No Recoil

(I'm not in misery)

Slightly altered quote from Margaret's CD.

I got an e-mail from Barbara yesterday. The little things that charge you for an entire day.

Things continue to go well here and I am thankful for it. Had a great apartment dinner with Nate, Dave, and I hosting Martin and Luke (and Bethany) to pasta, homemade sauce, Dave's famous garlic bread and the apartment classic, spinach leaf salad. After some Soul Calibur II goodness, Martin and I then got to do some editing on The Clearing - also known as the Nione story - that I helped him create for a class. We're sending it in to a national contest for fantasy short story writing. It's more his then mine - it's his writing - but I did have some of the major ideas of it and have already helped edit/continue it twice, so... I guess it's the essence of a joint effort!

Had a HUGE win in Dodgeball as Team Hit the Deck took down their archrivals Heinz 5-4. This puts us in great position to garner the #1 seed for the playoffs. HIT THE DECK!!
Shorter entry today. Have basketball tonight and a game to purchase. Woo!

Martin's updates continue to amuse me and I continue to do my own.

Current Obsessions (in no particular order)
Dodgeball - Team Hit The Deck, Defending Champions, .627 winning percentage (1st seed)
Volleyball - Team Try 17-4, 2nd seed
Basketball - Team Want It, 2-4, 4th place
Caissa wearing a green dress
Warcraft III - Mat Lv 17 Orc Blademaster, Stoph Lv 17 Night Elf Priestess, Rank below 150
The Flames of Resistance - Chapter 2, Things That Burn/Epilogue
Fantasy Football - 2-5 Friends, 4-3 Family, 0-7 Work
Pittsburgh Penguins, 0-4-5
Pittsburgh Steelers, 4-2
Agatha Christie
Burnout Revenge, 39% complete
Soul Calibur III
Footlong Meatball Sub On Wheat With Spinach Leaves from Subway

On The Way Up

(and trying not to look down)

Things are looking up.
After the most worrisome week in the history of my employment at my job, I feel much more secure at my job. I won't go into details, but there was some serious shakeup going on, and I'm glad to still be here. That would have changed everything.

But I survived, and things are looking up. My job is doing better and I'm getting more work done. My roomate situation in Squirrel Hill is a blast. I've roomed with Nate before, but this is the first time that I've roomed with Dave, and the experience has been epic. It's only solidifying a good friendship.

I am in better touch with friends. Talked to Margaret, seeing Martin and Luke, called Liam. Next on list: Jess, Barbara.

My Aunt Linda got out of the hospital! She was with the family to see the Steelers game! She had a yellow and black wig on (now that's team spirit) and it was great to see her. She slept through most of the game, as to be expected, but it's great that she is out of the hospital, however briefly.

I'm getting work done in TFOR, I am having a blast playing fantasy hockey, and I had great presents for my mom and my sister Grace's birthdays.

I found the stuffed shark.
That alone is putting a smile on my face.

Life is looking up. Gotta run with it while the going is good!

Dangerous

(and unarmed)

Treading on dangerous, uneven ground. Or on thin ice.
Or dangerously uneven thin ice.

Work got a huge shakeup the other day. Departments moved, responsibilities reset, managers let go. Gotta keep my head down.

ARGH! MY CIO JUST WALKED BY! Gotta cut this way short. Will write back later.

As If To Say

(who doesn't like chocolate?)

From Bloc Party, a new group that I love via Dave Wilson. Yet another scary music connection for the roomates. I plan on introducing Margaret to said group...

Short entry today, as I am very busy. All the Moulden 108 crew is here, and as planned in my most recent blog, Sunday madness and MNF did commence. Still on the schedule: Tuesday Dodgeball tonight and Seeing Margaret Off Wednesday...

