GAME05

ok, i guess i'm summoning the opinions of my fellow bf.netters out there. i have an interesting dilemma to figure out by Friday morning. it's a good-good dilemma. after many months of searching, today i got offered two separate jobs, and i'm trying to quickly figure out which one would be best for me. 1. Park Ranger job--ideally i would like to become a National Park Ranger (or some non-teaching type of parks and recreation job). and no job better prepares you for being a Park Ranger than being a Park Ranger, right? of the two jobs, this job pays better, not even including the usual health/dental benefits. resume-wise, this is very clearly the better of the two jobs. the downside to this position that i keep thinking about is that it is in Southern Texas. being from Wisconsin, there is a substantial fear that i will even be able to make it through the summers, as they are 105+ degrees with high humidity for most of the year. i should add that this job is 80% outdoors. the location is somewhat near Corpus Christi, but is in an otherwise lifeless and empty town. i don't plan on staying there for that long, maybe one or two years until that good experience gets me a better job somewhere not in Texas. 2. Canopy Guide--this involves mostly ziplines and rappelling, some environmental education, leading tourists through the woods. it starts with a week of unpaid training that has a 15% failure rate, though i've been assured from a friend who manages there that i'll be fine. pay is less with no benefits. the company is young and growing. my friend was a tour guide last year and is a manager this year. the job, however, finishes the end of November and doesn't start again until about March, so i figure to be on unemployment or working at REI between then. certainly not the better of the two jobs on paper, but still somewhat applicable when it comes to a career as a Park Ranger or something similar where i'd be working as something of a tour guide and naturalist educator. Nice thing about this position is that it is located in Asheville, NC, which i consider to be quite possibly the best city in the US. now, despite being told otherwise by my Advisory Board (who happen to share my last name), i still lean somewhat to the Zipline Guide. One reason is that i don't know a soul in Southern Texas, but I have five good friends in Asheville. For whatever reason I see Southern Texas as being a very lonely existence for those one or two years. I think a lot of me leans toward Asheville is that even though the job is worse, i suffer with loneliness quite a bit and it's a value to me to have friends in Asheville. and as a 33-year-old single person, i have no problems admitting that i regularly pray to finally meet a girl and get to settle down, which i guess i don't really see happening in Southern Texas. maybe i won't meet a girl i Asheville, but at 33, maybe i don't have all that many years left for the chance to have a family. yet long-term, i can't deny that the Park Ranger job in Southern Texas almost certainly gets me to my career goal faster than being basically a tour guide. the Zipline Guide training starts on Monday morning, and i have a 20-hour drive ahead of me, not including rests. it would definitely be a quick pack and go (capable of it, even though i work tomorrow). it feels like this is a decision of logic vs. emotions, or even of short-term happiness vs. long-term gains. i've thrown out this dilemma to a good number of friends today and they pretty much had the same answer, but you all have always been so helpful to me in the past, and i was hoping that maybe you all might have something to add on it. if i take the Zipline job, i figure i'll have to leave on Friday night, so i also don't have a ton of time to be debating this whole thing.

wholeheartedly agree, Obsessed. i'd rather be playing a top seed than a lower seed that is playing well. a bit hypocritical that the pundits keep talking about the parity in the Tournament the past few years, yet will as quickly blast Wisconsin if we lose to a mid-major tonight. plus that would be a big insult to the quality of the mid-major teams. it's not surprising at all that a lot of low seeds have gotten this far instead of the scenario of about five years ago when it was just one low seed like Kent State making it through. i work until 9:15 tonight, but fortunately there's a sports bar a block away that i won't have to miss much of the game at all tonight.

