it's all for the best, godspell

rules for waking up on saturdays:
X -> 8:00: that's just dumb and/or there better be a good reason
8:00 -> 9:30: couldn't sleep?
9:30 -> 11:30: reasonable
11:30 -> 1:00: clearly in the 14-22 demographic
1:00 -> X: what were you _doing_ last night?

name that tune:
A replay of last night's events
Roll through my mind
Except a scene or two
Erased by sweet red wine

1985, bowling for soup

so. i got a job.

sorta.

it's a contract job in fitchburg (suburb south of madison). i'm doing black-box testing of radiation therapy planning software. it's been good so far, lots of documentation and learning and whatnot.

there are two major upshots of the job:
1) testing experience. HEAVILY DESIRED testing experience. okay, it's black-box only, and nothing's automated, but it's testing and i've thought for a long time that i'd be a lot better at testing than development.
2) money. obviously not great, being a short-term contract, but with loans getting down to the wire i gotta build up at least some reserve.

there are, unfortunately, a couple downsides.
1) as mentioned, short-term. the project i'm working on has a deadline of january 1. meaning that come the new year, i will no longer be employed. and i have to do the job hunt thing. again.
2) this isn't really a good "2", more like a "105" or so because it's so minor. anyway it's the commute -- commuting sucks, and this is a 45-minute-rush-hour-both-ways drive. boo hiss.

so yeah, that's it. i'm pretty excited about it -- good atmosphere, comfortable conditions, good work, good experience. now if only i could be there for more than two months.

name that tune:
And maybe I'm crazy.
Oh it's crazy and it's true.
I know you can save me, no one else can save me now but you.

with legs like that, zebrahead

stole this from marcotte:

The BBC wrote up this list of "classics" that they feel everyone should read...

Here's everything I can personally associate with any of them...

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - no
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - yes - tried and failed as a kid, finally read 'em before the movies came out. yes, like everybody else forever.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - no
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - yes - mom got Chamber of Secrets from the library, read that first, then Prisoner of Azkaban and Sorcerer's Stone. When the next three came out, Mom got 'em early from the library (a librarian in the family is really useful sometimes) and i read 'em that day because i only got one day. the last one Ben got and i read in five hours before passing out under a futon mattress on his floor at 7 am.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - yes - 9th grade, mrs. wright. my buddy erik jefferson's paper on the book was sculpted entirely of misued quotes in order to make atticus finch seem like pure concentrated evil. got an A, if memory serves.
6 The Bible - not all of it
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - no
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - no
9 His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman - no
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - no
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - no
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - no
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - yes
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - no
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - no
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - yes - 4th grade advanced reading
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - no
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - yes - high school, forget when, and it was awful
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - no
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - no
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - no
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - no
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - no
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - no
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - yes
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - no
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - no
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - yes
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - no
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - no
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - no
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - no
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - some - only read the first four
34 Emma - Jane Austen - no
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - no
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - yes - i think they cheated? (see 33)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - yes - college, arts of expression; what an awful book
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere - no
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - no
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - no
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - no - saw the movie
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - yes
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - no
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - no - saw simon birch, does that count?
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - no
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - no
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - no
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - no
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - no
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - no
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - some - sorry marsh, i still have your copy, i'm working on it
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - no
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - no
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - no
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - no
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - no
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - yes
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - yes - 11th grade, then college too. i hate this book, and i had to read it for school. twice.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - no
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - no
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - yes
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - no
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - no
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - no
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - yes
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - no
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - no
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - no
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - no
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - no
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - yes
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - no
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - no
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - no
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - no
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - no
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - no
78 Germinal - Emile Zol - no
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - no
80 Possession - AS Byatt -no
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - i don't think so?
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - no
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - no
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - no
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - no
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - no
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - no
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn - no
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - yes
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - no
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - no
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - no
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - no
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - yes - first time marsh told me the title i thought it was about space and aliens and whatnot. then i read it, and i liked it all the more for not being about space and aliens and whatnot
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - no
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - no
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - yes
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - yes - 10th grade, mrs breezee
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - yes - if you thought the johnny depp movie was creepy, the book is just as much and the sequel doubly so
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - no

name that tune:
When did reality become TV?
What ever happened to sitcoms, game shows?

