Spring Break!

Spring Break, Baby! It is sweet! Well, well! To begin with, I had some chances to go on various trips. I was looking at either New Oreleans with St Mary or Mexico with UCO, but in the end I descided to stay here to help the basketball team. My field of work is here, and I knew few managers wqould be here and I should step up to the plate to offer my assistance and get more face time with the coaches. So that is what I did. Not to say I didnt have some fun of course...

But the fun began with the week leading up to it. That tuesday we ahd an awesome UCO. We had honorings and that was sweet. I was told that I was super creative and that 90% of my ideas were shut down. THat I was always positive and energetic and ready to give a helping hand. David said it best when he said "You know how people say that you dont know someone until you live in his shoes, well, with Pinedo, you dont know Pinedo until you live with him...in a small room..." Yeah...hahaha.

I had a few exams and papers to turn in on weds. I had my 489 history class exam which I aced, so that was good, and I turned in my Musicology paper. It was on the song "Lose Yourself" by Eminem. I started working on it and the more I endulged and researched about the song the more fascinating it became. In short, the 3-5 page paper turned out to be like 7 pages, haha. But it was really good. If you are interested, give me a ring.

Then Friday came,w hich ment more fun. A couple of us were going to watch Nacho Libre before some whent to Mexico with UCO, but then we descided to have some other fun. Bethie and Ashely made a surprise visit, well, surprising for me. We ended up hanging out, dancing in the room, having fights with duckt tape,a nd playing Settlers. That is one great game. Of course I got robbed bad, but it was all good. It was great fun being with the girls on their farewell to awesome Mexico and I give them my good luck and prayers.



Sunday me and Mark went to Christ the King and it was awesome. I had to record so many games for the team that weekend. Satereday I had like 18 games and Sunday I had 8 games. But that night turned out to be another fun one. Rina came by the room while me and Mark were hanigng with Call of Duty on line and we had a blast that night, playing in the snow and with pre-tape and everything. And I showed Rina how to tackle. It was awesome. This was a taste of the future to come.

You see, when those are left behind, well, those who are left behind must unite and conquer, and thats pretty much what Mark, Rina,a nd me did during the break. Mark did go to serve in Detroit from Monday to Thursday, but he was soon back on his feet ready to party.

The next real eventful night was Thursday night...the game against Purdue. Yeah, baby. I mentioned earlier how I wanted to get some of my chatechims kids to come to the game but the coordinator was out serving and the office wasnt helping me much at all and in short I was never able to contact them. And then my dad ditched me! He was gone all week and got back hiome loaded with work and alas he didnt get to come. So only Rina and Paulina, another freshman friend of mine came to the game...and what a game it was!

We took off in the beggining working very hard for each bucket. They were making a few easy ones. IN the very beginning they were up but we notched our way back in and before you knew it we were up. ANd Manny and Sims were on fire. Peedi only missed 3 shots all nigth as we ended with 63% from field goal and 50% flat on 3s. Thats right. Peedi and Manny combined for 56 points as we defeated #16 Purdue with a convincing 87-78 victory. Want to know somehting funny? Our longest droubt was the very end with no field goal, from 4:42-0:12. But we still won by a good margine. I was having so much fun, jumping up and down. And I know the girls loved it was we texted the whole game. My mom said I was on a lot on National Television and even my Texas Belt Buckle got a good shot on TV. Anyhow, it was a good win over a ranked team and a nice upset for senior day. It was so so so mcuh fun and I was going bonkers and wow, it was so good. I had a blast. But once again, after the game I was completely spent. I was tired. And I had to trade my meatball sandwitch to one of my manager buddies because by then it was 12:14 on Friday morning.

Beautiful...

The Three Seniors: Jevohn Sheperd, C.J. Lee, and David Merrit

Singing "Hail to the Victors" for the last time

Me and Senior C.J. Lee. Awesome Leader

Me and Senior David Merrit. Awesome Fighter.

Then Rina and Paulina and Mark picked me up. We went by main street to go dance or whatever but it didnt work out cause I dont remember. I was too tired. Then we left after chillin there a while and then went to pin ball petes where I dominated in the basketball shooting game and ice hockey game. We had a blast but it was getting late and it was 3 and I was dead. It was a good night.

