The O.C. is where I need to BE!

Well fellow Mississippians.... I have to admit that California just might be the most awesomest state in the Union. Just imagine: no air conditioner needed due to the coastal breeze through an open window, no bugs flying in open windows, sky-lights making lights unnecessary, sidewalks that all lead to the beach and waves that invite surfer dudes from all over the world. This is Cali.

I got to fly out to Orange County last week for Caleb's sister, Amanda's, Senior Trip. Two of her HS friends also came, which secured my fate as "an old person" and Mrs. Sharon took us all to stay at her Aunt Connie's house. I called their house "The Fun House" all week because it boasts a pool and hot tub, plus our Hosts, Aunt Connie and Uncle Dragi are so incredibly generous, hospitable and overall amazing.

Here are some highlights of the week:

- There was a World Championship Surfing Tournament going on at Huntington Beach, which is the beach we cool Belles were hanging out at. It was really fun to lay out while watching the best surfers in the world do their thang and listening to the 40-year-old washed up surfer announcers yell surfing terms from the loudspeaker such as, "DUDE! Did you see Contestant Three bust that gnarly wave!"

-I got really really burned. It is a different kind of sun out there.

-Aunt Connie has the rare talent of Cake Decoration on her resume and she gave us a personal seminar in the art. We couldn't get enough of it and I think our very first cake looks great! We can now do icing techniques such as rosettes, stars, and the border pattern seen on most cakes. Get ready friends! Get-togethers from now on will be complete with a special cake made by yours truly!

-We visited other relatives while in the area: Connie's oldest son and his wife and little boy. Their brand-new house is absolutely incredible and overlooks Anaheim. The best part about their house was the Movie Theatre. Yes, I said Movie Theatre. They have their own. In their House. While the adults chatted on the downstairs back porch (they had a huge porch upstairs too!) the girls watched a movie on the Big Screen. They even had surround sound under our seats so we could feel the big booms during war scenes. So Fun! They even popped popcorn in cute little popcorn buckets and brought us licorice. When was the last time Hollywood Cinema did that for me?

That's me reclining to my hearts content in the back.

Back in Mississippi, it's hot and it's humid, but it's God's Country, so who cares. I now must address an issue Caleb alluded to in his recent post, that of Planet of the Apes with Marky Mark. I don't have much to say about this, except that Caleb likes this movie. I think that should be all I have to say, but I'll give you the entire conversation just for giggles.

Caleb: Want to put in a movie?

Tricia: Sure.

Caleb: How's Planet of the Apes?

Tricia: (amiably)Sure.

30 minutes later....

Tricia: This is the worst movie I've ever seen? Why do we own this?

Caleb: Well! I bought it when I was coming to college because I thought I needed a lot of DVD's!

Tricia: That's okay, it's not like you paid to see it in the theatre.

Caleb: (reflectively) No- I saw it in the theatre.

Tricia: So you saw it in the theatre and still bought it?

Caleb: Yeah- I think it's pretty good!

It's true: Caleb liked this movie to buy it even after seeing it for the dump it is in the theatre. Has anyone else even watched the whole thing? It is so unbelievably aweful!

A nominal post...

Call it posting for the sake of posting (or a preemptive strike, as you will see later), but I wanted to add something, particularly since my favorite team, the Atlanta Braves, just traded for the best first basemen available. Instead of actually writing a post, I thought I would just copy and paste an email that I wrote to a co-worker when he emailed me to ask about my thoughts on the trade. We've had other email conversations before (the last one was about whether or not Andruw Jones, the Braves CF, was the most overrated CF in the history of baseball, which a baeball writer from ESPN had written). As usual, when it comes to writing about baseball, my email was too long, when a short answer would do. So as to continue that tradition, I feel that this post should start with a little background.

First, the Braves started this season having acquired two great pitchers to pitch late in games--Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez. Gonzalez has since been injured (out for the year) and the Braves have had no one in the bullpen that is left-handed (except for one guy who is left-handed, but, curiously, terrible against left-handed batters). It's important to be able to change up between RHP and LHP so as limit the batter's ability to recognize pitches quickly. In addition, the Braves have had a frequent problems at first base this year, after trading Adam LaRoche to Pittsburgh in the aforementioned Gonzalez trade. As a result of this and the absolute failing of once reliable 1B Craig Wilson, the Braves have been forced to use, at various times, a rookie from Canada (Scott Thorman), a rookie catcher (Jarrod Saltalamacchia, the Braves best prospect and record holder for having the longest last name in the history of baseball--seriously!), and a 49-year old Julio Franco (this guy was on RBI Baseball--the first one with teams from 1986 and 1987).

