I'm baaaack!

Oh man, does it feel good to be back or what? Let's jump right in and get caught up...

What the Heck has Mike Been Doing?

Getting Married
I'm sure you've seen the pictures on Facebook (Speaking of, I'm now at www.facebook.com/nagel.mike - the other itinerations of my custom url had been taken by Mike Nagel's with far fewer friends and way more time on their hands. And I'm mad about it.). Please do take the time to soak in the glory that is a tailored tuxedo worn with white Chuck Taylors, while you're at it. We do promise to post pics of our own as soon as we get the digitals back from our photographer.

As I was remarking to a co-worker the other day, the process of getting married is pretty much like having a second, full-time job. One that's a lot of fun, but also takes a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of patience, and you have to pay half the salary of your other job to work there. Oh, and when the job's over, there's no exit interview. There's just half a cake left and a car ride to a court-mandated, two-week vacation where you're left to wonder, "Did that just happen?"

I do want to write more about the wedding in the near future, but for now I feel guilty about mentioning it at all since Sonja and I have yet to post a single thank-you in the seven weeks after the Big Day.

Honeymooning
If you have about six hours to spare (like, you know, when you're at work reading this), you can check out the pictures of our two-week trip to Italy: Rome, Florence, a quick stop in Pisa, a day trip via bike through Tuscany, and Venice. As you'll see, the trip was absolutely amazing... and I'll write all about it coming up. Suffice it to say, we have a whole lot of souvenirs hanging on the walls of our place.

Moving In
Speaking of, did you know when someone moves in with someone else it takes them twice as long to do it as it would if just one of them moved? Yeah, we're still finding places to put all of Sonja's stuff and others places where we can donate mine.

More importantly, when you get married, people give you a lot of stuff. And they give you a lot of money. We're enjoying refurbishing the kitchen and the non-existent linen closet.

Work
Yup, back at it. Moving on!

Reading
Okay, so I'm not reading that much, but I am reading a little. I'll even tell you what I'm reading - Team of Rivals - in the hope that the next time one of you asks what I'm reading I'll have finished and moved on to something else. If not, I'll lie and say I've been buried up to *here* in literary magazines and haven't touched any book-length work in ages, darling.

Music
So, here's what it's my iPod of late that you should totally check out... MuteMath's Spotlight EP - fantastic single from an album that drops on 8/18, Our Lady Peace Burn, Burn if only for nostalgic purposes, The Devil Wears Prada Dear Love: A Beautiful Dischord suggested by a dude from GYG, and Michael Jackson Off the Wall because it's great to remember when the King of Pop was still royalty.

And While I was Writing This Post...
I learned how to pop popcorn on the stove without a JiffyPop exploding foil bag.

Time to Decompress...

I drive a lot. My commute is 75 miles in each direction. And though I only work in the office three days a week, I still spend at least 500 miles on the road each week. Add in the other miscellaneous driving I do, and I'm putting well over 2,000 miles on my car each month.

(For reference, I snapped this picture on January 2nd and I've gone over 3,000 miles since. This means I get a lot of oil changes.)

Typically, I spend about 100 minutes driving into work and 80 going home, since there's less traffic when I leave the office.

That's a lot of driving for anyone, but I have gotten used to the commute. I don't love it, but I can't say that I actually hate it, either. That drive home, spacing out as I maintain a certain cruise control speed in the fast-lane is peaceful alone time—the majority spent listening to the music, NPR, or audiobooks—does wonders for my post-work psyche.

Now, I don't have a stressful job. Sure, some days are busier than others, but it's nothing like a fast-paced, Crackberry, newsroom environments from my past gigs. Heck, even working at the travel agency caused more stress, since I was in charge of everything. Mostly, I do my thing, do it well, and leave it behind at the end of the day.

But for me, I still need that time in the car to decompress from my day. I use it as a transition from "work mode."

What's work mode? Work mode is how I get when I'm on task. It can happen in the office, at my real job, or when I'm banging away at the keyboard at home. As a guy, I can only handle one task at a time. I'll focus on that one thing and ignore everything else. This makes me a delightful conversationalist while I'm in work mode.

"Mmhmm... yeah, whatever."

"Uh, what'd you say?"

"(Dead silence)"

Yeah, I'm not that much fun in work mode.

The problem with work mode is that it takes me some time to work my way out of it. I can't just instantly leave the office and feel my brain turn to back toward my real life. Nope, it requires some coaching, some telling myself not to think about work stuff, and a lot of zen-like emptying of the mind. Not that I'm meditating while I'm driving... More likely, I'm just not thinking of anything.

And that part's great. I'm much more social and relaxed when I get home.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I was just thinking about it the other day and I wondered if anyone else has a "work mode?" Or is that purely an annoying Nagel trait?

(Yes, as you can see from my odometer, my Toyota Camry is the definition of a high-mileage car.)

Motivation to write...

From Paulo Coelho...

"I think the only advice I can give you is this : seat down and write - anything that comes to your head and keep going. At first you may feel stuck, but with time, if you continue on your quest of storytelling, you will see how the first barrier was only an illusion."

I have to say that I both agree entirely and also ignore this truth completely.

Bad Mike, bad!

Quotes for writers...

Both of these were taken from a coming New York Times Book Review piece called "Bail out the Writers!" Definitely read that, if you're interested.

"But instead it got me thinking that there was a real problem here. Not just a small problem involving issues of respect between one writer and one teenager, but rather a national problem of respect where being a writer has become so widely associated with being a loser that we have become the stuff of common jokes." - Paul Greenberg

"Are you prepared for the years of effort, ‘the long defeat of doing nothing well’? As the years pass writing will not become any easier, the daily effort will grow harder to endure, those ‘powers of observation’ will become enfeebled; you will be judged, when you reach your 40s, by performance and not by promise." - Graham Greene

And, yet, we still plug away... some just do it better than others.

A Christmas Reading...

My company held its annual holiday party last night, and the organizers asked me and a co-worker to do a reading at the end of the night. It actually was my first-ever reading and a ton of fun.

Each of wrote the "12 Days of Christmas" from their genders perspective. Here's what I came up with...

Sunday, December 14th – 12 days to go. I don’t have a gift. Probably should get one. But it’s a Sunday. They play football on Sundays. And, on Sundays, I eat pizza, chips and drink beer until I can’t bring another crust to my lips or raise the bottle in my hand. Since it’s a triple-header today, there will be no shopping for me.

