Even In Those Jeans She's Wearing

Ahh yes, the words of the immortal Sir Mix-A-Lot.

I recently bought a new pair of jeans. Now this seems like a harmless purchase. I mean, they're jeans, right? Well as I've gotten older, I've become more picky when it comes to these things. Its all about the fit, right? Yes, and so far, I haven't found the perfect pair. And I'm not even a woman! Speaking of the fairer sex, I've heard of guys buying women's jeans because they wanted a certain fit. Frankly, I'm not that metrosexual. Although I am digging these jeans. I'd say they are my favorite pair, but I've said that with numerous other pairs in the past. They are Express jeans. I can't tell ya which style as they have non-traditional names for their littany of jeans. Aside from the fit, the colour is a big deal. I'm not really a fan of the "blue" jeans. These are more of a dirty (but not in an obnoxious way) wash. And one thing I really enjoy about them is that the stitching is a nice rust colour. Subtle, yet it brings so much out.

I was out shopping yesterday and got some good deals. I got a new pair of boxers, a new red polo, and a long-sleeved button-down shirt for about $25. Yeah I'm good. The shirt is white with pink and gray stripes. This is my first foray into the world of male pink-shirts. It takes a certain guy to pull off the solid pink shirt. I am definitly not one of those. But I think I can pull this one off. Aside from my deals, I've decided I want a Sport Coat or two. I tried a couple of really nice pricey ones on and in a rare show of economic fortitude, refrained from purchasing them. I have been checking out the local vintage/resale shop. There are a couple of nice classic 70s era ones in there for about $15 each. I think I need someone else's opinion before I take the plunge into that world.

One last musing for today. I stopped by the MSU Dairy Store earlier for some home-made ice cream. It's only about 80 here today, a bit cooler then what we've been having most of the summer. But I stepped outside and the ice cream started dripping. And dripped it did! Then I started to get it on my face and around my mouth. Unfortunately for me, I had napkins, but they were in my pocket. I didn't want to reach this ice cream-stickey hand into my pocket and get my shorts all stickey. So here I am, looking like a 5-year old or George Costanza from that classic Seinfeld episode with ice cream all over my face, it is dripping everywhere, with me trying to pull napkins out of my pocket with my thumb and pinkie trying not to touch my shorts. Yes, its moments such as these where we need to step back, laugh at ourselves and find delight in life. I mean, that was a moment.

Now They'll Sleep All Right

So I have this little dream that I want to be a collegiate swim coach. Whether that dream actually comes to fruition, only time will tell. Anyway so I've been stuck/blessed coaching a group of young, very raw swimmers. They've learned that I can be very stern at times and if they're not doing something that is going to help them become better swimmers, then I don't like it. I think, however, that they've also come to realize that I am there to help them and I can smile & have fun at times. They have made tons of progress. For those former swimmers that read this, I've started to introduce interval training and the concept of using the clock. Today I gave my group a set of 4 x 100s on descending intervals with some hard 25s between them. After the set was done they were panting and I could tell they were exhausted. But they worked hard and I told them, if they keep putting in this kind of effort, they will become better swimmers. I was very proud of them. As a young, unproven coach, I find myself at times wondering if I am doing a good job. Results speak for themselves.

The kids also made me blush a little today. I got my hair cut yesterday (resounding applause from my friends and family) and they asked me if a girl cut my hair (yes), then they asked if it was my girlfriend. From anyone else, I wouldn't have a problem with that, but coming from a group of 7-10 year olds....I dunno.

Speaking of girlfriends (or in my case the severe lack of one), I got something quite interesting in the mail today. I got a Victoria's Secret promotion for a free Body By Victoria Panty. Now the first thing I'm thinking is, how on earth did I get on this mailing list. Secondly I notice that it isn't addressed necessarily to me, but to The Dziak Family. Its not for me, but for my whole family. It makes you wonder. So this promotion is going on through August 29. If I did have a lady friend, I'd just give this to her, but alas it is not to be. So if any of my beautiful readers of the female persuasion would like a free VS panty, just lemme know.

