Sawblade's speeches

Adam Schefter on NFL.COM writes, "In the past 18 presidential elections over the past 72 years dating back to 1932, if the Redskins won the last home game before the election, the incumbent president also won.
If the Redskins lost or tied the last home game before the presidential election, the incumbent president also lost" ... "Like the political ads would say, history approved this message. " The Redskins are playing the Packers today. Go Packers.

Quite an eventful weekend so far, especially considering that yesterday I drove a friend to the airport because she was flying to visit her boyfriend for the weekend. On the way I got a call from Sasha because was worried that I was fleeing Charlottesville. (Well, I'm definitely glad she cares, I was beginning to wonder if anyone cared about me anymore). That evening, Armenoush and I went to the Biltmore for some dinner; the place is really cool, you can get a burger called the S.O.B! Plus it's fun crossing train tracks to get there. Afterwards we went to Teeter to buy some groceries and then came back to the Moosetrap and watched Mission Impossible. It's nice to have fun with a friend once in a while.

Anyway, throwing a changeup here... Outdoors Club adventure number 3 of the year today, and every time some really wacky stuff happens. The leader of the group, Rebecca, didn't ask me to bring my car to drive people, but one of the guys who she did ask didn't have his. So she asks me to get mine (I was at Old Dorms at the time meeting with the rest of the group), and I run back to the Moosetrap to get it. Then I remembered that the windshield was really crappy so I went and got a wipe to clean it off; I really needed to be able to see well if I was 1) carrying passengers and 2) going on the interstate. So I clean the windshield off and drive over to Bonnycastle, and then Rebecca says it's not necessary anymore. Blah. So I just park it in the Bonnycastle lot (hopefully it was legal on weekends) for the day as one of the other group members brings his 8-passenger van. The journey to Devil's Marbleyard went pretty smoothly afterwards; despite a wrong turn every now and again all the vehicles managed to stick together.
The weather was beautiful for the hike today, I think it may have been close to 80 degrees. Hardly October weather, huh? Although there were tons of leaves on the ground which set the stage for many missteps to come this day. Some days you're just accident prone, and when leaves cover up the "actual" ground, it doesn't help things. The first stream that we cross, I think I have stable footing but I don't; I try to recover my balance but apparently step onto a hole or something that I thought was ground and fell over in the stream. My left arm took the hardest hit on a rock and my hand and the back of my arm got some nasty scrapes. Ok, embarassing moment of the day! Ironically, I was talking to one of the other people on the hike about the long rivers that we had to cross on my last adventure and how I managed to avoid falling in, carrying much more stuff.
So after hiking for a while we come to the marbleyard; a mountain of boulders that we tried to scramble to get to the top. Rebecca said at the beginning that it was "strenuous/fun" and it was both of those. It was a really interesting experience; you assume that all of the boulders when you step up from one to the next are stable; occasionally you run across one that wobbles and you try to jump to another or grab onto another boulder. It was kind of tough for me because I was trying to avoid putting a lot of pressure on my left hand because it was scraped up, although I found that I had no choice. Hey, you do what you gotta do; when the alternative is running your head into a big rock, it's really no contest. Besides, for some reason I got light-headed a couple of times while I was climbing up, so I needed to lean against some boulders. 'Tis better to sting your hand than to fall backwards and break something more important'!

(Hmm, actually I feel like I've been getting light-headed more lately... I'm not sure what it is...if I'm just not working out enough or what... I'm not blaming it on lack of sleep because I've been getting more sleep this year, sadly this is inversely proportional to my grades though. Wait, why am I going off on this tangent? I don't know. Let me return to what I was saying..)