Monday, December 15th – I know she wants something. And, if history is any proof, she probably dropped hints. But they’re never good enough! She mentioned something about a sweater and her size, I tried to remember it, but then I started thinking about meatball subs. Mmm… I love meatball subs. This other time, we were driving and I’m pretty sure she gazed longingly at a spa, but I forgot about it because I was trying to figure out my miles per gallon ratio. It’s so much better on the highways—I can do almost 31 versus 27 in the cities. Do you know how much money that saves? Let’s see… carry the four… It’s like 7.3 cents per mile!

Tuesday, December 16th– I’d go shopping, but ESPN’s showing a re-run of the 2008 World Series of Poker. I’m going to watch it because there’s nothing quite so awesome as a bunch of fat guys wearing sunglasses, struggling to breathe while they grunt bets and eat French fries in between hands. Nine shopping days left.

Wednesday, December 17th – I went to the mall today on my lunch break. No, really. I walked past stores and everything. It was exhausting and I built up an appetite, so I got lunch at Panda Express. Mmmm… orange chicken. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!

Thursday, December 18th – Spent the evening examining the gifts under our tree, hoping that I’d put one underneath and completely forgot about buying it. It’s happened before. Hmm… let’s see… None of the gifts are wrapped in grocery bags and they all have coordinated bows. No way are those aren’t from me. I’m still on the hook. Wait a second—here’s one that looks just like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. My January just got completely booked up.

Friday, December 19th– That package indeed was the new Call of Duty. I opened it, took the disc out, rewrapped it and played the game all night. She’ll never know. Yawn. Now I'm too tired to shop. Six days to go; I’ve got time, right? Right?

Saturday, December 20th – Went to Home Depot to look for gifts. Tried to imagine the look on her face when I show her the sparkling-new snowblower parked in our driveway. Then, I thought better of it. Went to look at the circular saws instead and I found a sweet, red, 7 1/4-inch one that’ll always remind her of Christmas. Bought that instead of the snowblower. I am awesome.

Sunday, December 21st – Returned the saw. Called a work buddy of mine and said he bought the same model last year. She used it to slash his tires before threatening to take his jingle bells, too. Red must be a bad color or something.

Monday, December 22nd – Today’s the first day of Hanukkah. I put the menorah too close to the curtains and set them on fire. As the poly-cotton melted and black smoke filled the air, she berated me, “Eagle Scout, my butt!” I diplomatically reminded her that it was her idea to put the candles in the freaking window. Found myself locked out. Did you know it’s cold in the middle of December? Went back to Home Depot for a new fire extinguisher. Briefly thought about putting a green bow on the red tank and giving it to her, but I didn’t think she’d see the humor. Bought a set of lock picks, too.

Tuesday, December 23rd – Still no gift, but there’s time. I was all set to go shopping, but then I saw that TBS was running A Christmas Story marathon. Haha—he put the leg lamp in the window! Frah-gee-le is a city in Italy! A Red Rider BB-gun! This never gets old, no matter if I’ve seen it a dozen times. That day. In a row.

Wednesday, December 24th – It’s 7:30. The mall closes at 8 and it's an all-male crowd. We’re milling through the halls, like a group of elf-zombies. Winding in circles, looking at carts full of cheese and sausage, furry Crocs, 365-day cartoon calendars and over-sized novelty slippers, I got too close to the Dead Sea Beauty Products and the salesperson attacked me. Now my right-hand has been violently exfoliated and I’ve been talked into buying the bulk gift set—the one with the foot scrubber and some sort of imported mud in a jar. If I’d know I could’ve made my own beauty kit with a wire brush and a jar of dirt, I’d have done it. But it’s too late to get the brush—Home Depot closed at seven. I’m worried that the dirt I bought won’t be good enough, so I keep looking…

That’s Jared!

I go up to the glass counter, whip out a credit card and tell the guy to give me the best he’s got. He tells me the price. I swallow hard, pull out another card… and ask, "What’s on clearance?"

Thursday, December 25th – She’s crying. It’s the good kind, not the “you-got-me-a-crockpot-for-our-anniversary-kind.” Man, I’m good

Merry Christmas!

A Perfect Space for Writing...

I can't write. I don't have a desk. I have a great new place and there's a ton of space in my room, but a big empty spot that should hold a desk. In the hole where the desk should go, there's a laptop stand that's really not cutting it. It has an edge, designed to hold a computer in place, that slices into my wrists were I ever to sit there. So I don't. I need a desk to be a writer.

At this desk I don't have, there needs to be a chair. Oh, I have one now, but I don't like it. It's a "rescued piece." Not "rescued" like this-is-from-an-18th-century-New-England-barn "rescued," but someone-was-going-to-throw-this-in-the-dumpster-and-I-took-it "rescued." It's not particularly comfy and it smells of moth balls, which is probably why someone left it in front of the dumpster in the first place.

No desk, no chair, I cannot write. I need a muse--and to be unencumbered from wires. You see, I need music to provide background noise when I write. But in order to have music, I have to have my external hard drive plugged into my laptop, and that just causes wires to go in all directions. I have a cable coming in one side of the computer from the hard drive and another on the other side, which runs through the power pack to the wall. Two cords are far too many. I only have a 12-inch laptop. That cords-to-inches ratio is far too high. I cannot write in these conditions.

And as far as that muse goes, I feel it's departed. I've left traveling behind (for the time being), so I can't entertain you about eating in strange places and pooping in stranger. Nope. I eat in a kitchen now. It's sterile, with just enough small bits of rust and minuscule food stains that it's not worth writing about the sterility and it's definitely not dirty enough to note.

But perhaps my muse is exhausted--I do have two Twitter accounts, after all, and that's a whole lot of brilliance shoveled out there on a daily basis. I now think in 140-character spans. That definitely doesn't lend to full paragraphs. Or sentences, for that matter.

There are many things I have to do, in writing's stead. The weekends, for example, are full of adult-type chores. I needed to frame artwork, clean the bathroom, work out, organize my recycling, clean the dust off of my television cables, change the batteries in the remote, wash a dish, ponder buying a beta fish, watch the Florida A&M football game while simultaneously watching a MadTV re-run, change socks, remove lint from my toenails, kill a spider, stare a hole into the wall, charge my laptop since I plugged it in to write and then didn't touch it and its battery died while I was staring (unsuccessful) holes into the wall. I'm a busy man.

