Puerto Rican tales of kosherness, compassionate conservatism, the War on Terror and the calling.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

So seductive...





Your Taste in Music:


90's Alternative: High Influence
Classic Rock: High Influence
Hip Hop: High Influence
Old School Hip Hop: High Influence
R&B: High Influence
80's Rock: Medium Influence
90's Hip Hop: Medium Influence
90's Pop: Medium Influence
90's R&B: Medium Influence
Alternative Rock: Medium Influence
90's Rock: Low Influence
Adult Alternative: Low Influence
Gangsta Rap: Low Influence
Hair Bands: Low Influence
Progressive Rock: Low Influence

George W. Bush II??? I think so :)





You Are a Religious Republican



You make up the conservative, Christian, dedicated core of the Republican Party.

You believe it's important for religious people to stand up for their beliefs in politics.

And for you, this means voting your conscience - which almost always means voting Republican.

Your pet causes include the sanctity of life, school vouchers, and prayer in school
.


Monday, April 25, 2005

Best.Sping.Holy.Days.Ever. :)

WOW! I knew that the spring Holy Days were going to be a great thing after a couple of difficult months in every sense of the word. It was my first Passover and I knew it was going to be a solemn and somber occassion but I didn't think of how it would hit me until it actually happened. I started to really understand and feel Christ's sacrifice when the bread was being broken. I could then sense exactly the body of Christ being broken through the beating He took when he was betrayed. I was nervous too about the footwashing and all but it went well, I made sure my toenails were clipped ;)
So we had services where we normally have them in Des Moines and it was awesome. We got a special rate to stay Saturday night so most of us did and had Night To Be Much Observed at sunset in the room we meet in. Kim visited for the weekend with her two sisters and we had some good conversation all weekend. We had about 3 hours in between the end of services and beginning of NTBMO so Ann, Kim, and I did a beer run for the weekend and then just talked and chilled until 8ish :) The dinner was awesome as all Church potlucks are and I must say that I stuffed myself with the best food that loving and caring hands can make :) I ate so much that I couldn't eat sweet unleavened cake afterwards but it was all good, YAY for Church potlucks!!! We then proceeded to change into swim trunks so that we could enjoy the jacuzzi. I especially was going to treat myself to it because I had a stressful week and wanted to relax for the weekend and it was wonderful.
I cannot complain about the weekend and the beginning of God's Holy Day calendar. First Passover experience, great NTBMO dinner and time spent with brethren, great girl and wonderful conversations with the girl...Life is good and I knew that the Holy Days would make things better (not only for me but for other people). This is the last week of classes and then finals week and I would be done for about 3 months!!! YEAH!!! You know that the Truth is how we do! :)

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Gentlemen, goodnight...Ladies, good morning :)





Your Seduction Style: The Natural





You don't really try to seduce people... it just seems to happen.
Fun loving and free spirited, you bring out the inner child in people.
You are spontaneous, sincere, and unpretentious - a hard combo to find!
People drop their guard around you, and find themselves falling fast.


Hmmm, I think this would describe me well :)





Your Love Style is Storge









For you, love and friendship are almost the same thing

And your love tends to be the enduring, long lasting kind

(You've been known to still have connections with exes)

But sometimes your love is not the most passionate

Leap before you look, and you'll find that fire you crave


Thank you to the presence of Metallica :)

It's a good thing I've got Metallica in my laptop because it's what's keeping me awake as I try to make up for the biggest blunder I could have ever committed in my collegiate career. I seriously felt like I must have stepped into Annette's shoes or something like that when I arrived in class and saw all those stacks of papers being piled up on the profs desk and I had completely forgotten about it because of all the other papers and debates that I was doing. I guess if anything I now know what it is like to feel like my favorite Camerican :) Let's just say that I don't know how you do it girl but hopefully you'll be able to counsel me about this and what steps can be done to reverse it ;) You know I love you and I'm playin' but seriously, I don't think I've listened to this much Metallica in a short amount of time as I have this morning :) I gotta say, if they ever get back to sounding like they did on The Black Album and their old stuff, I'll definitely get back to being hardcore Metallica fan. Oh well, I've got almost 2 pages done so I've got a minimum of 3 more to go and I think it might turn out well. I just hope she accepts it.

In the words of Larry the Cableguy, "GET 'ER DUUUUUNNNNNN!!!!!" :)

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Blunder of the most serious consequences!!! AHHHH!

