Sunday Reflections

Another award winning edition of Sunday Reflections...

-Busy and slow weekend overall. I spend a lot of time writing for the blog. Friday night was an evening out with the boys and a lady that was detailed in a post. I spend yesterday afternoon at Green Hills Mall, which was cool. Then I spent all of last night writing my advice post, which was the most enjoyable thing that I’ve written so far. Today was a lazy day doing laundry and watching the European Championship finals. Speaking of which…

-Viva Espana! I’m so glad that Spain beat Germany today. I have no beefs against any of the European teams, so I’m completely neutral. However, I want to see open action and aggressive soccer play. Teams like Germany and Italy play in that old school, passive defensive style that turns off potential soccer fans. Those two teams have tons of international tournament success, so you can’t knock it too much.

However, I want to see progressive play get rewarded and the Spaniards winning Euro confirmed this. Spain also played solid defense in today’s final, something Espana has been weak at in the past.

When I think of Euro, I will think of how Holland played the best soccer I’ve ever seen from a national team in their first two matches and then wet the bed in the quarterfinals against Russia. I’ll think of Spain finally breaking through. I’ll think of the classic penalty kick shootout between Spain and Italy. I’ll think of the surprising Russians. I’ll think about how Portugal can have such talent and promise, yet forget how to do fundamental thinks like defensive marking against Germany and that will always be their downfall.

The main thing that I will think about however, is the Turks. Their never give up attitude was inspiring to watch. Turkey went through so many injuries and suspensions, yet kept fighting and made an excellent run. Their wins against the Czech Republic and Croatia were thrilling. Even in defeat against Germany, they tied the score late before the Germans scored in the final minute. I’m now a lifetime fan of the Turks!

-At Green Hills Mall, I saw Vanessa Williams and that was a good sight. She’s smaller and shorter then I thought she would be. It was so weird because I was just walking to the Brookstone store next the Apple store and I see her in a white dress, really no makeup, with her small daughter I’m assuming and two other women. I guess she’s in town filming a movie or something like that.

Anyway, I didn’t place her at first and then I said to myself, is that Vanessa Williams? Very attractive and you know the love I have for older women. I’m supposed to say that she could get it or CGI at this point, even though I’ve never turned down a girl. She actually may crack the bench on my top-five, speaking of which…

I recently saw this picture of Ciara and she once again confirmed why she will always be a member of the top-five. Ashley is still the GM/head coach. For old time’s sake…




I will have an updated top-five list soon.

-As sucky as the Mets have been playing lately, they are only four games out of first place. That’s the beauty of baseball, the season is so darn long. The Mets have fired a manager, the clubhouse doesn’t get along, players want to get out and they are still in contention. Good stuff. Also…

-The Rays are coming on strong and are in it for the long haul. I LOVE that the Rays are contending and are actually in first place now. I get so, so tired of hearing about the Yankees and the Red Sox all of the time. I don’t have a big beef against either team, I just get tired of the media coverage of them. Detroit is also only five games out as well. Maybe my AL West champions Seattle can recover and make a run…maybe not.

-I’ll have my updated MLB predictions/review at the All-Star game in a few weeks.

-I must tell you that I’m a sucker for the Olympics, both Winter and Summer. I’m going to elaborate on this more in a future post. For now, I was watching the trials for Track and Field as well as Swimming. I don’t know all of the athletes names right now, but I just love the competition. Tyson Gay and Michael Phelps are freaks, btw. I also checked out the gymnastics one a few weeks ago as well.

-I was driving around town over the weekend and I began to thing about my career and what I would like to do with it. It was a reflective moment and I was glad to have it.

-I recently joined a cool Facebook group called “If you remember the 90’s…” Great group and going over the information on there brought back so many memories. Here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204285338

-I watched 60 Minutes today and there was a story on Will Smith in anticipation of his new movie, Hancock. Such a down to earth guy. I’m a big fan of his and Fresh Prince of Bel Air was essential viewing. In West Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground is where I spend most of my days…Y’all know what I’m talking about.

Here are some potential post topics for the next week (I will try to not write a post about women or dating.)

-Does this offend me, Part 3. Its coming, I promise
-Olympics
-Fourth of July memories
-So Black people don’t like rock music?

I heard this Bush song at a bar on Friday night and it brought back some memories. Actually, it was the cover band at Tin Roof. I was a HUGE fan of Bush back in the day. Have a good week.

Facebook and feeling Yes at the same time

Facebook is a trippy thing man.

Today was an interesting day for me from a Facebook prospective. The first person that I caught up with was a girl that I used to hang out with in college constantly named Alicia (if you read this blog enough, you know that’s not her real name). She was a few years younger than me, so when I was a senior, she was a sophomore. We used to hang out all the time and she was chill because she was from Georgia, was really nice and friendly. We used to kick it in my room often. Nothing ever went down with us and I don’t know why, but it just didn’t. I guess if I had some game, it could’ve. However, if you think I have no game now, I had negative game in college, it was sad, yet funny looking back on it now.

