cootie_10 took this picture. I am a massive dweeb. But Stanford. Luff.



Yes, that is my Tosei tie. I know, I know.

I like when Stanford beats USC, and I'm sure Jed does, too. Cal is up next, and I've got a good feeling about this one, considering that Stanford has utterly crushed its opponents the last two weeks.

I'm definitely sick. It's at the stage where my sore throat is starting to go away and everything goes to my nose, which means I have once again been sinus infection'd. At least I feel a lot better than I did this weekend - I couldn't lift my head a lot of the time. But a Furuba marathon severely improved that. Shigure. Eeeee, Shigure.

I just never know what to do with myself when there's no baseball. My first year of college, I discovered Oofuri, which was the perfect tie-over (especially given that Junta's personality is remarkably close to Mr. Lowrie's in one major aspect - sense of humor), and my second year, I was reading several baseball manga at once and it kept me occupied enough. That and doing awesome stuff with soprano_no_eiji all the time. She saves my ass, you know. This year, I'm leaning more towards writing some scouting reports for prospects, though, because prospects are my first baseball love, and I love making myself look like a total stalker. (Not actually true.)

I'm not sure how else to close this entry, so here, have a picture of a creepy Ewok costume for your toddler:

Him. I like him. An awful lot.

He's like an older, sluttier, more manipulative version of Sheridan, and that makes me very happy.

And he's pretty. Very pretty. And fucked up.

I like.

I uploaded the pictures of the Class of 2014 to my computer just now. It's sort of depressing, because they're the last ones I had to design for the slumberwood baseball team. It means the ride is coming to an end next year when 'Drotti (wood_campbells) graduates with the rest of the Class of 2011. I don't want it to stop. Ever.

Fridays are fun, though, because after class my roommate soprano_no_eiji and I get to be really stupid. As I write this, we're watching 20 minutes of little kids singing about baby animals (KidSongs). Naturally, the baby animals are amazingly cute (have you ever seen a fennec fox? Picture a baby fennec fox). There are these creepy mascot things, though, and I really don't know what to make of them. The real animals are constantly trying to escape from the singing kids, too, especially the four adorable baby tigers.

We also went to Borders, Michaels and Toys R Us today. Toys R Us has been my favorite store for all twenty years of my twenty-year life. I have never ever grown up. Ever. And I kind of love it. I especially love still buying things like action figures, stuffed animals and, well, preschool toys. Because I watch Noggin. C'mon, you know you've all seen an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba! and loved it.

Unfortunately, I did not buy the Cole Hamels doll and its accompanying balloon/carriage hybrid vehicle:



Yes, that doll IS Cole Hamels. You just can't deny that.

On a closing note, this is what you watch at 2:30 A.M. on a Friday night when you are completely sober and the people on Cash Cab are not stupid enough to laugh at.

Wow, two posts within one hour! I feel like tosei_10.

Anywho, Facebook just decided to make me giggle like a two-year-old by telling me this when I tried to like a SocialInterview.com answer:



I probably need sleep, but this is just funny.

Also, my Italian notes were laced with a Schoolhouse Rock! reference today. Tack on some lame points for me, please.



No, that exceedingly sexy young man in the picture is most definitely not Jed Carlson Lowrie. Not at all.

These were posted tonight. I am on the right; my roommate is on the left. The last two pictures (16 and 17), yes.

Once upon a time, I was an author on Fanfiction.net. I wrote in the Super Smash Bros. Melee fandom back when I was in eighth grade, and I had a small following as a crack writer. It was a very tiny following of about five people, and we all followed each other, anyway, so it wasn't really a following.

Now, if anybody has ever been on Fanfiction.net, there will be people who write like this who get much bigger followings (note: this is a troll, not an actual writer taking herself seriously). These seem to be the most popular authors for some reason; I never got it.

Today, I got bored in astronomy and decided to write a fic in the tradition of the authors of Fanfiction.net about a manga series I have never read, the highly popular Naruto.

( I entitled it What the Fuck Am I Doing? )

I really don't know how I did this, considering that I've avoided FF.net for years and I've never seen or read Naruto before. But I guess I just wasn't into astronomy today.

The "sexy voice" thing, by the way, was a nod to Takase Junta (see icon), who shares his voice actor with Sasuke and has the second cutest laugh I've ever heard. Sorry, but you're not beating Jed, JunJun.

Went to D.C. with soprano_no_eiji yesterday. We hit up a few of the Smithsonians for lots of stupid pictures - the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Freer and Sackler Galleries - and basically had an awesome time. Then we came back and made over 100 cookies in our apartment.

