Hitting a Curveball

In baseball one of the most powerful tools a pitcher has is the curveball. It comes straight for your head then plunges into the strike zone at the last second. The worst thing a batter can do is bail out. It seems like every situation in life can some how be related to baseball. Bad situations are like curve balls. You have to be the hitter. You can't run from problems you have to face them. Just like you can't bail out from the curveball. You have to keep your hands up, and weight back, poised for the right moment to strike. When problems arise one must not jump in to early or the curve will slide right by, but to late and the ball as broken and is no longer reachable and the hole gets deeper. In baseball you get three strikes, many players let the first one go by just to get their bearings, but when the second goes by, trouble begins. It's like problems if you let them build things just get worse. So, when that curveball comes in any situation remember: pick up the spin, keep your hands up, stay balanced, and don't bail. Not every problem is worth it so watch for balls that curve into the dirt, just let them go. Learning to hit the curveball makes people stronger batters, more dangerous than ever, and stronger batters solve problems by not acting to fast or slow.

Game Time!

So, baseball is in full swing. Our team is 7-3 and we haven't even hit our stride yet. We have 9 games left in the regular season, and then districts. We have had some people quit and some just not show up, so we are left with our starting team from last year plus one sophomore. We start 7 juniors and 1 senior and 1 sophomore, we are pretty stacked. We also have about 5 people batting over .500 me included. We have a doubleheader saturday and we are gonna smoke everyone from here on out. I can just feel it. It is FREAKIN GAME TIME!!!

My Favorites

Ok here are my top five favorite bands. Check them out and comment with ur top five.
1. Cunninlynguists (great name I know)
2. Modest Mouse
3. The Grouch
4. Flipsyde
5. Zion I

and here are my top three most hated musicians.

1. Justin bieber (he doesn't know about love he is 12)
2. Miley Cyrus (or Hannah Montana I don't know the difference)
3. Ke$ha (not kiesha that is not slutty enough apparently)

So, please comment with ur top five favorite bands and/or your top three most hated bands.

Perfection? You've got to be kidding me!?!

When I walk into a situation I try my best, and I expect myself to be as perfect as I can. I know perfection is impossible, but the pursuit of it is the best way to better ones self. When a coach demands perfection he needs to expect some failures along the way. My baseball coach is a single minded coach. perfection or go home. It works fine when he is a good mood, but on a bad day practice is hell on earth. Slowly, this whole season he has lost the respect of most, if not all the players on the team. He preaches character and respect, integrity and honesty, but he is a hypocrite to the letter. When we respect everything he asks us to do, and he spits curses and yells at us for a simple mistake I find it hard to respect him. When our team meets to discuss things his hypocritical tyranny is always at the top of our list. I demand the best from myself and expect the best from my teammates, we trust each other all the time. We believe we can be the best, but our coach ruins our focus and desire. We love each other too much to side with our coach on any matter he decides to yell about that day. We are a team that is bonded by talent, desire, and sadly hatred.

Magnetic

I always fall into the same patterns, time and time again. Sometimes for months sometimes years. My best friend (who is a girl) screws with my head. Not on purpose granted, but she manages to do it. She is my best friend and has been for years. We are always there for each other every up and every down. We just connect I guess and I don't know why. This last December I realized I had all these pent up feelings for her. Not just feelings, but head over heels feelings. Well leave it to me, I told her. Needless to say she broke my heart. After that we were on awkward terms to say the least.
Recently, she and I have fallen back into our old selves. Which is good, but I just wonder why, even though we often seemed to be broken apart for some reason or another, we can always be friends again? I wish these ups and downs didn't have to happen, but i guess it shows how strong of friends we really are. She is a big reason I can survive high school.

Accountability?

So, my baseball coach always gives us these life lesson talks. He talks about character and hard work, or integrity and sportsmanship. Then, the other day he talked to us about accountability. He told us we need to hold ourselves and our teammates to a higher standard. This makes quite a lot of sense. To be the best you have to work like the best, right? Then it occurred to me that isn't accountability a nice way of saying peer pressure? Well, the way I look at it, if the team strives to for perfection and there is someone not working as hard, and the team then tells him to get in or get out, that's peer pressure. Then I realized that this was a good thing, peer pressure was being used for the betterment of the team. So, I ask myself, does this mean peer pressure isn't bad? I would have to say yes. To be better the whole must push the outliers to get in with the pack. Accountability is for the betterment of the team, and I now believe the infamous peer pressure can be good.

Woops!

Sorry about the problem with viewing my blog. It works now! I hope you will continue to read.

School Spirit?

