My team

**I wrote this back in September, but just now got around to adding links/pics and posting it.  As I sat and watched the Seahawks on Monday night football.**

Growing up in Utah you don't get a "hometown" NFL team.  You either go with the Denver Broncos as the closest geographically, or you go with the 49er because of Steve Young.  I remember as a kid watching each of these teams win a super bowl and rooting for them.  But let's be honest, I was never really a fan of either of them. 

For the most part I've just ignored the NFL, watching a big game here and there, and rooting for whatever team had my favorite former college star.  (i.e. Dennis Pitta on the Ravens, Austin Collie on the Colts/Patriots, John Beck on whatever team picked him up that season, etc.)  Then as soon as that team started doing poorly, or my player was traded I stoped caring again.

As of last night, that is no longer the case.

I have chosen to be a fan, follower, and supporter of the Seattle Seahawks.  I would like to here present you with my reasons.

1. Seattle.
2. Neon Green and Grey.
3. My parents and my in-laws live in Washington, I likely will too someday, so I might as well start cheering for them now.
4. Some small connections to a handful of players including: Russel Wilson who I followed through his years at Wisconsin, Robert Turbin who played at Utah State (and scored a TD on an 80 yd run on the FIRST PLAY FROM SCRIMMAGE against BYU in '11), and Golden Tate who I had on my college football fantasy team for several high scoring weeks.  (Other's include Jermaine Kearse and Bobby Wagner.)
5. I like them, and it's as simple as that.  From here on I will support the seahawks win or loose.

I've kind of been a Seahawks fan for awhile, but very much a fair weather fan.  I was irate when the '06 superbowl was stolen from them by the officals and the Steelers, but I stoped caring as they rebuilt.  Now I'm jumping back on the bandwagon, but I'm here to stay.  I really like teams from Seattle.

amateur

I just read an article about Dez Bryant's disappointmentwith the NCAA and the amateur athlete rules and the enforcement thereof.  For those of you like me, who have no clue who Dez Bryant is you can read the article or just know that he's currently in the NFL, and played college football for Oklahoma State from 2007 to 2009 and one time worked out and had lunch with (former NFL star) Deion Sanders.  I don't know the details of this lunch or whatever, but it had the potential to violate NCAA rules so the incident was investigated. 

Remember the scene in The Blind Side where Michael Oher is taken into the NCAA office and interrogated about his connections with the Tuohys and such.  He's a nervous wreck and has no idea what to say about why he chose Ole Miss.  I would imagine that most college athletes that get investigated are pretty nervous about it, especially since you know that none of them have ever even tried to read the NCAA bylaws, and probably don't know if what they did violated Code 4 Law 26 Section 7.3.1.

So in the course of Dez Bryant being investigated he lied.  He said he didn't have lunch with Deion, and when the NCAA eventually found out that he did (though no NCAA rule was violated in the process) he was suspended for 10 games for lying.  10 games aka, the rest of his senior season.  You probably wonder why he lied, and I would love to interview him, I'm sure it had something to do with not being sure if what he did was illegal or not, so he tried to avoid the whole issue by lying about it.  True, not the best choice but a logical one for a 20 year old kid.

Fast forward to 2010, Ohio State quarter back Terrelle Pryor (among others on the team) sells things he owns (championship ring, jersey pieces, shoes, etc) in exchange for some tattoos.  Again, not the best choice but a fairly logical one for a 20 year old kid.  (The choice being "I own this, I'll sell it").  Terrelle (along with some of his teammates) is suspended for 5 games, but not their next game which was the  Rose Bowl.  Terrelle decided he didn't want to be suspended for 5 games and joined the NFL where he still had to sit out for the first 5 games (kudos to the NFL for enforcing that) but got paid half a million to do so ($580,000 signing bonus). 

So to recap: Dez doesn't do anything wrong, but lies about it and gets his senior year revoked.  Terrelle does something 'wrong' and lies about it and gets to play his final game and get paid half a million.  hmm....

In all fairness timing makes a big difference here, because Terrelle was investigated near the end of the year, and his sentence came at the end of the season.  Dez was investigated over the summer so his sentence came near the beginning of the season.  Technically Terrelle also missed his senior year (he went to the NFL early), and Dez did get a 1.9 million signing bonus.  HOWEVER, Terrelle still only got 5 games, while Dez got 10.  Seems unfair.

