New Weather, New Activity

Sorry for the posting delays. I've been busy. No actually, I've been lazy. So spring seems to finally be here. Even on cold days, it's moderately warm. And for the most part, it's pretty sunny. So with that, I've decided to go out and enjoy the outdoors more. I'm still doing soccer a ton. Coaching and playing is keeping me busy most of the time. Aside from soccer, I've picked up tennis again...and shortly I should begin playing golf with my pops too. My new desire this spring has been cycling. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I think it'd be fun on a weekend when nothing else is really going on to take a bike out for a couple hours and ride trails in the area, or go around Burke Lake, or even just cruise on the road to my cousin's house or a friend's house or something. But before I can do that, I need to get a bike. I have no knowledge of bikes whatsoever so I've been trying to get some info from people I know who ride.

Aside from the beautiful weather, not much else has been going down. I'm sure you all know about VA Tech on 4.16.07. Such a sad tragedy. I never expected anything like that to happen at such a peaceful place. Sad that for so many people, my alma mater will now hold a tainted reputation and view...when all I have is happy, wonderful memories of the place. My heart goes out to all the families and friends of people lost in the tragedy.

Hurray for Spring, I think.

Hey hey, so I haven't posted in a while. Unbelievably, I've been super busy with work. And I generally only blog when I'm bored at work trying to fill my time. So yeah, I suppose you could say I'm bored today. So Easter came and went this past weekend. Being Buddhist, this meant nothing to me, except that come Sunday evening, all of my normal dinner spots were closed. Seemed like a good day for me to play some poker instead.

Overall, the weekend was awesome. I saw my old roommate Adam from college. He's in the army now and he's from North Carolina so I really only get to see him once maybe twice a year. It was awesome seeing him and his dog Eve again.

I have to say I'm not a big fan of the spring weather we've been getting. Ordinarily, I am a huge supporter of the cold when it's winter because of my addiction to snowboarding. However, I had already given up on riding several weeks ago, and was steadfast in my Spring/Summer frame of mind. Leave it to El Nino or La Nina, or whatever it's called to bring on these frigid temps again. My new coworker from Ohio was shocked to see snow flurries in April.

Other than that, life is same old same old. I still watch a ton of tv. All my normal shows + a few new guilty pleasures. That new comedy show on NBC "Thank God You're Here" is pretty good. They basically bring in popular comedians and have them enter a room they haven't seen, without a script, and act out a scene and be as funny as they can. I wouldn't say the show is like "Whose line is it anyway?" because I think this show is different. But they're both good. I've also been watching American Idol more than usual this year. Simply because Sanjaya Malakar is quite possibly the worst Idol singer ever and I am stunned as to how he is still in the competition. It really makes me want to audition next year and hope to make it to the finals by some miracle. I just need to make a ton of Indian and Chinese friends this year so they can rally support for me.

The Mighty Ducks Part II

So a new season of coaching begins for me this week. Last fall I coached a 10 year old boys soccer team for the first time. We started the season rough, losing every game. But by the end of the season, I had done my best to teach these kids how to play together and we began spanking our opponents the last few games. I felt very much like Emilio Estevez coaching Pacey, I mean Joshua Jackson and the rest of their peewee hockey team.

This week, I received my new roster. A new team of ADHD 10 year olds. I gotta say I'm looking forward to the challenge. It's probably one of the best moments of my week when I've been having a cruddy day at work and I go to one of my kids' practices and all I see are smiling happy 10 year old kids running around on the field playing with each other. They don't care about money, bills, deadlines, or projects. They don't have girl issues, "beef", or any other kinds of drama that starts to arise in teenage years. All they have to care about in the world is playing a game. God, it's the best feeling...I wish I was a kid again. What's even funnier is when my kids team loses. I'll run into a parent the following week at practice and be like "Man, I still can't believe we barely lost at the end of last Saturday's game!" And the parent will simply reply "Look at the kids. Does it look like they even care? They've already forgotten they lost and are playing happily again." And it's true. Not a care in the world.

Needless to say, I'm still not ready for kids anytime soon. knock on wood.

March Madman

So it's that time of the year when every man mysteriously disappears for about a month. He's unusally inactive at work, and exposed to unhealthy levels of tv radiation as he follows his favorite basketball teams in the NCAA national tournament. In addition, for the average man, he's probably invested in 2-4 pools hoping to display his testosteronic dominance in hardwood prognostication.

For me, this year is especially important because my Hokies are in the tourney. I'm only in one pool this year, but my hopes are high that my picks will hold. As much as I want my hokies to win, I'm picking Georgetown to go all the way. I think they have what it takes to upset and win. That's not to say I'm not rooting for my Tech team though. I would love nothing more than to lose my pool if it means the Hokies are the national champs. But realistically, I just want them to make it to the third round, and possibly pull off an upset there.

Beyond that, I have no other goals for this tourney. I'll see you all at Bailey's for the tech game(s).

I'm not a millionaire.

So recently, the mega millions jackpot lottery reached a record high of $370 million. I generally play the lottery once every few weeks, but when the jackpot got this high, you KNOW I had to play. So I bought 10 tickets on the last night like many of my friends. My best ticket won me like $3. So yea, I'm not a millionaire.

