much.

After watching both the Giants and Patriots cruise to victory in Week 15, I made a bold prediction for this year's football playoffs. It looked crazy to a lot of people, and I wouldn't be surprised if it missed by a mile, but on the off-chance that it turns out to be dead-on, I want the world to know that they heard it here first. It's gonna be a New York/New England Super Bowl in 2006. More on that later.

Sunday, December 18. I don't remember doing anything all that important. I'm sure I'm just having a brain lapse and there was something amazing happening that day, but for some reason, it's just not coming to me. So... moving on...

Monday, December 19. At last! Back to CHS. Monday was the panel discussion with the juniors about college -- or, as certain (born-again vegetarian) Texans liked to say, "William and Mary: The Panel." It wasn't quite as much fun as I expected it to be, especially because it gets fairly boring by the third time around, but it was still an interesting experience. There were a lot of us on the panel (at its peak, I think it was eleven or twelve students) and the periods were 45 minutes long. So we really only got to brush the surface, meaning we got to talk about all the same things that we discuss with every single person who ever asks us about how we're doing at college. At least that's how I felt.

Other highlights of the day included my first trip to Bodo's in FAR too long, a visit with the good old KTR staff, and disruptions of class directed at Cochran, Deane, Irani, Kishore, and Wainwright. So many teachers to annoy, and so little time, but such is life. (I didn't have time to drop by Hickerson's room, but I made it up to him by tailgating him for part of the drive home that afternoon.) There was also a science bowl practice that afternoon, which I visited, which helped to reaffirm my belief that I will never be anywhere near as smart as certain brainy little high school juniors.

Tuesday, December 20. Speaking of reaffirming beliefs about my own stupidity, Tuesday was my day to drop in on the pop quiz team. That was fun for a lot of reasons, but it didn't do much for my ego. I was hoping college would help me... gee, I dunno, know stuff... but apparently forty-four grand a year is going to waste.

Wednesday, December 21. My last night in town before heading back to Beantown, so of course, I spent it playing poker. I followed up the previous week's $85 score with a $30 loss... apparently humility was the theme to my week.

Thursday, December 22. The plan was to leave for Boston at 5AM, so I did what any rational-thinking human being would have done in my position, having returned home at midnight. I stayed up 'til five. I continued my reading of Steven Levitt's Freakonomics that I had put on hold weeks earlier, and I played a few seasons of my new favorite computer game, Baseball Mogul. (After three straight World Series titles with the 2005-07 Red Sox, I got kinda bored and went back to reading.)

I slept through most of the ride, so there's not much else to report about Thursday. Moving on...

Friday, December 23. Christmas shopping in Boston, which turned out to make for a fairly depressing afternoon. I took the T over to Fenway to do some shopping at the souvenir store, and what I found right in front of the entrance was appalling. It's like a train wreck -- you don't want to stare, but you can't look away. It was a clearance sale -- three racks full of $5 Sox jerseys. On about ninety percent of the jerseys, the name on the back read, of course, "Damon." There was the occasional "Renteria" or "Mueller" thrown in for variety, but it wasn't enough. My Christmas Eve Eve was ruined.

Saturday and Sunday, Christmas and its Eve (but not in that order). As usual, three of the best meals of my year are crammed into one glorious two-day period. On top of that, it was some good quality time with the family, and presents are always nice too. Despite the fact that Boston got rain instead of a white Christmas, and even though Kevin Millwood spent his holiday rejecting the Red Sox' contract offer, it was an awesome weekend.

I wasn't expecting any incredibly big presents this year, seeing as how I was pretty much set for life after getting my computer and my iPod last year. I was perfectly happy to be showered with literature and clothing this Christmas. I now have eight Sox shirts (only seven that I can wear though, since I haven't touched my Nomar jersey ever since he signed it), and enough books to last me until I'm out of college.

Anyway, this point in this post marks where my browser crashed in the middle of typing this entry. After screaming at my computer for a few minutes, I collected my thoughts and suddenly realized that this past week hasn't been that interesting anyway, so I probably shouldn't bother retyping the day-by-day report on my week.

I'll spare you that boredom, but here are a few highlights...

