Long time no see

It's been awhile since I had a post, I'm getting too good at procrastinating. A lot has been going on as of late. My Mariners caught fire, then they left Safeco and they have crashed and burned so far on the road trip, Tessa came to visit this weekend, and we swept Lewis and Clark this weekend to improve to 30-7 this year on our last home games of the year.

I'm going to talk about my boys first. On their homestand they went an impressive 2-7 following a 2-5 start. They were able to pull off a sweep the in the final against the stellar now 3-16 Baltimore Orioles. Their bats came alive that homestand and their pitching was phenomenal. Unfortunately they don't get to play all 162 games in Seattle. They went out to Chicago this weekend to play the White Sox and the Mariners showed the text book way how not to win a game. they played pretty well but the pitching could not pull through in the end of games. The first two games were lost on walk off bombs, the second game we were up 2 and gave the ball to Aardsma in the 9th and he gave up two round trippers, a solo shot and a two run shot that won it for Chicago. Then last night we gave up a homerun in the bottom of the 8th to give the White Sox a one run lead. We went 0-3 in Chicago losing by a combined 3 runs. Just a little fun fact, Chone Figgins one of our big off season acquisitions is batting a solid .190 so far this year. We got Kansas City tonight and the King is on the bump so hopefully that can get things going for us. We are now 9-10. Go M's!

The other week I was talking to Tessa and was like how come we have not once seen each other when we live 45 minutes from another. So I got my best friend Mckenzie to take me to Seattle to go get Tessa. We got a little lost on the way there but thanks to the G.P.S. we found our way to Seattle Pacific University. SPU has a really nice campus but I could never see myself going there. That school was a little too "artsy" for my taste, and they don't have a baseball team. I had a feeling that Tessa was going to get along well with my girlfriends here at school, and I was right. They all hung out together more than they hung out with me. Of course the fact that I had baseball all weekend contributed. I guess they got it all figured out that Tessa is going to come back and hang out with the girls, I had no say in that, what else is new? She left after the game on Sunday but it was good to see her. It made me think about all my high school friends and got me pumped for this summer to see all my old buddies. It feels a little weird saying all my "old" friends.

So I went to dinner and I left mid-blog so the Mariner is over. I don't know what to say anymore, their offense sometimes amazes me. Felix throws 7 innings giving up 3 runs and we can manage a single run until the 9th inning against the Royals. We were a stellar 1-9 with runners in scoring position, that's not going to work.

Like I said though this was a big weekend for us. We got to the 30 win mark with a sweep of Lewis and Clark. The thing is Linfield swept George Fox so this weekend is going to be huge. Whoever wins that series will be conference champs and will advance to regionals. There is going to be so many people there, for the people who are making the trip to Mckminville, make sure you get there early. Both Linfield and us are nationally ranked. In the last poll we were #16 and Linfield was #20, the new poll comes out tomorrow though, we will both probably move up a couple spots. Only 27 guys will travel and I am crossing my fingers I'm going to be on the travel roster. If not I might go down with Luis and Megan to watch the games and stay with Luis but we will see, I find out tomorrow if I'm going to be traveling. It's the last week of regular season baseball, that's so weird.

Other than that not a whole lot to report. I'm counting down the days until summer. I'm tired of school. It's going to be really weird packing up the room after finals are all over. Megan and I have been talking a lot about WE Fest this summer. It is a 3 day country concert in Minnesota that you camp out on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday in early August. So I am really hoping I can get those 3 days off of work and go to that. Megan has gone for a few years now and it sounds ridiculous. She even might be able to hook it up with free tickets because she works at a country radio station in North Dakota. Is it summer yet?

I'm going to finish up watching the Blazers, they are down 49-42 in the 2nd quarter of game 5 then I have to head to the library, my favorite place in the world!

Nathan...out

Scotty, Max, Me, and Spenc after the last home game. My black top is way too big for me, I like the white tops better.

Oh yeah and I'm trying to get some sort of feeling for who all is reading these, let me know. I know you are dad and grandpa.

Khelo Thomas

Like I said I got a picture with Zero from Holes :)

He answered a few questions. Definitely a down to earth guy. He talked about Shia Lebouf for awhile, said they are still friends. PLU doing it big.

