Digital Seth

Power Outage Questions

2009-02-17T20:39:00.000-05:00

It's been way too long since I've written anything for this blog, but I've been busy (and fairly productive), plus, as Acacia complains, twittering takes away from your blogging. I'm the East Penn Open Sectional Coordinator for the College Championship Ultimate series run by the UPA. I'm also an Alumni Admissions Interviewer for Vassar. Both of those things have been taking up my time in varying amounts – I recently lost the site that I thought (through no fault of my own) had been guaranteed for sectionals and I was assigned two more Vassar applicants to interview. But most of my time and energy has been devoted to applying for new jobs. I'm looking for paralegal jobs at relatively small firms in Philly and D.C., so if you know of any openings (all four of you who read this blog) let me know!

Now that I'm fully ingrained in the glory that is Google Reader I've subscribed to Freakonomics, which I suppose is the inspiration for the following in some roundabout way. Last night my house, and others in the neighborhood, lost power. It turns out that a transformer blew up a few streets over, but that's not the point of the story. Right after the power went out, I called PECO (the electric company for those of you not from Philadelphia) to report the outage. I finally got through to an actual human being who told me that PECO knew about the problem, claimed it would be solved quickly, and offered this piece of information to me, seemingly to comfort me: the outage affects about 800 people. I couldn't figure out if that information was comforting to me. I suppose I was relieved to hear that it wasn't a blackout of all of Philadelphia, or the entire east coast, but I could have known that simply by looking across the street (in one direction they still had power). I wonder what PECO's motivation for telling customers the approximate number of people suffering from the power outage is. If it's a large number, would I have been more concerned that it was going to take a lot of time before my power came back. Might PECO be motivated to tell the customer that a smaller number of houses are affected by the outage than is true in an attempt to increase customer satisfaction? I simply don't see the purpose of PECO quoting me the number of customers affected by the outage at all. If I found out PECO was lying to me, would I take it out on them by refusing to pay my bill on time? (A plan that would surely backfire and only cost PECO a couple hundred dollars at most before they simply shut off my power.) If ignorance is bliss (which is generally is not) wouldn't I rather not know the number of people affected by the outage? On the other hand, perhaps I would be mad at PECO if they knew the approximate number of people affected by the outage, but refused, for some policy reason or another, not to tell me. I can't come up with a convincing argument for why PECO bothers to tell customers the number of people affected by the power outage, or what PECO's motivation for accurately conveying that number to its customers. But nevertheless, the power came back on about an hour after it went out.

My Car is Alive for at Least Another Year ... Well, Almost Alive

2009-01-10T23:44:00.002-05:00

Every year since my freshman year in college, when I first had my car full time, I’ve been worried that it wouldn’t pass inspection. The car is now 16-years old and had spent a good portion of it’s first 12 years sitting in a driveway under a tree on Staten Island. It was exposed to the elements (weather, salt air, leaves, and sticky balls that I think I’m still pulling out of the doors) and probably wasn’t frequently taken to the shop for repairs or an oil change. This year, however, I was seriously concerned for about six months that the cost of getting my car to pass inspection would outweigh the car’s value. Essentially I was worried that fixing the car would become more expensive than buying a new (used) car. If there ever was a year to take my car to a service center at a Mitsubishi dealer this was it. Luckily there’s one in Havertown - about a ten minute drive from my apartment.

I took my car in on Thursday (the registration ends in February, so if it was going to cost more to fix it than I thought the car was worth, I still had at least six weeks to buy a new car) and sure enough it did need some work to pass inspection. I had told myself before I dropped my car off that if the repairs were going to cost more than $1000 I would have to make a decision about whether or not it was worth it to keep the car. The guy at the service center called and said I need new tie-rods in the front of the car and that I had a brake fluid leak. All told about $700 in repairs. So, as you might have been able to guess from the title of this post, I went with the repairs, got my car to pass inspection, and it lives to see another year with me.

As you also might have been able to tell from the title of this post, it turned out that not all was perfect with the repairs on my car. When the tie rods, part of the connection between the steering column and the wheels (my car knowledge is terrible), were connected, the steering wheel must not have been pointing straight ahead. What this means is that when driving the car straight, instead of having the steering wheel pointing at 12 on a clock, it’s pointing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10:30. It’s possible (and really not all that hard) to drive safely with the steering aligned as it is now, but it’s certainly distracting, especially when backing up.

Obviously I noticed this problem as soon as I hit the road on Thursday on my way back from the service place, but since the service desk was already closed for the evening there was nothing I could do about it then. I called the dealer on Friday and they told me it would take about 45 minutes to fix the problem so I brought the car over in the afternoon only to be told that, upon looking at the problem, they had to send the car out to their alignment specialist for a two hour job. More importantly, it was already almost 3 PM and the alignment guys close at 4 so I’d have to bring the car back next week for them to fix - again. Luckily for me the service manager offered to drive me from the dealer to my job, and then pick me up when the car was finished. I guess we’ll have to see how all of this turns out on Monday, but they better not try to charge me for the work made necessary by their own screw up.

New Year, New Uncomfortable Situations and Scary Thoughts

2009-01-05T01:03:00.001-05:00

So for the first time in my memory I didn’t have to struggle to create a New Year’s option that consisted of more than just passing the new year with my parents. Not to say that I’ve done that in the past four years, it’s just been that I’ve had to search to find something, or push my friends to host something. This year, however, was radically different. I ended up spending a relatively quiet, and very fun New Year’s Eve in Washington, DC with Sam, Alex, Acacia, Steph and Sam’s former DCCC co-worker Trevor. It was really great to see all of them, and sometimes it really is nice to have a small and relaxed New Year’s. No trying to make lots of people feel comfortable with people they don’t know. No trying to get to know other people ... Anyway, I was also invited to New Year’s at Andrew’s in Brooklyn, Dov’s in Philly, Emily’s in Philly, and my housemates had a party in our apartment as well. I was sure each was going to be a great time and it was a really difficult choice - I actually called people to see what they thought I should do! The toughest question I faced, however, in the lead up to New Year’s came from Andrew. It seems he had ordered a case of champagne to be delivered to his apartment in Brooklyn. The champagne came from a liquor store that does delivery and happens, according to Andrew, to be owned by the mob. The tough question was how much Andrew should tip the guy who delivered the case of champagne. It was something like an eleven block trip and less than $100 worth of champagne. I had absolutely no clue. Andrew was looking up how much grocery store delivery people should be tipped and I was thinking that it might be a good idea to generously tip the mob. You know, just in case. After all, one can never be to careful. Andrew ended up tipping less than I suggested, but last I checked he was still alive and well and the liquor store hadn’t randomly charged his credit card the amount they thought perhaps he should have tipped.

Earlier today, well yesterday now I guess, I went home to do laundry and watch the Eagles playoff game. (Sidenote: Brian Dawkins is a freak of nature and I mean that in the best possible way.) My parents managed to trick their way into Comcast digital cable a while back and with that now (since New Year’s Day) comes MLB Network. Today the MLB Network was conveniently showing games 3-5 of this year’s World Series. Of course they were showing with the Fox announcers calling the game, with Joe Buck doing play-by-play. While we were watching the Eagles game on TV with the sound muted we were listening to the Eagles announcers on WYSP who are far better than any national announcers. Especially since the Eagles game was on Fox - meaning Joe Buck doing the play-by-play. So, for the record, the New Year brought Joe Buck coming at me on two separate channels disrupting two delightful Philadelphia sporting events. That’s a scary thought.

This (yesterday) morning when I woke up and sleepily found my way to the bathroom I noticed a scarf lying on the floor of the bathroom. Still mostly asleep, I actually looked up at the ceiling as if the scarf had somehow fallen from there. Seeing no evidence of its origin I simply ignored it. Later, in the day when I was out food shopping my cell phone rang. It was my boss. Calling on a Sunday I was a little bit worried. It turned out there was no need to worry. My housemate and my boss’ daughter, friends for years, were flying to Israel in the morning for a Birthright trip. My boss gave them a ride to Newark, the airport they were flying out of, and picked up my housemate from our house. Apparently he used the bathroom while he was here to pick up my housemate. Meaning that my boss was in my apartment while I was asleep on a Sunday morning. Probably a really good thing that I hadn’t had a crazy Saturday night and wasn’t in a drunken stupor, was fully clothed, and didn’t have any guests in a similar state either. Now that could have been a seriously uncomfortable situation ...

Happy New Year!

Onions Cost 10¢

2008-12-27T16:43:00.003-05:00

Since I’ve had a chance to write an entry, my family celebrated Hanukkah (twice, with two different sets of cousins) and Christmas. All three were a lot of fun. Most of the gifts I got are Phillies related. The regular season Phillies yearbok DVD The Perfect Season, the official MLB postseason DVD and the collectors’ edition World Series DVDs which is an eight DVD set that has seven complete games (Games 4 and 5 from the NLCS and all five World Series games) plus a bonus feature DVD among others. Needless to say I’ve been contently watching Phillies highlights for several days now!

