I think we’ve established on this blog that I love sports. I’m a sportswriter. My favorite activity is playing basketball. I relax by playing golf — although, in truth, it’s not that relaxing — and I probably spend on average five hours a day watching games.

But here’s going to be my best explanation to the future Mrs. Moore for why I spend my free time watching even more sports. Because the whole “because it’s my job” response will probably get me a good night’s sleep on the couch.

We are currently witnessing of one of the greatest starts by a Major League pitcher in baseball history, and that pitcher just so happens to play for my favorite team, the Kansas City Royals.

I could bore you with unbelievable stats that quantify Zack Greinke’s start, but to better explain, think about this. The only other pitchers with a comparable start to Greinke’s can be counted on one hand. And let’s remember, they’ve been playing Major League Baseball since the 1800s.

Add in the fact that Greinke is a comeback story, and he’s pitching for a tortured fanbase, and the story has captivated even the most casual fans. Check that, it’s captured those who probably don’t know the difference between a ball and a strike. My friend Jacky (yes, that Jacky, of ThisOrdinaryDay.com fame) e-mailed me the other day with a link to a story on Yahoo about Greinke with the subject line, “THIS MAKES ME HAPPY.” Now, no offense Jacko, but I don’t think Jacky has been excited about baseball in her life. And Jacky lives in New York.

But the Greinke story is one that touches even the ladies, because of what he’s been through. He was once a young phenom — still is, really, he’s only 25 — and he made it to the big leagues at 20. Immediately, all of Kansas City fell in love with Greinke, because he could throw pitches that dropped in mid-air and he looked like a sure thing, and we don’t get many sure things in Kansas City.

Unfortunately, Greinke had some issues that kept him from becoming the superstar that we thought he was destined to be. Spark Notes version: He went nuts, decided he would rather mow lawns than play baseball, moved back home to Orlando, was diagnosed with depression and social anxiety disorder, got help, returned to baseball, started to show the potential for greatness once again, and finally this season, Greinke is pitching like fans of the Royals always dreamed he would pitch.

Now, as a sportswriter, stories like this are a gift. They’re fun to tell and they’re great to read. (Here’s my favorite Greinke story of the many that have been written).

But, here’s my point, and I realize I’ve taken a long time to get here. The reason that I love what is going on with Greinke right now is the fact that I can share it with my friends.

When Greinke pitches these days, I’m in constant contact with my best buddy Ryan. We’re texting. We’re calling each other to talk about how absolutely amazing Greinke is pitching and how awesome it is that he’s pitching for OUR team. I’m getting random, unexpected e-mails from people like Jacky. At some point, I’ll talk to a complete stranger about Greinke and probably make a new friend.

And this is why I love sports, because sports brings us together. It gives us something to embrace and to share together. It helps us forget that the economy sucks and my paper just laid off a guy who’s been here for 41 years.

Yeah, 2009 has been a tough year. But if the Royals make the playoffs for the first time since 1985 — a year that I don’t quite remember, probably because I was in diapers — and Greinke continues to wow us, then 2009 will become a memorable year.

And what I’ll remember more than anything is probably going to a Greinke-pitched playoff game with my buddy Ryan that we’ll still be talking about when we’re old gray hairs.

For the past two years, nearly every weekend (weather permitting), an elderly couple two blocks down the street has a sidewalk sale. For the past two years, I am fairly certain that I have seen the exact same things for sale. Children’s toys, books, VHS tapes, old kitchen appliances (in the original boxes!). Everything looks ancient and faded. Most of the time the husband props himself on the steps of the apartment building while the wife with oogly eyes stands across the sidewalk near a tree, leering at people. For the past two years, I have minded my own business, never saying a word to them. I found them weird. I found them a bit delusional — obviously the demographic for a sidewalk sale is not on our block, as the exact same things have remained for sale for two years.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I noticed they had two signs up during the sidewalk sale: “For charity — H.I.V.” The signs are on white computer paper, written with colored markers, the end result looking like something a second grader would be proud of. The periods in H.I.V. were more like bubbles, the kind young girls use to dot their i’s. I thought it was quite compassionate of them to donate the proceeds, though I still wasn’t sure they ever had any to donate. Even though I’ve seen a person talking to them about an item every once in awhile, I’ve never actually witnessed a transaction take place. Maybe this has just become more of a weekend ritual for them than anything else. Something to pass the time and get out of the house.