Okay, new track.... Let's imagine that I'm really cool and still in college.  Let's say I write a book, and it goes on to become #1 best seller.  Some other famous person invites me to dinner, wahoo!  Now imagine that I'm an actor, a director, or singer.  I become famous, go to a red carpet premier, I sign pictures of myself and sell them for $1,000.   It's all good.  Now imagine I did those things, but I also play on my college ultimate frisbee team.  I'll probably be investigated by the NCAA to make sure I didn't receive any improper benefit from my athlete status.  Those are crazy and somewhat extreme examples, but I think its something to think about.  I don't think college athletes should be paid necessarily, but I do think there is some change/reform needed in the overall system of rules, investigation, and punishment.  Also some if the NCAA did something to help protect athletes from being exploited by others.  (When people started selling Johnny Football t-shirts the NCAA just joined in and Manziel's family had to file suit to stop them and trademark his likeness.)  

It's a mad mad mad mad world...  but I still love football, and I sure hope Johnny gets to play this year.  I think by suspending him the NCAA is just encouraging him to leave to the NFL early (as it did for Terrelle).

As another side note, I found this incredibly interestingsite on NFL player's salaries.

Gray

So in titling this post I had to pause and decide if I should use 'grey' or 'gray'.  For some reason I'm much more partial to 'grey' but the "traditional american spelling" is 'gray' so we'll stick with that.

So in (approximately) 10 days and 22 hrs BYU will host (presumably) nationally ranked Oregon State in BYU's annual homecoming game.  This is a special game because BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall is a graduate and former assistant coach of Oregon St.  Also it will be the cougars first real test since barely loosing to Boise St. and the first of three huge and difficult games that make up the meat of BYU's schedule this year.

Finally, it is also the first time that BYU will not wear white, or blue as their primary color.  I'd like to say that BYU has been a uni-staple, but between 1999 and 2004 they went a little crazy with uniform ideas, but in 2005 settled back down into the tradition.  This month all that tradition gets a little tweaking with a (jumping on the bandwagon) black out.

In the uni-watching world we call this BFBS, and black for black's sake is generally frowned upon, as is grey for grey's sake, or pretty much using any color that isn't one of your team's official colors.  But I don't care, these uniforms are gonna rock.  Why? because I said so.  While this comes as a surprise, it's not quite as jaw-dropping since the idea was leaked back in April.

All this thought of BYU uniforms makes me want to compile an awesome database of their uniforms... but for now I'll leave you with the beautiful pictures of BFBS.

You're probably wondering why I called this post Gray, well it's because of this beauty.  That grey with the blue!  ohh it is soooo good!!! I LOVE IT!  if they did one thing right here, it's the use of grey.  boom.

Oil

For some reason I love this logo, like a lot.

For those of you who don't know about former NFL teams, this is the logo of the (since moved to Tennessee,) Houston Oilers (and being in Tennessee where there's no oil, the became the Titans... go figure).

The logo is just simple, nicely colored, and it says a lot about Houston, Texas, the oil industry, and the history of all those.  It's just cool, and you never see it around anymore because the new Houston football team chose worse colors and an ugly logo.  So I decided to memorial-ize the Houston oil derrick as a 3D sketch, 'cause I do that.

BOOM

I know, it's pretty cool, right?  I worked pretty  hard on that... ok, like 3 hours maybe.  It's actually a REALLY complicated structure to model without proper structural design software (I use a free google product).



On a completely unrelated note:  I was at wal*mart a couple weeks ago when I saw huge boxes of cereal on sale (huge as in almost 2 lbs).  I bought some not knowing that my wife wouldn't eat Reece's Puffs, and I didn't really think I'd get sick of them.... but 2 lbs of cereal last like a month!

I read a lot of sports articles.  I used to read most of them on ESPN.com, but then they lost Pat Forde. (And since he now supposedly works for Yahoo Sports, I looked him up and finally found The Dash reinvented.)  So I've moved over to Grantland for now, a spin-off from ESPN, writing about sports and pop cluture (ooh, ahh..).

