So, uh, how've the past 4 months been for you? Everything going well? Glad to hear it. I'll check back in around October.
"Really," you ask?
"No, not really," I reply, smarmily.
Ok, so I'm a fucker. I vaguely remember posting something early on in this about a story I read on CNN.com about the slew of dead blogs, and I think I swore never to be one of those asshats. Maybe I didn't post that, but I know that I thought about posting it. And I'm too lazy to go looking backwards to see whether or not I really did.
Point being, I am back. And this one goes out to the both of you that might ever read this.
So what's been new with me in the past four months? Surprisingly little, with the exception of a shitload of travel, both personal and work. It started in February. Since that point I've been to Vegas (personal), Florida twice (both personal), Detroit (work), Boston (work), and Toronto twice (both work as well). In five days I head off again, for a two week business trip to British Columbia, including Kamloops, Vernon, and of course Vancouver. The BC trip will start off what is scheduled to be a five week run of business travel. I'll do the two weeks in BC, followed by a week each in Boston, Edmonton, and Tampa. Essentially, I've been living at LaGuardia.
You might ask whether my job was supposed to have this amount of travel, and I would answer that it is not supposed to. And also that I've asked the same thing. But the travel has been to some good places, with the notable exception of Detroit Rock City. Though I won't say much more, out of fear that the ABC affiliates will drop me along with Jimmy Kimmel.
Does anyone else remember why I initially founded this blog? Right, to discuss progress of my first novel, as I was going through NaNoWriMo. Well I am still working on the second draft. It's slow going, mostly because it's tedious work sitting there with a big stack of pages and a pen and marking them up. When I do get recharged in respect to it, I plow through a bunch of pages. But I tend to fade fast and let it slide for a while. At this point, my goal would have to be getting through the third draft before this October's NaNo contest begins, so I can go for it again. I have been bringing 50 or so pages along with me at a time on most of my business trips, and I did get through a handful of pages on my most recent flight to Toronto, but so far nothing while at my hotels. Next week I have the first week by myself, in Kamloops and Vernon, and I'm hoping to knock some work out on it while I'm in the mountains.
The other focus that I sort of molded this space into was to talk about the baseball site that my friend Mike and I had decided to found. If you've taken a look at that, you'd notice that it was last updated around the last time this was. Mike and I had a lengthy discussion about the site just a few days ago actually, and came to the decision that we'd rushed into this too quickly. Not with the idea, but with the actuall production/go-live stuff. We were moving along at a good pace, prepping the site and all. And then the Rangers traded A-Rod to the Yankees, and we decided to rush live as quickly as possible, and we faded fast in both the wake of that frenzy and the fact that both of our day jobs suddenly got busy. Come the off-season, we're going to revamp and relaunch well in advance of next year's Spring Training, hopefully around February or so. We're actually kind of excited about it again.
Even though the Mets suck, baseball has not died for me. A couple of weeks ago I went to a Blue Jays game in Toronto. And this past Sunday, a few of us (including Mike) went to see Rickey Henderson and the Newark Bears. Tomorrow, Mike and I are going ith a couple of others to see the Brooklyn Cyclones. A week from Saturday, in Vancouver, I'll be checking out Oakland's A affiliate, the Vancouver Canadians. Clearly I'm on a minor league baseball kick right now.
One other thing, which I just want to briefly mention, because it was very cool to be at. In my younger days, I was very much into Phish. I still am, but not as rabidly as I once was. I was naturally upset to hear that they were breaking up, although I have to admit that it's seemed kind of uninspired for the past few years. I had a ticket for one of the two Brooklyn shows a couple of weeks ago, but had to give it up because of one of my Toronto business trips. So when I heard that they were doing a free half hour show on the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theatre, I had to go, and it was a lot of fun to be there.
This is a very long update. And though you might correctly argue that is well overdue, I'd combat that with the fact that if I truly do come back to this as I've promised that you won't go without my banal posts for very long.
That being said, here's some pics that I've taken recently, that for the most part fit along with updates today.
SkyDome
A view of the CN Tower from my seat at the SkyDome
Rickey at the bat...
A mid-inning game at the Newark Bears game that would have pleased Randall Simon.
Phish outside Letterman
And finally...
Kevin Millar, of the Red Sox isn't a member of the MLBPA, and so can't officially be on any MLB merchandise. So what did Mike suggest, when I said that I'd have liked a Millar t-shirt? This is what he suggested. Say it out loud, and you'll sound like you live in Boston.
-Jordan
