So many hobbies, so little time

Beginning this week, I will be back on "flex time" at work. This means that I will no longer work on Wednesdays through the entire summer. The idea is that I'm being compensated for the long hours that I put in beyond the typical forty hour week during the fall and spring. I have to say that I think it works quite well.

The only issue is that I am suddenly faced with an over-abundance of free time, which can be quite intimidating for someone like me. I like to keep busy and know what I am supposed to do from day to day, hour to hour, and sometimes minute to minute. The flex days are great when I have a long list of things to take care of but they can make me anxious when I don't have anything pressing to do.

I can typically keep busy with house projects and errands through the first few weeks, but when I run low on things to do, people suggest that I take advantage of the free time to pursue some of my hobbies. I have collected a number of suitable hobbies over the years but for some reason I consistently have trouble committing to any of them. I have dabbled in photography, playing the drums, reading, blogging, philanthropy, and cycling just to name a few of my hobbies. Unfortunately, I've amassed so many hobbies that I often find myself paralyzed by the thought of which ones I should devote my time to.

I haven't made it any easier on myself recently. As you all know, I recently became a St. Louis Cardinals fan. What I hadn't counted on was how frequently they play. The Cardinals played a game 29 out of the 31 days in the month of May. That is insane! Baseball is therefore not a game that you can casually follow – there is a certain level of commitment that is required just to have a general knowledge of what's going on.

In addition to Cardinals baseball, I have also taken on two new hobbies – playing the bass and learning to ride a unicycle. Those of you who know me well know that I don't have the best track record with instruments. I love music and enjoy playing music, but haven't ever dedicated the time necessary to excel in playing any instrument. I was pretty good at piano and trombone because I had formal lessons with both of those and there was therefore a set amount of practice time each week. I picked up the drums pretty well because I had lessons but I lacked direction. I didn't really want to play in a band, so I was left wondering what the future held for me. No one appreciates a guy playing the drums alone in his basement – not even the guy playing. Now that a friend has lent me a bass and an amp I have another instrument staring me in the face. At this point in time I don't have any formal lessons because my parents are paying for any for me. Turns out that's something I took for granted growing up (thanks mom and dad for all those music lessons!). I can't quite pinpoint the reason but I think that bass could be a good fit for me.

The unicycle opportunity arose in a strange way. Because I really enjoy bikes in general and odd challenges, the unicycle has always intrigued me. A few weeks ago, Illinois Wesleyan was hosting a two day program called "IWU has talent" and the idea was to have students, faculty and staff share their talents with the rest of the campus community by teaching a fifty minute course on their talent/hobby/interest. One of the sessions happened to be "How to ride a unicycle" – perfect. I was one of fifteen to sign up for that course and after fifty minutes I was still interested in learning to ride the unicycle but I wasn't quite sold on the idea of buying one putting any time toward learning a skill that is at best a pretty solid stupid human trick. However, the universe had other plans for me. The next day I attended a course on "How to sell your stuff on eBay". The teacher had brought in a few items for us to practice with by posting for sale on eBay. One of these items was an old unicycle. Due to the weight and low consumer demand, it didn't make much sense to sell this item on eBay, so I offered the guy $10. He didn't want to sell it but he was happy to lend it to me for as long as it remained entertaining to me. Laine laughed and shook her head when she saw me wheeling home a blue and white unicycle the day after I took the course.

So, as you can see, there's plenty to keep me busy on my flex days. I just have to make some tough decisions. What I'm hoping is that by posting this quandary on my blog, I'll receive some feedback from you all with suggestions of what hobbies I should pursue and what goals I should set for said hobbies. Making decisions is not one of my interests, so any and all suggestions are welcomed.

Things Fall Apart

As you know, we recently acquired a new gas grill that we are very excited about. Remarkably, until this week, the only items that we have put on the grill are cylindrical meats and vegetables. This week, Laine made some delicious looking beef patties with added diced onion and shredded cheese. We pre-heated the grill, grabbed a beer and strided out to the grill with confident optimism.

We are admittedly a bit green when it comes to grilling burgers but how hard can it be? We're pretty sure we've each done it before and certainly watched others do it (parents, friends, people at Burger King, etc.) so the impending disaster really caught us off guard.