Ok so basically today I have had the biggest scare of my collegiate academic career. I've known for a while that I have 3 papers due around the same time frame. I have two papers due that are with the same professor because I take U.S. Foreign Policy along with U.S. Latino Politics with her. There's another paper for another class which is about Marxist Rebellions and Revolutions. I know they are all due around the same time, especially the ones that are with the same prof. So I went to Omaha for the weekend and started preparing for this North Korean debate which I was assigned to (we were the first group and had the least time to prepare for it) and I was all worried about that and what my talking points were going to be that I completely ignored what the syllabus said. I got all dressed up with a dress shirt and tie, nice slacks and shoes for the debate, and to my surprise a bunch of people are turning in their papers. I ask around to figure out what was going on and they told me that the paper was due today and I think I started thinking some things that I can't repeat here. I could not believe that of all the days the paper had to be due it was due the day I was preparing for my debate and completely didn't even know when it was supposed to be turned in. I have basically kissed my A in the class goodbye because I have reviewed the syllabus and it says that "late submittels will suffer a grade penalty and might not be accepted." This is pathetic I tell you, I busted my butt the first part of the semester to start off with all A's in all my classes and now because of confusion/procrastination/different classes with same prof with research papers involved I am now done for the semester. Kiss the 4.0 goodbye and possibly the 3.5 because of this stupidity in my part. This is exactly what I didn't need but I guess I'll write something up tonight with the partner I can't work with because she sprained her ankle and we haven't communicated at all and I don't even know if my paper will be accepted. Here's to a long night...I think ordering pizza is in the order :) (I can always find a positive in something)

Monday, April 18, 2005

Not too bad of a weekend

Back from a awesome weekend in Omaha. I must say that it was great that I went off on a spur of the moment type of thing and decided Friday afternoon to go and visit Kim in Omaha and surprise her. Needless to say, I think I achieved my goal of surprising by showing up in front of the apartment building and buzzing the doorbell and seeing her reaction once she saw me. Her exact words were, "you're terrible for telling me you weren't going to make it and then you did. I'm glad you're here." Yeah, I misled her into thinking I wasn't going to be able to make it because I left late and that I just couldn't but it was me just trying to buy time until I could get there in time :)
So we cooked some pasta on Friday night, her sister Lindsey, her kids, and her husband did a surprise visit and I got to meet them all. I liked meeting the gooey kids because I have an affinity towards the goo (yes I know I'm weird) and they were good kids. I think we watched "The Incredibles" about 5 times in a 2 day span but that movie is so awesome that there's no way I can stop liking it. Sabbath was wonderful because I got to hear the same sermon I heard before "Are You Prepared For Passover" by Mr. Meredith and I got a lot out of it. I took more notes the second time around than I did the first time and then had a great Sabbath dinner (yay for Friday night's leftovers!) and Kim went to see a movie. After much delay I was FINALLY able to see the movie that describes the story of me and Jon's life: HITCH. It was incredibly, wonderfully, romantic comedy that was just the perfect date movie. Watching Will Smith back on the big screen in a comedy was awesome because I've been watching a lot of Fresh Prince lately on Nick At Nite and I still remember all the funny jokes about Carton's height and lack of game and the fat jokes directed at Uncle Phil. Ahhhh, it's great to reminisce about the 90s and how it shaped my life :)
I made it back safely to Ames last night and went to classes this morning. Not too bad of a way to start off another week and I think the Omaha weekend was a much needed thing for me. Only 2 more weeks of class left and then finals week and I should be done for the semester with no looking back. I still don't know what my summer plans are exactly but I hope I am able to know sometime soon. I'm just wanting to get it done as soon as possible because it has been a difficult semester for obvious reasons and I just haven't been able to concentrate too much but school will hopefully end on a high note. Let's see how it all works out.
Last night on the way back from Omaha I called Jon and we were able to talk for about an hour. It was a good conversation and we were making some plans about visiting Milwaukee for the end of Unleavened Bread, making some summer plans for L4T and LYC, and just catching up on some other aspects of our lives. Unfortunately Jon is going to be heading off to France for the Feast this year so sadly most of us won't be able to hang with Jonny G this year at FOT but he said we should definitely do it next year so that the whole crew can hang out together. Under these circumstances I decided that since it's a late Feast this year I was thinking of maybe warm weather, nearby beach vecinity for this Feast.
So I was talking to someone in the Omaha congregation who has family in Florida and was telling me how Clearwater is about 35 minutes away from Tampa. This flipped the switch in my brain and I started thinking about how I haven't been to Busch Gardens since summer of 1995 and how awesome it would be to be able to fill up an amusement park with a bunch of church people and ride rollercoasters, run around, and have a blast with the whole churchy crew. So I'm throwing the idea out right now about maybe possibly getting the majority of us out to the same Feast site to keep the "unity" created after 3/12. I use the quotation marks here because I just feel that apparently something is missing in that regard. I know I don't have my own agenda, I'm willing to go where most everyone is going. I just hope that we're able to compromise into a location where most of us can be together. I hope we can do something together no matter where the location is. Let's try to make it happen. Anyways, that's all for now.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Ok so not everything can be perfect

