The pursuit of exploration

Growing up, I didn’t travel a whole lot.  Up until I was like maybe 11 years old, my entire world revolved around the states of Virginia and Maryland, bouncing around between family visits and, family visits.  Family vacations as I aged were to places like New York, Chicago, and to Niagara Falls, where we barely crossed into Canada for a spell.

Conventions, afforded me opportunities to visit other states, although I didn’t really explore any of them outside of the respective conventions I went to, but for what it was worth, I started visiting places like California, Georgia and the Carolinas.  And when I became my best impression of a functional adult and got super into baseball, the pursuit of baseball parks has given me the best excuse to visit a whole slew of places I never imagined seeing growing up, like Seattle, Portland, Miami, Boston, Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Diego.

However, aside from visits to cities in adjacent countries Canada and Mexico, I’ve never been outside of the United States.  In fact, I’ve never been out of the western hemisphere in my entire life.  For shame, when you consider the fact that I’ve never been back to the Motherland at any point, and it’s still my goal to ultimately take my mother to Korea one of these days.  I never went, or really had the opportunity for any dramatic international travel in my life; I didn’t go backpacking through Europe, nor did I ever have the aforementioned trip back to the Motherland.  And up until I was really an adult, I guess I didn’t have the financial means and/or the drive to pursue it.

Continue reading “The pursuit of exploration” →

To write, or not to write

All six of my regular readers are probably aware of my general desire to post something at least once a weekday.  They may or may not have noticed that I haven’t posted anything over the last few days too.

That thing I have that most people wouldn’t believe called “the girlfriend” works an unorthodox schedule, which leaves her “weekend” somewhere in the middle of the week, as opposed to the traditional Saturday-Sunday.  I had some mid-week travel plans that went awry, AKA an inexplicable number of people decided to go where I wanted to go on the exact same dates I wanted to go, therefore there was no room on any flights to my destination.  So, I decided to scrap the trip, not go to work anyway, and spend my girlfriend’s weekend, with my girlfriend.

However, those were two days in which I wasn’t sitting at a computer, writing about nonsensical things, or trying to find nonsensical things to write about.  Actually, that’s not entirely true, because I was in front of a computer at times, but that was time spent playing, you’ll never believe this, League of Legends.

Continue reading “To write, or not to write” →

Photos: League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational

So after a few years of watching LoL streams, the east coast of the United States was finally thrown a bone with an actual League event, with the arrival of the first annual Mid-Season Invitational.  The good news was that it was within reasonable driving distance for me, however the bad news was that it was held in Tallahassee, Florida, and most notably, on Florida State campus.

Florida State blows, but since it would be nice to actually attend and see a notable League event, sacrifices had to be made.

Anyway, as a whole, I thought the event was pretty good.  MSI proved that there are in fact, serious LoL fans on the east coast, and hopefully this will be a promising sign that perhaps more things might come to the east coast; maybe not such a shithole like Tallahassee, and perhaps a place that’s easily accessible by anyone via plane, car or internationally, has facilities to host, as well as an existing culture, like say one of the Collegiate teams, like in, oh, I don’t know, like Atlanta*cough?

Continue reading “Photos: League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational” →

Photos: Frawley Stadium, Wilmington, Delaware

Because I’m a baseball hipster that prefers minor league baseball over the majors, I had to capitalize on proximity, and take advantage of the fact that my friend and I would be passing Wilmington on the way back down to Virginia, and stopped for food and MiLB baseball, at Frawley Stadium, the A+ affiliates of the Kansas City Royals.

As the classic film Wayne’s World inquires what there is to do in Delaware, we at least found one decent thing to do in catching some minor league baseball at a pretty clean and comfortable ballpark.

Not that anyone but me would care, Frawley Stadium is one more park closer to achieving a smaller accolade than visiting all 30 MLB parks; which is seeing all of the stadiums in the Carolina League of minor league baseball.  With Wilmington now off the list of eight ballparks, that leaves just two more Carolina League parks to see for completion.

Continue reading “Photos: Frawley Stadium, Wilmington, Delaware” →

Photos: Citi Field, New York

#27 of Major League Baseball ballparks, I made my way through Flushing, New York to Meet the Mets.

Unfortunately, my ballparks site is down for the indefinite future, but honestly, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to perhaps switching it up to a blog format, because when it comes down to it, I probably could talk about ballparks enough to warrant making it such.

Anyway, Citi Field is a pretty nice ballpark in itself, very much attune to the New York state of mind, with its exorbitant luxury sponsors, exclusive clubs all over the place, and walking through areas that stop and make you wonder if you’re headed to a casino, or the bleachers.

I would write more about the place, but it’s something that I’ll eventually get to when my ballparks site is up and running again, hopefully someday.

Continue reading “Photos: Citi Field, New York” →

Mega Uber dream

Recently, I had a dream in which I woke up feeling very aggravated.

I dreamt that I was riding a Megabus somewhere, and that somewhere along the line, while in Georgia, I got left off the bus and stranded behind, due to someone’s negligence.

For whatever reason, Megabus was operating in the same manner in which Uber operated, which is to say mostly via their app.  And while on the bus, when the employee was checking everyone’s phones to check their apps for confirmation of seat, somewhere along the line, the employee got ahold of my phone, and in some sort of scramble of people getting on and off the bus, I got pushed off the bus, and the bus took off without me.

Continue reading “Mega Uber dream” →

While trying to be the prodigal son

Long story short: my parents’ separation isn’t going that smoothly.  Big surprise there.  My sister and I have been doing everything we can from afar, but there will always be limitations to what we can do for them, without actually being them, or at least, being physically present with them while we try and do things for them.

Naturally, the whole ordeal is often exasperating, and leaves the both of us on the phone with ourselves, venting to one another about just how they could possibly drive us even more up the wall than they already are.  Ultimately, the conversations steer back to the fact that they’re our parents, and we’ll do whatever it is we can to make sure that they’re okay, because that’s what supposed good children do once they’re adults, they help their parents.

To those paying attention, know that recently my bank account took a fairly substantial hit, on account of some decisions that my parents made, without necessarily doing enough (read: any) checks and balances to what repercussions may come about with spontaneously changing bank accounts.  Although the incident from a few days ago wasn’t the first time that this had occurred, it was undoubtedly the worst, seeing as how it completely zeroed out that particular bank account and rendered my daily purchases and ability to pay bills compromised until repaired.

Continue reading “While trying to be the prodigal son” →