Fall, Glimmer, Sparkle and Fade

:: Saturday, April 20, 2002 ::

A classmate of mine was killed yesterday when the Jeep he was driving went out of control, struck a tree, found its way back to the road, left the road again and went airborne for 80 feet before hitting a tree and rolling over. He was 20 years old. If anyone reading this has ever driven a car drunk, stop and thank God that you are still alive. Even more, be thankful you didn't kill anyone else. If you ever drive a car drunk, forget you know me. There is absolutely NO EXCUSE to get behind the wheel of a car drunk. None.
He was 20.
He's dead.
He shouldn't be.

:: Ryan 3:42 AM [+] ::
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I know you're supposed to write in this thing everyday. And trust me I would, really. The problem is that in order to post, I need a computer to post FROM. Right about now that seems to be the problem. Mind you I know very little, if anything, about computers, but I know that when you turn your computer on and nothing but a black screen pops up, you're in big trouble. I have this disk that will fix my computer, but in order to do that it has to delete everything on my hard drive. Does that sound like a good idea? Yea, not so much. So until I figure out how to fix my computer, the posts will just have to be few and far between... Yes, I know all three of you that read this on a regular basis are broken up about this. When I can't brighten your day with a post, head over to any of the other blogs I have linked up on the side, each one will be much more interesting than anything I have to say and for the most part each have something new everyday. Now that I have found my way to a computer on campus, I might as well leave something that I've wanted to post for a while now.

Today's post will have absolutely no meaning to you unless you are a baseball fan. Sorry. Something I like to do every sports season, mainly because I'm a loser, is try my hand at predicting the final standings and a few award winners. Now that Baseball season is upon us, I figured I'd post my picks here so that this year I can't say "oh yea, I picked the Twins to be a contender this year", similar to what myself and everyone else around the country were saying at the All-Star Break, but laughed at during Spring Training. You can all point and laugh, more so than usual, after the season when my picks are all wrong.

NL East
Braves
Mets
Marlins
Phillies
Expos

NL Central
Cardinals
Astros
Cubs
Brewers
Reds
Pirates

NL West
Diamondbacks
Giants
Dodgers
Padres
Rockies

NL Wildcard: Mets
NL Cy Young: Matt Morris
NL MVP: Mike Piazza
NL Rookie of the Year: Josh Beckett
NL Batting Champion: Moises Alou

I picked everything on Easter Sunday, the day the season started. Already I look pretty dumb if you believe the Pirates can keep winning(i still say they'll lose 80 games) and Alou will keep getting hurt. There is no science to any of this.

AL East
Yankees
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Devil Rays
Orioles

AL Central
White Sox
Indians
Twins
Tigers
Royals

AL West
A's
Mariners
Angels
Rangers

AL Wildcard: Mariners
AL Cy Young: Tim Hudson
AL MVP: Jason Giambi
AL Rookie of the Year: Hank Blalock
AL Batting Champion: Jason Giambi

Again, I look pretty dumb if you think Giambi will keep slumping(he'll hit .330 with 40 homers if he's healthy) or this kid Blalock will continue to bomb.

The playoffs look like this:

NL Division Series:
Mets over the Cardinals
Diamondbacks over the Braves

NL LCS
Mets over Diamondbacks

AL Division Series
Yankees over the Mariners
Oakland over the White Sox

AL LCS
A's over the Yankees

World Series
A's over the Mets in 7

I might be biased as a Met fan by putting them in the Series, but I can't be THAT biased if I have them losing to Oakland. So write all this down and place your bets in Vegas! Or just come back here at the end of the season and laugh at my stupidity. Either way, just keep coming back....

:: Ryan 10:52 PM [+] ::
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In place of any thing I could possibly post, I will just direct you to Kraig's Blog. You should be reading this on an everyday basis already, but if you aren't then now is as good a time as any to start. So go and enjoy it!

:: Ryan 12:37 AM [+] ::
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"Y'all drove all the way to Atlanta just to see a baseball(pronounced bayseboll) game?"