This is a small excerpt from this weeks article that I just happen to love, and I love it a lot because it's so true, and because I love soccer. (I love soccer more than I love football in general, but not as much as I love college football specifically.)

Letter to a Coach

Coach Saban,

First off, let me say you have a fine, fine football team. The running game and the defense are just fantastic. I'll make this quick because you're busy. Tuscaloosa probably has a part of town where Latinos are concentrated. If not Tuscaloosa, then certainly Birmingham. In that part of town there will be a makeshift soccer field, or maybe even a real soccer field. On this field you will find children of all ages for whom kicking a ball is easy, second nature, and who haven't lived lives steeped in American collegiate football lore and therefore wouldn't be super-duper nervous if asked to kick a weird-shaped ball through uprights that to them would seem a gaping target. After you've chosen your boy, explain that he will receive a college education at one of the top 100 state universities in the nation if a few dozen times a year he kicks the weird ball through the uprights for you. There may be a moment of confusion when the boy thinks he has to actually hit one of the uprights with the ball, and then when he realizes he merely has to kick it anywhere between the uprights, both of you will laugh, and laughter knows no borders.

It's true. And speaking of soccer, my own Real Salt Lake lost to the stars of the LA Galaxy last week, which means the Galaxy will be hosting the Houston Dynamo (what's a Dynamo again?) for the MLS cup next Sunday (Nov. 20) I believe it will be broadcast on ESPN or ESPN2 for those interested.  

BCS comps

So I like computers, and I like college football, and college football uses a lot of computers to determine rankings.  It logically follows that I would be very interested in these computers, which is why I have bookmarks to the sites for all six BCS-used computer ranking systems.

In looking ahead to tonights BYU game against TCU, I though I might go see what the computers thought might happen, so....

One computer (Massey Ratings) actually has links for 'predictions' and 'matchups' where you can enter in particular match-ups and see who would win, as well as see predictions for the upcoming games.  It says that TCU has a 78% chance of winning the game, and by a predicted score of 34 to 24.  Maybe not the best chance, but it's the same percentage that said Notre Dame should have beat USC last week, just sayin'. (btw Massey has TCU and BYU ranked 53, and 54)

Moving to more promising news, two computers have BYU ranked higher than TCU.  The Colley Matrix BYU 41, TCU 42 and the Anderson-Hester computer, BYU 41, TCU 45.  Close margins, I know, but still.  (Colley Matrix is 'unbiased' meaning high scores don't matter, and A-H prides themselves on being the best rater of what a team has accomplished to date, not a great predictor)

Then there's the other three computers that have TCU above BYU, but again, by pretty close margins. The Billingsley Report TCU 41, BYU 50, Peter Wolfe TCU 43, BYU 47 and finally the Sagarin Ratings TCU 46, BYU 55.  And finally there is a page on the Massey Ratings site that shows the ranking of teams based on the averages of all the computers (both BCS official and others), there TCU is 33, and BYU is 51.... not boding so well for the cougars in this one.

But really, computers can only take you so far.  They fail to truly predict the outcome of games though they come close.  From a more human perspective, neither team has won any super difficult games, TCU's 'best win' came over #51 SD[iego]SU, while BYU's is over #76 SJ[ose]SU (basically the same team, minus Ronnie Hillman). Their strength of schedule and records are actually pretty similar.  Both have lost to two good teams (ok, so Utah's not so great, but the were better before losing Wynn) and both teams have beaten up on inferior opponents to look good (Idaho St., New Mexico, Portland St.)

If I were a betting man, I might put a few dollars on TCU.  But it is a really, really close call.  I still believe that BYU can win this one, they are an improving team, and this will be the big test for them (since their next three games they will actually be favored to win).

And now it's only 7.5 hrs until kick off.  :-D  I'm excited.

The QB debate

So it's been a little over a week since BYU nation began the great QB debate, Jake Heaps or Riley Nelson.  It seems that a large portion of fans think Riley is a much better option than Jake, chanting his name at the Utah State game to get him put in the game.  It seemed quite obvious to me that Riley would start this game against San Jose State.

Really, the only thing Riley adds to the game is his ability to run.  He is just as inconsistent (if not more so) of a passer as Jake Heaps is, throwing two interceptions (almost three) this game.  His running ability though does do a lot for the game, giving the ability to pick up 5+ yards running when his receivers get covered and getting him to move the pocket and give more time for plays to develop and get open receivers.