Last night my apartment threw a “White Elephant” party. I’d never heard of a party of that type before, but both Liz and Paul had. It works something like this: everyone brings a wrapped gift (not more than $15 in value) and gets assigned a number. When your number is drawn you get to choose a present to open. If you don't like the present you picked you can trade with someone else who has already gotten a gift (they must accept the trade). The person who was just traded with can then trade with someone else - and that process continues for one minute. Basically it's present opening and minute long frantic gift stealing. It's a lot of fun. I ended up with some irish cream whiskey and two glasses. There was a lot of booze, cheeky toys, and weird DVDs including the 1971 cult classic Vampyros Lesbos. The party was a blast and my friend Bethany from college was there (back in town from Costa Rica for the holidays). She stayed over, ostensibly so we could have more time to hang out, but also so that we could go to Dalessandro’s Steaks for cheesesteaks for lunch today. We both ordered delicious cheesesteaks. Bethany’s with mushrooms cost $7. Mine, with mushrooms and onions cost $7.10. At Dalessandro’s, onions cost 10¢.

Holiday Card

2008-12-14T22:01:00.001-05:00

Every year for as long as I can remember, my parents have sent out a holiday card around this time of year with a picture of me and my sister, if not the four of us. This is the first year that my parents aren’t sending out a card with a picture of me or my sister. For a number of years, dating back to when I was in high school I suppose, I had suggested to my parents that the time had come to send holiday cards that did not include photos of their children, but they demurred. Last year we sent out a card with a picture of the four of us at parque güell in Barcelona that was actually taken in December 2006. Of course, this year coincides with my living on my own and believe it or not there were a few moments of me contemplating sending out a holiday card of my own. Alas, that idea was quickly shot down (very quickly regarding the use of regular mail, and a little slower about a holiday email) and I’m left with this blog post. (On a related note, I did get a holiday card from my friend Rachel, so it wouldn’t have been totally crazy for me to send out holiday cards.)

So, although anyone who reads this blog will know, here’s my year! I graduated from Vassar in May after four wonderful years. Senior year was highlighted by living in a townhouse with four wonderful housemates and writing a thesis I was quite proud of. Since graduation I have been working at a small law firm in Ardmore and since July 1 I have been living in Bala Cynwyd in a lovely apartment. And yeah, in a nut shell that’s been my year. Happy Holidays everybody!

My Philadelphia Renaissance

2008-12-08T01:38:00.002-05:00

If memory serves, there’s an episode fairly early on in the first season of Sports Night, in which one of the co-anchors, Dan Rydell, won’t stop talking about the New York renaissance he’s having. He goes on and on about how he’s lived in New York City his whole life, but he’s recently rediscovered the city in all it’s glory - mostly by having simple experiences, riding the subway, taking the Staten Island Ferry, going for a drink at a swanky hotel bar and the like. Obviously I don’t live in New York City, although recently I have been feeling like I’m having a renaissance of the city I’ve lived in my whole life - mostly through relatively simple experiences. In the Sports Night episode (a series I should probably watch again and might after I finish my current endeavor - going through the West Wing again), Dan’s incessant rambling about his New York renaissance is the butt of several jokes and very annoying to the other characters, I can only hope my Philadelphia renaissance post won’t be those things!

Last Tuesday morning I got an email from my Mom that there was a raffle at her office for tickets to that night’s Penn-Villanova men’s basketball game at the Palestra. My Dad and I said she should put in name in (there had been other raffles in the past at her office for sports tickets that we hadn’t won) and she won. Not only was it a college basketball game (a sport I love), not only was it a game at the Palestra (a place a I love), not only was it Penn-Villanova (two team’s I’ve followed for years), it was a Big 5 game! For those who don’t know, the Big 5 is a Philadelphia tradition that began a little over 50 years ago in which the five Philadelphia-area (Villanova is the only one that sits outside the city limits) play a round-robin each year. The five teams are La Salle, Penn, St. Joe’s, Temple, and Villanova (Drexel wasn’t big enough when the Big 5 started, and therefore isn’t included, but is actually a sixth Philadelphia Division 1 basketball team). Big 5 games are always special and the Palestra has a long and storied history in Philadelphia basketball. I had forgotten how much I love the scene at the Palestra for Big 5 games and how unbelievably cool it is to watch Division 1 basketball in person. It didn’t hurt that the tickets we won belonged to my Mom’s boss, a Penn grad, and they were COURTSIDE. That’s right, I saw a ranked men’s Division 1 college basketball team four-feet from the court! Oh, and in the stands watching the game (all further from the action than I was!) were in no particular order, Gov. Ed Rendell (D, Pa), Phillies President Dave Montgomery and ESPN.com baseball writer Jayson Stark. Apparently, the Palestra is the place to be on a Big 5 game night!

On Saturday, I decided that despite the cold (it may have been 34 degrees) I was going to bike from my apartment to the Art Museum and back (a modest 15-mile ride as I later discovered using Google Maps). On the way, I was reminded how much I used to love that ride when I was in Middle School and High School when I did it fairly frequently. It’s a beautiful ride along the Schuykill, past boat house row and around the Art Museum. (There are always bus loads of foreign tourists who come to the Art Museum to take pictures and run up the steps á la Rocky Balboa. I wonder how many of those tourists even realize it’s a fantastic Art Museum. Maybe the Museum should charge for tourists to do that. They’d make a killing.) As if the wonderful ride wasn’t enough, on the way back I was reminded that I recently had played disc golf a stone’s (or frisbee’s, if you will) throw away from where I was biking. Sedgley Woods, the first disc golf course on this side of the Mississippi is in Fairmount Park and they have a quasi-secret extra nine holes that takes you very close to Kelly Drive - my path on the way back from the Art Museum. Sedgley Woods is an awesome place, and I love the people that are always hanging around there - great mixture of stoners, hippies, washed up Ultimate players, and those who are all three. For now, that is my Philadelphia renaissance, the Palestra, the Big 5, and several parts of Fairmount Park. This is a wonderful city with an infinite number of things to love, so I’m sure I’ll find more to bore you all with soon!

High School Reunion

2008-12-06T12:29:00.002-05:00

This past Saturday, two days after Thanksgiving, was one of the busiest and most enjoyable days I could ever imagine having - from a PADA hat tournament, to meals with friends, to a “5 year” high school reunion I was running around all day. The whole time I was with people I really enjoy spending time with, some of whom I haven't seen or spent lots of time with in a very long time.

Every year PADA has a hat tournament on Thanksgiving weekend, this year was no exception. My friend Judy (we went to GFS and Vassar together) was in town - she moved to San Francisco in the spring - and she brought her little brother to the tournament. Judy is probably the best female Ultimate player I have ever had the privilege of playing with and it was a blast playing with her on Saturday - just as it is every time I get the chance to do play with her. At the hat tournament, we dominated our first two games and got beat pretty soundly in the last game to a team Jake, the Vassar men’s captain from my junior year of college, was on. It was really nice to see Jake as well. We were beaten so soundly in the last game because we got a little tired in the last game - and I’m sure it didn't help that they tapped the kegs as the game got underway. Anyway, it was wonderful to see Judy and Jake and play Ultimate with them. After the last game I went out to a late lunch with two of my summer league teammates from 2007 and several other fun PADA people.

GFS sent out invitations to the reunion in the mail about six weeks before the event and for at least a month in advance there was a facebook event advertising it as well. About a week before the reunion, Marisa sent out an email to about a dozen of our good friends from high school saying that she and Emilia thought it would be good idea if we all went out to dinner before hand. Of course it was a good idea, and of course it was Marisa and Emilia who had come up with the idea and done all of the planning. I guess some high school dynamics never change.

Back to the day as it unfolded: After I got home from my late lunch and took a shower it was already 4:15 and I was hoping to catch a 5:03 train out of Merion Station. On top of that, I had to get to a State Store so I could buy some wine for the BYOB dinner which wasn’t supposed to start until 6:30. I needed to be downtown so early because my father had noticed an add in the paper (in the Sports Section, of course) that Mitchell & Ness was having a 50% sale on everything in their store. I had missed getting him a birthday present because he got a Phillies World Series Champions shirt from someone else (and a refrigerator magnet too!) and needed to get him Hanukah and Christmas presents as well. For those of you who don’t know, Mitchell & Ness is a company that manufactures retro jerseys in authentic materials paying incredibly close attention to detail. They are widely known as the best in their business, and their only retail store is in Philadelphia. Walking through Mitchell & Ness’ store is an incredible experience, especially when everything is almost affordable and I have a reason to buy something. Initially I thought it would be cool to get him a Richie Ashburn jersey, but the only ones they had left were gigantic, so I kept looking. My next bet was going to be a nice Yankess jersey (as close as I could ever come to committing a such sacrilege, but he did grow up a Yankees fan). I would have preferred a Mantle or Berra jersey but I only saw DiMaggio and Gherig ones, and decided on a beautiful 1939 Joe DiMaggio jersey.