Anyway, we've needed help in three areas: 1B, left-handed reliever, and an extra starter. This results of this trade were that the Braves gave up Jarrod Saltalamacchia (or Salty), Elvis Andrus (a SS in the minors who was projected to take over SS in a few years), and two minor league pitchers (one of which is a great pitcher named Matt Harrison who pitches for AA Mississippi Braves) for Mark Texiera (a Gold Glove, switch hitting 1B) and Ron Mahay (a LH relief pitcher). So we have filled two of the needs, while sacrificing three young players (I don't know who the other pitcher will be, so he could be a career minor leaguer), all of which were slated for the majors in the next two years. Without further delay, here's the email after the jump, which was prompted by this email:

Looks like the braves got their man. How do you feel about this?

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/index

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Excited, but kinda conflicted. Tex will be great, but I hate to lose Salty (a switch hitting catcher for a two year rental) and Andrus (a young shortstop expected to take over when Renteria falls apart in the next two years). The real meat to this trade, at least in the minds of Braves fans, is the pitchers. The Braves badly need a left-handed reliever (we just designated Wilfredo Ledezma, our only LH RP, for assignment today), though I think everyone had CJ Wilson (or even Eric Gagne, though he’s not LH) in mind as the pitcher coming back. Mahay will definitely give us that LHP out of the bullpen. It was heavily rumored that Texas wanted Salty, Andrus, and a pitcher for only Tex, so I’m glad Schuerholz held out for a pitcher when Daniels was trying to get everything into a bidding war.

The other side of it is that the Braves are giving up two minor league pitchers, and Matt Harrison is rumored to be one of them. Harrison is a big pitcher with an ideal pitcher’s body (think a 6’5” Chris Young out of San Diego) with supposedly ML-ready stuff. The other pitcher will probably be Kyle Davies, our #5 starter for most of the year, who seems to either 2-hit the Mets or give up 5 runs in 3 inning to the Pirates. He’s another big bodied pitcher who I think can be good, probably a #3 or 4 starter at the worst, but he’ll probably go and we’ll sell low on him.

The real decision on whether this was a good trade or not will happen at the end of this year, when we’re trying to decide whether to re-sign Andruw (who always says he loves Atlanta and wants to play here all of his career). If we re-sign him, it’s unlikely that the Braves can re-sign Tex. If we lose Andruw, then we’ve got another Scott Boras headache, er…I mean client, in Tex (who has already talked about how great it would be to play in Baltimore, where he’s from). It’ll be a real balancing act, but I think Schuerholz has a plan and is way too secretive for a guy like me to know what will actually happen. In the short run, it’s a great trade—we’ll have one of the best line-ups in the NL and we can drop Andruw from batting 4th to probably 6thor 7th. However, I’m concerned about the future, but I’ll put my trust in Schuerholz.

Probably more than you wanted,

Caleb

The other point of this post is to let you all know that it is likely that Tricia will come on here claiming that I own the movie Planet of the Apes (the one with Marky Mark) and have watched it thrice in my lifetime, but I'm sure our readership is much to intelligent to give in to such falsehoods. Seriously, Planet of the Apes?

We've Made it a Year! (And Bought a New Couch)

So the Butts have been married 1+ years now! We've (well, I've) been especially looking forward to the one year anniversary for a while because it means we get to eat the topper of our wedding cake. Plus, it's kind of exciting on another realm, because the thing has been frozen for a year. Is it going to taste like dried dirt? Will it be good? Who knows?

Well, much to my amazement, that cake tasted just like it was made yesterday. I have since then eaten the entire thing by myself- seriously- that year-old cake was delicious! And beautiful, I might add.

We also had another fun surprise while cutting in to our wedding cake- there was a huge piece of plastic in the middle! Gross, right? WRONG! We pulled out the plastic which turned out to be a tiny ziploc bag with a note in it! Our cute cake lady had typed out a Bible verse and hidden it in our cake. We love Ann Palmer!

For the Anniversary Celebration, we decided to stick with the Traditional schedule, which calls for a paper gift on year One. I got Caleb a book he had really been wanting, and he got me a new Bible with my married name on the cover. My Dad got that for my Mom on their Paper Anniversary, so it was a doubly special gift. Thank you Caleb for a wonderful first year of marriage!

