Hey, somebody from this team needed a blog.

Changed my layout.

Today we created a fan page for a ding, which is a piece of Chinese bronze with three legs that holds food. See, on Facebook, dings are generally tagged as sideaffected, and so Aidan is one of the admins of the group. You should all go and become fans of dings, because they are awesome and bronze and hold food and are buried with dead Shang Dynasty people.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my robot program! It's due in early December, so I need to be finished with the script by Thanksgiving. Hopefully I can handle that - I should be fine. I just can't wait to try to use the robot! It's going to be really awesome.

Ethan is going to cook for everyone tomorrow! I'm really excited - he's easily the best cook on the team because his parents own a Thai restaurant, so any time he volunteers to make a team dinner we all attack him. He's just that good. We keep telling him to go on Iron Chef or Top Chef or something when he's done with college. He's honestly almost considering it, I think!

Righto, program-finishing time! Will write soon with updates like whether or not I get into MIT and other exciting things.

We had an anti-Yankees party this weekend! Corbin came up from Boston with Katie (his awesome girlfriend who was the first person to ever tell me I was cute, but she wasn't interested in going out with me because she liked Corbin) and we had an awesome party with 'Drotti's Campbell's and Aidan's real food and lots of baseball!

Of course, the Angels went and lost both games - go figure - but we're still clinging to hope! They can pull this out for sure!

My robot is coming along pretty well so far. I'm pleased. I'm going to apply to MIT for grad school, I think, so hopefully I'll get in there with my magical robot powers! ...the program is annoying to work on and makes me stay up late, though. Ugh. I just want it to be done.

Spent the weekend with 1863_project and soprano_no_eiji in Pennyslvania because our reading days matched up. They took us (us being comprised of me, sideaffected and wood_campbells) to the Apple Harvest Festival, which was amazing and had things like tractor square dancing and books entitled Aidan Saves the World from Global Warming. Bought a copy of the latter and had it autographed to Aidan by the author. Way cool, self.



That second Aidan at the bottom is a sticker that says "Help Aidan Save the World" on it. I keep laughing at it.

On Monday we went to Colonial Williamsburg and had a grand old time (olde tyme?) finding things to tag Aidan as in photographs, such as FREE TRUCKS. It's cool to see everybody dressed in period clothing, though. I think I would look really sexy in a cravat and tight pants and an awesome coat, after all. If anything ever actually happened here in Conifer Lake, I would dress up in historical clothing all the time, but Conifer Lake has no exciting history whatsoever, so screw that.

I'm not sure I like being a senior. It makes me feel really old and awkward, especially since some of the new freshmen were born in 1991 and that's just insanely late for me for some reason. I guess it's because I was born in '88. But soon we'll have freshmen who don't remember things like Legends of the Hidden Temple and it'll be sad. I mean, I'm programming a robot and applying to graduate school (I'm looking at MIT), and they're like, "Why do you have so much work? It's weird." I just...feel really weird.

I don't think I like being old.

I just friended three adorable dolls. bmu_kids_128

Seriously, they're way cute. But my girlfriend is way weird.

I am significantly more attractive than him. He looks just like Aidan, though!



NOTE: THIS MAN DOES NOT ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY RESEMBLE AIDAN ADDISON. THAT WAS A JOKE, PEOPLE.

So we've got six newbies running around at our practices now and they're honestly looking like good acquisitions for Slumberwood. As a senior, I am officially in charge of them, so I get to order them around and whatnot! Actually, all six of them are good kids, and one of them, Gao Lin, whom we call Gao-Gao, is from Taiwan, which is really cool!

We also have two more pitchers, my eventual heir at the shortstop position, our first baseman of the future and Finnegan O'Toole, who is probably going to be our DH and has the coolest name ever. It's more Irish than mine and they call me Sheridan! And I'm fairly convinced that 1863_projecthad this guy in mind when she was working on the Class of 2013...

Since we're way behind on roster stuff, I think we need to catch up on that, so I'll kick Corbin into updating our LJ with the Class of 2012 and Class of 2013 soon. We're catching up, we promise!

Uhm...also, I think I need some more icons, so if anyone has any awesome suggestions or creative skills, please help me out! I'm a little busy for Photoshop right now because I AM A SENIOR WHAT THE HELL.

 So Slumberwood got a Tumblr. 

I am so going to spam it with inappropriate things and Angle Dance.

Be scared, America. Be scared.

(Also, Nick Green is an amazing pitcher. I should try that...)

I'm back at Slumberwood now. We have practice tomorrow - our first one of my senior season.

I'm actually not excited about this at all. I love my teammates and I'm glad I get to hang out with them again, don't get me wrong, but this is my last season at Slumberwood and I just don't want it to end. It's been a magical three years for me so far - here's hoping for the fourth - and I don't want to leave. I caught myself wishing the summer would just go on forever so I wouldn't have to face the music.

I'm not too keen on playing my last year here...it's too much fun to stop. At least I've got this one season left, I guess. But...yeah.

Wow, I haven't updated my LJ since the day before my birthday.

So I guess I should put something interesting here...uhm, well, this summer 1863_project spent a few days in Rhode Island visiting me! I managed to get her to McCoy once, where she saw Jed rehab (and promptly flipped out) and I also coached the orphans in a summer league! It wasn't as eventful as last summer, but it was relaxing!

Also, y'know what's really awesome? Sour cream and onion popcorn.

