12:46 a.m. - October 09, 2005
It's a Random Essay, but Isn't Life Random?
Well, it�s been a random week, so why not have some random thoughts semi-strung together in a semi-coherent fashion?
Today, Wabash played a home football game against Oberlin. The crowd was a bit down, but it may have been expected since Oberlin isn�t exactly a football powerhouse. They�ve won 12 games in seven years, and that�s counting a 5-5 season in 2003. Wabash won 42-7, but Oberlin did play a lot better than that, and they look like a program on the rise, as many of their key players are young.
That and many of our alumni travel to our games and only go to two or three home games a year, and we have a huge game at home against Wittenberg in two weeks (their evil-doing is only surpassed by DePauw�s nefariousness. And they�re both the Tigers, so go figure�)
However, I only write this because of the nickname of their sports teams. They are the Yeomen. When I hear that I automatically think of that chick on Star Trek that had the basket weave hair do. Oberlin�s women�s teams are the Yeowomen. I kid you not.
Division three has its share of wacky nicknames. Wabash is the Little Giants, which of course IS oxymoronic, however, it�s got history back to the aughts (that�s 1900�s for you all) when our team played Michigan to a tough game, and our football coach at the time said we competed like �Little Giants� out on the field. That�s all it took back in the day.
In our conference, we have the Lords (Kenyon, who�s women�s teams are the Ladies, of course), the Terriers (Hiram, and doesn�t a terrier strike fear into you? Doesn�t it?), the Battling Bishops (Ohio Wesleyan) and the Quakers (Earlham).
I know a lot of schools are named the Quakers, but Quakers playing football? Quakers are supposed to be non-violent, right? If they were true Quakers, do they just stand in the huddle silently until God speaks to them as to what play they were going to run? Hmmmm�.
Some other great D-3 football nicknames are the Concordia-Moorhead Cobbers, the Franklin and Marshall Diplomats (negotiate them to submission, no doubt), the Heidelberg Student Prices (mini-Machiavellians, no doubt), the Illinois College Blue Boys (ladies, name your own joke), the Knox Prairie Fire, the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens (ooooh�how scary!), the Coe Cohawks, the Tufts Jumbos (I�m sure the ladies teams love THAT one), and the Whittier Poets. Some may scoff at Poets, but that may be effective. Because when on the line, what they�ll do is just spout some pretentious inane babble that sounds deep and snap their fingers a lot, and the opposing team will be confused in trying to understand the so-called symbolism, and hey, easy touchdown!
Speaking of football, thank goodness it�s football weather. Earlier this week it was over 80 degrees and humid here in BFE Indiana, which isn�t right. We have to put up with that stuff for the summer, but when the calendar turns to October we should enjoy nice, crisp Autumn days in the 60s and nice cool nights, and not have to keep running the air conditioner. Finally, sanity has come to our weather pattern. That hasn�t stopped a couple of our trees from shedding leaves during the heat wave, though. See, at least the trees knew what the heck season it was!
Kristin is four months old today. That�s hard to believe. She�s doing just great, and growing right on schedule. This of course means that instead of 3-6 month clothes, she�s in 6-9 month clothes already. Who sizes these things, anyway? I don�t think any child is really in the size the tag says they�re supposed to be. Katie, who will be 4 in December, is wearing 5 and 6 clothes already. There needs to be an investigation about this. It�s an insidious plot, I�m sure.
Our little drool bucket is now sleeping in her crib upstairs instead of her bassinette. (Well, when we can extract the cats from the crib. They seem to like it!) She�s pretty active as well. Every time I go get her when she wakes up from her slumber, she�s rotated 90 degrees and is lying perpendicular in the crib. It looks really odd. The last time I woke up perpendicular in my bed I had no idea how I got into my bed and no real idea on what I did the night before. (Well, until I got my credit card bill.)
Today (Sunday!! Sunday!! Sunday!!) we have a cookout for the younger members of the church we are �dating� (we�re going pretty steady, really).
It makes me feel good that me, at almost 40, is considered a younger member of a church. For what it�s worth. I just wish it wasn�t on a Sunday, in October. The NFL is on, man. And I can�t drink beer and watch the games before I go to the cookout, lest I be looked at kind of, well, like a ne�er do well. I know it�s Methodist, so it�s not like evil and all that I like beer, but football and beer are just great partners, and I just would feel all weird to have even one beer on my breath when talking to the pastor on his turf.
However, we�re going to invite him and his wife over for dinner this month to kind of get into the nitty gritty o� theology, and I�ll have the home field advantage. So I can offer him the proverbial loaf o� bread and bottle o� wine and my ramblings about this, that and t�other spiritually, ethereally, and temporally. I hope he doesn�t run away. I hope Liz doesn�t run away.
This past week, I shipped out another batch of mix CD�s, which I love to do as captured here. I think that I�ve done about 63 mix CDs in the past six months to various and sundry friends (hello, all of you!) and I�m spent, for now. I�m going to let my mix CD ideas simmer, though I do now owe someone else some at some point. I have some new tunes coming, some new purchases, and then many, many songs that I have neglected.
Right now, awaiting the four CD�s that I have on order from Amazon (which should come ANY DAY NOW, dang it!) I have 11, 612 songs on my iTunes (with a lot more either on my backup drive or in my CD collection) and I really need to explore them so I can make better mixes for you all.
Right now, iTunes says that my entire computerized collection would take 28 days, 12 hours and 17 seconds to play.
Oh, if I only had that vacation time.
But it got me to wonder. After I get these CDs in and burned onto my hard drive (a note, these CDs are from artists where I have a substantial collection on CD already, and want to really keep said collection, in case of, well, in case of holy hell that causes my entire online music collection to be lost I�d still have a basic collection to come back to) I was thinking of setting my iPod to shuffle and playing it until I went through from beginning to end and see how long it really took to do that.
It�s loony and quixotic enough to give it a try. I�ll see if I can actually do it without wimping out.