The thing with the lottery is, I don't even need the jackpot. Anything over 5 million is more than I want/need. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to get as much free money as I can. But realistically, I do not aspire to live like a baller or hip hop mogul (as my normal spending habits and clothing style might suggest). Honestly, my whole goal in life is to continue living the way I am currently living, and not have to work. For me, this equates to making somewhere between $70,000 and $100,000 a year income. So, let's assume that I live on the high end of my goal and make $100,000 a year. That's enough for me to live in the size house I currently live, have a decent reliable car, and have enough spending cash for my going out/vacations/travel/food etc. Now I figure that in order to reach my goal of not working and receiving this kind of income, I'd have to win a small lottery and put all my winnings into some kind of fund and live off the interest compounded from it. So taking a look at the kinds of funds that are out there, I figure that with a few million dollars (less than 5) I might be able to get 5% interest. So to receive $100,000 a year in interest, quick math puts me at 2 mill.

So 2 is the lucky number. 2 million dollars and I can continue to live my current lifestyle without working. So $370 million jackpot, that's nice. But I'll gladly play lotto south jackpot and hope to hit that 3-4 million jackpot. After taxes/taking that lump sum, I get my 2 mill and retire at age 25.

I'll see you guys at the 7-11 for my retirement winnings.

Ole....Ole Ole Ole!

I've been a soccer fan my whole life. I started playing soccer when I was 5 because my dad played soccer in college and thought he'd start me on it. I took a 5 year hiatus from competitive soccer when I hit college, but now that I'm a working professional, I've dedicated a lot of my free time back to my favorite sport. Last year, I started coaching a boys U10 team. It's awesome to watch 10 year old kids play. That's the age when they don't have a care in the world. School is easy, there's no teenage drama to worry about, and they sure as hell don't have any work/class/grown up stress to worry about. All they care about is playing a game. Even when they lose, they forget about it the next day and come back out and play again. I would give anything to go back to that age.

In addition to coaching, I started playing soccer again. I'm a member of several adult teams. I play with Spikey Mike's coworkers. We're not very good competitively, but they're cool peoples...and they love to drink/snowboard so that's win win for me. I also started up a team with my coworkers. They're awesome. Everyone on the team is extremely skilled. I feel weaksauce playing alongside them.

Both my teams are coed. I've found though, that's extremely hard to find enough women to play. My team with my coworkers struggles to find enough girls to play each week, and often times we have to play one down. If any of you happen to be of the estrogen bearing variety and would like to play, holla at your boy!

Other than that, snowboard season is pretty much over...so most of you should start seeing me on the weekends again.

Snowshoe '07

So I went snowboarding this past weekend to Snowshoe resort in West Virginia. It's one of the biggest ski resorts on the east coast, and one of my personal faves. We took a trip out there, about 50 of us and stayed in 4 separate condos. Arriving intermittently Friday nite, some of us headed out for Friday day/nite riding while others who arrived later broke in our condos with some good old alcoholic debauchery. Nothing serious of course, since we all wanted to wake up early the next day for a full day's worth of rides on the slopes. That is...all of us except for Alex. He decided to get tanked the first night and remain hungover and hammered for the rest of the trip...including when he threw up in our fireplace (putting out the fire...) and then throwing up in a cardboard box which he then threw into the fireplace (which was no longer burning cuz he put it out with his puke):

Saturday was fun. We spent the day riding meeting up in the early to late evening. After an evening of some night riding, we headed up to the only "club" on the mountain. To my surprise, there was actually a DJ who played hiphop and techno in between sets of a rock band that played typical West Virginia music. We basically chilled at our table shooting pool and playing foosball while slamming beers until the DJ came on when we rushed the dancefloor and rep'd DC, NOVA, and Virginia Tech like no other. Big props to Jac for taking over the mic in the DJ booth. That was hot.

After the club, I dun have much to say for the remainder of the night. It's kind of one long crazy blur. Dan got into a fight outside the club, typical, and we had to calm his ass down as we walked back to our condos. At the condos, we sat around and drank furiously. It was great because all of 1210 H was in one spot. The originals: Dan, me, Spikey Mike, and Andy. As well as Adam, who was part of the 1210 graduation unit. Dan hit the bottle hard, typical, and passed out on the floor:






After Dan passed out...Vin and I decided it might be fun to put his hand in warm water. We did this for about 10 minutes before Dan moved. We decided at this point that Dan was far too drunk so it wouldn't be a bad idea to put him in the snorers room (where I slept). We dragged him to the floor in that room only for him to jump into my bed. No biggie, I didn't mind sleeping on the floor. Several hours later, at around 3 AM. I awoke to Dan moving around in our room. I assumed he needed to puke so I moved to let him out. Next thing I know, I felt liquid on me. I feared the worst. Dan was puking on me. I jumped up and ran out the room to let him go. But he didn't come out. So I flipped the light on to see what was going on with him. To my surprise he was pissing on our dresser. I looked at my wet shirt...no puke. DAMMIT...Dan just pee'd on me. I ran into the living room, pissed as hell (literally.) I threw my shirt onto the floor and David Lam laughed at me. Trong woke up and also laughed at me. Karma's a bitch. That's what I get for trying to prank Dan.

Overall, the trip was fantastic though. Here are some more pics. Nothing beats cramming like 15-20 people into an 8 person condo. Multiply that by 4 and you get our trip.