Wow, two post about 5 hours apart so I'm doing pretty good today :) Well Randy Johnson decided to pitch like a 42 year-old bum instead of the stud he usually is and the Yankees lost tonight. I was only able to watch the first 5 innings or so up to 7:45 because I had this public lecture that I could attend for extra credit for not one but TWO classes :) You know I have to take advantage of things like that plus it was going to be about "The Soviet Union Dissolved...Maybe Not." I must say that it was pretty interesting hearing from someone who had visited the Soviet Union before, has visited Russia and the surrounding states and one of his books was actually used as a textbook for my post-Soviet politics class last spring. I thought that was so cool and now I wish I actually read the book last spring when I could have, hehehe.

Well the guest lecturer's name was Dr. Kotkin and he spoke for about 45 minutes and was quite humorous during his talk. He spoke on the fact that even though the Soviet Union dissolved there was still a very strong sense of "sovietism" and "sovietness" in the republics that emerged from it. Even though there was supposed to be profound change things are still very much the same in how those countries run. It was interesting nonetheless and I liked hearing what he was saying.

Well I guess it was an ok day but the Yanks lost 8-5 because A-Rod is sucking big time in run-producing opportunities. Honestly A-Rod, you're making about $25 million a year and you're starting off just as bad as last year and you're choking big time against the Yankees arch-rivals and not really earning your keep. Blah to him and to Randy Johnson tonight for basically giving the game to the Red Sox tonight. Oh well, the next time they play is around Memorial Day weekend so there's calm and rest now. Oh and what is up with the stupid Red Sox fan took a swipe at Gary Sheffield? Stupidity once again exemplified tonight with a stupid fan. Anyways, we'll be waiting for them at the "House That Ruth Built" :)

Yankees, women, and macs

Hmmm, I really should have posted yesterday since it was a better day than usual. The reason the day was better than usual was because the Yankees beat the Red Sox 5-2 last night. It isn't the fact that the Yankees beat the Red Sox that made it a good day but it was the fact that they beat Curt Schilling in his first start of the season. Plus the Yankees finally seemed like they brought their bats for this season and everybody (except A-Rod) got a hit and shellackled Schilling into an early night. They play again tonight (I'm watching it as I post) and they just blew the first call of the game with a non-tag out. I mean, seriously the first baseman didn't even apply the tag on Womack as he was running to first base and they still called him out. I mean, the throw was off and the tag didn't even occur yet the umpire is blind enough to call him out. Blah, I hate this all Red Sox hurrah about them finally winning the World Series and everybody jumping on their bandwagon. It's pathetic and they get help from the umpires and they have the most pathetic and whiny fans in the history of sports. I'm tired of hearing about the Red Sox, their fans, their futility, their moronic lifestyles, their bad hairdos...that was last year and now it's 2005 and it's a new season. Let's get on with it.

So fantasy baseball is going well for me so far. I have to say that I got pretty lucky with the type of players I was able to get. I mean, I completely rearranged the pre-draft order because I didn't like how some players were rated and I went with who I knew could produce. I didn't even participate in the draft but I got 3 of the top 10 pitchers in the league and a bunch of great hitters and I have flexibility for trading and maybe improving a bit. I'm 6-3-1 right now and I'm leading 6-3 right now after trailing 8-0 on Monday (I love it when my guys destroy the competition) and it should get better with my pitchers improving and such. Not too bad and hopefully it'll continue. I'm up for putting some money on it but I don't know if everybody else would follow along. :)