I still had time to waste after my purchase I wandered into a Modell’s where they happened to have the Phillies 2008 DVD playing. I stood transfixed for an unknown period of time before heading off toward the restaurant where I was intercepted on the way by Ben. Being the slightly awkward GFS kids that we still are, we decided not to go in and take the table for 13 with just the two of us. We waited about 10 minutes until Maya and Jen came and then we felt sufficiently able to take our huge table and damn near half the restaurant. The food was good (it was an Italian place) and in large quantities, but the company was fantastic. It was really great to see all the people who were there (even if I mostly only got to talk to the people who were down at my end of the table). Of the people at dinner, Me, Ben, Jen, Maya, Amy, Jeremy, Emilia, Sarah, Marisa, Darrell (Marisa’s boyfriend), Emily, Audrey, and Eric - only the last two didn’t continue on to the bar for the actual reunion. Oh, and a funny story, after we paid for our food, the restaurant wouldn’t let us stay. They kicked us out because we were making too much noise!

The "5 Year Reunion" was scheduled to start at 8:00 at the Black Sheep Pub on 17th and Latimer (for those of you paying attention, that is the same bar as Vassar's Philadelphia area 100 nights party). If I had taken any Psych classes in college I might be able to tell you why two reunion event would be held at the same bar, but I studied History and Economics so I can only tell you about the historical development and economic incentives tied to the two events. No worries, I won't even begin to bore you with either one! Walking down the street from the restaurant to the bar we were all a little bit anxious about what was going to be in store at the reunion. How many people would be there? What would people be like? Was it going to be strange at all? As it turned out we had absolutely nothing to worry about.

Oh, and "5 Year Reunion" is in quotation marks because no matter how you bother to add it up, it's really only been 4.5 years since I graduated from high school, but this is how GFS does their fifth year reunions. There was a time in my life when I would have been pissed that they were having a reunion early so they could try even harder to get me into the habit of donating money. It's probably a combination of my maturation and the fact that I've already begun to get into the habit of donating money that makes the early reunion's financial purpose not bother me at all - that and the fact that it was a BLAST!

It was so nice and fun to talk to and catch up with people I hadn’t spent much time with since high school. I don’t think it hurt that we were all drinking fairly liberally, but the conversations didn’t slow down all night. We technically only had the room until 10 PM, but the bar let us stay until about 10:30 when they decided they needed to kick us out because they had another party coming in at 11. Being the tight class that we are (who would have thought that?!) we all decided to hit the streets together and go find another bar to go to together. We ended up at some club-like place that I really didn’t like all that much. After about half an hour, Claire and I left to go to Tria (conveniently located right across the street!) where we had been before some months ago and where she in particular really liked (I like it a lot too, she just goes there far more than I do). We had about 15 minutes of a nice little debriefing before we were (re)joined by Amy, Jen, Emilia and Sarah. It was awesome spending more time with them and we left at about 1:30, just in time for me to catch the last R5 back to Merion Station. What a night. And the best part of it may have been that the general consensus was that we should do something like that every six months or so! That won’t happen, but it sure is a nice thought - at least it’s not too long until the Burns’ Christmas party when I’ll get to see a bunch of these people again!

Friends from DC, Friends in NYC

2008-11-28T23:13:00.002-05:00

Two weeks ago, Sam, Alex, and Acacia came up from DC for a weekend visit. Sam and Acacia had seen my apartment in August, but Alex and Aapta (who came down from NYC to visit) had not and they were pretty much blown away by the size apartment you can get for the rent I pay if you're willing to live in Bala Cynwyd. Due to a mixup, a late start, and some getting lost, the three from DC didn't arrive until 11 PM on Friday and arrived quite stressed to say the least. We took care of that stress fairly quickly with a very "collegiate" stress relief method. Consequently we didn't really wake up until noon the next day - and didn't make it to Hymie's for lunch until 2 PM. And it took us until about 5:30 before we finally left for Caitlin's parent's house in Cherry Hill, NJ - she was having a whole host of people over for dinner, which was the origin of the idea of the visit from the DC friends. I was only really able to hang around for dinner though - others stayed after to play games and things, because my aunt and uncle were in town and I owed them a visit at my parents house. The weekend was capped off with Fall League finals on Sunday - Sam and Acacia got to watch my team lose (not surprising) in the first game and be eliminated.

Last weekend, I went to New York city to visit friends (and family, actually) because I had been promising to visit a bunch of different people and simply hadn't had the opportunity to go for about six months. I left work about an hour early on Friday and took the R5 from Ardmore to 30th Street, then the R7 to Trenton, and NJ Transit to Penn Station. I met Reed and Rachel for dinner at a Tapas bar in Chelsea. It was great to see Reed - I hadn't seen her since graduation. After dinner I went to Emily's apartment in the East Village where I saw a whole host of other people as well. On Saturday afternoon after lunch I headed out to Brooklyn to visit Andrew and saw his housemate (and fellow Vassar history major, Jennette). Andrew and I got drunk, got stuffed, played video games and watched college football, it was simply a blast. After dinner I went to the Upper West Side and Rachel's apartment. We stayed up talking and catching up until at least 2 AM. On Sunday morning I went to visit my second cousins who recently moved from LA to NYC due to a job change. They live in one of the most impressive apartments I've ever seen, many many floors above the street looking directly out over the Hudson. All things considered it was a wonderful weekend in New York City visiting people I hadn't seen in a long time on the heels of a visit from other friends I hadn't seen for a while (alright so it had been two weeks since I'd seen Sam, Alex and Acacia, but who cares!).

Election Day Recap ...

2008-11-19T21:16:00.004-05:00

I was one of the unknown number of volunteers for Obama and the Democratic party on election day. (At least that number is unknown to me, and I wondered just how many of us there were as I worked on election day.) Just like the other times I worked on election day (democratic primary and general election when Ed Rendell ran successfully for the Governor of Pennsylvania) I worked because my GFS friend Emily bugged me about it. This year (and for the past 2+ years, Emily has been working for Patrick Murphy the congressman from my Grandmother's congressional district in Bucks County, PA. Murphy is just finishing up his first term in Congress, so when Emily first started working for him he was not yet a congressman.

On election day I woke up at 6:30 AM and soon thereafter dragged myself down the street to my polling place. I probably got there just before 7 and was out by 7:20 - not a bad wait all things considered. After voting, I walked home and hopped in my car to get out to Levittown to one of the Murphy offices. Once there, Emily sent me to Trevose to an Obama/Murphy canvassing/phone bank center. I was quickly trained as a canvasser and soon thereafter got to work. I did three canvassing shifts with a guy from Manhattan who was, at one point, deputy mayor of San Francisco. We worked a three neighborhoods in the Northampton/Southampton/Trevose area - I was only yelled at and treated nastily once, so wasn't too bad at all. After my three canvassing trips, I returned to Levittown where Emily reassigned me to something called "comfort duty." I was sent to a polling place in a heavily democratic ward to stand in line with voters and keep them from becoming discouraged and leaving the line. I was sent out with food and ponchos and things, but the polling place I was sent to was in no need of me. There was no line and it wasn't raining, so I didn't have anything to do.

After the polls closed I returned to the headquarters and collected directions to the official Murphy election returns party at some hotel in Oxford Valley. It was the exact scene I'd seen on local news for years. A big ball room filled with rowdy people watching big TVs and cheering and booing as the results came in. The party was fun, and I enjoyed it, but it was a long way from home and I wanted to be enjoying the night (having a few drinks) so I left the Murphy party and went to one in South Philly with a bunch of Frisbee friends and acquaintances. It took almost an hour to drive from the one party to the other, and lest you think I was missing out on election results, I discovered that NPR has excellent election coverage. I got to South Philly before 10 PM and watched the rest of the results from there. What a day - what a night. It was truly memorable.

As for all of this sinking in, I think it might finally be starting as I'm writing this post. I'm highly considering going to the Inauguration if I can get off work for it and it seems like a feasible thing to do. I'll bet if it's not fully sunken in by then, it will be after I watch him get sworn in!

Halloween in DC!

2008-11-16T19:57:00.002-05:00

So, now that it's been a little more than two weeks since I went to Washington DC to go to my college friends' Halloween party, I've finally found the time to write about it. Of course, I realize that to tell the story I have to back track even further - once again, I realize just how busy real like is.

So, the last weekend in October (the 25th and 26th) I picked up with the Vassar College Men's A team at Haverford's annual Halloween tournament (the aptly named, Haverween). I had been planning for several weeks to go to DC for Sam, Alex, and Acacia's Halloween party and had no clue about a good costume. From experience, however, I knew that Haverween would be a great chance to steal some far more creative person's costume idea. I didn't even have to look far for the costume idea, a Vassar sophomore was dressed as Sgt. Pepper (of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) - and I immediately knew I was soon to be on the lookout for a similar costume. Eventually (with some driving to Springfield, Delco) I found a cheaper - and not quite as nice, but still quite functional - Sgt. Pepper costume.

