BEEEIISSSSBOOOLLLLL!

I gotta make this quick, the A's are about to come on:

Something about April always makes me perk right up. Spring has sprung (cliché alert) and I'm all ready to go out and play. My hormones are raging and I feel like I can get any girl I want (yeah right,) I want to go run for miles and lift heavy things to make myself feel manly. But, most of all, I want to play ball! Baseball's here. And I freakin love it.

America's pastime is, by far, my favorite sport, both to watch and to play. There's nothing like sitting a the ball park with a beer and a dog and watching your team play. True, I've never actually had a beer at the park, but I'm guessing they're pretty tasty. Maybe someday I'll make it to an A's game without my dad. I have, however, downed ten hot dogs in one game...because when they're a dollar, why not?

Some of my earliest memories growing up involved the Oakland Coliseum. It didn't used to be massively ugly monstrosity that it is now, thanks to Al Davis. It used to be a great ballpark for baseball, and had a gorgeous backdrop of the Oakland hills out to center field. The bleachers were actually bleachers, and there wasn't an ugly orange seat that sat empty. The A's fell into a lull in the mid 90's, but picked it back up in the early 2000's, making several playoff appearances, and even got to the ALCS in '06. In September of 2002, I got to see them win their 20th game in a row, an AL record, and it was probably the most dramatic game I've ever seen, ending on a walkoff homer by Scott Hatteberg. The game even got like a whole chapter about it in the book Moneyball. My A's love runs deep.

This season the white elephants started off 4-1, which is a shock and has me hoping they can continue the magic. Of course they lost the next game to go 4-2, but today they have a chance to take the first series they play in Anaheim from those freakin Angels. Also, since my good friend Taylor finally stopped being a moron and proposed to his long-time girlfriend Carly, I'll be heading home in June for the wedding. I decided to see if the A's were in town that weekend, and was bummed to see they were playing an away series. Then I noticed that series was against San Francisco! So it looks like I'll get to catch a game when I'm home, and then head out to the city for some nasty Chinese food. Times is goood!

Baby why you gotta treat me this way?

Whoa I sneeze and two months go by!

A lot can happen in two months, and I'm really glad that's the case. Since my previous postings of woe, lamenting my unemployed status and feeling rather sorry for myself, I ended up landing a pretty nice job, getting out with some friends and generally started feeling pretty good about life again. Hell yeah, Me.

I guess the main events in my life lately have revolved around employment. For a while there I was about to join the military, and in fact came *this* close to pulling the trigger. I still wouldn't call it out of the question at this point, but after going through a few different recruiters and getting a pretty great job, I'd have to lean toward staying civilian for now. When Zombie Hitler and Hirohito rise again, however, count me in for the fight. Also, on the plus side, I started getting my fat ass back into shape in anticipation of boot camp. Even though it didn't pan out, I'm still about 10 pounds lighter than when I started and I can do more push ups than you.

The weather has changed significantly in the past couple months as well, which gets my outdoorsy side all hot and bothered. I didn't realize it while living in Logan, but Salt Lake really is a lot warmer, and there's no snow to be found on the ground these days. It's nice, and, as we're now officially in Spring, I can't wait to get outside more. I obviously didn't have the money to ski this winter, which was a bummer, but I've been able to get on my mountain bike already, and that's got me all pumped and ready to go. It's also got me thinking I need to get a road bike to start commuting the 13 miles to work that way. I figure it'll save me over six dollars a day in gas money and continue to trim some off my flabby ass. More on that as it develops.

On the flip side of that, I guess the other big news of late is I couldn't find a regular stick of Starburts at the store tonight, so I just went with the $3 bag, which means that two hours later I'm laying in bed covered in red, pink, orange and yellow wrappers with a terrible stomach ache. Someday I'll learn self-control when it comes to Starbursts, but not this day.

An abomination in a pull-up

It was a cold, gray, dreary morning. I was on little sleep, and the scalding cup of coffee I barely managed to get down before I arrived had yet to kick in. Still, I did my best to entertain my sister's twins. It was going fine; I was just checking out the rug burns on my knees from crawling on carpet faster than anyone my age has any right to...when it happened. Twenty four years, five and two thirds months. My time on this earth when it all came crashing down. When everything I knew, everything I'd felt, the sum total of my very being ended. When my niece Hannah gleefully waddled her little cheeks over and shouted "Change me, Jonny!"

Shit.

No seriously, that's what I was dealing with here. I knew it was coming. After chasing both of the toddlers around their playroom and letting them tackle me me for what seemed like forever...I guess she worked something loose. When we went back downstairs to watch Lilo and Stitch (again,) Hannah made her way over into the corner of my sister's front room and demanded I leave her alone. I've never had kids, don't really want kids, but I knew what was happening. I tried my damndest to coax her out of the corner, maybe she could pinch it off and wait till mommy came home...no luck. Instead she insisted, with tears in her eyes, that I leave her alone. When I asked if she wanted a magazine she gave me a look that would turn most people to stone. Ok...no magazine.