I think though that the biggest difference is not in these stats, unlike baseball, football is much more of an emotional game.  Think of it this way, Heaps, the sophomore going deep to the freshman Apo.  On the other hand you have Nelson, the junior going deep to the senior Jacobsen.  leadership is everything and the players respect their elders.

I think Riley will continue to start our games.  I think Jake will get time to play in the 3rd and 4th quarters in the games against Idaho State and New Mexico State, (and maybe Idaho). And he will continue to improve and in the future Heaps will be the great BYU quarterback that has been expected of him.

Uni-forms

You may not know this, but I love sports uniforms, more to the point I love college football uniforms.  Considering that Nike, Under Armor, and others are spending millions, possibly billions on creating cool, trendy, and stylish uniforms that college recuits will like, it's not a surprise that I (a near-college age male) like them.

Because of my slight obsession with the college uniform scene I found a blog called The Uni-Watch.  It is run by uniform enthusiasts who are quite thorough in their coverage of uniform changes, updates, discrepancies, and specialties.

Through this blog I stumbled upon a very narrowly minded site tracking the Oregon Duck uniform changes (most would say it was the ducks who began this national uniform trend).  I also found The Gridiron Uniform Database, a complete collection of NFL jerseys worn every game for the past several years.

After this years explosion of college football uniform advancements some devoted uni-watchers decided to expand the gridiron database to include college football, and this is the result.

If you notice the second team on this list, Boise State, (the were second at the time of this writing but that could change) who's uniforms were reproduced here by none other than you're truly, me.

I will say, I do believe they are quite the work of art.  And hopefully I'll be able keep up weekly with the new uni-combos they wear and make improvements eventually to those currently 'done.'  (I forgot the name on the back of the first two, oops.)

The Holy War

You might have to em-biggen the video to see it well enough.

Basically I thought it was silly to hear BYU fans say, "We've won 3 of the last 5."
While Ute fans retorted, "We've won 6 of the last 9!"
And really, you can manipulate that statistic to serve your team anyway you want.
(BYU has won 26 of the last 39, including a 18 out of 20 stretch!)

So the only way to truly understand the game and the record of the teams is in a dynamic fashion, charting wins overtime.  I made this graph in Excel and animated it using Visual Basic.  I'll try to get the file uploaded somewhere somehow so you can download it and play with it yourself if you like.

For now, enjoy this upload.  It has some explanatory notations and I've included my analysis afterwards.

What do we learn from this?  

We learn that the series has been VERY close for the past 6 years.  

From 2002-2005 Utah took over (surprisingly the time  when Championship machine Urban Meyer took over and the Utes BCS-Busted the Fiesta Bowl).  

It was pretty even again for a while until the early 90's throughout the 80's and into the 70's (the height of BYU's program under Lavel Edwards) when BYU won 18 out of 20 ('72-'92).  

Ute fans will of course point to thier recent success saying they've won 6 of the past 9, but oh wait, not a single player on their team played for the 2005 team, so really they can only claim more recent history of which BYU has won 3 out of 5 (some BYU players have been on the team for all 3 wins).

So... It's close game, and an AWESOME rivalry.  I'm glad to see that The Holy War has even gotten some national media attention over the past few years, and I hope to never see an end to this great game.

This link should be an excel file, right click to download.

Remember to ENABLE MACROS to have the buttons work properly.

Also, sorry I was too lazy to make a 'reset' button.

Hand signs

So my last post got a little distracted with my slight obsession with those Nike gloves, so back to the point...

Hand signs are cool, not just as a "We just scored so throw your hands up!" way, but also in a passing on the street, simple way to show your team spirit.  However they aren't the easiest thing to have.  Ignoring the new glove-palm salutes, only five teams that I know of have hand signs.  So please, if there are other widespread hand signs let me know about them.

As I drove on the freeway in Salt Lake County (U of U territory) I passed a man with a BYU sticker on his car, and I wished that BYU had a hand sign that I could have flashed, letting him know that I too was a BYU fan.  Alas, the only think I could come up with was a sign language Y, but that's not a BYU tradition, so I didn't

Now, about those teams that do have signs:

Perhaps the most well known sign, Hook 'em Horns:

Then there's the growing in popularity Oregon O:

If I ever attended an Oregon game, I'd buy these.

