First Week in my Apartment, Second Week of Training

For those of you who were exposed to the raunchiness that was my apartment in State College, you all would be quite impressed by the place I have landed here in Kamloops. It is in the basement of a house, the house is owned by an 49 year old woman whose husband had passed away. I enter through a back entrance and can go down the steps. I have a decent sized living space, with a room that is very nicely sized. There is another bedroom that is currently being turned into a kitchen and a bathroom that is temporarily being used as my kitchen. I subsequently use the bathroom upstairs until all renovations are finished. It is a very nice setup and it is cheap in comparison to the other places around town. I am about a 10-12 minute drive from my training center but only about 5 minutes from the start of my job (paper route). It is also nice because the woman is a dog groomer and she offered to groom and bathe Anton for free and she enjoys having him stay in the household. She also offers me food at times which is always a plus and gives me leftovers that she cannot finish (because I am fat). So, all in all it is very nice.

Kamloops is expensive as hell, as is most of Canada and it does not help that the Canadian dollar is shitting on the American dollar and will most likely continue to do so for the next 2-3 years, as predicted by "those people." I say it is because Bernard Bernanke is the devil and really should be thrown in jail for cutting recent rates at the Federal Reserve and artificially making things seem okay. In my opinion, the US needs to go back to the Gold Standard. Another amusing thing, is that many people like to point out that Americans have everything but own nothing...this is why I despise credit. Anyway, I adjusted well the first week of living here and have since found it to be very comfortable. It is also nice since I have a queen sized bed that is brand new, to sleep on. I should have my own internet and phone up and running within a week of today.

The hardest part to adjusting was getting used to waking up at 4 AM for my paper route. I find this somewhat amusing because I live 3 hours behind the home time zone, yet probably wake up before many of my friends, especially those still in school. The route is actually fairly fun once I get going and it is also nice because I can take Anton on the road with me. They pay 12 bucks an hour which helps a lot with bills and should be my main job for the next 9 months. My other job is being a bouncer. I make 15 dollars an hour bouncing and work only about 2 days a week for 4 hours but it is all cash and a very exciting job. The place I work at is quite interesting. By day it is a sports bar and by night it becomes a giant club. It gets pretty crazy and the age group ranges from 19-early 40's. The place gets really packed but things are fairly under control. I must admit that it is weird seeing 19 year olds out on the town and drinking legally...it is weird but I believe that the US should grow up and put the drinking age down to 19 or 18...let's be honest here, if you want to drink, you will get the alcohol...and you can vote for the president but not drink? Shows how important the presidential vote has become these days.

My second week of training was better. I had a number of throws with the 18 over a decent mark and I have gradually adjusted to the new technique. After a few days where I was dragging ass from delivering papers, I realized it was because I came back from work and slept for too long of a period. Now, I deliver and come home for a 25 minute nap and then get up with about an hour and fifteen minutes before practice time. Then, I feel very good and ready to throw well. Bondarchuk is a very good coach and it is extremely fun to throw 5 days a week, especially with my training partner Jesse and a thrower that is as good as Dylan is. It is very helpful. I really forgot how fun it is to throw as much as we do (5 days a week, 25 throw fulls a day), I feel like I am in high school again. I really feel that this year is just an extended year of education for my future job. It is really awesome to look back at all of my coaches and take all of the stuff they spoke about and piece them together, either my throws coaches (Miss C, Mark Gottdenker, Dayna Wenger, Anatoly Bondarchuk) or my strength coaches (THE Phil Yoder, Mark, Tom Bender, Dayna and now Bondarchuk). I feel like I am molding a nice philosophy together and look forward to putting things all together for the future.

Now I am fairly caught up on my blog and will start to remark with much shorter length articles. I have decided that my next blog will deal with Sabermetrics...I will introduce everyone to a revolutionary way to view baseball. I am sure Moerder will cream his pants, too. Also, Braylon Edwards sucks.