I'm a

According to the "Which Big Lebowski character are you?" quiz:

Why don't you check it out? Or we cut of your Johnson!

Melting my Pumpkins Off

It's Oct 31st, Halloween, 1 day away from November and it 80 degrees outside. I love it. Walking around in shorts and a t-shirt on Halloween. This sure beats last year when it was cold and snowy just about every day. Happy Halloween everyone!!!

This sucks..

My last post couldn't have been truer. Here I am one day back at work, and I'm already up at 2:30 AM because I got woken up by work. I get woken up because of something that should have been taken care of while I was out earlier in the week, but of course it didn't get handled correctly and has snowballed into something I am now responsible to fix. If all goes well, I'll be done in about 30 minutes. Worst case scenerio, I have to drive in to work (30 miles away) and recover the servers from there. Hopefully I'll be able to do it remotely.

Pondering...

After spending some time in the “country” it really made me think about what’s important in life. Sure I like having nice things in life, but are all the headaches associated with earning a good living really worth it? Is earning a good living really worth getting woken up at 2AM on the day of your birthday? Or doing maintenance at 12midnight the night your vacation is supposed to start? Sitting in traffic 10+ hours a week. Feeling so tense and stressed from work that you have pounding headaches and a stiff neck because your muscles are so tense?

The people in the Pocono Mountain area probably make significantly less money than I do, but they also appear to live a much happier life style. There was hardly any traffic, we didn’t have to wait in line to get into a restaurant, and the mood all around was so quiet and serene.

Well on a happier note, Rachel and I enjoyed ourselves up in the Poconos. I really think, the older you get, the wiser you get. The time in the Pocono’s came courtesy of Rachel’s 88 year old grandfather who we affectionately refer to as “pop-pop”. It was his wedding gift to us.

While it was nice getting money, towels, kitchen utensils and those sorts of things; spending time together was the best gift we could have asked for. It was sort of like a second honeymoon for the two of us. It got us away from work for a few days, and gave us much needed time to get away from the stress of our everyday lives and just spend some quality time together. What gift could be more perfect than that?

Seeing the video on Fox News of Saddam Huseein’s thugs torturing Iraqi civilians really makes me hope there is an afterlife. So those who spent their time on earth making others lives miserable, spend an eternity suffering. How can any civilized human throw another person off the roof of a building? Or tie a man to a pole and continually beat him?

I’ll work on a web gallery for the Pocono’s over the next few days. Here’s one picture that summarizes our days in the country…

Vacation Time!!! WOOHOO!

Ahhh today is my last day at work before Rachel and I head to Mount Pocono for a few days. We hope to make it up to Cooperstown as well to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. Work has been so stressful the past 2-3 weeks, Im really looking forward to this break. Not to mention all the late nights watching stressful Yankees games!

My Tivo cracks me up. It has this feature where it records shows it thinks you would like based on your viewing habits. I click the Now Playing button, to see a list of shows that have been recorded. There is the stuff that I asked it to record like Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, KIng of Queens, and Life With Jim. Then I scroll down and see the shows it recorded as suggestions and was totally baffled. Here's what was listed:
Moesha
Fresh Prince of Bellaire
Elimidate
and some PBS special about wine.

Rachel watched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy the other night, so I have feeling I'm gonna get back from vacation and have a Tivo full of the Isaas Misrahi show, Will and Grace and Liza Minella Behind the Music. Oh and of course Richard Simmons infomercials.

I need to win the lottery!

It's 1:42 AM on my birthday and what am I doing? Working of course. Isn't that what everyone does in the middle of the night on their birthday? :-(

WOW!

The Yankees are simply amazing. Just when I began to lose hope in them, they came back from near elimination and won one of the most exciting, hard fought games I've ever seen.

If a sports fan were to write a book, or a screenplay, I don't think they couldn't have come up with more story angles than this game had.

1) Roger Clemens, former Red Sox pitcher, now a Yankee. Pitching in what could have been his last game ever, since he has announced he is retiring at the end of the year.

2) Pedo Martinez, after throwing at Karim Garcia and throwing Don Zimmer to the ground, and being hated by Yankees fans in general, he gets to face Roger Clemens, in game 7 of the ALCS at Yankees Stadium.

3) Jason Giambi needs a police escort to make it to Yankees Stadium due to horrible traffic conditions resulting from a massive water main break in Washington Heights. He finally shows up to Yankees Stadium in his Porches at 5:48 (48 minutes late).

