Ben’s Blog

The American Screenworks Theater opened last August near where the “New Square” is being developed on the east side of town. They had ten screens, with tables between the seats. They sold sandwiches, pizza, and alcohol to go with the usual theater fare. I had wondered if a small college town of 12,000 full-time residents and another 12,000 students could support two theaters. Apparently the answer is no for now. According to the Daily Mississippian the theater hasn’t paid their rent since late 2006. Their landlord won a $450,000 judgment against them yesterday.

Cassie and I had only been there a couple of times. Being able to order “real food” was nice, but they just never seemed to have any decent movies playing. Hopefully someone else will give it a go. I think it could be pulled off, but only if it was done right. At this point I imagine the owners of the building would be willing to rent it to someone at a discount. Hopefully this won’t set back development of the “New Square.” It already seems to be going slowly.

Moe’s Southwest Grill also shut down a couple of weeks ago. They are going to be replaced with “Redneck Burrito” soon. It sounds like the owners got tired of paying franchise fees. Bad management was their problem. They were always running out stuff. Moe’s was pretty popular for the first six months or so, but it had gone downhill for the past six.

James was complaining that I haven’t been keeping everyone up to date on Ole Miss baseball, so I’ll fit this in while I have a chance.

Two weekends ago LSU won the series down in Baton Rouge. On paper, we should have won it, but baseball isn’t played on paper. Those two losses looked pretty ugly at the time, but since then LSU has taken a series from Mississippi State in Starkville. Apparently they are better than people were giving them credit for. Also, they had history on their side. Ole Miss has not won a series in Baton Rouge since 1982.

This past weekend we took two games from South Carolina. They were ranked in the top 5 in every poll. We had a chance for the sweep on Sunday, but South Carolina’s bats finally woke up. Lance Lynn was named SEC Pitcher of the Week for his performance on Saturday.

We went up a spot in all of the polls except for one. Collegiate Baseball actually dropped us two spots. Seriously? Someone takes a series from your number five team and you reward them by dropping them two spots?

We play Murray State tonight. Scott Bittle will be making his first career start. He hasn’t pitched well lately, so hopefully this will help get him back on track. We play Mississippi State in a three-game series this weekend in Oxford. State has been playing well this season, so it should be fun to watch. They won the Governor’s Cup game a couple of weeks ago, but we weren’t using our best pitchers. They are ranked near us in all the polls.

In other baseball news, freshman first baseman Andrew Clark was dismissed from the team last week for breaking team rules. Also, the bids for the baseball stadium expansion came in $6 million over budget. It looks like they’re going to have to scale it back some.

I pulled two all-nighters (Sunday night and last night) and finally finished the “final draft” of my thesis this morning a little after 6am. I met with Dr. Rice this afternoon, and now all I have to do is make a few corrections and clarifications and make sure it meets the Graduate School’s formatting guidelines. It’s pretty close, but I’m sure I’ll have to make some changes. I will submit the edited version to my committee either Wednesday night or Thursday morning. My defense is next Thursday, May 3rd at 4pm in room 225 of Weir Hall.

Yes, I do have a good excuse for not posting lately. I’ve been working on my thesis pretty much non-stop. That’s what happens when you procrastinate. I took off from work all day Thursday and half a day on Friday. I’ve got to have a final draft to my advisor by first thing in the morning so I’ll have time to make changes and get it to my committee by Wednesday night. I’ve already been dreaming about all the things I can do once I get done with this thesis. It’ll be nice.

FYI, we went to the doctor last Tuesday, and Luke is still doing great. Cassie’s co-workers threw her a shower at school a couple of weeks ago, and our church in Belmont is having one today. (I have to go pick her up this afternoon.) By the way, we are registered at Toys R Us/Babies R Us and Wal-Mart. I think the Wal-Mart registry is pretty limited at this point. People have been good to us.

Ole Miss baseball stunk it up last weekend by losing two games to LSU, but they are making up for it this weekend. They have already taken two games from South Carolina. South Carolina is ranked in the top 5 in all the polls. We get the chance for the sweep this afternoon. More on that tomorrow hopefully.

Back on January 2nd, I posted my New Year’s resolutions. One of them included a goal for “the end of March,” so I thought now might be a good time to look back at my resolutions.

1. Lose weight. My initial goal is to lose twenty pounds by May 1st. I’m probably not going to make it, but I’m happy with my progress. I’ve lost around twelve pounds since I started. I’ve completely cut out soft drinks (which wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be), started eating smaller portions (I could still do much better), and started walking/jogging about three times a week.
2. Get in shape. My goal was to be be able to run a 5k at the end of March. I didn’t even come close to meeting that goal. I had no idea how out of shape I was. I discovered my mile time is about twice what it was when I was in high school. However, I can definitely tell that I’m making progress, and I’m impressed that I’ve stuck with it this long. I will continue toward my goal of running a 5k.
3. Finish my thesis. I will be finishing my thesis this semester. It’s not done yet, but I’ve still got a couple of weeks. I had hoped to have it done earlier, but procrastination reared its ugly head.
4. Spend more time reading for pleasure. Through January and the first part of February I did a good job of reading a little most nights. However, as the deadline for my thesis starting creeping closer, I started feeling guilty for reading. I plan to make reading a priority in a few weeks once my thesis is behind me.