After a few minutes, we tested one burger by sliding the spatula underneath. You would have thought that I slapped at it with a stick - the gorgeous patty crumbled like a house of cards. Whoa, whoa! Maybe we were a bit too eager. We gave the next one another minute or so and tried again. Laine used her steady hand to ease the spatula under the edge of the patty while I applied gentle pressure from the opposite end with the broadside of some grill tongs. More crumbling ensued; large chunks of carefully packed meat fell through the grates and burst into flame.
We kept our spirits up hoping that we could produce at least two, and then just one, cohesive patty on our optimism alone. The Grill Gods were not with us though and we had to face the fact that this was just not going to work out for us this time. We called Great Wall and had our first dinner ever delivered to the house.
(On a side note, Laine put her pragmatic thinking to the situation. She salvaged the burger crumbles and baked them while we waited for our Chinese food. The following night, she made a nice meat sauce to put over spaghetti and it was delicious. I'm looking forward to the leftovers for lunch today.)

The Ice Breaker

The Missouri Association of College Admissions Counseling (MOACAC) conference kicked off on Sunday evening with a "First-Timer's Social". At this event, us "first-timers" play an icebreaker game to get to know one another. I should point out that the main reason for me to attend this conference is to get to know some other college representatives who cover the St. Louis area. I have been recruiting in St. Louis for four years and in this time I have been pretty successful at getting to know the high school counselors in the area. This is an important part of the job because it's the high school counselors who often refer students to IWU. I don't expect that many seventeen year olds in St. Louis know much about IWU but I hope that their counselors will enlighten them. High school counselors only make up half of the MOACAC membership with the other half being college counselors like myself.

I had never seen the point in getting to know counselors from other colleges. Admissions counselors stay at their school about two-three years on average, so it seemed to me like a lot of effort to get to know someone who would not likely be around for very long and who I didn't share much in common with outside of seeing them at college fairs. I did however start fear that I was beginning to look a bit conceited at college fairs because everyone else seemed to know one another and I never did much more than shoot a closed-mouth smile to people as I walked into and out of college fairs. As a representative of a selective liberal arts school I figured that I'm already at risk of seeming stuffy, so I hoped that this conference would help me break out of my shell a bit so that I could show these college counselors that I'm not just some dashing professional from a top tier liberal arts university (irony intended).

Anyway, back to the icebreaker. I have a love/hate relationship with icebreaker games. They make me nervous but I appreciate the effect they can have. They make me nervous because I don't want to have to rhyme or act in front of strangers. I consider myself a pretty well-adjusted and confident person so I'm not sure why this is, but I won't think about it too hard. I have seen icebreakers serve their intended purpose very well in the past though, so I'm not entirely against the breaking of ice. They handed out sheets of paper with about twenty statements (ie. I have run a marathon, I enjoy sushi, I have traveled to three countries, etc.) and we were to work the room and find different people to sign their name to each statement.

Now this is a game I can enjoy because all that's required is to present your paper to someone and ask them to help you out and in return you do the same. After five minutes they called time and counted up to see who had acquired the most signatures. I was the clear winner. I immediately realized the flaw in this icebreaker and shared it with the leaders. The winner of this game in the end proves to be the most anti-social person in the group, especially with a time limit such as the one we had. It was easy for me to get a lot of signatures - I just refused to speak to anyone beyond asking them to sign my paper. So in the end, as the winner of this game, I had probably broken the least amount of ice between me and the rest of the group.

At least they gave me a fancy MOACAC pen.

Go Cards!

I recently decided to become a St. Louis Cardinals fan (for professional reasons) and I'm kind of excited.  For those of you who don't know anything about sports, the Cardinals are a baseball team. I have never been a baseball fan and I don't expect to become very interested in the Cardinals, but I figure that I should put in some effort to follow the team because when I visit schools in St. Louis in the fall people are always talking about them.
When I tell people that I'm becoming a Cardinals fan it usually prompts the question, "well what were you before?". I guess I'd have to say that I was/am?a Cubs fan. That's always been just by association because I grew up in the north suburbs. I still like the Cubs because they are the quintessential underdogs, but I think it's a better use of my time to follow the Cardinals than the Cubs.
It hasn't been that hard to switch my loyalty in my mind, so I guess I've never been a very good Cubs fan. I still think I'd like to see them win the World Series though. Laine and I went to the mall on Sunday and I picked up a Cardinals hat that I'm pretty excited about.

Banquets and Grills

Monday evening, Laine and I went to the Faculty and Staff Recognition Banquet. In years past, this event has been open to all IWU faculty and staff and their significant others. This year, in an effort to scale back costs, the school decided to only invite faculty and staff who are celebrating milestones (every five years). Because I am completing my fifth year in the Admissions Office at IWU, Laine and I were invited to the cocktail hour and dinner. I also received a $25 gift certificate to the business of my choosing (Thai House). Typically, this event is held at a banquet hall but this year it was held in the new Joslin Atrium on campus. It's a really nice space and I'm glad that Laine had a chance to see it. Chris Kawakita was celebrating his tenth year, so we sat with Chris and Beni. During the banquet they show pictures of everyone who is recognized. Here's the picture that they had of me.

