so a lot of people are familiar with the fact that one of my favorite movies (one of my family's favorite movies, really) is You've Got Mail. Tom Hanks is hilarious, it is beyond quotable, and for those that know the Cooper Family you know that its quotability is probably why we even like this movie at all. well, my sisters and mom might think Meg Ryan is cute or something too.
anyway, i was at work today cleaning dishes...which is an entirely too lonely time of the day for me. if manhattan wasn't lonely enough, i have to do dishes by myself sometimes. rough life. but while i'm doing the dishes i get to think, and i like thinking. i think i'm a lot better off because of my ability to think and without it i think i'd be rather comparable to jell-o in terms of IQ. i was thinking about You've Got Mail and how my family could very well be watching it as they were driving down to Nowata, OK (again, stricken if i need to include the location....but i've decided its probably more important that i include ", OK" this time. nowata is a bit smaller).
I'm telling you insignificant details and trying to be funny. here's what i foudn interesting: the movie centers around Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) who is part owner of Fox Books, the economic devil in the eyes of Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) who owns The Shop Around the Corner, a children's bookstore. Fox Books is going to put SATC out of business. its inevitable. and the whole movie they all talk about how horribly commerical and huge and impersonal and loud and unhelpful and corporate and nationally annoying Fox Books is.
yet the movie is also obsessed with incorporating Starbucks. i found this shockingly contradictory. that is all.
-ap.
June 30, 2007
June 29, 2007
four.
i think i've figured out why i'm not blogging anymore.
i got in a rut of NOT blogging - and now i'm looking for the perfect thing to blog about and its never going to come.
so i'll start lame and work my way up.
today lets talk about....eh...four things that i've recently discovered i enjoy. yeah...4 is good...i can make up four.
1) iced tea. this time last year i thought the stuff tasted like watered down grass...which is kinda what it is actually. i'll put it this way instead: i thought watered down herbs tasted horrible. however, a recent addition of honey to some tea has made me a huge fan - but i dont mix it up. i leave all the honey stuck at the bottom and drink it through a straw so i can get huge globs of gloriousness. love the word glob. so many negative boogerish images.
2) this one is still a stretch, because i think i have some obvious fears to overcome here: collared shirts. during the latest SGRT (thats small group reunion tour) my click traveled to indian hills country club where they have not only a dress code, but a plethora of free andes mints (i take full advantage - i wish they didnt have a dress code so i could wear cargo pants with those massive garbage-bag-sized pockets so that i could fill them up and walk around with sandbags attached to my knees. but anyway. as of june 8, i did not own any collared shirts so i had to borrow one from mi amigo, dan. i was a fan and found myself thinking "hey. maybe i can pull off the collared look afterall...then i got home and apparently AE was having some sort of collared shirt blow out sale cause my parents had bought me three new collared shirts all of which i'm a fan of. i'm still scared to break them out though - maybe this weekend when i dont have to work in an espresso infested establishment for 7.5 hours at a time.
3) harry FRICKIN potter. oh my goodness. i'd already read books 1 and 2. and they were good and entertaining, but not addicting and suspenseful and the greatest thing ever like books 3-6 are. i started reading book 3 on the 24th of may. and i finished book 6 on the 24th of june. 1 month...i think its something like 2600 pages. i'm completely captivated by these books - rowling is unreal. she's created this whole new world (aladdin) of spells and magic and characters and she weaves them all together into probably the most amazing series since star wars. i think so at least. i'm excited for the movie to come out in a few weeks but i'm infinitely more thrilled about the final book appearing on shelves soon after that. i was literally pacing around my room reading the end of books 4 and 6. the most intense and riveting thing ever. eh. other than the outlaw.
4) confession: last weekend i was in des moines (i am currently stricken as to whether i should include the ", IA" after the city there...i think everyone knows where des moines is though so i'm not going to bother...plus the interior of these parentheses just informed and doubters anyway). i was there for reasons i might talk about in another post but are not necessary knowledge now. i was at the dinner table with my two cousins, their two boyfriends, and my grandparents (i did feel a slight hint of disappointment that everyone had a partner but me...kinda like neville longbottom only i'm not plump and i do not have a frog named trevor)...we were eating dinner and my grandma had made my number one least favorite item in the world - green beans - but i was hungry, and i didnt think i'd fill up on fruity jello, so i dished a small helping onto the classic coops dinnerware (brown and tan patterned plates and bowls) and gave it a squishy taste.
and i liked them.
i know. gasp away. gasp gasp gasp gasp gasp. i went back for seconds. it was weeeeeeeeird. no, i dont want to talk about it, but i'm glad to have it off my chest.
alright that is all. its 2:30 and i need to call spain.
"the country, he ran it...that was his job...."
k late.