The Halloween party in DC was a bunch of fun and I got to see all sorts of people I hadn't seen in quite a while. Thanks to the end of daylight savings, the party went quite late into the night. There's photographic evidence of the costume as Sam and I tried to create the positioning of last year's Halloween pictures. That didn't really work so well, but at least there's photographic evidence of me in a quasi-real Halloween costume for the first time in ages ...

Put This One in the Win Column for the Fightin' Phils!

2008-11-06T22:07:00.004-05:00

As I wrote about more generally in my last post, I was at Game 5 of the World Series, in attendance as the Phillies won the World Series. Game 5 was originally scheduled for Monday, October 27. I was nervous about the game all day at work, it was, of course, the most important baseball game I had ever been to. It was chilly all day, but around 4 PM clouds began to move in and the radar started to show one of those huge blotches of green that can only mean hours upon hours of rain. Because Major League Baseball sold its soul to Fox for some huge number of dollars, the game wasn't scheduled to start until 8:30. The rain started soon thereafter and did not stop. It was probably about 40 degrees with a significant steady wind the whole time. By the fourth inning the field was essentially unplayable. Players were unable to make plays they were typically capable of making quite easily. And yet the game was not suspended until the Rays had tied up the game in the top of the sixth inning. Had the game begun earlier, or been stopped when the field became unplayable, I would have had nothing to complain about. Bud Selig and Major League Baseball, however, seemingly don't know what is good for their game.

So, after the game was suspended and I suffered through the worst SEPTA Regional Rail ride of my life (drunken, stupid, angry, rude, racist, homophobic suburbanites and Villanova students all over the place) the game was scheduled for Tuesday. During the day on Tuesday, the weather was not much better (although it did get better at night) in the middle of the afternoon the game was postponed until Wednesday night.

Wednesday was cold, but the weather was mostly clear. I made my way to Citizens Bank Park with my father and my high school chemistry teacher, Ken. I knew the "game" or the continuation of the game as it were, was only going to 3.5 innings at most (unless it went extra innings) but it was still very weird to go to a game that was so short. The crowd was uncertain as to how to act - given the odd situation of a resumed game - but the Phanatic came out and got the crowd incredibly hyped up and ready support our Phillies. Say what you will about mascots, but the Phanatic deserves some serious praise for how he got the crowd ready to be incredibly loud and supportive. An absolutely integral part of the Phillies organization.

I won't bother to rehash the details of the game, that can be read about in other places, instead I'll focus on what I experienced. The fans in our section were counting down the outs as the game neared it's end. Everyone was high-fiving everyone else. It was such a blast. After the final out was recorded my father and I hugged tighter than we have in years. I must have stood up on my seat with my hands raised a-la Rocky Balboa on top of the Art Museum steps for 5 solid minutes. I was too happy to move or do anything else. All in all, it is certainly an experience I will remember for the rest of my life!

Dreams Do Come True!

2008-11-05T21:20:00.004-05:00

I've got multitudes to say, but I think I'm going to try - at least a little bit - to break it down into several posts. As I sit down to write this post, I'm listening to Dan Rubin's (Blinq) playlist for our new President-Elect and I can't think of a more apropos set list. This past week has, in all honesty, been one of the most incredible weeks of my life. It's not the kind of incredible week where you kick ass at your job, play a killer game of ultimate, and finally hook up with the hot girl you've had a huge crush on for ages, no, this feels like it's bigger than just me.

A week ago today, the Philadelphia Phillies, my pitiful, pathetic, get-your-hopes-up-just-to-see-them-dashed, Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series. As is that wasn't enough, I was at the game. Stressing out, freaking out, and CELEBRATING along with my father and more than 45,000 loyal, die-hard fellow fans (phellow phans if you will...) will remain one of the seminal memories of my lifetime until I'm beyond just old and grey. I'll remember it until my brain finally fulfills my mother's prophecy (said while I was watching TV) and turns to mush. While it will remain a very personal memory for me, the importance of the World Series win to everyone who considers themselves a Phillies fan, a Philadelphia sports fan, or even just a plain old Philadelphian cannot be understated. As if the Temple students who got on my subway car at City Hall on my way back from the game weren't enough (they, and many of their fellow students, had spontaneously streamed out of their dorms onto Broad Street and ran, yes ran, to City Hall in celebration of the first major professional sports championship since 1983, before probably 95% of Temple's undergraduate population was born), the estimated two million people who showed up for the Championship parade down Broad Street in the middle of the day on Friday, October 31 are a testament to the fact that I was far from the only one celebrating the Phillies victory. An elated city that doesn't know how to react to things going there way - and it's all the Phillies fault.

In all honesty I would have written about my Phillies earlier, but I was worried about jinxing things when they finally started going my way. And now, with an historic presidential election finally concluded, I can write about two seminal moments in my life in the very same blog post. I can't imagine that's going to happen all that often.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President-Elect of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama," are words, that even when the polls showed the landside that did eventually come, I wasn't sure I would ever hear uttered. Not only did Obama win, he won huge. While the final tallies are still too close to call in some states, the election was called at 11 PM when polls closed on the West Coast. Certainly that didn't happen in the last two presidential elections. As for the election being important to people other than me, I don't even need to say anything at all. Tens of millions of voters, millions of donors, and people all over the world have demonstrated just how much this all means to them.

The World Series and the Election has taught me once again that a quote from The Shawshank Redemption, corny and Hollywood though it might be, is very true. "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

More Thoughts From Yesterday ...

2008-10-08T22:02:00.004-04:00

Wow, look what happens when the Ultimate Club season ends and there's a break in the baseball playoffs! I actually write two blog posts in two days. Miraculous, I know.

Anyhow, I realized that I ran out of steam yesterday before discussing what exactly it was I missed about college. Essentially it boils down to this: I had one hell of a friend-support system in college, that simply isn't the same in the real world. When I was in college there were always people I could talk about my life with in person. All I need to do was walk across the hall, or down a couple of TH's and there was a friend I could talk to about whatever was going on in my life or theirs. (So I used "their" as singular, so deal with it, English doesn't have the benefit of having an "a" and an "o" denote masculine and feminine like Spanish, allowing for the wonderful, gender-neutral "ell@s" - look at the "@" it's an "a" inside an "o", get it?) While my housemates are great people, we all have our own lives, and we don't interact the way my friends and I did in college, and we don't have the same things in common, we're a college student, a paralegal, and a contract writer for a concert promotion company. It's hard to find the kind of social scene I enjoyed so much in college when you're living in the suburbs and the nearest quasi-interesting bar is a ten minute drive away. I sure am saving a bundle of money (both in expenses and taxes) by not living in Philadelphia proper, but I'm also definitely missing out on the benefits a city offers.

Perhaps the least expected (to me for sure) thing I miss about college is the type of thinking I got to do in, and related to, the classes I was taking. My job simply does not offer me the kind of complex, in depth thinking I took for granted in so many of my history and economics classes. I don't get to apply and analyze things the way I very much would like to. It also leads to me very seriously considering taking the GRE's and going back to school to study more history. I didn't figure for that to happen so quickly, that's for sure.

To completely change the pace, here are two things that have caught my attention. One I've been hanging onto for a while and haven't (still) found the right way to present it, and the other is much more recent. The first is the following quote from Albert Einstein: "When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot ember, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." And I don't really feel like that needs much analysis. It pretty much speaks for itself. The second thing is this. Now that's a whole family of Mavericks!

September Update

2008-10-08T00:10:00.006-04:00

Well, once again it certainly has been far too long since I’ve have written anything on this blog. Like most months in the real world, this one has been fairly eventful, and yet seemingly void of the things I miss most from college, but I’ll get to that later.

On the Ultimate front, Philly LOVE played in three tournaments in the last five weeks. The first weekend of September LOVE hosted a mini-tournament at Edgely in Philadelphia. Per our unintentional team theme, we came out ice cold in our first game to a team, Bear Proof, we didn’t think was going to be all that good and they rolled us. We must have lost 13-5 or something like that. We recovered to crush some terrible team that had no idea what they were doing, lose again to O.L.D. S.A.G. (who we can’t seem to beat to save our lives, they always make the best of their overwhelming advantage in experience every time we play them), and then beat Eastern Motors FB in the final game. We ended the day (and the tournament) 2-2 when we felt our best playing would have had us at 4-0. Frustrating to say the least, especially the weekend before sectionals.

Sectionals started off fairly well for us, we had two easy games to start the day against two college teams and then faced off against O.L.D. S.A.G. Just like every other time we have ever played against them, they beat us. Losing to them is truly starting to get old, but it doesn’t seem like we’re capable of doing anything to change it. That pitted us against Pike in the cross-over game. The last time we had played Pike was at Chesapeake in August and we lost on universe point when our offense couldn’t score. (Sadly, issues with our O-line were also a theme of Philly LOVE this year.) Against Pike at sectionals, once again our D-line came out strong, keeping us right in the game. The Pike team we played at sectionals was a lot more loaded than the Chesapeake one, and we would have had to absolutely play a perfect game to win. We made some small errors, but they were definitely a better team than us. That didn’t stop us from having a chance to beat them - here’s a little example of how things could have gone our way and we might have been able to pull it out, but we didn’t. We had a D-point late in the game where we got a turn and gave it back again. I had been guarding handlers for most of the game (as I should be, I’m generally a lot better at guarding handlers than guarding cutters), but following our turnover I ended up marking probably the best cutter on Pike’s O-line. He made an in-cut and I was right there half a step behind him. The throw went off and I knew I had an outside chance to get the D. Without thinking (when can you ever think when you’re playing D at that point) I layed out and somehow managed to get the D. I would most certainly have to say that it was the best defensive play I’ve ever had at a moment like that. As the point went on, I had a chance for a big huck to one of our good deep threats. My defender just barely got the tip of his finger on the disc and that, combined with a slight misread due to the fact that the disc wasn’t coming in as hard as it could have (because of the tip) let the Pike defender make a spectacular play. Exhausted, and slightly let down, Pike scored on that point, and we ended up losing 15-11.

