Trade Deadline

The day of reckoning arrived, and now let's see how things panned out. I'll start by talking about non-Cubs deals (or non-deals, as the case may be), then talk about the Cubs-specific ones.

The Quaker State needs to get out the Quaker State after their trades today. The Yankees stole Abreu from the Philles, and followed that up by dumping Chacon on the Pirates and getting Craig Wilson (by far the most underrated commodity on the market) in return. The Yankees are clearly the favorites in the AL east now. I feel bad for the Jays, they really had a chance to contend this year.

The Nationals failed to trade Soriano...which may end up being a good thing. They couldn't get the price they wanted, so they really need to focus on re-signing Soriano now. There were signs from Soriano that he wanted to stay in DC, and talk that the new owners will bring out the checkbook to keep the star power their franchise desperately needs. If he walks, things won't be looking so good. Although, even if he does leave the Nats came out ahead due to the most lopsided trade of the season in the Kearns+Lopez for 2 relievers and parts.

As far as the Cubbies went, I have extremely mixed feelings about their trades. I had a feeling Maddux would be gone, and statistically they made the right move by trading him. Aside from his last start, he's been terrible for the past 3 months (6+ ERA terrible). The Cubs could get more bank out of his reputation than what talent was left to him. They received Izturis in return from the Dodgers, which is intruiging. If he has more than this season left on his contract it could be a great trade. The talk seems to be that they will move Cedeno over to 2b and have Izturis play SS, which could end up working well (Izturis is great defensively). Offensively, Izturis is not known for his bat, though he does have decent speed. His OPS isn't much better than Perez's but at least he gets on base. Here's my guess at how things should play out for the rest of the season.

Usual lineup (Assuming we don't see Lee again for a while):

CF Pierre
SS Izturis
C Barrett
3B Ramirez
RF Jones
1B Nevin
LF Murton/Pagan
2B Cedeno
P Whoever

Rotation:

Zambrano
Prior
Marmol
Hill
Marshall/Miller/Guzman/Rusch (In that order, depending on health)

Back in Town, good news

I'm back from Virginia. We had a fantastic time visiting various relatives and sharing our big news -

Jennie and I are getting married next summer!

Everyone was excited to hear the news - most importantly our brothers, who we asked to be our Best Men. We bought a few wedding books to give us ideas on what we want to do (and what we decidedly do not want to do). The most interesting one is titled I do but I don't: Walking down the aisle without losing your mind. It's a book that chronicle's the author's experience with getting married, and it critically examines the behemoth that is the "Wedding-Industrial Complex" along with the various traditions surrounding weddings. It's really opened our eyes to what we want to do with our wedding.

Luckily for us we have both of our sets of parents in our corner (weddings under protest can be quite uncomfortable, as we learned last summer). Just as importantly, Jennie's cousin Beverly Ann will fill in as our unofficial wedding coordinator. She's a huge asset because not only did she have a wedding very similar to what we want, but she missed her calling as a professional party planner. She's organized many company picnics/dinners and has all the relevant connections in Loudoun County.

We made a preliminary guest list and it was much larger than we expected, but after the initial shock we're not overly concerned about it as we plan our wedding to be pretty low-key and fun. Our motto is that we want a fun wedding rather than a Perfect Wedding, and I think we can pull it off. Now we just need to hunt down everyone's addresses - more difficult since our intended officiant and one of the groomsmen are currently out of the country.

We're not sure of our official date yet, but it will probably either be the last weekend in May or in mid-June sometime (we're still waiting to hear on one or two family-related things we need to schedule around). We're planning on doing it at Jennie's parents' house. We'll do the ceremony in the front yard and have the reception/party in the back yard.

Headin' home

We're heading home tomorrow morning for roughly 2 weeks. It should be fun - there's a Grandmarama for Jennie's grandmother this Sunday, and we have other various and sundry things planned for our trip home. We have a book on tape and 2 books on paper (?) to occupy us as well, on top of my Mp3 player.

We're hoping to stop by the Chicago Ikea on the way to take our
future couch for a test-sit. Ikea rules.

I'm okay!

I went to what I thought would be my final meeting with Professor Milewski in regards to my research this morning and now things have settled down somewhat. He suggested some original directions to go with my research and when I mentioned the other job that I applied for, he told me he could give me another month of support which should salve my fincancial problems. W00t, I say.

My new goal is to make sure I earn this money rather than hang about. I need to be better about scheduling my time and should definitely budget time for studying/working while I am home.

Progress

For once this whole job stuff seems to be coming together quickly. Right now I'm looking at 2 possible part-time jobs and I still need to see if anything's going on back at DFM. One of the jobs would be working part time (probably 3rd shift) at the gas station across the street, the other is doing some matlab stuff with a guy in Engineering. Both have possiblities of more hours...so I might just squeak by.