An evening with the Wells’ almost always leads to a chiding from Chris to update this site more often. In an attempt to inspire more frequent updates, he has attempted to link this page to my Facebook profile, with the thought that it will reach more readers… let’s see if it works. If it doesn’t, I’ll just blame the copious amounts of wine consumed over the course of the night.
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New things are afoot here at SP. Stay tuned for exciting new changes.
As the seasons once again change, with (albeit mild) hurricane force winds blowing the Pacific Northwest headfirst into winter, I turn back to the pages of Saturatedpratt – the silent companion to literally tens of readers throughout the dark months. Its been a rather fast four months and change since my last update, so as always, a quick re-cap should brings us up to speed.
August and September were filled with, as has become the norm for summer, work and baseball. Unlike the first half of the year, the late summer and early fall found me working fairly close to home – the longest work trip being a brief two-day jaunt to Klamath Falls. This being the case, I had to augment my relatively light work travel with a baseball-centered road trip with Miller to Vancouver, B.C. and all stops in between.
On this trip, I completed my second complete tour of a professional baseball circuit, adding the last two Northwest League parks I had yet to visit (Vancouver’s Nat Bailey Field and Everett’s Memorial Stadium) to my collection. The Northwest League now joins the Cactus as the two I have completed with no realistic successor in sight, barring a move to another geographic region. I will likely focus my efforts next year on seeing the Dodgers’ last spring training in Vero Beach, followed by hopefully being able to get some tickets to the their two-game exhibition series against the Red Sox at the L.A. Coliseum, where they played their first two seasons on the west coast. The big trip for the year will probably be New York sometime in spring or early summer to see Yankee Stadium in its final season – I think it’s a must for any true baseball fan to see the house that Ruth built before Steinbrenner knocks it down.
But wait – this update isn’t about the future, it’s about the past four months. After the September trip, the next big event was a quick weekend trip in October to Seattle to see Karen & Emily’s wedding. I don’t get to see them very often (or anyone who doesn’t live in the Portland area, for that matter) so it was great to catch up them, as it was with Brunner and Megan, and Lauren and Garth, who once again volunteered their extra bedroom for the night. I always have a great time whenever I see my friends from my Carson days, and I hope to see them a lot more often than the once every two years at someone’s wedding plan I’ve been on of late, especially with all the sports-related travel… (well, except for the Yankee Stadium trip – that is a necessity.)
The rest of the time from October until the present has been spent dividing time between work, Ducks football, Blazers basketball, and going to the gym. As always, the colder months are bringing with them a lot more work for me, so I’ve been doing more traveling of late. Last week’s work-related adventuring took me to Aberdeen, Washington, one of the last places in the state of Washington I had not seen on the company dime.
Between making visits to agents, lining up contractors, and conducting interviews, I found a little time to poke around town. My findings are as follows: it is very gray and damp, the area is in serious need of an economic kick-start if the 
vacancy rate downtown is any indication, and I can totally see how the region would rear a kid like Kurt Cobain. I wandered the downtown and snapped a few pictures, including some of what I am sure was a spectacular electric company building in it’s time – a stocky two level structure speckled with hundreds of sockets that were once filled with lights lining the windows and nearly every other architectural line on the building’s façade.
After taking in civic utility buildings of a bygone era, I went to see the historic bridge crossing the Wishkah river, the same river by which Cobain myth dictates he slept while periodically homeless in Aberdeen. After being there at high tide, I agree with Krist Novoselic’s assertion that this myth was only that – a myth.
So, that basically catches us up to the present. Next week I will be taking a week off for a random “use it or lose it” vacation – I will probably spend most of the week wandering around town taking pictures, going to the gym, and just relaxing before what is shaping up to be a very busy next couple of months at work. If I find enough time, I just may throw a couple updates online, as well as a story or two. Stay tuned.
Tonight, Saturatedpratt travels back in time, to mid-December 2005, where we unveil the long-awaited Saturatedpratt lost post - the completed entry that never was. The update of all updates, finished just before I moved, and thus, never uploaded. I do this not out of nostalgia, nor the greatness of the post itself, but rather to buy time to write an up-to-date entry. So really, I am updating my website with an old update… clearly, I am the best at procrastinating. Without further ado, allow us to be taken back to 2005.
Well, I needed a March update, so I guess you could say that I’ve been under the gun. It’s not that March has been uneventful, it’s just that it’s been tough to string together the time to make a truly good update. So, in lieu of a truly good update, I offer this: an update. (somewhere, someone just pressed the “back” button on their browser…)
March was, in spite of the lack of updates, really pretty good. Work has been going well, and I’m really beginning to feel as though I fit.
I’m getting the hang of my job, and I’m actually starting to feel pretty productive. On top of all that, I get along with my co-workers, despite the playful ribbing and continued “golden boy” taunts.
Life away from work has also been pretty good of late. In the last month we’ve had about ten days of legitimate sunshine, including a couple of days where the temperature was dangerously close to eighty degrees. With the sunshine, the trees have begun to blossom and it growing more and more apparent that we’re only about a week away from days packed with a full MLB schedule- yes, life is indeed good. (how’s that for a positive paragraph?)