TCU has it's "Horned Frog" although it looks nothing like a frog (or horns for that matter):

The University of Miami (FL) has their U shape:

probably my 3rd or 4th fav of the gloves

Some would argue that Utah also has one, but there's a debate about the U symbol...

And one I just found out about this past weekend, the ASU pitchfork:

And through my searching I came across of few less-well known others (the Houston Cougar Paw, the Villanova V?) but nobody really cares about those so we'll leave it at that.

Some are cool, others are weird, but hand signs (sadly) are not for every team.

NCAAF Gloves

Quite a bit of hullabaloo has been made recently regarding hand signs in college football. Over the past year or so there have been a flew flags thrown over 'excessive celebration' relating to the using and showing of hand signs after touchdowns.

Most recently, Fox Sports' Mike Pereria complained that the Oregon Ducks should get penalized similarly for their O sign.  Then after further clarification from officials and administrators he recalled his statement, saying that flashing the hand sign was ok to use in a 'non-taunting' fashion.

This is probably a good thing, since more and more teams are getting awesome gloves that make for sweet glove-palm salutes.

Entré Les Photos!

UGA

Oregon State

U of Miami (FL)

Horned Frog (TCU)

TCU

Stanford

Boise St. (probably the best design)

Army

Navy

Michigan State

LSU (totally awesome)

Florida

Florida State

Alabama

Texas

Nebraska (a little over kill with the 2nd pair)

And if you want to see more Nike Pro Combat Unis take a look at these news stories from the first three years of uniform releases.  First Second Third

slogans

It may well be known that I love BYU sports, and of all college sports, I love football the most.  Sitting in priesthood meeting on Sunday for some reason I felt inspired by the slogans/logos released by BYU in the past several years.  Not only are they football themed, but they are very gospel themed as well.  I collected some samples to show:

Fully invested:  

BYU use - be a fan that is fully invested in supporting the team, be a hard working, undistracted (fan/player/coach).

Gospel use - fully invest yourselves in preparing for salvation, don't casually read the scriptures or pray, but really mean everything you do and make it important.

The Quest (for perfection) - thats a little bit self explanatory for both uses.

Rise Up:
BYU use - Coming back from a less than perfect season, it is now time for the Cougars to rise up, and become a national power again.  (which I totally think they can/will)
Gospel use - "Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?" Psalms 94:16.  Also, from Hymn #324, 
"Rise up o men of God, tread where His feet have trod, as brothers of the Son of Man, Rise up o men of God."


Yes, I do think that Bronco has been doing his very best to influence this team spiritually as well as physically, and I agree that a team that is spiritually healthy will perform better physically (due to the fact that much of the game is mental, and spirituality helps mental focus).



Not to mention the constant reference to the original slogan (the one introduced the very first year Bronco was head coach) "Band of Brothers".  At first when I saw coaches and ball boys wearing that shirt at a recent practice I thought they just had some old stuff, but then I realized that its the same shirt that Bronco wears to half of the games:

And they have it front and center on all of their helmets:

 And this year they made a poster/desktop with the slogan

So, Rise up!  Be fully invested in the quest for eternal salvation through faith, repentance and baptism in the true church headed by Jesus Christ himself, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Outcome: win

Now that the College Football season is officially over and all the bowl games have been played. It looks like out of nine bowls I predicted five of them correctly, that's above 50%, I can feel good about that. In my defense, had I know of Iowa's returning QB, I might have picked them and Oregon really could have beat OSU... the just didn't. But that's how the game rolls.

Today I read a post-season, pre-season poll. Now that it's all over Yahoo!'s rivals.com put together their top 25 for next season. I was quite offended to see Oregon State as #20, but no BYU. Huston as #21, but no Air Force. TCU and BSU ranked in the top six, amidst the National Champs and Rose Bowl teams, but those were about the only good choices made. Nebraska and Wisconson in the top 10?!? And whoever put Texas as #8 must have missed the part about the true freshman leading his team to 15 unanswered points and bringing the Longhorns within 3 of Alabama. He's got the whole offseason to bring his whole game up to competition level and I expect to see them go big.