In the American History Museum, there is a section on technology. It shows the evolution of various forms of technology and computer science over the years, and at the very end of it is a vehicle named Stanley.



As one can discern from the extremely sexy logo on Stanley's windshield, he is a product of Leland Stanford Junior University. He won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a race run by computer-controlled cars. Stanley has 100,000 lines of programming stored within his on-board computer. I generally get way too excited whenever I visit Stanley, and I end up scaring people by doing things like what I am doing in this photo soprano_no_eiji took of me.


Hugging cars through glass is the new cool, people.

In short, we're awesome people.

Everybody's doing it, so why not?

( Steph is predictible! )

Watching Ghost Adventures Live. This show just never gets old. I love the way they act like a bunch of frat boys.

Drew Storen is blogging the Arizona Fall League! So far he's posted three entries, which are here, here and here.

I'll write more later, when I actually have time...or something to write, y'know...

Went to Hershey on Friday with soprano_no_eijic_for_cinephilecootie_10 and a friend of theirs from high school. I ended up doing two things I never thought I would even consider in my life:

1. Go on this:


And 2. Go on this:


I am not a ride person. These are the two biggest roller coasters I have ever been on, and I was utterly terrified. soprano_no_eiji had to hold my hand (thank yooouuuu!). I really have trouble with big drops, so I tend to freak out in the beginning (on Comet, the first coaster, you lift out of your seat a tiny bit on the first drop, which scared the crap out of me), but once it gets into the twisting and turning stuff I'm fine because I feel like I'm in a car. (You probably do not want to drive with me. I still have pipe dreams of being a racecar driver.)

It rained pretty much the entire time we were there, so there wasn't too much we were able to do overall, but we did go on Reese's X-treme Cup Challenge twice! That is kind of the best ride ever, and it doesn't go too fast or have any huge drops, so it's one I can do over and over again without becoming a shaking mess! It's basically a shoot-the-targets-game ride and it is totally worth the lines. Not that there were any lines the day we were there because of the weather, but you get the idea.

Since it was Hershey's big Halloween celebration, I wore my LSJUMB uniform. It actually kept me drier because of the hat, so I'm not complaining. (All of the following pictures were taken by soprano_no_eiji.)

( I am clearly a cool person. )

I guess after this roller coasters are more of a possibility for me. I didn't think I could do them at all, but soprano_no_eiji has shown me that I can! Thank you so much for everything, you!

Baseball later tonight. Yes.

In order to raise a little college baseball awareness, I have decided to draw every former Stanford player currently in professional baseball - Majors, Minors and independent leagues - wearing the uniform of the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band. The idea is to promote both college baseball and higher education. I will add retired players as I go along, as well, and maybe even players still at Stanford in order to highlight them.

I will need suggestions as to who to draw after everybody on the current list is done (I imagine that Brett Mooneyham is a given, but there are plenty of other boys on the team). If this goes well, I may move on to other colleges, drawing the players in distinctive outfits related to their institutes of higher learning, but for now I plan to just focus on Stanford because my heart is there.

Besides, kids with trees are awesome.

You can follow the project as it goes on at projectcardinal.

Who is Johan Santana today? on Facebook

It's not done yet, but we'll see if we can get this thing running by the end of the night.

EDIT: IT WORKS! Go try it out! ...no, I'm not cool.

For the record, it's a parody of this Spider Man app, which keeps giving me horrible giggle fits at bad times.

We finally got heat in our apartment, so soprano_no_eiji and I are no longer freezing ourselves to death! It's a pleasant little miracle.

As far as baseball is concerned, I am severely depressed that I cannot post Cole Hamels Dance again because the Dodgers lost last night. I have decided to post a link to that video every time Hamels gets a loss just because it makes me giggle a lot. It's just true - every Barbie prince has always resembled him. I can't get over it!

My notes for astronomy are illustrated. I normally doodle in my notes, but I've gotten carried away in astronomy and the notebook is filled with diagrams explained by Stanford boys in LSJUMB uniforms. So far I've included Jed, Junior, Sam Fuld, Carlos Quentin and even Chris Carter. It started when I drew a little sketch of Jed talking about Tycho Brahe's copper nose in the corner of one of my pages and...I kind of took it further. (I may post pictures eventually to embarrass myself.)

I have finished my LSJUMB uniform. I will take way too many pictures of it at Hershey one week from now. I will also wear it for other occasions, such as the date of the Big Game (Stanford vs. Cal, for those not in the know) and Jed Lowrie's birthday. These are extremely important dates, you know.