My oh my

Last time I was here I vented about how my Mariners were struggling. However, their first 7 games were on the road so there was reason to be optimistic about them coming home for their home opener, starting the season over. Max and Megan got to go the game, it was Max's first Mariner game. Being the awesome friend I am, I let Max borrow my Felix jersey and my hat. I definitely let him know how important it was that my jersey come back stainless. Watching the game knowing that they were there with the sold out Safeco was very depressing for me. Even more depressing was the Mariners showing. On their home opener, with so much buzz and enthusiasm they got blanked 4-0. Rowland-Smith pitched well and the defense was there minus one play by one of my least favorite Mariners Milton Bradley. So that I can be alright with. What I am not ok with, getting 3 hits of off someone who throws mid 80's. Yes he kept the ball down and changed speeds. In that situation I don't care though. You are playing in front of your home crowd for the first time that year in a year full of expectations and promise. You are all professional baseball players, make a damn adjustment.

That game aside they pulled a "W" last night. Doug Fister for Cy Young anybody? He was incredible and the offense was again lackluster. Going over 20 innings without scoring and finally putting up a 3 spot in the bottom of the 8th off of a Milton Bradley homerun. He is now a stellar 2- 28 or something along those lines, with two homeruns though. Hopefully we can see some offense tonight and get the first series win of the year, a good start to the home stand.

Because I couldn't go to opening day I went to my first Tacoma Rainier's game. I had no idea how close they play to PLU. It was less than a 10 minute drive. There were not very many people there at all but it was still cool taking a look at the future. There were several guys on the team that I recognized from fall call ups last year. We were playing the A's AAA team so Jack Cust was down there too. None of the pitchers that threw that game touched 90, some of the guys again were in the mid 80's. Its kind of fun to think about, they are professionals throwing in the mid 80's and I am throwing low 80's. Oakland's closer did throw smoke however. He hit 101 twice, I got a picture of it. I'm pretty happy about that. Seeing someone throw that hard was crazy.

After my 8 o'clock today I went to the library and printed off my Mariner tickets for Monday, I'm excited to go. Hopefully they have the ship righted before then. I am not trying to go see a game where they get 2 hit or something like that.

Last night was the night where we signed up for living situations next year. I slacked, dangit, and had to scramble last second to sign up for me because I had class when my registration time was. It actually got pretty nerve racking thinking that I might have to move out tstad and into pfluegar or even worse, upper campus. But I got a text during class saying "you better love me" from Mckenzie, I do. She is the best. I called her last second and asked her and she stood in line for me and got me a room. Max and I are going to be on 7th floor next year, so far all of my close friends are on 7th floor. We find out later today if the other people who are trying to move into tstad will get in, crossing our fingers. I meet with my academic advisor next week to talk about classes next fall then sign up in two weeks. Freshman year is almost over, only 42 calendar days left, I'm not sure I want it to be over.

Anyways I got class.

Another cool fact. I just got a picture with Zero from Holes, Khelo Thomas. He's a pretty chill guy. He was here at PLU doing a meet and greet deal. I'll put that picture up here in a bit.

Nathan...out

7 Months Waiting

I read countless blogs and articles in excitement for the 2010 Mariners season. I went online and bought tickets during the Mariners first home stand when the have Baltimore. So we get to see what we gave up when Bavasi gave up the soon to be perennial all-star Adam Jones for Erik Bedard, who has spent more time on the dl while he has been in Seattle than he has in uniform. Good move Bavasi, it's no mystery why you got fired. I like what the Z man has done so far though, particulary with the pitching staff. Lee should be an awesome pickup and Bedard will hopefully pan out and put together a solid 1, 2, 3 in the pitching rotation. However, if I were him I would have tried to sign a big bat. I'm not too sure how well Milton Bradley is going to turn out. He's off to a scoulding hot 1-17 start, great. More evidence that we need another bat. Seattle in its first five games is averaging less then 4 runs a game, and thats tough when your giving up 6 or 7, which explains much of the reason why my Mariners are off to a 1-4 start.

Watching the Oakland series I didn't understand why Wakamatsu threw in the rookie pitcher in the 9th inning in 1-1 game. We still had Aardsma waiting in the 'pen. When he got out of a bases loaded jam after walking two, Wakamatsu threw him back out for the 10th, why? Of course Oakland won it. In an inning and a third for the rook, Oakland had 5 hits. In the first 8 innings they had 4, I dont get it. We have a closer for this reason, to pitch in tight games. The next night we lost again in the last at bat, and again Aardsma was sitting in the bullpen. I love my Mariners but they break my heart, I really hope we don't have another train wreck of a season after an offseason full of hope. I'm not sure if I will be able to take it. The Mariners bullpen which has been known for being one of the best in the bigs has looken very mediocre so far. Then again 2 of the bullpen guys have been forced into the starting rotation because Cliff Lee and Erik Bedard are hurt right now.

