Do I think they’ll set the major league record for losses this year like a lot of media folk around the country do? No.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they ended up around the team-worst 107 or 108-loss mark again though. And ended up with the worst record in baseball. Simply put, the Astros are still terrible and they’re going to be bottom feeders for another couple of years. But at least they’ve reached the point where they’re building instead of just tearing down. I mean, I guess they have. I don’t see what else is left to tear down.

I’m not happy about the way the club was railroaded into the AL. I’m not happy about the fact that 20% of the team’s laughably meager payroll is being spent on Wandy Rodriguez to pitch in Pittsburgh. I’m not happy with the fact that the new owner appears to be a giant asshat who shoots his mouth off at every possible opportunity. I’m not happy with the way the radio team was dismissed, nor with Jim Deshaies’ departure from the TV booth (but I’m happy for him – JD will shine on the national stage that WGN provides). And if I still lived in Texas, I’d be very unhappy with the way the whole television thing has been bungled from start to finish. (Seriously – every one with cable in Houston will be able to watch every Rangers game this season while 60% OF HOUSTONIANS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO WATCH THE ASTROS AT ALL. How do you screw something up so badly that you’re not even the most televised team in your own city?)

But I still love baseball and the Astros. So I’ll watch this year from afar and hope there’s some signs of improvement by the end of the season.

2013 season predictions

• AL West: Angels
• AL Central: Tigers
• AL East: Blue Jays
• AL Wildcards: Rays, Rangers
• NL West: Giants
• NL Central: Reds
• NL East: Phillies
• NL Wildcards: Nationals, Dodgers

I refuse to make postseason predictions at this point, because there’s a pretty good chance I’m totally wrong on all ten picks above.

Leave a Comment

Hey, a post from the road! (But not about being on the road.)

I’m currently in the middle of making my trek from Texas to California. Tonight finds The Dog and me at a motel in Santa Rosa, New Mexico and I’ve got nothing to do. So I decided to steal The Wife’s year-in-review thingee and do it myself.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before?

Hmm. Lived apart from family for six months. Flew to another city solely for a job interview (multiple times and to multiple cities). Had multiple job interviews in the same day. Packed up a four-bedroom house by myself. Trusted my spouse to pick out a house without me even having seen it. Went to Las Vegas. Went to a college graduation ceremony that wasn’t at Texas A&M. Appeared on House Hunters (although only for about a third of a second). Downsized to just one car for the family. Ate one of those Doritos tacos. Watched a Star Wars movie in 3-D.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don’t think I made any resolutions for 2012, so mission accomplished on that.

For 2013, my only resolution is to move to San Francisco. I’m currently in the process of doing that and should be done in less than 48 hours, so this year is already looking pretty good on the resolutions front.

I guess I could resolve to blog more often in 2013, but I’m not ready to commit to a second resolution at this point.

Oh wait, I do actually have a second resolution: To continue bugging Anderson Cooper until he agrees to get matching tattoos of Wolf Blitzer with me. Entering year five of that little project.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I don’t think so, but honestly my memory of the first couple of months of 2012 are pretty hazy right now. No family members or co-workers did though.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Nope. Except Larry Hagman’s endlessly fascinating eyebrows.

5. What countries did you visit?

Uh, none other than our own I guess. But I certainly crisscrossed the southwestern portion of it about a billion times this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?

Stability. And a lot of money. But mostly stability.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

I’m not sure there are any particular dates that will be “etched upon [my] memory.” This whole year was about gradual change and evolution.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Surviving.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I spent the last year and a half working on a major project at work and didn’t get to launch it before I left. I don’t know if my successor (who hasn’t been hired yet) will continue to work on it or just scrap it entirely. But I guess either way, it’s not my problem any longer.

Also, I crashed and burned during the last two weeks of the fantasy baseball season.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing major.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Airfare and tickets to Star Wars night at the ballpark for my son’s birthday. I surprised him with a visit and we had a blast at the game, watching the fireworks after the game, and negotiating the vagaries of late-night mass transit in the Bay Area as we tried to get back home.

12. Where did most of your money go?

To JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, U-Haul, Motel-6, our new landlord and the general direction of San Francisco.

13. What did you get really excited about?

Visiting the wife and kids throughout the fall. My wife’s graduation in May. Seeing the space shuttle fly over our house (literally).

14. What song will always remind you of 2012?

Either “Gangnam Style” or “Call Me Maybe.”

