Bigger and Blogger

Jamie Lee and guacamole!

2008-05-02T10:46:00.001-04:00

I meant to write about this the other day...

I was flipping through the channels the other night and True Lies was on TNT HD. It was the scene where Jamie Lee Curtis doing
the stripper dance for Ahnold. Very hot.

Then a few minutes later, I come across a commercial with Jamie Lee Curtis (who looks to be about 70) eating Activia. WTF!?

This is a worst transformation than Carry Fischer.

Does this mean 15 years down the road Miley Cyrus is going to be doing Monistat commercials? Hot!

On a side note, there's a local radio show here on WJFK that has a friday segment called "Snacks of the Round Table". The two
hosts, along with one or two staff members and two listeners each bring a snack to the table. They each try the snack, then
they each rate it from 1-5. One of the items they reviewed a few weeks ago was Spicy Guacamole Pringles. They are fantastic!
Doesn't really taste like guacamole, but they taste great!

On my Mind...Part Deux

2008-04-30T08:44:00.001-04:00

Speed Stick 24/7 is the strongest anti perspirant I've ever used. It's crazy. I can get in the shower, run my armpits
under the water, and they still stay dry. Crazy.

I have this co-worker who's rather flamboyant (annoying). He's always doing things that scream out "Hey look at me, I'm
different". When people ask him about his quirky behavior, he practically salivates at the chance, then behind their backs he
talks about how close minded they are. Geesh. His latest attention grabber is replacing his desk chair with a large red pilattes
ball. They were nice enough to buy everyone a nice $400 Herman Miller chair, and he chooses to sit on a red ball that cost $10!
Everytime I walk past him and see him sitting on that damn thing, I want to kick it out from under him. But I know if I do
he will swing at me, and I will powerless against a man with such a strong core, hamstrings and glutes! Oh and did I mention
he wears capri pants? He calls them cabana shorts, but come on, they're ladies capri pants.

Played golf last night after work. The weather was crazy here yesterday. 30 mph wind gusts and seasonable cool. So it was quite
an adventure out there. The co-worker I play with (who sits in a desk chair), is a much better golfer than me, and he struggled
pretty badly as well. It was just tough keeping the ball on line. There was this particular par 3 (hole #8 I believe), which is
positioned around a lake. The wind was particularly strong there. So I aimed at the bunker about 10 yards to the right of the
green and booyah, my ball landed right in the middle of the green. Now if I only I had figured that out after 2 or 3 holes
instead of 8.

Why is it that when you're a kid, 24 hours seems like an eternity, but as an adult, 24 hours seems to go by in the blink of
an eye?

The new Mike O'Meara show really sucked the first two weeks, but it's really picked up the last few days and is turning out to
be very entertaining. I guess after Don's "dick move" of retiring 2 months early, Mike and the gang didn't have much time to
get things ironed out and situated for the show. They seem to be a little better prepared now, and the show seems to flow a lot
better. The first couple weeks, it was like they were looking at the clock to see how much longer they had to speak. Now it
seems a lot more natural. And we're getting to hear sides of Buzz and Robb that we never knew about before. The one thing I miss
from the old show is how Don would play an audio clip from a movie or tv show to setup the next segment of the show.
The full show is available via podcast through iTunes and was ranked #10 last week.

The new season of Big Break is pretty good so far. But there's this one woman who's pretty annoying (isnt there always). She
plays golf without shoes. Her excuse was "my golf shoes and I haven't been getting along real well lately". What!?

Judah Friedlander is hysterical. It's no wonder he's been the world champ for 14 years straight!

TomGreen.com is awesome! He's taken the whole Kosmo Kramer route and put a full talk show set in his house. Then he invites
people like Steve O over to his house, video tapes it, then posts it on his site. He now has some kind of mobile command center
that allows him to do his show while on the road, literally while the bus is rolling down the highway, he can interview someone.
I think the Madden cruiser needs to be setup like this, so we can have a John Madden reality/talk show. "Hi, I'm John Madden and
this week, BOOM, I'm eating short ribs with Brett Favre!!!" Are you listening Fox Sportsnet or Frank Caliendo :-).

That's all I got...

Now this is funny!

2008-04-17T15:38:00.000-04:00

Yankees Bury Bernie Williams Under New Stadium For Good Luck

NEW YORK—Citing a need for physical and spiritual cleansing after a Boston Red Sox fan entombed a David Ortiz jersey in the floor of the new facility, the New York Yankees buried former centerfielder Bernie Williams under 4,650 pounds of...

