Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player (song 2 and 3)

(Editor's note: this post is listed as Friday the 14th, but pretend it's really Wednesday the 19th)

First, a few sports comments (that means, Alex, skip down a few paragraphs):

Concerning the Red Sox...

...Eric Gagne is a disaster. I was all for the move the Red Sox made at the trade deadline, but he really hasn't done anything good and has now cost them four games in the standings.
...They've basically clinched a playoff spot (magic number over Tigers for the wild card is 4, I believe), but they really need to finish this off. God help us all if the Yankees were to overtake them. And at this point, they're only half a game up on the Indians and Angels for the best record in the AL, too.

Concerning the Patriots...

...They look really freaking good. Stomping the Jets was one thing - I see them as a typical 7 to 9 win team depending on how the breaks go, just like 75% of the NFL. Stomping the Chargers was another. Maybe we'll find the Chargers aren't as good as last year or Norv Turner sucks at coaching, but at this point in time the Pats laid waste to a team that is widely considered to be one of the top 5 teams in the NFL. Wes Welker and Randy Moss simply will not be stopped this year. It's as simple as that.
...A first round draft pick was pretty harsh penalty for this whole cheating scandal. Let's be realistic - pretty much every team in every sport tries to gain an advantage any way they can. In baseball you've got sign stealing, tar/sandpaper incidents, corked bats, etc. In football, you have retired players admitting as much as most teams trying to steal signs for decades. I'm not condoning these things, and the Pats deserved to be punished to a greater extent because the use of video clearly crosses a line. But a first round pick in the NFL is a big deal, and I'm not sure it quite fit the crime.
...That being said, if it wasn't clear before, it's clear now that the entire Patriots fan base is utterly in love with Belichick. But hey, you win three Super Bowls, you achieve that kind of status. It's interesting how everyone else hates the Patriots now - just six years ago they were a team that had a pretty miserable overall history.

Concerning the Bruins...

...did you know NHL training camps not only opened, but they started the exhibition season two days ago? Me neither. I used to know almost as much about hockey as I did baseball and football, but I'm totally out of the loop these days. Thanks, lockout.

And now a few comments on the life of Nathan:

It's been an interesting week and a half, to say the least. Last week started great, but mid-week was not so hot. I had to run around in circles for a few days dealing with some unauthorized charges to a debit card, and I screwed up my team's softball schedule so that we showed up to a game at the wrong time and had to reschedule it (why the league would send out a "preliminary" schedule, we still don't know). Thursday morning was kind of the perfect storm - I was still in the middle of dealing with the debit card thing and felt like no one was really helping me, and I still felt bad about the softball game the previous night - but it also turned into "just one of those days" that you wake up and really, really just don't want to go to work. To explain to you why I'm not overly excited about my job anymore would be a whole other blog post. Fast forward to later in the day, and I found out that a friend of a friend died - not anyone I knew, but someone not much older than me. The juxtaposition of hearing something like this, compared to the day I was having, made me realize that I wasn't really having such a bad day. Who am I to have a bad day over things that I either have control over or things that don't really matter at all? I can't make these changes immediately, but it was at this point that I realized that I needed to start formulating a plan to make changes instead of moping about the fact that I don't know what those changes need to be yet. Some things in my life that I have far less control over seem to be coming together very nicely, so this should really be a piece of cake, right?

At this time, I'm strongly considering looking into teaching. This feels kind of weird because half my friends are either teachers or started somewhere else like me and made the same switch, but I can really see myself doing it. Their reactions have all been positive (so far, at least!), and I am encouraged by that. I'm not going to lie, spending a good chunk of the next few years focusing on a switch to an entirely different career is a bit disconcerting. But not doing so, well that would probably be worse. I'm pretty sure I'd look into coaching something like track eventually too.

Well, that's probably the most I've ever actually talked about myself in this blog, but I figured the five of you who read this would find it interesting. Until next time...