After probably 45 minutes or so (I'm not sure of the exact time) of intense work to get to the top, the view was absolutely incredible. Well, not that it wasn't when we were halfway up the beast anyway! On our way down the same hazards presented themselves with some sketchy and shifty boulders. In addition, the fact that you're no longer leaning parallel to the boulders, and the boulders slope down; it was a challenging task to say the least trying to get down back to the bottom of the boulders. But we made it (obviously, or I wouldn't be typing this).
On our way back the "normal" hike, the entire path was leaves-covered so we definitely had some tripping action going on the whole way down because of a lot of hidden rocks. Finally, when we got out to the main road where we parked, Rebecca found a big animal head skeleton (probably a deer skeleton) that she took with her; I told her that if you got a flannel shirt to go with it and put it on your head that you'd be the head of a country/hunting club!

I get really sick of it whenever people start talking about the need to hold close to your church denomination. I think certain people just bicker too much about this. Every once in a while, someone I know bashes church leadership at Wesley Mem because the leaders don't seem Methodist enough (ie they seem to preach too much from a unitarian perspective or something like that). I'm sorry, I just don't care. It reminds me of when the Wesley Foundation was down at Red Bird for spring break my first year, and we had an agape service. The speaker that was performing the service was telling us that it wasn't a real communion service, because in the past people of different denominations didn't believe that it was justified to have communion with other denominations, or they could only have communion within their own church, or something to that effect. The speaker said that God was probably looking down on them and saying, "You idiots, won't you ever get it right?" I think some people can be much too trifling about this issue. Last year at one point, I mentioned to a guest at the Wesley Foundation that I came from a Presbyterian Church and she said that "well, you don't need to get out your Methodist card", saying that the Methodist church is pretty liberal about welcoming anyone. Still, what's the deal with making the huge distinction? At one point this year, I was telling one of the first years that I grew up in a Presbyterian church, and he responded, "Hmm, you don't seem like that kind of guy." Huh??

I've never tied myself to any particular denomination of Christianity, nor do I think it's really necessary to classify anyone as such. I'm not all that clear on the differences between denominations, but growing up I went to a congregationalist church, then a Presbyterian Church, and now at UVA I'm at Wesley Mem, a Methodist church. My parents sometimes say that I'm just disguising myself as a Methodist. Uh...yeah. Right. I don't consider myself any of these denominations, I just try to consider myself a Christian. I don't favor denominations; if I did I wouldn't keep coming back to Wesley, I would have found myself a presbyterian church. I don't really see differences between denominations, just individuals or individual churches. Frankly I'm not all that clear on differences between denominations, and frankly at this point in my life I don't think I really care. Because I'm sure that in every denomination there are traditions that people like and others they don't like; fine. I've been to several Presbyterian churches and Methodist churches, and on both sides I've found churches that I really liked and others I couldn't stand. In terms of Wesley, I came back time after time because of people that are really welcoming. And I live at the Wesley Foundation because of the people that are there.

If you're ever at the Wesley Foundation, I'm certainly willing to welcome you in my home (which at the present time is the Moosetrap). Although if you're asking me to advocate Methodism as the way to go over all other Christian denominations, you're probably wasting your time. We can't afford to be this picky. I don't exactly have the greatest success trying to make new friends, so I know that I definitely can't afford to be picky. I'm sorry, if you're too trifling about something you're probably going to miss out on a good thing.

I feel like every day I'm riding a roller coaster and I don't know if the tracks are under me. It's weird. It's a very strange although interesting feeling when it seems like you're a thousand feet up and not sure if the ground is under you. (Maybe that's why I want to go skydiving!) One day I'd like to be able to get off this ride and just walk on the ground for a while.

11:40 PM, 10/27/04: The Red Sox finally break the curse, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals. Eight straight playoff wins; a record. Keith Foulke, pitching to Edgar Renteria. Renteria grounds the ball back to Foulke, and he throws to first. Red Sox sweep the Cardinals, winning game 4, 3-0. "The Idiots are World Series Champions", the announcer says to Johnny Damon. MVP: Manny Ramirez. I think Ortiz or Bellhorn may have deserved it more, but he battled .412 with a homer and 4 RBI! 17 game hitting streak. (I still can't believe though, that it's Terry Francona that was managing this team! Oh well!) Wahoo!!!

