Football > Blogging

So I was planning on writing a post about what my dad and I did today, or maybe what I've been up to for the past week. But that was before I decided to look up Virginia Tech's football schedule for this fall. And once I did that, I figured I might as well make use of the ESPN Insider access I was paying for to check out what they were saying about my team. Now it's an hour later that it was when I first sat down at my computer; I'm not able to work up the energy to write about my day.

I do, however, have the energy to write about football! Man, I'm excited about this season. Of course, I'm always excited about football. It's strange in a lot of ways, since in the grand scheme of things football is utterly meaningless. But there you have it, I love college football, and especially when my team is playing.

One slightly disappointing thing about this year's schedule: no home games until the middle of September. We play Ohio on Sept 17. (The complete schedule is at http://www.hokiesports.com/football/schedule.html I'll either be in Lane stadium or in front of a TV on all the days listed. Just a heads up, a month or two in advance.) Until then, we just play NC teams...hmm, maybe I'll see if anyone will be traveling down there...

The opener at NC State worries me a little. They always have a tough defense; combine that with home field advantage and a bunch of inexperienced players on our side, and you might have a recipe for disaster. Last year's game against them was so disappointing...

Alright, so I need to get some sleep now. Later.

No title

So much for posting a meaningful update in the morning...

But regardless, here's an update now. Of course, this also might fail the "meaningful" standard, as several things I thought about writing over the past couple weeks have come and gone. Maybe those ideas will be reincarnated in later posts, maybe not. All I know is that it's probably not going to happen right at this moment.

So I fly back to the states two weeks from today. Despite a slow start, this one has been roaring by. My mother, sister, and brother have all already returned and are busy with all the joys of getting Stephen situated to start college. So normally, that would mean that my Dad and I would be alone in the house, hanging out. But since our house is a hostel now, we have people over. At the moment, just the Culliphers are here. But earlier, Jason stayed here for a few days, and later on Joe and Mary will be living here. I still have trouble adjusting to how many people can live (comfortably!) in our house.

Alright, well my dad and I are going to hike to downtown Heidelberg from our house, so I need to sign off so we can leave. If you're lucky I might write more later.

Administrative spam

I recieved a forwarded email announcement from my CS advisor today, and I'm not sure exactly how to take it. You see, it was describing an oppurtunity specifically for women to hang out with highschool girls. Makes you wonder how carefully they read the messages to see who to send them to.

Although it was amusing to see how far down the list of desperation you have to go before they'll accept a male undergrad to help out. Especially as the coordinator is a male undergrad student.

Sorry to those who were looking forward to a real update, I realize it's been a week an a half. I'll post a meaningful update in the morning.

Thoughts on freedom and maturity

Freedom is...
A release from the obligation
Of blindly obeying other's notions of right and wrong.

Maturity is...
Choosing to do
What you've always known is right.

Le Tour de...Germany?

Total of four hours travel time (there and back) + five seconds of watching cyclists ride past = my Tour de France experience. Of course, travel time would have been less if it hadn't been for the incessant staus, but still. It was fun though...I'm glad I went. I can at least say I was there (and maybe some pictures came out, too).

Music recap

Now that the day is gone, I'll finally get back to what I was planning on writing earlier today. As I said last night, Carmina Burana was excellent. To be honest, I didn't really know all that much about it, except for the song "Fortuna Imperatrix". Chances are that you know that song, as well, even if you don't realize it. It's used a lot, especially to convey a heavy, dark, dramatic scene. In fact, Jason was telling me that it's the song playing at the end of Apocolypse Now, when the start dicing up the guy. I don't really remember that, but then it's been many years since I've seen that film. Regardless, though, I really enjoyed that song, which was enough to get me to want to experience the rest of it.