I updated slumberwood! I now have the entire Class of 2012 and Class of 2013 up on the page, so things are coming along smoothly! I also added an internet directory so people can find which members of the baseball team are on Facebook (four of them are currently there) and whatnot. Slumberwood also has a Tumblr, but that's not very important.

soprano_no_eiji and I are going to try our hands at baking pretzels tonight! We're very excited. We'll make sure to let you know how they come out!

This was one of the harder seasons to stomach in my baseball-loving life. It was difficult to see the team go out the way they did, and it was trying to watch them plug along throughout the season with all of their injuries and struggles and losses.

It's even harder when you go into a season with such high hopes and then have to watch the team go along without your favorite anymore.

This season started out for me at Spring Training with soprano_no_eiji. Jed ended the 2008 season by making the last out of Game 7 of the ALCS, so it was only fitting that my 2009 Red Sox season began with him. We arrived at the stadium and ran inside to check out batting practice, and he was the first person I saw when I got to the top of the stairs. My heart skipped a beat. Literally. I was maybe 20 feet from him at most - possibly even closer. I'm sure he had no idea I was there, but the experience was wonderful even though he didn't wave at me or anything.



To this day, that is my profile picture on Facebook.

Naturally, after this I couldn't wait for shortstops much longer and I really wanted the season to begin, but I had about a month or so to wait for that, and in the meantime Julio Lugo got hurt and Jed essentially won the starting shortstop job. He was looking absolutely fantastic at that point, even hitting the first home run in Citi Field's non-official game history when he crushed a grand slam off of much-maligned starter Oliver Perez in an exhibition game, and I was giddy. This was going to be the year he proved his worth.

Then, right around the anniversary of his Major League debut on April 15th, he went down. His wrist problems hadn't been resolved, and I began worrying. When I found out that he was going to need surgery, my heart sank. I knew he'd worked hard for that starting job, and now he might not be able to get it after all. Fortunately, he was given a fairly speedy timetable with which to recover, but it ended up meaning that he was bounced around from one Minor League affiliate to another as he rehabbed the wrist because of weather issues over the summer - this was perhaps the rainiest summer I can remember.

It turns out our paths crossed again in Pawtucket in early July:



I was afraid I wouldn't see him rehabbing at all during my trip to Rhode Island because it was that week that he was moved from Pawtucket to Lowell to Portland back to Pawtucket, but he arrived in Pawtucket on a Thursday and played that night, conveniently in front of my family and myself. Although he went 0-4, he was defensively fantastic - he made a beautiful stab of a line drive at short - and was his happy, giggly self. He was also very supportive of the kids, waiting for Bubba Bell halfway back to the dugout to personally congratulate him on a fine catch out in left field. It was just too sweet, and I think I fell in love all over again that night.

He made his return when I was at Otakon in early August, and I screamed with delight on a concourse in Baltimore when I found out he homered in his first game back. It all started to go downhill from there, though, and I remember watching him reinjure the wrist on a check swing from the left side on my TV when the Sox were in the process of being swept in New York. I knew it wasn't over yet, and I soon found out he had been diagnosed with ulnar neuritis, which is vaguely like carpal tunnel syndrome in the elbow.

He went back to Pawtucket for a second time, and this period was likely better for him due to a reunion with John Mayberry Jr., his college roommate and best friend. They even homered in the same game at one point! The wrist seemed like it was finally coming around, and sure enough, he made it back up when rosters expanded in September. He didn't play much, but he had one extremely clutch hit early on and then did mostly defensive work, including when I saw him in Baltimore (soprano_no_eiji gives the BEST birthday presents!).

Oh, and he hit a grand slam, so he started and ended the season with one. Not bad, eh?

The grand slam is probably what got him on the playoff roster. Unfortunately, that was very short-lived time, too, because the Sox were swept and Jed only appeared a few times overall, not doing anything of major consequence. That was it. It was quick and ruthless, and then it was over.

Now we both have to wait until February again.

I am so, so proud of him for sticking it out in a situation in which so many other people would have given up. He worked incredibly hard to get himself into good enough condition for the playoff roster, and although it took him the entire season and two Minor League rehab stints he pulled it off. He really needs more recognition for this - it takes a lot of mental strength to survive what he went through. Instead of just tossing him aside, he deserves to be given at least a little attention and praise.

So let's not forget about Jed Lowrie right away, Theo, okay?

In honor of Cole Hamels losing the second game of the NLDS for the Phillies, I have to post this.