And Then the Next Thing You Know

Well I had a whirlwind trip to the 'Wood on saturday. Basically I needed to go home for the day for 2 reasons: one, I had to get my car e-checked (it failed for the 2nd time) and my sister and I had to make our video for The Amazing Race. Yes, I'm/we're trying to become the newest Reality TV stars. I didn't get a chance to see the final video, as my sister had to edit it on sunday but from what I hear, it's pretty good. The video was in the vein of an animal TV show. Picture the Crocodile Hunter and you get the idea. Except that they were looking for the elusive red-haired Dziak. It is quite entertaining and reveals a lot about us without us even speaking (save for the very end). So I'm hoping that it gains their interest, and intrigues them enough to say "hey, lets invite these two back for the semi-finals." Then we can win them over with our charm. I guess our downside is that we have a great relationship. We're not dysfunctional and do not have problems from our childhood that we're still getting over. Frankly we 1) want to see the world, and 2) win the damn thing.

Oh yeah, someone commented to me that I can't allow anonymous comments on here. I changed that so, go ahead and post anonymously.

Dressing Up In Costumes, Playing Silly Games

Some guy from Case designed this game. It is remarkably simple yet painfully challenging and addicting. I've made it through level 9 and stopped at 10. I've had visions of moving lines, triangles, and little circles all day.

And apparantly the New York Times reads Metamorphosis of Life. As today they have an article on t-shirts that mentions among other things, Threadless which I just talked about yesterday. Looks like I'm headed to the big time baby!

Oh yeah, just for the heck of it, here's a lovely picture of Jewel.

I Sleep in Your T-Shirt

Good news for those of you who both read this crap and call me on my cell phone. It is not back in my posession. No, the world did not end. A life can be had sans cell phones.

Anyway, time for some interaction with my faithful readers (are there any?) It is about time that I bought myself a new t-shirt. Now some my scoff and say "A tshirt is a tshirt" and may also say "Mark, you have too many shirts." Au contraire. Tshirts are special. Each one has a special meaning an invokes certain feelings of nostalgia relating to a certain time and place. That is why a lot of us (read: Men) have a hard time throwing/giving away our tshirts. They are a part of us and getting rid of them is like taking a little bit of who we are.

Part of the whole tshirt culture is the interest in all-things from the 1980s. For some reason the decade of the 80s holds a special part in the fabric of America. It has succeeded past fad and become a legitimate business enterprise and cultural phenomena. Authentic tshirts from the 1980s available at thrift stores and new faux-80s shirts are all the rage. Shirts like these often look aged and have a saying that is either ironic or a double entendre. Examples can be found here.

So I've decided I need a new nifty tshirt. I already have my Music + Science = Sexy shirt which I quite like. Now I'm looking for a new one. I've decided to buy one from Threadless T-Shirts. Where you, my readers, come in is helping me select which one. I've narrowed it down to the following:
One
Two
Three

So there are your choices. I'll close the voting next friday (July 29). All you need to do is leave a comment and let me know which one I should get. Of course the one I really want is sold out. Hopefully they'll bring it back so I can buy it sometime.

I'll Write the Ending Without Any Sorrow

And for all those curious, my cell phone has been found. And by the woman I was hoping to find it. She called my mom to tell her she had my phone. My mom says "I wonder how she knew to call me." Well, I do have you listed as "Mom" in my phonebook, so there's a dead give-away. Of course if she wanted to call my dad, that would be a dead-end road as he's not listed as "Dad" in my phonebook. So yeah, on monday or tuesday I shall be reunited with my cell phone.

Well I'm on duty this weekend. From 5 pm friday till 8 am monday I have to respond to the problems and troubles here in the dorm. So yeah, that's why this post is going up at the time it is. To spend some of my time, I stopped by the library and picked up a couple of books:

Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto Anneli Rufus
Dude, Where's My Country Michael Moore
Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation Joao Magueijo

Right now I'm tackling the first one and should have it finished by monday. I do consider myself, maybe not a loner because the word has too many negative connotations, but someone who does like to do his own thing. Rufus's book tries to stress the point that being a loner is not a bad thing and how loners serve the greater good of society. I'll comment more after I'm done reading the book.