If I never hear that line again it will be too many times. In case you didn't know, I guess now you do: This past weekend I drove down to Atlanta to see the Mets play the Braves. As you say to yourself "You're crazy Ryan." trust me, I know I'm crazy. I went down last year for Mets opening day and the trip actually wasn't that bad. Sixteen hours in the car sounds like a long time, but it really does go by pretty quick. It doesn't hurt to have a few hilarious stops along the way to keep you awake. The first seven hours of the trip were pretty uneventful, but then things started to get a little more interesting. While driving in Virginia, I realized that I was running low on gas, so obviously I just need to pull off at the next exit and get gas... sounds pretty easy, right? Yea, not so much. Did you know that there are almost no 24 hour gas stations in Virginia? So after close to 20 minutes or so of praying my car didn't stop dead in the middle of Virginia at 3:30 in the morning, we finally found a 24 hour gas station. I know it's not all that exciting, but what we found inside the gas station was a bit more interesting. Now I've never been one to discriminate against someone because of their skin color, sex or religion... number of teeth is another story. This woman, calling her a woman might be giving her too much credit, was scaaaaaaary. Besides the shirt that was three sizes too small, the hair from the 80's and the weird lookin guy that was sitting right next to her just staring into space, her three teeth were the worst part. I was afraid to get too close to her because I thought she might club me and take my teeth. So I pay her for the gas, very cautiosly mind you and since we figured we wouldn't be able to sit down and eat for a while, we decided to go across the street to the classiest restaurant ever: Denny's. Our waitress was another winner. Just imagine a resident of southern Virginia who works the overnight at the local Denny's restaurant. As always though, the food was as close to diner quality as you're gonna find. Plus, they had the coolest video game ever: Galaga! After playing a rousing game of Galaga(i got second place) I was reenergized and ready to start the second leg of the Atlanta trip. After a couple hours, which included flipping off the Duke Universitysign, I decided to hand over the driving duties to one of my friends and take a nap in the back seat. I woke up a few hours later and we were parked at a gas station. I stumble out of the car and into the Exxon Mart and ask a very valid question: Where are we? The response didn't come from my friends, but instead from the guy behind the counter: "Y'all in tiger(pronounced tiega) country now." Apparently we were in Clemson, which above all else is Tiger country. This guy was similar to the lady in Virginia in the way that if he had five teeth it was a lot. After filling me in on exactly where I was, he continued to show us how he and his Exxon Mart partner were trying to 'win the big one', meaning $100,000 from a scratch off ticket. They both seemed VERY excited about the fact that you can put the tickets into the machine WITHOUT EVEN SCRATCHING THEM and find out if you won. Apparently if we had won the 100,000, we were going to 'drive to greenville, then turn the car towards caaaaaaaaaancun'. Our friendly clerk, however, would open a 'flop house'. Call me stupid, but I had no idea what a flop house was. He let us know that it was exactly what the name says, a place for all your friends to come over and just 'flop around and do nothing'. Yea, gotta love those south folks. Anyways, it was then off to the whole point of the trip, seeing the Mets in Atlanta. Atlanta really is a pretty city, but the people working at the Sheraton in downtown Atlanta are the dumbest people in the world and to top it all off, none of them speak more than two words of english. After not being able to find our reservation for a few minutes(it 'magically' appeared later), the valet guy tried to explain to me how their system works, I just gave him my keys and said 'Okay' because I figure he has to at least understand that. After a power nap it was off to Game 1, a 7:35 start at Turner Field. The pitching matchup was Pedro Astacio against Albie Lopez. The Mets went down early in the first inning, giving up a two run homer to Andruw Jones, who is of no relation to me. The Mets responded with a couple RBIs from Rey Rey 'warning track power' Ordonez and the pitcher, Pedro Astacio. The Mets ended up putting the game away with a three run homer in the 5th inning by Jeromy Burnitz. Anytime I can see the Mets put up a 9 spot is a good time, and it's even better when I drive 16 hours to see it. The next day's game was night game too, so we had a few hours to kill before gates opened and decided to explore downtown Atlanta a bit. Apparently Atlanta shouldn't be called 'hot'lanta, but instead 'coke'lanta because it's really the only soda you can buy in the city. I almost felt dirty walking around with a pepsi bottle that I bought the day before in Clemson. The Coke factory is there and so we decided to take the guided tour, which really isn't much of a tour. Basically you walk around the three level 'exhibit' and look at old Coke bottles and advertisements and then you can taste any of the Coke products you already know and love (cherry coke, sprite, tab, etc..) and then you can taste soda from all over the world. Let me just tell you, some of that stuff was some of the worst shit I've ever tasted in my life. The one that didn't taste like carbonated cough syrup had this really gross metallic taste to it. So after getting our 6 bucks worth of soda, we decided to make our way to Turner field for Game 2. This time it was Jeff D'Amico against their stud Tom Glavine. D'amico looked great for the Mets, going six innings only giving up two runs while striking out 4. Glavine was just as good, giving up 2 runs over 7 innings with 4 strikeouts. It was 2-2 going into the top of the ninth and their closer, John Smoltz, was coming into the game. Smoltz is one of the better pitchers in the game and our biggest gun Mike Piazza went down two innings earlier with a knee injury, so I wasn't feeling so confident. the first batter of the inning is Jay Payton, the Mets center fielder, and he proceeds to send one of the first pitches he sees into the left center field gap for a triple. I think it's safe to say that now my confidence has been restored. Two of the next three batters had singles and the Mets were holding a 4-2 lead. This is where I realized that Atlanta fans completely suck. Now I basically already knew this, but this completely convinced me. The Braves were down only TWO runs in the ninth inning and the Mets closer warming up in the bullpen had blown two games in this very stadium just months earlier, yet they all started pouring out of the stadium after two runs. Maybe that's why the rest of the inning made me feel that much better. The Mets weren't happy with just a two run lead, they wanted more... much more. They got just that with singles from Robbie Alomar and doubles from Vance Wilson, the aforementioned Rey Rey Ordonez and 'Super Joe' Mcewing. 9 runs later it was a 7-2 ballgame and the Mets took the first two games of the series, which sent me home very happy, feeling a bit better about being in a car for 16 hours and having to make that same trip again that night. During our two day stay in Atlanta, despite wearing Mets gear and looking like tourists the whole time, we only got one 'Go home yankees', which was in the middle of the second game. I was actually pretty impressed because if there were a bunch of people from Atlanta walking around Queens and then watching the game at Shea in full Braves gear, I can guarentee you they would hear a lot worse than 'go home'. Oh well... Gotta love that southern hospitality.....

:: Ryan 3:40 AM [+] ::
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