Power outages

Power outages are a pain in the ass. I hate it when it happens, but there are some redeeming qualities. It gives me a chance to play pokemon. I could play Pokemon whenever I want, but I always feel like I should be doing something else. Even if I play a video game, Call of Duty is somehow "better" than Pokemon in my mind. With the power out, the only option is Pokemon on my gameboy. It's pretty nice, not gonna lie.

Saturday Night Live

I absolutely love Saturday Night Live! I feel like I start 1/2 my blogs with "I absolutely love ______".
But it's true in this case. The reason I love Saturday Night live isn't because it's funny. It's not for the guest hosts. It's because to people who watch Saturday Night Live, the whole show is one great inside joke. When you find out someone else is a part of that elite club, you immediately have common ground. You launch into long conversations about if you've seen some random sketch from 5 years ago.

Easy Mac

Shoutout to Alex Loechel for the Title/Topic of this post!

I absolutely love easy mac. It's like my crack. But the thing about easy mac is that it always tastes better when someone else makes it. It's weird, it's EASY mac, it shouldn't be a big deal to make it, but for some reason it is.

One day with my friend, we decided to make easy mac. We boiled the water, set everything up, and put the mac into the water. And then my friend turned off the heat and ruined the macaroni. I'm not exactly sure what the point of this was, but loechel wrote the topic and I decided to run with it!

Why Ryan Fitzpatrick is my idol

In case you didn't know, Ryan Fitzpatrick is the Quarterback for the Buffalo Bills. He's a good quarterback, but that's not why I admire him. I admire him for a choice he made all the way back when he was in high school.

He was recruited to play football at big schools, schools on the level of Alabama or USC. Seems pretty typical for a star high school quarterback, right? The thing is, Fitzpatrick was and still is a genius. He had a 4.0 GPA and scored just off perfect on his SAT. He had a big decision to make: play football and chase his dream, or get the education he could earn and make use of. HE decided on both, passing up scholarships, NFL opportunities, and parties at bigger football schools to go to Harvard and play football there.

This is a decision I've struggled with myself, but on a much smaller scale. I could probably play division 3 soccer, but I made the decision that my education is more important. The odds of myself becoming a professional soccer player are pretty slim, so I figure that the education will be much more important to my future. Fitzapatrick decided the same thing.


This didn't mean that he didn't work hard to make it to the NFL. He did, and he succeeded. That's why I admire him. He picked his education over 4 years of football, and got everything he could out of it. He spent 4 years playing college football, and made it to the NFL. Plus he has a Harvard degree as backup.

Not bad.

OH CRAP!!

I just realized that I had been saving all of my blog posts instead of posting them for the past week and a half or however long. That's just great.

Anyway, let me talk for a minute about failure. Yesterday I failed pretty hard. I lost my soccer game in overtime, which sucked, but it's not the end of the world. What is actually a  bigger problem would be my grade in Calculus. I don't get it. I work my butt off, I have an A or B in every other class (at least I think so, nobody actually TELLS ME) but I have a D- in Calc. I don't understand what the hell I have to do to get this grade up. It just seems so unfair that this one grade could ruin my chances of going to college where I'm never going to have to do it again. I don't plan on working with math, I don't understand why Calculus is necessary for me. I wish I had taken statistics, which might actually be useful instead of getting talked into taking Calculus by my parents. They get mad at me for not doing well in a class they made me take. Meanwhile, neither of them can do algebra. It just doesn't seem fair.

Battle of the Beltway

It's a difficult position, living between Baltimore and D.C. I never know who to root for. Football's easy because my grandfather was a Redskins fan and neither of my parents care much one way or the other. My main dilemma is in baseball. Orioles or Nationals? If i root for the nats, i have a clean slate of all D.C. teams. If I root for the Orioles, I can support a team that really represents the state I'm in and a team I've supported for longer. Decisions, decisions.

The joys of procrastination

I love doing things at the last minute. It's always a good feeling knowing that you got something done JUST as it was due. And in form, I'm submitting this blog at 5:59.

SATs

I completely forgot I had the SATs tomorrow. I am NOT excited. I always do fine on standardized tests, but they're all so long and boring, it's almost unbearable.

Playing cards with one hand

My grandparents have always loved to play hand and foot. It's by far their favorite card game, and they played almost every week with their friends Phyllis and Bert. My grandfather got diagnosed with cancer about a year ago, and has been dealing with it on and off since. A couple months ago, it got bad, and he ended up in a lot of pain. He got his arm amputated about 2 weeks ago.

Before that, he was in a lot of pain. He didn't talk much, and was on a lot of pain meds. Now, he's back. He might not have an arm, but he's back to being who he was. I called the other day to check up on him, and asked what he was doing. He told me he was playing hand and foot with Phyllis and Bert. In the background I hear a voice scream "AND LOSING." He chuckled, and I almost cried. It was like I had gotten my grandfather back.

I was a little curious though. I said "Hey Pa (that's what I call him) how do you play hand and foot? How do you hold the cards?" He responded "I don't play hand and foot, I play foot and foot." I literally fell on the floor laughing. My grandfather had his sense of humor back, and I couldn't be more excited.

The Joys of Being on a Team

Let me get this out of the way first. I don't like everyone on my soccer team. There are people on that team I consider friends, and people on that team I can't stand. But the thing is, once I'm on the field, it doesn't matter. I sometimes worry that with everything happening in my life, it's a little ridiculous to attach so much importance to a game. And that's what it really is, a game. But I don't really want to settle into that little realm where I act like nothing's important, or that it's uncool to care about things.

Being on a team is a great feeling. I love knowing that there are 15 other people all working hard towards the same goal as me. If you think that's lame, I don't care.