I'll leave you with a quote from Seinfeld:

George: "It's not you, it's me.... You're giving me the 'It's not you, it's me' routine? I invented 'It's not you, it's me.' Nobody tells me it's them, not me. If it's anybody, it's me."

Girlfriend: "Alright, George, it's you."

George: "You're damn right it's me."

Ice Age Coming

Idiot!

I was at a swim meet earlier tonight in Flint. I was waiting for the other coach and sitting on a table playing with my cell phone. I set it down and said to myself "Now Mark, don't be a dumbass and leave your phone here." Fast forward and we're halfway home and I realize, hey, I don't have my cellphone, it's still at the pool.

Idiot!

Luckily my supervisor is sister's with the woman who runs the pool in Flint so I'm hoping it won't be too much trouble getting it back. My worst fear is that, it's Flint, not the best city in the world, and that some else picked up the phone and is making all sorts of calls with it. Of course the battery would soon wear out. On the bright side of things, my life is pretty boring so going a few days to a week without my cell phone will not kill me. So if you read this and need to get in touch with me it would be adviseable to IM me or email me. And if you do read this I give you the freedom (not that you need it) to make fun of me all you want.

Idiot!

I Thought I Knew What Love Was

I've decided to carry on with the baseball theme that I ended with on monday.

The annual MLB All-Star Game (aka the Midsummer Classic) was last night and for the 8th time in a row the American League came out victorious 7-5 over the National League. And for the 3rd straight year the American League will have home field advantage for the World Series. The lone Indians rep, Mr. Bob Wickman had a less-then-flattering appearance. He allowed 1 run without recording an out leading the the ever-statistically-significant ERA of infinity. It's always fun when that happens.

But let's suck on the good of the 2005 Indians for a moment. Headed into the 2nd half of the season they are 47-41, good for 3rd in the AL Central and more importantly, 2 games out of the Wild Card race. That leaves 74 games left, but only of which 29 are against teams with records of .500 or better. This means that 45 games are against teams whom the Tribe should beat down. I like our chances of gaining the AL Wild Card and apparently so does ESPN's Page 2. Along with the Indians & the All-Star game, did Travis "Pronk" Hafner get the shaft or what? The guy is 1st in the AL in OPS, 1st in On-Base %, and 2nd in Slugging %. And the guy can flat out smack the ball. Maybe in retrospect, not signing Jim Thome wasn't such a bad thing afterall. One last note for any baseball statistic-philes. You gotta check out Baseball-Reference.com. It's got team-by-team stats for every year and player imaginable. In fact, even after all their years of ineptitude, the Indians still have a .510 winning percentage.

I'll leave you with a bit of an IM conversation I had earlier today:
Female Friend: so hurry up and get rich so we can get married
Me: on one condition
Me: this may be a little forward, but would you make babies with me?
Female Friend: haha
Female Friend: your rich right??
Me: ha ha, yes in theory
Female Friend: sure, why the hell not
Me: cause I want to breed so I have athletically and intelligently and beautifully superior kids

Quit Drinkin' the Drink

There is no central topic for today's musings, so I'll just speak a bit on a few things on my mind.

My friend Jess (of Case Swimming fame) came to visit last thursday. It's always fun to have visitors. We went out thursday night and had ourselves some fun. Nothing big, ya know, right? Well I was hurting the next day. This has been a recurring theme lately. I go out with friends, think I can drink like I used to and I end up paying for it the next day. This is all due to the wonderful economics of grad school which prevent me from having any sustained social life. So I came to the following conclusion: The older I get the less I can drink and the worse the hangovers are; that, or I'm a complete pussy.

In an addendum to my previous post on Lindsay Lohan and her lack of a figure, there's a website up, Feed Lindsay.

