No New Posts Until April 16th

Hello Readers!

I'd like to take this chance to thank everyone who has been reading. Thank you for all of the comments below, the emails, the Facebook messages, the Myspace messages, the phone calls, the webcams and the presents in the mail!

Most of you would know I was lying if I said "I wouldn't be writing this if you weren't all reading it," because I would... but I wouldn't be having nearly as good of a time without all of the support from everyone!

This short post will be my last one until I get back from backpacking. I've been staying in London for the last 9 days. Thanks to everyone who has let me stay with them, and fed me!

I'm heading to Scotland in the morning, and going on my whirlwind 10 country tour from there. I'll have lots of pictures, lots of stories, and lots of posts when I return.

This will be my last post until April 16th. I'll be back and posting regularly by then!

A Perfect Little Day for a Raincoat

“Live from the Laundrette” has already been used as a title twice. It seemed witty the first time, a nice chapter marker the second time but… I thought it would sound dumb for a third time. So, just for reference – I’m at the laundrette.

To my left are a boyfriend and girlfriend arguing in front of a dryer. He’s trying to “fold his shit” while she’s trying to “find her perfect little bra thing” and “throwin her shit all up over his shit.” She seems to think that if her “perfect little bra thing” doesn’t come out of the dryer stat, that some “shit” will happen. Meanwhile, in an attempt to make things worse he is grabbing her stuff and “chucking it on top of her shit,” so she doesn’t have a chance to “fold that shit.”

They’re Americans.

Before leaving for a month of back packing in less than 48 hours, I decided I needed to at least START the trip with clean clothes. I put in my suitcase what seemed to be “a sensible week’s” worth of clothing. While it all is getting washed, that sensible week’s worth of clothing is going to be cut in half and I’m going to just wear dirty clothes half the time. Score.

But really, who goes backpacking and has clean clothes to wear every day? My brother has gone back packing a few times and while we never directly discussed the laundry issue, I’m pretty sure he was not carrying with him “a sensible week’s worth of clothes.”

I don’t have very much to write today – so I’m going to tell you a story I’ve had on my mind for a few weeks that just hasn’t seemed to fit in with any other post I’ve written so far.

Before baseball practice season kicked of, I knew I needed some appropriate workout clothes. I also decided, being a catcher, I needed to get a cup. I headed into town with Sam, who knows all of the places that would sell such things. We find a store that has track pants and what have you, and then I find myself a nice cup for $6. (That thing only needed to save my unborn children once to pay for itself… and such it has done!)

Anyway, so I get the cup and ask Sam “how does the thing stay in place?” He tells me that my boxers will hold it there. Sam and I have done laundry together enough times for me to know that what he calls “boxers” are very different from what I call “boxers.” We debate about whether or not mine would hold them in place. Sam is sure they will. I inform him that unless this cup is capable of defying gravity, it’s not going to stay. We leave the sports store and head off in search of a place that sells what Sam calls boxers.

Sam informs me, “it doesn’t matter where you go. Underwear is expensive.” (My theory that important things are cheap in England, while unimportant things are expensive in England means that these Brits are freeballing it 90% of the time… unless my theory is incorrect, which is highly unlikely.)

So, we find a store that’s selling 3 pairs of what Sam calls boxers for $40, and though I truly believed we could find them cheaper some place else (like I don’t know… ANYWHERE!) Sam has a class to get to and I’ve got practice. I pay for them and we head back.

All works out fine with both the cup and the boxers. It wasn’t until I washed them the first time that I noticed the tag. This was a separate tag from the “instructions for laundering” tag. It’s bigger. The font is bigger and it reads “KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE.”

Something had to have happened somewhere along the line that made this tag a necessary edition to these incredibly expensive underwear. Did someone light their ass on fire then try to sue because there wasn’t a warning telling him not to? Are the underwear I have just purchased especially flammable?

Somewhere along the line there was a meeting. Professional people in suits sat down at a big long table and discussed the pros and cons of including a tag specifically to warn people to keep them away from fire. These hard-working men and women made a decision on this issue, and the decision was that this was an important addition to the underwear and I can only describe that with one word – amazing.