Once upon a time, soprano_no_eiji discovered the Barbie Channel on iO On Demand. She told me to investigate at my house, and we decided that it was one of the best channels ever. It has clips from Barbie movies, Barbie commercials and lots of other disgustingly pink things (I'm fine with pink and all, but you can always have too much of a color, even my favorite color, green). We watched it this past weekend when we were at my house, and we made a startling discovery: nearly every single prince in the Barbie movies resembles Cole Hamels.

Then we found the Cole Hamels Dance.



The latest film to be released, Barbie and the Three Musketeers, has a blooper reel, like many of the Barbie films (I have discovered this by buying many of the films to dub over/laugh at). About thirty seconds into this one, Cole Hamels, dressed in a rather flamboyant prince outfit (left - I know you thought that was him on the right!), breaks into a wild dance, much to the surprise of everybody else in the scene. Barbie joins in, but the best part is the people in the background, who sort of halfheartedly play along.



After this ingenious scene, we were kind of in hysterics and decided to watch other videos on the channel. We came across a brilliant one that involved Barbie and Cole Hamels, as well as Barbie's 11 sisters, dancing with some very creepy golden men. And we decided that this meant that we had to recast the film it was from.



Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses has now become Chase Utley in the 12 Dancing Phillies, starring Chase Utley as Princess Genevive, Cole Hamels as Derek, the royal cobbler, and Jamie Moyer as King Randolph. The full cast is as follows:

Princess Ashlyn: Jimmy Rollins
Princess Blair: Ryan Howard
Princess Courtney: John Mayberry Jr. (She's the book-smart one! I love Mayberry.)
Princess Delia: Jayson Werth
Princess Edeline: Joe Blanton
Princess Fallon: Carlos Ruiz
Princess Genevive: Chase Utley
Princess Hadley: Brad Lidge
Princess Isla: Ryan Madson
Princess Janessa: Pedro Feliz
Princess Kathleen: Kyle Kendrick
Princess Lacey: J.A. Happ
Derek: Cole Hamels
King Randolph: Jamie Moyer
Dutchess Rowena: Pedro Martinez
Desmond: Cliff Lee
Brutus: The Phanatic
Felix: Raul Ibanez
Twyla: Chan Ho Park
Queen Isabella: Charlie Manuel

Yeah, we did some of those arbitrarily. But we are awesome people, are we not?

First off, I was away this weekend, so happy belated birthday to cornerinfielder and sheep_mambo! I hope you both had wonderful days!

Now where was I this weekend? My parents bought tickets to the last Saturday game at Citi Field through the Gary, Keith and Ron Foundation - a lot of the money for the tickets went to charity, and in return the ticket holders got to walk onto the warning track for the national anthem. So I was standing on a Major League warning track. I was shaking. Literally. My legs were like jelly. It was kind of beautiful.

The other exciting thing from Saturday is that, well...Josh Thole's pants have made their way to my dorm room. They were selling game-used merchandise, and in lieu of anything that was once worn by Daniel Murphy, Thole's pants were acquired. This led to this picture:



Insert a joke about how I got into Thole's pants here.

And to top it off, Jed. Jed, you just...you amaze me. You utterly amaze me. That first career grand slam was just beautiful...except I was in the car when you hit it and couldn't see. But I'm sure it was the most beautiful home run hit at Fenway all year.

You had better be on that playoff roster, you genius.

As I've been mentioning on my Twitter lately, I'm working on a term paper on Eddie Plank, he of the 326 career wins (third all-time for a LHP) and 2.35 career ERA. He's been keeping me quite busy today, and I have to say I'm actually enjoying it.

Is anybody else here into deadball? You know, Philadelphia A's and St. Louis Browns and New York Highlanders and Boston Americans-style deadball? Because there really were some fine players back then. I'm indulging in reading about second baseman Eddie Collins, the great Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants, the eternal Walter Johnson...it's just so magical. It's a whole new world that's out there for a modern baseball fan to discover.

The game was different back then. Much different. In a way, there was something more enchanting about baseball in the early 1900s. It was quaint, relaxing, and although there were many big stars who received plenty of attention, there's still something rustic about the whole thing. Baseball hadn't entirely lost its 19th century charm yet.

In other news, the Jed Lowrie card I won in an MLB.com auction finally arrived in the mail today! It actually contains a piece of one of his 2004 Team USA jerseys, which I am extremely excited about. It's just really cool to own something that he wore in Taiwan.



The team in 2004 also included John Mayberry Jr., Ryan Zimmerman, and even Mike Pelfrey and Troy Tulowitzki. I'd say that's a pretty good group of kids right there.

I have a paper to finish up and an astronomy lab to go to tonight, so that's all for now!

Let's play Spot the Lowrie.