life

1. I've started working.  Although I probably shouldn't call it that because what I've been doing for the past week or so could hardly be considered "work." After orientation last week, my first week in the office consisted of hours of reading old Stephen King novels (courtesy of a sympathetic coworker) and doing crossword puzzles/sudoku at my desk while I anxiously awaited the arrival of my computer and phone.  Apparently the huge storm a couple weeks back made life tough for everyone in the IT department which made life tough (or easy) for me this past week.  Now, as you can see, I finally have a computer...except I don't have access to any of the drives I need to start doing work.  And so I wait.... At least now I have internet access.  I don't know if I could have taken any more sudoku (although I did get really good in a really short time).

2. I've been loving these winter Olympics.  So many great stories and drama filled moments have been interspersed throughout these past 2 weeks.  While the games got off to a rocky start, the athletes have risen to the occasion and delivered some incredibly memorable performances. A few that come to mind include Bode Miller redeeming himself with gold and silver medals after coming away empty handed  in the Torino games (deservedly so) and the Chinese couple that came out of retirement and gave up the first years of their marriage to train for pair's skating gold one more time (and it paid off!).  Oh, and I guess I can't fail to mention the domination of the Koreans in speed skating (judging incompetency aside...)

The only quibble I have with the games is that all the good competitions come on close to midnight, and I have to wake up at 5:30 every morning.  So, I either have to miss watching some events live or wake up feeling like a zombie.  Some nights, I go to bed earlier than my parents.  I feel like a grandpa.

Regardless, last night I resigned myself to this morning's impending zombie-ness so I could watch Yun-ah Kim compete in the ladies figure skating competition.  I have to admit, I was a little nervous for her after the NBC announcers hyped her up so much.  While they have their flaws, they are certainly adept at milking the drama out of every situation, especially for all the high profile skaters.  However, it was as if Yun-ah wasn't aware of the incredible pressure surrounding her, because she was crazy good.  I don't know much about the technicalities of figure skating but I do know that phrases like, "best ever" and "one of the greats" (both of which were hushedly mentioned several times after her dazzling performance) only apply when a program is, well, the best in a long time.  And to think she did that with the weight of an entire country's hopes on her 19 year old shoulders astounds me. 

So I felt incredible pride.  I was a little disappointed though, when I logged on to facebook this morning and saw that that same pride in me had evolved into downright arrogance in some fellow Koreans.  I'm fine with celebrating a great win, but verbal harassment toward her competitors (most of which was pointed toward the Japanese Mao Asada in second place) is below us I think.  I know there are cultural differences and deep-seated tensions between the two nations that run far longer than I've been on this earth and I'm not saying that a friendly rivalry between the countries is necessarily even a bad thing, but come on, are we still so obtuse as a people that we have to resort to using words like "dirty Japs" or being downright giddy when anything bad happens to a Japanese person?  Most of the people I'm referring to have little or absolutely no reason to be this crass and insensitive either.  If you're 70 year old Korean man who refuses to buy japanese cars or tv's after living through the Japanese occupation that's one thing (not saying its ok, but at least somewhat understandable), but a 17 year old high school kid who spouts hatred like that is just copying the cultural arrogance and xenophobia of their parents' generation.  Learn to think on your own.  And this is all without even mentioning the spiritual implications this has for those of us who call ourselves Christians.  There are (or have been) Japanese people who attend our church for goodness' sake.  Japan is one of the most unreached developed countries in the world.  How are we ever going to spread the love of Christ to them if we have none of our own to give? 

I know I may be blowing things out of proportion just a little and that my audience is indeed small, but I've seen careless remarks by a few people (especially of the racial kind) have huge effects in the past.  Sorry for preaching; I know I'm hardly qualified to do so, but it needed to be said.

 I guess its back to sudoku now... :)

vday

i found this on a website and thought it was funny.

if you rearrange the letters in "valentine's day" you can get some interesting combinations.  A warning, some of these are a little risque...

