The Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants are playing each other for the next six games.
I'm torn. I love the A's. They are a young good looking, Backstreet Boys team, with a genius of a general manager in Billy Beane and the best 3 starting pitchers in the game. They're young, scrappy, and they've got one of the smallest payrolls of any teams, yet they manage to be at the top of their league every year.
A's management are geniuses at developing players and picking up great players that have been turned down by other teams. They are an underdog player's friends, always willing to value skills above anything else. What's not to love? They're the underdog team of underdog teams.
But I live in the city and county of San Francisco, so I also love the San Francisco Giants because they're the home team with the great stadium. They're the team I've gone to see at least once a year with friends, they're the team I feel honour bound to root for, because they're something so cool about rooting for the home team.
But I love my A's, I love my babies. But I have to also love the home team.
Mark Purdy from the Merc News has a great take on the series, A's vs. Giants means much to both teams.
I hope they split the series, A's winning one, the Giants winnning the other, then I'd be happy. I wouldn't feel bad that I love two great baseball teams for two totally different reasons.
Go A's! Go Giants!
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
So in honour of Harry Potter mania, and inspired by my friend J's essay on The Hogwarts Club at the Hooray for Anything blog, I figured out which Hogwarts house the sorting hat would put me in.
I would definitely be in Ravenclaw, because 1) I love crows and ravens, so it's a natural I'd be in the house with the word Raven in it and 2) "Ravenclaw are all the geeks and arty types" - from Hooray.
Yes, I consider myself the geeky and arty type. I'm a writer, and on the enneagram test I'm a 4 with a 5 wing, that's 4 - the artist with a 5 - intellectual bent. For the most part, I'm weird and introspective and sometimes very clever only because I seem to have a knack for memorizing trivia galore.
I wonder what colour would my uniform be? Because that's the really important question.
I would definitely be in Ravenclaw, because 1) I love crows and ravens, so it's a natural I'd be in the house with the word Raven in it and 2) "Ravenclaw are all the geeks and arty types" - from Hooray.
Yes, I consider myself the geeky and arty type. I'm a writer, and on the enneagram test I'm a 4 with a 5 wing, that's 4 - the artist with a 5 - intellectual bent. For the most part, I'm weird and introspective and sometimes very clever only because I seem to have a knack for memorizing trivia galore.
I wonder what colour would my uniform be? Because that's the really important question.
Monday, June 16, 2003
Wow, maybe there is something to the writing by hand thing. I printed out a bunch of stories I had started, but never finished and took them with me to the library.
I read through them and decided to work on one I titled "Spooning with My Mother". It's a story about a woman who is divorced from her husband and feeling lonely, and trying to decide if she should sleep in the same bed with her 13 year old daughter for comfort.
Anyway, I read through the 3 page freewrite and decided that before I could finish the story, I'd write an outline so I could see how it would end. I started outlining the story I had written and was just about to write the outline for the rest of it, when I realized I didn't know what the story was really about because it had been so long since I wrote it.
I started to write a Q&A session with myself, which soon turned into a Q&A session with the main character. I just ended up asking her how the story ends, and I wrote what I popped into my head. Once I knew how it ended, I knew I could finish the story.
So after a 3.5 page outline and a Q&A freewrite, I wrote 16 handwritten pages and finished the story. YEAH ME! My first completed short story in a really long time.
Of course it's only a very shitty first draft, but at least it's done, and I can start typing it up and deciding whether I want to work on it some more or just leave as is.
This is good. This is exciting. A completed short story.
I'll post the opening for "Spooning with My Mother" tomorrow.
YEAH! I'm writing again!
I read through them and decided to work on one I titled "Spooning with My Mother". It's a story about a woman who is divorced from her husband and feeling lonely, and trying to decide if she should sleep in the same bed with her 13 year old daughter for comfort.
Anyway, I read through the 3 page freewrite and decided that before I could finish the story, I'd write an outline so I could see how it would end. I started outlining the story I had written and was just about to write the outline for the rest of it, when I realized I didn't know what the story was really about because it had been so long since I wrote it.