I'm going to the Mariner game next Monday, the 19th, I'm stoked. All 8 of the freshman guys on the team are going. A little good 'ol team bonding. We're going to try to figure out how to take the bus to Safeco, should definently be an adventure. There will be pictures to come, I am going to take a lot of them I am sure. It doesn't get a whole let better than Safeco. Plus it gives me another reason to wear my King Felix jersey. Even though I've worn it everynight during each game.

But alright enough about my Mariners, you are all lucky they didn't start out 5-0 or else I would have written a lot more. Somewhere in there I'm sure playoffs, or World Series may have been mentioned. Might have been getting a little ahead of myself, but what's new?

We have a big weekend starting tomorrow with Witworth, who I think is sitting at 5th or 6th in the conference. A sweep this weekend would be huge, but it's not necessary. Linfield played UPS on tuesday and lost so that gives us a two game cushon in the Northwest Conference. I get chills when thinking about the possibility of dog piling on the mound after getting that last out to win conference. With the two game cushon it is possible that we will get to clinch on our home field the second to last weekend before we head down to Oregon to play Linfield.

Adam and Sam are on their way to PLU right now. Sam is looking into college baseball either here or at Linfield. I wanted him to see what college baseball is like and show him that he really can play college baseball. I didn't think I could play either until I went and saw a PLU game. Looking back, deciding to walk on and tryout was one of the best decisions I ever made. I have already gotten so much better and I went from playing on a .500 high school baseball team to playing on a nationally ranked college team.

We beat Seattle U. yesterday 6-0. The first division 1 team the PLU has beaten during the 6 years Loomis has been here. It was pretty cool beating up on a d1 team. I went and looked at their team site last night and saw that they beat Oregon, and we stomped them. What we decided on the ride home was that going d1 in baseball, is mostly luck. A lot of kids on that team were not that good, I could play for that team. I will give you that they are like 3-20 and it is the first year of their program, but still a d1 team. Their starting pitcher was 6'10'' and probably 190 pounds, one goofy looking dude.

But alright Shrek 2 is on and I have nothing to do so I'm going to watch. Craig is at the softball house with our neighbor Ben, who's dating one of the softball players. Since I got the room to myself I'm going to watch the movie and take a nap, I guess it's no different from what I would do if Craig were here, it just gives me more of a reason to. And any reason I have to nap, I'm going to take it, ah college.

Nathan...out

Weekend in Walla Walla

I just got into the hotel in Walla Walla, nothing like a 5 hour bus ride after a 2 and half hour practice. The first thing I realized when I unpacked all of my stuff, I forgot my wallet, awesome. There's one of the benefits to being a freshman though, if anything I am only going to get one inning and I can borrow a fellow freshman's. Tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful over here on the east side, low 40's with rain and a wind chill around 30, perfect baseball weather? It's a good thing I remembered my thermal pants, how did I forget my belt then? I amaze myself sometimes.

Spring break is pretty much going to be over when we get back to campus Saturday night. We're just going to have Easter Sunday off then it's back to class 8 o'clock on Monday. I'm probably going to get my midterm back and I'm excited to see that big fat A on the top of it. But then again it is Professor Carp so I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't even started grading them. He might have been to busy working on his thrilling novel about business and economics in the constitution. I am definitely going to make sure and get me a copy of that. New York Best seller for sure.

It is going to be nice once break is over to have people back on campus. It is a ghost town right now. The UC has been closed all week and the market closed at 5 every night and didn't serve breakfast at all so this week has really sucked food wise. All of you know how much I like my food.

I was talking with some of the crew yesterday and it's tough to believe that theres only 2 months left of school before our freshman year is over. It's really hard to believe considering I just got to school last week, thats what it feels like at least.

This is a big weekend for our team. If we sweep then we are im position to win our conference, it would be the third time in the past four years that PLU has won the Northwest Conference. After falling out of the rankings we are back up to #19 in that nation after this weeks rankings. This is our last road trip for four weeks until Linfield the last regular season weekend of the year, its looking like that is going to be a huge weekend. Coach said I was going to start that last game, that would be crazy.

Most of the team is out getting pizza right now. I ate a lot on the bus ride so I'm not hungry. It is so bare over here that they had to take the bus to the closest restaurant. And I thought Woodland was small. At least we can walk to restaurants in Woodland.

Quick shout out to Taylor for reminding me to update my blog, it has been awhile. Also to Megan, I feel like I gave you something to do in boring 'ol North Dakota, have fun!

Nathan...out