This weekend was an absolute blast, as I was up in Chautauqua with the family at the sixteenth annual Margaret Jackman Invitational Tournament, or MJIT XVI for short. The scariest part? I won. By one stroke. It's a handicapped system, but the system is so accurate that the top five players all finished within five strokes of each other. Now THAT is well designed. I'm also happy because I know that - after a tough day 1 - I played amazingly (for me) and shot back-to-back 104's for a net-61 and a net-66 on days 2 and 3 to come roaring back to steal the title. Here's how my uncle described it in his MJIT summary:

1st Place/2005 MJIT Champion/ Mat – after a rather ordinary first round effort, Mat put together back-to-back blistering rounds of mid-60s golf to rip the MJIT Championship from the grasp of his would be pursuers. Along the way Mat set many tournaments firsts:
- first NextGen winner of the MJIT
- youngest MJIT champ and the best ballroom dancer since Gpa
- Only golfer ever to shoot below par on the final day wearing skidoo gloves on both hands and sporting a WWI flying ace hat on his head (with the flaps down)
- only bachelor Champion……..although when the news of his new title hits The Snug…..it will only be a matter of time until Mat has his own collection of trophy wives

The WWI flying ace hat/skidoo gloves would be the 42 degree whether on day 3. You couldn't even feel the club if you had bare hands, it was so cold. It didn't deter me from a huge victory, however! (Really, it was the hat.)

I'm extremely pumped for the dodgeball match tonight. HTD is still in second place and could greatly benefit from a stomping of Oscar's Grouchy Green Balls (yes... that's really their name). Dave is absolutely hooked, just like everyone else. Honestly, you play it once... and it's all over for you. You're hooked, you're done, don't fight it baby, just go with it. Oh yeah.

That's enough for now, I have to run. On bravado.

It's A Hockey Night

(in Pittsburgh)

Tonight from the Mellon Arena... the Pittsburgh Penguins... versus the New Jersey Devils!
Well, ok, it's not at the Mellon Arena, but the new NHL season is here and I am more excited about it than I have ever been before. The salary cap - fair economics! - the crackdown on interference - fair refereeing! - the changes in the game - exciting offense - well... let's just say my vacation has been moved around because of how excited I am about this Pens season. I have a 20-game plan, a TV that gets FSN Pittsburgh and OLN and the only thing I need is a vintage Pens jersey. (Perhaps of Ron Francis?)
Man am I pumped!

Match 4 of the Fall Season of Dodgeball was last night, against archrival Heinz. It was a hard fought, bitter match, one that we ended up tieing, 5-5. Not too shabby for being down 5-1 and playing subless the entire night against the best team in the league. Just like last season, we are trying to hawk down Heinz for the #1 seed in the league. In the summer we did just before the playoffs, beat our first round matchup and won the finals in the last game on the last throw, 6-5, for an astonishing come-from-behind Dodgeball Championship. Now, we want to repeat, and we're following the same script. So far, so good!

Sadly, just when blogging was really helping me and I was having a lot of fun with it, I have to go on vacation. Thursday-Saturday is Golf-o-rama for the Frailey family (my mom's side) and I am expected to attend, representing the "youngins" of the group. I will be coming back on Sunday to three days with the Moulden 108 crew, which will just be awesome.

The stuff to do this week!
- Sunday Guys Fantasy Football Madness
- Steelers Monday Night Football
- Tuesday Dodgeball
- Wednesday Seeing Off Of Margaret

It's MADNESS I tell you! MADNESS!

And as a last important note, after seeing Men In Black with Dave Wilson at the apartment, I am following in the legendary footsteps of Mike, Grace, and Rosie in being able to quote MIB at will.
A pet cat!

Be It Bereft Of Women

(there's no place like home)

This was the e-mail I mentioned a bit ago about what I felt about my new place. Here I reproduce it in (close) to its entirety:

It's pretty bizarre living off in Squirrel Hill after living in the South Hills all my life. You wouldn't think being in a different direction from the city would make all that much difference, and in some cities it might not, but in Pittsburgh it does a lot. The geography and social history of Pittsburgh are really different. The south had some affluence that allowed it to ride out the steel mills closing in the 70's, so they had some nicer amenities and their T (trolley) was the only one of the four that didn't go under and they built in a more expansive way. In Squirrel Hill everything's a lot closer together, not prohibitively so but in a way I'm not used to. All the houses have a little alley between them and that's it. It's a little weird.
And of course everyone uses buses. If I had to say there's one thing I miss about my old place it would be the T hands down. I could write an entire e-mail about how the given schedule times for buses are merely a suggestion, and how half the drivers are from Zimbabwe and drive according to those laws, and don't get me started on the relative seating and leg room for 6'7" computer and backpack carrying city workers. Thankfully we live semi-close to the city and it doesn't last much more than a half-hour.
The apartment is really neat. I'm beginning to love the linear layout of our apartment. It's cool because you can be blaring Rage Against The Machine or having a (rather raucous) celebration during the football game and if you're in your room with your door closed way down at the end of the hall you don't even know it's happening. This is good for reading, sleeping, and the general sense of sanctuary of having your own room. It works in reverse too, which is really good when you're with a girl. The walls are generally thick, though I think sound probably can make it one room across. Little does Nate know that since his room is in between mine and Dave's, both of us can hear when he's railing the crap out of Bethany. Haha! Well, ok, we can't because the man is very courteous and I have yet to hear a thing. But it's not out of the realm of feasibility.
The TV room-sunroom/arboretum/computer room is my favorite combo in the apartment. The TV room looks really nice because Nate and Dave scored a freaking AWESOME couch for $0 (of course - we'll come back to this) and we keep the doors between the two open, so I run back and forth and roll around on my chair. My Lazyboy chair is also in the TV room allowing for personal kickback action as required. If there's one thing we have to work on it's the reach of the PS2, but I'm working on a solution. Let me tell you, kicking back and watching the game or playing a game of Burnout Revenge is a privelege and an enjoyment. I also get to play with Christoph online some (a game called Warcraft III) and as I'm playing a light breeze will waft through the room. And if DW's watching TV or some such I can just close the folding doors between the TV room and the computer room and neither of us disturb each other. These are things you never find out until you experience them in person, and they're great.
The strangest/coolest thing of all is the way our lifestyles are all changing. There are a couple aspects of this. Being a pretty carefree guy I'm probably the messiest, though Dave isn't wild either. To DW's credit though, since he doesn't have a job yet he pulls his weight by doing things like general cleanup, getting grocieries, etc. I called him from work a week ago and told him I left him money to pick up a Brita water filter and he went and got it. The man even put away all my books I had lugged out to the main room to put in the bookcase. I, on the other hand, am never home, so I have yet to be very helpful. I haven't even done dishes yet - they just magically get clean as far as I can tell. I try and be helpful by taking on larger tasks, like washing the kitchen floor. As soon as DW buys some Lysol, we'll be good to go.
But aside from cleanliness, some of Nate's ways are rubbing off. Slowly but surely I find myself changing the way I think about things, particularly in monetary terms. I am now on the lookout for free ways to get things, most particularly food. For example, instead of just stopping by my house last night, DW and I helped my bro out with his math homework and we got a free meal (spaghetti) and took some salmon home for us all to split (which was tasty). I find myself making more cost-effective decisions at work too, and if I can find a way to support my large needs for bread (the primary problem being finding a time to get it from the grocery store) I want to start taking my lunch to work every day. Now this is not normally how I operate, but Dave was so committed to broadening his horizons - both literally and metaphorically - that