-I've been checking just about every five minutes to see if my semester grades are available (as of this writing, they aren't)
-I read Nolan Dalla's One of a Kind, a very good biography of Stu Ungar; I'd recommend it to the card players among my readers (and even for those who aren't, it's still interesting stuff)
-After a year of trial and error, I finally have the perfect amount of music on my iPod. Enough so that the 20GB capacity is full, and not so much that it overflows and doesn't have any room for my playlists. 5,060 songs to be exact.

While my week was fairly boring, things began looking up this past weekend. I had a blast playing pool and Apples to Apples at the Billses' on Friday, enjoyed a couple of fun gatherings with family friends Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday I had a play rehearsal at church (I get to be Satan, of course). I followed that up with another huge night at the poker table. Last night's game lasted until about three in the morning, when I happily cashed out $96. Thanks to squaring off with the notorious H.A.L. for about an hour after everyone else left, I'm starting to get the hang of heads-up Omaha. It's a lot more fun than I expected.

Anyway, I started this entry on Saturday afternoon, and it's now nearing the onset of Tuesday morning. I've learned my lesson about putting this off: the more I procrastinate, the longer I end up forcing myself to make the next entry. So, I'm considering taking back my statement from the beginning of this post. Perhaps bi-weekly blogging is a must.

I suppose I should close with my obligatory sports commentary:

-Really, seriously, I'm not kidding... I honestly believe the Patriots and Giants can win their respective conference championships. Yes, I am aware that the Pats have the worst record of all the AFC playoff teams, but I also know that for seven of their 16 games, they were not at full strength. Up until their bye in Week 7, they were missing Tedy Bruschi, and if you look at their lineup in yesterday's Dolphins game, they were barely even trying. They're a 7-2 football team when sees playing time, and they'll be at full strength this month, with a healthy Bruschi, Seymour, Dillon, and Tom Brady. Honestly, who else in the AFC stands a chance?

As for the Giants, they deserve a lot of credit for surviving, nay, winning, arguably the NFL's toughest division. I know Seattle is favored to cruise to the NFC title, but I'm not impressed by a year of beating up on the Rams, Cardinals, and Niners. I'll believe a Seahawks Super Bowl berth when I see it.

-As for baseball... we're not going to talk about the Yankees' center fielder. I'm trying not to think about him anymore, so please, no one provoke me. Likewise with the Rangers' staff ace, and to a lesser extent, the Dodgers'... whatever Nomar is to the Dodgers... first baseman, right fielder, middle reliever, batboy, what have you. Let's move on.

As for the Manny situation, I've always maintained that I'd rather keep him and wait him out than trade him, but if he must go, I'm happy that the Mets are still interested. The Tejada deal isn't going to happen -- the Orioles are asking for way too much in exchange for letting one of baseball's best hitters stay in their division -- but that's okay. I wasn't crazy about Tejada anyway. The Red Sox are overloaded with middle infielders. Tony Graffanino can play second next year, Mark Loretta can cover short, Alex Cora is a reliable backup for either one, and former Arizona State superstar Dustin Pedroia will be up from the minors before you know it.

Our outfield, however, consists of pretty much no one but Trot Nixon, and Adam Stern if we're that desperate. The Mets, while they're not expected to deal Beltran, do have both Mike Cameron and Lastings Milledge, and I'd rather trade for them than anyone else on the market today.

I may expand on these little nuggets of analysis in a later post, but right now, I'm tired of writing. That's all for now, but I'll write more over break, since I don't have much to do between now and January 17. Potential topics include...

-Further baseball talk, which I will probably avoid since no one who reads this really cares (with a couple of exceptions)
-A review of Freakonomics (a masterpiece, truly... I really should explain)
-My complaints about the psychology program at Tufts
-My thoughts on Tufts' strengths and weaknesses in general, after one semester
-Perhaps my opinions on online poker (I have a feeling there's a bit of demand for that)
-A bunch of other ideas that aren't coming to me right now, but will, I'm sure, five seconds after I hit the "Publish Post" button

That, I do believe, is all for now. It's been a good three days of writing, and I hope the end result has been a good 3,266 words.