We opened day two of sectionals playing against Roots of Rhythm, another young club team, mostly full of people who went to Wissahickon High School in Bucks County. Some of them seem to have absolutely no clue about the Spirit of the Game or a general sense of tactfulness. Some of them would be best described as assholes. (I’m being careful to just say some, because not all of them are jerks. Some of them actually seem to be real people!) Anyhow, they’re kind of our arch rivals and they were having a much better season that we were. Not surprisingly the game quickly became very testy. (Perhaps the best part of this game was the white trash mom of one of the players on Roots who, at ten in the morning, was pouring cans of Natty Ice into a travel coffee mug and getting hammered. She was also heckling - poorly.) Again, our D-line played very well, while our O-line only played alright. We ended up losing 15-13 with our O-line on the field for the last two points of the game. On the sidelines, our D-line couldn’t help but think what would have happened if we had only been able to get back on the field. We sloshed through our last two games to qualify for regionals by beating two poor college teams.

Regionals was set up as a double-elimination tournament with two teams advancing to nationals, meaning that unless we were in the top six at the end of Saturday we weren’t going to have games on Sunday. We came in with the 14th seed, which meant we were matched up against the 3rd seeded team (think opening weekend of March Madnesses), Los. They beat us pretty soundly, 15-7. I think it was the first time all season our D-line didn’t score a point. In our second game we were matched up with Floodwall, a team that beat us at Chesapeake. We played them evenly through the first half (we may have been down 8-6 at half, I honestly don’t remember). Anyway, we found ourselves down 12-10 with our O-line on the field. We needed our O-line to score and keep us in the game and that is exactly what they did. Our D-line took the field down 12-11 and we ran off four straight points to win the game 15-12! It was the first game our team had ever won at regionals and guaranteed that we would finish no lower than tied for 11th, finishing better than our opening seed of 14th. I played three of the last four points and had the disc twice following the last turn. At the first throw I called “Jesus” out of the stack (a player on the team who has long flowing hair and looks rather Jesus-like). My teammate cut and caught the disc, just like I had planned! Later on I got the disc back right on the goal line and called “Lots of Sex” out of the stack. Again the appropriate player cut out of the stack and this time had to lay out (which I couldn’t see because my defender moved in front of me, blocking my view). He caught the disc and we won! It was quite an experience, to say the least. We ended up losing our last two games (to X-rates, a team that blew us out at Chesapeake, and Roots again), but still did better than last year. As several of my teammates said, if we only had last year’s O-line and this year’s D-line, we’d be set.

During the month of September, the Phillies managed to come back from 3.5 games out of first place in the National League East to win the east by three games. I watched the clinching game at home with my dad, and the final game of the season in the stadium. The final game was a blast. The Phillies played a bunch of September call-ups and won the game going away. My dad and I also had tickets to the first game of the NLDS. Being at a postseason baseball game in-person was like nothing I have ever experienced before. I was so emotionally involved in the game, my knees were weak and I passed out almost immediately after I got home. Probably not the healthiest thing ever, but what an experience it was! The Phils won the series and will start the NLCS on Thursday at home against the Dodgers.

Rainy Saturday and a Return to Vassar

2008-09-06T17:12:00.003-04:00

I'm actually enjoying my rainy Saturday thanks to Tropical Storm Hanna. I got to sleep in at my apartment - something that feels like it hasn't happened in months - got to do some pleasure reading and went food shopping. I was supposed to have a tournament, hosted by Philly Love, at Edgely today, put it was postponed until tomorrow - meaning that I will miss both the first Eagles game of the season and the first game of the Mets-Phillies double header. But since I had a free day today, I'm not worried about feeling like I had another lost weekend.

Today marks one hundred days since I graduated from college. As such, AAVC (Vassar's Alumni Association) organized parties in bars in Boston, NYC, Philly, DC, and San Francisco. This evening I'll be off to the Black Sheep Pub near Rittenhouse Square.

Aside from not really believing that I graduated from college 100 days ago, it seems strange to be celebrating with Vassar people when I was just back on campus last weekend helping my sister to move in for her sophomore year. Being back on campus was, very strange. It still looked and felt a lot like the place that I had made my own for four years, but it was also very clearly not mine anymore. It belonged to all those underclassman, now seniors, juniors, and sophomores, not to mention the Class of 2012. I think I'm adjusting well to being a college graduate, but it was still strange to be back at Vassar and not be a student any longer.

Update ... Finally

2008-08-19T00:23:00.000-04:00

Quite clearly I’ve utterly failed at keeping up with this blog. For a while my excuse was that I was too busy moving into and getting settled in my new apartment. I suppose if I had to give that a time frame it would be from around the time I got back from Phoenicia to the middle of July. However, as my summer has been all along, I’m incredibly busy during the week. Between playing summer league, going to Philly Love practice, playing pick-up soccer and running whatever errands I need to run, I’m usually doing things outside my apartment every night of the week. As for my weekends in July they were taken up by a Philly Love trip to the No Borders Tournament in Ottawa (first time in Canada since my family went to Alberta in August 1994) and the Wildwood Beach Ultimate tournament.

The tournament in Ottawa was quite a lot of fun, Ottawa is beautiful and the drive (shockingly!) really isn’t that bad at all. Like many Philly Love tournaments, our play was frustrating and inconsistent. I don’t think we grew as much as we could have/should have as a team. I’d be alright with the beatings we take if we showed actual improvement or figured out what we needed to do to improve and were able to do it. That may be where we could use an experienced elite club player to be a coach, or a player-coach, for us. Maybe that person would be able to take what’s happening on the field and convert into things we could understand and improve on. The tournament site is a large field complex solely owned by the local Ultimate organization. It’s the largest built-for-Ultimate field complex in the world. I felt kind of special being able to say that I played at such as site ...

The Monday after I got back from Ottawa, the free internet that had been left over from the previous tenants was unceremoniously cut off by Comcast meaning that for me to get the internet I had to sit at the table by my front door. An awkward position to sit and browse the internet to say the least. About two weeks later, my immediate upstairs neighbor got wireless installed and I’ll be paying him $5 a month to use his because it works in my room(s) and the living room.

Wildwood was, as it was last year, fun, and pretty crazy. As the largest ultimate tournament in the world it’s tons of fun. There’s really nothing like seeing that many people play ultimate at the same time. I played with a Vassar team (two other alums, and a lot of current students). It was really fun to play with all those people, but frustrating because I wasn’t used to playing with them so I made throws to places people weren’t going, or couldn’t get to.

The first weekend of August was spent at Saturday Love practice and hosting a housewarming party for myself. I really enjoyed having a bunch of my friends come over and see my new place. Although not all at once, Rachel W, Sam R-A, Acacia, Claire C., Ben J (and friend), Kathleen M, and Emily S (and boyfriend and boyfriend’s brother) were all there. The party was a blast (everyone agreed it was nice to be able to let loose without having to worry about getting home ...) and I need to come up with excuses to have more parties so I can have whole bunches of friends come over.

For pretty much the entire first two weeks of August my boss (and his wife, who’s practice is also in our office) were out of the office on vacation. As anyone with a boss can attest, it’s always a nice change of pace to have your boss out of the office - and in my case we were able to clean up (which mostly meant throw out!) lots of the office. I’m not neat freak, but I also not a slob and it was nice to clean up parts of the office - especially when I was able to see such a clear improvement. On top of that, I really felt like I was able to keep my boss as on top of things in the office as he wanted to be while he was away. He knew what was going on and I was able to take care of what he needed me to do.

In the interim since I last posted anything, I got my graduation present from my parents (finally) - a new MacBook. Because I managed to convince them (without even really trying) that I am still eligible for the Apple Education Discount. I also got a free 8 gig iPod Touch and a free printer/scanner/copier. The printer/scanner/copier is great, the MacBook is fantastic, and the iPod Touch is out of this world. When I go away for tournaments, or to visit friends, I no longer have to lug my lap top to maintain my internet/world connection addiction. Now all I have to take along is a tiny little iPod. It’s really great. Not having an iPhone, and not having played around with any iPhones, I was completely blown away by the technology it uses.

