the world is your acorn

I’m at home today, waiting for a case of zin from Napa Cellars to be delivered. The Little Red Haired Girl and I decided to splurge for it when we went to San Francisco. We are assuming that the case will last us a few years, so don’t go thinking we’re all bougey or anything. We haven’t found much wine in that price range (around $20 - these are special occasion bottles for us) that we really like down here, and it’s not like we have money to throw at trying new things. We should check out more wine tastings, maybe. This fall we went to a sparkling wine class over at Sunset Grill for pretty cheap; I’d go again if it weren’t the same night as rugby practice. I wonder if there’s other similar stuff going on around town?

Anyway, I’m excited for that case to get delivered but I hope it comes soon, because I am getting nothing done while I’m at home.

I don’t get much spam- maybe five or six emails a day. I don’t give out my email address, and I think the only website it is posted on is for rugby. In that case, why is it that 90% of the spam I get is in Japanese? I’m not Japanese, my name doesn’t sound or look Japanese, and neither does my email address. I wonder if someone is using my email address to register for Japanese porn or something.

I just came home from a great rugby practice. This weekend’s tournament was really fun, and I got good playing time, but I was terrible. So even though today I have been sore and tired, I was ready to go out there and learn something and practice. Lucky for me we worked on some of the things that I’m really sucky at, like tackling. It felt good to go out, work hard, get physical, and come home feeling like I accomplished something. Tomorrow I will be sore, but hopefully I will be able to stay in this frame of mind and keep working to get better. Sucking sucks.

Now I think The Little Red Haired Girl is going to rub my back a little, because she is sweet like that.

So, I was just flipping through an Eastbay catalog. Is Air Jordan not a Nike brand anymore? And why are Adidas Gazelles $99.99?! I’m sure I bought mine for $25 or something like that.

This weekend the Nashville Men’s and Women’s Rugby Teams are sponsoring Nash Bash, hosting nearly 70 club and college rugby teams from all over the country. Please come down to check it out and support the players. It’s free to come watch, and I assure you that rugby is one of the best spectator sports that there is - contact, agility, ball handling, brute force, and pretty much any kind of athleticism that turns you on. Information can be found at Nashville Women’s Rugby and Nashville Rugby. Hope to see you there!

• Drinking: Second cup of tea. I’ll have to catch up on water intake later (to maintain my glass of water for every non-water beverage rule).
• Work: I’m trying to finish reading for classes so that I can spend the evening and tomorrow morning rewriting my paper on institutional setting. I can’t stop thinking about paper revisions though.
• Newest Lethal Distraction: Babble, which is basically just Boggle with chat. You get one puzzle per day. If you pay the $10, which I may do soon, you can also find out how many words you haven’t found yet, their point values, and their first two letters. You can also use this site for free.
• Newest useful freeware:Noise. Click the button, and it plays white noise. Great for working in these sound-leaking cubicles we have. I forget how I found it, so now I can’t give credit. Oh, and it’s just for Macs. Sorry.
• Frustration: I only brought one BabyBel to school today. I wish I had 7.
• Light at the end of the tunnel: After this paper I can breathe for a couple of days. It’s been crazy since coming back from San Francisco (not that I haven’t had any fun), and I haven’t really had any unscheduled days for a while.

Back to work!

We just got home from a day of basketball at Vanderbilt. 1st round in the women’s NCAA tourney. We saw LSU, UNC, and Vandy, among some other very good teams. We also saw some pretty good fans, mascots*, cheerleaders, and bands too. The highlight of the day was definitely the end of the final game, Vanderbilt against Louisville. The Louisville fans were just so enthusiastic and so good-natured in their cheering that it was fun to be competitive against them. If I remember correctly Vandy led by a small margin most of the first half, then lost the lead for most of the second half. In the last 4 minutes or so they just came back bit by bit, and the whole crowd ended up on its feet. Even though I haven’t really identified as a ‘Dore yet, I was completely swept up in it, and I think The Little Red Haired Girl did too. I can’t wait for Mondays games (keep your fingers crossed that they won’t be during class).

*I have to say that the Commodore mascot is a little disappointing. I saw it for the first time today. For those of you that don’t know, it’s a guy with a big (plastic?) old-guy head, what I assume is a commodore hat, and big black shoes. No furry outfit or anything.

Sometimes when I’m reading, especially if it’s academic stuff, I’ll have an outburst of reading/mumbling out loud. The Little Red Haired Girl often makes fun of me for it, particularly because I often don’t realize that I’m doing it. Usually it happens when I am feeling distracted by thoughts or something else going on in the room, but I want to concentrate on whatever it is I’m reading. It’s like, if I read it out loud, then yet another of my functions will be engaged in the content, thus outnumbering whatever parts of me are doing other things.

This morning, as I was getting into the shower, I caught myself bursting into tuneless humming. I suddenly realized that I was doing it to drown out (or distract myself from) some stupid embarassing memory from years ago. I don’t even remember what it was now. It seems that my mind tends to wander into unsanctioned territory from time to time without my permission, and my way of objecting is to voice something, anything. Kind of like yelling “blah blah blah” and covering your ears when mom is lecturing you about something.

Although, now that I think about it, there have been times when I have been reliving some particularly cringey conversation, and I’ve caught myself responding outloud what I wish I’d said, or something dismissive like, “It’s all good….” Of course it only serves to make me feel even cringier because I’ve just said something out loud for no apparent reason at all.

I have no idea what is going on in this game, but I think the general idea is to slam into the guy as hard as possible so that he will bounce. I’d be glad to find out what is going on with the various people who “boost” or “angle up” or whatever, so if you read Japanese please feel free to share. You know who you are.

Nanaca Crash

Looks like the concert series at the river, Dancin’ in the District, is no more. It is too bad, because it was one of the first things that The Little Red Haired Girl and I did here in Nashville that made us feel at home, and one of my first memories here. I hope someone will pick up and find a way to launch something similar.

Dancin’ in the District Dies [Tennessean.com]