I started to write a Q&A session with myself, which soon turned into a Q&A session with the main character. I just ended up asking her how the story ends, and I wrote what I popped into my head. Once I knew how it ended, I knew I could finish the story.
So after a 3.5 page outline and a Q&A freewrite, I wrote 16 handwritten pages and finished the story. YEAH ME! My first completed short story in a really long time.
Of course it's only a very shitty first draft, but at least it's done, and I can start typing it up and deciding whether I want to work on it some more or just leave as is.
This is good. This is exciting. A completed short story.
I'll post the opening for "Spooning with My Mother" tomorrow.
YEAH! I'm writing again!
Love and Darkness and a Sidearm - a scary freewrite
The cursed say they are damned for all eternity. Me, I say, sometimes it’s just plain dumb luck that you get caught and then people go ahead and make up a big fuss about it, when secretly you know they are happy you did it. Delighted, is even a better word. They are delighted that you rid the place of a bad human being. Sometimes people don’t get what’s coming to them soon enough and you’ve got to give nature a helping hand.
I didn’t mean to shoot him, but he just kept coming at me. Paul was always a little crazy, you know, especially when he drank. Liquor is like a demon, a gold liquid demon. When you drink enough of the demon, it makes you do crazy and mean things. It’s like there’s this little voice talking inside of your head and telling you to do things, thing you would never normally think of doing. And the devil, he’s like an old cowboy who’s bent on breaking you. He rides and rides you and you can’t buck him off and he digs his heels into your sides, till pretty soon you get used to the pain and the hurt. He knows and you know that it’s just a matter of time, before you become his, his prize. And Paul was definitely one of his prize specimens.
Poor Paul, he couldn’t go more than a couple of days at least as far as I could tell without a drink. And when he didn’t drink, the devil would dig his spurs into old Paul and Paul would get all mean. But nasty mean, even meaner then when he did drink.
Whenever Paul got mean, I poured him a whiskey in one of those little glasses with the oranges on them, that mama gave me years ago. I’d hand it to Paul and he’d look at me, the hate coming out of his eyes like an icy heart stopping wind. You know, the kind that whips right through you in the dead of winter and chills you to the bone. But after a minute, he’d laugh, take the glass and down the content in one gulp without spilling a drop. Then he’d be okay, at least for awhile.
The cursed say they are damned for all eternity. Me, I say, sometimes it’s just plain dumb luck that you get caught and then people go ahead and make up a big fuss about it, when secretly you know they are happy you did it. Delighted, is even a better word. They are delighted that you rid the place of a bad human being. Sometimes people don’t get what’s coming to them soon enough and you’ve got to give nature a helping hand.
I didn’t mean to shoot him, but he just kept coming at me. Paul was always a little crazy, you know, especially when he drank. Liquor is like a demon, a gold liquid demon. When you drink enough of the demon, it makes you do crazy and mean things. It’s like there’s this little voice talking inside of your head and telling you to do things, thing you would never normally think of doing. And the devil, he’s like an old cowboy who’s bent on breaking you. He rides and rides you and you can’t buck him off and he digs his heels into your sides, till pretty soon you get used to the pain and the hurt. He knows and you know that it’s just a matter of time, before you become his, his prize. And Paul was definitely one of his prize specimens.
Poor Paul, he couldn’t go more than a couple of days at least as far as I could tell without a drink. And when he didn’t drink, the devil would dig his spurs into old Paul and Paul would get all mean. But nasty mean, even meaner then when he did drink.
Whenever Paul got mean, I poured him a whiskey in one of those little glasses with the oranges on them, that mama gave me years ago. I’d hand it to Paul and he’d look at me, the hate coming out of his eyes like an icy heart stopping wind. You know, the kind that whips right through you in the dead of winter and chills you to the bone. But after a minute, he’d laugh, take the glass and down the content in one gulp without spilling a drop. Then he’d be okay, at least for awhile.
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