You see? It's impossible to be a writer. People say that all you have to do is write. Well, they're wrong. You need a desk. You need a chair. You need the perfect amount of noise and the perfect lack of wires. You need a muse, but you don't need social media. And you definitely, definitely can't be cleaning the lint out of your toes.

How do those people who write for three hours a day do it?

They must have linty feet.

Mike in Cartoon Form...

Big news (and, if you'll pardon me, some horn tooting)...

Today, for the first time ever, a piece by me ran in the Boston Globe. Check out this Coupling column about my virginity. For those who don't know, Coupling is a column about all things love that runs on the back page of the Sunday Magazine each week.

I'm pretty excited about it. So, if you missed it on the news stands (because my Mom bought 150 copies), check it out in digital form.

Here's the first two paragraphs to when your appetite for non-sexual action!

I have my own apartment and do not live in my parents' basement. I own zero collectible figurines but do have a growing collection of handcrafts gathered from a fair amount of world travel. I do not attend Star Wars conventions but will frequent Sox bars when I'm outside New England. I prefer designer jeans and Chuck Taylors to short-sleeved shirts and pocket protectors. While I can introduce myself in several languages, I cannot spell my name in binary code.

I am a virgin. Wholly wholesome and always abstinent, my life is sans sex. I'm 25 years old, a healthy male in the prime of life, and yet I'm completely OK with this lifelong state of sexual inactivity. No, really.

Hey Mike - where have you been?

I've been AWOL for the last few weeks, so I thought I'd give you a little update and catch you up onto my life's developments over the past weeks. It'll probably be boring, but it's better than logging into your 401k to see how much money you're losing or listening to talking heads discuss bailout plans that no one understands, right?

-The Big News: I'm employed.-

Yup, that's right. I have a job (started on Monday). And I'm officially a salaried, professional writer. A cool, second-year startup hired me to be an "online producer," which means I'm ghostwriting blogs, generating site content and trying to appear as artsy as possible at all times around the office. I've only been there three days, but it's already a blast. It's nice to be able to put my degree to more use than as a decorated placemat (which is hasn't been performing well... kind of thin and it allowed spaghetti sauce to leak through).

I haven't been posting here because I spent most of my days scouring Monster, CareerBuilder and Craigslist to find jobs to apply for that I didn't even want and logging in to my bank accounts in the hope that I'd gotten a Monopoly "Bank Error in Your Favor" card dropped into my checking. That never happened.

-I've been giving wedding toasts-

Longtime buddy/partner in crime, Rob, got married to a lovely girl who's way out of his league down in Newport, RI last weekend. Sonja and I went down there for three days and it was a lot of fun. Rob's family generously invited us to stay at their rented beach house and, although it rained most of the time, we really enjoyed ourselves. If anyone's looking to do a long weekend getaway somewhere on the East Coast, you could do a lot worse than staying in the historic town of Newport. There are beaches, a cool cliff walk through mansion-ridden neighborhoods, a fun downtown area with bars and shops and loads of restaurants. Being there made me want to buy plaid pants, cardigans and boat shoes, but I settled on a t-shirt instead.

-Discovering old youth pastors that have gone on to become professional gamblers.-

Brian, my brother, called me the other night and told me to switch over to ESPN. I did and there, sitting atop the chip leader board after day 3 of the World Series of Poker, was none other than Jeremiah Smith. Since I last saw him, Miah has left being a pastor, moved to Vegas and now works for Full Tilt poker and plays professionally. Rock on. He wound up finishing 45th in this year's WSOP.



I still remember the time he called me a "little turd." He's always been inspirational that way.

-Reliving the College Years-

WICB, my alma mater's main radio station, is up for a mtvU Woodie Award as the nation's top radio station. For anyone that's a former Bomber or just likes great music, you can go vote for them. Competition is going to be tough, as they're up against Emerson's WERS, which is also an awesome station with a much larger listener base. Check out either site for some great music while you're at work - they both stream worldwide.

That's all that's up with me. What's up with you?

Seeing your name in print...

Does it count if you see your name published but it's on the web? I dunno. But with the start of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games looming (t-minus 5 hours to the Opening Ceremony tonight and some footie matches already kicked off yesterday), STAtravlers.com has started promoting my blogs and video/photo galleries on their homepage. If you're REALLY bored, feel free to check it out. And no making fun of the horrible shot of me that they picked for the web banner, okay?

Happy Birthday, dear blog, Happy Birthday to you!

So, in all of the travel-related excitement, I missed the one-year anniversary of my blog. At some point last week, "Great Story. Compelling and Rich" - the Mike Nagel saga - reached its first annum.

Let me just say that it's been a fun-filled, exciting year in the blogosphere of all things Mike. I've been learning along the way on how to do these things, how to keep you entertained and how to be a "blogger." It's been a riot all 365 days (and 100+ posts).

The best thing, though, has been the feedback I've gotten from you, my readers. Your comments don't go ignored - whether left here, emailed to me, posted on Facebook or fabricated entirely in my imagination - and I appreciate your willingness to keep reading while I stumble around figuring out what works best and strike a balance between what makes me happy as a writer and y'all enjoying yourself as readers.

So, rather than singing Happy Birthday to a website, I'd like you just to take a second, pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself on a successful Year One. I couldn't do it without you and I hope you'll stay tuned for more fun in the year to come...

Thank you.

Pardon me while I toot my own horn...

Okay, so apologies for bragging, but it's nice to get validation from time to time. Plus, I can share this news with you as an excuse to have you read something that I actually got paid for, as opposed to reading my ramblings that have made me zero bucks over the past year.

Good Catch Publishing, one of my freelance employers, selected a piece I wrote for them as their "Catch of the Month" for June, which means they picked me as the author of their favorite article for that 30-day span. Pretty cool, huh? The piece is a chapter of a book and details the true story of an Oregon man and his struggle to overcome an addiction to pornography. You can read "I Can't Do This Alone" by following the link.

It is a long one, so apologies. But I hope you like it!

Mike and his blogging alter-ego...

Many thanks to my friend and blogging compatriot Justin (of Letters from Suburbia) for posting a link to Emily Gould's NY Times Magazine article about her motivations to blog and how, why and when to share personal details on a completely open and unfiltered platform.