i'd quit my part-time gig at Wal-Mart to go full-time at my outfitters in large part because they told me that soon i'd be eligible to buy into their health-care program. two days as a full-time employee there and they go "OH, sorry, you actually have to wait until May to get health care." that really got me steamed. the job pays worse than it should, but there's no point in me finding a similar job because i don't expect to be in Austin much longer--though i haven't explored the city's options as much as i'd have liked, i think i underestimated just how hot it is here (85 degrees today) and am basically frightened of the summer (told that it cools all the way down to 95 on summer nights). plus i like North Carolina and Colorado and have friends/relatives there. options on my table right now: (Educational) Program Coordinator: though i very much don't want to be a teacher (essentially what this job is), it's good for my resume plus it's located near Austin. i was supposed to get a callback today to tell me if i was selected or not among the other three candidates. Park Ranger: ideal for my resume, though located in horribly hot and humid Southern Texas. i took second or third in a previous interview, they had a new opening, and the manager emailed me to ask me to reapply (not that i'm guaranteed anything). Zipline Tour Guide: pays only $10.50/hr and only for 8 months of the year (guess i'd go for unemployment afterward). a friend is a manager there and the place has a lot of management potential. nice that it's located in North Carolina, which is ideally where i'd like to live (or Colorado), and i'd be able to apply for the few North Carolina jobs instead of applying from 1,000 miles away. after talking to a friend in the industry, i think it'd be best to take the Coordinator or Park Ranger positions if either was offered ahead of the Zipline job. then just suffer my one or two years as i build my experience and look for a new job out of the state.

for now, i'm working as a low-paid sales associate at an outfitters (backpacks and such). a customer has come in a bunch of times since he is about to attempt a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. Since i have done it twice, he of course talks to me a lot about it. and he's a talker--i've been scolded a couple of times for talking to him for too long. i've spent a lot of time with this guy and helped him out a bunch. what bugs me is that he's left already and he never stopped back in to say goodbye.

this isn't off-topic at all. it takes a good bit of knowledge and education to construct a personalized workout plan, and i think it would be a big help to a lot of people to see just how one is constructed. i've done a lot of long-distance hiking where i'd have to select the highest-calorie and highest-protein foods that were possible (nutrition was still more important than straight calories), but also constructed my own trimming diet when i was in that phase of lifting weights. in both cases it meant reading every label on all the food at the grocery store and knowing what i'm truly taking in at the fast-food places. it seems strange or just a pain in the rear at first, and it does take a little bit of effort when you first begin. but once you start doing this, it becomes second-nature to turn the packaging over and read the labels. it quickly gets to the point where you can tell right away whether it is an appropriate food for you or not. i'm not lifting right now, but i still find myself reading labels on everything as a matter of course. it seems like a chore at first, but considering how 80% of the "food" in a grocery store is made entirely of sugar or fat, learning to read labels and knowing what or what not to eat truly is more valuable than the price of a monthly gym membership. recent studies have started to show that a proper diet alone is more valuable than exercise alone. learning how to quickly read labels and how to even moderately balance a diet is going to tremendously enhance whatever workout a person chooses.

maybe base coaches should stand behind the same barrier that batting practice pitchers do. players would still be able to see them and they can easily move around once the ball is in play. losing the eye is obviously rough, but glad it sounds like there won't be any permanent brain damage.

Kansas doesn't ever play a hard enough schedule, so they should never be considered for a HCS Bowl game. At least one team in the HCS Championship Game should automatically be given to an ACC team. i certainly agree that the BCS is idiotic, but the only problem with tournaments is that they keep getting bigger. in four years, the NCAA basketball tournament is going to have 100 teams. it's already a ridiculous size. we've already got pre-tournaments to determine who gets into the next tournament, where the day before a few teams play in a tournament to face a #1 seed.

i ran about 10 miles a day in college and ran with a buddy. i never quite got there, but he got in good enough shape that he was able to keep up a conversation the whole way. that definitely helped keep things interesting. we'd also take turns picking new routes that we'd run for a week before trying something new, which kept things new, also. i'm a competitive person even exercising by myself, so i was always interested in beating an old time or distance. sorry about being confusing in my last post, Cdiddy. i'd meant to say i was into long-distance hiking now, not running.

we're getting in a new version of Suunto watch at my work that's designed for runners. keeps track of mileage and HR, and when you enter in your personal workout plan, the watch beeps when your heartrate gets below a certain bpm. i'm not a runner, but like to do long- and short-distance hiking. i'm about to get the new Merrell Trail Glove barefoot shoe that i'm real excited about. it won shoe of the year from Runners World, if i'm not mistaken. and from the reviews i've read, they hold up better on long-distance days. i have an issue with my right foot where i don't get a roll from heel to toe, and instead the ball of my foot just slams down hard on the ground after my heel initially strikes. even on short hikes, this makes the ball of my foot hurt quite a bit (you can imagine the discomfort on my AT thru-hike, then). so i'm getting these barefoot trail runners in hopes that by staying on the ball of me feet the whole time, that my foot will hurt quite a bit less. and since they look like regular running shoes, i won't feel embarrassed to walk to the grocery store in them like i would be in those Five Finger shoes.