drunk again, reel big fish

i'm moved home. it's meh. anybody need either a java developer or manual labor? if it pays i'll do it, (almost) no questions asked.

found out today that my best friend in kindergarten is a pretty significant contributor to what i understand to be one of the three big brewers blogs on the netwebs. small world eh? "jim of bernie's crew" could be anybody on earth...turns out i played t-ball in his backyard literally the next house over when i was 4. i'd have to work to do the kind of analysis he's put together, which is alternately really cool and really intimidating. as much as everybody has told me i should write about baseball, my mind is sufficiently blown as to preclude all cognitive processes tonight.

name that tune:
She's got a hold of me
I need the remedy
Just to hold her would, be a cure for me
I can't keep going on this way

good thing, reel big fish

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-- Carl Sagan, on Earth

i know sagan was an agnostic, so he wasn't necessarily looking for God in all this, but it's awfully hard for me to ignore. part of the reason i love astronomy, really.

name that tune:

All I wanna do all day
Is spend it in bed
But that's bad for the body
And even worse for my head

tribute, tenacious d

So the ultimate frisbee season ended today. We were playing for the championship (yeah, I know it's rec league, give me a break) against Elliot's team.

Backstory: Elliot's team was undefeated, 8-0. My team had won seven straight going into the championship -- our only loss was the very first week to Elliot's team. Elliot's team had blown everybody else out of the water thus far this season. We scored 10 on 'em week one, but other than that I'm not sure anybody else cracked double digits. So yeah. We were primed for revenge. Also sweet justice for the rest of the league (nobody likes a hucker in rec league).

Turned out to be a fantastic game. Not for me personally, save exactly one moment, but whatever. Went into the half up 8-6, which itself is frankly pretty amazing considering what we were up against. Got tight near the end though -- at one point score was 13-13, and by that point it was getting late so a hard cap at 15 had been set. Ipso facto first to 2 wins.

I was out there for the next two points. I unfortunately was tasked much of the game with covering one of the three(!) super fast guys they had on their team. Also by then their strategy had long since devolved into, "well, we have three fast guys -- if we throw it far, one of 'em will be close enough to catch it and score right?" I'd gotten burned by the guy I was covering no fewer than three times thus far (only two resulting in scores thanks to one throw going long out of the end zone by maybe a yard) so I'd taken to playing about 10 yards deep on the guy and just conceding the short game. Unfortunately this time the throw went sideways and even in depth -- but it floated, so I thought I might be able to get up and bring it down. No luck. 14-13, championship point them.

Stayed out for the next point. Pretty standard point really, except we managed to get it down to near their end zone. Couple ugly turnovers each way, then we caught a break -- my defender was out of position, so after a turn our guy close to the disc quick passed to me then lit out for the end zone (maybe five yards upfield from my spot near the sideline). Classic give-and-go. 14-14. First to one wins. Sudden death.

I was pretty gassed by that point so I subbed out. Good thing too -- the final point took a good 15 minutes. Failing light (it was really late by then and getting very dark) certainly didn't help. Jarsh (actual name unknown) and Jesse made some fantastic defensive plays and we largely kept the disc near their end zone. Failed to capitalize on a couple scoring opportunities, unfortunately. However, we finally managed to sneak one near the back to Leah. 15-14, Mythbusters win! Glory and rejoicing for all!