After all my frustration about my summer league team - all our loses and the captain’s decisions I didn’t agree with - we really came together at the end of the regular season and during the playoffs. We won our last two regular season games and ended up with the second seed in our playoff pool (we missed the first seed by 1 point). We won our pre-quarter game to make it into the A-pool and then proceeded to lose to Trey’s team (the team that won - just like the last two years) by three. Like every summer league, it was a blast through and through. And I might just end up captaining next year. We’ll have to see.

Last weekend Philly Love went down to the DC area for the Chesapeake Open. Not about to waste an opportunity to see some friends I stayed with Sam Acacia and Alex in their lovely town house in a section of DC called Trinidad (apparently it’s not near Tobago, which disappoints me ...). In truth on Friday night I only stayed with Sam and Acacia because Alex didn’t move in until Saturday (I actually slept on the floor of Alex’s room on Friday). Like Ottawa, Chesapeake was frustrating for the team. While I played well, and may have had my best game ever in a tight battle with Pike (we lost on Universe when our O-line couldn’t score - the theme of the tournament - I played really solid D-line handler, three or four assists, including a cross-field hammer, and a low-release flick that I know turned heads, plus really hard handler defense) it was very frustrating that the team couldn’t put it together. We finally won a game, our last, against Red Tide. If our D-line plays like it did last weekend and our O-line manages to put it all together, we’ll be a tough team. If not, we’re in for a very frustrating series in the fall.

I’d say something about the Phillies, but they’re pissing me off too much for me to write about. They’ve come up with so many more ways to break my heart it’s not even funny.

Crazy, Busy, Madness

2008-07-05T23:50:00.002-04:00

It's been way too long since I've had a chance to write anything for this blog. Since I last had a chance to write, I've lost three summer league games, played in the boston invite, talked to three friends before they went abroad for varying lengths of time, moved into my apartment and used the internet at my summer house. Since I've got so much to catch up on this is going to be more of a journal blog entry than an editorial, but whatever.

My summer league team has been fairly frustrating. We're actually quite talented, but have yet to win a regular season game. We have terrible turnout and I've gotten to the point in my ultimate career where I really feel like I know enough to be captaining a summer league team. Since I'm not a captain, we're not doing well, and I don't agree with all the decisions the captains are making it can get fairly frustrating. It just proves that Trey was right when he told me two years ago that one summer I'll end up on a team that will make me realize I'm ready to be a captain. Hopefully we can put it together and make a good run in the post-season that will set us up for finals weekend.

The weekend of the 28th and 29th of June I went up to Devens, MA with Philly LOVE to play in the Boston Invite. We came in seeded 26th, or second in Easterns III. We fairly convincingly won our first two pool games on Saturday morning. Our third pool game was against a recently reformed team from Brooklyn called "Red Hook." Red Hook is mostly made up of PoNY cast-offs, including Edmund whose sister is a Vassar professor. Edmund did most of his college at UCSB where he played a lot of ultimate. He came to SUNY New Paltz to finish up the last few remaining credits he needed for a BA and came to a lot of our practices because he missed the game. Red Hook is quite a good team and we traded points most of the game. I was probably playing 95% of the O-points and 25% percent of the D-points. With a hard cap to 15, the game was tied at 14-14 and we were on offense. We worked the disc up the field with no turns and I caught it in the endzone to win the game. Our crossover game was against some Firebird, the B-team of Phoenix, an excellent club team from Ottowa. We both played poorly, but we managed another double-game point victory (this time off a D-point, so I wasn't in the game). That win ensured that we would break seed, an important step for a young team looking to get into more high quality tournaments. After a 4-0 Saturday we came out on Sunday and did nothing, I wouldn't bother to describe either of the games, except that the first one was against DoG (the second one was too ugly for words). Against DoG, we played quite well until we ran out of gas. We were on serve until 12-11 DoG when they broke us three times for the win. Our offense was working quite well, and since they are DoG we couldn't get more than one lousy break on them (I hucked to KEG just short of the goal line, who then tossed it to School for the easy score). Jim Parinella, a legendary ultimate player if there ever was one, blogged very briefly about our game in this post.

In the last two weeks I talked on the phone with Bethany (before she went to Costa Rica to teach English for at least two years), Lillian (before she went to the South of France for the summer to be the personal assistant to a Vassar-grad who runs a retreat/conference center in a 12th century monastery) and Claire (before she went to Rio di Janero for a year to study Portuguese). My friends really seem to be spreading out all over the place. It makes me wonder when the next time I'll see them will be. Before some future Vassar Class of 2008 reunion I hope!

I moved into my apartment on July 1, without signing a lease, and without keys to the place. For two days I was technically squatting before I finally had to take off from work on Thursday to sign the lease and get keys to the place. I'm still in the process of moving stuff from home, but my room is beginning to look more and more like a room. I have to leave Woodland Valley early (tomorrow after lunch) so I can get back and set up more stuff and go food shopping and the like. At least something spurned my mother to get cable internet here so I can catch up on emails and (much overdue) blogging. There are 17 of us here, ranging in age from just turning 8 to 92. It's an impressive gathering, but like any family, it can be quite stressful at times. I really wish I had more time to spend relaxing here. I think another week would be enough. It's not to be, though, I have to go back to work on Monday.

Birthday and Modern Connectivity

2008-06-19T21:42:00.004-04:00

On Monday I turned 23. I guess that means I'm an old man and a full-fledged adult now, both of which are scary concepts. I haven't had a chance to write since Sunday night because I was busy doing birthday stuff on Monday, had a summer league game on Tuesday (which we lost - again), and had LOVE practice on Wednesday. Tonight all I did was buy furniture for my apartment (a desk, some drawers and a bookshelf for $60 - not a bad deal) instead of playing soccer which means I still have the energy to write what I've been planning on writing since Monday. It also doesn't hurt that the Phillies (who have lost three straight series) aren't playing tonight.

One of my Vassar classmates and fellow Vassar-Wesleyan Madrid Fall 2006 travel companions has a really cool gig blogging for Huffington Post. Morgan got the gig by being heads up and on his toes. The story I heard was that on accepted students weekend at Vassar this spring Morgan was asked to sit on a panel in front of prospective students and their parents to answer their questions. Morgan happened to recognize the voice of one of the parents who asked a question as that of Arianna Huffington. After the event ended, Morgan sought out Huffington and convinced her to give him a blog on her site. He's a cool and interesting guy, I'm sure it was an easy decision for her. Anyway, what I've been wanting to write about concerns a post of his, my birthday and the general level of connection my generation has as a result of the technology we use.

Morgan's post is about the evils of modern methods to say in touch, namely facebook, cell phones, and portable email devices. While I don't disagree with Morgan in that allowing a cell phone or BlackBerry to dominate your life is not a healthy choice, on Monday I cherished the level of connectivity such devices can provide (full disclosure, I don't have a BlackBerry or even a camera phone, although I'm not sure having one would have any effect on my opinion).

Through facebook, email, text messages, and cell phone calls I received nearly fifty birthday well wishes from people who I expect would not have been able to wish me a happy birthday without the technology. Friends who may not have my phone number, friends who live in other countries, friends i haven't seen in a while all got in touch with me in one way or another and brightened what would have otherwise been a pretty crappy way to spend a birthday (at work, on a Monday). The lift in my spirits more than made up for all the hours (as Morgan noted) I must have wasted procrastinating with facebook and text messaging. Morgan's main point, however, that we allow technology to interfere with our face-to-face interactions. That to me seems like it is a matter or manners and conscientiousness, not a fault of the technology. As our technology changes I am sure that adjustments in personal interactions should be made and will be made by successful and conscientious people who strive to make a good impression on others by demonstrating that other people are important to them. In that vein, technology is simply forcing people to work with increased diligence to show others that they care and in the grand scheme of things is that really so bad?

Busy Weekend

2008-06-15T20:08:00.002-04:00

Since I last had a chance to write an entry on this blog I've been quite busy. Wednesday night I had my usual Philly LOVE (my open division club ultimate team) practice. Every Wednesday the team scrimmages - I go whenever I don't have a summer league conflict - and this Wednesday after we scrimmaged we ran a boatload of sprints. The sprints simply reminded me what poor shape I am in. On Thursday after work I played pickup soccer at GFS, the same Tuesday-Thursday pickup soccer I think I've been playing since the summer after my freshmen year in high school. The turnout wasn't great and my touch was terrible (as expected since I haven't played soccer since sometime last July or August), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Friday evening saw me back at Edgely for a summer league game. Our team is quite talented and we were well-matched with our opponents, but we lost on double game point after a flurry of bad decisions. We were all quite frustrated. Since it was Friday, however, a good portion of our team hung out afterwards and barbecued. My high school, college, and ultimate friend Judy was in town for her brother's high school graduation so I got to see her. After we had our fill of barbecue the team sort of split up and wandered around. I ended up sitting with three club teammates and several other PADA people approximately my age. As it turns out, due to the odd make up of Philly LOVE, there is an occasional get together known as "adult swim (kids out of the pool!)." Philly LOVE is made up of some high schoolers, many college students, and some "real adults" with jobs and things. Anyway since I fall into the latter category these days I got invited to an "adult swim" on Saturday night at Dock Street Brewery in West Philly.