-ap.
i got in a rut of NOT blogging - and now i'm looking for the perfect thing to blog about and its never going to come.
so i'll start lame and work my way up.
today lets talk about....eh...four things that i've recently discovered i enjoy. yeah...4 is good...i can make up four.
1) iced tea. this time last year i thought the stuff tasted like watered down grass...which is kinda what it is actually. i'll put it this way instead: i thought watered down herbs tasted horrible. however, a recent addition of honey to some tea has made me a huge fan - but i dont mix it up. i leave all the honey stuck at the bottom and drink it through a straw so i can get huge globs of gloriousness. love the word glob. so many negative boogerish images.
2) this one is still a stretch, because i think i have some obvious fears to overcome here: collared shirts. during the latest SGRT (thats small group reunion tour) my click traveled to indian hills country club where they have not only a dress code, but a plethora of free andes mints (i take full advantage - i wish they didnt have a dress code so i could wear cargo pants with those massive garbage-bag-sized pockets so that i could fill them up and walk around with sandbags attached to my knees. but anyway. as of june 8, i did not own any collared shirts so i had to borrow one from mi amigo, dan. i was a fan and found myself thinking "hey. maybe i can pull off the collared look afterall...then i got home and apparently AE was having some sort of collared shirt blow out sale cause my parents had bought me three new collared shirts all of which i'm a fan of. i'm still scared to break them out though - maybe this weekend when i dont have to work in an espresso infested establishment for 7.5 hours at a time.
3) harry FRICKIN potter. oh my goodness. i'd already read books 1 and 2. and they were good and entertaining, but not addicting and suspenseful and the greatest thing ever like books 3-6 are. i started reading book 3 on the 24th of may. and i finished book 6 on the 24th of june. 1 month...i think its something like 2600 pages. i'm completely captivated by these books - rowling is unreal. she's created this whole new world (aladdin) of spells and magic and characters and she weaves them all together into probably the most amazing series since star wars. i think so at least. i'm excited for the movie to come out in a few weeks but i'm infinitely more thrilled about the final book appearing on shelves soon after that. i was literally pacing around my room reading the end of books 4 and 6. the most intense and riveting thing ever. eh. other than the outlaw.
4) confession: last weekend i was in des moines (i am currently stricken as to whether i should include the ", IA" after the city there...i think everyone knows where des moines is though so i'm not going to bother...plus the interior of these parentheses just informed and doubters anyway). i was there for reasons i might talk about in another post but are not necessary knowledge now. i was at the dinner table with my two cousins, their two boyfriends, and my grandparents (i did feel a slight hint of disappointment that everyone had a partner but me...kinda like neville longbottom only i'm not plump and i do not have a frog named trevor)...we were eating dinner and my grandma had made my number one least favorite item in the world - green beans - but i was hungry, and i didnt think i'd fill up on fruity jello, so i dished a small helping onto the classic coops dinnerware (brown and tan patterned plates and bowls) and gave it a squishy taste.
and i liked them.
i know. gasp away. gasp gasp gasp gasp gasp. i went back for seconds. it was weeeeeeeeird. no, i dont want to talk about it, but i'm glad to have it off my chest.
alright that is all. its 2:30 and i need to call spain.
"the country, he ran it...that was his job...."
k late.
-ap.
June 06, 2007
it'd be worse without Buck
this is an article from the KC Star this week. amazing.
After updating the Stat Guy database Monday, a shocking conclusion was reached: The Royals are pretty bad.
OK, we knew that. But, as usual, the Royals are across-the-board bad, which is disappointing. Most troubling has been the offense. The preseason projection was for the hitters to be close to the middle of the pack but with several young regulars, there was the possibility of being much better than that.
The SG database calculates win stats for all the big three categories — hitting, pitching and fielding. Through Sunday, Royals hitters ranked 29th in the major leagues with -14.1 wins added, which is last in the American League.
John Buck and Mark Teahen are the only regulars with positive wins-added figures. Even Teahen, though, is underproducing his projection. While he’s right on target in terms of batting average and on-base percentage, Teahen has yet to find the consistent power stroke that made him such a dynamic hitter during the second half of last season. However, Teahen started slow last year and there really isn’t any reason to doubt that the extra bases will come.
As for Buck, well, he’s been a revelation. Buck turns 27 in July, the most common age for a hitter’s career season, and had similar numbers in some of his minor-league campaigns. Buck’s 0.62 hitting wins-added is the best on the Royals and fourth among catchers in all of baseball, and that’s before his two-home run game Monday.
Bad timing for Buck: Fellow catchers Victor Martinez, Jorge Posada and Russell Martin are all off to monster starts. Otherwise, Buck would be a deserving All-Star starter, not just the Royals’ default pick. Those aforementioned backstops all have about 60 at-bats more than Buck, and that is unfortunate.