Anyhow.... that is all I have to say on the subject of football for half a year now. Whatever happens, you can be sure that the BCS and the Big 6 as we know it are on their way out. :-D

Guesses or Predictions

I was just looking around at some random stuff about College Football (which I love) and I found this picture. It is SI's pre-season edition, giving a rundown of top teams, bowl predictions, etc. I thought it was very interesting to compare the pre-season rankings to season ending rankings, and I thought I might include that here:

	SI's Prediction		Final Ranking
1	Florida		5
2	Texas		2
3	Oklahoma		NR
4	USC		NR
5	Virgina Tech		12
6	Ole Miss		NR
7	Oklahoma State		21
8	Alabama		1
9	Boise State		6
10	Ohio State		8
11	Oregon		7
12	Georgia Tech		9
13	LSU		13
14	Penn State		11
15	Georgia		NR
16	Florida State		NR
17	TCU		3
18	Oregon State		16
19	Utah		23
20	North Carolina		NR

All of this becomes even more interesting when you compare the opposite direction, what currently ranked teams weren't even on this preseason list (#14 through #25 all weren't included with the exception of Utah and Oklahoma State). And we can see that there was some significant shaking of the BCS, but not by the teams SI predicted (they had 4 covers released regionally for Oregon, Ole Miss, Oklahoma State and Penn State), of which only Oregon ended up in the top 10, but teams like TCU and Cincy.

Of course predictions are often wrong, and they couldn't see some random events like BYU's upset over Oklahoma or their loosing Sam Bradford (twice). From little things like 'Bama's two blocked kicks over LSU, to big ones like Stanford taking over the Pac-10 late in the season and USC falling to dust. Only time can truly tell the future, but I guess it is still fun to make guesses.

Speaking of which I will now offer my predictions on this years biggest bowls (for the BCS and MWC):
Championship:
. Alabama (Texas has been playing worse and getting lucky)
Tostitos Fiesta:
. TCU (Can't get through the D, can't stop the offense)
Rose Bowl:
. Oregon (their team synergy has only grown bigger since beating 6 ranked teams this season)
Allstate Sugar:
. Florida (got off their game, but I believe they can get back on it for Tebow's final hurrah)
FedEx Orange:
. Georgia (I really wanna pick Iowa, but they really lost their umph since QB Stanzi went out
Las Vegas:
. Brigham Young (Oregon State, seriously?)
Pointsettia:
. Utah (Cal's had a serious falling out this year)
Armed Forces:
. Huston (again, I'll be rooting for AFA, but being a non-AQ and being consistently ranked says alot)
New Mexico:
. Wyoming (why not? ;-)

First things first: Football. I love BYU. I also love Max Hall and everything he stands for... for the most part. I don't hate EVERYthing about Utah, but for the most part. But seriously, whoever created these shirts... genius. I am very glad that BYU will be playing in the Las Vegas Bowl again, and I have good faith that we can beat Oregon State. I am also stoked for TCU vs. Boise State, Utah vs. Cal, 'Bama vs. Texas..... oh bowl season fills my soul with such joy.

Alright, secondly: dating. I know what you're thinking, I'm beating a dead horse, seriously though. I have recently performed a neat little social experiment from which I learned a great deal, and I wish to share. Now I say experiment meaning that I tried something that I had not previously done, not to say that I was doing it for 'pure science' or my heart wasn't in it. To claim such would be untruthful and unfair to the parties involved. I recently began to engage in a relationship and did so in a way that I have never done before (and I think most guys haven't). I met a girl, thought she was pretty tight, and wanted to get to know her better; I then had and took some chances to do so: took her on a date, hung out with her fairly often, and even had near daily chats on facebook (it's the daily part there that's important, not the facebook part). I made it quite obvious to her that I was interested with very little shying away or hiding that fact, not only she was aware of my interest, but surely her whole apartment (and half the ward as well). While there were those girls that I talked to about this, I never actually sought any advice from anyone, especially from her roommates, hoping to be able to make the correct decisions on my own. I tried to avoid the whole 'tell a friend so they tell a friend who tells a friend who lets her know that I like her' and went for a 'I'll tell her myself' kind of approach.