On Saturday I had LOVE practice at 9:30. It was a lot hotter than I expected and we did quite a lot of conditioning, serving once again to remind me what poor shape I'm in. I thought I played well, but I was completely drained at the end of practice. So drained in fact that after I came home and ate lunch I fell into bed on my way to the shower and promptly fell asleep. I woke up to a phone call from Bethany asking where we were going for dinner (she was coming in from South Jersey to see me and our friend Katie before she goes to Costa Rica for two years to teach at an American school in Monteverde). My nap made me an hour-plus late to Emilia's graduation party which, in the grand scheme of things, was really alright. I saw Sarah B. and Audrey at the party which was nice. Audrey will be in town assistant teaching and Sarah doesn't know what she's up to as of yet. I had to leave Emilia's party early (also alright) to get home to hang out with Bethany. Dinner with her and Katie was lovely. We went to the Chestnut Grill and then Breadenbeck's for ice cream which we ate in Pastorious Park. For Bethany and Katie it was a nice experience, for me it was that and reminiscences of times I spent in Chestnut Hill in high school. My full Saturday concluded with a trip to West Philly and me catching the last ninety minutes of adult swim. It was fun, I hope I keep getting invites, I really like all the people that were there.

This morning I got to sleep in for the first time in a while! Dad and I cleaned up the house and marinated some steak, red peppers and zucchini (Heather was at work) that we later grilled for a Father's Day/Birthday barbecue for my grandparents. The food turned out to be quite good and the meal was capped off with my favorite Custard Stand ice cream cake. The Phillies have been stinking it up recently and I turn old tomorrow so that's fun.

Texting in the Dark

2008-06-11T00:08:00.002-04:00

At about 7:45 Tuesday evening, the power went out at home, depriving me of the internet and the Phillies game. (In the grand scheme of things, being without the Phillies game was not a terrible thing, they lost, Myers pitched poorly - again.) The power going out in Philadelphia (or any other northeastern area) really isn't that surprising in the summer time. Typically, when a heat wave breaks, a loud and wonderful thunderstorm comes through and occasionally knocks down trees which in turn knock down power lines. The odd part about today was that the power outage preempted the arrival of the storm by about an hour. We got to sit outside and watch/feel the storm approach because we had nothing better to do - and what a storm it was. It was raining so hard that we had to close the windows on all sides of the house. Anyway, after the storm ended we lit candles and sat on the front porch listening to the Phillies lose on a battery-powered radio.

With the game over and still no power I turned to the only electronic device I still could use - my cell phone - and began texting and calling Vassar friends right and left. It was my own little orgy of catching up with people. Maybe if the power starts going out a lot more, I'll keep in better touch with my Vassar friends!

A Very Full Weekend and the End of the Housing Crisis (For Me At Least ...)

2008-06-09T23:57:00.003-04:00

This weekend was scorching hot, packed with high school friends and a Phillies sweep of the Braves. Saturday morning I went to LOVE practice until 12:30 (it must have gone on for at least another hour, maybe more), then raced home for a much-needed shower, and got to Jordan's house about an hour after his graduation party started. I wasn't late, of my high school classmates who came, only Nate was there before me. Eventually Jonah and Pete showed up as well (such a rough commute for them ...). Jordan's party was fun, and awash with lots and lots of well-catered food. The party was supposed to end at 3:00, and for the most part it did, but I didn't leave until 9:30 after spending the whole day with various combinations of Jordan, Nate, Jonah, and Pete. It was quite a lot of fun and I really enjoyed catching up and spending time with all of them.

On Sunday I played disc golf in Fairmount Park with Jordan and Nate. We used to play all the time at the end of high school and during breaks at the beginning of college, but it had been a while since any of us had played. At one point Jordan and I were shooting 47 for 18 holes, but that was in the winter when there were no leaves. On a terribly hot day with full vegetation, the winning score was a "par" 54 (the winner happened to be me), but the highlight was the hole in one I shot on the 15th hole. For all the years we've been playing, no one has ever scored a hole in one, but it finally happened, and let me tell you it wasn't nearly as exciting as I thought it would be. Or maybe it wasn't nearly as exciting as it would have been when I was in high school and still desperate to prove how cool I was. One of those things.

Sunday evening I went to Marisa's graduation party. It was also awash in great food (not catered this time, Marisa's mom made it) and high school classmates (and because Marisa was also a faculty brat, GFS faculty members). Emilia, Ben, Eric, Emily and Maya were at Marisa's party. Like Jordan's it didn't end when it was supposed to, we all hung out at Emilia's (because it was air conditioned) afterwards. The vast majority of my weekend was spent hanging out with high school classmates and I didn't get to do the things I was planning on, like calling a bunch of Vassar friends to check on how they're settling in.

On Monday morning I got an email from the house that had been giving me all sorts of trouble with not having an open room when they said they were going to telling me someone had taken the room. I wasn't really sure how that was possible, but I honestly didn't care. By this point I wasn't going to live with them because it really seemed like they couldn't get their stuff together. I was supposed to visit two possible apartments on Monday evening, but ended up only going to one because one of them bailed on me. The one I did go to was fantastic. I'll be living with two girls, one 22 and the other 24, in the first floor of an old mansion. I'll write more about it later, I'm sure.

The Phillies have been playing absolutely lights out for the past two weeks. It's been simply a joy to watch them play. Sweeping the Braves this weekend was awesome. Shane Victorino's throw to the plate in the bottom of the ninth on Friday was a thing of pure beauty. As you can see I've run out of superlatives, but suffice it to say I had a great time watching them and can't wait to see what happens when the next series starts on Tuesday in Florida against the second-place Marlins.

My Day in Court and More Housing Issues

2008-06-05T23:12:00.003-04:00

Instead of driving out to Ardmore on Wednesday morning to start the work day, I drove to center city (parking quasi-legally at 4th and Arch Streets in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's parking lot) and walked to the federal court house on Market Street between 6th and 7th. All of this happened because my boss was delivering an oral argument in an appeal in front of a panel of three federal judges of the third circuit. Never having been in a courtroom of any kind before (or even a courthouse) the whole building seemed a little intimidating. That feeling of intimidation was not lessened by the fact that I forgot to take the tiny pocket knife Phoebe gave me as a Christmas present off my key chain before I sent my metallic items through the x-ray scanner. For a fleeting moment I thought I had lost a very useful tool, but unlike the airport (for obvious reasons) they don't have to permanently confiscate all items. Small pocket knives are simply taken and tagged. Just like a coat check, I was able to get my pocket knife back when I walked out of the courthouse.

The federal courthouse in Philadelphia is a fairly swanky place, but some years ago, one of the justices, Edward Becker decided that the lobby needed to be more friendly to the public. The lobby now has some small exhibits and nice looking seats that I did not have occasion to investigate. I was made well aware of the lobby and its restoration by my boss who clerked for Justice Becker when he was a District Court Judge in the mid-1970s.

The courtroom in which my boss was arguing was on the 19th floor and was named for a Quaker judge by the name of Maris (Westtown School class of 1908) who served on the thrid circuit bench from 1936 (appointed by FDR) until his death in 1989. A whopping 53 years on the court. The Maris courtroom is a circular room with an elevated section for the justices, a podium for the lawyer whose turn it is to argue to the court, two tables (one for each side), three rows of cushioned leather seat and two rows of nicely stained wooden benches with backs. Along the sides of the courtroom, in the front, are special seats for the justices law clerks and summer interns (a job I don't think I would be entirely opposed to having one day). Before the court was called to session, a crier recited (very poorly, enough so that my boss mentioned it to the crier's boss) the opening prayer for the court. There's more I might want to say, but I don't want to go into too much detail about the case even though it was clearly open to the public. Needless to say, it was an interesting and informative experience.

On a totally different matter, I have supposed confirmation that the guy who was supposed to move out of the house I wanted to move into and go to Texas will actually be doing that. To the best of my knowledge that has not happened for real yet though. Earlier this week I went through craigslist one more time and found some other alternatives. On Monday I'm meeting with two guys in their mid-twenties right after work and immediately following that I'm going to dinner to meet two girls in their early twenties who are friends of my boss' middle daughter. I've meet one of them and she seems really nice and really cool - important qualities in a housemate. On Tuesday I'm supposed to meet with a 49 year-old single and recently laid off guy who's looking to rent two rooms in his house. Somehow I think I might just cancel that meeting. The issue with the whole situation is that the first house seems more convinced than I am that they have an open room and they want an answer from me. I would much rather not give them an answer until after I meet with the two houses on Monday. We'll see how all of that turns out.

An Odd Day at the Office

2008-06-02T23:28:00.003-04:00

When I showed up to work on my first day last week, my boss wasn't in the office yet, so I was given a tour by one of the other lawyers in the firm. During the tour, in the basement of the office, I noticed what looked like a hair ball on the floor, but figured it would be far too awkward for me to say anything about it. Later in the day one of the other lawyer's office managers remarked that she had found a hair ball on the floor in the basement and that it was a very strange thing to find. The immediate response to this was my boss asking if any of the lawyers had brought a pet in to work with them over the weekend, to which the answer was a resounding "no."