A couple weeks ago, I was in the laundromat before work while the husband was there. He was already chatting with another old woman, and I felt no shame in completely listening to everything they said. I’m glad I did, because I am now incredibly fond of this man. I never overhead any names, so I will make them up for storytelling purposes. The husband is Frank and his wife is Gertrude (trust me, she’s a total Gertrude. Hello, oogly eyes and sour disposition). Gertrude had cancer a few years ago and had to have a hysterectomy. She’s doing OK now but can’t walk for very fast or for very long. Frank runs the errands, but Gertrude will sometimes go shopping with the girls if she wants to walk. Frank and Gerty have at least one child together (I didn’t get the full family tree) but she can’t have children, so she and her husband are adopting a baby from China.

Frank spoke fondly and protectively about Gertrude while he waited for his clothes to dry. And when I returned to the laundromat to toss my clothes in the dryer, he was still talking to the woman about his life while he folded clothes. I caught myself pausing to focus more intently on his stories, then hoping they didn’t suspect me. Frank finished his laundry before I was ready for him to go, leaving the hum of the dryers and Spanish television to fill his storytelling absence.

I’ve noticed — more than once — that I can be quick to make judgments about people. I don’t realize I’m doing it. I couldn’t tell you when I decided that Frank and Gerty seemed odd to me. My judgments end up being more a feeling than an actual thought process. Many times, I’ll change my mind about the person or event or decision…I’m not set on my first impression, but it takes me awhile to understand how I really feel about something. One friend put it kindly, saying I leave room for grace with people. I’m glad Frank and Gerty proved me wrong, yet again.

I can’t decide whether the my relationship with running is a healthy one. On the one hand, I feel my absolute best when I’m in a pattern of running three or four days a week. On the other, those patterns are few and far between. I’ve never been a “runner”, and by that, I mean someone who takes joy in heading out for a jog. For me it’s more of a battle. I have to talk myself into it most days.

It’s an inconsistent, back-and-forth relationship built on a foundation of obligation, not desire. I like the start of a run and I enjoy the payoff, but the in-between is a stretch. The first few hundred feet are always the easiest, and I feel a bounce in my step that leads me to think this might be the day when I’ll just run until I collapse in sheer satisfaction. And yet almost without fail, I hit a wall that comes earlier than I would like. My muscles tense up, my legs feel heavy and I begin talking myself out of the five laps around the park I had settled on before I started.

How about three? You can do sit-ups when you get back to the apartment.

It’s this bitter and lazy side of me that does the negotiation, and unfortunately, it sometimes gets the best of me.

I’ve tried everything, honestly. I run outside. I run on a treadmill. I head out with a faraway destination in mind. I set a small goal. There always seems to be an excuse not to keep going, and that’s something I’m working on. It’s too hot outside. It’s too cold. I’m too tired. My legs hurt. It goes on and on.

So when I decided this weekend to go for a run around the park (five laps, as previously mentioned), I didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary. I might finish, but I wouldn’t keep the momentum going. After less than a lap, I was winded and pissed off at myself for letting it get to this point. I’ve never been a workout maniac, but I stay in decent shape for the most part. In a combination of beautiful weather, pain in my lungs and outright anger, I felt something I hadn’t experienced in a long time — I could feel my stride kicking in. I was comfortable running. Each step melded into the one before it and I felt like I was hardly touching the sidewalk. The pain in my legs and lungs wasn’t gone, but it was damn near comfortable.

I flew. I didn’t negotiate with myself at all and at no point did I consider stopping. The only deal I made mentally was one that I only hoped I could live up to — I decided to alternate sprints the last lap around. I hadn’t sprinted since last summer during softball season, and even then it was with beer in my system. So as Lap 4 concluded and I saw the start/finish line, I briefly considered ducking out. I had made this a productive trip already and I didn’t want to push my luck.

“Just run the last lap and call it good,” I told myself. I barely had time to think it over before I was telling myself “No.”

I just took off, and it burned so bad. Halfway around the park, I found myself in that bizarre zone that you can only find when running, where pain and pleasure melt together and you feel simultaneously weightless and exponentially heavy. When I finished a sprint, the blood rushed to my face and I felt lightheaded. But each and every point I had marked out as a “restart” spot, I kicked back into gear and sprinted with everything I had. When I made it to the finish, I cursed under my breath then let a smile cross over my face. It was intense, and I felt a high for half an hour afterward.

The next day, I opted to catch up on much-needed sleep instead of going for a run. Today I plan on getting back into it. Will it hold up? Can I keep this rhythm going and turn momentum into something I can be proud of? Right now it feels like it. I also know myself and I remember my history and know that it could all be gone before I know it. But something feels different this time. I’ve got my stride back.

