My first love

How hard is it to be a facebook friend, honestly?

… For the first time since 2004 I can say my favorite baseball team – the San Francisco Giants – won more games than lost with a handful of games remaining in the season. I believed in them more than most but at the same time, if you were to ask my friends, never really felt positive about the team.

I am extremely happy on how they played this year. I knew they could be contenders. For a while they were proving me right, they just could not come up with a clutch hit as often as I would have liked.

It does give me hope for next season and if they can get a hitter in the off season I think this could be a very dangerous team in 2010.

… While I’m on the subject of sports, let me talk about my first love, the San Francisco 49ers. I have haven’t seen a 49ers team this good in a long time, even though they lost to Minnesota this weekend.

The credit has to go to head coach Mike Singletary. I became a big fan of his when he kicked tight end Vernon Davis off the field after getting an unsportsmanlike penalty during a blowout loss. The post game interview after that game was everything you wanted to hear as a fan. He made his point and Davis has responded with the rest of the team.

While they did lose on Sunday to Minnesota, they looked real good. Unlike with the Giants, the 49ers played tough in the clutch; they just got beat on a perfect play.

I’ll be watching them as much as I can this season.

… For the first time ever, I’m going to Universal Studios the theme park. I’ve been to CityWalk, but never inside the theme park which is sad for two reasons: I’ve lived here in Southern California for 13 years and I’m a huge Simpson fan and have yet to go on that ride.

Well all that is going to change this week as I go on Monday. I’m looking forward to it, especially with the time I’m going to spend with my sister and niece.

… I have everything under control with a week left for my trip to Mexico. The only real fear I have right now is the language.

I had the same fear when I went to Japan but I soon learned it wasn’t a big deal since most everyone tried their best to help me out. Going to Mexico is different because they are just going to assume I know the language and I don’t want to let anyone down. I’m sure my family will help me out as much as possible. I just worry when I’m out and about what is going to happen.

I also had a tetanus shot and a regular flu shot done last week. I hate shots, but each time I go, I wonder what the big deal is. Although the one I hate the most are blood sample shots.

So now all I have to do is pack.

Socrates justifies this blog

I’m letting my facial hair grow out for no reason what so ever.

… Recently, tennis player Serena Williams lost her U.S. Open semifinal match due to her receiving a penalty point on match point against Kim Clijsters.

She had received a warning/code violation after she lost the first set when she broke her racket in frustration.

The penalty came when, on national television, she verbally abused a line judge that called her for a foot fault causing her to earn a penalty point. I say earn because they usually don’t give those out very much.

She clearly went off the deep end telling the line judge from what could be heard on camera: “I swear to God I’m … going to take this … ball and shove it down your … throat, you hear that? I swear to God.” The ellipses are in place of swear words, I’m sure you can figure it out.

The line judge promptly ran to tell the chair umpire and a conversation began that also included the tournament referee. While most of what was said couldn’t be heard, you could clearly hear Serena say: “I didn’t say I was going to kill you. I didn’t say that.”

Did she say that? Only the people truly close to the action know that answer. What can’t be denied is she did tell the line judge she would shove the ball down her throat. Now, I don’t know what the chances of survival are with a tennis ball being shoved down your throat, but they are probably not good. While, Serena may not have said she would kill the line judge, one could say she did threaten her life by saying she would do such an action.

… With three weeks left to go before I go to Mexico, I received some good news about the trip. The Mexican National Soccer Team defeated Honduras this past Wednesday and could secure a spot in the 2010 World Cup with a victory on Oct. 10 over El Salvador. My cousin is working on getting tickets.

I’ve been to plenty of sports venues in Southern California covering things or just being a fan. The biggest crowd I’ve been a part of was during the 1994 World Cup semifinals at the Rose Bowl in front of a crowd of over 91,000.

This event will probably top that for two reasons. The site for the World Cup qualifier can hold about 105,000 people. So far an average of 95,000 have showed up, however, with a chance to see the national team advance to South Africa, there could be more people watching.

The second reason, and the reason why it draws me so much, is that unlike when I went to the World Cup semifinal, this time it will seem like an entire nation will be in that stadium rooting for their team and I want to be a part of that.

I have a friend of mine that has been to there to watch the U.S. and Mexico play a WC qualifier four years ago and he said it is unlike any place he’s been. I hope so.

… The following is from a facebook note I wrote more than a week ago:

For those that really know me, they know that I spend a lot of time in thought.

Recently my friends and I went to see comedian Demetri Martin perform at the Grove of Anaheim and we all had a great time. A day later a friend of mine showed me a show he did years ago titled “If I.” This stand up isn’t so much a stand up as it is a reflection of his life. While it is funny, it's not his funniest show; however, it is his best show because it is extremely well written.

Now, I’m deep, but I’m not this deep. I do look believe in looking at other perspectives than mine. In fact, one of those exercises at the end is something I do; the “If I...?” game especially now.

If I had chosen a different major in college, how different would my life be right now? I’d be working in a secure field, maybe. I’m 99 percent sure I’d be married. Knowing what I do know now about my college sweetheart, however, I’d probably either divorced or close to one.

The one thing for sure is that if you are reading this and I met you after my sophomore year in college you would be doing something else right now because there is no way we would have met. In a small way, my major choice affected you at this very moment.

The unexamined life is not worth living, man.

For those of you that have 40 minutes to kill, I invite you to watch it. It's in six parts and here is the first.