Let it be known that on this night, October 20 to 21st, 2004, the Red Sox made history. The first baseball team ever to come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a series. What impressed me was the way they did it... after getting shelled in game 3 I didn't think they would make it out of Fenway. And then in both games 4 and 5, one inning away from elimination twice, they came back off Mariano Rivera, quite possibly the greatest closer ever, to force extra innings twice, to have David Ortiz hit the game winner in each one. And then Schilling, after being shelled in game 1, with the stride to come back into Yankee stadium and undo his blunders from game 1.... and then tonight, Johnny Damon, who couldn't hit a tee ball in this series, coming up with a grand slam to give the Red Sox the lead. I was born in Massachusetts; I went to Fenway as a kid when Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens were with the Red Sox, but now I've never been prouder to be a Red Sox fan. The last time they made it to the World Series I was 2 years old. They have home field in the world series... this may be their best shot in the next 20 years to win a World Series. May the curse be broken this year!

Check out the newly updated LEAP page on the Wesley Foundation website at http://wesleyuva.org/leap.html :-)

Sometimes you come to very strange realizations about yourself and you're not really sure whether to say "Ugh!" or "hmm..."

Last night during informal worship, we had our debut performance of our LEAP show, which we named at the last minute, literally, "Rediscovery". After spending 2 days at a weekend retreat doing much line cramming and music practice, we got the show ready to go. Sarah Reynolds is directing the show this semester, and I think she did a good job getting us ready for the show. Actually, it's the first semester for a lot of us.... Sarah, Alex C. and I are the only people in the group this semester that have done it before. Ashlee, Sean, "R squared", and J-Dub are all new to LEAP. After thinking that LEAP would probably just dissolve into the abyss last semester after Andrew graduated, Sarah and Alex did a good job of reviving it.
After thinking that we would have to change the style of the show for a while, we came back to the original format of music/drama, where we pick out songs and write our own script. Alex and Leigha wrote the script; the theme is "A loss of faith". The songs we're singing are "The Long And Winding Road" by the Beatles, "Most of the Time" by Bob Dylan, "Day is Done" by Peter, Paul and Mary, "Turn Turn Turn" by the Byrds, and "This Love will Carry" by Dougie McLean.
Despite some of our inhibitions about how it would work out, it worked out really well. John Wade (J-Dub!) is the star of the show; he's doing an awesome job considering it's his first semester doing LEAP. Ashlee, primarily in LEAP because she wanted to play piano, doesn't consider herself much of an actress, but she plays "the girlfriend from NOVA" well. Sean and Alex, whom I'm considering giving them the nicknames "the two towers" because they're both so tall, did a great job. And I can't say enough about "R squared", he brings so much personality to the group and he's real good at playing a convincing character. I, myself have a very small part; my acting is done by the second scene. My main role in this show is to be the guitarist for all of our music. Since Andrew graduated, I said I'd try to take up the role of guitarist; not an easy task considering that I'm not a third of the guitar player he is. Although Sarah's convinced that I'm doing a fine job, so I'll take it! I'll be interested to see how our show progresses over the semester.

Well, since the latest trend to be with it is facebooking, I've finally got on board and started my own account. Let the "poking" begin! (If you have no idea what that means, don't worry about it)

all my teams got their asses kicked tonight :-(

50 cents better now

Ugh, headlines really know how to juxtapose two things together that just make you want to scream. For example, the AOL headline today mourns Christopher Reeve, reading, "Paralyzed 'Superman' film star championed medical research". The line directly below reads, "Gas Jumps 8 Cents a Gallon".

GO RED SOX!!

Tonight was the big night for the Cavalier Marching Band... at halftime we performed with the Temptations and the crowd was absolutely ecstatic. The logistical problems we anticipated weren't too major, although as usual I think the sound system wasn't that good. Our section did a dance during the opening number so we all got the spotlight for a few minutes at midfield! It was over pretty quickly, but how many people get to say that they performed with the Temptations?