In summary: I might have to play ultimate more regularly, wherever I end up.

name that tune:
Are these the good days
That I've heard so much about?
There goes the heartbreak
That I can live without

you're gonna go far kid, the offspring

feel like writing now, 'cept i'm not sure what to write about when i'm not in a mood.

heard about a job today, gotta call the lady back tomorrow. what part of "preferred contact by email" is hard to understand? especially when the first contact (and my response) was by email? weird.

got complimented on my singing the other day. that's like three times in three weeks. i miss doing it. no, guitar hero doesn't count (aside: is it weird the three songs i know completely are ozzy, the eagles, and paramore?) maybe i could replace pat's singer :-P. too bad he's the writer too.

ultimate frisbee remains awesome. the mythbusters are winners of three straight baby! also our captain said, "well now that we know aaron has a flick [forehand throw] we've got a shot to be pretty good." apparently two half-decent hail mary passes in two weeks qualifies me as useful. admittedly i've been practicing that throw since i found out my technique was bad, but i'd like to do it more consistently.

yeah that's all i got. still feel like writing, but i don't have a topic. ideas?

name that tune:
play the best song in the world
or i'll eat your souls

what if i stumble, dc talk

I really shouldn't watch movies late at night. You see, movies and I have this weird relationship. Movies I watch regularly fall into really only three categories: movies that are funny, movies where stuff blows up, and movies I think about. The first largely consists of Mel Brooks comedies or absurdist fare -- Ghostbusters and Blazing Saddles come to mind, things that are simply mindless humor. The second category is pretty self-explanatory as well -- The Matrix (I don't go for that new-age hippie crap), Van Helsing (no explosions but does have werewolves!), Equilibrium, Live Free or Die Hard are the ones that come to mind immediately.

You will notice that those groups, while broad, leave room for a ton of movies. Unfortunately for me, this means that many, many movies have at least something for me to chew on afterwards. The Iron Giant? "You are who you choose to be." Moulin Rouge!? "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." Master and Commander? Dedication to individuals or duty. Hercules? Discovering and fulfilling a purpose. Groundhog Day? Discovering truth to oneself. And these are just a smattering of the movies I watch frequently!

I choose the above films as examples because I identify with them. Heck, most movies I like I like for precisely that reason. My life isn't exciting by any stretch of the imagination, try as Ben does to set me on fire or other delights. I get no joy out of who I am or what I do unless the Brewers are involved or I'm playing a videogame, and both of those are quite condemningly desperate attempts to fill...something in my life with other things that are just as clearly not of my own creation. But I'll get into that more later on.

I bring all this up because over the last few months I've taken to watching movies as I fall asleep (thanks to the unique construction of college life, TV and bed not necessarily both required). Of late especially has been a selection of films I had yet to see. Bolt was last week, which was surprisingly good -- my penchant for the music of one Miley Cyrus by no means extends to her acting career, but I liked it quite a bit -- and tonight's selection was Ratatouille.

Honestly? It was good but not great. However, there was something bugging me during the whole movie that I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was only after the fact when I was reading about the film on Wikipedia (specifically, reviews of it linked to from there) that I figured it out.

Remy spends much of the movie torn between his upbringing -- let's face it, he's a rat -- and what he truly desires to be -- a cook -- and it is this that I identify with. Anyone who will read will know that it's no secret that I have no love for what I have spent five years training to become. You will also know that what I do love doesn't translate into a paycheck very well. The surprise here is that I'm not talking about baseball or even sports in general, but rather literature. Books are fun. I can go back to a good story countless times, and there's such a rich history of them I could start reading now and my grandchildren would never dream of reaching the end of it.

I guess what I realized it comes down to is one of two options: can I man up and just stick with the books thing (which sounds a lot like getting a job at a library somewhere for not much money), or can I stay with my major enough to "learn" to like it. The ideal scenario from my point of view is to work for long enough to pay off school, then get a job I like. Is that likely? Almost certainly not.

The bigger short-term concern is the interview process. Every interviewer doing due diligence will at some point ask a variant of, "why should we hire you?" and it is this question I dread. I know and you know the honest answer is, "No reason, really," for the simple reason that I offer no skills that many other qualified candidates do, and for darn sure a bunch of those actually want to do that job. There's no evading that answer to that question that doesn't sound like an evasion.

I'm still looking for real jobs, but I'm starting to really consider the fun job route. Am I crazy, or finally getting sane?