"Any valid teens?"
"A lady sin event"
"A venal destiny"
"An invested lay"

the english language never ceases to amaze.

blizzard of 2010 brings out the best (and worst)

my mom came into my room this morning saying, "something's wrong with our car, come outside!"

i went outside in my groggy, pre-showered state to see that my driver's side window had been completely shattered. at first i thought the weight of the snow on top of the car had crushed the window after 3 days of weighing down the car, but after shoveling a path around the car to investigate further, i noticed that the driver's side door had a huge dent in it too.  it looked like a crumpled soda can.  also, i discovered glass from the window underneath the 2 and a half feet of snow, which means this all happened before the snow came on friday.  

some idiot was probably driving too fast friday night despite the snowy conditions, lost control, and sideswiped the car.  now that i think about it, it was the perfect hit and run scenario.  with all the snow in the forecast, it took us 2 days to get out to the street to notice the damage.  also, because the car was literally buried, it looked completely fine underneath all that snow.  only after the snow melted a little bit could we see the damage.  i hope the jackass gets stuck in the snow and freezes to death.  

we called some nearby relatives to help us shovel the rest of the snow around the car so we could put it in the garage, only to find out that the car battery had died sometime during the past three days.   luckily, our neighbor is handy with cars, so he helped us recharge our battery.  finally, after an eventful morning filled with shoveling, phone calls to geico, cleaning bits of broken glass, and even more shoveling, we got the car into the garage.  now we're just waiting for a tow truck to come get it; hopefully sometime before the snow starts up again (blizzard of 2010 redux?).

so, i guess all's well that end's well.  a bad situation brought forth good company (and a good workout).  i'm just crossing my fingers for at least a couple incident free days.  with another foot or more of snow in the forecast however, i doubt we'll be so fortunate.  oh well, spirits remain high in the pyon house.   

ps.  since my dad is away in sunny vietnam  for business (90 degree weather, seriously?), my mom and i cleared our entire driveway and street in front of our house on sunday and monday.  i'm so proud.  she didn't even complain once (unlike my dad who claims he's gonna have a heart attack every 15 minutes).

uva bball 2010

i'm no rick reilly or mike wilbon, so forgive me for trying my hand at a sports-related post.  i just have nothing else going on in my life right now and the public (jonathan) is clamoring for a post.



this vid basically sums up my experience with uva bball this year.  i dunno what tony bennett is doing, but it's got our guys fired up and motivated (and playing solid d?  now i've seen everything).   what everyone expected would take at least a couple years (hoos were picked to finish second to last in acc this year) has happened almost overnight (as i'm writing this, we're currently tied for second in the acc with a 5-2 record), and i couldn't be happier with the way the team is playing.  yes, we have encountered a few bumps in the road (painful, close losses to teams like penn state and auburn come to mind, ugh), but we've responded with strong showings every time. i never thought i'd see the day when we'd come off a heart breaking overtime loss at home to our instate rival and respond with a beat down of epic proportions in the dean dome vs last year's national champ.  i guess it also helps that the acc as a whole isn't at its strongest, but hey,  i'm not complaining.

the best part is that everyone seems to have bought in to this system and everyone is contributing in their own way (not to mention having fun).  case in point, will sherrill, a junior walk-on  who hadn't played more than a few minutes in his whole college career must have impressed his coaches during practice, because he has become a solid part of the line up.  his stats may not show it, but he makes his teammates better by doing all the little things right; hustling, boxing out, locking down on d, setting good screens, etc. Oh, he also dropped 25 in the game against cleveland state.

the fact that we only lose 2 seniors next year (our top scorer is a sophomore) and have a pretty stacked recruiting class makes me even more giddy.  so, not only does bennett coach well and motivate, apparently he attracts talent too.... could it be?  i think i'm in love.  scouts has our incoming class ranked at 14th in the country (although duke, nc state, wake, and unc are all top ten... i guess some things never change) and it looks like we'll be more than comfortable at every position with some much appreciated big guys coming in to help beef up our post presence and at least 1 all-american guard to give us more options around the perimeter.

i know the season is still a long way from being over and we have lots of tough tests down the road, but for these reasons i can't help but to be at least a little optimistic.  i only wish i had enrolled for another semester so i could go to some games without paying.  30 bucks to drive 2 hours and sit in the nosebleeds is steep when you're used to sitting basically courtside and walking to every game for free.  listening to games on the radio is the next best option most of the time, and that's like dating a really nice, funny, sincere, smokin' hot...... hologram.  exciting maybe, but so far from the real thing.  maybe i should just count my blessings and be happy with the way things are going.