A job, a blog, and a gift registry

• Yes, it's true! On Monday, I start a one-year contract for Supervalu Corporation. They own Cub Foods and many other supermarket chains, as well as produce their own generic-brand grocery products. My title is something incredibly generic like "Business Specialist" but the important part is that I'll be doing your general exciting office stuff, and making more money than I did at HTA.

I'll be working in the building that used to house Best Buy's corporate headquarters, and it's really cool! Very bold colors, there's a test kitchen where they perform consumer marketing panels, and it's a huge building. It'll be a very different environment from the teeny little office that HTA was in. With any luck, I will have coworkers who are around my age!

• I've been posting at Babes Love Baseball for a week or two now, and I'm having a blast! Most days there are lots of emails that go back-and-forth between myself and other cool, baseball-loving girls. It's awesome and I'm having a great time!

• Yesterday, Ryan and I went to Target at the Quarry to start our gift registry (which you can view here). It was exhausting! I thought it would be such a fun, lovely time for us as a couple. It was, for the most part: we picked out a sweet tv (someone buy it for us! ;)) and a DVD-VHS combo player, and sheets, and a duvet, and towels and bath mats and place mats....

...and somewhere in there I became overwhelmed by all of the choices! How many of each thing ought we register for? What colors (apparently that's blues and greens)? Should we go for mix-and-match colors or all the same? HOW DO WE DO THIS?????

Now that I'm thinking about it while sitting on the couch, it doesn't seem so hard. But in the moment, after having been there for an hour discussing the benefits of registering or not for luggage and tool sets, it seemed like mission impossible.

The real difficulty here is that Ryan and I don't know where we'll be living in six months, never mind six years from now! So things like shelves and storage which we may or may not want and find useful in our new place, we don't know if we will have room for them, if they'll be useful in our home, etc. I think we'll be living in an apartment for a few years before we can buy any kind of house.

Ryan did a great job of trying to keep me calm and keep us on track, but I understand that he doesn't really care about all this stuff. I don't know that I care all that much about it, either. But I know that I want place mats and dishes and a nice rug and all that stuff, I just haven't figured out quite what I want. There are too many choices! Usually when I shop for "big ticket"-type things, I research and research and find reviews and opinions until my eyes bleed. But I can't possibly do that for every little item we'll be registering for or I'll go insane!

Seriously, buy us the TV. Or a kegerator! That would be awesome.

Big News

I feel like the coolest girl in the room.

I'm a Babes Love Baseball blogger.

Today? BEST DAY EVER.

A few thoughts

• Every time the summer Olympics comes around, I realize that I've forgotten how much I love volleyball! Men's, women's, indoor or beach, I just love volleyball. It's such an precise, beautiful sport.

• The tv show Bridezillas is fantastically addicting and entertaining. I'm not even shamed by watching it anymore; I really love watching these ridiculous girls get so beast-like over a wedding. Funny stuff! And best of all, Ryan likes it too.

• I've been missing Toronto really intensely the last few days. I really wish it would have worked out to take a trip there over Labor Day. There's been talk of doing a road trip to the Black Hills over the holiday weekend instead.

• I miss blogging about baseball, but I don't have nearly the time it takes to keep up a decent blog. You'd think it'd be easy-ish, blogging with someone, but I haven't really talked to or seen Nicky in, what, a month?

• Ryan's birthday party has been changed to Sunday, Aug 24th. I hope many people come for bbq and beer and to eat lots of our vegetables.

• My computer was attacked by some bizarre spyware last night. It somehow is spyware that tries to tell me that I have lots of infections and should download and pay for a spyware removal program. It's taken over my desktop and I'm trying to keep it from taking over MSIE. Which means I'm running Firefox for the time being. I know that so many people love Firefox, blah blah blah, but I don't care for it. I never had any problems with IE and never saw the need to change, especially as there are plenty of things that won't run on Firefox.

• We still have lots and lots of veggies. A cabbage, 2 green peppers, 4 sweet corn, 2 beets, 2 cucumbers, a zucchini and some herbs. And I haven't yet picked up today's delivery (which I will go do as soon as I finish this blog post!).

• I hate Friday weddings. I hate the idea of them, and I hate the hassle that is involved in going to them. No offense to anyone who will have/is having/has had a Friday wedding, of course. Is it a money-saving tactic, or is it something that people do because the wedding site they wanted was already booked on all acceptable Saturdays? Even having a wedding on a Sunday is far, far better than having one on a Friday. Friday weddings, from the guest perspective, says "I'm the bride and I don't really care that 90% of my guests have to work Mondays-Fridays, I think they should take vacation time for ME!" This is, of course, more directed at weddings that start prior to 6pm or so on Fridays, but even so. My personal opinion is that if it is indeed a money-saving strategy, then you should reconsider your idea of a wedding. If you can't afford a gangbusters affair then you should downsize your guestlist, your menu, whatever. If you can't afford an open bar? Don't have a bar! Have a keg or just beer and wine or no booze at all! Yes, in my opinion asking people to take time off of work to attend your wedding is about as crappy as asking them to pay for their own drinks at a wedding. This may all be simply my idea of being an good host, of course, that if you are indeed throwing a party for your nearest and dearest, that you should make that party as easy and fun as possible for them. It shouldn't involve taking vacation time, fighting rush hour traffic, or paying for their own drinks.

