Sophmore Year

In less than a week I will be returning to Rockhurst to begin RA training and my sophmore year. I'm truly excited to meet the incoming freshman class and get to know the guys on my floor--2-West. In addition to returning to Rockhurst I look forward to finishing up my summer work with Delta. I feel that it was a successful summer even though I didn't get to work with the enviornment as I had initially planned. I want to thank Delta for providing me with a job in these difficult economic times. Manual labor, while difficult at times, can be extremely rewarding. It will be nice to get back into a routine at school.

Home Run Derby

The annual Home Run Derby will be held tonight in Anaheim, CA. When I was younger I loved watching the biggest stars hit the longest home runs--(enhanced) sluggers like Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa hit ridiculous shots into upper decks and completely out of the park. It seems as though this annual event has been changing over the years, however, and tonight appears to be a prime example of a new attitude towards the derby. This years field exhibits players such as Nick Swisher, Chris Young, Hanley Ramirez, Corey Hart, and Vernon Wells. Who exactly are these guys? Certainly they are not the premiere power hitters in the league. They are an eclectic group of above average hitters who were chosen only because those deserving to be in the tournament declined to participate. These true power hitters declined because of the growing belief that participating in the derby will alter their batting mechanics, resulting in a poor second half performance. Much has been made about former derby champion Bobby Abreu's comments on how the derby altered his swing and caused him to have a poor second half of the season. As an avid Cardinals fan, I recall both Albert Pujols and Jim Edmonds' performance in the derby. Edmonds hurt himself during it and Pujols' batting average significantly tailed off in the second half. Both sluggers declined to participate a second time. I can't blame the players for opting out of an event that has proved itself detrimental to second half performance, but I still wish that more would sign up. In the meantime I suppose I'll watch a shortstop with 13 homers square off against the Yankees ninth place hitter.......

Cable?!

After a day at work I came home in the hope of wasting an hour or two in front of the TV before I went out to swim. Something happened to change all of that however, as I slouched deep into our couch and began channel surfing. For all my life our family has gotten a basic cable package that does not have the two tv essentials: ESPN and Fox Sports Midwest. I could sorta get ESPN if I didn't mind squinting at the fuzzy black and white display without any sound. As I approached the elusive channel 42 everything appeared normal--Cash Cab on the Discovery Channel, celebrity trash on E, reruns of some not-so-funny sitcom on TBS, and Sportcenter on ESPN in color. SPORTCENTER IN COLOR WITH SOUND?!?!?!?! I did a double take. And a triple take. Somehow we now had the full cable package. I ran around the coffee table a few times, made a couple celebratory howls, and began my quest of making up for nineteen years of lost time.

Heat Advisory

These last couple of weeks at work can only be described as HOT. Work aside, my crew has been working in weather with heat indexes consistently above 100. The work has been rewarding and safe so far, and I cannot thank my employer enough for giving me a job this Summer. Today I got to use a jackhammer and a pickax for the first time. Hopefully it will have cooled off enough to go swimming later tonight.

Part of my job also involves driving the crew around in our rental minivan. I was excited to find out that the minivan came with satellite radio--something I have never listened to before. The first few days of driving to work were spent flipping through the many available stations. After a couple weeks however, I found myself returning to good ol' National Public Radio.

Softball

A couple days ago I played in a softball game for the "Saint Mary's Rubber Ducks". I believe we're the only co-ed team in the church league which consists of several hardcore softballer teams. The double header we played in on Friday was against one of the most serious teams in the league. They had on wrist bands, arm bands, head bands, knee bands, high socks, belts, sliding pants, and jerseys from when they played high school baseball. Since I was cut from my high school team I showed up in a tee shirt, shorts, and worn out sneakers. They fielded nine professional looking men while we had a ragtag group of five guys and five girls (one of which was still in grade school). Now that I have created this scenario where we appear as the lesser team it would make perfect literary sense to do a complete 360 and surprise the reader by informing them that in fact we were the superior team--and that is what I shall do. We won by the ten run rule 15-5 in the first game and 17-12 in the second game. However, the humbling of our hardcore opponents did not go without conflict. Midway through our second walloping of the Lynwood Baptist Church, their coach announced that he was going to protest both games because we used an illegal bat. In addition, our head coach and the last player to use the bat should be ejected. Fortunately for us, the head coach and last player happened to be the same person. Our "illegal" bat (which also happened to be about fifteen years old and sounded dead on contact) was thrown away and we had to get an acceptable bat from the opposing team. Oh church league...........

Summer Fishing

My favorite hobby during the summer (besides running/swimming/biking) is fishing. Since school let out I have already gone to Montauk State Park to catch rainbow trout and the Saline Creek for smallmouth bass. Both trips were major successes as I caught my limit of trout at Montauk within a half hour of the opening horn and landed three beautiful bronze smallies on the Saline. One of these three is shown in my picture--a sixteen inch smallmouth that I caught from my favorite spot on the creek. I'm partial to smallmouth and trout over the traditional freshwater fish such as largemouth, bluegill and catfish. This is most likely due to the fact that I prefer to fish in clear streams. These two species of fish are less tolerant of pollution and require water with higher oxygen content than other freshwater fish (IE you will find trout in cold clear fast moving streams). Hopefully I will find time this summer for similar successful fishing trips.

Summer Job!

I have officially gotten my work for this Summer figured out. After receiving twelve polite rejections for the various positions I mentioned in past blogs, I have finally been hired to work for Delta Companies this summer as the foremen of a seven man work crew. Interestingly enough, the sea turtle position I applied and initially did not get accepted to, came back and offered me the position a couple weeks before the job began in June. Unfortunately I could not accept on such late notice. Perhaps I can work there next summer. My job with Delta will last all of June and July while still allowing me to return to Rockhurst on August 4th for RA training which works out wonderfully. I was with Delta last summer and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My crew gets to work outside for 40 hours a week and the work is visibly rewarding after we finish up a project.