You can see what I'm doing (or, you know, not doing) by following me (just like here, I'm pixystixaddict).

Because they just weren't getting enough people, I joined 1863_project's Relay for Life team this year! You can donate to our cause here if you like - I'm hoping to get some contributions from the baseball team, at least!

Note: Schoop is not my real middle name. That's actually Tyler. Schoop (pronounced 'Scope,' but I like to say 'Shoop') is the name of the shortstop on the Dutch national baseball team. I thought it was cooler than Tyler, so I stole it.

Guys, I swear to God the bot was not me. You know as well as I do that my second language is Japanese, not Russian.

Also, Nobu-kun, you are so right that Darvish was not the right choice for the ninth. He totally stole Iwakuma's win. But that's okay because YEEHAW JAPAN!

Just popping in quickly to inform everyone that both slumberwood and 1863_project are not dead - work is attacking her like crazy lately. She's going to post the bios of our new freshmen on the team when she gets the chance to write about them.

Also, Corbin-buchou is doing a lovely job leading us about. He's quite good at this captain thing - we managed to win our first three games under his tutelage! He's having issues with one of the little ichinen, though, so we'll all have to put that first-year in his place soon enough to show him that Corbin is Teh Boss. Eh. Yay baseball.

Changed the layout: pixystixaddict 

I've been really busy since I got back to school - I've been helping to break in freshmen. Maybe I can convince Corbin to put up legit scouting reports on our little rookies at some point, although at any rate the information on slumberwood will likely be updated within the coming months. They're just so young, and being a junior makes me think of them as positively tiny. They make second-year 'Drotti look big! Okay, not really.

'Drotti's been going around all confident now that there are people on the team younger than him. He's still the shortest, but he's thrilled that he's older than people. That kid is severely entertaining. I think he was trying to explain the merits of Campbell's to the freshmen yesterday when they asked him about why he was such a good contact hitter. I wonder if 'Drotters understands that he's a genuinely good hitter and that it's not the Campbell's chicken noodle that makes him so good.

...time to finish homework that I don't care about. Joy. Practice always cuts into homework-and-fandom time.

I got back to the United States a few days ago (holy crap, the jet lag!), and so ended the best summer of my life. Well, there's maybe a few days of it left, but for the most part it's over. I mean...look at this!

~ Won the College World Series
~ Went to Japan!
~ Watched Nobu-kun's cousin play at Koushien
~ WENT TO COMIKET. 

If that's not one hell of a fucking awesome summer, I don't know what is.

My last totally awesome event for the summer is going to play out tomorrow, when the orphanage I grew up in is going to play a pickup baseball game against another sort of local orphanage. We've been doing this for years now - it's so fun to see the little kids getting out there and just enjoying themselves. It was originally the idea of the woman who raised me at the orphanage, Gladys Hartnet, who played in the AAGPBL when she was younger (how cool is that?). And this year, I've been promoted to the position of bench coach (Ms. Hartnet will manage, of course)! Ms. Hartnet said I could grab someone to help the kids with batting practice, so tomorrow morning I have to get up really early to drive out to Cape Cod to pick up 'Drotti because 'Drotti only has his boat license and doesn't own a car. ...or I could just stay up all night, because that works, too. It's not like I've never done that before. See, 'Drotti's a natural hitter, and, in his own words, he'll "be able to see eye-to-eye with the kids bettah. Literally."

God, why'd it go so goddamn fast?

You can now friend me on Facebook! 1863_project is going to get my profile picture up later tonight, but the rest of my information should be there. And look, we're "dating!" 

Yes, I know none of us have posted in forever. We've been kind of busy, though, doing stuff like, oh, I don't know, GOING TO JAPAN.

We've been here for about a week or so now for that tourney, and so far it's been the best experience of my life save for winning the College World Series. I absolutely can't believe I'm here still - it's just so damn overwhelming. And in addition, I get to watch the Summer Koushien tournament on television! This is just too good!

Noburu's cousin Katsuo actually qualified this year, so he and I are staying after the tournament ends on Tuesday to go watch him. And we're also going to go to コミケット (this, for the unacquainted), which makes the two of us not going to Otakon this year (we did it last year) totally worth it. And we'll probably catch a Seibu Lions game before we leave, too. That's, like, three or four life dreams all in once for me!

Holy freaking shit, is this real?

I'm currently in New Jersey visiting 1863_project with Noburu (I brought Del's from Rhode Island because 1863_project says this eighth wonder of the world is sorely lacking in the Garden State). She recently went to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, so she has some Ramune in the fridge for us, which is cool. I think we will go uptown for some Pocky soon, too.

And she says we have to go back to Mitsuwa because when she went to the bookstore she recognized Shigeno Goro on the door. I kind of love Major and would not mind picking up a few more tankobon without having to get Noburu to ask his cousin Katsuo to mail them to us. (They also had Misufuru, which I wouldn't mind owning more of, either.) Besides, we can get food, too - the marketplace has a supermarket, too.

We listened to the Sox game on the radio as we did stuff today around the house, so we got to listen to the insane clobbering. I'm watching the footage on ESPN as I type this up - and yeah, that hit of Tek's was totally a trap. I don't see how they could even try that triple play shit. Good for the umpires for getting the call right, for a change! And Manny came alive, too, which is a great sign!

Oh, and for those who have never seen the epicness that is Major before, I dug up an AMV: