Something Requisitely Witty and Urbane

Closure

I had an strange night last night.

After doing a little shopping, the Girlfriend* and I were driving around, trying to find something to do.  Our meandering, impromptu road trip took us near the campus of Dallas Baptist University, where I first went to college out of high school.  Readers of this blog know that was a different time in my life (if you want to read more about that, read here).  It was the first time I'd been on the campus in at least 6 years.  I'd made only one return visit, which was very soon after I left in the first place, to get a transcript.

We drove around the tiny, hillside campus for just a little bit, and we walked into the music building that I spent the majority of my time in.

The building has been expanded quite a bit, and there are three times the number of practice rooms than used to exist, but the same old names were still on the doors.  Down one hall, I saw the nameplate of Sue Mitz, my piano professor, and further down Dr. Barbara Wallace, my music theory professor.

Driving around campus, there are the same old buildings coupled with dozens of other, newer buildings.  The campus is growing, and it was a strange feeling. There was a sense of familiarity, but the changes coupled the familiarity with a disconnect.

I honestly wasn't expecting to feel anything, save for, perhaps, a little nostalgia.  But driving away from the campus I just sort of got slammed with feelings.  Not all of them were entirely good, I suppose, but I had a hard time putting words to them, except that I just kept saying that it was all sorta "heavy."  The Girlfriend seemed to sense that I was in it, and let me sort of stay in that place for a while (although, as she told me later, when she doesn't exactly know what the right question to ask is to get me to talk about it, she usually just lets me be silent for a bit and I normally just talk it out and get there on my own).

There was some feeling of separateness.  I just couldn't seem to find any way to put the person I am today back on that campus.  I've changed so much since then, mostly for the better (I'd hope).  For the first time, in my life, I sort of felt like I was looking back at a period in my life where I could have snipped those years out, and I wouldn't be missing much.

But that's kind of silly too.  I had some amazing experiences at DBU, and met some amazing people.  I actually began my crazy sort of journey to re-self-discovery in my last year there (which is a big part of why I left).

Mostly, however, I think I felt some finality.  DBU is the only real college experience I've had.  I've teetered around at a couple of other schools, but it never really took.  Today, however, as I'm preparing to go back to school in about 2 weeks, I had found myself looking back to my time there quite a bit.

I'm sure the rush of feelings I had were quite specific to this particular moment in my life.  Maybe I could have gone there last year, and it wouldn't have happened.  This particular day, however, I went to a much different headspace, and now I feel like I've officially left that part of my life, and that place behind.  It's a good feeling.

I don't really know how many people this will make a lot of sense to, or if I've even explained it well at all, but it was just a crazy sort of finality on the whole thing.  One of those rare moments where you end up at the right place to sort out the feelings you are having at a very specific time.

*I still haven't figured out what pithy name to call her.  Any suggestions?

"...and I'm sure the light will hurt my eyes."

So, I mentioned it a few weeks back, but my time managing the restaurant comes to a close today.

It is kind of strange, sitting here in the office with literally no projects to do, no responsibilities at all but to answer the phones and wait until the end of the night.

I've kind of had senioritis about the whole thing for a month now, basically since I made the decision, and this day couldn't come quickly enough.

And school starts in a few weeks.  For the first time since I first dropped out of college, I'm excited about going back. 

The Best of 2005

Taking a cue from Rusty's post of the same nature, I thought I'd engage in a little rhetorically egotistical navel-gazing and list off some of my favorite posts from the year 2005.

The Majesty of Rock 'n Roll, Take 2 (January) - Wherein I take on the question of why there are no legendary, mythological rockers anymore.

"To Be Disclosed or Revealed" (February) - Wherein I take on the moral questions surrounding publicly outing gay Republicans.

Yeah Man, You Really Cracked the Case Here (March) - Wherein I take on UNC Professor Mike S. Adams' chauvanistic attack on his university's performance of "The Vagina Monologues."

Terry Schiavo (March) - Wherein I tackle the subject made obvious by the post's title.

Reid vs. Frist, Round 1 (April) - Wherein I discussed the then growing debate over the nuclear option and the Senate filibuster.

Jake (April) - Wherein I write about one of the funniest, kindest men I have known: My grandfather, Jake.

"Elephant" (May) - Wherein I review Gus Van Zandt's excellent take on a Columbine-esque massacre.