This pic is at Old Venice. Don't be fooled: this is not meant to capture the delightfulness of the half-Luau half-supreme pizza we ordered. No, friends, look at the couple in the back: Gross! Who does that? They sat on the same side of the booth and smooched the whole time. I go to Old Venice for one thing and one thing only: eat as much bread as humanly possible.

In other news, we finally purchased our new couch and loveseat. We love it so much! Thanks to Grandaddy who gave us $500 for a couch when we got married. He's glad we've finally put his gift to use! Here's a pic of Caleb and Tameka, the Ashley Furniture Sales Rep, ringing up our couch/loveseat order. Hooray!

And here we are on our super-cute couch. I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but the store had these really weird "thumbs up" sculptures, so we're giving our new couch a "thumbs up."

We did all of this during Ashley's Once-a-Year Midnight Madness Sale, so we saved $100 bucks! Very Fun!

Fond Farewells

Today's my last day as a Graduate Assistant! While the job definitely helped keep food on the table, I must admit, there are some things I won't miss:

1. Giving tours to High School students that text message on their cell phone throughout the entire tour and don't pay attention to the pearls of wisdom I speak.

2. Outrageous corporate parents who conduct business during my tours and especially those who fire employees over the phone while I'm pointing out such campus treasures as the Drill Field or perhaps the tree that has been into Outer Space. (note: I could hear the fired employee crying on the other end of the line).

3. E-mails that say, "I want to change my major." Okay, sure, just a couple of questions before we can do that, such as what is your name, for instance.

4. Conversations such as:

Overbearing Parent: "My daughter is the top student in her class and we won't settle for anything less that a full ride."

Me: "Excellent. May I ask what her gpa and ACT score is?"

OP: "She has a 1.9 gpa and a 16 ACT."

Sigh.

But alas, it has not all been bad.... I work with some of the most fun people in the history of MSU (shout out to Anna Little!) and everyone here is always bringing me tokens of appreciation, typically in the form of chocolate. Today being my last day, the "Cookie Fairy" visited me (thanks JD!), Laura Crawford made some awesome HOMEADE brownies (she's going to make a great wife, Cal!), and Dan brought in a cute little red velvet cake with cream cheese icing (obviously, many thanks, Dan-the-Man!). This wasn't all for me, it's Jon David's last day, too.

I can't wait to start my life as a School Marm and try to get as much of my students to MSU as possible! GO STATE!

Water, Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink

The title is a line from Samuel Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in which men aboard a ship in the middle of the ocean have no food or drinking water. They are surrounded by salt water, hence the famous line.

All that to say this: I was caught in a thunderstorm while attempting a rather long jog this morning.

My hair-brain scheme was to park my car across from Mugshot's, run to the Sanderson and lift weights, then run back. This isn't really an attempt at being physically fit, rather it's one of the small ways I'm contributing to an eco-friendly environment. My thought was that if I don't drive all the way to the Sanderson, I'll save on gas, thus I'll save the world.

There was not a cloud in the sky when I started my journey. I ran for about one block down Main Street before I was winded and then I walked the rest of the way- so much for my "jog there and back" idea. When it was time to leave the Sanderson (I only had enough time allotted to jog back and get ready for work) the sky was a dark grey and ominous lightning was crackling in the distance. So naturally, I said to myself, "Alright girl, the race is on!" And started my race against Mother Nature.

She won of course. And not because I had enough time to run back to the car. Nay... sadly I just can't run very far anymore. My first walking break was at the Hump and there were many a walking breaks from that point on for me to catch my breath. I made it past Bin 612 when the rain really started coming down, so I stood under a patch of crepe mertles. Two scary men in what I like to call a"Rape Van" pulled up and offered me a ride, but I declined. Better to be cold and wet under some crepe mertles than in the back of a rape van, I alway say.

When the crepe mertles weren't enough, I took shelter under the awning of a nearby apartment. I was very thirsty and very tired. As the rain let up, I darted out from under the awning and started the dash back to the car. This Dash took approximately an hour, as I would get tired of sprinting every 50 feet or so and would have to locate a new rain shelter. If you or anyone you know every needs a rain shelter on University Drive/Main Street, I would like to point out that the old Starkville Daily News building offers the best awning in the case of a thunderstorm. It has a very deep entryway which is great in case the wind changes directions and the rain starts whipping you in the face.

I did finally make it back to my car, and yes, I had mascara running down my face from church yesterday, yes, I smelled like a wet dog, and yes, I looked even worse.

Who throws a slider anymore?