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

• Happier or sadder? Happier. Last year, we were trying to figure a way to reinvent ourselves. This year, we’re well on our way.
• Thinner or fatter? About the same.
• Richer or poorer? Richer, at least on paper. The cost-of-living difference between College Station and San Francisco makes such calculations difficult when you’re tired and sitting in a motel room in New Mexico and your wife handles all the finances anyway.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

• Watching TV. Seriously. I was pretty much without television for the last five months of the year. That’s rough.
• Working out. Perhaps another quasi-resolution for 2013?
• Spending time with my family. Duh.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

• Spending time at work. I basically lived up at work for 16 hours a day after August. And as noted above, it was pretty much all for nothing.
• Applying for jobs. I must have applied for a billion jobs in the past year. I’m glad it all worked out in the end, but I would have rather it worked out much sooner.
• Spending time at airports/on the road. For as much as I flew back and forth this year, I guess it wasn’t that bad, but I had a couple of days where the delays stacked up and made life crappy. And I got tired to driving to/from the Austin airport in the wee hours of the morning and night.
• Worrying. I guess it all worked out in the end.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

As with the rest of 2012, I spent Christmas traveling back and forth. The Wife and our children flew into Austin on Christmas Eve. We spent a few days up there with her parents, then went down to the Swamp for a few days with mine.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

I really didn’t have access to cable at all after July, so it’s hard to answer this one. I did spend a lot of time watching Big Bang Theory, Rules of Engagement and How I Met Your Mother in syndication though, all of which I had never seen before. They’re all okay I suppose. I still love Doctor Who.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

I finally finished Roy Jenkin’s massive and onerous biography of Winston Churchill, which was incredibly good, even if it often required slogging through pages of British political and parliamentary minutiae.

I tore through the first three James Bond books in a couple of days and am looking forward to reading the remainder written by Fleming. They’re not great literature by any stretch, but perfectly fine for some lighter, more leisurely reading.

And I’m currently in the middle of Team of Rivals, which is fantastic. I believe I’m probably the last person on the planet to read it.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

Nothing. All this noise you kids listen to these days is crap.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

I think I’m the only person who enjoyed John Carter.  I also really liked The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall. The kids and I watched Wreck-It Ralph the other day and I thought it was pretty good as well.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 34 and spent the day at my cousin’s wedding. All in all, it was a weird birthday.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Being together with my wife and kids for the last half of it.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?

Lazy and uninspired.

26. What kept you sane?

Twitter, FaceTime, occasional flights out west and Netflix. And baseball. Always baseball.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.

How to pack a suitcase. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Leave a Comment

I believe the cat on the door says it all:

Today is my final day of work here at Texas A&M. After five and a half years, I’ve accomplished a lot that I can be proud of and made many good friends that I’ll miss dearly. To all of my colleagues who might be reading this, thanks for putting up with me. I am better for having known and worked with you all.

Tomorrow is also my last day in College Station as a resident. I moved here initially for school in 1997 and we moved back as “grown-ups” in 2004. Between the two stints, I’ve lived here 13 years – longer than anywhere else. I still love it here, but it’s time for the next adventure.

Highway 6 still runs both ways. Time to head out.

Leave a Comment

Leave a Comment

Over the past weekend, I spent a good deal of time in the car and had a lot of time to do some thinking. Most of that thinking had to do with the horrible events in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday morning.

I started composing a post in my head as I drove back and forth all weekend long, but I had a hard time finding the right words to express my sadness and dismay. I discovered yesterday that my wife had written a post of her own, echoing my thoughts exactly. I encourage you to take a few moments and read it:

• NonSoccerMom: A few words, although there truly aren’t any

The solutions to this problem aren’t easy. They require long-term investment in our communities and our social services. They require us to value responsibility as much as we value unfettered freedom. They require us to break away from our normal pattern of allowing extremists (on all sides) to monopolize the debate and decision-making process. They require us to resist the urge to demonize those with differing opinions, see beyond our own soapboxes and work together for the common good.

I hope we can. When people are being killed in elementary schools and movie theaters, we can’t simply shrug our shoulders and accept their deaths as inevitable or unavoidable. The status quo isn’t acceptable. It’s time for things to change.

Leave a Comment

Leave a Comment

Hey look – a blog post with words! You know it’s a special occasion when I bust out my keyboard.

And a special occasion it is, but why get to the point when I can beat around the bush for a bit?

