Baby, you'll be famous

Now I know what it's like to live for the weekend.

College life has become a bit of a grind. I still have the occasional leisure time to myself for unproductive things (like blogging), but the homework and the job are ultimately pretty pervasive to the point that little Xbox breaks and such just seem like distractions and procrastinations. All told, it's all right, I'm accomplishing a fair amount - but I really only enjoy myself when I specifically set time aside to do something that I want to do. It's about the mindset, I think. It has to be something to look forward to, and something about which I've told myself, "yes, I am taking up valuable productivity time, but I will get joy from this! Learn to accept joy!"

So I'm trying to set aside more of these times. Perhaps that's the wrong approach, and I should start being able to find joy from everything...but to do that, I have to shut off the worrying part of my brain - and I can only do that a few hours a week.

So what kind of things DO I do with worry-free time?

The most exciting for me has been Chicago Fire games. Well, technically I've only gone to one of them, but my crew and I ("my crew" is used loosely here...it's more of a random smorgasbord of 5 people) are heading down November 7th to watch Chicago take on the New England Revolution in the playoffs. The first Chicago Fire game I went to was late September of this year and I'm hooked. My love of Major League Soccer (and all things soccer, really) is well documented, so it was probably only natural that I'd love going to games. I'd go as far as to say that my first Fire game was among the 3 best days of this year (behind only my two US National team games this summer). Plus I achieved one of my New Year's resolutions by finally going to a game, and I am totally still working to accomplish those.

Something else I'm about to start doing is going to Badger Hockey games. Evan and I got season tickets this year because our dad used to take us to games at least once a month for several years while we were growing up. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of excitedly hopping in the car with dad and going to hockey games...I started going when I was 4 or 5, I think. We'd get to our seats, get hot dogs and share one of those huge stadium sodas (always a diet coke...probably why to this day I like diet coke unlike every other male I know) and watch Badger greats like Brian Rafalski and Badger not-so-great-but-still-a-cool-guys like Jake Soper.

The reminiscing was enough for Evan and I to buy season hockey tickets, although because of work I can only go to the Friday games, and even then something tends to get in the way - so I haven't been to a game yet this year. I'll probably go this Friday, although Evan probably cannot go and I'll be forced to look for someone to go with and take his ticket. So hey, anyone want to go to a hockey game Friday night? or want to buy Saturday night tickets, ever?

(The sales pitch seems irrelevant when few people read your blog).

And one of these weekends (perhaps the weekend before Thanksgiving?) I'm planning on taking off of work and heading up to MLC. I of course have a lot of friends up there (many of whom I haven't spoken to much lately, due to mutual busyness and distance) and I always love a good weekend trip to anywhere. My last trip to MLC was a lot of fun, but there were several variables involved that could be improved on for the next trip. I always enjoy trips there either way, because the kindly folk at MLC are such a breath of fresh air compared to the prototypes I run into all the time at UW (or ran into, in the case of USF).

Golly gee, I sure would love going to school there, I just don't want to be a teacher. Funny how some of my friends have the opposite sentiment. Maybe I'd eventually feel the same if I actually did go there.

But if I went to MLC, I'd be able to get that nice, family-minded WELS girl from the plan...instead of the near-vacuum of female interaction that comes with my tight schedule. But that can always change...and that's a topic for another post. Get to bed, Blake. You have an exam tomorrow.