Friday was a lot of fun. I didnt have pracitce till 3:30, which ment I slept in, hard core. Till a phone call at 11:30 from some lady in Texas wanting a magic show, and I had to explain to her that I was in Michigan. Then I fell asleep. And then was up at 12:30. I dont remember the last time that has happened. It had to have been some time in summer that that happened but I am not sure. I was not expecting anything that night and then Rina came over. And I completely forgot what happened that night. At least I think she came over.

Saterday was even better. Me and Mark and Rina...skiing, and Rina and I for the first time ever. It was sweet. And I sucked. But man it was so fun. You see, there were two modes of thinking. Rina was trying to learn by following Mark. And she was learning, but very slowly. And I just jumped off the hill and went for it...and crashed..and got up..and crashed...and got up, but hey, I learned, fast, real fast. And with my pure athleticism and strength I was able to get down the weaving and turning and it was great. It was super great. Check out this video on facebook. After the great night we went over to Big Boys and chilled there for a few hours getting into some really deep discussions. Rina is an awesome girl because she likes to have fun but she also has the capacity to get really serious and she really loves the Lord. And on top of that she elt me drive her car back to Ann Arbor, of which I heard later I am the first person that she has ever let drive the car. It was sweet.

Yes, that is mud...I took a few hard hits.
But that is how you learn.

And then we got back and we watch Valkarie on the PS3 with some other friends that came over and that movie, wow, it was so good. I loved it. It had a lot of criticism but I theroughly enjoyed it. It was so so good. And it was nuts how close they got to killing Hitler. And on top of that, it was very acurate to the true story. Read more of it here on Wikipedia.



Sunady was pretty nice and lade back. That night like everyone came back. I had to get used to all the noise and all the dudes and all the smells, but It was well worth it. But sad enough spring break had come to a close. Oh well, it was sweet. Sure, my dad didnt get to come, but at elast I see him in 2 months. THat will be cool. And even though we get out alte this year at the 29th of April, at least that means mroe days of nice weather. Because there were like 2 days of perfect weather last year and then I left on the 15th. But this year I will get a little more enjoyment. Keep you posted and tell me what you did for spring break! The comment button on the bottom of the post lets you do everything. Clikc annonymous if you dont have an account and then just write in your name at the bottom of your post! Let your thoughts be heard! Go Blue!

Sweet Pre-Spring Break Week! 9th-15th Feb 09

What a week! I love these little gem weeks when you do just about everything imaginable in a short time span!

Tuesday we played against Michigan State. Now this was a dissapoinment. We had all been working so hard for this game. Well, for the most part that is. And hten State came in and was playing on the top of their game. Both teams were struggling scoring, but they were just mearcyless on the defensive end. They are so big and play so quickly that they completely shut out our offense. You can see that my the fact that we only had 15 in the first half! And Manny had his second bucket of the game wit a few inutes left in the game! They really shut manny out, but also our wings. They played a 2-3 defense, and since they were so big and quick they could cover the open 3 in a heart beat. So we ahd no open 3s, all contested, leaving us with a 4-24 3-point shooting. The only force we had, surprising ly enough for his small size, was Peedi, Deshawn Sims. He was the only one making consistent baskets, and it was impressive to have him shoot at such a high percentage. All in all, it was very dissapointing, and so much drama happened on the bench with cups spilling, running out of towels and players throwing up and bleeding; it was a mess. I yelled so hard and got intot he game so much that by the end of the game, and when I finally had to accept defeate, I was dead, truely worn out completely, as if I had played in the game. We will have to win on Sunda against Northwestern.

There I am on the bench

Weds I jsut studied all day. I had a stats exam for thursday and I had to be ready for it. Well, Thurday ame about and I didnt have nearly as much time that day as expected to study, which was a big annoyance as I had to cram in a lot of material and 2 practice exams in 2 short hours. Then I ran over to the undergraduate science building to take my exam. Now I was getting the concepts down, but I still had a difficult time distinguishing between what formulas to use, because we have like 4 different formulas to find th sample mean of a population proportion, so to know which one to use in a given question was difficult. I have no idea what I got, but we will see.

Right after the exam I literally ran over tto the dorm to meet up with my room mates to go to the Red Wings Hockey Game! I didnt really get to eat. I just went inot the caferteria to make a big turkey sandwitch and walked right back out. Ben got 4 slices of pizza and walked out. We all waddled over to David´s dads car and took off. We had 6 strong: me, david, ben, mark, alex, and todd (a dude that will live in the quad next year). I had tons of energy in the car and alex and mark took turns playing the beer pong application game on my iPhone. We drove to Detroit and thats when I saw a border patrol SUV and I was dazzeled to see one from all the way from Texas up in Detroit. That was until I was educated that they have a border patrol for Canada as well and that there was Canada across the Detroit River...wow, I had no idea.