4) Joe Torre shuffles the Yankees lineup around. He takes Jason Giambi who's been struggeling at the plate, and moves him from batting 3rd to batting 7th. He sits Aaron Boone who's also been struggeling, and replaces him with Enrique Wilson. Wilson wins up throwing wildly to first base on a routine grounder which results in an unearned Red Sox run. Giambi winds up hitting two home runs in the game.

5) Mariano Riviera who is accustomed to pitching 1 inning, 2 at the very most, comes in and pitches 3 amazing innings preventing the Red Sox from scoring.

6) Mike Mussina, who lost 2 games for the Yankees in the ALCS and one game in the ALDC comes in as a reliever when Roger Clemens get roughed up. He comes in with 1st and 3rd, 1 man out and shuts the Red Sox down, preventing them from extending their lead.

7) Derek Jeter comes up in the 8th inning. The new Yankees Captain, who's been chastised by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for staying out late, and partying too much. Derek lines a single to begin the Yankees rally.

8) Japanese superstart, Hideki Matsui, in his first year as a Yankee, comes up with a HUGE double to keep the rally alive. An idiotic woman in the right field seats reaches out and grabs the ball (which was in play) preventing Derek Jeter from scoring from third. Welcome to the post season Godzilla!

9) Jorge Posado, who got into a shouting match with Pedro Martinez after he hit Karim Garcia with a pitch in game 3, pokes a seeing eye double in no mans land, to tie up the score at 5 all.

10) The Red Sox put in knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who's already beaten the Yankees twice. Aaron Boone comes off the bench in the bottom of the 11th. Aarons older brother Brette is calling the game for Fox television along with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. Boone steps up to the plate, he jumps on the first pitch he sees and hammers the ball deep into the seats of left field winning the game, and the AL pennant for the Yankees!

I'd like to note that Rachel bought me a hooded Yankees sweatshirt for my birthday and sister Linda sent me a Yankees blanket for my birthday. We celebrated my birthday a few days early, because of Rachel's work schedule and her dad will be traveling for business. Teh Yankees come out and the Red Sox quickly jump out to a 4-0 lead. Things aren't looking good. I walk upstairs and get away from the game for a few minutes. I turn Ron and Fez on the radio, and they announce that Giambi hit his first home run. 4-1. I decide to slip into rally mode.

I unpack my Jorge Posada McFarlane Sports figure and walk downstairs. I put on my new sweatshirt, my Yankees cap, and wrap myself in my new Yankees blanket,. Giambi hits his 2nd home run... They continue to rally, I continue to sweat. But there was no way in hell I was unwrapping myself or removing the sweatshirt! It seems like it worked out quite nicely.

Way to go Babe!!! Keep that curse alive!!!!

The Yankees will be the death of me...

The highs, the lows. The ups, the down. I get home from work and the Yankees are down 4-1. Right about the time Rachel got in from work, the Yankees rally and go ahead 5-4. Then Jorge Posada hits a home run. 6-4 Yankees.

We eat dinner, Yankees are threatening to the blow the game wide open. 2nd and 3rd one out. Giambi strikes out. Bernie Williams grounds sharply to third. Inning over, but it's ok, Yankees are still up by two.

After dinner, I make a pit stop into the bathroom. I come out a few minutes later and the game is tied!!! Based loaded, and Felix Heredia walks in the go ahead run. Terrible ball and strike calling by Angel Hernandez the home plate ump, but regardless Yankees are down 7-6.

Then in the top of the 9th, a 3 run home run by Trot Nixon that put a nail in the coffin. So now after the long 162 game regular season, tomorrows game will determine who will go home for the winter, and who will go on to the World Series. Pedro vs Roger. Doesn't it get any more dramatic than this? I don't know how much more of this I can take!!!!

Yankees-Red Sox

Ok the whole Yankees-Red Sox brawl on Saturday...

Pedro Martinez CLEARLY threw at Karim Garcia's head.If Karim hadn't moved, he would have been hit in the side of the head instead of the back of his shoulder.

The pitch that Roger Clemens threw that ticked off Manny Ramirez was nowhere near him or his head. Manny over reacted. Much like Sammy Sosa over reacted in game 5 of the Cubs vs Marlin series.

