Running roughshod

It’s pretty clear to everyone — people in the stands, his coaches on the sidelines, the other team’s defense — that the best way for G-Prep to win is to put the ball in his hands. Even if you know what’s coming (and since Sankey had 41 carries en route to 359 yards, it wasn’t exactly a secret), it’s still really hard to bring him down.

[Latest technology] is [expensive / confusing / worrisome]

Hoo boy! As a [technology writer/reporter without a story idea/old person], I've seen my share of changes in life. But [new product] is about to completely alter [area in which new technology will have extremely slight impact].

Best seat in the house

I’m not entirely sure what I expected when I ordered my tickets for ArenaBowl XXIII for “STANDING ROOM ONLY.” Perhaps a corral where we would be led and allowed to roam around, like free-range chickens.

“This is your pen, and this is where you must stay,” they’d say sternly, but we’d mill around and laugh and visit and generally enjoy ourselves

Small ball

Minor league baseball. Even the name sounds so ... inferior. “Minor league” has that connotation in today’s parlance: cut-rate. Second-fiddle.

Not good enough.

Yesterday was Moving Day; as is tradition, that means today is "Not Moving Day," owing to the soreness from yesterday.

Moving is supposed to bring about an onslaught of different emotions: a twinge of nostalgia at leaving the place you've called home, sadness at altering/losing the different interpersonal relationships you've developed at said location, and excitement or trepidation at thought of what's to come.

I don't know that exhaustion can rightly be counted as an emotion, but the depth to which I feel it now seems to indicate it should at least be in the running.

After the third or fourth major geographical upheaval in 12 months (with a few minor phase shifts as well), moving just doesn't have the same impact anymore. Sleeping for the first time under a new roof felt just as comfortable as sleeping under the old one, which is to say "not very" because I never really "settled in" to the old apartment in the proper sense. Despite living there for eight months, the overly spacious two-bedroom apartment treated me more as a guest in a motel room than a permanent occupant.

Sure, I have some memories. The hideously overweight 40-some-year-old creepster who lived on the ground floor and sat outside his apartment 80 percent of the time, whiling away the days smoking, eating peaches or painting his fingernails a flamboyant hunter orange. That wouldn't have been so bad were it not for his completely obvious leering at women half his age or whenever he'd get in the mood to go shirtless.

Or consider the Albertson's grocery cart in the parking lot that mysteriously disappeared and reappeared on no set schedule, without rhyme or reason. Nothing says class like an Albertson's grocery cart.

Obviously, it wasn't all bad. Friends came over, drinks were drunk (and drunks kept drinking), movies were watched, great books were read and many a sleep was slept. But none of this served to dispel the ever-present air of transiency.

I'm now in Spokane, more specifically Browne's Addition, working at a job that seems pretty damn perfect for me (more on that later). The hope is to keep this apartment for quite some time, to break the moving cycle. At least long enough so that the next time I have to move, it actually means something again.

The bonds that restrain us

Space was different. When you reached the edge of outer space, it made no more sense to refer to your flight in relation to earth than it does to imagine our galaxy as a geocentric one. What is up when there is no gravity? What is down when you can look up and see the earth?

Hello, Seattle

Last month, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I had quite a bit of vacation time racked up at work. Once we passed through the busy season, I took the first opportunity to use it. I decided to take an entire week off and go camping - much to the surprise of nearly everyone I told.

Apparently, mine is not an "outdoorsy" dispositon.

Extra-ordinary powers

Everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to have that one thing they're the best it, what they're known for - in many cases, what defines them as a person. I am not everyone. I accept the fact that I am good at a lot of things and the best at none just as I accept that I know a little bit about damn near everything, but am an expert in practically nothing.

2009 in review

It's Dec. 31, which means I’m parked in front of my television starting my annual personal Twilight Zone marathon. Though I stole the idea from the SciFi channel, mine’s better because a) there aren’t any commercials and b) I have the full complement (the original series and the remake from the ‘80s).

Nonfiction

When he picked up, the first thing he asked me was if I had heard about Rachel. I wasn't quite sure what he meant. We were the same age, having attended the same school from kindergarten right up through college. We were both in band, we had a number of activities and classes that overlapped, and I was fairly certain I had seen her at a barbecue two days before graduating college, about three months prior.

TW: Suicide

What more do you want from me, Kindle?

I've not made much of a secret of my purchasing a Kindle, largely due to my evangelizing the stupid thing whenever the opportunity arises. Despite what some people would have you believe, I do not ardently desire the death of printed books, libraries, or puppies (an unrelated story for another time). I do, however, believe that printed books could use some competition. My purchase of the electronic daemon-tome was justified (to myself) on the basis of a few facts:

It's all about the cover letter

I preserved a cover letter I wrote for a job right as Web 2.0 as launching into the stratosphere. While I do think this was the beginning of an era where people were able to present themselves more as whole persons than drones, I am also fully aware that only a fraction of the population has any idea what these websites even were, much less why the cover letter isn't just full cringe.

I realize that former Gonzaga basketball player Josh Heytvelt was trying to give a heartfelt interview and express his remorse over being arrested for possession of 'shrooms, but there's a reason why athletes usually have people talk for them. This quote is why:

Heytvelt was ordered to do 240 hours of community service. He did more than 300, working primarily with terminally ill children at a Ronald McDonald House. "That really made me think that those kids aren't choosing to have cancer. They're given that," Heytvelt said. "I realized I had made some really bad choices and that really made me think about every choice I made from then on out."

Two questions: Did Heytvelt previously think those children had chosen to have cancer, and who did he think gave it to them?

One year in

I don't often do much reflection, but this felt like a big step. Looking back on the one-year mark working at my college newspaper, the Washington State University Daily Evergreen, after getting involved on a lark. Then they put me in charge of the thing??

How Sweet it is

At 4:27 p.m., Pullman shuts down. Classes are canceled, businesses will close and all eyes will be on the boys in red as they take on the boys in baby blue. Families will huddle around their televisions, office workers will huddle around their computer screens and thousands will stream into Beasley Coliseum to cheer on the Cougs with one voice.

While you were away

It's always odd, walking the streets at night when everyone's away. Without exception, by the end of the weekend before a break Pullman empties and I am left to fend for myself among the other rejects and townies. 2 a.m. is a sufficiently creepy time in and of itself. Now, it's literally quiet enough to hear the buzzing of the electric lights in their faux-Victorian lampposts.