In the lengthy piece (which, if you have some time, is well worth the read), she details her history with blogging, her time at Gawker and, after a series of personal revelations, her experience being stripped and exposed on a very public level.

It got me thinking about how I pick and choose what I write about here. I've been working on this blog for almost a year now and I'm nearing the 100-post mark. While I don't actively promote the site, I do link to it on Twitter and Facebook and include it in the signature of all my emails. My readership isn't anything to brag about, but it holds steady at around 100 visits a week or so - mostly from people I know, but I do get reasonable traffic from complete strangers who stumble across the blog looking for Anchorman quotes or Googling "Puerto Rican bosoms." (Seriously).

Knowing how accessible anything on the web can be, I'm generally very careful about what I write here. You'll notice I've never written anything negative about the jobs I've worked, refrained from sharing political views and haven't even mentioned the name of the town where I live. Where I'm ever more careful, though, is stuff that I consider private. Very little of what's on this site is uber-personal. Sure, everything I write is about me. It's got my name on it and I'm not making any of it up. But you will rarely catch me talking about anything that I wouldn't tell a complete stranger, either.

After reading the article and weighing the amount of sharing that I've done here, I realized that I had, subtlety and unconscious, developed a blogging persona. I'll call him Blogger Mike.

Blogger Mike is not too different from Real Mike in many ways - they both like the same foods, the same sports, the same music and the same coffee. But the Blogger Mike doppleganger (should I call him B.M. for short? ha.) is both way more self-deprecatory and pretentious than his R.M. counterpart. I think B.M. is also funnier, more cynical, thinks he's more tech-savvy, asserts himself with too much self-important mannerisms and has better breath than R.M.

Sonja, who is the fiancee of both B.M. and R.M. whether she likes it or not, hates that B.M. never talks about her. Whereas, as R.M.'s friends know, he never shuts up about her. That online silence was a very intentional choice. It's just that my relationships (family, friends and the many, many, many love interests) have always been a very personal experience for me. One I didn't feel was necessary to share online with God-knows-who's-reading-this.

In the last two posts (and a little in this one), R.M. broke through. I'm not at all sad that he did, it's just funny that it almost took a year for it to happen. And who knows if it'll happen again? If it does, it'll probably take another year.

Emily Gould's piece just got me thinking about why I blog and how much of myself I'm really sharing with the world. In one sense, I'm sharing a lot - people would never know half the stuff about R.M. if it wasn't posted here. But 95% of everything that's here comes from the B.M. version - and he doesn't even know half of what makes up the R.M. At least, I like to think there's a separation. When doing any kind of writing, it's always good to keep a little mystery in there; you have to leave 'em wanting more.

(You get more hits that way.)

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Question of the day: Do you, too, have an online persona in order to maintain a semblance of privacy? If so, how do you balance the two?

Mike is like a steak...

...in that, he's well done.

That's right. I just turned in my thesis yesterday. 122 pages of earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting, bowel-quaking brilliance. And, once I reformat it to meet the department's requirements, my brilliance will probably stretch to 140 pages or so (Yes, it's spread thin).

WHEW.

Talk about a sigh of relief. I feel like I'm tasting freedom. I feel liberated. I feel like the world is my oyster, if only I would reach out and shuck it-shuck it long and shuck it hard. So, what am I doing in my first thesis-free day in four months?

Sitting in my chair, drinking a beer, watching TV out of the corner of my eye and writing to you guys. Yes, I know how to live life to the fullest. Rock 'n roll, bay-bee!

It's all good. Truth be told, I once again missed writing here, especially since my page views and comments are up (Thank you, friends, family and Internet stalkers). My new discover, courtship and long-term commitment to Twitter hasn't dissuaded me from posting posts of 140+ characters. However, when you're swilling coffee, banging at a keyboard until your fingertips bleed and questioning everything you've done for the past three years, you don't have much time for weblogging, you know?

But I'm back and it's for good. Or for now, at least.

There's a lot going on in my life right now and, of course, I feel like I need to share it online, so I'll get back to doing that. Upcoming posts can/may/will be on the following topics:

- a book deal
- new music for me to illegally share
- Banana slings
- Beijing, baby
- Mike's next blossoming career as a viral video star
- faking death to avoid school loan payments
- the Red Sox
- the worrisome feeling that I may be allergic to my apartment. Or my body hair.
- softball season starting up
- flip-flops
- Brazilian waxes

Who's excited? I'm excited. How 'bout yourself?

In the words of the immortal Jay-Z:
"When I come back like Jordan / wearing the four-five / It's not to play games with you / It's to aim at you"

BostonNow...

This is going to be quick, since I have class in a few. Right now, anything that's not a Tweet is on hold, in terms of blogging, until I finish my thesis. It's due on April 9th, but I'm hoping to have put a wrap on it after this Friday (since I have a 1/2 marathon to run and other writing to do this weekend).

I'll let you know how that lofty goal goes.

But, I was featured in last week's BostonNow. It is not, as you might assume, because of the awesomeness of my blog or because I pitched them an article. No, it's because I was in a bar at 1p.m. in the afternoon and one of their reporters interviewed me about college drunkeness. Go figure.

The link to the pdf is here. I'm on page 10 or something (first quote in the story).

Play ball!

I had all kinds of great plans to do my first-ever running diary (a la Bill Simmons) for the Red Sox' season opener in Japan this past Tuesday. I was going to get up for the 6 a.m. start, make myself some scrambled eggs with feta cheese and hot sauce on a sesame bagel (recent favorite), crack open some Sapporo and start typing.

Alas, it was not to be. I caught that nasty flu that's been circulating the Northeast. Except that mine came accompanied by the flu's friend, Mr. Vomit. Let's just say that the beer wasn't happening and I spent more time with my toilet than in front of my TV. Blast. Not exactly how I'd planned Opening Day.

But at least Opening Day happened. The Sox are back. This makes me happy. Now I have a reason to be paying for cable again. I watched as much as I could of both Japan games live, watched replays of the games that afternoon and highlights later on SportsCenter while I attempted (unsuccessfully) to stay coherent and write productively. You could say that I missed me some baseball.

You'd be correct.