But that’s not all. I noticed shortly thereafter another addition. There was a small black sticker on 1 of the pairs. It was on the front of the underwear – front and center. Right in the middle of the action. It was a small, black, circular sticker that read only three small font words. “NEW AND IMPROVED!”

If only it had been screen printed...

No Clever Title

See, the joy of having a perfect attendance record in one class, and only missing one session of the other means that if I don’t go to either of my classes tomorrow, no one is going to say “That damn David Robbins kid! Gar!”

I’ve been debating for about the last 2 hours whether or not I was actually going to get up at 9 a.m. tomorrow to go talk about Antony and Cleopatra. Answer: No.

I’ve only written 75 words and my eyes are already noticeably starting to droop. This is either going to be a very short post, or a very long one that makes less and less sense as it goes. But, I have a few stories, so here goes.

We had a party at Robbie’s house the Thursday before our away 2 away games against Windsor. (Robbie is the team captain.) It was suppose to be a “watching a baseball game from last season” meeting where we’d discuss strategy and drink beer except… we removed the strategy and in its place drank more beer… who saw THAT coming?

We had a blast. Robbie, a diehard Marlins fan decided to put on one of their games. (MLB.tv allows subscribers to watch every game from last year during the off and pre season.) He picked a game against the Mets, however, the first hour of this game was a rain delay. Though we were able to fast-forward, this resulted in about 5 minutes of fast-forward and vicious, bloodthirsty ridicule.

Since the replay included the rain-delay, it also included the commercials. The running commentary of American advertisements coming from British kids was the best part of the game. (I mean, it was the Marlins… and I already knew the score. Who cares how great Dan Uggla’s swing is. His last name is Uggla for a reason!)

I don’t carry a notebook with me on a regular basis. I take notes in my cell phone. If someone says something good and you whip out a notebook, it draws attention. Pull out your cell phone and start texting away, no one bats an eye. Save it to drafts, they’ll never know you’re listening like a journalist. All of these are quotes I wrote down during the evening.

During an SUV commercial: “You’ll never need a car this big. But you want one, because it looks fucking awesome!”

During a Pizza Hut commercial: “But a ridiculous amount of pizza, get a ridiculous amount of pizza free!”

Someone decided we should play a baseball related drinking game at one point. We toss around a lot of lame ideas and then for the 900^th time, a preview for some inspirational baseball movie called “The Final Season” is played. During this preview, Paul announces, “Guys, I’ve got it. We’ll watch The Final Season, and every time a father has an inspirational talk with his son whom he has become estranged from, and baseball is the thing that brings them together, everyone takes a drink!”

After the game ended we started flipping between channels on TV. We skip over some bizarre looking sport and I ask, “What is that?”

“That’s netball. Don’t the have netball in the states?”

“No.”

“Oh. It’s a lot like basketball except everyone is on ice skates… and they’re all blind folded.”

Everyone enjoys picking on the American.

The UEA Blue Sox won the first game on Saturday 14-6. In the second game we were losing 6-3 in the 4^th inning. The other team was at bat. With no outs, the bases were loaded, and it was pouring. The Blue Sox decided to cut their losses and call it a 6-3 loss instead of submit to the inevitable beating they were about to take.

I spent the weekend hunkered down in my room writing 2 essays, planning my Easter vacation, and making some moves in Fantasy Baseball. Some genius in my league dropped Paul Konerko to pick up Curt Schilling the day after the Red Sox made it very clear that Schillings career was over. Way to go, team stupid!

I’ve put in a waiver request to acquire Konerko.

Schilling being done means that drafting Clay Buchholz was a really good move. Today, Redsox.com referred to Jon Lester as the Ace for the 2008 season, as Josh Beckett is already struggling with a back injury.