I had another banquet dinner on Thursday night, but this one was for admitted students from the St. Louis area and it was held at Maggiano's in St. Louis. Laine drove down to St. Louis while I was at dinner and met me at the Melick's house after dinner. It was good to catch up with them and see their place. We all went for a jog in the morning and had some coffee cake for breakfast on Friday morning. Laine and I got on the road shortly after Matthew headed off to work.

We seized the opportunity to head out to Kansas City, KS to visit Adam and Kelly Rose and see their new baby Sophia Renae. Kelly is still on maternity leave since Sophia is only six weeks old and Adam took the afternoon off, so we got to see their whole family when we arrived around 2:30. It's funny to me that when you have a baby you seem to spend virtually all of your time looking at it. This was very hard for me to adjust to the first few times I visited friends' babies but I'm getting used to it now. We had a nice time looking at Sophia, going for a walk and then dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We looked at Sophia a bit more before calling it an evening.

On Saturday morning we had a tasty breakfast of banana bread, breakfast casserole, and fruit. Then we took a trip to downtown Kansas City and spent some quality time in Barnes and Noble. I picked up "Although of course you end up becoming yourself: A road trip with David Foster Wallace" by David Lipsky who authored the Wallace memorial article in Rolling Stone. Back at their house they threw together some tasty chicken salad sandwiches and we looked at wedding photos, then again at Sophia for a bit more before hitting the road.

The trip back went by quickly thanks to good conversation with the wife. We pulled into B-N around 11:30 PM and went to bed. Sunday we had the whole day to ourselves. After church I fiddled with my two broken lawn mowers and Wes and Scott came over to help. I thought that I was going to take some pieces apart and figure it out but Scott fixed my Poulan mower just by yanking on the cord a few times to un-jam it. I was able to mow the lawn while Laine spray painted a couple big pots that Lori left on the patio. Then we went for a bike ride to the library, bike store, and Common Grounds. The first two were closed and the last didn't have what we needed so it was a failure in that regard, but it was really nice to bike around town.


Laine marinated some veggies and we put them on the new grill along with some hot dogs. It was a great relaxed Midwestern Sunday evening. We're looking forward to many more this summer.

Ringing in Spring

After work on Friday Laine and I hosted a patio party for the neighbors, which was a huge success! We had dropped hand-written notes off in their mailboxes on Wednesday and we were pleased that five houses showed up. Dirk and Allison had a baby girl on Thursday night, so they weren't there, but we had a great group and it was so fun to meet people that we hadn't had a chance to really talk to yet. I think everyone was pumped to be hanging out at our place too. They're talking about doing it once a month and rotating houses. It seemed like everyone was good people, so we're even more excited to be living here!

After everyone left we cleaned up and bought a 12 pack of beer at Walgreens – they just started selling today – and watched "Up in the Air" at home. It was a nice night.

On Saturday, Bragg, Oz, and JP all drove down for Pig Dinner, which is the annual alumni dinner for my fraternity. Beth and Brette also came down to play in the alumni volleyball game on Sunday. We all hung out on the patio – it's a great place to hang and it was nice to have that group together.

On Sunday, LT and I went to Menards to pick up a grill. We're super pumped. It looks almost vintage - like a barrel shape. It's also black, which I am hoping means that it won't look quite so dirty all the time. I'll get some pictures of it up soon.

Welcome to my new blog!

Hello loyal blog followers. I'm proud to say that I have enough blogging experience by now to know what a blogging platform is and know what I am looking for in a blogging platform. I'm also becoming comfortable using the word blog.

I have decided to create this new blog on Wordpress after a very positive experience leading an Infinite Jest book club on this site. I like that you can post pictures very easily and there are also better editing tools (in my opinion) than on Blogger.

Some of you may know that I have kept a daily journal for over 10 years. Recently, I finally broke the streak and chose to make it a weekly entry at the same time that I launched into blogging. I've found that it's pretty redundant, so I'm going to try to use this blog as something like an online journal. I'm hoping that this will cause me to be more consistent with my posting. As a result, you will have a chance to follow what Laine and I are up to even when we're not up to anything at all.

I'm looking forward to embarking on this new era of journaling! Thanks for reading!