So, Alicia and I have a common friend on Facebook and I was going through her friends list and saw Alicia and just had to become her friend because I wanted to know what she was up to. She was a teacher out in LA the past few years and even got called Ms. Smith, which is what I will call her now because it’s cool and kinda sexy.

Don’t give me that look from your computer. I’ve always wanted to be disciplined by a cute teacher and call her Ms. Whatever while she teaches me all types of lessons. Wow, that may be the first TMI (Too Much Information) moment in the history of Pourtout Institute of Pancakes. Only took two months, good times.

She’s now working in education in a different capacity. And, I have to admit as a guy, she gotten incredibly attractive the past few years. Like one of the cutest girls that I’ve seen in a long time attractive. And if she has the same personality she had in college, that’s a monster combination I’d like to kick it with in the future. Not that I wasn’t attracted to her before, but she’s improved in that department greatly. She seems to be in a good place and I’m so happy and proud of her at the same time. Alicia was always that one person from college that I wanted to know what she was doing and had no way to contact her until today. Anyway, we exchanged e-mails and hopefully will keep in touch.

That’s the cool part about Facebook, seeing where people have gone with their lives. Seeing everyone’s profile, I’ve associated with some amazing smart people over the years. Everyone is either in grad school, graduated from grad school or working at cool jobs. It’s great to see many of my old and new friends doing good things in their lives.

The second thing on Facebook that happened to me today was that an old buddy, Katie, just announced her engagement. This is the same Katie that was a freshman when I was a senior and we took a women’s studies class together. She was so quiet and shy yet super nice. We just happened to sit in the back row of class and would just chat all day. I would even try to make crude jokes and make odd statements and she would just look at me with that face. She was such a cutie and proper. We even saw one of my favorite movies ever, Kissing Jessica Stein, together at Sarratt for extra credit in class one Friday night. It was the one pseudo date that I had in college. Anyway, to see sweet Katie engaged to someone not only makes me feel a little old, it puts things in prospective in a good way.

If I found out that Katie was engaged before I started this blog, I would have been devastated because it was another person I knew younger than me engaged while I was living the lonely life. I’ve documented this in the past: http://pourtoutpancakes.blogspot.com/2008/04/im-tired-of-being-lonely.html

However, through this blog, I’ve worked out a lot of internal mental issues and am in a better place. I can actually now be happy for other people’s happiness in relationships without internally hating them.

That’s it from me on this topic.

Finally, I’ll leave you with the song that I was listening to while typing this post. It’s a song called Angkor Wat by Yes. So frickin beautiful that I get teary eyed listening to it sometimes.

Let's get a cup of coffee "or something"

On our way to Florida, the baseball team and I watched some Seinfeld episodes and that was good times. One of the episodes was about the time that George asked out a waitress at their coffee shop. So they are out on their date and they are just walking and talking in Central Park when George starts talking about horse manure. She then mentions something about her boyfriend. George then talks to Jerry about how he was duped. George says that he told her that they should go out or something. Anyway, the “or something” part was decided to declare the event a date.

I turned to Ross, aka the Tennessee Tornado, and the Tornado and I shook our head and acknowledged that this has happened to us in the past.

The last time that I misinterpreted interaction with a girl happened earlier this year. For the sake of this post, we’ll call her Joan, because I know that she reads this blog often and some of you may know her.

So I met Joan in January and I immediately thought she was cute and had a cool attitude. We had to go to an event off-campus one day and after it was over, we spoke near her car and I was actually getting a positive vibe from her. I asked her if she wanted to go out to coffee or something. Sound familiar?

Joan said that she would like to and I sealed it with one of my patented bear hugs. One advantage to being a big man is that I give good hugs. The ladies love hugs, just don’t hold them too long because they start to get creeped out. If you want advice on hugs, just ask me.

Anyway, Joan and I start exchanging e-mails and even start making lists together, including the top-five albums that was the focus of a post I made last month. Go ahead, check out the post. Just come back.

So, throughout all of this, there is no mention of a boyfriend.

I mention something to Joan about her Facebook profile because she mentions that she likes a sports website I visit often as well.

I send Joan an e-mail telling her that I like the web site too. Joan responds that her boyfriend recommended it to her.

Really, a boyfriend!?!

I tried to play it off cool and when we saw each other later, I actually apologized to her for hitting on her and wanting to go out with her. Joan said that she just forgot to mention the boyfriend in our previous interactions.

Joan and I have actually become friends over the past few months, still do lists together, even though she owes me one, and actually keep in touch with each other more now then when we first started talking to each other. I’ve actually met the boyfriend and it was an interesting meeting to say the least.

Out of respect to him, I’ve kept it friendly with Joan because I don’t pursue someone else’s woman, even though I think very highly of her. Actually, since I haven’t been trying to date Joan, we’ve gotten to know each other better because I care about how she’s doing.

Every few days, I send Joan a text message to ask about her and make sure she’s feeling good. I do this because I really care about her as a friend.

So, in the end, getting swerved by Joan was a good thing because I made a good friend in the process. However, if she ever broke up with her boyfriend, I would like to finally have that cup of coffee or something.