I’m about a year away from finishing my doctorate. I have a bachelor’s degree (with five minors… I wanted to be “well-rounded”), a master’s degree, a graduate certificate, and now my title is A.B.D. (all but dissertation). All this before the age of 30. Impressed?

I have been writing my dissertation for what seems like forever. Last year, I tackled the research while planning a wedding and working as a graduate assistant, which meant I made little progress. So this year I’m writing and researching full-time (or dissertating, as we say in the biz). Here’s my work pattern:

Monday—Home/the coffee shop next door (I go back and forth)

Tuesday—Lunch at Eric’s school then a coffee shop and/or the medical library

Wednesday—Home then, you guessed it, a coffee shop

Thursday—Campus library

Friday—Home then a restaurant

I don’t even like coffee. But I go crazy trying to work at home for too long, and I have to be around people. So I have visited just about every wifi hotspot in Houston in search of the ultimate workspace. I should write a Zagat for dissertators.

Most of my days are frustrating. Some days I have nothing to show for my time. Some days I stare at the computer screen, hoping the cursor will move by itself, and it doesn’t. Some days I get announcements from colleagues who started the program when I did (or later) who have finished their work and now I have to call them “Dr.” Some days people ask me if I do anything, because I just sit in coffee shops all day. I sat on my front porch editing a draft one day and my neighbor, a retired English teacher, asked, “Do you even work at all? What do you do?” And some days reorganize everything in an attempt to stretch my chapters closer to that 200- to 300-page mark.

People keep telling me it’s wonderful, and they couldn’t do what I do, and they are so proud, etc. etc. But the reality is that it all feels so painfully ordinary, and not at all glamorous. There is some sort of fight every day, either within myself, or with the research or with someone I have to please. I feel worthless at times without a job. I easily get bogged down in the minutiae of it all.

Affirmation from friends and family are necessary, but it means more when someone I’m writing about goes out of their way to thank me. My dissertation recounts the history of professional women of color, and part of that journey has included interviewing women about their experiences. I interviewed a Jamaican immigrant whose father gave her a doctor bag as a child and told her, “Reach for the stars, because even if you don’t grab one, you’ll still be high in the heavens.” She has incredible stories of perseverance, a positive awareness of all her obstacles and a strong identity. She chose to work for the urban under-served and has pursued a culture of diversity in her professional and personal life. I found her tale so engaging, and was surprised when she concluded our talk by thanking me profusely for my work and for telling this story.

I fell in love with historical study because I felt strongly about telling stories that no one else had told. This experience showed me that

I’m a part of the story because I’m telling it. I will never have to endure racism and half the other hardships these women have faced. But I can bring the story to light, and, and least on some level, that’s commendable.

I guess it doesn’t matter how banal the daily work feels, it all adds up to something pretty extraordinary. In the mean time I’m trying to be all right with days full of coffee shops and libraries and blank computer screens. The daily details are part of the story, after all.

The other day, I went to a Klezmer concert. To be precise, it was a concert given by a classical pianist and a Klezmer clarinetist. I would never have known about it, had a colleague not told me it was happening. He was going to come all the way to Hamburg to read a story by Jean Giono to accompany the concert.

I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t have any idea about Klezmer. I had this vague idea that it’s a Jewish tradition, but I didn’t know, for instance, that it’s mainly played at weddings and other festivities. My colleague had told me that it was going to be Klezmer on the basis of classical music by Russian romantics like Mussorgski, but that didn’t tell me much, either.

So I mounted my bike to go and see a colleague, and considered it a work date more than anything else.

Klezmer literally means “vessel of music.” In this Jewish musical tradition, the musician is not important in and of himself, but only as the medium that conveys music to its listeners. As a German Klezmer musician once described it: The music is always there, it is inside me, waiting for me to lend it my body and instrument to make it audible.

The two musicians – a very young Russian pianist with exceptional talent and an older famous German Klezmer clarinetist and pupil of Giora Feidtman (for those of you who know Klezmer) – did not have many listeners on this particular night. There were not more than 20 souls scattering the seats, and I with my 31 years of age, pushed the age average a good deal.

Nevertheless, they were playing in one of the most beautiful settings imaginable for music that is at once secular and deeply rooted in religious tradition: They were playing in a church of 120 years, one of the few that survived the bombing of Hamburg in the Second World War, with unexpectedly good acoustics. A grand piano was positioned in the chancel in front of the three-story, gilded altar, the semi-circle lighted by indirect, golden light. My colleague recommended sitting in one of the front rows so that I could see the pianist’s hands and the communication between the two performers, which I did. Still not knowing what to expect, I was consoled by the beautiful and peaceful setting.