So yesterday I had to meet with my partner for my Latino Politics paper which is focusing on Puerto Rican status and we decided to got to the computer lab in the tech center rather than the campus library. I didn't think twice about it when I saw her in front of the library and suggested to go there but she told me later on why she changed her mind. Apparently some freaky guy was looking all weird at her and staring at her and being the girl that she is she didn't want to be there anymore and waited for me in front of the library instead of inside of it. So we get to Durham (it's like where you get help with all the techie stuff) and used the computer lab there to do some research and I saw that there were Macs :( I was not very happy about the fact that we had to use Macs because they are the most annoying and complicated piece of technology that exists today. I have to agree with Summer's opinion on 'em and I would like to add some more thoughts of my own on them.

I was talking to Annette last night and I came up with something I believe is revolutionary. I was telling her this story about the Macs and I proceeded to say this: "Women are like Macs. They're complicated, you can't understand them, and they take forever to get going." Yes I know it's a horrible thing to say (especially the last part) but I thought it was something funny to go and say :) I immediately told her it was a classic that was going in my blog and I hope you guys are able to appreciate it as much as we both did :) Anyways, I hope I don't get massacred by the ladies for my quote but I hope it'll be ok in the end. All in good jest. Now back to the game and to a Yankee victory :)

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

One month today

Here I am posting again for the first time since Friday and I have to say that my mood, feelings, emotions, and a lot of my thoughts have changed. If you guys have read Ann's blog then you'd see that we had a great time on the Sabbath during the fast and afterwards by eating at Applebee's and watching "Fever Pitch" in the movie theater. The fascinating part about it is that as a diehard Yankee fan I forsook my anti-Red Sox feelings because Ann was in the mood to watch a romantic comedy and you can't say no to that :) (I love you Ann :)) It was a good movie, it made me laugh quite a bit except at the end when they showed highlights of the "Greatest Choke Job in the History of Sports" courtesy of the Yankees last year in the 2004 ALCS. Oh well, I just put my head on Ann's shoulder and she consoled me during those scenes. I told her how I had planned to raise my own kids teaching them about the "Curse of the Bambino" and how the Yankees always, ALWAYS had the Red Sox's number and they were going to continue breaking Boston fans' hearts year after year. Thanks to the Yankees last year that is no longer the case but there are more important things to talk about.

It is one month today. It is one month since the Milwaukee shootings occurred today and I haven't been able to think about anything else. One month since most of our lives were changed because Satan decided to declare outfront war on the Church of God. It hasn't been the easiest time since that black Sabbath with so many emotions, so many different thoughts, and so many feelings swirling inside of me as I have tried to cope with it. You all probably know the story if you've read Annette's blog or if I've talked to you about it because certain things in our lives changed in order for a great friend and person like Jon to be protected. I know it because all the plans, ideas, and thoughts that I had at the end of January 2005 were changed, put away, destroyed (insert any word you'd like) leading to a very emotional rollercoaster for the ensuing months (not all bad, not all good either). I was planning on giving a very big commitment to the girl I was dating (our one-year anniversary was about to happen on my birthday February 8th) with a nice asortment of gifts. Jewelry was included, along with the dozen roses, the card, the whole deal because it was important to me and she was important to me. Well those plans went out the window for reasons I don't want to put up in here and because I could type it for hours and it just brings pain to my heart. For some reason something I worked on for a year didn't work out and I couldn't understand then why it happened but after March 12th I found a rational explanation. Since the plans didn't pan I actually started committing a bit more to school (I started off with A's in all my classes), but more importantly I started talking to more of my friends that I hadn't kept up with all that well during the previous year because I was dating. I talked longer and more often with Jon, Jeremy, and I started talking to my good friend Annette who I hadn't talked to for about a year. You could say she was counseling me throughout the post-breakup period and it was great to "regain" a friend again. For the ensuing weeks I talked a whole lot more to all my friends and Annette came up with the brilliant idea of doing a spring break road trip up to Canada. I had never been up north and I had nothing going on for spring break other than starving all week so I talked to Ann and Jon and they were up for it as long as long as Ann could take a couple of days off from school (our spring break wasn't the same week) and Jon needed to be able to get off from work those days. Basically everything happened at the last minute because Ann took charge of the whole trip with planning and Jon's boss rearranged the entire schedule so that he could be able to take those days off. Even Adam was able to come last minute and be there in Canada with us. Then...the world changed and what I thought was incomprehensible now made sense. The only reason I can think of as to why something didn't work out for me was the fact that it meant that God was using all of our lives for something greater than we can think of. Then the time in Milwaukee served as a time of healing because of all the people there that I hadn't seen in a long time and it just served as proof that the Church is a close-knit family that will support each other during these times. I think 1 Corinthians 12:26 put it perfectly, "And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it."