I'm excited about this season. Sure, it's extremely hard to repeat, but I like our chance. It looks like Manny remembered that the season doesn't start in July this year, Papi is healthy, Lester and Bucholz are a year older, Dice-K's celebratory handshakes are set, Jacoby is making ladies swoon left and right and Paps is still bringing heat from the 'pen. We're good to go.

Only a couple things have me worried. Schilling being out hurt for most of the year doesn't help us. But, I do think it could be a blessing in disguise. Don't forget that he's missed time each of the past three seasons anyway. This way, we could potentially get him back and have him fresh for a stretch run. We just can afford to lose another starter or Bartolo "The Blimp" Colon could be seeing major innings on our mound and that kind of scares me.

Our catching situation gives reason for concern, as well. Tek is still Tek - he's the captain and he'll be great with the pitching staff. It's just that he's 35 and is wearing down. And to back him up, we have... Oh, that's right, we don't have anyone. We cut Wakefield's batterymate, Mirabelli and don't have an adequate replacement. Anyone want to place bets on the date we re-sign him? I'll take April 25th...

As long as we stay healthy, I like this year's team. I'm glad we didn't tinker too much, since there weren't many dramatic holes to fill. Our outfield is stacked right now (Crisp and Moss are more than adequate backups), too, which is good since J.D. Drew still could get hurt sneezing or trimming his goatee.

Predictions? Well, can any true Sox fan not predict finishing first in the A.L. East and not winning the World Series?

Of course not... so, there you go.

Yankees Suck.

I'm not dead yet...

No, my friends, I haven't kicked the bucket yet. Nor have I been eaten by a moose in the nether regions of New Hampshire.

I was suffering from an absolutely horrible case of writer's block. You see, I'm working on my thesis (I think I've mentioned it here, but it's the culmination of three years' work, 60 grand and the capstone on a completely non-marketable MFA). It's due to my reader and adviser in about five weeks. Ten days ago, I completely conked out - I was sick of the project, didn't know where to go with it next, out of ideas and couldn't string together two coherent paragraphs.

For my subscribing faithful, you'll probably ask, "How is that any different than your writing here, Mike?"

In which case, I'm smack you in the face. But point duly noted.

Anyways, I felt like if I wasn't working on the thing that I've left my job to actually work on, then the last thing I should be doing is writing about the miscellany in my life that appears here. It's not that I don't love you readers (yes, all 2 and a half of you), it's just that I am a man of principles. Sometimes. And my principles said that I had to churn out another chapter of thesifizing before I posted another blog to destroy your workplace productivity.

But good news. I sat myself town and told myself, "Mike - now I don't like you and you don't like me - but we're going to lock ourselves in this room and not come out until you have 10 or more pages written that don't look like used Charmin." And it worked. I'm on a roll now (which is like unused Charmin).

Alas, this is not the long-awaited, genius post that you've come to expect, nay demand, from my thoroughly unprofitable site. Those are coming. For now, I've got a meeting that I have to get to, so you're just getting this update, a LOTD and two YouTube videos I've become obsessed with. See, I can make sure your productivity plummets even without writing.

You're welcome.

---Link of the Day---
Check out Pando.com. My brother alerted me to this site. It's a way to send large files (up to 1 gig) for free. So, basically, we're using it to illegally share music. Can I get an "Amen!"?

Also, it has a handy function that will allow me to post files here. Once I figure out how that works, I'll probably post some sample tracks that you can try for free and then go buy the album so I don't get sued.

---Videos of the Day---
Okay, so over 15 million people have already seen these on YouTube, but in case you haven't, I enjoyed them. You will, too. Both are from Jimmy Kimmel's late night show on ABC, which I don't watch, but do enjoy every time I happen to flick through it.
"Sarah Silverman - 'I'm doing Matt Damon'"








...and the response...



Talk soon!

They like me... they really like me!

So, it's not even the end of January and I already met one of my goals for 2008, which was get paid to do this writing thing.

Actually, that was one of my goals from 2007, but let's just say I rolled it over to this year.

Good Catch Publishing, a small, up-and-coming house based in Oregon just asked me to join their staff of freelancers. GCP works predominantly with churches to put out books with the life stories of their members. The churches then use the books as an outreach tool, a fundraiser or just as giveaways.

I will come in to the process as a GCP journalist. Typically, I'll be assigned to interview one person, get their story and write it up for an upcoming book. Pretty exciting stuff, I think...

I don't know if they'll let me publish excerpts here, but if they'll allow it, I will. If not, um, well, I don't want to get fired, so you can call me and I'll read it to you over the phone and you can be mesmerized by the smooth, sultry sounds of my "reading voice."

Observations at a Starbucks on a Saturday afternoon...

My writing compadre Julie and I decided to meet up today in a downtown Starbucks and get some good work done – me on my thesis and her on a job hunt. While I did manage to write a couple pages, I couldn’t resist people watching (one of the things I love to do when in coffee shops) and put down some of my observations for you to enjoy…

Three ladies sit down at my table. One is “of a certain” age and seems nice enough. Definitely well put together – the lipstick matches the jacket, which also matches the bag. The other two are younger, and, as it turns out, are her daughters. They don’t look anything alike, unless you count the scent of money wafting across the table.
The one in the middle has an enormous circle-cut diamond, encircled by diamonds on a (platinum?) band with, you guessed it, more diamonds. They’re out wandering the streets of Boston planning a wedding. Judging by the amount they’re dropping on flowers for the rehearsal dinner (two grand – I’m so nosy), it’s going to be a high-class affair.
The bride-to-be eyebrows seem to be constantly arched in surprise. This is less due to any sort of sticker shock, but more to an overly enthusiastic wax job, which gives her the look of someone being goosed in their Paper Denim jeans every 15 seconds. Or, maybe she’s just surprised that the popped-pink-polo she’s chosen to wear for bridal registry day is so 2004.
The three of them crowd over their venti teas and examine a Crate & Barrel “free gift” card insert from this season’s bridal magazine. The card entitles one of them to a silver-covered wicker basket.
“What the hell would you use that for?” asks the sister. She’s wearing a Pink Burberry scarf, that matches her light freckles, upturned nose and $200 haircut perfectly. Oh, and it looks good with her $85 lip bleach job, too. Snap!
“We could fill it with candy for Valentines Day!” sniffs bride-to-be.
“Oh, that’d be cute!” coos the cougar mom.
“Let’s go to Pottery Barn and then we’ll be done,” says bride-to-be.
“Can we at least go to one store that I want to go to?” Mom asks, only whining ever so slightly.
“Which one is that?” sister/maid-of-honor/girl most likely to go home with a groomsman asks.
“Maybe Lord & Taylor.”
“What about Nordstrom’s?”
“There’s a Nordstrom’s around here?”
“It’s a Neiman Marcus, you always do that. Get it right.”
“I don’t like pleated pants.”
“Oh, they’re pleated. We couldn’t get anything but pleated.”
“Why is that kid whining? You know, if you let your kids whine, they’ll just develop a speech impediment.”
It was at this point that I have to start tuning them out, otherwise I would be tempted to overturn my table, spill their teas and mess up their hair while laughing maniacally.
Oh well, congratulations. May you last ‘til ’09.

