Busy and Tired

Tired and busy.

Good times

Yesterday, I came home from class to find Tim cleaning the living room. This was apparently so he could have more room to kick the soccer ball around, which we did later in the evening while watching M.A.S.H. and drinking beer. Then at the beginning of one particularly trippy episode, he said, "This makes me want to watch The Wall."

"Do you have that movie? Man, I haven't watched that since I was like fifteen!"

"Hell yeah!"

So we watched that a bit, until his girlfriend came over and retrieved him for dinner. Inspired by the angry young man theme, I went down to the basement and beat up the punching bag, went to the gym, then wandered around the dark neighborhood.

Yeah, we have a punching bag. Three different bands rehearse in the basement, drinking beer and playing with the soccer ball indoors is encouraged, and no one freaks out over a little mess. I should've moved here sooner.

And there's more in the closet!

Yes, the curtain is tied back with a Timber Jim scarf. Yes, the curtain is actually a shower curtain. Yes, it's stapled to the wall. And yes, the walls have wood paneling. I never claimed to be MarthafuckingStewart, ok?

Whew, Tuesday's move was pretty exhausting. I was about to curl up into the fetal position motionless for several hours by the time this pic was taken. Thankfully, the boys made my bed for me. So what if everything is inside-out and backwards?


Then I remembered I had a soccer game that evening. We lost, there was one actual fight and multiple almost-fights, three blue cards (sort of like the penalty box in hockey/sin bin in rugby - two minutes on the sidelines, leaving your team short a player on the field) and one yellow. The yellow, I may have had a part in instigating. This giant, angry girl on the other team used her mass to move me out of her way on the path to goal, so I grabbed her arm as she scored. Only it got called back due to a supposed handball on her part. She was so incensed by this that she got in the ref's face and swore at him and threatened him, and then kept it up after he gave her a blue card. I don't know what it is about that Tuesday league that lends itself to raging tempers, but this certainly isn't the first time there have been some heated exchanges during a match. The people on both the teams I've played on there are truly nice outside the facility, are a delight to drink with afterward, and are at all the Timbers games with drums and flags, which is what keeps me playing with them, I think. It's just strange how they're such different characters when they're playing.

That didn't last long

There's something sad about watching TV on the couch, alone, while eating a bowl of cereal in the dark. Strangely, the sad part of it is the TV itself. If I'd just been sitting there by myself in the dark eating a bowl of cereal, the situation would have somehow seemed less pathetic. I was initially excited by this newfound access to cable TV, but now that I've lived here for the better part of six days, the novelty has worn off. Two minutes on a channel that isn't broadcasting cartoons is enough to make me stick my fingers in my ears and scream, "Aaaaagggghhhh! I don't live in this country! I don't know these people!" (The Family Guy I'll take credit for, though.)

Moving day tomorrow! I've exchanged babysitting hours for haul-shit-around hours, so I'll have help dragging my bed and books over here. Can't wait to see what the old housemate has done in my week long absence. The morning after I gave notice, she got up at five am and vacuumed, turned on the porch light that shines directly onto my bed and then banged the door next to my room several times, seemingly unnecessarily. The next day she emptied my shower, doused it in cleaning solvents and left a note that said, "My plumber friend tells me that using too much bleach will cause the sealants to corrode." What? Needless to say, I didn't use the shower again for fear of my feet melting.

OK, I promise to not complain about the old housemate again unless she does something really outrageous. Although if I'm not complaining about people, I really don't know what I'm going to write about, since I've been in such a blahhhh mood for the past.... 3 months? Sheez, I need to see the sun again or something.

SCORE!!!!!!

I scored! ....a goal. In soccer. No euphemism there, unfortunately.