En Fuego!!!!

2008-04-16T23:12:00.003-04:00

Wow was tonights Yankees vs Red Sox game nutty. Tons of offense. 24 runs, 30 hits. Tomorrow when they play it will probably be 2-1 as a final score. Crazy.

So why en fuego? Well that's how I would describe my golf game from yesterday. Normally when I golf, I'll have a day where Im putting really well, but I can't drive the ball straight. Or I'll drive the ball straight, but my iron play is way off. I was clicking on all cylenders yesterday. The weakest part of my game was probably by long irons, but I was hitting them well enough that I was getting everything close or on the green in regulation. From there, my pitching was really spot on. I was knocking everything within 3-5 feet of the pin. So I was able to one putt a lot of the greens. I had a few two putt greens, but I didn't miss the putt by much. The big thing for me was I didn't 3 putt a single green. As a result, my worst score on any given hole was +1. I ended up parring 5 of the 9 holes and finished the front 9 with a score of 40.

The particular course we played gets really long on the back 9, so I'm not sure I would have been able to score 40 on the back as well, but even if I was 9 strokes worse on the back, I would still break 90. I hope this is a sign of things to come and not a fluke!

First Round

2008-04-15T12:47:00.003-04:00

I'm very excited, tonight after work I'm playing 9 holes of golf with a couple of my co-workers. I got to play a par three course in Raleigh over the weekend, but it's not the same as playing a real course.

Last night when I was getting my clubs together, I got so excited, I caught a little wood.

Last night when I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep, I kept thinking about that first drive and how sweet it will be.

I'm trying a new ball this year, I ordered 2 dozen Titleist NXT Tour balls. They are supposed to be close to the Pro V1 but more suited for the average golfer as opposed to tour players.

Man, I love golf!

Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, Tiger Woods Ya'll

2008-04-10T09:26:00.002-04:00

A lot of people feel that Tiger Woods is so locked in that he has a good chance of winning the grand slam this year. So as they get ready to tee it up at Augusta, I'm going to predict that Tiger will win 3 of the 4 major this year. I feel confident he will win the Masters this weekend. I don't think he will win the US Open. I think the pure length and the thick rough of the US Open is enough to even frazzle Tiger. I'm also confident he will win the British Open. Tiger has said this is his favorite of the four majors and he seems to take extra pride in preparing for the British Open Championship. I think he has a good chance of winning the PGA Championship, but if he loses the US Open, he may lose a bit of focus and it won't mean as much to him. So I don't feel as confident for him to win the PGA Championship.

Chances of winning the Masters: 90%
Chances of winning the US Open: 60%
Chances of winning the British: 95%
Chances of winning the PGA: 75%

So in summary, I think he's a lock to win 2 of the 4 majors with a very good chance of winning 3 of the 4. But I think he will fall short of winning the slam.

iPod Shuffle

2008-04-09T19:23:00.002-04:00

Since the final Don and Mike show is on Friday, the past few weeks they have been playing highlights from over the years. One of the cool things D&M did on their show was where they had everyone on the show bring in their iPods. The iPods were set to shuffle and they listened to the first five songs that came up in peoples shuffles. It proved to be pretty telling about the person. Here's my 5:

Stickshifts and Safety Belts by Cake

Beeswax by Nirvana

Deuces are Wild by Aerosmith

Do the Evolution by Pearl Jam

Boss D.J.by Sublime

What's your 5?

Barack Song

2008-04-06T22:33:00.001-04:00

I hear the Indigo Girls are working on a Hillary Song....C-U-N...

Words to Live By

2008-04-01T13:11:00.000-04:00

Check your blood sugar...

Check it often!

Opening Day

2008-03-31T08:25:00.002-04:00

Today is a bitter sweet day. While it's opening day and I'm really excited that baseball is back, I also know that it's the last time opening day will occur at Yankees Stadium. Im sure the new stadium will be awesome next season, but there is just something so special and so magical about the current Yankees stadium. And if Base Ruth put a curse on the Red Sox for trading him, what will he do to the Yankees when they tear down "his" stadium? Yikes.

Last night, I was so hungry for baseball, that I actually tuned in and watched a little of the Nats game. Wow, a walk off home run by your franchise player, what a cool way to win your first game in a new stadium. Almost seems a little too perfect. The new Nationals stadium looks really nice. I just hope the local area fans support the team. Last year, there were a few games where only like 12,000 fans showed up. That's pretty sad. Im sure this season with all the buzz of the new stadium, that they will feel the majority of the seats. It's 3 or 4 years down the road that I see people losing interest. The Nats are in a tough division, so they have their work cut out for them.