It's safe to say that when I do get married (touch wood), it will not be on a Friday.

I realize the last bit probably comes off rather screed-like, but it's just rambling about weddings generally and I'd hate for any person, be they friend or random passerby at my blog, to take it personally. For the record, my best friend had a wedding that began at 5:30pm on the Friday before Christmas, and I Maid of Honor-ed it happily.

watch out for those metrodome steps

metrodome cutie

go cubs go

yosh kawano day

DFA! DFA! DFA!

My favorite punching bag has been designated for assignment to a minor league team. I am not sad to see him go!

He's said publicly that he would refuse the assignment (as major leaguers who have more than 5 years of service time can) and become a free agent.

Hmm. Lew Ford tried that last year. He's playing for a minor league team in Japan. Jason Tyner also refused a Twins minor league assignment and is playing for one of Cleveland's farm teams.

Seriously! Where is this idea coming from that being a free agent would be better than going down to a farm team, working on fundamentals, gaining confidence? I can only assume that Mr Rincon wishes to pitch again, but who but the most self-destructive of MLB clubs would pick up an RHP with this 2008 line?

J RINCON: 2-2/28.0 IP/33 H/21 R/19 ER/5 HR/16 BB/20 SO/2 HBP/3 WP/1.750 WHIP
His 2008 ERA in those 28 little innings pitched? 6.11!

Of course, we can't forget little-used but interesting statistic of Inherited Runners Scoring: 7/7. 100%!

It doesn't matter, though, because he's not the Twins' problem anymore! I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from Twins Territory.

spilling beer for good luck

Netflix!

My queue (Bond flicks, Ken Burns' Baseball series, Best Picture winners):

Casino Royale (1967)
Ken Burns' Baseball: Disc 6
You Only Live Twice
Diamonds Are Forever
Ken Burns' Baseball: Disc 7
Ken Burns' Baseball: Disc 8
Ken Burns' Baseball: Disc 9
Ken Burns' Baseball: Disc 10
Live and Let Die
The Man with the Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Never Say Never Again
Octopussy
A View to a Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence to Kill
GoldenEye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World Is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale (new version)
The Broadway Melody of 1929
All Quiet on the Western Front
Cimarron
Grand Hotel
It Happened One Night
Mutiny on the Bounty
The Great Ziegfeld
The Life of Emile Zola
You Can't Take It With You
Gone with the Wind: Collector's Edition
How Green Was My Valley
Mrs. Miniver
Casablanca
Going My Way
The Lost Weekend
The Best Years of Our Lives
Gentleman's Agreement
Laurence Olivier's Hamlet
All the King's Men
All About Eve
An American in Paris
The Greatest Show on Earth
From Here to Eternity
On the Waterfront
Marty
Around the World in 80 Days
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Gigi
Ben-Hur: Collector's Edition
The Apartment
West Side Story
Lawrence of Arabia
Tom Jones
My Fair Lady: Special Edition
The Sound of Music
A Man for All Seasons
In the Heat of the Night
Oliver!
Midnight Cowboy
Patton
The French Connection
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
The Godfather, Part III
The Sting
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Rocky
Annie Hall
The Deer Hunter
Kramer vs. Kramer
Ordinary People
Chariots of Fire
Gandhi
Terms of Endearment
Amadeus
Out of Africa
Platoon
The Last Emperor: Disc 1
The Last Emperor: Disc 2
The Last Emperor: Disc 3
The Last Emperor: Disc 4
Rain Man
Driving Miss Daisy
Dances With Wolves
Unforgiven
The English Patient
Titanic
Shakespeare in Love
American Beauty
Gladiator
A Beautiful Mind
Chicago
Million Dollar Baby
Crash
The Departed
No Country for Old Men

Saved (not yet available on DVD):
Cavalcade
Rebecca
Sunrise
Wings

Ryan's queue (mostly baseball movies):

The Natural
Mr. Baseball
The Scout
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Seasons 1 & 2: Disc 2
The Sandlot
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Seasons 1 & 2: Disc 3
Minnesota Twins Vintage World Series Film
The Pride of the Yankees
The Bad News Bears
Eight Men Out
For Love of the Game
The Rookie
Angels in the Outfield
Major League
Major League II
Rookie of the Year
The Mighty Ducks

My love of Wikipedia

Ah, Wikipedia. Source of so much information. I've wasted countless hours looking up completely random things, so I've decided to keep record of what I look up and why on a semi-daily basis.

The MLB Civil Rights Game, which took me to Cleveland Indians mascot Chief Wahoo. I then learned more about Chief Illiniwek and Chief Bender. Learning about Chief Wahoo made me curious about other Major League Baseball mascots.

Our recent relocation to 26th & Blaisdell in Minneapolis puts us near Eat Street and the landmark restaurant Black Forest Inn. Ryan and I have discussed eating there, and as I like to be informed about my food I searched for German cuisine, and learned about bratwurst, Leipziger Allerlei, Hasenpfeffer, sauerbraten, spätzle and the döner kebab, which reminded me of the Donair, a Halifax treat.

Of course, I had to read the entry on German beer, and the discussion of beer gardens makes me long for hot summer nights with friends and pitchers of beer.

A dicussion with a coworker about the forbidden deliciousness that is the Rice Krispie treat led me to read to her its history.