That's a little synopsis of an endless list of events from the past couple of months and how I guess I'm affected. The weekend was awesome up to the point where I was driving back to my dorm Saturday night and made the mistake of answering my phone. It seemed like the weekend of hades and if I was feeling emotionally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually drained before even more so now. It's as if for some reason some people just don't want to understand exactly what I've always felt and what type of person I am. I know I am not a saint, not by any means because I know my closet is full of skeletons and I'm still paying the consequences of my decisions to this day but I try and continue to try to improve. I was reading Summer's blog from today and I have to agree that the Bible Study area is probably the one area of my life where I need to emphasize more on. School, personal problems, and the skeletons take up so much time and drain my emotions to the point where I feel I can't deal with all of it. I'm known to shun myself from the world at times like these and I'm trying my hardest not to. There's a reason why my blog is titled the way it is. That Green Day song is basically the story of my life and it basically summarizes what my life has been about and what it is right now. School's about to finish in about 3 weeks and I intend to exile myself in Florida this summer and regroup. It's obviously not working out for me in the Midwest, too much drama, too much stuff I can't control. I've only got one more year of school left and I hope to "get 'er dunnnnn" as soon as I can. I'm planning on doing L4T and LYC, hopefully by road trippin' with Jon to get there by flying in to Chicago. Let's see how that works out though, because it would provide the most fun and best way to spend 3 weeks of my summer. We all need to heal some way and I just don't think that spending my summer in D.C. was the way to go after all this.

Nice to see that I just went on a tangent that probably makes no sense. I always have the belief that somehow writing what my feelings are would help. I've yet to discover if that actually works after 4 years of trying.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Here's to a solemn Sabbath and a helpful fast

Well after another undesirable week of school I am very glad that the Sabbath is here. It's been a somewhat tiring and not really exciting week so the fact that it's over and it means I'll be done in 4 weeks makes me very, very happy. Well for those who are interested the midterm wasn't too bad although I wish I would have studied more than what I did. It was an essay exam and it was mostly based on this book that I was supposed to have read the past couple of weeks. Actually we were supposed to have been reading it over spring break and the ensuing weeks of class but obviously things changed and it took me a while to get back "into the swing of things." It's a history class that is based on science, technology, and public culture in Europe 1500s-present and it's pretty cool actually. The professor is awesome and makes sure that we've got as much information on the handouts he gives us during the class and is genuinely a nice guy. He's even almost extra careful and goes completely out of his way to help us out. Needless to say, I wish more of my professors were like that. He's getting the best evaluation from me whenever we have to fill out those teacher evaluations at the end of the semester.

Well the Sabbath is here and it's an important one with the fast that we are doing. It's something that I think we all agree has to be done because of the recent events that happened and the need for us to lean on God during these trying times. I still don't understand why such an event had to happen and why certain things in my life and in the lives of my closest friends the way they did. So many little pieces moved around so that our lives and things changing completely right before the events in Milwaukee happened and that probably brings more confusion to my already stressed out and confused Puerto Rican mind. I think Annette posted like the short story of how things played out in her blog (it's in the March archives I think) and to see how certain things worked out it's perplexing. Why me, why us, why did all this happen the way it did are probably the things that go through my mind the most along with all the other confusing stuff that happens in my every day life. Let's just say that there is never a dull moment in this life of mine and I'm interested to see what God has in store. Like Annette said in her blog the other day, so many things were being planned and the same way that God made things happen beforehand, He's changed plans again afterwards and I'm left to think a lot during the day. Yeah, it's not good when I'm thinking all day because it just leaves me in this state of confusion, perplexion, sadness at times, loneliness....oh well though, it's just something where i guess I try to brush it off and do my best. I am human though and it's hard to deal with the emotions of the situation at hand. This fast though will be good for me and for all of us in the Church as we strive to draw close to God and have Him heal the wounds and have us learn the lessons He wants us to learn from this. It's not easy to deal with all of this but if we ask more of His Holy Spirit and we strive to do what's right in our lives He'll be there to answer our questions and provide us with what we need.

