3 posts from October 2007

Bear with me. What follows isn't a complaint or a bitch fest. Just dumping some emotion so I can move on.

This past weekend I was a little down. Alright, a lotta down.

The Phoenix Storm played their first match of the season and I wasn't there. It sounds really stupid, but I had a hard time with it.

Friday night I had a hard time sleeping, like I normally do before games. On Saturday I kept looking at the clock thinking:

It's 8 there - the guys are getting up.

It's 9:30 they're at the pitch.

They're probably stretching now

etc.


Then I saw Jay posted on the player's site that the Storm was up 21 - 0, Anton had scored three times and there was 10 minutes left. I was so happy and so upset at the same time.

I should have been there. I should have been feeding him those passes. I should have been encouraging everyone to continue to push, no matter the score.

I wasn't.

Then the text messages came in. First Joe, then Phill. Then Jay e-mailed me a picture of the drinkup.

I couldn't take it. So I unsubscribed myself from all of the Storm Yahoo groups.

I simply let go.

And I felt so much better for it.

For 30 seconds.

I was on the verge of tears for the rest of the day. I tried to talk to Kevin and Shawn about it but had to stop because I was getting choked up and couldn't talk.

Later that night I was at a party and Greg from Nashville texted, then Alfonzo called. I couldn't take the call because it was too noisy. And honestly, I didn't want to hear what I was missing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm SOOOO happy we won. And I'm so proud of the backs and of Drew in his first game back with the Storm. But damnit, I worked really hard and I feel like I should have been sharing that success. I told Phill at Seattle that things were on the up and the backs were going to be phenomenal. And they were.

I just wasn't part of it.

Saturday night while walking home from the party I talked to Greg and listened to his recap and the drink up stories.

The next day I heard more from Alfonzo when I talked to him. It sounds like it was our wildest one ever.

I'm irritated because I worked really hard all summer to get into shape. I was lifting hard core and gained 15 pounds of muscle. I was working to improve myself so that I could lead effectively on the field. I was going to be a better fly half. I was going to be better at the game.

And now I've lost all of the gains I made over the past two months. I've had to spend too much time looking for a place and then getting it ready.

Last week my schedule cleared out for me to work out again. But I'm pissed because of what I lost - I'm skinny fat again.

Next week I'll start rugby here (my benefits kick in at the end of this week). But they've been practicing since July. I'm rusty and it's going to take months to get that back. I might not be able to go to Bingham. I don't know.

Things will be ok. And I'm happy here. Beyond happy. This was the right thing to do. And I'm going to change things in the world for the better.

But it was a rough weekend.

I've received several requests to post pictures of my house and to post something in my blog. I know it's been weeks, but I've been really busy.

That's not an exaggeration. Up until I found my apartment I would leave work, go to the apartment broker and look at apartments until 8 or 9 at night. After I found my apartment, I would go home, clean, put IKEA furniture together or paint. I usually did this until 10 or 11 and then crash.

Saturday was my last painting day. There are a few areas that need to be touched up (painters tape never works as advertised). And I need to hang some curtains and buy a sofa. But for the most part, the big stuff is done.

My apartment is perfect for me. I really really love it. It's a railroad style apartment. This means that all of the rooms are in a straight line and connected to one another. The only down side to this is the bathroom is in my bedroom. So when I have guests, they'll have to come into my room to take those midnight pee breaks.

The place is about 4 blocks to the Broadway stop in Queens. I either live in Long Island City or Astoria. It depends on the utility. According to Time Warner cable I live in Long Island City. The electric company isn't sure if it's Astoria or not. It's very strange.

The rooms aren't gigantic but they're larger than what you'll find in Manhattan. In fact, if I were to live in Manhattan I would get a place slightly larger (but not much) than my living room. The rooms are about 10 - 11 feet wide and 10 - 13 feet long, with 10' ceilings.

I really like the exposed brick walls in the kitchen and living room. The kitchen and bathrooms were renovated 4 years ago, so they have nice tile and new fixtures. The apartment is in really good shape. I've seen a lot of places over the past two months and am pretty lucky to be in this one. The building itself is very quiet. Most of the people that live here are older (40 and above) professionals. So I rarely, if ever, hear anything.

When I first moved into the place it was trashed. The previous tenant left a bunch of trash behind (a really nasty rice cooker and toaster oven, some clothes, food, etc.). She was also obsessed with hooks, nails and shelving units. So there were a billion holes in each wall. Plus there was a really tacky track lighting system that was affixed with some sort of peel off glue thing. The lighting went halfway down the wall and had this big honker of an electrical plug dangling.

After seeing this mess and hearing the words (this place is uninhabitable come from the lips of Shawn - as relayed by his boyfriend Mason) I called the landlord and complained the following Monday. I told him he needed to fix the holes and paint. Or he could pay me to do it. He was apologetic and explained the super told him the apt. was fine. He asked what I wanted to happen. I told him I wanted to paint so I could choose my own colors. He was fine with that and cut me a check and put it in the mail.

I spent a week, taping, painting and all that fun stuff. It sucked at times but the results are pretty decent. The only crappy part was having to buy paint supplies and gallons of paint, then walking a few blocks to the subway, getting on the subway and then walking a few blocks to my apartment! But I managed. :-)

The colors all turned out well. Shawn helped me choose the colors. The only hiccup was I asked for Newport Blue for my bedroom. When the guy gave me the paint can, the paint dot on the top of the can looked green. At the time I chalked it up to being wet paint.

However, when I painted my room it was obvious that this was Sea Foam Green and NOT Newport Blue. But I like the color anyway. It's pretty.

Now I have a lot more free time and I'll blog more often. I have a lot of funny stories to relate.

Here are the pix....

My friend Shawn has a blog that he never updates. But when he does, it's always a great read. Shawn has some bad luck. So he has these wonderfully amusing stories to share (wonderfully amusing to everyone but him).

I'm crashing on Shawn's couch this week until I'm able to move into my apartment this weekend. So... poor Shawn has to put up with me all week AND make IKEA and Costco runs with me this weekend.

Shawn has had to do a lot of crappy things with me. For example, last Saturday we laid on about 300 beds to find the one that was "just right." I think I found it though, so I'm excited to sleep in my own bed next Saturday.

Quick funny story... Shawn just walked out of the bathroom after taking a bath. He looked into his closet and said, "I hate when the only comfy shirt I have is dirty." Now there are at least 47 different shirts in his closet. So I asked him if he really only had one. He was adamant in his reply. So he puts on a "non-comfy" shirt and then sighs and says, "I put this on backwards."

He takes the shirt off and puts it on correctly and walks into the kitchen. The tag on the back was visible, so I laughed and said, "You're shirt is on inside out."

Anyway....

Shawn e-mailed me this morning. I told him that since he was too lazy to blog I was posting this on mine since it's so funny. (I didn't do any editing).