This week has been my school's annual spring spirit week. Either it gets more lame every year... or I am becoming more cynical by the day. My bet is a little of both. I just can't get excited about my shit school, EVER. My school is a perfect example of this country's failing school system. Sports reigns king and people want me to get excited about our shitty school beating a another shitty school at sports. I mean really? This is just a subject that needs to be criticized. How can a high school like this be someone's "glory years"? I just can't find it in me to have school spirit. School spirit, in the words of a cynic (me), is a way to keep people down. Shouldn't school be trying to force us out into the world or higher education? Or should they make high school sickeningly easy and try to make it peoples "glory years"? I wish my shitty school would think more about educating people than about how much school spirit there is.

Why Wait?

Recently I met this girl. Yes, a real live girl talked to me. She is great, except she lived pretty far away, and in my earlier post you wil realize my car won't make it very far. So, when I did get to see this girl I knew she was somethin' special. Well, we hung out for a while and just talked and laughed and had an all around great time. Well, then came the talk. DAMN I hate that talk. Don't pretend you don't know the talk. The what are we talk. The where is this going talk. So, she asked me these questions and I put them off because I have a. . . claustrophobia of relationships. . . for lack of a better term. So, I tried to sidestep the talk. I said I didn't think long distance worked. Well, she didn't seem upset at all. Things seemed normal, we talked, and flirted, and laughed together just as we had before. Then, to my horror I see a facebook post. Stupid facebook! She had a date. FACEPALM!! While I thought things were good, she had ben lookin' around. I mean I really can't blame her (would be so much better if I could). That's when I realized I wanted to date her. Screw my stupid phobia I wanted this amazing girl, but I was too GOD DAMN late. So, don't wait. I learned that a little too late.

The Search

I haven't posted in a while because i have been on a trip around Oregon looking at colleges. As I looked at college I realized I can't wait to go, but I am scared as hell to go. I went to see Oregon State University first. This school is huge! It has over 30,000 students and covers nearly 500 acres of land (which is a lot).The campus is magnificent, it is one of the prettiest schools I have seen. The next school I went to see was the University of Oregon. This school is very similar to Oregon State except the campus is smaller. The I realized why I am so scared of college. Cities scared the shit out of me! I am from a tiny town where i know everyone. Being somewhere where it takes as long to get across the city as it does to get across my county scares me. I guess I have come (and not for the first time) to the conclusion that my small town life has left me almost crippled to the outside world. Other than that I can't wait to go to college. And overcoming adversity is what it's all about right? So I'll keep tryin' to survive high school, then Nut Up and go live in a city (more than 20,000 people, at least in my eyes). College where my insecurities and biases will change, hopefully for the better.

Epic Fail

So I was diagnosed with sports induced asthma a while ago. Well, the medicine didn't work and I went on surviving feeling exhausted after every time I exercised. A few weeks ago I went to a lung specialist to see what was up. She right off the bat ruled out asthma. Great months after I was diagnosed I was going to be re-diagnosed. If only it were that simple. She sent me to get test after test and every time there was a lead on something, it was dashed to pieces after another test was done. Finally, when I saw her she had no idea what was wrong with me. What was the next step? FUCK! the doctor didn't even know. I mean I'm not dying or anything but running is very difficult and any exercise throws me into a spasm of pain. The medical field has no idea what to do next. Their tests showed nothing so they in turn can't do shit. AWWWWWWWWWWWW! It just amazes me that there seems to be no fix. This is bullshit and I am scared and frustrated, and amazed that someone can pay soo much for absolutely no answers.

So It Begins

This morning I woke up at 5:30 did my chores and left for baseball practice. My addiction to baseball has been ingrained in me since before I can remember. My first baseball game was on a saturday the spring after I turned five. My game was that afternoon, but I was so excited that I got dressed in my baseball uniform in the morning. Then, went to our couch and sat down. My mom then came and asked me what I was doing. I replied "I'm waiting for dad to pick me up for my baseball game," and that is pretty much what I did. I didn't leave that room except for lunch until my dad came to get me. If this doesn't show my obsession with baseball I really don't know what will. I think baseball is one one of the few things that helps me survive high school at all.

Just FYI there will probably quite a few more posts on baseball in the future.