I decided that I wanted to broaden my horizons too. Case in point, Nate and Dave decided to make a salad consisting of spinach leaves, carrots, and peppers. Normally I like only the peppers and wouldn't touch spinach if my life depended on it. But I decided to go for it and ended up liking it and put down three times as much salad as I normally do - with this being much healthier than what I usually pick at. It's especially important since my job is SO sedentary - its major minus - and health and exercise are at premiums. The neat thing about this is that I think we're rubbing off a little on Nate too. He went to Subway with us because I more or less determined that I had a craving, something he wouldn't do by himself. It's less of an effect I think because he's 1) not home that much and 2) has Bethany who reinforces his original concepts, but there's potential there. My eventual goal is to keep my mind open to other ways of doing things (Nate's being the most different from mine, they're the most story worthy). As a bonus, that means when I do things the normal way it's refreshing, reassuring, and a treat all at the same time. I still plan on eating with Dave (at minimum) at the Chinese restaurant next to us once a month, and a Sunday football Pizza Hut here has already become a tradition.
Hanging out with the guys is fun and alone makes the decision to move worth it. Dave has done a great job so far in getting involved, as he now is in two-and-a-half PSL sports and has joined a church choir. He's also hung out at a bunch of parties as Nate gets invited to one every two hours. This is where I skew a little different than Nate and DW, I'm not a huge party guy and while I like the occasional shin-dig, I'd trade any party in the world for last night, with Dave ranting about his fantasy football team and drowning his sorrows with a cold one or three, playing Burnout Revenge at halftime with Dave's help, and Nate coming home from class and racking out on the chair and blatantly looking for boobs on TV with our help. Still, I'm making a commitment to broadening my own horizons, so I plan on hitting up Karaoke tomorrow night with the guys (despite my singing voice having gone to shit) and am going so far as to invite some of my own friends to come. I'm also going to attend some of Nate's parties.
Sports are a blast and you look forward to them all day. Nate has started class and it's pretty well screwed volleyball, which is ironic since due to other unforeseen circumstances (injury, marriage) Dave has had to fill in twice for our volleyball team. This is a competitive league and Dave has never played the sport outside of gym class. Dave's record? 6-0. The man had a massive roof last game and we all went nuts. Dodgeball is also a blast and I think DW likes it a lot more (than volleyball). The idea of pounding women with flying projectiles just appeals to him I think, and now that he's got the basics down he's becoming a force with his right arm. We're just outside of second place and have a big match against the team in 2nd tonight. Dave really gets into it. Unlike basketball, where if you shoot as hard as you possibly can you'll send it over the backboard (as DW has), in dodgeball you are welcome to bring as much heat as you can (if you're a heat thrower of course), so DW can really let loose. Picture his face after a shot that doesn't go in on a hard drive to the hoop and the rebound's going the other way. Now hand him a ball and tell him to kill the girl thirty feet away with it. Yeah. LOOK OUT, INCOMING, WE ARE PULLING INTO ANNIHILATION STATION. It's a lot of fun. Basketball might be the best of all because of how much I appreciate playing with the guys. Remember what it was like senior year when Dave would come down and we'd all get to ball again? It's like that EVERY time. I'm soaking it in for all we're worth. We also play Tuesday nights at CMU (pickup) and that's men's and intense besides, so we cover the full range. Great exercise is important, as both DW and I could be in better shape. Nate, the running swar, has .3% fat on his body, and all of it is on his right big toe. His endurance is getting back to playoff-run collegiate volleyball levels, and that's scary. I hate playing against him at CMU because of it because he can run up and down the floor at will. I feel like I'm 90! Hahaha. Sad but true. In the end, bit by bit I'm feeling more comfortable. I already love the place and the guys and my goal is to learn and experience new things while still enjoying the old. To this end I think I'm starting on a good track. The next step is for Tom and Jeff to come down and experience the place with us. That's about the only thing missing at this point, besides the 6 ft cactus. But Nate completely blew it on that one. Sad.