I can’t place this one guy. His appearance gives one the impression of either being a brilliant M.I.T. professor, mentally working out theorems, or of the guy who digs the cans out of my recycling bins each week on a break between talks with Verne, his imaginary pet troll.
I looked up to see him chewing on a plastic bag, so it appears to confirm my latter suspicions. His hair, styled in the ever-popular Ben Franklin fashion (bald on top, long on sides and back) sticks out haphazardly in all directions, coming dangerously close to the latte belonging to the studious co-ed next to him.
He’s also switched seats three times in the hour that I’ve been stationed behind my laptop. Perhaps he’s waiting for someone? Or maybe he’s even more OCD about his seating arrangement than I am (I refuse to have my back to the door – you never know when your mortal enemy might show up. In my case, my mortal enemy is either Derek Jeter, the lead singer for Maroon 5 or Griffin, the smelly kid from fourth grade.).
He’s dressed in a fairly clean, 3/4-length wool dress coat. Underneath that, he has corduroy slacks and a v-neck sweater, both also in presentable states of cleanliness – no stains, no smell. He does come off as frumpy, and not just because of the hair. Everything he’s got on is wrinkled.
If I were a betting man (and I am for the right odds and money), I would have to wager that he is nuts more than he’s brilliant, even if it is a combination of the two. While I’ve been typing the last three paragraphs, he’s still been in focused, intense conversation with Verne the Troll. And, if I’m not mistaken, Verne has done something to make him upset. Watch your back, Verne!

I have seen no less than four iPhones in the past ten minutes, not including my own, confirming my suspicions that I have already slipped dangerously behind times. I must now go and my replace my horribly outmoded iBook G4 with a shiny new MacBook Air, stat. Whatever “stat” means.

This other guy, his head is huge. It looks like a lumpy bowling ball squatting on top of his rounded shoulders. His posture is terrible – all hunched over, gremlin-like - and it is an instant reminder for me to correct mine. Now sitting straight up in my chair, one leg crossed over the other (attracting sideways glances from the boys, but dammit, it’s comfortable) I shoot sideways glances his way. He's removed the bubble-top of his non-whipped frappacino and is tilting the slushy chocolate drink back to his lips, gulping each mouthful down with a long, drawn-out sssssssslurp. I can see the other table members shooting him glares over their copies of Love in the Time of Cholera and How Starbucks Saved My Life. And I find myself doing the same… I wonder if I’m better at shooting darts with my eyes than I am in bars?

What is it, exactly, that gives high-schoolers the herd instinct? Two groups of eight just walked in here, one right after the other. The first was chattering non-stop about some girl named Tracy, who apparently isn't with them and also has some questionable hygiene and moral issues, at least by their standards. I don't catch what the second group was yammering on about, because I’d just noticed another instinct they all seem to share – the motivation to wear that bare minimum of cold-weather clothing.
It’s chilly out. I’m sitting by the door and every time it opens, my fingers turn a slightly deeper shade of blue. I’m typing furiously, not to record all of this stuff, but to keep my digits attached to me, right where they should be – at the ends of my wrists. I’m sitting inside and I’m cold, yet not one of these kids is wearing anything heavier than a thin, unzipped sweatshirt. The girls all seem to be part of some sort of team, or buy their clothes in bulk, since they all wearing identical fake-fur lined, puffy black vests.
Whatever, I probably used to do the same thing. Actually, I have two vests that I recently donated to the Salvation Army because I haven’t worn them in years.

What is it about the French that make them so freaking skinny? This lovely couple just added cream and sugar to their respective coffees. I’m not a big guy, but they could’ve used my jeans as His & Her sides to a denim sleeping bag.
I hate them.
Good thing I stuck with the soy latte.

Okay, time to go warm up… my fingernails just went black and I can’t feel my toes. I thought coffee shops were supposed to warm you up?

I've missed you...

As you, my faithful readers, have no doubt noticed, I haven't posted much this year.

Okay, I've only posted once and, to be honest, that was one I'd started writing before the ball dropped. I should beg your forgiveness - I know you've come to expect at least thrice-weekly Internet lovin' from me to make it through those tedious 8-hour days in your cubicles. I have a good excuse, though!

Here it goes...

So, I went home from work on January 4th, just like it were any other day. When, in fact, it most certainly was not.

That Friday marked the last day that I, Mike Nagel, could truthfully call myself an employed man. When I re-started my computer at the end of the day, it was out of habit - I always did that when leaving at the end of the week, just to give the poor, non-Mac machine a break. But it was a futile, worthless gesture... the thing could have spontaneously combusted and it wouldn't have affected me one iota (or, less, depending on how big your particular iota is, I wouldn't know).

I woke up the next day in a cold sweat. Which, when you think about it, isn't really possible - who's actually cold when they're sweating? Unless you're talking about Tom "Terrific" Brady's icy blue eyes, that is.

Suddenly, I was without purpose. At 3 a.m. on that Saturday morning, a most inconvenient time to be awoken, I realized that even the word "Saturday" had lost its meaning. I no longer had any "weekends," because I didn't even have a "week." My week could never end because it couldn't even begin.

I freaked out and began pacing my room, which is something I'd never done before, most likely because it only takes two-and-one-quarter strides to reach either side of the room and the 180-degree pivot to turn and step the other way causes extreme rug burn after a few minutes. But I was too panicked to care that my soles (and very soul!) were bleeding... I needed to find a meaning, a purpose in my existence.

At precisely 5:42 a.m. - which was sunrise on the 5th - it dawned on me (ba-dum ching!), I would take a trip! I would search for meaning in my travels! I would wear the same pair of pants for 10 days straight!