That's all... have math problem set due in 8 hours

So when I woke up this morning I figured I was feeling better and decided to run the 5k anyway, despite my inhibitions about it last night. Actually, Tara's sorority was sponsoring the event. Tara's another fellow Wesley Foundation person I've come to know over the past 2 years... anyway, I told her about the crazy backpacking trip (from my last entry) and she said I was nuts for running this morning. Yeah, probably, but I still did it. I'm convinced that it wasn't quite a 5k since my stopwatch said I did the whole thing in about 21:15. The reason this doesn't make sense to me is that I haven't run a 5k race in a few months, and my best 5k time ever was about 22:15. Plus I had sore feet and a stomach bug from the weekend... musta been that cold chicken.
After the race I talked to another guy who ran it and he said he finished it in 16:40. Holy cow! He said he wasn't on the cross country team though, citing "not good enough" to be on the team. If that's true, I think that might be a little more shocking. Someone there also said I looked kind of like Alan Webb with hair. Well, I'd have to gain like 30 pounds of muscle and cut about 7 minutes off my 5k time to be like him. Although my goal is not to be the next Alan Webb! Anyway, it was good to get out and do a race again... even though I didn't get to run with Ashlee this time around, she gives me motivation to keep in shape when these events come around.

What a wild weekend. Finally not having a band weekend was a welcome sight. (No, I'm not saying that because I'm tired of being in the band, it's just that I'm tired of having performed 3 Saturdays in a row!) Anyway, I went with the Outdoors Club on a backpacking hike up the St. Mary's Wilderness trail (it's about 50 miles or so southwest of Charlottesville). Lindsey, the leader of the group, asked me to drive since we had 10 people going and we needed a 3rd car. On Friday afternoon I ran home from class (stopped by the library first to print out the inventory list) and attempted to quickly pack. After about 30 minutes I had most of the stuff, although my camera wasn't ready (I had been charging up batteries for it), realized that I wanted to print out chords/lyrics to Hotel California, and that I didn't have a flashlight. Camera first... I put the batteries in the camera and realized it was full from previous picture outings (ie band camp, the Akron game, and the hike from several weeks ago). So I hooked the camera up to my now-reasonably-working computer, no go. Duh! I needed the driver. So I searched for the driver and I bought a downloadable copy for something like 7 bucks or something off paypal. Downloaded it, then the camera was no go. Camera upload error. Doh! So I went through some of the pics and deleted some bad ones to free up space. Then I quickly installed the printer driver on my computer and attempted to print it out. 1st page went ok, then I got a system error. Blah! So I abandoned that idea, and ran to the bookstore to buy a flashlight. Got that, threw it in my car with the rest of my stuff, and headed to Echols to meet the rest of the group. There, Lindsey hooked me up with a hiking backpack (it's about twice the size of your everyday school backpack, or mine at least). I stuffed all my supplies in there and realized that I had no way to attach my guitar to the backpack. A couple of us attempted to get that done but no go. Doh! I offered to carry it but everyone said that would be a bad idea since we'd be doing some maneuvering that you would need your hands for, plus we'd be crossing some rivers.

So we all drove out to St. Mary's and the clouds overhead looked like rain. The meteorologist that I am, I said, "Well, it's not going to do anything until I see evidence of this rain of which you speak." (I figured it probably would rain but I didn't want to down the group!) I left my guitar in the trunk of my car since I couldn't take it with me. We started moving along, and I began to understand why it was a bad idea. We maneuvered over some fallen logs and squeezed through some tight spaces along the first part (not easy when the backpack comes up to the top of your head!). We also came across an abandoned sweatshirt and cap... from then on we figured there might be some naked guy walking around somewhere (many inside jokes about that subject were developed from this idea). Later on we crossed a rocky river for the first time. Some people took their shoes and socks off, although I didn't... so mine got really soaked. Oh well, keep on moving while sloshing around a little bit! Then the trail was right along the edge of a cliff, and the ground to walk on just sort of ended at one point. Well, temporarily. We had to scale the cliff a little bit, holding on to tree roots that were stuck in the cliff to keep our balance since our feet were either on an extremely sharp slope or a very narrow rock. Either way, with those backpacks, center of gravity does NOT favor you. Yeah, definitely could not have done that with the guitar. So we kept going until we got to a fork. We took a break, and Lindsey dropped her pack and ran up one of the sides. Eventually she came back down (after apparently either tripping or getting whacked by some tree limbs) saying that the campground was in her direction. Although after hearing about how steep it was, we went the other way instead! That's ok, it eventually took us close to the campground and we just had to climb up a steep hill to get there anyway.