The apartment experiment continues...

Serenity

(is there anything better in the world)

Peace.
For all the times that people want excitement, that people want adventure, and that people want something to do on Friday or Saturday night, there is nothing more fulfilling than simple serenity.
And I had it.
Have it, really. At least for this.
On Saturday night I went out to Finnegan's Wake, which is a pretty cool Irish bar near PNC Park. I was invited by Margaret, who knows of my love for Irish music and also knew the opening band - Jackdaw - as one of her favorites. I have to say, they were awesome. They are a kooky collection of disparate elements that make up one drunk, fun-loving Irish bar band. It's great. Their five-piece band include a bass, a guitar, a violin, drums, and an accordion/bagpipes. The guy who plays the violin is very quiet; the bass is totally nuts; the guitar/singer looks like he's stoned; the drummer looks like he's in another world; and the accordion/bagpipes guy looks like he's crazy and loving it. The accordion/bagpipes guy's name, I believe, was either Mike or Dave (we'll guess Mike, but I could swear Margaret kept telling me a different name every time I asked) and had a mohawk, tatoos, a kilt, and a mean penny whistle. Incredible stuff.
We walked back to the car (parked on the other side of the river) and, on a beautiful star-filled night, talked. About everything; the past, the present, the future, intentions and expectations, hopes and laments. It was part truce, part agreement, part apology, part... well, let's just say there were a lot of emotions and tears were shed. And I need to write that down in this blog because I can't afford to forget it; I needed this blog four years ago, to sort out my conflicting emotions and get my thoughts in some semblance of order. But what was so - beautiful - about Saturday night was that the past melded into the present into the future, without reservation. We discussed how we felt about our past, and how it affected us now, and what it should mean for the future, and for the first time... peace. It's said that time heals all wounds, but that's not exactly true. Time gives the perspective of distance, something critically important because of how hot and searing the reality was. For a long time, looking back at that time was as painful as flicking away a barely formed scab, something I couldn't open my mind or heart to without a world of pain and regret that I could only manage to take in small doses. But the beginnings of a truce months ago - and getting to hang out with Margaret, and interact again - lay the groundwork so that this time, I could take away the scab and put a Band-aid on it. It will now heal, something that never happened before. And while there will always be a scar, it no longer will be an open wound; and things can again grow normally.
I don't know why I slip into a lot of symbolism sometimes, but it is so apt. So apt.
So we will be friends again. Are. Will be. That's all. And I am so happy about it that I could scream - except it's not euphoria. The emotion is intense, but peaceful. Like drowning in an open grassy field next to a murmuring stream. Because for the first time - and as I type these words I realize they are true - I think back to those days and they are painless. Still tinged with regret, maybe, and sorrow - but now there is hope, that those days will not go unavenged, that they will not burn and plague my soul with no recourse for years to come. And I look back upon those days now with a sense of wonder - because I can look back at them without the pain in my heart or the hatred of my decisions - and tears nearly come to my eyes, here, at work, because the intensity of the pain hid its source. Because being friends with Margaret - simply friends - were some of my best times with her ever. I have other amazing friends - good 'guy' friends like the Moulden 108 crew, amazingly talented friends like Martin or Luke, friends that stayed through the years like Jess, friends that never forget like Barbara. But Margaret was something different; a curiousity, intellectual yet creative, thoughtful yet fun, and a loyalty that could burn you from twenty yards away. And it took losing that to realize how special that kind of friend was. You don't know what you have 'til it's gone.
But now that thought, that damn thought that I had to bury lest it pain me forever, is painless and I can look back and remember the great times without regret. I can remember the fun and the interests and the inside jokes and laugh and smile and remember fondly. Forensics. Lockers. Drawings. Writing. Stories. Meetings. Writing stories at meetings. Lunches. Dancing. Parks. Movies. Presents. Friendship. They bring a smile to my face now. Not pain or loss.
Oh, peace. Oh, tranquility.
Serenity. A fictional place no longer. How fitting!
I might look back on writing this entry and think it is overly melodramatic, or over the top, or both.
But somehow I don't think so.

Martin's profile and my good mood are collaborating on this one. This will go up on my IM profile and be updated there, but I think I'll make the first entry here.

Current Obsessions (in no particular order)
Dodgeball - Team Hit The Deck, Defending Champions, .628 winning percentage (2nd seed)
Volleyball - Team Try 8-1
Basketball - Team Want It, 1-2
Drawings of Caissa
Warcraft III - Mat Lv 13 Orc Blademaster, Stoph Lv 13 Night Elf Priestess
The Flames of Resistance - Chapter 2, Things That Burn
Fantasy Football - 2-2 Friends, 2-2 Family, 0-4 Work
Pittsburgh Penguins
Pittsburgh Steelers, 2-1
Misery by Stephen King
Burnout Revenge, 19% complete
Burgers with spinach salad