So a few minutes after she's done her business, she waddles in to the kitchen and declares she's ready to be changed. I contemplated, at least for a few seconds, letting the little tyke deal with it until her mom and dad got home. A quick check of the clock, though, shot that idea down. I can be mean, but not mean enough to let her sit in her own turd for another two hours. So I bit my lip, picked her up, and held her out at arms length as I took her upstairs to the changing..uh, place. I have to say I was somewhat weirded out by being walked through the diaper changing process by the one whose diaper I was changing, but looking back I think it was probably easier that way. It wasn't messy, there was no crying involved, and she even had herself half wiped by the time I got back from tossing the diaper. My first diaper change ever was a pretty painless process, I'd have to say.

But I'm never doing it again!

(Obligatory cell-phone pic of when I had to get their costumes out for them)

Now it's like this, little breeches...

If there's one thing I'll always need in life, it's a canine companion. It doesn't even have to be mine, but a four legged friend living with me can be the difference between sinking into the depths of depression and, well, keeping my head slightly above water. I feel like I've been fortunate to live with a dog for the vast majority of my life. Aside from the college years, I've always had a Max, Charles, Maulie, Trigger the Psycho and my new German Shepherd guard dog, Aili. Technically she's my sister's dog, but as soon as I moved in she defected. It really blows my mind how quickly she's taken a liking to me. The first thing Aili does when Emily wakes up and opens the door to their room in the morning is come to my door and start bumping it with her nose until I open up and her in. She's already loyal to me; she gets jealous when I show affection to other dogs and when another dog growled at me at the dog park, she got all up in his face like she was gonna kill the punk. Truly I gots a way with the bitches.

At least, the ones on four legs.

I had this long list of things to do when I got Salt Lake that included, you know, important stuff. Like getting a job. Or maybe checking out the dating scene. But it seems like I check off one item on that list per five episodes of Dexter, or a couple sessions of Star Fox 64. Somehow when I moved here, I became addicted to a game that I got the Summer I turned twelve which features a mercenary force of a fox, hare, toad, falcon and a robot helping out a planet of dogs being invaded by an evil ape warlord. That's right. You can't make this stuff up. Despite the ridiculous premise, it's actually an incredibly fun game, and getting the required score to receive a medal on each level was something I labored at for weeks back in the Summer of 1997. This time I did it in a few days, since playing is like riding a bike. The difference is, in '97 I didn't have a care in the world, and I could sink as many hours as I pleased into a game. The Jon Holmes of 2010, though, is probably risking his financial future by prioritizing space dogs. Oh well. Waiting for something to fall in my lap hasn't failed me yet!

I dunno if I can't take this seriously or if I'm taking it too seriously.

I'm starting a blog, Hank Moody's (and my) worst nightmare. God help us all.

I'm doing it out of purely selfish reasons though; I really doubt I'll pick up any sort of following or inspire anybody. My real motive is to force myself to write something, anything, in the hopes that doing so will help me in re fining my craft. I graduated from Utah State University in May 09 and, as of January 2010, I haven't written shit. I've been stuck playing around with the same few stories and made little progress on getting anything together I'd want to submit to a publisher. Well, here's to hoping the blogging world can help get me out of my funk. And if someone reads this and enjoys it, well, that would be nice too. It's also worth noting that I intend to review a ton of stuff here, so this inaugural post may be somewhat unique.

It's kinda hard to look forward without looking back. 2009 was an interesting year for me: I became a college grad, quit two jobs, bought a mountain bike, had three short (i.e. failed) romances and, right at the end, moved from the nurturing college town of my adult infancy to Salt Lake City, the big city around these parts. Putting events into a list like that seems to sort of gloss over the huge ups and downs they represent in my life, but each one had its own impact on what I'm doing with myself these days. Maybe future blog posts will allow me to elaborate further.

For now, though , I'm just getting started in the SLC. Really, it's about the size of the suburb I grew up in back in California, but it feels big after spending the rest of my adult life in Logan, a town whose population is half USU students. Going to Smith's Marketplace last night was quite a wake up call (and quite a clusterf**k, I have no idea who organized that place,) even though I'm from one of the bigger metropolitan areas in the country. Still, for living in a city I'm not having to deal with too many of the problems that arise from that. I can park in a driveway, I have a huge backyard with ample storage space, and my roommate is my sister Emily...so I don't have much in the way of surprises there. Also, Emily has a young German Shepherd who already considers me her best friend, and everyone who knows me knows I love me some canine companionship. And I can't say enough about the shower in this place. It is mirrored on all sides, except the curtain side. Yes, front, back, side and ceiling are mirrors. I can't decide if it's the kinkiest or coolest (or both) thing I've ever seen. There's nothing like getting in a shower and being able to look at your white ass being mirrored in front of you.

Now that I'm all settled in, my new quest is to find some gainful employment. Gainful meaning pays better than the average Mickey D's, which I hear actually have fairly competitive compensation...