On "To Blogroll or Not to Blogroll" (May) - Wherein I bored people with, what I think was, some fairly interesting talk about the Blogrolling curfuffle.

Kenny Rogers (June) - Wherein I explained why Kenny Rogers' cameraman meltdown will shadow what would otherwise have been the best pitching career in Ranger's history.

Jobs I Have Known #5, "Planet Days" (June) - Wherein I recount my transformation from bible college conservative to liberal democrat, all while finding my way into the hospitality industry.

Pamchenko Twists (July) -  Wherein I prove to Pauly D that I am, definitively, the only person ever to land the Solo Pamchenko.

Six Feet Under 5x12 - "Everyone's Waiting" (August) - Wherein I eulogize the passing of Sunday's with the Fisher family.

My Trip to Crawford (August) - Wherein I demonstrated a stunning, if temporary, burst of activism and joined Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, Texas for a day.

"The Brown Bunny" (September) - Wherein I review Vincent Gallo's newest film, and talk, perhaps a little too much, about his penis.

Race (September) - Wherein I talk about the racial implications of the devestation in New Orleans.

Top Fifteen of the Last Fifteen (October) - Wherein I honor the greatest website ever created by listing my top fifteen films of the last fifteen years.

Search, Tags, Online Identity (October) - Wherein I write about John Battelle's book, The Search, and change the way I use this blog.

Jobs I Have Known #6 - Management (November) - Wherein I write about the end of my restaurant management career.

And just for shits and giggles, here's a picture of me in high school, my favorite post that I wrote during a highly rewarding guestblogging stint at Feministe,  a retelling of many of the strange stories that have happened to me in my current apartment complex and the story of how I helped a Iraqi war veteran get married.

Merry Fucking Christmas

Because I've just finished my Christmas shopping, and it's never a bad time to recycle this picture.

John Spencer

I can't believe I missed this.

John Spencer, veteran character actor best known for his role as Leo McGarry on The West Wing, died on Friday.

It's one of those strange celebrity deaths that seems to hit me pretty hard.  There's no particular reason for that, except for the affection I have for the character of Leo.  If the show was already on it's last legs, then his passing virtually ensures that it is done.

What I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging

For about a month or two now, blogging has been light to non-existent.  It's a problem that I am rectifying, but real life got in the way for a while, in mostly good ways. Here are the things I've been doing instead of blogging.

• Working.    It's the busy season at the restaurant.  My particular type of restaurant (the fine-dining but not-too-fine-dining type) is a destination for corporate Christmas Holiday (gotta do my part in fighting the War on Christmas) parties.  Admittedly, this year has not been the busiest busy season in the past few years, but it has been busy nonetheless.
• Avoiding phone calls from wait staff, every one of whom wants Christmas Eve off.   It's unavoidable, during the holidays, that many requests from the staff come your way.  Typically,  the staff doesn't find out what their schedule for the next week is until the Saturday before.  During the holidays, of course, everyone wants to know exactly what their schedule will be weeks in advance, which is damned impossible during the holidays, as situations change daily.  I know there are some really awful jobs out there, but making the schedule for a wait staff of 25 people is the worst job I've ever had.  I'm framing this week and next week's schedule and hanging it in a prominent place, just in case I ever need motivation for school.
• Dating.   I've met someone.  I'm still deciding how much I should talk about her on this blog, as some things should be kept private from the vast reaches of the internets.  I'm sure, at some point, I'll come up with a witty acronym or nickname, but in the meantime it is simply becoming inconvenient for me not to be able to mention her and, as things on this blog typically have, how I talk about her will simply work itself out.  At any rate, she's great, things are going great, and I'm quite happy about the situation.  Quite.
• Traveling.  Sorta.  She and I went to Oklahoma to visit one of her friends.  Ok, so, look.  I was born in Oklahoma.  I've been to Oklahoma many, many times.  I appreciate Oklahoma.  But... well.... it's kind of useless.  We were staying with her friends in Choctaw which we were told, rather emphatically, was a mere 20 minutes from Oklahoma City.  This would be true if Oklahoma decided to build highways, even the lame two-lane type.  Instead we drove by more shops with "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" on their windows than I thought existed.  Also, apparently, Oklahoma, or at least Choctaw, has an upcoming vote on whether or not to keep 911 for their emergency services.  I appreciate that different regions call for different needs, but I was pretty sure the whole 911 thing was a decided issue.  It's like Social Security.  It works.  Didn't realize there was still a question.
• Drinking.    We'll just leave it at that.

