I'm Back...

After a long hiatus.....actually it was a long basketball filled break. My disappearance from my blog happened to exactly coincide with the beginning of the NBA season. I also have cable at home (which is a novelty to me), which meant I could watch every single Raptor game. Headline Sports also has this wonderful program called Court Surfing where they jump around the league and play exciting stuff from every game live.
And with the start of another basketball season, it means the start of another Fantasy Basketball Season.

Quite sadly, fantasy basketball has gobbled up all my internet time and it has made be neglect my blog. I've even been reading fewer blogs from other writers. When I'm on my computer, the first place thing I check is fantasy ball. So anyway, it's a bad habit. To limit myself, I've decided to only check it three times a day...once in the morning (to check the totals from the previous night), once after I get home from school (to make any last minute lineup changes necessary) and once before I get to bed (to see how my guys did). I know it sounds like a lot still, but it's better than before. Trust me. The good news is that I'm tied for first with Dave Clement (who is The Stats Doctor....I'm not kidding about either, he got accepted at Cornell for a Stats Doctorate program. Congrats Dave) in my league. So maybe all this work is paying off...in a strange sort of way. Tim really is right that "out of all the ways we like to escape from reality -- [sports] is by far the most real." (BTW thanks Tim for posting to my site, when I was awol)

Oh yeah, one other basketball related item. I joined an intramural basketball team, which I think is going to be a lot of fun. It's strange that I really enjoy playing basketball and yet I'm so bad at it. If I really had lot's of time, I guess I could practice and improve, but I don't. Barry Ip is the captain, and even Chris Erven is playing on it...so it's definitely going to be fun :)

So has anything happened to me over the last few months? I was working a lot at a pretty enjoyable job (at Sensors & Software, makers of Ground Penetrating Radar) and that took up a lot of time. Our company had developed some equipment for use on the mars rover, Beagle 2, but unfortunately that didn't work out.

I worked out with Monty over the past term. Monty is a beast. He's currently at 185 lbs, but probably can do a few reps at 200!!! Yes, that's right, 200!!! I made quite a lot of progress over this term, and on the last day I managed to bench 175 lbs, which is an all time record for me. I really should pay more attention to cardio though...i get winded running the basketball court! Even doing the CN Stair climb this past term hasn't improved my cardio.

Hmmm, what else was I up to..... I went to an OHL game, purchased a Toronto Mamma Mia Package (Dinner, hotel, Mamma Mia & Raptor tickets) with Kitty, a Raptors game w/ Tim, settled my bet with Keith at Red Lobsters, heared some cool stories from Jeff Wentworth (who came back from spending a year working in Japan), another quake day, another fun Annual Secret Santa, too much to drink at my company's open bar Christmas party (it sounds worse than it actually was...I only felt the ill effects of too much alcohol after coming home), checking out a Jazz club downtown (which I found really enjoyable...I'll have to go again sometime), paintball (spending money for more ammo at paintball increases the fun factor tenfold). That's about all that really comes to mind right now.


Anyway I'm hoping to blog more often now and more consistently, even though I have a busy school term ahead of me. I'll try to find a photo of myself to put on my friendsters site (the site is sooo slow, it always pisses me off too much and i just stop trying to use it), which I have totally and completely neglected. And I will try to keep up with other people's blogs. I mean, how can give up on reading blogs when I have one like this to look at, err read. :)

But seriously, seeing other people blog consistently is a very good reminder to blog. A friend at Western, Patrick Ma, just started a very good one and he blogs like crazy (with daily pictures to boot!). Also, one of my softball teammates had a very popular and entertaining series on Understanding Girls. Check it out.

Happy New Year!