Anyways, that's enough for my "does not make any sense blog" which I decided to do at 1am. That's probably a little insight as to why I may have named my blog after a Green Day (which by the way is an incredible song). I'm not the eternally depressed individual who just listens to the sad songs, I just think their song kinda describes my life a little bit. I've been blessed though beyond anything I ever deserve. I should focus more on that than everthing else that crumbles around me. Hmmm, if I only actually tried to do that more I think I'd be ok.

A good song to wake up to

So this is the song that played on my radio alarm at very early this morning (somewhere between 4-6 since I had to study for my midterm :S). It's a Staind classic and I hadn't heard it in a while and I thought it was appropiate to a lot of the things I've gone through in my life and what has gone on in the past couple of months. I thought you all might appreciate it (especially for the rock fans out there) and it's one of the few times that I actually wake up to a good top 40 song on the radio :)
"So Far Away"
This is my life
its not what it was before
all these feelings i've shared
and these are my dreams
that i'd never lived before
somebody shake me'cause i
i must be sleeping
[chorus]
now that we're here,
it's so far away
all the struggle we thought was in vain
all the mistakes,
one life contained
they all finally start to go away
now that we're here its so far away
and i feel like i can face the day
i can forgive
and i'm not ashamed to be the person that i am today
these are my words
that i've never said before
i think i'm doing okay
and this is the smile
that i've never shown before
somebody shake me 'cause i
i must be sleeping
[chorus]
i'm so afraid of waking
please don't shake me
afraid of waking
please don't shake me
[chorus]

Thursday, April 07, 2005

So far a good day...

In typical Iowa fashion, it's freakishly cold today after a couple of days of nice warm weather. You can go from wearing shorts one day to actually having to wear a hoody and jeans to keep warm. Oh well, enough of my cold weather banter.

It's been a good day so far for me. I got caught up reading Proverbs again after falling behind and falling asleep :) I get frustrated when that happens, at the same time I feel like my life can turn into just reading, reading, reading (ranging from school, school, school). You can tell that I am not a big fan of school but it's just that I don't believe in how the education system works in the US. In other news God continues to do SO MANY things for me even when I know I do not deserve it. I received a letter from Financial Aid and it said that I received another scholarship for Fall and Spring for my last academic year. I don't know if I had it before but it's $2,500 for each semester so it seems like I won't have to take out too many loans for next year for the third year in a row. For all my friends out there, I am living proof that God does remember our prayers and He WILL handle and take care of our needs. It's the second time in the past 2 months that financial aid notifies me of such good news and I appreciate the extra money (it's what allowed me to afford the trip to Canada, tuning up my car, gas, etc) and it's getting me by well so far.

I got a package today in the mail from my mom with our favorite type of bread!!! Yes, yes I got 3 boxes of Matzos along with a card from my parents congratulating me on baptism, my beloved 100th anniversary Yankee cap, the best chocolate in the world (Yay for Nutella right Annette? :)), and a cool reversible belt (it's brown and black and it's the same one Adam bought in Milwaukee and I was thinking of getting. Moms are great in knowing the needs of their children :)). So my mom sent me different types of Matzos even though I've told her for the past 15+ years that I like the plain ol' Matzos the best. I don't care too much for the grape, egg, and different flavored kind...I like them crispy and plain but I guess she's trying to get me to broaden my horizons. Oh well, I guess I'll give them a shot this year and see if they are any good.

Hooray for a great day so far!!! It obviously hasn't sunk in yet that I'll probably have to stay up all night studying for my History class which focuses on science, technology, and public culture in Europe. The test is focusing on the impact of totalitarian regimes on science in the 20th century (specifically Nazi Germany and Stalin Russia). Oh the joy of an all-nighter :) (this is where Jon would insert a Camerican joke that only the nerrdy crew would understand :)) Awesome day so far, hopefully I'll be able to post again later tonight

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Another day on the boulevard :)

There isn't much I can say about today, other than the fact that it was really, really hot last night when I went to bed. Apparently they haven't turned on the A/C in the building so there isn't any cool air coming from the big ol' block on the wall. There isn't much of a breeze coming through the window so basically I'm left to not moving much at all in my room and I'm still sweating bullets. Normally I would not mind it if I was working out like a madman in my room but this is happening after I take a shower and sit down to do some surfing or chattin'. It's pathetic and for some reason it makes me stressed and a little annoyed when I'm sweating for no reason.