The evening was not without its share of snags, however. It started off when we arrived at the castle. Jason, Natalie and I hadn't purchased advance tickets, because by the time both of them said they wanted to go there wasn't enough time to get advance tickets delivered. There were probably other ways to get reservations or tickets in beforehand, but to be honest I didn't feel like dealing with them once I saw that we could purchase tickets at the enterance the night of the show. However, by the time we arrived, the only non-reserved tickets left were the expensive ones selling at 44 EUR. Needless to say, we weren't fond of seeking those out. So we waited for the unclaimed, reserved tickets to go on sale. The end result was that the three of us had seats in three completely different sections. We tried all sitting together near my seat (which was the worst of the three). Our reasoning was that if single people approached us, we could offer the nicer seats to them. Unfortunately, a couple came up when we thought we were home free. We didnt' know what we were going to do, until right as the last call for seating rang out over the speakers, Jason strikes upon the idea that there are a significant number of empty seats in the expensive section. So we simply walk up and sit down. It ended up working out really great.

As for the show itself, it was superb. A dance accompanied the music, which definitely helped out as I had no more than a vague idea of what was supposed to be going on, since the entire piece was in Latin or Middle German. Actually, I did understand a good bit of the German portion, but that was only after I realized it was in German. In the end, though, it didn't matter that I couldn't logically understand what was going on; the emotions still got across, and anyway you could at least generally figure out what was going on from the dancing. There were times when some of the dancing got a little...sensual, but it was still excellent. I strongly recommend the show.

That's all for the time being. Now the moment has arrived for me to sleep.

Terror in London

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4659093.stm

Hard to work up enthusiasm to write about mundane events when something like the bombing in London happens. I think about the people involved, and especially the families of those who died, and my heart goes out to them. The death and destruction is wearying to the soul. And that's not even counting the people dying in Africa because they're not (insert adjective here). Or those who'll die from suicide bombers in Iraq today. Or the bombers themselves, who are able to convince themselves that killing themselves and as many bystanders as they can is somehow right, or justified, or whatever.

As I sort of implied earlier, I do have other things to write about. And on further consideration, some of them might not be all that mundane. But I'm just not up to writing about them now. After I've had a chance to process a bit more, I'll post again. Til then.

Real Quick...

Carmina Burana = teh r0x0r.
Or for those of you more educated, it was amazing. But I have an early start planned tomorrow, so now I'm off to bed.

Weekend Update

After a slow week spent on very little (activity-wise), the past four days have been quite busy. The ball started rolling on Saturday, which was the date of another all day strategy board game marathon at my house. Turn-out was lower than the previous one, but that was alright, as it gave us perfect numbers to play "The Settlers of Catan" throughout the day. We played three games (or was it four?) before we disbanded for the day. Excellent times.

Sunday saw church, lunch at Europa, and then a LAN party over at the Creiglows. Ahh...all-night nerd fun. And for once, it actually did go all-night. The games started around 1800 and didn't close up until 0830. Even more miraculously, there were no major problems with the network, and no catastrophic breakdowns on any computers. The extra computer I brought did require a number of newer drivers to function (along with some utilities to remove the copious amounts of spyware/adware/malware my brother had managed to infect it with), but even that went pretty quickly. All in all, the evening was a (sometimes literally) roaring success.

I got back home around 10 AM Monday, did a few odd things, and then went up to my room to crash. As I was setting my alarm I entetained a few vague notions of only sleeping for an hour and then pursuing a somewhat productive fourth of July. My body had other ideas, however, as I managed to either sleep through the alarm on my cell phone until it turned off or somehow turn it off in my sleep without any awareness. Either way, the end result was that I spent 5 hours asleep, before I got up for the remainder of the day. I spent the evening on PHV for desert, games, fireworks, and good conversation. Yet another extremely enjoyable day.

Finally, last night I went up to Landstuhl to go see Batman Begins at the Broadway Kino. All in all I was impressed with the film, though the big superweapon was a little preposterous. But at least it was easy to ignore.

Alright, I'll have to write more later, because I'm about to go see Carmina Burana at the Heidelberg Castle tongiht. Til then.

Seven Years in Heidelberg

Today marked seven years since my family moved up from Augsburg to Heidelberg, and so to celebrate the German-American Fest in Mannheim decided to shoot off fireworks. Well, maybe they were going to do that anyways, but it was pretty neat to be able to see fireworks going off 14 miles away. Not something that'd be possible if we were still living in the valley.