I shouldn't watch movies at night.
*****************
name that tune:
Show me how to lie
You're getting better all the time
And turning all against the one
Is an art that's hard to teach

every little thing, hawk nelson

top 5 pages that will cause you to waste hours and hours on wikipedia:

5) crisis on infinite earths
4) civil war (comics)
3) mythology
2) astronomy
1) supreme court cases

name that tune:
is this one for the people
or is this one for the lord
or do i simply serenade
for things i must afford?

and so it goes, billy joel

"Gladwell: This is actually a question I'm obsessed with: Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so? Why does Eddy Curry come to camp every year overweight?

The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study for tests -- which is a much more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid -- and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger is tougher than Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong: Tiger is tougher than Mickelson and because of that he works harder." -- emphasis mine

this comes from an old inteview bill simmons did with author malcolm gladwell. hits a little bit too close to home, i'll be honest. pretty solidly describes my job search right now, actually...and my academics, if we're keeping track. except senior project -- not convinced that could have gone any better even if i had tried harder.

name that tune:
She's been on my mind (she's working overtime)
She's got perfect reasons
Says she loves to talk to Jesus

AFI Top 100

(X) 1. Citizen Kane, 1941
(X) 2. Casablanca, 1942
(X) 3. The Godfather, 1972
() 4. Gone With The Wind, 1939
() 5. Lawrence of Arabia, 1962
(X) 6. The Wizard of Oz, 1939
() 7. The Graduate, 1967
() 8. On The Waterfront, 1954
() 9. Schindler's List, 1993
(X) 10. Singin' In The Rain, 1952
(X) 11. It's A Wonderful Life, 1946
() 12. Sunset Blvd., 1950
() 13. The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957
() 14. Some Like It Hot, 1959
(X) 15. Star Wars, 1977
() 16. All About Eve, 1950
(X) 17. The African Queen, 1951
() 18. Psycho, 1960
() 19. Chinatown, 1974
() 20. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, 1975
() 21. The Grapes of Wrath, 1940
(X) 22. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
() 23. The Maltese Falcon, 1941
() 24. Raging Bull, 1980
(X) 25. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982
(X) 26. Dr. Strangelove, 1964
() 27. Bonnie and Clyde, 1967
() 28. Apocalypse Now, 1979
(X) 29. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, 1939
() 30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948
() 31. Annie Hall, 1977
() 32. The Godfather, Part II, 1974
() 33. High Noon, 1952
() 34. To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962
(X) 35. It Happened One Night, 1934
() 36. Midnight Cowboy, 1969
() 37. The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946
() 38. Double Indemnity, 1944
() 39. Doctor Zhivago, 1965
() 40. North by Northwest, 1959
(X) 41. West Side Story, 1961
(X) 42. Rear Window, 1954
() 43. King Kong, 1933
() 44. The Birth of a Nation, 1915
() 45. A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951
() 46. A Clockwork Orange, 1971
() 47. Taxi Driver, 1976
(X) 48. Jaws, 1975
(X) 49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937
() 50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969
(X) 51. The Philadelphia Story, 1940
() 52. From Here To Eternity, 1953
() 53. Amadeus, 1984
() 54. All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930
(X) 55. The Sound Of Music, 1965
() 56. M*A*S*H, 1970
() 57. The Third Man, 1949
(X) 58. Fantasia, 1940
() 59. Rebel Without A Cause, 1955
(X) 60. Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981
() 61. Vertigo, 1958
() 62. Tootsie, 1982
() 63. Stagecoach, 1939
(X) 64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977
() 65. The Silence of the Lambs, 1991
() 66. Network, 1976
() 67. The Manchurian Candidate, 1962
() 68. An American in Paris, 1951
(X) 69. Shane, 1953
() 70. The French Connection, 1971
(X) 71. Forrest Gump, 1994
() 72. Ben-Hur, 1959
() 73. Wuthering Heights, 1939
() 74. The Gold Rush, 1925
() 75. Dances With Wolves, 1990
() 76. City Lights, 1931
() 77. American Graffiti, 1973
(X) 78. Rocky, 1976
() 79. The Deer Hunter, 1978
() 80. The Wild Bunch, 1969
() 81. Modern Times, 1936
() 82. Giant, 1956
() 83. Platoon, 1986
() 84. Fargo, 1996
(X) 85. Duck Soup, 1933
() 86. Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935
() 87. Frankenstein, 1931
() 88. Easy Rider, 1969
() 89. Patton, 1970
() 90. The Jazz Singer, 1927
() 91. My Fair Lady, 1964
() 92. A Place in the Sun, 1951
() 93. The Apartment, 1960
(X) 94. Goodfellas, 1990
() 95. Pulp Fiction, 1994
() 96. The Searchers, 1956
(X) 97. Bringing Up Baby, 1938
(X) 98. Unforgiven, 1992
() 99. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, 1967
(X) 100. Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942