In other news I almost shaved my head off, it was getting long and I think I left a total of .5 inches of length of hair on the top of my head. I feel so refreshed now, plus my Yankee cap should fit better now that I got rid of the puffy hair I had going. Speaking of the Yankees, they were playing the Red Sox today in the final game of the opening series of the season. The Yankees, dubbed as the "Evil Empire", were on the verge of completing a three game sweep and begin the early season bragging rights against the annoying Red Sox and proceeded to blow the game. The Yankees took a 3-2 lead into the ninth after scoring the go-ahead run in the 8th and having the entire Yankee Nation, like me, in shock when Derek Jeter took a blow to the head. Seriously, the pitch went straight to his head and you could hear the impact on the helmet and then Jeter fell down but stood back up and went to first base. Needless to say it was a sigh of relief because it was a scary thing to watch. Anyways, the Yanks score on Sheffield's sacrifice fly and head to the 9th with a 3-2 lead and Mariano "The Hand of God" Rivera coming in with "Enter Sandman" playing in Yankee Stadium or "The House that Ruth Built."

So in comes Rivera and he's had some troubles with the Red Sox recently (because they play each other a stinking 26 times each year, it's crazy...they shouldn't play each other that often) and he blew yesterday's save to boot but Jeter was there to save the day. So Rivera walks the first batter, allows a 2 base hits, gets a strike out, and has the bases loaded with Manny Ramirez at the plate. He has the defense playing the double play so we can all go home and start bragging about Yankees mystique again. So Ramirez hits the perfect groundball to A-Rod so that a double play can be turned and end the game but it doesn't exactly happen that way. A-Rod proceeds to boot the groundball and isn't able to even get one out!!! A run scores, and there's no outs because of it...I was so incredibly ticked off because that's been the story behind the "fall of Rivera." Everyone blames him for losing velocity because he's getting older but he's still getting people out. The past couple of years the stinkin' Yankees defense doesn't do its job on a routine groundball (like A-Rod today) or on a fly ball and then what shows up on the record is that Rivera blew the save and is losing his skill. You know what? If you make $25 million a year and you can't handle a stinking ground ball to turn a double play to end the game and sweep the Yankees' most hated rival then you should be to blame. Yeah, after A-Rod booted the groundball the floodgates opened and the Sox ended up winning 7-3 I think. Rivera gets booed and all those years of getting big save after big save is forgotten in an instant because he blew his first 2 saves of this season against Boston. Yeah Rivera didn't pitch that well but in spite of not having his best stuff he put the Yankees in position to win the game if A-Rod converts the double play. Instead they don't even get an out and a good guy like Rivera gets a bunch of people on his case for not having his defense do its thing. I really feel for Mariano because he's one of the few nice guys in baseball and he's incredibly religious and you can see he's God-fearing. He plans to become a minister when he retires from baseball and heads back to Panama and I just hope that I'm able to see him play one day before he does retire.

Wow, so I basically described my afternoon which consisted of watching the game, thinking about the results for a while, and then passing out as I tried to read Proverbs :) I'll make up for it later tonight hopefully. As you can see, I'm a big sports fanatic and I love the Yankees.


LYC CI 2003 Posted by Hello

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

First.Post.Ever.

So here I am on a lonely night in Iowa and I decided that since I am a man who has a lot to say I should start my own little blog. Granted, before I probably would have just turned it into a pro-Bush/right-wing/neo-con/compassionate conservative blog where I would just bash away at liberalism, left-wing lunacy, and the intolerant "tolerance" preached by the "educated elite." Ok, so the people who know me out there would say that there's no way I could refrain from doing so. Of course there will be an occassional bashing of liberals but I just plan on talking a little bit of what goes on in the mind of a misplaced Puerto Rican still finding his purpose in life, still searching for the answers to the many questions in his mind, but more importantly still looking for a place to call home. There's plenty of things that spin inside of my head and if I am able to put them into a cohesive thought I will post. Anyways, I just wanted to see how this works and maybe personalize it a little bit so that it can be a "little bit more like me." I might include a couple of poems here and there from back in the day when I was "young and irresponsible." Who knows, I might even start writing again :) Much love to all my friends and hopefully I'll see many of you soon this summer.