The game was pretty fun. It is much better watching it live. I had a bunch of fun yelling the whole game. I was still horse from the MSU game so I am pretty sure my voice is getting wore every day progressibvly. My bad. But it was tons and tons of fun. We all placed bets who would make the first score and I picked #26 because that was my football number in high school. It was some ceck republic dude but low and behold he scored first! So I got a free pretzel from my firneds which I shared to everyone. The Wings ended up wining 4-2. Yeah, Go Wings!

Friday was a whole different ball game. And it was freakin sweet. Mark Pressprich, my good friend Mark, haha, well he told me as we were driving up Thursday that since I actually had nothing going on Friday night, that I ahd to go dancing with him, salsa dancing that is, the best type of dancing around. Well, I havent been salsa dancing in a while, alothough I love it, so I said sure, I would go. And wow, what a night! Originally it was going to me me, mark, Rina, and Bethie, but then their friend Adam from high school came and then Ashely showed up later at the Heidlerberg. And what a night! I was going all out with my moves. I danced with some of the loacals early on and then when it got dense and sweety around I sticked with out 3 girls and just had one of the most liberating fun on the dance floor I have every had. It was great to dance with them 3 and me and Mark had an asolute blast. We danced till like 2 and then we went outside to discover it was snowing again! It had just all melted away a few days ago, but now we had this thin layer of soft white snow.


We were kinda hungry and didnt want the night to end,s o we all drive over to Pizza House. Haha, we had so much fun as we talked about basketball (that was my fault, but hey, it was NBA AllStar weekend), school, nutrition, and NFP (Haha, I am not kidding). We kept having fun and being goofy and trying eachother´s deserts and wow, another great night was in development. Me and Mark were just going all out and yeah, awesome. I love going to bed at 4.

Which, speaking of which, we had to get up bright and early on saterday for the Valentine´s Girls Breakfast! So I hardl slept at all, my voice was gone, I was beggining to feel a little sick, and my knee was gone, and with little sleep I troddled over with Ben to Campus Chaple. I set up some of the food and coffe and I was in charge of entertaining the laddies as they got some pancakes and tried to pour the coffee. And then I joined Ben and Will to sing some songs to the ladies and it was awesome, hahaaha. And poor Mark slept in. We all knew he would. After that I got Alex tot drop me off at Crisler Arena for some practice. And after practice, inspired by the NBA Slam Dunk Contest that was going down tongith, all the players gave a few tries themselves at Dunking the ball, which led to us managers attempting to do as well. Haha, epic failier. After that I lifted even though I was feeling a bit tired.








I got back to the dorm like at 4pm. I took a shower and got some reading done and then Bethie came by to pick me up. We drove over to Borders in Ipsi where Rina works and did some of my History489 reading there...well, for a little, till I got distracted and wondered around the building, looked at sport car magazines (Top Gear, yeah!), tasted some hazlenut coffe and talked to Rina and Bethie. And then Mark joined us all of assudent, ready fot eh night. That night was the 80´s Valentine´s dance at St Mary, the one I made the poster for that was all over campus. He showed up with his look and was ready to go. We were laughing at this book called "How to get girls" that was written by a 9 year old! Hahaha. Check out an exlusive border´s interview here.

