The Competitive Eating Diet

How to eat like this crazy chick from Alexandria, or, how you too can lose weight on the competitive eating circuit.

I'm doubtful that any of us in high school could have drank 126 ounces of liquid in one sitting. I mean, that's two of the giant Wesco* mugs, and I never even got one of those.



*For you non Michiganders, that's just a local gas station chain.

How High's The Water, Mama?

Five feet high and risin'.

Pull out a $20 bill; look at the back. That tree on the right of the White House isn't there anymore. All of the wet-dry vacuums are already gone. Here's a summary for the graphically inclined. The Capital Weather blog will probably have the most up-to-the-minute info, if you care.

Another 2-4 in. overnight (Tuesday) We're going to get brushed, although not too badly, with that tropical system that didn't organize off of North Carolina.

I have ice cream, scotch, and a "Rain" playlist on iTunes. I'm good to go.

Just Another Manic Monday

I've bitched before that no one here can drive if a single molecule of water falls from the sky in any way, shape, or form. But this time it's legitimate; we've suffered a deluge. (WaPost; registration/bugmenot). Roads have been closed, people endangered on the roads. On the traffic website I check, I've seen reports that my road to the Beltway is flooded; the Beltway is closed at alternate route on; and when that opened that their was a mudslide onto the Beltway in between me and work. The mudslide is I'm sure from the construction--last Monday, when trying to escape a downpour that washed out our softball game in Maryland, it was clear all the runoff from the Wilson bridge & related construction project was focused on to the Beltway--stupid whether or not it was on purpose. See, where I grew up, the roads drain to the side.

The feds are actually on unscheduled leave, wherein you can burn a vacation day unplanned--I've only seen that happen for snow, so far. And I was even going to get moving early today--since I woke up an hour before my alarm because my blood sugar was low, I figured I'd get moving...but it doesn't seem like a good idea to gas up the car and go right now. Since the sound on ESPN isn't coming through my cable right now, so I can't even catch the highlights I missed....this is a rough day, and I'm not even dressed yet.

I singled to right. No, seriously.

Those of you who played softball with me in Chicago will struggle to believe me, but I singled to right today. Right over a leaping firstbaseman, driving in two runs.

Famously--or maybe the opposite of that, wherein no one gives a crap--I went through a stretch in slow-pitch softball in grad school of being unable to hit a fair ball, on account of always swinging way to early. My solution was not to learn patience, but to start with my bat in front of the plate, and yank it back to the elbows-out position only after the ball was released. This cockamamie system worked, but I could still only rip balls down the line, in the hole, or just to the left of second base. Even if I was trying to aim to right. I defined dead-pull hitter.

Well, in this modified fast pitch league I'm playing in, I don't have that luxury. There's no windup, so the delivery is sort of like a bowling motion--it's not that fast, but too fast for my loopy swing. Mostly I'm looking for a pitch inner-half to pull inside the 3rd base bag. Except for with two strikes on me, when I'm actually choking up and slapping at the ball a bit. It's worked pretty well.

The exact pitch sequence, for posterity:

1. Taken, strike on the inside corner. Not a good pitch to swing at for the first strike.
2. Taken, ball high.
3. Taken, strike about 4 inches outside. Ok, if that's the way we're going to be...
4. Taken, ball low. Almost got me to swing.
5. Pitch about 2 inches outside. Sorta had to swing there. Stepped into it and drove it to the right side.

Surprisingly, I did not hear trumpets or see horsemen.

This must be a Thursday..

I never could get the hang of Thursdays. Or blog posting, apparently...

While my side project (and way to stay here next year) is going swimmingly, the main imager project isn't. It's frustrating, and I need to bear down harder, but things will not get done on the schedule we've hoped for all 2006. Some of it is us not figuring crap out, a lot of it is things breaking out from under us...but oh well.

League umpiring is done...I'll be doing districts again the first two weeks of July. May just have to see about driving up to Williamsport this year, or next...it'll be tough this year because, with the project, there's no way to take a weekday off right now. Ah well.