After seeing his new title as the Ace of 2008, I checked to see if he was available, and he was. I have since dropped Mark Buehrle to make room for Lester from free agency. Even if Buehrle were to have a season better than any he’s ever had before, that’d put him at 16 wins. 16 wins is on the good end of mediocre. Boston would not be calling Jon Lester their new ace in March if they thought he was going to even be in the ballpark of mediocre. Passing up the opportunity to pick up this platinum prospect would be something I’d really regret later in the season if he performs even half as well as he should. Plus, if he doesn’t, there’s plenty of old duds like Buehrle sitting in the lukewarm pool of free agency.

I realize that this gives me 6 Red Sox players on my team, which goes slightly against my “I’m not letting my bias get in the way…” but they won the World Series! This is slightly different than a Royals fan having 5 Royals just because they like the good old blue and gold!

I’ve got Mike Lowell who kicked ass last year and is not showing signs of slowing down. I’ve got both of Boston’s center fielders, Crisp and Ellsbury. I’m waiting to see who they say will be their #1, at which point I will re-assess having both of them on my team. I’ve got Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester, and lastly, Jonathon Papelbon.

I’ve got a lot of prospects, possibly picking up Konerko, and I have 5 knock out relievers, 3 of whom I’m willing to trade. I think it’s fair to say this is going to be a good year for The Damn Bandits fantasy baseball.

I’ll keep the Weekly Brit updated on the trades, but for some reason, Fox Fantasy Baseball has trades disabled right now. I emailed them to complain and they responded saying it was a technical error that they were working to fix. I’ve never seen a technical error take a freaking week to fix, but then again it is Fox.

Fox is probably too busy doing voodoo magic on Barack Obama and having their sweatshop laborers turn enough of a profit to pay for Eliot Splitzer’s overdue balance. (The pictures from that story are heartbreaking. His poor wife! Poor thing should have made that asshole go apologize to the nation alone. She looks like she needs a hug.)

That wraps it up for this post. I will put up my full travel details of where I’ll be and when before I leave, but this might be my last post for a while. I will have my laptop for the first 10 days in London but I’m not bringing it with me after I head to Edinburgh on the 24^th.

Real and Fantasy Baseball

Unfortunately, I did not make the squad for our baseball game at Windsor. (I know I’ve been saying North Hampton the past few posts. I’m not sure where I got that. It’s Windsor though.)

As much as I’d love to go, I know it’s nothing personal. The team was only able to bring 12 guys. Part of it was how many guys the team we’re playing against said we were allowed to bring, part of it is that’s how many guys we could fit on a mini-bus.

I can say completely honestly, I know without doubt that there are at least 12 guys on the team who play better baseball than I do. I realized today I have been hoping and wishing that I’d get out there and play some amazing baseball and turn out to be this super stellar athlete, but as it is written in the genes of Robbins’ family males, such is not the case.

But I’m making friends, having a good time, and can say till the day I die that I played baseball in college. (Kind of like how I tell people I used to wrestle. No one ever asks “Yeah but did you suck at it and permanently ruin the cartilage in your left knee?”)

Practice, as usual, was a lot of fun. It was intense due to the game on Saturday. We went for a run, did infield and outfield drills, did base running drills (which would tire out a car), batting practice, the whole shebang. (We actually do almost all of that every time… there’s a set routine… it still seemed worth noting though.)

It is a lot of work. My legs are still tired. We are working for something, but everyone is there to have a good time.

There’s a lot of laughing. Robbie stands at shortstop, both playing and adding color commentary, making up statistics for everyone as they bat. During batting practice, where only a few balls made it out of the infield, the guy in right field decided to sit down in the grass and wave.

Surprise surprise to everyone blood related to me, I actually hit a ball! And got to first! Yeah, that’s right, I can run 90 feet sorta-kinda fast, but faster than it takes to throw the ball there. (Yeah. Eat it… every gym teacher I ever had!)

If you don’t follow Major League Baseball, don’t care about Major League Baseball, and won’t be entertained reading me WRITE about it, have a good evening. More posts to come soon.

I decided against doing a live draft for Fantasy Baseball this season. The time I had was when I’d be in Paris. It takes 7 hours to do. Both reasons alone eventually seemed good enough to not do it. So, I did an automated draft. Here’s who I got.