We drove back to the PentaDude and chilled ther trying to watch the NBA 3-point shooting contest and Slam Dunk contest, But it was taking forever tog et there and they had all their NBA Cares propoganda and it was really annoying so we just goofed off as I tried to get a costume up for the 80´s theme. I ended up wearing my one pair of jeans, stealing Bethie´s shirt (I kid you not), my gradnfather`s orange shirt and my saxophone tie around my head. It was epic. Haha, and together me and Mark went to conquer the land of the 80s. Ashely was there and so was my catechism partner Danny, and me and MArk were goffing off the whole night. The cool thing is that since none of us were there in the 80s, we can pull off whatever rediculous dance we want and get away with it, haha. And that is exsactly what we and mark did. But alas, because of the fatige, little sleep, working out, malnutrition (I forgot to eat lunch or dinner, haha, I know), no voice, little sickness, and the fact that we were up and slasing all night last night, we left early, haha, but not by much. I just wanted to sit down. So me and Mark, AKA Los Charros Borachos (thats right, and dont you forget!) went back tot he PentaDude and then killed some Nazi Sombes on Call of Duty IV World at War on the PS3. We ended up staying late anyways. But hey, it was fun.
Sunday....sunday sunday. It was one of those days that I got up and had hours blocked off for work, but since I finally had some time to myself, the first in weeks, and since I actually got to pull out my bible and devotional and spend some quality time with God, well, lets just say I lost about 3 hours doing that, haha, woops. Not really a bad thing, but I did loose a lot of time. And then I had to get ready for my afternoon living at St Marys. So I packed up my belongings and get my lesson plan ready and went for the large afternnoon. I had cathecism class with Danny and the kids, but the annoying this was that the Northwestern game was on and I couldnt watch it! We had to beat these guys! So I followed the entire game on my iPhone, but the game took foever! It went into my NCSA meeting, and since the game was close the entire game, it just kept getting longer and longer. The last 2 minutes felt like every rebound they would call a time out,a dn then there was a foul, and then we were up by 5, and then, woops, lets make them tied. And then alas, overtime. Overtime! Ahhh! I cant even watch the game! I am watching it closely on my phone and not even paying attention tot he meeting. I just kept nodding my head and tried to keep the facial exressions to a minimum. It was a constant struggle between hypervenelating and acting as chill as possible. And then we finally won and I just felt so relieved, like haha I was feeling relaxed. We won, and thats all that mattered. I played saxophone at mass with my hourse voice and then went back to the PentaDude where one more epic adventure awaited me.

Well, here is the deal. On Friday David turned 23, yes, I know, it is very old, but I non-the-less speak the truth. So the girls (rina and bethie) were going to make their epic cake for him, but the old man desided he was too old for school and took off Friday afternoon to go home. So we had to call that off. But the girls would not give up, no they wouldnt. So they reschedualed for Sunady night at 10ish. They showed up with this insane red flannel shirt cake, haha, and they brought Ashely along with them. But then we couldnt figure out when he would come back. And so we messed around with duck tape and fighting off the girls with their weird ways and watching the slam dunk highlights. And then Alex and Ben came back,s aying that they had men´s group and that David was talking and would probobly take forever. So in anticipation, and in our preparedness (is that a word?) he finally came and we busted out the cake and the knife and the fun and wow, it was so glorious. I even had an old man poem written for him with the aid of my new rhyming dictionary and that was pretty cool as well. All in all, it was great to have the trio girls over att he PentaDude and messing around with cake and duck tape, I mean, you cant go wrong with that. Haha. And then when they left us dudes could not end the night and so the Nazi Sombe slaing ensued and then I finally put all my stuff online and it was one amazing week. Wow. Haha. Cheers -DP


NBA Slam Dunk Contest Highlights

Fun Times

Well, after much work on my phone continuously and over and over again, I figured out the only solution. Apparently my macbook had a new driver that would not allow my iphone to go into hack mode. So I installed the previous one which let it get into that mode. Also, iTunes was not cooperating with me for the past month and wouldnt let me get by not having an activated sim card. I almost wanted to blast the darn thing. So once I got the driver, I had to get something that would not use iTunes, and thus used another program called QuickPwn and bingo, it worked like a charm! Like super quick! Check out these pics. My phone is back! My Life is Back! Woohoo!!!


We had some fun with basketball as well. My manager buddies are big fans of my "mysteriosu blog" and so they wanted to get on it. Here is Manny getting interviewed by fellow sophmore player Kevin Grady.


Here is the half beard I promised to bring to practice once Man Month was over. The funny thing was that almost no one noticed it. Thats the kind of effect I have on people: even when looking my worst, people still dont notice and think Im good lookin. Eh....

Here I am with Steve, an legendary senior manager that came from the maize rage, and Jon on the left, my fellow sophmore manager. Here we are in the locker room at half time while watching our Wolverines at Work. Go Blue!

Here I am after my cut and shave. This is Andrew, another Senior Manager that joined this season. What is even cooler is that he became a scout player for the scout team. Kinda cool, eh? He is a good shooter; Pinedo Approved.



Plus, what do you think of A-Rod admitting to taking steroids? Too bad for him, going under the pressure with all those millions to take the juice. You can read more about it here.