Speaking of positive paragraphs, I’ve received some feedback lately critiquing the negativity on this site… in response to that, I guess I could promise to attempt to accentuate the positive a bit more, but I’m not sure that would be very honest. After all, I try to write what is currently on my mind. For instance, at the present time I’m pretty happy, despite a few unneeded developments at work and the continued transition from a comfortable, cozy existence in Eugene to one in my new (old) home where I suddenly know very few people. In all, everything is going well, and it is not lost on me. But at the same time, if something is really bothering me, or something is on my mind, I am likely to write about it whether it is euphoric or as depressing as anything that’s ever graced these pages. With that said, it’s sometimes a lot easier to write a narrative of recent events if I have the freedom to include some of the trials and tribulations of the daily life of pratt… not to the degree that it would be self-pity, but to just enough to make me laugh a little when I read it in a few months.
In other words, any negativity seen on the opening page of this site is there mostly to serve as comic fodder, and is not evidence of any deep-seeded malaise hiding just under my surface. No, my deep-seeded malaise is out there for all to see…
Well, for only the third time in its seven-year existence, my web page has moved. That’s right, Saturatedpratt.com has launched and left the University of Oregon and its Gladstone server behind with the other cast off servers of the past.
So, what prompted this move you may ask? Well, aside from the burning desire to spend money on something I can get for free (namely, web hosting), I am finally leaving the University of Oregon. That’s right, Mr. Pratt got a job.
This weekend I’ll be moving up north to begin working as an insurance claims representative. I know, it’s a corporate job and seems to be contrary to my previous post’s celebrity guest appearance, but they’re willing to pay me money to work, and do so during the daytime. So, for once and for all, goodbye Officer Pratt, hello Corporate Whore Pratt! (For brevity, you can call me C.W. Pratt, but not C.W- that’s taken.)
Over the next couple months I’ll probably be splitting my time between McMinnville, where I will live with my parents during the workweek, and Eugene, where I will attempt to preserve independent Chris on the weekends. We’ll see how it goes, but if I start asking for permission to drink a beer, I’ll know that it’s really time to get a place of my own. Really, it shouldn’t be too bad… for the short term anyway. It’s definitely going to be weird though.
For now, it looks like I’ll eventually be moving to the Portland area sometime after I get back from my training in Seattle in January or February. Hopefully Derek and I will be able to find some sort of nice, inexpensive shelter. I feel pretty bad for leaving Greg and Wells earlier than I thought I would, but I’m going to continue sending down rent and using the place as much as possible until either my lease runs out or they find a replacement. Then again, who could replace me?
As far as the what happened the rest of the time between now and my last update, the following events occurred in order: A drunk guy on his bike crashed in to my parked car and damaged the left front fender, Simon and Garfunkel were awesome live in Seattle, I met “Jesus” while patrolling the EMU one night, I had my first Krispy Kreme, the Ducks turned their season around, won the Civil War, and will play in the Sun Bowl, Thanksgiving came and brought with it cheesecake and stuffing, the Twins didn’t hire me, and Linfield lost to a team named the Johnnies. That’s about it.
Stay tuned for more frequent updates, as I now have most of the other pages on this site fully functioning, and of course, I now have more incentive in actually updating the page.
Yeah, I said that there wouldn’t be an update until I move to the new domain name, but here I am, updating. I expect to move to a new server in about a week, at which time I will hopefully adopt the name listed above. In the meantime, a short update will suffice, a little farewell of sorts to the University of Oregon’s Gladstone server… Really, I’m just looking for a way to be able to post the Meatwheels photo again.
Let’s see- what’s new? I’m still working at DPS, where I was moved to graveyard shift in September. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t too happy about joining my fifth new watch in a year and the job search has intensified a bit. I guess there’s nothing quite like genuine unhappiness to light a fire under my ass. Anyway, as I said, the job search has intensified, and as a consequence I’ve been looking at careers in nearly every field- from insurance to finance, from finance to public service, and on to baseball, I have literally sent out resumes and applications to nearly everyone I can imagine- hopefully I’ll hear back from some people in the next few days.
As for other things, I spent most of October watching postseason baseball, and witnessed perhaps the greatest playoffs in baseball history. I was a bit disappointed that the Cubs or Sox didn’t make it (of course, I was more disappointed that the A’s again choked, but that’s besides the point) but I was somewhat satisfied that the Yankees again collapsed. Speaking of collapse, I’ve gone to each Duck home game this year and have witnessed another round of historically bad defense, coupled at times with horrific offense. However, last week’s shutout of Stanford brings back memories of the Michigan game, and will hopefully be a harbinger of successes to come.
My biggest news of October would probably have to be meeting Michael Moore last Thursday. As you can see, while passing through the book signing line, Mike grabbed and pulled me across a table where one of his handlers took our picture. Before another person asks, no, he was not wasted, he was just very excited at the prospect of seeing me. Actually, I was among the last people to go through an hour and a half long line to have stuff signed by Mike after his speech in Portland, and he looked absolutely beat by the time I got to him. All things considered, he was in very high spirits, thanked me for coming, and stuck out his hand for me to shake before he would pass back my copy of “Dude, Where’s My Country?” In all, it was a successful brush with one of my heroes.
All of this will be covered in greater depth in the upcoming weeks as I get this site fully up and running, hopefully at its new web home. I plan on having the photo album and writings sections fully operable by then, and I will hopefully have more news on the employment front. Oh yeah, and I’ll be able to fill ya’ll in on how Simon & Garfunkel was…