guess i've seen 30. my sister's seen 55. my younger, high school freshman sister. :: sigh ::

the marvelous toy, peter paul and mary

last few months i'll turn on this playlist to shuffle when i go to bed. maybe not the brightest idea, but it's good sleep music...even if it prompts a melancholy mood.

Missin' You -- Chris Rice
It Is You (I Have Loved) -- Dana Glover
I'll Fly Away -- Jars Of Clay
You Belong to Me -- Jason Wade
Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels) -- Jim Croce
Time In A Bottle -- Jim Croce
I'll Have to Say I Love You In A Song -- Jim Croce
You Raise Me Up -- Josh Groban
Picture -- Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow
How Great Thou Art -- Promise Keepers
Faking My Own Suicide -- relient k
Deathbed -- relient k
Jefferson Aero Plane -- relient k
Hallelujah -- Rufus Wainwright
Homeward Bound -- Simon & Garfunkel

still crazy, after all these years. and man it would be nice if nice formatting worked in this thing.

name that tune:
In every heart, there is a room,
A sanctuary safe and strong.
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along.

25 Random Things

25 Random Things About Me Share
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. I've skipped class to watch the Brewers on ESPN and never thought twice about it. (Sorry Mom & Dad)
2. I'm pretty good at fantasy baseball.
3. I'm terrible at fantasy football.
4. I'm currently attempting (with three friends) to catch them all, and if that doesn't mean anything to you you're older than 25.
5. I'm terrified that kids don't like me because my overarching life goal is to have them. My luck seems to be turning in this area, however.
6. I know way too much about certain videogames.
7. If there was one thing from videogames I wish I could do, I'd play blitzball.
8. I'd been to three hockey games in my life and played soccer one summer in elementary school before coming to college. Now I go to as many hockey games as I can and have played soccer every week for five years.
9. My favorite foods coincide with tailgating fare. There may or may not be good reasons for this.
10. I have a really bizarre skill set, including (but not limited to) videogaming, classic literature, musical composition, athletic competition, navigation, internet culture, and board games.
11. I can't help but notice that the list in #10 has nothing to do with my major.
12. I can be bribed to do anything with Vanilla Coke.
13. I'm functionally nocturnal.
14. My first girlfriend is still one of my most trusted friends in the world.
15. My third year of college was really REALLY weird.
16. My vocabulary is about a thousand times better written than spoken. This irks me incessantly. Specifically, how I wrote, "This irks me incessantly," without thinking, but I know that if I was talking it would come out as, "That sucks."
17. I brought my baby blanket and teddy bear to college and still sleep with them.
18. I can irritate my roommates by listening to Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne, but mostly I listen to them because I like the music.
19. I am what is known as an "easy mark", and I would give anything to not be -- but I like the attention, because it's all I get, so sometimes I set myself up for abuse.
20. I'm terrified of heights -- less because of my actual likelihood of falling from them than because of my tendency to wonder "I wonder what it would be like to fall from here?" and my worry that curiosity will one day get the better of me.
21. For that matter, I often visualize doing lots of really really stupid things because I wonder it would be like. These include seppuku, rolling my car doing 70 down the interstate, etc.
22. On a similar note: I once promised an ex that I would go skydiving if she wanted to. I was serious. In a related development I dread the day she calls me on it.
23. There are four things on my bucket list and they all involve baseball.
24. Totally ridiculous thing I want to learn at some point in my life that you never ever would have guessed: mountain climbing.
25. I keep a mental note of who is going to be in my wedding party.