The long goodbye

Remember the first time you saw The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and you had to sit through that whole 30-minute dénouement at the end?

At first, you felt exhilaration when the tower crumbled, but then Frodo and Sam stumbled out of Mount Doom and found themselves stuck on an outcropping in the middle of molten death. They exchanged some weepy words and then it faded to black. You were kind of bummed, but at least the good guys won, right?

BUT WAIT – Gandalf flies in on his giant eagle and saves the little people. At this point, you’re kind of relieved because you didn’t want the movie to end with Frodo and Sam biting the big one. You settled in for a few more minutes of gleeful post-near-apoocalypse celebration and you got it when Frodo woke up to find all of his traveling buddies reunited (and bathed for the first time in many moons) in Rivendell. Satisfied, you started to stretch your legs and prepared yourself to stand up after three hours of sitting in a theater.

BUT WAIT – All of a sudden you’re watching Viggo Mortensen singing for some reason. Oh yeah, he had to fulfill his destiny and become king. And hook up with his elf lady friend again. You guess you can sit through this. There’s been a lot of building up to it for the past nine hours of the trilogy. And Cate Blanchett is doing a voiceover while they pan over a map of Middle Earth. Certainly everything is wrapped up now.

BUT WAIT – Now they’re just drinking in a tavern. What is this? Are you going to have to sit through the rest of their lives? Is there even a point to this. Oh wait, there it is – they had to show that Sam didn’t have a thing for Frodo after all, because we’ve all been totally suspecting it for the past nine hours of film. Hooray for Sam and his barmaid wife. Who cares about Frodo? The bathroom is calling after that jumbo drink you just finished.

BUT WAIT – NOW THEY’RE BACK AT THE FREAKING ELF CITY?!?!?!? We were just over there. Remember the montage of goofy grins and awkward slowed-down hobbit dancing around Frodo’s bed? You’re now beginning to wish that Sauron had won. It’d certainly make for a shorter ending. Fine, get on the damn boat, whatever. You stand up, car keys in hand, because certainly this can’t last any longer, right?

BUT WAIT – WHY ARE WE SHOWING SAM BACK IN THE SHIRE AGAIN? At this point, you hate Peter Jackson, you hate hobbits, you hate Middle Earth and you hate that you didn’t just leave to go to the restroom back when Gandalf was swooping in on his giant eagle. And how short of a trilogy would it have been if Frodo had just hopped on a giant eagle three movies ago, flew to the volcano and chunked the ring in? Has all of this time just been a waste? Has your entire life been a waste? Has all of human existence been a waste?

And then, the circular door of Sam’s hobbit house mercifully closes and the movie ends. And you think to yourself that it was totally awesome. But it could’ve been wrapped up a little sooner.

That feeling of “This has been really great, but I hope it ends like five minutes ago” pretty much sums up my past six months.

Ever since The Wife moved out to San Francisco in July, our family hasn’t been living under the same roof for more than a few days at a time. The kids moved out there in mid-August and I’ve managed to work in a few visits, but I’ve been basically marooned* here in Texas until I could find a job. (Don’t worry. I’ll recap my half-year of homelessness in a future blog post.)

Giant eagle to the rescue

But no longer! After months of applying, interview, teeth-gnashing and hoping, I have finally been offered (and have accepted) a position in San Francisco!

Starting January 7th, I’ll be the online marketing analyst for the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

Now, to answer the two questions that have popped into your head:

• No, I’m not Jewish.
• Yes, they’re totally cool with that.

I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll give me the opportunity to refocus my career on some of the things that I really love about my current job and give me a chance to move away from some of the more technical aspects that I don’t enjoy quite as much anymore.

It’s also a great fit for our family situation right now. It’s where our son’s after-school program is located (and where our daughter will go starting in the fall), it’s literally across the street from The Wife’s office and offers some really great benefits. It’s a win-win-win scenario. Like Spock delivering free pizzas in a hovercraft.

So, there you go. Consider yourself updated.

I’ll finish out the rest of the year here at A&M, then enjoy the holidays with The Wife and kids (who were already planning on flying down here for a couple of weeks). Sometime around New Year’s Day, I’ll pack up my suitcase and my greyhound and drive them both out to California and our new home.

Possibly in a hovercraft with Spock delivering pizzas. Perhaps not. We’ll see.

*- Yes, I’m aware of the pun.

Leave a Comment

Leave a Comment