Technicality

Today I went to a school function in which a friend and I submitted a website as a project. Well, we didn't win, but we did manage to get disqualified. How you ask? well we submitted our website using adobe dreamweaver. We did not however, get an FTP client or a host to get the website actually up and running. We just coded the site. It says nothing in the rule book about getting the site all the way to the web. According to the judges it was "a given" rule. That is complete BULLSHIT! This competition is so high and mighty they think they can make a rule a "given"? The judges even told us we would have advanced our project had we had it up and running. Getting a website up costs money, i am a high schooler with an 8 dollar an hour summer job. They think I can afford to pay for some bullshit competition? Screw Them! Here are my grievances:

1. It wasn't in the rule book
2. They judged it four days ago (I wasted a whole day)
3. They could have told us in advance
4. Patronizing us as if we should have know

So you know wat? Screw them, if conforming to the society of today means to have to put up with the upper class bullshit, then its not worth it. I'll become a hermit and show those bitches whats up!

Ok, sorry this is a shitty piece of writing, but I just needed to rant and rave about this. again my apologies.

Music to My Life

So, I was sitting at my computer thinking of something interesting to say, well nothing seemed to come to mind. I turned on ITunes and stared blankly at my library of songs. I scrolled up and down several times before settling on a song. This song "Artsy" by The Grouch has a deep meaning for me. Let me give you a little background. I live in rural colorado where you are either a coal mining hippie hatting redneck, or a pot smoking war protesting tree hugging hippie. As for me, well im one of the oh so small population of tweeners. In other words I am neither of the other two partys. So back to this song i briefly mentioned, basically it says "don't preach" whether you are of the christian right or the alter ego hippie. I find this view quite refreshing, because I will admit one of my pet peeves is being told wat I do is wrong or right for that matter. Just live and let live. So, I guess the point is there are two opposite but equal sides. In this song The Grouch talks about how just because you act the part doesn't mean you are as righteous as you say. Let real ideals and principles dictate how your life is run. I can't lie when a hippie comes up to tell me to be better to the world, and have peace on Earth I have the sudden urge to get in a fight and litter, and when a christian comes and tells me God loves me, or redneck tells me how Obama is ruining this country I just want to put an Obama sign in my yard and throw the bird towards the sky.

My car

This past friday I had quite the experience with my 1995 Ford Windstar (my friends call it the "man van"). So, when I got to school I was told I had a flat, no big deal right? Anyway, my friend Cody and I went to go fix it near the end of the day. So, we had no problem finding the jack or the tire iron, and we began to remove the tire with no problem. As we came close to taking the tire off we decided to take a look at my spare. Well, lucky for me it was flat, but it wasn't just flat. It had a piece of rebar about 8 inches long protruding from it. So, obviously we couldn't change the tire. So, I called my mom and had her bring down the other car with the same size tires (I thought this was quite clever). Cody and I then had no problem changing the tire and putting the spare from the other car onto the my car (maurice). Well, as I was about to leave my day got even better. I put the key into maurice's ignition. The engine turned over but just wouldn't fire. Maurice just would not start, he would rumble then fail every time. So, wat are the first words that come to a teenager's mouth? "STUPID GOD DAMN PIECE OF SHIT." I just could not catch a break. So, Maurice would sadly have to stay in my school's parking lot for the night. Well, the next day it got towed and taken to the shop. The reason for my beloved minivan not to start? When I had taken the jack out of its hold I hit a certain button. The inertia switch as it is called cuts off the flow of gas to the engine when the car is hit. This is to keep it from going boom. well it can also be manually switched on and off. So, the first words to come out of a teenager's mouth? WELL SON OF A BITCH! Well at least the car is fixed.

The Beginning

I go to a small rural high school in which our football and wrestling teams are the jewel of the community. My freshman year I was quite into school spirt and pride (now I must say I am quite lacking in). I was active in three sports and seemed to fitting in well. No I didn't play football, because i was... well quite small and skinny. So, I ran cross country. I was soon injured because I wasn't really ready to run tat much, but i had a great coach. He made me feel quite a part of the team still. This was quite uplifting. Soon Basketball started and the freshman team i must say... was better than the JV. I'm only bragging a little. Now as baseball (my passion) began I felt part of something (proverbial program I guess). I had a great time and that remains just about the only sport I truly like to play. I guess I used sports to cover up any social problems I was feeling. Which now I realize were a big part of that first and second year of High School. During my Sophomore year I started to lose my school spirt and a startling rate. By the end of the year the only pride I had was that our baseball team was badass. I wish I could enjoy high school like so many other students do, but i just feel like I'm ready to move on. As a junior I have been told that I act like a senior. Which apparently is a bad thing. I mean wanting to get out of a shitty high school ASAP is a bad thing. See I have to call a bullshit on that one. So here I will chronicle my hardship and happiness through the rest of high school. I would like to here from people who had to cope with this too. So basically everybody. So, please follow me and the Survival of my high school years.