Batters:

· B. McCann

· M. Jacobs

· D. Uggla

· M. Lowell

· J. Peralta

· M. Ordonez

· H. Pence

· C. Crisp

· C. Blake

· B. Hall

Pitchers:

· C. Buchholz

· J. Peavy

· D. Willis

· J. Putz

· F. Rodriguez

· T. Saito

· J. Papelbon

· M. Mussina

· T. Hoffman

· M. Buerhle

· N. Lowry

Last night, putting Clay Buchholz anywhere on my list seemed like a strikingly good idea… but, I put him as like my 60^th player. (12 teams each picking one after another.) He was my 5^th round pick. NOW I’m thinking this was a wicked bad idea.

The Red Sox don’t even have him listed as a pitcher on the depth chart (either as a starter or a reliever), and his future is SOOO up in the air. There are 2 possible outcomes. Either I’m intuitively so baseball smart that this was just a bloody brilliant move, or at the end of the season I’m not going to make it to the playoffs because I wasted my 5^th round pick on some noob. (Judging by all 6 of my red sox jerseys, the fact that I follow it ferociously… and that I’m a baseball player (duh!), I’m kind of banking on it being the first one.)

You might have noticed in my pitching lineup that I have an uh-mazing bullpen. In the MLB’s top 10 releif pitchers list, I HAVE 5 OF THEM! HOLY CRAP! This is good for the time being, because I’m hoping to trade off at least 3 of them… but come the first game of the season this is going to be a huge problem.

Ups: I got Magglio Ordonez and Jake Peavy

Downs: My base stealing SUCKS, I have too many relief pitchers, and Coco Crisp might not even be a starter this season.

Roar!!

Psyching up, pumping up, getting ready for our last practice before our game on Saturday, and before we find out who gets to PLAY on Saturday. Full post to come later today.

Spring Break and Baseball

I have a ticket to London 10 days from now. They don’t call it Spring Break over here, no no… this country isn’t afraid of offending people for mentioning the fact that religion exists. This is Easter Break… and it last for A MONTH.

Thursday the 13^th UEA is hosting an early Saint Patrick’s day party. I’m hesitant to go, seeing as I’m already going to ANOTHER early Saint Patrick’s day event, and then going to real Saint Patrick’s Day. I’ll keep you updated on what I decide to do.

The night of Friday the 14^th is the American Embassy’s Saint Patrick’s Day celebration, where my flatmate Dom is has been invited to play bagpipes. He got me on the guest list shortly after he was invited to play. (Thanks, Dom!)

I’m going to spend a few days with Dom, then a few days with Dave (the buddy I stayed with the first time I went,) and then a few days with Sam. All 3 live in different parts of London, and have different things they want me to see. I’m also planning on going on a 2 day trips, 1 which will take me to Stonehenge, The Windsor Castle, and The Roman Baths. I’m also going to do one that takes me to Stratford on Avon, where Shakespeare is from.

After my roughly 10 days in London, I’m heading to Scotland for a few days, then flying to Dublin. My favorite poet, William Butler Yeats lived in Dublin. My favorite poem of his is titled “The Wild Swans at Coole” and while unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it all the way to Coole in a short time (or, affordably) I’m excited to see where he lived, and pay homage to one of the two writers to inspire me to become a writer.

From Dublin, I’m flying to Paris – by myself. I’m really excited about this bit. I don’t speak a word of French (Though my friend Ross did tell me how to say “I’m Canadian,” in case I get in any trouble.) I’m either going to starve to death or leave after a few days with a few phrases of French I know how to say.

And things are just STARTING to get exciting! After Paris I’m meeting up in Switzerland with my UofA travel buddy, Teri, and her friend Lauren. Teri being awesome planned this WHOLE trip, hostels and everything, and after doing all the hard work invited me to come along. I’m very grateful. From Switzerland, we’re going to Lictenstine, Vienna, Prague, Vineberg, Berlin, Bruges, Belgium; Brussels, Amsterdam, and then flying back to London and getting back to UEA.

