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Through The Horse and His Boy

I finished up the third book of the Chronicles of Narnia this past Sunday and I’m working on Prince Caspian. I’m starting to get into new territory, meaning I haven’t read these books before, so it’s all fresh and new and I’m really enjoying it. Normally, I’m not a big “fantasy” or children’s lit. fan, but C.S. Lewis just does such a great job painting word pictures and articulating concepts through metaphor that it’s impossible for me not to enjoy his writing.

California: attempt 2

Well, I’m going to try to go to CA again next week. This time, I think it’ll happen and the timing seems pretty good. I’m going to e-mail my co-worker out there tomorrow so he can give me a list of places to go and things to do while I’m out there. I figure I’ll use it as sort of a field-trip to learn about L.A. and that general area. It’s been about, oh, 20 years since I was out there, so we have a lot to catch up on.

The Passion

Well, I’ve been itching to see it since I first heard Mel Gibson was working on it and I’ll finally get to catch it tomorrow night. I’m going with a friend who’s already seen it, but he says he’s excited to see it again. I’ve already heard lots of opinions on different aspects of the movie, but the great thing is that I already know what happens, so I can watch it simply to appreciate the gravity, intensity that the movie is said to create.

Pay day approaching

I get paid again on Thursday afternoon. This way of life is so different from being a college student, I still can’t get used to it. In college, my bank account would spike once every four months or so, then it would slowly decline as I spent my scholarship and loan money. Then, as a new semester began, so the cycle would recycle. Now, I get a fresh influx of cash every two weeks and I have a lot of freedom regarding how I spend or invest it. Right now, I’m focusing on paying back my student loans and the other “debt” I incurred this past year at school. I say “debt” in quotes because although it is technically debt, I’m not paying any interest on any of it, so I don’t stress about it too much. If all goes as planned, I’ll be paying back all of this past year’s living expenses by October without having paid a penny of interest on that money. Then, I can start whittling away at the real debt.

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The Academy Awards were on tonight…

And, as anticipated, The Lord of the Rings and company nabbed several awards. I wasn’t too surprised at that, but what did surprise me was when the announcer said that it had won 11 awards, tying Ben Hur and Titanic for the most awards given in a single night. I thought it sounded strange that Titanic had won that many awards. I mean, it was a pretty good movie, but 11? Maybe I should watch it again.

I was happy to see that Lost in Translation got Sofia Coppola an Award for Best Original Screenplay and, although I was sorta’ pullin’ for Bill Murray, I was glad to see Sean Penn finally get an Award (I thought he was robbed a couple years ago when Denzel won for Training Day). I haven’t seen Monster, but from the clips I’ve seen, Charlize Theron earned every ounce of her Oscar. I thought Billy Crystal did a great job hosting, but then he’s been doing it so long, I bet it’s old hat for him by now.

Overall, it was a good show, but I have to say I’m glad Lord of the Rings won’t be up for any Oscars next year. I mean, they were all good movies, but I’d like to see some other films get a chance at some awards. It’s gettin’ old seein’ the same people winning all the awards every year.

Aaaaaand my weekend is officially over.

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Another Noble Friday

Tonight was the second Friday that I spent at Barnes & Noble since I got here. Part of me thinks that makes me some sort of extravagant loser, while the rest of me thinks it was a good time and an excuse to drop 30 bucks on some magazines and a book. I got a 5-dollar copy of Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA by Kevin Davies. The magazines were on web design, digital photography and, yes, Nintendo Power. I couldn’t resist the Nintendo Power because I used to read it when I was a kid and I figured it was worth five bucks to see what sort of rubbish I used to enjoy. Turns out it’s the boring, short-on-actual-content sort of rubbish that I enjoyed so much when I was younger.

Florida game tomorrow

I think we play Arkansas tomorrow. I think they’re doing pretty poorly this year, so hopefully we’ll be able to grab a road win and build some confidence. I can’t make any sort of predictions because I don’t know much about their team. I think I read somewhere that they have a couple strong wingmen, so that could spell trouble for our perimeter defense, especially if we’re playing a zone again. I guess we’ll see…

Speaking of Basketball

I’m playing tomorrow morning at 9, so I’m gonna’ go ahead and get some sleep now.