I know you guys are probably tired of baseball posts, but I couldn't help but post this (I promise, this will be a short baseball post, because I'm sure none of you care about, nor do I know, any interesting stories about how the slider, knuckleball, curve, fastball, change up, slurve, cutter, sinker, or gyroball were invented--yet. However, I do remember the movie Rookie of the Year, where Henry Rowengartner's mom, a great "pitcher" in her own right, tells him to "float it!" Actually, I do have an interesting story about that, but I elect to let you guys off for the day.)

(Aside: At softball games, I still yell to our pitcher to give the batter "the cheese! The HIGH STINKING CHEDDAR!" I don't know why, but I'm sure it doesn't embarrass Tricia, who wanted to bring a CD player to the games so she could play me entrance music when I came to bat.)

New Japanese Pitcher Technic! Video

Oh, and Deadspin, a hilarious sports blog, went to Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest and took some pictures and talked about meeting everyone. Enjoy that link here. Oh, and if you look close on that page, you can find the link to Kobayashi's "reversal".

International Federation of Competitive Eating

I swore I wasn't going to blog about this, but I can't help it. Last night, after having stuffed myself twice on pork tenderloin, grilled corn, potato salad, BBQ bread, and yellow cake with chocolate icing and homemade ice cream, Tricia's dad, Richard, and I were watching various baseball games and came across the event we had all missed earlier in the day: Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest.

For those of you who are unaware (which I am sure is nobody the way Sportscenter has milked this for all it is worth), every year on July 4th since 1916 (save 1941 when it was "canceled to protest the war in Europe" and 1971 when it was canceled as o "a protest to civil unrest and the reign of free love"--yes, this parenthetical statement deserves it's own paragraph, but like our competitors, I choose to remain focused), Coney Island is home to the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest. What I like to call "the fastest twelve minutes on television" is a hot dog eating contest, where contestants see how many hot dogs and corresponding buns they can eat over a twelve minutes period, with no mustard or ketchup in sight (for those of you who like relish: gross). For many years, the contest was somewhat of a local fascination, but steadily went international. In 1999, American Steve Keiner won the title over Hirofumi Nakajima, taking home the coveted Mustard Belt through tears of joy. The next year, Kazutoyo Arai ate 25 1/8 hot dogs taking the belt back to Japan and out of American hands since.

The world record for hot dogs and buns (henceforth, HDB), had hovered around 20 or so for years. Then, a visitor from the East emerged. Takeru Kobayashi arrived at the contest and demolished the competition, nearly doubling the world record from the previous year by putting down 50 HDB. The next year, he put up similar numbers, with no challenge. America had not seen such dominance since 1920, when Babe Ruth hit 52 homeruns, more than any other team total in the American League, except, of course, his own. In all, Kobayashi won 6 straight Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contests, with no real challenge except for a young, Civil Engineering student from San Jose, CA--Joey Chestnut.

Last year, Chestnut started out well, putting down 15 HDB over the first three minutes, but the dreaded "six minute wall" hit, and Chestnut slowed down, finishing one HDB behind Kobayashi, 53.5 (a new world record) to 52.



Chestnut continued his training, ignoring the praise of announcers calling him the "great American eater of all time". He continued to work for the ultimate prize: the Mustard Belt. In May 2007, Chestnut broke Kobayashi's world record of 53.5 with a new WR of 59.5 at a mall in Arizona, earning his a $250 mall gift card. With a new world record, Chestnut was to face his Far East rival.

But wait, there was hitch in the competition. Kobayashi, through his many campaigns and battles through competitive food eating was suffering from what could be a career-ending injury: an arthritic jaw. Enthusiasts were skeptical whether it was true ("My jaw refused to fight anymore") or whether it was psychological warfare on Chestnut.

Despite the injury, Kobayashi elected to play through the pain, and showed up to defend his title. Chestnut was waiting, along with many other great professional eaters, including Arturo Rios (the pig's feet eating champ) and Sonya Thomas (who ate 10% of her body weight in cheesecake). Through a grueling twelve minutes, Chestnut came out ahead, setting a new record of 66 HDB (the first half of the contest can be seen here).



My favorite line is when Orel Hershiser, a great baseball player and competitor and not horrible baseball announcer, refers to Kobayashi throwing up as a "reversal". In the end, much like the 1980 Olympic hockey team, America triumphed and I, again, "believe in miracles". Thank you, Joey Chestnut, for being a great American! Enjoy your prize of "$1000 dollars and worldwide celebrity and fame."

(And don't even get me started on this website, which included eater profiles, records, and rankings.)

New Obsession

His Name: Paolo Nutini
Talent: Musician/Artist




His voice is amazing! Enjoy!