Destination Confirmed!

Since most other blogs are referring to Mike D lately, I guess I will as well. Mike is the one responsible for me writing this at noon instead of at like 4 when I was originally planning on writing it. But anyways, here we are...

You may (or may not) have been wondering what my plans were for once I finish up my classwork here at the end of the summer. Well, I have been throwing around a notion for a long time now of spending a few months in the U.K. I received an opportunity via e-mail from a soccer club in the U.K. to work as an intern in their marketing department (the internship would give me the last remaining credits I need to get my degree from here). The day I received that email was one of the better on record and throughout the past few weeks they have been very helpful in getting back to me whenever I have had questions. The question became: do I take on such an expensive foreign venture or do I just stay back in the Midwest and hope that something opens up somewhere?

As you can assume, I have decided to take on the expensive foreign venture. So with that out of the way, I'll try to fill you in on some of the more interesting aspects. I will be leaving for the UK literally immediately after D's wedding; I may even have to go straight to the airport! I will be working for a team called Southend United, a small English club whose ground (Roots Hall) seats somewhere between 10-12,000, though they probably average somewhere around 7,000. The city itself is called Southend-on-Sea and is located in the county Essex (Southend is about 50 miles east of London). It is exactly as the name describes as the city of about 120,000 is situated directly along the coast of the North Sea. The city also boasts the one of the longest piers anywhere, a 1.2 mile-long boardwalk with a shopping mall feel. My parents and Michelle are planning on accompanying me over to find a place to live and maybe spend a day touring, but then they will be forced to return stateside. Lucy will be living with my parents while I'm gone.

One of the things I'm most excited about is that I've been told by my team that I'll be able to travel with them to the away games all over England. This means that at little or no cost I'll be able to see many of the large and small cities of England (Southend will play at least 23 away games next year, although I may not be there for all of them).

Truly, I'm very excited about the opportunity to immerse myself in a culture that I've always been very fascinated with. If any of you are interested, I will have a web cam in case anybody wishes to talk.

I hope that helps to paint a clearer picture as to what exactly I'm up to later this year! If you have any more questions, please feel free to leave them in the Comments.

And, of course, guests would CERTAINLY be very much welcomed.

Surrounded by Sound!!

Well, all of the talk finally sunk me. I had been looking for a way to spend my credit card points and after a few brief conversations with Dariano and and remember all of my wonderful experiences at Steve and my one experience at Mac's, I finally broke down and got a home theater system.

I have to say that I'm very impressed with my own little set-up as well. It's so nice just to hear things from the mono system that I had set up before. To make sure that it was up to it's fullest potential, I watched the D-Day episode of Band of Brothers, and yep, oh yeah, the bullets are literally flying (it's actually rather entertaining because it freaks the dog out, but then again, she's mystified by laser pointers).

I'm glad that I joined this technology trend, as I think it will greatly enhance my NetFlix addiciton, although I wish I would have leaped on this bandwagon sooner. If you're one of those out there without at least six speakers around you, surround yourself as soon as possible. You'll thank me for it.

Transition Complete

Well, it's now official. I'm sure people out there have been whispering for awhile now, but I'm finally coming out and living up to it today. That's all because, on this day, April 3, 2005, I completed my transition into total dork.

It all began when I picked up a series of books with dragons and mages on the cover, a series called "Dragonlance," (sorry Failor, a lot of this is going to apply to you too). It wasn't long until I was a regular in all of the Perrysburg "Magic: The Gathering" game circles, even going to the annual "Magic card" convention in downtown Toledo twice (and I even had to pay an admission fee!). It wasn't long before I was also becoming immersed into the realm of Dungeons and Dragons, either, a realm that I still occasionally visit today. Then, late in high school, Star Wars kicked in. I was at Episode I on opening night. Yeah, I got two of those tickets that went on sale a week early, stood in line for two hours in front of the theater to get good seats and cheered when that trumpet fanfare began blaring. In college, I had Lord of the Rings to obsess over. But all of those things only lead to the inevitable...

Today, I bought my first "graphic novels," or comic books to everyone else. In fairness, they're all collections of several actual comic books and bound together in paperbacks around 150 pages. My selections, for those curious (of which there are likely none of you), were Y: The Last Man: Unmanned, Iron Empires: Faith Conquers and Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days. I've been thinking about picking up one or two a lot lately, since the outpouring of comic books that are made into movie form, ala Sin City, A Scanner Darkly and Appleseed. I also just thought it was time that I expanded my horizons a bit, all I've ever read is books that didn't have pictures in them. Well, it was time to embrace my dorkiness and dig in! (and, being a tightwad dork, I indulged in Borders' 'Buy two graphic novels, get one free' deal).

So the jury is still out on whether or not these will be any good or if this is just a phase I'm going through, but I'm pretty excited for the time being about the possibilities of devouring a story in a different way, (if anyone is interested in the plot of any of them, let me know).

Now my transition is complete, and I don't own an iPod to prove it...