Don Zimmer... Should he have charged at Pedro Martinez...no. Should Pedro have grabbed a 72 year old man's head and thrown him to the ground? No. Pedro's a professional athlete, he could have restrained Don Zimmer without throwing him down. I think major league baseball probably felt the same way since Pedro was fined $50,000 while Don Zimmer was only fined $10,000.

Should a Red Sox groundskeeper harass a Yankee player? No. He's there to maintain the field, not wave a towel in Jeff Nelsons face. I'm not sure if this is fact, but according to an article I read, the same grounds keeper was involved in the water bottle throwing incident that took place in the ALCS in 1999 when the Yankees faced the Red Sox. If this is indeed true, this groundskeeper needs to be fired.

Should Karim Garcia have jumped over the outfield wall to go into the bullpen? Well it depends on his intentions. If he jumped in because he thought Jeff Nelson was in trouble and in danger of getting hurt, then yes. He has every right to help a teammate. If he jumped in for the sole purpose of ganging up on the smart ass groundskeeper, then he is clearly wrong. It was sort of amusing in last nights game, the chant of "JAIL BIRD" surfaced when Karin Garcia walked up to the plate. But he had 2 RBI's, so let those Red Sox fans chant what ever they want. I still prefer the Yankees Stadium chant of "Asshooooole". I have a feeling we may hear that tonight during game 6 when Manny Ramirez walks up to the plate for the first time.

It's no secret that the Yankees and Red Sox don't like one another. The fans don't like one another, the players on the opposing teams don't like one another. They've had their ugly instances before. But I think Saturdays game was one of the uglier incidents in the two teams histories. Im glad none of the Yankees or Red Sox players got seriously injured. The situation could have easily gotten out of control. Im glad cooler heads prevailed and game 4 and 5 went on without any major incidents. I thought it was very classy of Don Zimmer to appologize and very low class of Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox organization as a whole not to make a public appology. At the very least, the two Red Sox players should have both appologized to their fans. The fans that paid their hard earned cash to come see a baseball game. NOT to see two hot headed players play dirty when the going gets tough for their team. It takes a big man to admit when he's done something wrong, not appologizing show just how selfish and arrogant Pedro and Manny are.

WHEEEE!!!!!!

I won't get into the whole Yankees-Red Sox brawl on Saturday. I'll leave that for another day. I just wanted to share a photo of myself from the punpkin patch we visited on saturday. They had this zipline that you could slide along, I had a blast! It was meant to be a fun day for little Andrew, but I think I wound up having more fun. The only problem I had was when we walked through the barn. They had had lining the floor, and it can get quite slippery. A guy from NY just isn't used to walking around in ankle deep hay. Enjoy!!

Sono un bastardo grasso

So I've been hearding about this "never ending pasta bowl" up at Olive Garden on the radio. So Rachel and I went to the Olive Garden on monday night and I gave it a shot. I ate so much pasta, it was insane. By far, my favorite was the tomato alfredo sauce on fetuccini. It was creamy and tangy at the same time. When I got to my 4th bowl of pasta, the waiter started looking at me funny. Despite the looks of confusion and disbelief, I ordered one last bowl of pasta. Linguini pizzaola. Looking back, it was probably a good thing that it turned out to be nasty. I ate a few forkfulls, and decided it was too gross to continue. So I stopped at 4 bowls and 2-3 fork fulls from the 4th bowl. Not bad for a guy who weighs 155 pounds :-).

I jokingly asked the waiter if I could swing by at around 8:45 before the Monday Night Football game for another bowl of pasta since it was "never ending" and he just smirked and said no. He then came by with the check and a polaroid camera to add my picture to the bastardo grasso (fat bastard) wall of fame. I came out looking like Dominick the bloated attorney Barbera. Beeds of sweat on my forehead, orange sauce stains in the corners of my mouth, my eyes glazed over.

I learned a few things...

1) next time I'm wearing sweatpants. Jeans are way too constrictive.
2) no bread sticks, they just take up valuable stomach space
3) Im bring some wet naps!

I'll put more cash, in you khaki pants!

Just testing to see if the titles work... it appears that they do. SWEEEEET!

Wanted to take a few minutes out to make some predictions about the baseball playoffs.

Yankees-Twins Yankees
Red Sox-A's Red Sox

Yankees will win the ALCS

Marlins-Giants Giants
Braves-Cubs Cubs

Giants win ALCS

Yankees win World Series

It's probably the kiss of death predicting the Yankees will win, but I can't bring myself to pick any other team.