Yes, it’s time for your weekly Ole Miss baseball update. Ole Miss won on Friday night and Sunday afternoon to take the series. A three-game sweep would have been nice, but we didn’t play very well on Saturday. My parents came up for the Friday night game. As you can see, it was pretty chilly. I took some pictures as usual, though this time it was with my new Fujifilm F31fd. I’ll do a review of the camera when I get a chance. (More below.)

On Friday night, Ole Miss had a 6-0 lead in the 4th inning, but Georgia cut it to 6-2 in the 5th, 6-4 in the 6th, and took a 7-6 lead with a three-run home run in the 7th. That should have been the end of the story, but Georgia dropped an infield popup to allow Evan Button to score in the 9th, tying it up. In the 13th inning Georgia scored a run in their half of the inning. We managed to score two runs to win 9-8.

It was a sloppy day all around on Saturday. The score was tied 3-3 going into the ninth, but we managed to walk three batters and they got a run off a fielder’s choice. Georgia won 4-3. Lance Lynn pitched a good game, but the defense had three errors, and we were held to five hits.

On Sunday we blasted them 9-0. True freshman Nathan Baker pitched six scoreless innings in his first career SEC start. I suspect we’ll see him again next weekend. Both Bukvich and Rodriguez were given a shot at the Sunday starting spot earlier in the season, but neither one did a great job.

In other SEC baseball matchups, South Carolina took two from Florida, Vanderbilt took two from Alabama, Tennessee took two from Kentucky, Auburn took two from LSU, and Mississippi State took two from Arkansas. MSU taking two from Arkansas is pretty impressive. It was at Fayetteville no less. The SEC standings look very similar to last week. Ole Miss is still tied with MSU for second in the West, one game back from Arkansas. Ole Miss is ranked 16th, 15th, 13th, and 23rd in the four major college baseball polls.

We play Southern Miss Wednesday night in Hattiesburg, and LSU this weekend in Baton Rouge. The Southern Miss game will be tough. We beat them by one run a couple of weeks ago in Pearl, a neutral site. We should take at least two of three from LSU, but one never knows.

Today Ole Miss announced that they would be spending $10 to $12 million to expand Oxford-University Stadium. The expansion will increase the number of seats from 2,951 to over 6,000. The outside of the stadium will be made to look more like the rest of campus. The renovations will be complete before next year’s season.

Ole Miss baseball has sold out reserved tickets to season ticket holders for the past two years. That means it’s impossible to buy a ticket that guarantees you a seat. You have to buy a standing room only ticket and hope someone doesn’t show, or just sit in the outfield.

The expansion should go a long way to help us recruit even better players from across the country. It should also help us keep Coach Bianco around a little longer.

Last night we blasted an injured Arkansas State team 19-3. We play Georgia in a three-game series this weekend in Oxford. I’ll be there Friday night, hoping someone doesn’t show up. :)

Today Armintie Price was chosen third overall in the WNBA draft by the Chicago Sky, the highest selection ever for an Ole Miss Rebel.

I just noticed that Armintie has her own Wikipedia page. That’s a standard we should all aspire to. :) I also noticed that her middle name is Ada. Named after the first programmer, Ada Lovelace, no doubt.

We went back to the baby doctor yesterday. Luke is still doing fine. 32 weeks down, 8 more to go. I recorded his heartbeat with my Treo this time. I’ll post it as an MP3 as soon as I can find an SD card reader. We go back for two more two-week checkups, and then it’s one-week checkups the rest of the way in.

We still don’t have a middle (or first) name to go with Luke. We’re working on getting registered at a couple of different places.

Last Wednesday night the elephants from the Ringling Brothers Circus walked from Queens to Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. Apparently the circus travels by train. Unfortunately, while the train can make it into Manhattan, it’s rather inconvenient for the elephants to get off at Penn Station. So the train stops in Queens, NYPD shuts down the traffic at midnight, and the elephants walk through the Queens Midtown Tunnel (under the East River). Once in Manhattan, they walk down 34th Street, right by Macy’s, to Madison Square Garden. Apparently they do this every year when the circus comes to town. Most years they are greeted by lots of little kids and animal rights protesters.

When Cassie and I went to New York City last summer our hotel was on 32nd Street between 5th Avenue and Broadway (map). We were a block from the Empire State Building, two blocks from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, and right in the middle of Little Korea.

NPR did a story on this, which is how it originally came to my attention.