At any rate, there is now.  I have accepted a job at a large public university in Georgia, and will be moving there on March 12.  I’ll be living about 45 minutes northwest of Savannah.  While I’ve already announced this in other not-fully-public forums, I have yet to put something out on the inter-web in a fully open manner.

Basically, the job is the next step up from the one that I currently do.  I’ll be supervising a few people who work as Resident Directors, and will be doing some other stuff, too.  The area is nice, and the school has a really good ‘vibe’ to it, but it is a little bit in the middle of nowhere.  This isn’t terrible, but it will be an adjustment from living in Oakland.

This is something that is both exciting and neat, but also sad and a bit scary, too.  I really like living in Pittsburgh, and I suspect that it will always be a target area for me in future job hunts.  Right now, however, there just doesn’t appear to be any ‘next step’ positions for me here.

Well, even though the Pirates are in the middle of their 15th consecutive losing season, their record with me in attendance at PNC Park has improved to 5-0. I really need to write up a proposal to their ownership… they don’t want to spend any money on their players payroll? Ok. Just pay me something like 70K a year (nothing by their standards!) and I’ll come to every home game. They’ll win every time!

The other point of interest of last night’s game was the planned “fan walkout” at the end of the 3rd inning. It was organized by fans to protest the terrible management of the team over the past several years. Organizers were hoping to get fans to stand up and leave after the 3rd inning and exit the stadium to protest. Alternately, fans could just leave for the 4th inning and hang out on the concourse, then return to their seats at the top of the 5th.

Well, the walk out happened, but it didn’t really have much of an effect. The park was only at about 26,000 in attendance last night anyway, and the extra few hundred to 1,000 or so fans who exited for the inning were barely noticeable. There was even booing when people started to walk out.

This was my first game of the year, and it was really fun. I’ll probably try to hit up a few more before the season’s end. Let’s see if the streak will live. As for right now, it’s time to pack and get ready to leave for Vegas.

In poker news, I took down The Wheatie last week raking in the first place prize bucks. I’m not going to go and say that this was any great feat of poker talent on my part. I was getting hit in the face by the deck, mostly on the flop and after. Like the time I flopped the nut flush and 4 other people in the hand bet like crazy. That was great. I went into the final table with a massive chip lead (about 3x the chips of the 2nd place player) and kept it for most of the time. I did manage to make a couple of big mistakes and loose the lead at one point, but I was able to get it back. Heads up play only lasted 2 hands. Anyway, I think any mostly competent player could have gone deep in the tourney if they were getting the cards I was. I’m not sure I’ll have the time to play tomorrow, but I hope I do. Next week I obviously won’t be able to play while in Orlando.

The other thing I wanted to mention in this post is about food. Specifically, really freggin’ good Indian food. Before going out to join Don and Tara for their bowling birthday party on Saturday night, Angela and I decided to go out for Indian food. We went to Taste of India on Penn Ave, near Main St. I had only been there once before, and didn’t remember much about it. On this visit, though, we experienced some of the best Indian food either of us had ever eaten in this town, the prices were very reasonable, and the staff was very nice. When Angela asked for a box to bring the remainder of her dinner home, they brought it out with fresh rice, with out even being asked to do so. Compare this to that hole India Garden that CHARGES YOU for an extra plate of rice while you’re eating in their restaurant. I asked for my food with a hotness level of 10, and while it still wasn’t hot enough for me, it’s the closest any place in this town has come yet. I’ve found my new favorite place to eat around here, I think.

The downside of the last few days has been that my dieting and exercise has suffered since Thursday. Last Wednesday was the last day I was on the trainer, and there were a few days of caloric excess in there too. Consequently, I gained weight in the last week (about a pound) for the first time since I started the get-smaller campaign on January 22. Also this week isn’t going to leave much time for the exercising, either, and it’s not going to be too easy to be calorie conscious while at the conference. I would say that I will try to use the hotel gym, however, I don’t know if I’ll actually hold myself to it.

There was also a motorcycle-related headache this weekend, but I’ll leave that for another post.

Just because it’s 17ºF and very windy doesn’t mean it’s not a great idea to sit outside for three and a half hours, drink overpriced but crappy beer, and watch the Steelers beat up on one of the worst teams in football. Actually, it’s quite fun.

A coworker of mine had procured some of us tickets to the game. I was glad to have the opportunity to go because I’m not sure if I’ll be around these parts for another football season and I can’t leave Pittsburgh without having seen the Steelers in person at least once. The final score was 27-7. It probably should have been 27-0, but the refs failed to call a fumble on the part of the Browns late in the forth quarter. The replays made it look pretty clear, but when you’ve got less than 7 minutes left in the game, and you’re ahead by 27-0, it’d probably just be sort of a dick thing to do to throw the red flag.

Willie Parker had quite the game too. He’s now the first Steelers running back since Bettis to have two consecutive 1,000 yard rushing seasons, the first Steelers running back to have two 200 yard rushing games in their career, and he set the all time Steelers record for rushing yards in one game with something like 223 yards.

It wasn’t a very interesting game in the “who’s going to win” sort of way; the Browns just never really started playing. But it was really good to see the team play well again. If they could have only been in this groove a month and a half ago…

At any rate, I really don’t have anything insightful to say about this. So I’ll stop now.