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Phone home

The highlight of my day was a 45-minute conversation I had with a friend from back home. This has been a common theme since I got here and it seems that nothing I do is ever more refreshing than talking with someone from home. Tonight’s conversation was all over the place, but the common thread throughout the conversation was the commonalities that we share. It’s nice to realize that I’m not alone and, although I’ve begun a new phase in my life, there are many other people experiencing things just like I am. It’s interesting how we can be in different places in life, but still be experiencing the same things.

Group blog

I don’t think that I mentioned the other blog I’m a part of now. A friend of mine decided it would be good to have a blog where many people post to discuss our perspectives on transitions. Specifically, we’re all in some phase of the college-to-real-world transition. I think it’s a good idea and I hope I can contribute something meaningful. I’m not a super writer and I often have trouble thinking of interesting, useful and creative things to say, but if I do think of something that has all those attributes, I’ll post it over there.

Still reading the Chronicles

I’m in the third book and still enjoying the series. Nothing to report except that I’m still reading them and I’m going to knock out another chapter right now.

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Good workouts

I’ve been having some particularly good workouts lately. Here are some of the contributing factors:

Routine – I’m up at 7 and in bed at midnight every day; I work out around 5, so I’m good and ready for my workouts
Food – I’ve been eating three good meals a day for several weeks now; I feel more energetic and strong
Sleep – this may sound redundant, but I’m consistently getting about 7 hours’ sleep; I think that’s just what I need for a long day
No Spotter – In general, I think it’s a good idea to use a spotter, but when I don’t have one, I’m forced to work harder and do better reps because I don’t have a spot to bail me out if I get lazy
Warmup – Back at school, I tried to warm up before working out, but I couldn’t always do it; here, I can always shoot hoops for 20 minutes to a half hour before my workouts and that gives me more energy and helps build my endurance and overall strength

Hopefully, my workouts will continue to be productive for a while. It’s been too long since I was in good shape and I’m ready to get back to it.

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Ah, sweet couch-naps!

That means the furniture’s here and I’ve already had an incredible nap on the couch. I can only hope future naps are as great as today’s.

The Prelude

Of course, a good nap is best when preceded by much busyness. I played ball this morning for only the second time since I moved here. I played much better than the previous time, but I still have a lot of work to do. I haven’t gotten my shooting rhythm back yet, and I need to work on my court vision. Overall, I was pleased with my progress and I’m looking forward to playing again next Saturday.

I also helped a friend move an armoire from his cousin’s house to his apartment. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as we thought it would be and I enjoyed eating lunch and hangin’ out a bit with my buddy and his wife. It’s nice to have friends with whom I can spend the occasional Saturday afternoon. I mean, I like my apartment and all that, but friendship is irreplaceable.

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Real World quote of the week

“You are misinterprettating the situation…” – Brad

Quickly comin’ together

Turns out my computer desk will be here tomorrow, so that means my apartment will essentially be settled and furnished by this weekend. That’s just in time for me to ship out to El Segundo for a week. Ah, sweet irony.

Is there some sort of lame weblog award? I think I could win that. Speaking of winning…

Gators droppin’ the ball

So, we had another basketball game tonight and things seem to be getting worse by the game. I’m pretty sure this is the worst season I’ve seen as a Gator. Tonight’s loss was to Georgia, who already had 10 losses to our 6 or 7. We managed to lose another decent lead by crummy play, careless passing and cruddy defense. It didn’t help that our only senior, Colas, and our best passer/assist leader were out for stupid reasons. Colas is apparently serving a 3-game, University imposed suspension for who knows what, while Christian Drejer is back in Gainesville contemplating playing pro ball in Europe. It looks like there’s an outside chance that we could miss the NCAA Tourney this year, although that’s extremely unlikely. I guess the upside is that we can’t really do much worse and, although we just broke our streak of 98 consecutive weeks in the polls, we have an opportunity to begin a new streak. Of course, the streak I’m interested in starting is a winning streak.

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Another choke

I didn’t see or hear the game, but from what I could glean from Sportscenter, the Gators let another one get away today. Apparently, we had a lead late against LSU, but we choked it away in the last few minutes. I expected us to get beat up a little inside (their frontcourt is solid, while their backcourt could use a lot of work), but I ultimately thought we would pull this one out, especially since we were playing at home. I thought wrong.