I should be back to a more normal blogging schedule, now, and will try to live up to the demands that coming in last in the Best Liberal Weblog competition requires of me.

Signaling

There might be a little something behind the otherwise troubling trade of Chris Young, Adrian Gonzales and Termell Sledge for Adam Eaton and a player to be named.

After the decision not to resign Kenny Rogers, and the inability to trade for Josh Beckett (or any other halfway worthy starting pitching), Chris Young had suddenly become the number one starter for the anemic Ranger's rotation.

And so, Jon Daniels trades the number one starter for Adam Eaton, a reasonable number 3 who is coming off a bad injury year.  It's puzzling.  Two comparable pitchers are traded for, and neither team really benefits from either acquisition.

Which leads me to wonder if there might not be a little more behind it.

For three years, Adrian Gonzales has held the promise of being the best defensive first basemen this club has ever seen.  He even tantalized with his bat, as he made the team out of spring training two seasons ago and went on a .330, 5 HR streak before tanking and being sent back down to the minors.  His bat has never really caught back up to that initial greatness, but his defense has always be sparkling.

Unfortunately for Gonzales, that position is firmly held by Mark Texeira.  Texeira's stunning offensive numbers have been rendered even more impressive by the way his defensive game has come around.  At this point, three seasons in, Mark Texeira is the premiere first baseman in the game.

The only question about Texeira's future with this team has been if the Rangers could jump the Scott Boras hurdle and actually manage to come to terms with their slugger in two years, when his contract is up.  Texeira's numbers will demand a high dollar amount to keep him and the Rangers, skittish since the A-Rod and Chan Ho debacles, will be forced to put up or shut up.

The general thinking has always been that, in the event that the team couldn't put together a deal rich enough to keep their star player, Adrian Gonzales was waiting in the wings and, though his bat comes nowhere close to matching Texeira's, hot-hitting sluggers can be brought to Ameriquest Field quite easily.  By trading off the only real competition to Texeira's first base supremacy, the Rangers are effectively telling him that they are willing to play the game without an insurance policy.

It's a shrewd move by Daniels who, in his first off-season as GM, has shown that he won't sit still all the while insisting that "things will work themselves out."  And so, though the pitching issues this team has perennially had have yet to be addressed in any real way, one could make the argument that Daniels' freshman performance has been the Josh Beckett trade away from being quite a successful one.

Weblog Awards Wrapup

Well, the Weblog Awards are over, and it looks like I'll end up with a little shy of 80 votes.  This places me in last place, which is right where I belong.

I just wanted to take this opportunity, again, to just say thank you to all the readers who've made this blog worth coming back to day after day.

I love to write, and blogging has, no doubt, provided me a medium which suits my particular talents (such as they are), but the most fulfilling thing about blogging has always been the responses I get from you, the encouragement, the criticism, and most of all, the little network of friends that I've attained.

Blogging has been good to me, and I hope I can continue to make it interesting enough to warrant the honorable mention that all of you give me and that this nomination represented.  I'm extremely proud to be a part of that select group of bloggers.

Blogging has been inconsistent over the past couple of months, and that is a situation that I will absolutely rectify forthwith, although that promise is beginning to sound a bit like the abusive husband who promises he will change.

Thanks for reading.  Thanks for coming back.  Thanks for sticking around.  Thanks for making SRWU one of my proudest achievements.

My Lovely Lady Lumps

Hua Hsu of Slate, on the "Horrifically Bad" Black-Eyed Peas song, "My Humps":

"What you gon' do with all that ass/ All that ass inside them jeans? … What you gon' do wit all that breast?/ All that breast inside that shirt?" rapper Will.I.Am teases in response, rendering literal what had heretofore been pretty much literal.

Genius.  Read the whole thing.

Rock the Vote

Don't forget to go vote for me in the 2005 Weblog Awards.  I'm in last place, which I deserve in this group, but I'd love to make a strong showing.

Oh, and I'm not above a little bribery.  Just remember... I'm the guy who knows how to get things.