Two days later, the alarm in the office went off twice between 1:00 and 1:30 in the morning. One of the lawyers/owners of the building and her daughter came by to investigate and found nothing. The next day there were two theories around the office, the very sarcastic "oh there must be an animal living in the office" theory and the faulty motion detector for the alarm system theory. The faulty motion detector theory won out and the alarm company was called, and fussed around with the motion detector, sure enough, no more problems with the alarm going off in the middle of the night.

This morning, when one of the lawyers who works in the basement came in (a lawyer who has six cats at home), he mentioned that when he was in the office on Sunday morning he heard what sounded like a rustling noise in the basement - a noise, that in his experience, could only come from a cat-sized animal. Upon hearing that, the office exterminator was called and I was sent to the basement with a flashlight to see what I could find. After searching extensively in the basement for about 15 minutes I came across a frightened tabby cat hiding behind a whole bunch of files deep in the basement. Not wanting to grab a possibly angry and sick cat, I closed the door to the room in the basement and waited for my boss to get off the phone.

When my boss got off the phone we debated for a while how to best remove the cat from the basement when all of a sudden, in walked the office exterminator/animal specialist. He had been in the area and decided to stop by. Being the specialist, he hatched a plan of sorts. We were going to scare the cat and direct it up the stairs and out the back door. Needless to say, this was far easier said than done. The cat, it seemed, had no intention of leaving. After frantically visiting every room in the basement, it made a mad dash upstairs, but not out the door, much to the chagrin of the lawyers standing at the top of the stairs trying to usher the cat towards the door. The cat burrowed itself in another office before it made a dash back to the basement where the process began again. This time, the lawyers at the top of the stairs were prepared when the paralegal (me) and the exterminator sent the cat scooting up the stairs. They had set up a barricade of legal file boxes channeling the cat towards the door. I suppose then, the moral of this story is that a cat might be smarter than a bunch of lawyers the first time, but the lawyers will win in the end. An appropriate moral for a firm that specializes in appeals.

Games, Practices and More

2008-06-01T23:11:00.006-04:00

I was able to get out of work 15 minutes early on Thursday in time to make it to my first preseason summer league game (there was one during my last week of college that I was obviously unable to attend). I was even able to make it to Edgely by 6:00, which turned out to be before most of my teammates arrived and almost an hour before the game actually got under way. My summer league team is phenomenally tall - we have a 6' 6" guy, a 6' 4" guy, and two 6' 2" guys. At 5 ' 10" I'm actually one of the shortest on the team. Needless to say, I'm excited about throwing to all that height. We played pretty well on Thursday (there's always room for improvement in summer league, especially in the preseason) and won 15-9. Most certainly a good start. More to the point, however, the game ended in time for me to race home (17 minutes from Edgely to my parents house, ludicrous, as in ludicrous speed from Space Balls) in time to catch the entire Lost season finale. It was a hell of an episode full of the twists and turns and frustrating unanswered questions that got me addicted to the show in the first place.

On Saturday I woke up early (shocking, I know) and went to my first Philly LOVE (the club Ultimate team I sort of played for last summer and will be playing with this year) practice. Considering the fact that I haven't played seriously since Rooks = Bitches at Vassar (where we lost on double game point to the Class of 2009 following a dropped hammer my a guy who quit playing Ultimate after first semester Freshman year - yes, that's how desperate the Class of 2008 was for Ultimate players) three weeks ago and Regionals before that, I thought I played quite well. It might have been due to the personnel at the practice, but I played with the O-line in our scrimmage against OLD SAG (the Philly Masters team) far more than I did last year. I suppose that counts as a promotion. I'm excited about the opportunity to contribute to a club team, even if it's not a nationals-caliber club team.

Saturday afternoon, before my family went our for dinner at a hibachi restaurant with both my grandparents - I love hibachi, doesn't matter how many times I've gone, it's a great show every time - I went to the PENNDOT license center to renew my driver's license. Not only do I finally have a horizontal license, making it blatantly obvious that I am over the age of 21, I ran into a high school classmate, Chelsea, and her mother. I probably hadn't seen Chelsea since New Year's freshmen year of College, a fun night if I remember correctly, so it was nice to catch up.

The Phillies played at home today and per whatever agreement my father has with the Myrans, the tickets to this game were ours. The Phillies went down 5-1 in the third inning, but due to some timely hitting and good pitching over the last six innings, won 7-5 and retook first place from the Marlins. Chase Utley hit his major league leading twentieth home run. Good stuff all around.

Of course I have work tomorrow and should probably try to go to bed soon, but I passed out for about 45 minutes after dinner and I'm not really very tired at all. Maybe I'll be able to bore myself to sleep looking for rooms in Ardmore on craigslist. I have to do that all over again because who knows what's actually going to happen with the place I have my eyes on. It was supposed to have an open room at the end of May, but the end of May has passed and the room still is not open. They guy who was supposed to move out had been in the area to work on his Ph.D., which he got, and was supposed to move to Texas to work, but because he is a foreigner, he is having visa/working papers issues and can't move until that's resolved. Consequently, I'm still living in my parents house. Free food, however, is not the worst thing in the world.

New Job, New Summer League, New House?

2008-05-28T23:04:00.007-04:00

As I alluded to in my last post, I started working two days after I graduated from Vassar. I work as a paralegal at a small "boutique" law firm in one of the Philadelphia suburbs. With just two days of work under my belt I still feel as though I have not even begun to get the hang of exactly what I am supposed to do. My hours are still frustratingly in flux. My boss would like me to work from 10-6, which is really fine with me - I'll get to sleep more that way - except on days when I have Ultimate commitments beginning at 6:15. My boss did not seem very receptive to my coming in before ten and leaving before six every now and again, but I think I'll try to wiggle my way into that arrangement if I can.

My leaving work early every now and again brings me to my second topic, the beginning of my fourth (damn, how did that happen?) Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance Fairmount Park Summer League, which starts tomorrow evening. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this after I play a game with my new team (captained by a teammate on my first summer league team), but I'm really excited to get playing again. Summer league has always been a blast and my teams have always played quite well (I made A/B pool in all of my previous summer league seasons, for those who know what that means), so I can't wait to get started on another season. Disappointingly, I won't be able to stick around after the game tomorrow, one of the very best parts about summer league games is hanging out after they're over and grilling food and drinking beers with teammates and friends, because I have to rush home and watch the season finale of Lost or else I'll turn into a pumpkin!

Today I looked at several rooms in a house that is about five blocks from where I work and not too far from bars, pubs, night spots, a regional rail station, and the like. The price is quite affordable, the house is on a quiet street, I would get two decent-sized rooms (one the size of my TH bedroom and the other slightly smaller), full access to the shared first floor of the house, wireless internet, and cable in my room. The people I would be sharing the house with are considerably older than I am (in their early 30s I would guess), but I don't really think that would be a problem. The problem however is that the previous tenant has not yet moved out and might have to stay one month longer than he was anticipating because of some mix-up in the state of Texas (I knew there was a reason I didn't like Texas ...). Hopefully that situation will resolve itself soon, the commute from my parents house to my job is by no means an enjoyable one.

Welcome

2008-05-27T23:04:00.001-04:00

Welcome to my post-college blog. This is my first attempt at some real blogging - my long-since deleted Spain blog most certainly does not count. We’ll have to wait and see how much content I actually end up creating for this blog. Like most things I undertake of my own accord, I have grand intentions (in this case, grand intentions of writing something extremely intelligent every few days) but I am well aware that my intentions do not always mesh with my reality. Hopefully, however, the fact that I will be writing for fun will get me adding new content frequently, especially since I recently admitted to myself that I actually enjoying writing (shocking, I know ...).

I guess my inspiration for blogging was several-fold. I want to keep writing, as I am not entirely sure how much I writing of any kind I will be doing at my newly started real-world job. (Yes, I started immediately after graduation, and no, I’m not sure if I started so soon because I’m a sucker, or because I have a well-developed sense of duty.) I also recently read a New York Times Magazine article by a woman who wrote for Gawker for several years after having nothing more than a simple blog about her life. The article is actually quite frightening in its discussion of the “dangers” of blogging and living one’s life through electronic interactions with the rest of the world. Reading about someone else’s blogging life, however, made creating my own blog seem a lot more feasible. Lastly, I decided to give blogging a shot because I run across things from time to time - such as this engrossing Philadelphia Magazine article (I generally do not like Philadelphia Magazine at all, maybe I'll explain why at a later date, but I could not resist this piece) on the owners of my favorite professional sports team, the Philadelphia Phillies - and want to feel like I’m sharing them with people without posting them to facebook. (I’m all right with reading other people’s posted items of facebook, but somehow I don’t like adding my own posted items, weird, I know.)

I hope whoever reads this enjoys what I write, but even if they don’t, I hope I keep writing until I come up with a good reason to stop!