I’m not risking bringing my laptop, so there won’t be any substantial posts while I’m gone. However, I’ll be hitting up internet Café’s to check my email so I’ll probably put up small ones. Every year for the past 4 years someone has invited me to do something really, really cool during spring break and I’ve had to turn it down because I didn’t have enough money. I told myself that it would pay off, because eventually I’d go on a trip SO MUCH COOLER that it’d be worth only getting to do once.

Well hot damn, I’m glad I kept THAT promise to myself, otherwise I’d have been pissed!

Baseball practices have been going well. We’ve got our first game @ North Hampton on Saturday. But, only 13 people can go. (Not totally understanding why, but it is indeed so.) So, tomorrow is our final evaluation practice, after which they will tell us who gets to travel to North Hampton and play for UEA and who has to stay home…

Conveniently, my catchers mask, glove, and batting gloves arrived in the mail today. (Thanks Dad!) So for our last evaluation practice, I get to look like hot shit and stop missing easy catches because of using a lousy glove.

Of course, I will let you know tomorrow whether or not I get picked to travel to North Hampton.

And with that, I leave you!

The Big Red Chair

During my sophomore year, back at the UofA I took intro to writing poetry. English 209. This class was taught by Professor Steve Orlen, who is exactly what I visualize when I close my eyes and think of a poet.

He was completely out of his mind, but he knew what he was talking about. He knew it so well that I’m sure his lessons only got stronger as he got crazier.

On the first day of our lecture, he blindfolded all of us. 100 people in the class, I kid you not. All of us blindfolded. Then he told us, without taking off the blindfolds, to get out a piece of paper and a pencil. When that was done, he turned off the lights and told us to write poetry. Really. That simple. He turned off the lights and said, “Write poetry.”

But then Professor Orlen started yelling. He wasn’t yelling at us, he was yelling to us. He was yelling things like “VACCUM CLEANER, USED CAR SALESMEN, GARBAGE DISPOSAL, WHEEL BARREL, OAK TREES, BARNUM AND BAILEYS CIRCUS, JUMP ROPE, JUMP ROPE, JUMP ROPE!!!” This went on for about 10 minutes, and then he yelled “HAAAALT!!!!”

Blind folds off.

Lights on.

“Now,” he said softly. “I want you to take every abstraction, and write in its place, “THE BIG RED CHAIR.”

So, we go through and change every feeling-word to the phrase “THE BIG RED CHAIR,” and then he asks us to read them to ourselves. When we finish that, he says we may leave. Inevitably, someone asked “What was the point of that?”

To which he responded:

“When you understand that – then you’ll be a poet.”

Every once and a while I have a mental explosion that, when it settles, a bunch of things I’ve learned all have become incredibly clear. I still don’t understand the big red chair exercise, but I had one of those mental explosions this week.

My first short story of the semester was due this past Friday. Professor Henry Sutton said at the beginning of the class that it MUST be a complete story, and it absolutely must fall in the word limit he gave us. (between 1,350 and 1,650 words). 1,650 words is an incredibly short number of words with which to tell a complete story. The shortest story I’ve written in my college career prior to this one was 3,338. To give you an example, in this post you have so far read 413 words.

The draft I had the class workshop fell within range. But as many rough drafts are, it was ROUGH. It didn’t make sense. It was very, very fragmented. I figured out what was happening as it went. This is very normal, but I didn’t go through and sand down the edges well at all. I decided I needed to completely re-write the story for this draft. When I finished writing it, it was 2,400 words. I felt very panicked. It did everything it needed to. It told a good story, made sense, had good characters. But it was 750 words too long.

Slowly but surely, I made it shorter. I started by cutting out short sentences, and bits of sentences. I re-wrote descriptions to make them more concise. By the time I got to 1,850, there was nothing more I could do but go through and take out individual words. It was in the middle of finding individual words to take out that I had one of these mental explosions.

I don’t remember who said it, but for sake of loyalty I’m going to credit it to William Butler Yeats. He said that in both fiction and poetry, every word must be able to stand alone as art.

