A Day at the Races

This past Friday Raegan and I made the trek to the Keeneland horse racing track in Lexington for the final day of racing this spring. It was quite the experience for me. I had never been to a real live horse race in my life, so I can chalk this up as another new thing I have done in my life. All total, we stayed for five races. They run a race about every 30 minutes or so. It really is true that is incredible to watch in person. I even had the chance to place my first ever bet on a race at the track (some people may argue this was not a good thing for me to do, but that is another post, another time). I am proud to say that my first bet ever was a winner. The horse was Criminologist, who went off at 7-1. So, my two dollar bet brought a $16 return. How sweet is that! It was great experience and I am already looking forward to going back in October when racing opens again.

How to Attract A Guy 101

For all the ladies out there looking to attract to attract a guy, might I suggest this as a possible starting point:

Alyssa Milano's MLB Blog

and maybe as a supplement to that:

Touch by Alyssa Milano

This is just a small suggestion on my part. Honestly, I just wanted to write about the fact that the blog she is writing is crazy good and really has great insight.

DISCLAIMER: This in no way means that I do not love my fiance Raegan. I love her very much. I am very fortunate to be with such a loving, caring, and wonderful person who enjoys sports and is willing to humor me and my crazy obession with them. This post is merely for informational purposes.

Text Messaging Madness

You absolutely have to be kidding me. A 13 year old. And what 21 year old law student needs to compete in a text messaging contest. Seriously!

Text Messaging National Championship

Baseball Season

As many people who know me know, I am huge baseball fan. The start of the MLB season is one of my favorite times of year. I even like to try and declare Opening Day a holiday in my life (that never works by the way). For me, there are three great things about baseball season:
1) Watching the Braves play
2) Going to a game
3) Fantasy Baseball

When it comes to the first thing, the Braves are off to a nice start this season after a dismal April last season. The starting pitching has been pretty good outside of Mark Redman (but even he made a good start last night). The bullpen has been better and the offense has been...well...ok. The Braves are 10-5 currently and only a half game behind the Mets in the NL East. We are in good postition.

I have had a chance to attend one game so far this season in person. While Raegan and I were in Texas we had the chance to go into Houston (30 min drive from her house) to see the Astros take on the defending World Champion Cardinals. The Astros won their first game of the season that night behind a complete game from Roy Oswalt and homers from Lance Berkman and Carlos Lee. Needless to say, the Astros star power performed well that night. It was also a lot of fun to watch Oswalt face Albert Pujols four times. Talk about a great pitcher and great hitter facing one another. Oswalt got the best of him that night. I had also never been to Minute Maid Park before so it was a lot of fun to be able to share the experience with my fiance.

Finally, I have two Fantasy Baseball Leagues of importance this season. The first is my traditional PPUMCFBL (Pittman Park UMC Fantasy Baseball League) named for the church I went to in college that contains many current and past members of the congregation. I am currently in seventh place out of eight (head-to-head league) right now due to lackluster starts by Andruw Jones and Chase Utley. That team is good though so it will turn around. The other league is the Grice 3rd floor league which includes 6 people off our floor and Raegan. Now after the draft, I said I thought Raegan had the best team (it was an auto-draft by the way). Now early in the season, her team is proving me right. In this Rotisserie style league, she is currently 17 points ahead of the second place team and 36 points ahead of me because of some sucky offense by my team early on. Raegan is winning 7 categories right now while sitting in second in 7 others out of 21 total categories. See why she is winning now?

That is all for now. Be back soon hopefully.

John

The Miserableness of Crashing

Anybody who has seen me over the past week probably noticed I wasn't myself. A lot of people probably didn't see me for precisely that reason as well. It all finally came crashing down on me. Months of too much on my plate and overworking of myself finally reached its breaking point in me. I was basically useless. Yesterday, I felt like I was starting to recover but I am still not quite there. I am hoping I will be back on my feet and rejuvenated by tomorrow. Needless to say, I have a little bit to do to get caught up from a week of basically seeing or talking to nobody and sitting in my room being miserable doing almost no school work. I want to share a few things that I have picked up on that caused this crash in hopes that someone else who may read this doesn't fall into the same trap I did.

First, try not to let too much get on your plate. I had school, work, wedding stuff, and more. Now granted, all those were necessary and important. We all have to be able to know when one is done and another begins and how to put space in between the things (whether the schedule allows or not). Basically, realize your limit and don't do what I just did and try to push it.

Second, find that time during each individual day that you can remove yourself for 15-30 minutes to do a devotional and pray. That was the one thing that always suffered in the madness for me and it showed in more ways than you can imagine.

Third, don't neglect your friends and completely withdraw from them. This is one thing I greatly regret about the time leading up to this. I was not being as good a friend as I want to be to people.

Finally, take some real relaxation time. I need it, you need it, we all need it.

That is it for now. Hopefully coming soon, John and Raegan at "The Juice" aka - Minute Maid Park in Houston.

John