I noticed an LSU player doing the “Gator Chomp” just before time expired… I’m not sure what compels players to mock our Gator chomp, but I find it ironic that other teams never mock it before they get a win. Why? Probably because they know we can beat any one, any time if we bring our A game, and who wants to look stupid mocking our chomp and then gettin’ beat? I guess am entertained by how flamboyant other teams come after they squeak out a win against us… where’s all that confidence before the game, fellas?

Switchfoot

They have a new song–Meant to Live, I think–being played on the local alternative station, and I think it’s a fantastic song. Here are the lyrics:

Fumbling his confidence
And wondering why the world has passed him by
Hoping that he’s bid for more than arguments
And failed attempts to fly, fly [Chorus]
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside
Somewhere we live inside
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Dreaming about Providence
And whether mice or men have second tries
Maybe we’ve been livin with our eyes half open
Maybe we’re bent and broken, broken

[Chorus]

We want more than this world’s got to offer
We want more than this world’s got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
And everything inside screams for second life, yeah

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live
We were meant to live

I think they’re playing it on the radio because it’s a great piece of music… but I’m glad to hear that Switchfoot is making a breakthrough into the maintsream on the wings of this particular song. The lyrics are powerful and it’s difficult to listen to the song without asking, “Why are we meant to live?”

More Target time

So, I went back to Target tonight to exchange a couple lamps I bought. I ended up spending about $150 and making two trips instead of just one. I had been keeping a list of stuff I needed, so I took this opportunity to cross some things off that list. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to write a little about what all went into moving–logistically, financially, etc.–and I’m definitely including this list. The list has things I never would’ve thought about until I lived here for a while. Hopefully it’ll save me some trouble later on, or maybe it’ll help someone else. That’s coming soon.

Snow

I went to go play basketball this morning and I was greeted by several inches of fresh snow. I think this was the first time I’d ever woken up to see fresh snow on the ground (unless I include the Winter of ’89 when it “snowed” a little in J-ville; it was mostly just ice). I took several pictures, but didn’t realize until after it stopped snowing that my camera was set to the lowest resolution (1 Megapixel), so I’m not sure how they’ll turn out. I hope to post them on JoshDoody.com pretty soon.

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Scrubs

I’ve been watchin’ this show for a couple years now and it’s always really entertaining to me. On tonight’s episode, Michael J. Fox showed up in an interesting role. I think there’s a fine line between acting and temporarily becoming a character or even portraying oneself with a stage name and a slightly different personality; Michael J. did a great job of straddling that line on this episode. It was interesting because he played a doctor suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and I couldn’t ignore the thought that his “character” was venting some of the frustration felt by the player as he battles Parkinson disease.

I guess that was neat because it gave real credibility to his character and I couldn’t help but believe and sympathize with him. But what was even more impressive was that he did such a great job of containing his ailment and working with it in the role. I was specifically looking to see how “afflicted” he seemed on the show and, if I hadn’t known he had Parkinson, I probably never would’ve guessed it. The only hint that I saw was that his character seemed to constantly move–not in a jumpy or jerky way, but he simply seemed to be perpetually moving.

The coolest thing was just seein’ him working again. I watched Family Ties when I was younger and I own the Back to the Future Trilogy on DVD, mostly because he made them so entertaining, whimsical and almost believable. I’m glad to see him back on camera.

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The Horse and His Boy

I started reading a new one and it’s pretty good so far. I really enjoy C.S. Lewis’ storytelling ability; his writing seems equally appealing to children and adults alike. That seems like a difficult thing to do properly.

I think I’m going to try and wrap up all the books I’ve only partially read. There’re probably 5 or 6 of them on my bookshelf and I feel like I need to finish those before I start reading new stuff. I don’t think it’ll take me too long to get through them.

Legacy Church

I went to a local church today and enjoyed it quite a bit. The teaching was good and I felt like the worship was good, too. My only beef was that the people in the church seemed almost bored and not very “into it”. I think I’ll eventually end up going back and hopefully I’ll see that they were just having a somber Sunday or something.