Lame Trip Recap

Wow. I’m actually pausing mid-workday because my brain just can’t take it any more. The holes in the Division II information are creating equivalent swiss-cheese holes in my brain. (I came back and finished/posted much later)

No, it’s not the job itself. It’s the state of things that were left behind for yours truly.

You see, over the last seven days, I have come to the conclusion that this job was vacant for a month at the exact wrong time of the year. Summer? Annoying, but not a problem. During the collegiate season? Someone would have had to do some kind of maintenance. December/January? When everything gets organized for the Feb. 8 first pitch? Disaster. Nothing was done. NOTHING.

Oh, and my predecessor didn’t exactly clean out his computer knowing that he was leaving. Let’s just say that I now know what his wife wanted for Christmas. She likes jewelry and handbags. Seriously.

My trip to Mississippi started early a week ago today. Up at 4:30. Driving to Greater Pitt at 5. Landing in Houston (Bush) only to discover that my connecting flight was taking off in 25 minutes. On the other side of the airport. Let’s just say that I got my workout in. Oh, and signage in that airport is horrendous.

Got to Jackson, Miss., without further incident. Rented my car and drove the two hours up to Starkville. No worries. Got a grand tour of Starkville from the new boss, then taken to “World Headquarters” then dinner. Sleep was my friend that night.

Tuesday, I was bombarded with information from all angles. By 4 pm, my brain was mush. Just too much new information. I have six pages of notes.

Near the end of the day, Bill (my best friend, who lives in Oxford, Miss.) called my cell phone. I was meeting with the new boss. Needless to say, I let it go to voice mail. He actually left a voice mail, which is quite odd. When I got back to my phone, I had a voice mail and a text. The text was from my friend John who works at Kentucky and it said “Where are you right now?”

I was a little panicked at first, because Johnnie is dating a wonderful woman who lives in Pittsburgh and I thought something might be wrong there. [Oh, and cell reception at the office? Spotty at best. I have decided that Mississippi is where cell phones go to die.] Then a little bell went off in the back of my head. Somebody mentioned that MSU had a home basketball game that night! Sure enough, Mississippi State was hosting Kentucky. John works with Kentucky men’s basketball. We were both in, of all places, Starkville, Mississippi, on the same night! (Bill had been calling to warn me that John just found out I was in Starkville, since Bill is the one who realized that we were both there. One doesn't exactly check with all of their friends to see who else is going to be in town when they travel to Starkville, Miss.)

So I went to a basketball game


At this point, I must admit that RT slept through his 4:30 am wake-up call and didn’t make the trip to Mississippi. I hang my head in shame. I did take a Yarn Harlot Traveling Sock photo, but the sock-free one came out better, so that's what you get. I thought about photoshopping the little dude into the photo, but that just felt dishonest.

At the MSU-UK game, I sat with the head softball coach from Alabama. He’s a great guy who I’ve known for years and he was at the game for the same reason I was, to see John.

A good time was had by most (UK lost, so John didn’t exactly have a great time). Jonathan Papelbon was honored during the first half, so that was kinda cool. Plus, my seat neighbor is a big Red Sox fan, so he was pumped (Papelbon is the the psycho star relief pitcher for the 2007 World Series champion Boston Red Sox, since I know I have several sports-challenged readers).

On Wednesday, I had a 6:30 am wake-up call so I could go to breakfast with an old friend who is an athletic trainer at MSU. Of course, the hotel decided to give me a 5:30 am wake-up instead. I blame that for part of the reason why it took me so long to recover from this trip.

After breakfast with my friend, I started tackling the toxic waste dump that was the first major thing of the DPUTiger administration in the new job. I was going full speed all day with a minor slow-down for lunch with my predecessor, then back to the toxic dump.

I managed to get out of the office at 4:30 pm for the 90-minute drive up to Bill’s in Oxford. It was either dark or raining the whole trip, but it was an easy drive. I pulled up to his house just as he called to see where I was. Bill, Jr. (my friend), Bill, Sr. (his dad) and I immediately turned around and went right back out the door to the Ole Miss-Florida basketball game


Ole Miss won the game. Bill, Jr. did his undergrad at Ole Miss and graduate work at UF. Bill, Sr., did his undergrad at UF and graduate at Ole Miss (where he met his wife!). It was funny sitting between the guys as they cheered (quietly in Sr’s case) for opposing teams. When we got home, Jackson (Bill Jr’s dog) and Dixie (Bill Sr’s golden retriever) played for about an hour while all three of the humans in the room played dueling laptops. It was too dark to get a good picture and I left at the butt-crack of dawn, so no furry cute-ness from this trip. Sorry!

But it was great to be able to stop in Oxford. And really good to see for myself that Bill is doing OK after having a truly lousy Christmas.

So that’s about it from here. I finished my first Coriolis sock and have started the Hubster’s Cobblestone. I desperately need to get my butt down into the basement and get the M&Ms swap idea in my head out onto sewn fabric so it can be mailed to California in time for the February swap. Yikes!

And, once again, we’ve gotten to the end of a day and I am Wiped. Out. I’m trying to settle into a routine and hope to keep up my more prolific blogging schedule that I’ve gotten used to in the last few months. Type at ya soon!