i work at an outfitters, and i would disagree. not to go all salesman-y, but socks now are breathable and wicking and have become very specialized to what you'd need them for. the problem with socks these days (at least i think) isn't the quality, but that they cost $25 a pair now, which is utterly ridiculous.

if he was Elijah Dukes v.2.0 then i'd quickly say good riddance, but if he's just immature/idiot/jerk, then i don't think it does. a certain amount of arrogance seems like a necessary tool to succeed in professional sports.

if McGehee truly has just about peaked performance-wise (which ain't too shabby!), then what would we really be saving by locking him up instead of going year-to-year? about $8M? despite an injury-free past, any player can get hurt or just tank, and it doesn't seem like $8M is enough of a savings to be accepting that risk. i would say it was justified in the case of Braun just because we were catching him at the start of what we guessed to be some spectacular next few years.

having replaced Parks & Rec, Outsourced could have been the second-best show on TV and we'd probably still find reasons to hate it. i've seen all the episodes and for me it's risen to the point of "meh." but there's a dearth of decent comedies on tv now, so i'll take what i can get. the show really dumped the "culture clash is funny" stuff pretty fast. my friend/roommate doesn't watch Thursday TV (he'd never seen The Office before), so i'm trying to get him hooked on Parks & Rec, although this last episode was mediocre.

so that means, including tonight's episode, there's only three episodes left in the season?? and wasn't Will Ferrell supposed to be in four episodes?

what does a typical MLS ticket cost?

i don't know, i kinda was looking forward to having such a close three-team race for the Division Championship this year.

a few teams get more in revenue sharing than they pay out for their 40-man roster. i'd be mad if i were the Steinbrenners, too (although i wouldn't say the idiot stuff).

The Royals faction of prospects probably don't say much because each of their roles in the organization were pretty well defined. Lawrie was the only one who must have wondered where he fit at the ML level since he was blocked by so many people, but also why Milwaukee couldn't give him a clear answer where he was exactly going to fit in. those quotes all sound pretty reasonable to me and certainly make sense from his perspective, and i personally don't translate them as intending to be at all negative about Milwaukee. he just isn't obligated to be so politically correct about Milwaukee anymore. with the Blue Jays he has a defined path to the Majors that he really didn't have with us. it's definitely a better move for him.

even if you absolutely stunk every year in your career, but had an amazing contract-year performance, there's a lot of teams who will pay you gobs of money. Jose Bautista is a week-old example of that, and of course Fielder knows that, too.

there is a thread specifically devoted to P90X on here if you do a search. most people who tried it really loved it, and i have a friend who used it and made huge strides. i'm sure it's not for everybody, though. i think that all being in decent shape comes down to is finding whatever activity you enjoy doing and then being consistent with it, be it P90X or frisbee golf or jogging or whatever.

Fielder is so young yet his weight won't be any real issue for another five or six years.

opinions of sports finances probably has a lot to do with the team you root for. deep down, any new MLB financial plan is just saying 'I want to give MY team a better chance at winning.' the Superbowl got its best ratings ever when two of its best teams were playing, and baseball is structured so that Boston and New York will always be a factor. the NBA is the same way--everybody but us doesn't really want to see the Bucks in the NBA Finals. maybe the MLB doesn't have it totally wrong that they've established a system where the teams that will get the best Playoff and World Series TV ratings will almost always be in the Playoffs. i have my doubts that MLB could survive without the Yankees or Red Sox or Dodgers, and if so, then maybe it's beneficial that they each have a better-than-not chance at making the Playoffs every year. every year we typically see 6 major-market teams and 2 scrappy small-market teams, which are ideal ingredients for good TV ratings. the NFL survives by building its brand through supporting the lesser-ran teams, but Baseball survives by supporting its most popular ones. different strategy, same result.

this episode would have been a lot better in the beginning of the season, but not right now. they've had us all geared up for the Michael/Holly relationship stuff and this episode was kind of a "pass."

you think a little 3" thick glass could contain The Muscle???? ha!

they just recently added the steak and cheese to their $5 list. i bought the $8.50 sandwich about a year ago, but i think about it every time i see those terrible commercials.