Hastily, I gathered some belongings and shoved them, willy-nilly, into my backpack: my journal, a digital camera, a couple Clif bars, three sets of socks and underwear, a Hooters t-shirt, flip-flops, wool socks, a Sharpie, a picture of my mom, an Espanol word guide/dictionary, a flask, a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and my bottle of allergy medication. I flung the load onto my back, scribbled a hasty goodbye to my roomie (and an apology for using the last square of Charmin) and threw open to the door of my apartment and stepped out confidently, albeit hastily, because I slipped and fell down a flight of stairs, landing prone in front of a lawn ornament of Little Lord Fauntleroy (seriously, my landlady has lawn ornaments adorning her landing).

Recovering from my fall, I continued out the door to Logan airport...

There, I bought the second-cheapest Jet Blue ticket they had to offer - a one-way to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I could've saved 20 bucks and flown to Fort Lauderdale, instead, but one look at each destinations advertisement was all it took to convince me to spend the extra Cleveland (which is what I call 20-dollar-bills, refusing to acknowledge the switch that took place in 1928 to put the impeached Andrew Jackson on the front... read more here). The photo of Puerto Rico showed smiling couples with taut, bronze skin playing in crystal clear waters... bosoms and pectorals everywhere! Fort Lauderdale's showed the same thing, but in geriatric form - the guys all wore black socks with sandals and the gals showed off plenty of bosom-action, but it was all around their belly-buttons.

I was going to Puerto Rico! I had a plan! My mind was filled with exclamatory punctuation!

I landed without a place to stay, but I didn't care... I had decided on my flight down, in between happily enjoying the Dunkin' Donuts coffee that now comes on all Jet Blue flights and the little blue bag of pretzels, that I would sleep on the beach. I'd never done that before.

When night came, I dug myself a little bed on the beach, made a mound of sand for a pillow and curled up with my backpack to watch the sun go down. I fell asleep watching the sun painting the sky a brilliant palette of pinks, oranges and reds. The waves crashing into the shore, lulled me to sleep and a gentle breeze wafted over me.

I woke up to find the surf pounding around me, my bag nowhere to be found. The undertow had dragged it, along with one shoe, away, and was threatening to do the same to my pair of pants. I was completely soaked and a rather large piece of seaweed had wrapped itself around my head, partially blinding me.

I stumbled around the beach for a while, grasping at my pants and struggling to pull the wet jeans up to cover my bare rear, when I found about about two cups of sand had found its way into the crotch. Now THAT was comfortable.

Sputtering seaweed, I tried to figure out what to do. The entire beach was completely dark and that comfortable sea breeze I'd fallen asleep to was now freezing cold. My erect nipples were cutting twin holes in my Hooters t-shirt, which I would have found amusingly ironic, had they not been blue.

The closest apparent source of light (a neon sign) and civilization (it said, "Budweiser") was about a quarter mile down the beach, so I started walking towards that. My one bare foot leaving footprints in the sand next to my shoed foot that read "Puma" and had a cute little drawing of a cat on it. I reached the bar and tried to assess the situation. I looked like I had just washed up on shore (which I kind of had), but I still had my wallet, which albeit soggy, could be used to pay for some drinks, a spot at the bar and a chance to dry out and figure out what to do next. I took a deep breath, held my head high and walked through the door up to the bar, my bare foot leaving wet, sanding footprints on the floor, which, incidentally, was covered in peanut shells, causing me to squeal in pain every other step.

Crunch. Ouch! Crunch. Ouch! Crunch. Ouch! Crunch. Ouch!

It took eight steps to get to the bar.

I ordered a "cheapo cerveza," no doubt impressing the bartender with my fluent Spanglish, and looked around. It was about as close to a biker's bar as I'd ever been in. Everyone there was bigger than me, more leather-clad than me and harrier than me, including the chick behind the bar. I was, as the British say, scared poopless, but no one was paying any attention to me.

No one, that is, except this one scruffy dude in the corner. He was a small guy with, no joke, an eyepatch AND a wooden leg. Seriously. In 2008, someone was walking around in a bar with a wooden peg leg. It started at the floor and disappeared into his cut-off, khaki shorts. Someone had taken the time to ornately carve and paint a mermaid into the side of it. Her sea-foam tail started at the base of the leg and continued upwards to just below a pair of fantastic, wooden breasts (36 C's, I'd say). I couldn't see her face, since it disappeared into his pants (if I had a nickel for every time...), but it was quite the piece of work.

Anyway, Mr. Peg-Leg Eyepatch was staring at me. Not wanted to be rude, I didn't stare back, but tried to drink my beer in peace, which is hard to do when one eye and a wooden leg with boobs on it are fixated on you. I sipped. I pretended to read the Spanish label. I sipped again. I learned the Spanish names for the months by checking the born-on date. I sipped some more. I re-read the label, and so on.

I did this for three (tres) beers. I had no where else to go! And all the while, the weird, piratey looking dude just nursed his own beer and kept staring at me with his one good eye.

Eventually, while I was on my fourth beer and giggling without reason every time I read Junio on the bottle's label, the guy walked over. He was surprisingly smooth for a guy with a wooden leg. You couldn't even hear him striking the floor with it - just the same crunch, crunch sounds everyone else (but me) made when walking over the peanut shells.

"Ahoy, there!" he said. No, really.

"Ahoy!" I said back and saluted him with my bottle. No reason not to be friendly.

He looked at my bare foot. I looked at his mermaid's bare chest.

"You look like you could stand to have a drink bought for you. Ever had a Mind Eraser?"

Visions of roofie coladas danced in my head. But I didn't want to seem standoffish. Plus, I still had nowhere to go and I didn't want to spend all of my own money.

"Nope, what is it?"

Peg-Leg chortled heartily, if not somewhat ominously. I don't know what it was - perhaps the fact that his laugh was deep and dark and that his smile didn't reach his eyes - but I was nervous. Apparently, though, not as nervous as I should have been.

He hauled himself and his leg up onto the stool next to me.

"Betty," he said to the mustachioed bartender, "get this kid a Mind Eraser."

I tried to watch all the ingredients her tatooed hands poured into the blender, but it was impossible. Clearly, it was a popular drink and she'd made it plenty of times before, because she spun bottles, poured in syrups, crushed ice and blended it all together in a flash. She set the drink before me, condensation dripping from the outside and a deep, red, slushy mixture inside.

