ryan l.

Just testing the iPhone Wordpress app. It’s been a breeze thus far. I sailed right through the setup and am publishing this with relative ease. Kind of interested to see how the auto-correction function screws with people’s perception of how well or poorly I write.

There’s not a whole lot I feel like I do well, but one thing that I’ve done a lot is pack and move. It’s a pain in the ass that most of us have to endure at least a handful of times in our lives, but for me and Bryn, well, it seems like an annual activity. That time came about two weeks ago and today we finally finished unpacking and setting up. For us, the end product is quite pleasing and mostly a relief.

That’s just the living room, one that is almost as big as our last apartment, or at least it feels that way. This place is much more spacious than our last and a major step up. Of course, big steps up also bring my bank account to tears once a month, but that’s ok because it’s certainly worth it to have such a nice place to come home to every day, even if it’s in sweltering Dublin.

We’ve had the apartment in pretty good shape now for more than a week, but we were missing one thing: our new bed set. Apparently, the shipping company thought it would be funny to hold our merchandise for well over two weeks without so much as a call to schedule the delivery. It took my pushiness to finally open the lines of communications and even then it still took them about four days to get our stuff to us. Naturally, everything came on a day we had plans in the evening, so we felt a little rushed to set up things. But, we got it together in time to get out of here on time … except we had one problem - the mirror was broken. Awesome. After nice lengthy calls to both the shipping company and JC Penny, our new mirror was ordered, but who knows when it will arrive. Oh well, we wait.

Tonight we have Bryn’s mom, dad, and brother coming over for Father’s Day dinner. Should be fun provided some things happen and others don’t. I’ll just leave it at that.

This was too unbelieveable to not record it, so sorry to those of you who don't care about sports. Went to the gym after work today and was just there doing my thing and then I look to my side and here comes none other than King Steroid himself, Jose Canseco. Of course, even in the all free weight area, he turned heads. I was watching more out of disbelief at what I was seeing. I guess he still hangs around the old Oakland hood.

No, I didn't pull a bash brothers move and clash forearms with him, it probably would have broken the bone, but I thought about it.

A great discussion is taking place over at Media Orchard about Barry Bonds and his need for a PR makeover. Ideas and suggestions are being thrown around in the comments section, so definitely drop by and throw your two cents in, or do it here. 

Primary question: "His people call you tomorrow and offer a huge retainer, whatever it takes, to change his image. First off, would you accept, and secondly, if so, what are your best ideas for the PR image makeover." 

Maybe an additional question is, can Bonds' image be made over at all? 

I heard about the Yankees signing Johnny Damon to a four-year, $52 million deal to play center field for them yesterday and just couldn’t believe it. Talk about sacraligious. How do you go from winning a World Series with the Bo-Sox to the F’in’ Yankees? I’m sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that I’m so tired of the Yankees. They spend all the money and teams like the Oakland A’s spend a fraction of the price and, minus the titles, does pretty damn well for themselves. Steinbrener needs a few classes in spend management before he drives himself into bankruptcy.

Anyway, on to the main reason I wrote this. Johnny Damon, as we have all noticed, went from clean-cut, young hustlin’ ball player to Jesus look-alike / caveman wannabe in a matter of a couple years. I think it was that collision in Oakland during the playoffs a few years back that knocked a screw loose. Well, I’m not sure how many people have realized this, but Mr. Damon is going to have to take the old razor to his full beard and the scissors to his past-shoulder-length hair if he expects to play for the Yankees. George doesn’t play around, Johnny! They have an image of overpaid “gentleman” to uphold afterall. Just look at how Giambi cleaned up (hair-wise, because we know he was still juicing) when he started with the Yanks. You’re in for a trip to the barber Johnny.

So three cheers for baseball’s latest traitor, Johnny Damon. Great player, seemingly nice person, money-hungry center fielder. Time to go from caveman to a clean shavin’ 12-year-old.