So we're at this plateau which is the campground. The weather seemed even more threatening so we set up 3 tents, just in case. But still no rain. Then, we figured we'd build a fire, although Lindsey had brought a portable stove just in case we couldn't get one going. Although both of those options required matches. While we had matches, what we didn't have was the match book (or something to strike it against). We tried various surfaces to strike the matches against but no luck with the fire. So we tried going "caveman" style, digging into a log a little big and then twirling a second stick against it back and forth to get something going from all the friction. Nada. Then we tried clanging some rocks together. Nope. We got some sparks but nothing to start a fire with. Doh! I should mention at this point that when I was packing, I realized I didn't have time to make a sandwich, so I just threw a half-bag of bread, a block of cheese, and a case of peanut butter into my bag, figuring I'd put together a sandwich later. But since we couldn't get a fire going, most of us gathered under one tent. Other people had brought marshmallows and graham crackers and chocolate for smores, so we used the bread, crackers, marshmallows, peanut butter to make some sandwiches and pseudo-smores (no cooked marshmallows!). Also we had some cold chicken to eat... it actually wasn't too bad. (I should mention that it's a shame that after thousands of years of human evolution we don't remember how to get a fire going without technology. Gee, I hope we don't run out of energy sources anytime soon...)

So after that we got out our sleeping bags that the club provided. Although none of us were sleeping in the tents (at least initially), we all decided to sleep outdoors under the stars. At the time it was a very pretty sky. So we all just bundled near each other and went to sleep. I was kind of in and out of consciousness for most of the night, partially because I had kept my keys in my pocket, and partially because rain came down on us off and on for a while. Later on that night it started raining again and it woke us all up, so a couple of us including myself went into one of the tents for the rest of the night.

We all woke up around 9-9:30 or so when the sun was really starting to come up, and we cleaned up the site and left. On our way back down, we turned and headed towards the waterfall at St. Mary's. It meant we had to cross the river several more times. After soaking my shoes before and not wanting to destroy another pair of socks, I figured I'd try crossing it barefoot. Then I remembered I have really soft feet. Yeah, I almost fell down a couple of times trying to cross. Not a huge deal normally, unless you're carrying stuff that you can't afford to get wet like a digital camera, a cell phone, and some of the stuff in the backpack! When I got across I put my socks back on and some blood showed up on them later. Sweet...battle wound! Eventually we got to the falls and we had a pretty good time... most of us briefly went swimming in the river. Yes, briefly; it was cold water! At one point when I was trying to get across the river, I lost my balance and fell in (although I was swimming at the time so I didn't destroy anything by falling, well, other than maybe a piece of pride!). Some of the others also did some bouldering along one of the side mountain walls, with the river right below them. That looked really hardcore, and I knew I didn't have the feet to try to do that. By the way, on the way back to the car, I just decided to keep my shoes on when crossing the river several times, getting them soaked again.

It's strange, in the description, Lindsey wrote that the trip was "perfect for beginners". I certainly had a blast on the trip, although that's a pretty hardcore trip for a beginner. I told Geoff later on about the cliffs we had to cross along the hike, how if you didn't do it right you would pretty much fall to your doom; he said, "Well, I guess you did it right then!" I bet certain people who read this are thinking right now, "Well, I hope you have band weekends more often!"

So now I'm just taking it easy for a bit... probably I'll just get some sleep tonight. I'm considering running a 5k tomorrow if I'm feeling ok (which remains to be seen).