After several weeks of trying to take her on dates and getting to know her a fair amount, one evening I came straight out and told her, 'I kinda like you' after which I quickly corrected myself and said, "I like you.." and something about I'm interested in going on more dates with you and getting to know you a lot more... I don't think she was so surprised to know that as she was that I actually said it to her, but I suppose she accepted and expected my strangeness in the matter, saying that she wasn't necessarily opposed to the idea, but wasn't really sure, and wanted to just see where things went, giving it more time... something like that.

So here is my first mistake: I wasn't clear on what I wanted. It seems that she interpreted 'I like you' as 'I want to date you' which, although not wholly false, was not my intention at all. Do I blame her? No. It was my own fault in not being clear and now my 20/20 hindsight has allowed me to see that I was so unclear because at the time I didn't know what I wanted. Honestly our conversation never needed to be had, I was so caught up in the novelty of being honest and straightforward that I failed to realize or think through just what I was doing.

So a week goes by (Thanksgiving, we didn't see much of each other) and a couple of days later she initiates a walk, we talk, she says, "I just don't see it going anywhere..." and shoots me down in such manner. We talked a lot though, not discussing our relationship, but just talking (like I had wanted to do from the beginning) and very much agreed that we needed to still be friends (and just friends). So it ended... and then there were a couple of awkward days where I knew that I wasn't interested in her, but I didn't know if she understood that I had gotten over it that quickly. So I wanted to talk with her and be friends, but I didn't want her to think I hadn't gotten the hint and was still trying to pursue her, but being quite sick of DTR's with her I didn't want to have to go on another walk so I let it slide, had a couple awkward days, and now things are clearing up and we're friends again. life is good.

The final couple things I learned from this are about taking time, allowing things to happen a little more naturally, and of course knowing what you really want/think/feel before trying to tell others about it. I think that I tried to make something happen when things were perfectly content they way the were. It's like a huge container of water, it's hard to spill it if it's not full, but once it is full a good bump will spill it all over.... I don't know if that makes sense at all, but it does in my mind. Another point of interest is how in the first couple weeks of being interested in her I felt really annoying, like I was pestering her, and being nosy and such. I think I had this feeling that I had to get to know her quick, that I had to do all I could as soon as I could to develop a relationship etc. because if I didn't right away then she was going to find someone else, and start dating them. Perhaps for the first time in my life I felt competitive over a girl (yay for experimentation). I don't think that it was a positive influence on the outcome, so I'll try to maintain a much more open mind, and not be so set on my own agenda form the start. That's about it I suppose... this post is much too long.

emo day!

There comes a day in every young man's life that he just has to sit down and listen to some Dashboard Confessional... Today is that day (okay, so maybe one of the many of mine, but still). There's not one particular reason for my emo-ness today, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I keep meaning to write in here, but nothing I think about stays in my mind long enough to be transferred to type. Some of my thoughts recently though include:

-Fair-weather fans whom I hate. Not just those who leave a game with 5 minutes to go, but those who only cheer for winning teams in general, sure we have a national recognized football team, but what about our women's volleyball team or cross country, they rock too and deserve to be cheered for just as much.

-Hearing really awkward clips of conversations of random passerbys. Things like, "...pills and it's like drug use..." or "... buy a new baseball bat, come over to your house and beat you with it!"

-Dating... yes girls and their ever complex minds still intrigue me, as do my own reactions to them.

-Surprised at how much I didn't really miss my friends over the thanksgiving break, not that I don't love them, but I just enjoyed being with my family so much that I kinda forgot to think about my super awesome friends (who I believe were equally absorbed into their family activities).

and I've been thinking about myself a lot lately too. Thinking about how cool I am, about the cool stuff I've done lately, about the cool classes I'm taking or will be taking, about how arrogant I am and how obnoxious I must seem to others, how much I talk when I shouldn't and keep silent when I should talk, how I'm dirt poor, how life's quickly escalating complicatedness is by far a much larger foe than I could ever hope to defeat.... hence the emo. w00t.

yes, this is me playing frisbee on the beach ^_^

And this is an 'A' for Ako (tagalog for 'me') Awesome, Ace, and an all around nice guy ;-)