Every single word in that story was individually selected, hand crafted, and inserted as art on its own. Every single word was re-considered and it’s value appraised as I decided whether or not to keep it or cut it. Every phrase was read aloud to hear that it flowed smoothly and to assure that there was nothing superfluous. The plot of this story is not my favorite of the ones I’ve told, or the ones I’m working on but the craft, style and composition of this story is by far the best thing I have ever written.

The mental explosion was not simply the satisfaction that I’d written one of my best pieces to date, but that for the first time I had felt the process of turning every single word on the page into art an of it’s own.

I have yet to write about feeling homesick in this blog. At the point when I wrote “I haven’t felt a lick of homesickness” I wasn’t lying, but it would be lying to say that I still haven’t. The reason I’ve chosen to not write about it is that it has come and gone each time before I had a chance to write it down, but now is my chance to tell.

I certainly have felt homesick. I do feel homesick as I’m writing this. I felt homesick on the train into London last weekend. It comes in two ways and from two different parts of me. The first one is that everything is so new to me all the time. I was talking to Mom on the phone the other day and said to her that I miss using US currency. It’s little things like that. Money doesn’t feel the same, doesn’t look the same. I still have to convert it to US currency in my head before I buy anything.

I miss food at restaurants not being so damn expensive too. Not only that, but I miss the familiar restaurants. I miss my local Thai restaurant on Grant and Campbell where they know me by name: but not as Dave, but instead as “No Soy.”

I miss the weather. I know I’ve spent the last 9 years whining about how hot it always is in Arizona, and how I wished it rained more… I truly thought I could come to a place where it was always raining, and I would feel the excitement I feel in Arizona when it rains, but feel it every day. I honestly do miss the days on end sunshine. In my pile of stuff I kept by the door, (keys, wallet, phone) my sunglasses used to be one of the essentials. Right now, I’m not even sure where they are because I haven’t needed them more than a handful of times since I arrived.

I miss the people I got so used to being with so consistently. I still have the key to Pat’s front door on my key ring here and I miss using it! I miss going over to Kate and Rachel’s apartment to watch the Daily Show at 11 p.m., accidentally falling asleep on the couch and then getting to have breakfast with them in the morning.

And lastly on the familiarity front, I miss the little mischievous fuzzball who stands on the toilet seat and pounces at the shower curtain while I’m bathing, and licks my shoulder while I sleep.

This is the picture I currently have set as the wallpaper on my computer.

The second front on which I’m feeling homesick is the reality that the house really isn’t going to be the same, if even still ours, when I get home. Dad sent me 28 close-up photos of my room about a week ago and asked if I could go through them and tell him what to keep and what to throw away. I couldn’t just tell him what TO throw away without mentioning what not too. The response to the pictures, for the most part was, a history of the things I wanted to keep. “That blanket is the one I had on my bed in Manchester from the day I got out of a crib until the day we moved to Arizona.” “That yellow box contains every note and memento every girl I dated in high school ever gave me.” “That pile of wood nailed together is a sailboat we made together when I was in kindergarten…”

I told the stories of the lead action figures from Nanny and Poppy, bronze piggy banks from Grandma and Grandpa, porcelain dogs and puppies Mom had when she was a little girl. I told him my memories of souvenirs he would bring me when he first started going on business trips when I was little.

I sent Dad this email this morning and within an hour got a call from him. I really didn’t think the emotion I was feeling while documenting everything important to me would come through in the writing but it clearly did. He told me he laughed through parts of it and had tears in his eyes through others. The way he put it was that the story behind everything in my room was the history of my life, which I think is a very accurate description.

I have very mixed feelings about not being there for this. I have very mixed feelings about everything the separation of our family has brought in the last few years. When I stay in that house, it is so easy to feel the bad memories and forget the good ones that did occur, but there really are plenty of good ones. The fact that even a small part of me wishes I could be present for the final dismantling of the home that the 4 of us once shared seems to be a good sign that once this is all over and done with, I will think fondly of the years I grew in that house.