I took a sip.

Boy, that felt good! I started to warm up inside... and all the way down to my bare foot...

I took another sip.

"So, tell me your story," said the pirate.

I did, right from the beginning of my revelation that morning to waking up on the beach that night, sparing no detail (including my airport purchase of a grande-triple-shot-soy-extra-hot-extra-foam-no whip-latte). During which, he bought himself another beer and me another pair of Mind Erasers, laughing another dramatic har-har guaff when I drunkenly started on both at the same time (Man, if I had a nickel for that!).

Did you know they still Shanghai'd people in 2008? Yeah, um, me neither...

When I woke up the next morning, with the absolute worst headache I've ever head in my life, I was on the deck of a fishing vessel bound for Caracas in the company of Peg-Leg and a bunch of other guys I recognized from the bar. Apparently, they needed another drug mule for operations coming out of Bogotá. Their last one had burped too hard and three condoms full of coke burst in his stomach.

At the risk of self-incrimination and a life-sentence from the D.E.A., I won't tell you about the next week, except to say that if you've never pooped a balloon before, thank your parents. And, if you have, tell me where to buy the most comfortable, inflatable donut, okay?

I finally managed to escape while I was expelling the balloons into a public toilet in Havana. I pulled a Shawshank and crawled through a hundred foot pipe filled with foul, stinking, ballon-infested fecal matter and then found my way, via sewer main, to the black market, where I managed to find passage on the next ship bound for (no joke), Fort Lauderdale. It cost me quite a bundle to get on that homemade raft and I'm not proud of what I did (suffice it to say, that word "kidney" in Spanish is "riñón"), but I finally made it back.

Didn't you miss me?

-------------------------

Okay, okay, okay... so maybe I made some of that up. Or all of it. But at least it's better than telling you, "I had writer's block and not much time in front of a computer," right?


Any idiot can play greek for a day
and join a sorority or write a tragedy.
Articulate all that pain,
and maybe you'll get paid.
But it's a sin when success complains,
and your writer's block - it don't mean sh*t.
Just throw it against the wall and see what sticks.
Gonna write a hit - I think this it.

It's a hit.

-- Rilo Kiley, "It's a Hit" from More Adventurous

(Was listening to this album, which is ridiculously good and I just sorta re-discovered, while I wrote this post. You should check it out.)

Will work for money...

Some of you out there in internet-land know that I'm about to quit my job. Well, I'm "taking a leave of absence," which means I don't have the balls to all-out quit and really would like to keep the door open to fall back on instead of winding up homeless, addicted to crack and singing for change outside of CVS.

The reality of it is two-fold.

One, I just really need a break. Since I got out of college (2004 - almost four freakin' years ago, incredibly enough), I've either worked a 70+-hours per week job or been employed while going to grad school full-time. It's more than a little taxing and I think it's sort of caught up with me.

Secondly, and probably most important, I have a thesis to write. It's the culmination of three years of grad school, $60,000 dollars of loans and, to be honest, a mostly useless MFA piece of paper to hang on my wall. While it may not be the smartest thing to leave my only source of income right before I have to start repaying loans, I really want to make sure I focus on the thesis project and get the most out of my experience and the crapload of money I'm spending.

As of January 3rd, 2008, Mike Nagel will no longer be gainfully employed. After almost seven years of higher education and four of working (including management experience!), I will be jobless. I wonder if I can get on welfare?

I do have some savings and I'm expecting a rather large tax return, since I can claim a student credit (if anyone else is in grad school and you haven't done this, DO IT - you basically get all your taxes back). I'll be living off that for a while.

But I'm also going to try to supplement that by working, when I can. The plan is to become a "freelance writer," which is really just a fancy way of saying, "I have no money and no job, but my spelling is swell!" I actually do have some opportunities on the horizon, but I won't discuss them here because I don't want to jinx anything.

However, that income while great, needed and a nice morale/ego booster, won't go too far towards paying for the lifestyle I've become accustomed to. Yes, that lifestyle consists of stealing WiFi, washing my underwear in the bathtub using dish detergent, preferring to wear three sweatshirts instead of turning the heat on in my apartment and testing the limits of Trader Joe's free-sample policy. But, dang it, it's still a lifestyle!

I have been preliminarily researching some job opportunities, though, and I thought I'd share a couple of the more interesting ones I've found.

1) Ordained minister

You'd think that becoming a man of the cloth would take deep religious devotion, years of prayer and research in a seminary and an attuned sense of the spiritual, right? Actually, no. All it takes is five minutes and internet access, thanks to the Universal Life Church and the Spiritual Humanists.

I stumbled across their sites while flipping through a copy of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weddings (not for me, I mailed a copy to my friend, Jenny, who just set August 3rd as her wedding day. Congrats!). Apparently, if the minister shows up, you can ordain a friend to perform the ceremony for you.

I thought that I could take the ordination test/form thing and then offer my services for a small fee. I don' t know what real ministers cost, but I bet I could charge half that and still make a killing. Of course, that would probably come at the expense of my eternal soul twice over, but, hey, a dude's gotta eat...

2) Drug dealer

I have no background in this field, except that I'm good at sales. And, actually, I really enjoy selling.

The problem is, I've never done drugs. The only injections I've ever had were for my allergies (way cool, Mike, way cool) and the hardest thing I've ever smoked were cloves. I still get a high off cigarettes for goodness sake. So, I don't think I could be convincing as a dealer, seeing as I don't even know how a bong works, much less how much a gram costs.

Then, there's also the possibility that I could be gunned down one day while walking to the T because I crossed paths with the wrong person. That would suck. I bet it would pretty much spoil my week.

But, I guess if I didn't die from the shooting, Medicade or Medicare (I don't know the difference) would probably pay out my medical bills and I could live on disability for the rest of my life. I mean, look at 50 Cent, he got shot a bunch of times and it totally made his career.

3) Prostitution

I thought about this for about three seconds, but I know even less about sex than I do drugs. And it's already way too cold to be standing out on the street at night in fishnets. So, moving right along...

4) I've got nothing

That's it for ideas. If I think of something else, maybe I can fall back on that... Otherwise, I may become the next over-educated, underpaid barista at a Starbucks near you.

I sure hope the food kitchen doesn't shut down because of e-coli or something.