I'd been telling everyone prior to tonight that I hadn't scored a goal since I was nine. This is kind of an understatement. I'm not sure I've scored in a competitive match ever. Obviously, I'm a defender. But I'm not just *a* defender. Due to a lack of technical ability and being relegated to defensive duties since age 11 and therefore never learning any sort of offensive move, my entire role is to screw up the other team. Defense is pretty easy, really: get to the loose ball first, block off the passing lanes, and get a toe on every ball that gets near you. If you really stop to think about the physical requirements for dribbling a round object with your feet at a high rate of speed, it's easier to understand why just the slightest misdirection of that ball can completely foil an offensive player. Just a tap can ruin a striker's day. Basically, I'm the one to get run over just before the ball gets to the keeper. I disrupt, not create. So it was a personal victory for me to put one past the gigantic Marine Corps-looking keeper.

When I told Tim - my new housemate, and fellow soccer player/fan - about the goal he responded, "So it's pretty much the best night ever, right?" I told him that the pub was missing its warm sandy beaches and the male strippers never arrived, but it'd been pretty alright nonetheless. Then I had a beer in the shower, which is about as close as Oregonians can get to a cold beer on a warm beach.

Speaking of which, I'm going to Texas at the end of March. Plane ticket prices just rose a bunch though, so I'm contemplating driving. At about that time of year, I'm so craving warmth and sunshine that I often have dreams about deserts and flowers and things, so a road trip down the California coast and through Arizona and New Mexico might just be the cure. My last final is on a Tuesday morning, and I have the following week off as well. I absolutely loved the Texas beach the one long weekend I spent near Corpus Christi. The water was warm and extra salty making one buoyant, which is good for non-swimmers like me, and there were dolphins and fish, and you could walk out for about a half mile before it was too deep. I remember a pickup full of guys that drove past and threw us cans of beer, and all the food was dirt cheap, and the surf clothes affordable. Then there's the rest of Texas, where you can drive 110 and see armadillos and cactus. And Austin! God I love Austin. It's like a warm Portland with even more college kids. I will probably have to spend some time in Killeen, though, which is where my friend lives. Killeen is this dirty military town with all the requisite car dealers, pawn shops, and high murder rate. Good Korean food, though.

PS - I hate that I can't sleep after an evening match. The game was over by 9:15 and here it is 2:55am. Booooo.

Oops

Even with getting up early, and planning ahead enough to get coffee and complete an essay test, I still ended up so discombobulated (holy shit I spelled it right first time!) that I thought I had another thirty minutes before my next class, only to realize that had started fifteen minutes earlier. Strange.

It's a busy week here. I'm finally moving out of the house with the crazy woman and into a house with friends. This is a huge sigh of relief for me, but now I have only a few weeks to move everything and clean (to my standards, which are probably far lower than the OCD housemate's) in between classes, papers, and midterms. There are a thousand things I want to do in the new place, but first and foremost is simply getting my stuff there and setting up a place to sleep. The least amount of time I spend in my current situation, the better.

Spent the weekend in Philomath, partly to get away from my house, partly to watch the Superbowl and partly to pick up the set of dishes I'd shoved in my parent's garage for a couple of years. For once everyone there was rooting for the same team, or rather, we were all rooting AGAINST the same team, as we all pretty much hate the Pats. Also, on the Giants was a kid that went to my podunk little high school, and while we weren't exactly friends, it was kinda cool to see someone I know make a hugely important catch in the Superbowl.

Wow, this is a boring post. Point is, I'm moving! YAYYYY! But I'm busy enough that I'm tired just thinking about the things I have to do. I mean, I have to write a 5-7 page paper on the inherent pessimism of the Norse/Icelandic mythology. While finding the inherent pessimism in things seems to fit my mood as of late, I am a bit worried with it being the first actual English class I've taken at college, and therefore the first one I've had in eight years. I feel like I should be a lot more awake and distraction-free to do this.

And finally, while on the subject of school, I am sick and damn tired of archaeology classes. They're all the same.. blah blah sample size, blah blah screen mesh width... I'm sick of it! But I still couldn't set up a site, even with the field school I did (which admittedly was mostly about drinking and fucking around on the beach), which means I probably have to take even more of them next term. At least I'm getting that stupid class out of the way that caused my original graduation date to be delayed by about a year. Turns out that now I don't want to graduate! haha. Yeah, I think I'm going to stay here as long as the GI Bill lets me. Why graduate? Just stupid jobs out there.