Ahhh yes, what else? Oh yeah, some of you may have gotten an email forward from me over the weekend. I received it from my sister. The topic is St Theresa. For whatever reason she's been on my mind recently so when I found it in my inbox I decided to send it on. From what I know of her, if you say her prayer (or a version of it), you're supposed to receive a flower. I usually don't send forwards but I figured I'd give it a try.

I was watching a montage of the history of the Home Run Derby on ESPN earlier tonight. They had a shot from 1995 of Albert (Joey) Belle. I'll agree that yes, the guy was a prick. But he's one of those players that as long as he's on your team and he produces the fans will love him. So yeah I was watching the montage and did that guy have one hell of a scowl on his face in the batter's box? I mean the guy could flat-out hit the ball. If I was a pitcher and saw that look in the batter's box I'd be pretty itimidated. Here are some pics of the guy (all in Indians regalia of course).

I'm pretty sure that Airplane is the funniest movie ever.

Three, It's the Magic Number

Happy 3rd brithday to my nephew. He's such a fun kid to be around. I'll get your present to you eventually man.

They Say Its Your Birthday

Happy 23rd to the most talented swimmer I ever got a chance to swim with.
Way to be 'Lish

Let's Go Away For a While

Ahhh, the holiday weekend has come and gone and I'm plum snookered out. It turned out to be a good time as I was able to go home and see my family and all my friends from the Wood. I was able to relax a little, go to the beach, and not sleep a whole lot. A couple of things though to elaborate on.

I've decided that Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July are my two favorite holidays. Thanksgiving is great becuase I'm allowed to gorged myself on the oh-so-yummy food. I like the 4th of July because...well...its during the summer, there are fireworks, and it is the essence of who we are as Americans. That's why I like these two holidays. They are the only ones that are belong to us as Americans and to no one else. Coming off a volitile, much-divided election, the 4th of July reminds us that despite our differences, we're all together celebrating this rich history we have as a country. We still live in the best and most powerful country in the world. We have freedoms and opportunities that others in the world can only dream about. 229 years ago a group of young and determined patroits set together to create a soverign nation separate from England. Little did they know that their actions would lead to the model nation of today's modern society. Add to that a Constitution that is amazingly simple, yet has held this country together for 216 (I hope I'm doing my math correctly) years. Yes, to quote Bob Serpintini, I'm American and proud of it. Speaking of the Revolution, I've always felt that the British feel inferior to us since their "little colonies" were able to defeat them (twice) and become the strongest country in the world. It's kinda like an apprentice becoming more successful then this master.

Which brings us to the fact that I finally saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I can say I enjoyed it. The script was bad in a few places and some of the acting was pretty piss-poor (alliteration!) but what can you expect? It's Star Wars man! SPOILER ALERT! My only real complaint was that Anakin's transition to the Dark Side did not convince me. I didn't feel that he was truly torn and had to go to the Dark Side. Thanks Hayden Christensen. I did enjoy the actual physical transformation of Anakin into Darth Vader. The final placement of the helmet and the breathing! The breathing man!! It's like YES! Darth Vader is here! Increase dork quotient +100. And I did enjoy that when it ended it will flow right into Episode IV, or the original Star Wars. After seeing the movie, it makes me want to go out and buy/rent the original trilogy. I also love the music. John Williams did such a great job. The opening title is probably one of the simplist yet best sequences in all of cinema. The music starts with the original Fox fanfare. There is a brief pause and silence for what seems forever. Much like when you're at the top of the Demon Drop waiting for it, erm, drop. Then you're hit with a wall of horns and that classic Star Wars logo. It's all quite ethereal.

What else...well I ran the Bay Days 5 Mile Race on monday. I did pretty well as I took 15th overall and somehow got 1st in my age group. I can't complain about that. I could have paced it a bit better as I started out the first mile in 5:30, went :15 slower each of the next 3 miles and then finished with a 5:54. I need to learn to pace a bit better in these slower races. I think I get a trophy or prize or something. I'll have to look into that.

Lastly I waiting until after the fireworks to drive back to Michigan last night. I got to bed around 3:15 and I'm looking forward to a good night sleep tonight.