When they began to play, my first impulse was to cry. This may sound ridiculous, but these two musicians truly made their instruments sound like human voices. The clarinet often sounded like laughter, while the piano conveyed a deep sense of calm, content or sadness. They seemed to be talking to each other, telling stories old and new, like the one of the ancient witch Baba Yaga, who lives deep in the forest in a wooden house mounted on three chicken’s feet, which she leaves only very rarely to perform a magical dance.

In between the different musical pieces, afore-mentioned colleague read a piece called “The man who planted trees,” based on a true story. In 1910, a then 55-year-old Frenchman started to plant oaks in an area close to the Alps that had once been fertile but had long since become deserted. He kept doing this through two World Wars, the Great Depression and everything else that made the first half of the 20th century what it was, and managed to plant a forest of more than 30 kilometres in diameter. He returned his home into a prosperous piece of land where families and farming thrived, where water started to flow again, where animals re-built their dens.

So in the end, the concert and reading turned out to be an entirely unexpected gift. Music and story-telling – two of my favourite things in the world – came together in the most beautiful way. While one conveyed a sense of the deep, deep roots of humanity with its myths, legends and old traditions, the other reminded me of how powerful the work of one single soul can be.

One semester in college I was enrolled in three literature courses, plus a copy editing class and a creative writing one. This courseload brainwashed me to see my life as a work of literature. I noticed syntax in conversations; I had the sensation of existing in a cocoon of words; I developed a weird emotional involvement with reading. On one hand, I was sick of it; on the other, I couldn’t get enough. Most of all, I started noticing metaphors and symbolism in everything. A tidy lawn next to a messy one caused a reverie of how this might illustrate the temperaments of the homes’ inhabitants. An unfinished beer on the counter resulted in a meditation on the optimist/pessimist idiom, and how this might reflect my roommates. I considered the time I had to borrow my boyfriend’s car, and couldn’t figure out how to turn off the hazard lights, and spent most of the humiliating car ride across a very busy campus wondering if this wasn’t the Great Narrator trying to tell me symbolically that I needed to be knocked down a peg or two, or perhaps that I am an idiot in an educated world.

Most of the sensations left once I emerged from my word cocoon a very nerdy butterfly, but the metaphor-izing stuck, especially with the granddaddy of them all: the car. The car is perhaps the greatest metaphor (except for the butterfly one). It works for health (check-ups, proper gasoline), decision-making (go down the right path), diversity (we all can’t be Lamborghinis), ending relationships (path split) and a fifillion other things.

My car has been in metaphor overdrive (ha!) the last year or so. The car was hemorrhaging power steering fluid last year, and I got the $620 repair done the day my $600 stimulus check was deposited. Lesson: The Lord (sometimes even through government) will provide. My car broke down this spring big-time, and my friends were all too happy to schlep me around. Lesson: Quit thinking you can do this on your own.

Most recently, on Day 5 of 19 consecutive days of working, I was slammed with a humdinger of a metaphor. I was on Highway 78 at 11:30 p.m. on Friday, driving home from the newspaper, in a hurry to get to bed because I’d been working since 7 a.m. and wanted to attend a student’s soccer game at 8 the next morning. Suddenly, the RPMs plunged and my speed dropped to 30. I pulled over, turned the car off and the hazards on, and restarted. When I tried to merge, again, I couldn’t pass 35 mph without the RPM gauge hitting 4. BAD. NEWS. I thought: My transmission’s out. I bet that’s $2,000. I’ll never save enough to move out of here. I don’t want to ask Mom and Dad for help. Two thousand dollars. I drove at 35 mph in the right lane, hazards a-blinking — FOR 10 MILES — panicking. Then I looked down: I was in D2. FOR 10 MILES.

First I was relieved. Then I was grateful I was alone in the car. Then I was grateful there was no traffic. Then I wondered whether I’d torn something to shreds. Then I wondered how much of this I could blame on being tired, or what the chances are I am actually a complete twit.

It wasn’t until days later that I realized the Great Narrator may have been telling me, in a metaphor so simple it would garner mockery from any literature professor worth her salt, SLOW DOWN, YOU JACKASS.

Makes sense. Unfortunately, this is one of those times I can’t listen — I’m too busy. Let’s hope I turn out better than heroines who don’t listen to the signs around them.