OK, we didn’t expect Buck to hit this well, but this idea of having him catch just three out of five games ought to be tossed into the wastebasket along with the blueprints of the Edsel and the recipe for New Coke. The backup catcher, Jason LaRue, is hitting .136 and in 59 at-bats has posted -.52 wins-added — almost undoing the good work Buck has done.
Here’s one other Buck tidbit for you. According to hittrackeronline.com, Buck has averaged 409.6 feet per home run this season. Only six batters in baseball have done better, led by Martin’s 415.3 feet per long ball.
Other than Buck, pretty much every Royals hitter has fallen short of his projection to date. Alex Gordon was projected to produce 20.1 runs above average; he’s on pace for -28.2. But you have to stick with him, right? The only obvious way to improve the attack is to replace Mark Grudzielanek (-.52 wins added) on an everyday basis with Esteban German (-.03). Billy Butler probably should be DH-ing rather than Mike Sweeney (-.30) — both for now and for the future.
But those moves would have only a modest impact.
Punchless
Only four Royals hitters have posted above-average wins-added totals so far this season.
Everyone else is below average. Here are the worst.
Note: Wins-added measures how many wins a player has contributed (or cost) his team
Only four Royals hitters have posted above-average wins-added totals so far this season.
| John Buck | 0.62 |
| Reggie Sanders | 0.33 |
| Mark Teahen | 0.13 |
| Ross Gload | 0.10 |
| Alex Gordon | -1.19 |
| Tony Peña Jr. | -1.07 |
| David DeJesus | -0.80 |
| Ryan Shealy | -0.56 |
| Jason LaRue | -0.52 |
talk about awesome.
-ap.
June 05, 2007
touch em all (9, 10)
Devil Rays 4 - Royals 2
5th inning: John Buck solo homerun.
8th inning: John Buck solo homerun.
need i say more?
5th inning: John Buck solo homerun.
8th inning: John Buck solo homerun.
need i say more?
June 02, 2007
searching for growth.
i feel like i've stopped thinking, wrestling and growing.
life is pretty stale these days. i'm in one of the slowest moving cities on the planet - at least the slowest i've experienced. slow isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact, a lot of people (myself included) would argue that a lack of speed is an absolutely beautiful thing. just to stop and be silent and move at a slower rate is terrific at times. and i agree with that whole-heartedly. however, i'm someone who truly enjoys moving fast. going fast means more things are in my life and more things are forcing me to grow and learn and adjust. the faster i move, the more people i come in contact with, the more knowledge i'm able to gain.
but nowadays i see no one. its depressing a lot of the time. i miss the people in my life that would challenge me and give me new ideas to wrestle with and figure out. people like dave, nate, and christian. people with more wisdom than i have for sure, but who i'm able to feel comfortable with and in no way intimidated. sometimes i find myself reluctant to get into a conversation with someone who has new ideas or strong viewpoints because i feel like i'm being attacked. people jump on their soapbox and tell me what to believe. the three i listed before aren't like that and there is a serious lack of people like that in my life these days.
but that doesnt mean i can't grow without them. i need to learn to force myself to grow. wake up every day and search for opportunities to gain knowledge and learn new things. open up books and seek truth on my own instead of hoping it comes to me. i'm hoping my spiritual boredom ends soon - it has been so sparce for a while now (hence the plethora of posts that are NOT on here). check the drastic decline in posts in the last 5 months. happy june everyone. i'm going to try to be back.
-ap.
life is pretty stale these days. i'm in one of the slowest moving cities on the planet - at least the slowest i've experienced. slow isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact, a lot of people (myself included) would argue that a lack of speed is an absolutely beautiful thing. just to stop and be silent and move at a slower rate is terrific at times. and i agree with that whole-heartedly. however, i'm someone who truly enjoys moving fast. going fast means more things are in my life and more things are forcing me to grow and learn and adjust. the faster i move, the more people i come in contact with, the more knowledge i'm able to gain.
but nowadays i see no one. its depressing a lot of the time. i miss the people in my life that would challenge me and give me new ideas to wrestle with and figure out. people like dave, nate, and christian. people with more wisdom than i have for sure, but who i'm able to feel comfortable with and in no way intimidated. sometimes i find myself reluctant to get into a conversation with someone who has new ideas or strong viewpoints because i feel like i'm being attacked. people jump on their soapbox and tell me what to believe. the three i listed before aren't like that and there is a serious lack of people like that in my life these days.
but that doesnt mean i can't grow without them. i need to learn to force myself to grow. wake up every day and search for opportunities to gain knowledge and learn new things. open up books and seek truth on my own instead of hoping it comes to me. i'm hoping my spiritual boredom ends soon - it has been so sparce for a while now (hence the plethora of posts that are NOT on here). check the drastic decline in posts in the last 5 months. happy june everyone. i'm going to try to be back.
-ap.
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