I'll finish up by borrowing a David Letterman joke. "It's opening day, and out in Queens, the Mets have been mathematically eliminated".

Oh That Crazy Flickr

2008-03-26T17:57:00.002-04:00

Hi squilky,

Yay! Barack Obama has marked you as a contact!

Here's a link to Barack Obama's profile :

http://www.flickr.com/people/barackobamadotcom/

And photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/

See ya!

Thanks Meth Heads

2008-03-25T10:05:00.002-04:00

Because they used to use Sudafed to make crystal meth, Sudafed along with alot of other cold/sinus medication makers have stopped using pseudophedrine in their products. They replaced it with phenylephrine, which is derived from the Latin meaning "doesn't do anything!"

Im gonna have to go to CVS during my lunch break to see if any product still contains pseudophedrine. Either than or Im gonna have to score some meth from Amy Winehouse. I'm ready to cut my head off my head/face hurts so bad.

Even with this blinding headache, I'm still able to pump out 70 point words in Scrabble. Yeah baby!

Drillbit Taylor

2008-03-20T09:02:00.003-04:00

Who's idea was it to pair up a suicidal heroin addict with a bunch of kids and put them in a movie together?

What's next, Amy Winehouse in High School Musical 3? Seriously, have you seen her meth sores?

I recently read an interview with an up and coming author named Jodi Picoult. She has a #1 best seller named "A Change of Heart" which is about a child who is murdered. The murdered is convicted and sentenced to death. The child who was murdered, has a sibling who needs a heart transplant. The only doner they can find happens to be the convicted killer who killer her little brother. In the interview she talks about the experience of sitting in on an execution. It changed my views on the death penalty. Of course if anything ever happened to Rachel or Max, I could probably be swayed back to the other side.

Here's a link to an audio interview she did on DC101.

The beginning is her talking about pants, but about 3 minutes in she starts talking about her death row experience.

Stuff...

2008-03-18T08:06:00.003-04:00

I love the band Kiss, but man is that Gene Simmons reality show terrible. Everything is so scripted and fake. It's more like a really bad 80's sitcom than a reality show. Oh and Gene's son is freakishly tall. Seriously, I don't know how tall he is, but he's like a foot taller than everyone else on the show.

Max slept from 10:30PM to 5AM this morning and it was glorious!!!

Free Tibet, ya'll!!!

Sure Paul McCartney makes more than $50 million dollars a year in interest, but does Heather Mills really deserve $50 million dollars? 1) Paul is a Beatle 2) He's been knighted! 3) He wrote frickin' Let it Be! 4) Paul has TWO legs

If Heather Mills was together with Paul when he wrote some of his classics and she was the inspiration behind the songs, then maybe she deserves a wad of cash. But all she did was spread her leg and spit out a kid. Come on! He's a Beatle!!!

I bet Linda McCartney is laughing her ass off of in Rock n Roll wives heaven.

When does daylight savings time begin?

Meghan McCain is kinda hot. Not Amy Adams hot, but hot for a potential first daughter. I still think Mrs. McCain is gorgeous. Sure she's older now, but I bet back in the day she was quite the head turner. She's easy on the eyes if ya know what I mean.

Dear Vitamin Water, why do you want me to pay $1.50 for a bottle of watered down fruit punch?

I read that the drummer for Abba dies after a fall in his home. I bet he was rocking out to Dancing Queen.

George Michael "retired" last year, and now the local sports here in DC is done by a hottie named Lindsay Czarniak. Hubba Hubba. She knows her sports, and she's cute. Winner!!! She's still not as hot as Warner Wolf however.

Is there anything more tasty than oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?

I bet security guards are really good at crossword puzzles and sudoku.

There's this show called Technology Jones on Mojo. The show is about this eccentric, electronics junkie. The show is total crap, and the guy is such a douche bag, but I couldn't turn it off. Hey it's in high def!

There's another show on Mojo called Gear. They recently did a show about "recreational weaponry". They coolest item was this pneumatically powered launcher. Picture a hand held grenade launcher. And you can put anything up to like 2 inches in diameter in this thing. So they were firing hot dogs, golf balls, D sized batteries, carrots. It was awesome. What guy wouldn't love one of those? It kind of reminded me of Homer Simpsons invention of the makeup gun.

Uh oh....Chongo!!!!

Alyson vs Jenna vs Amy

2008-03-13T10:06:00.006-04:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about Alyson Hannigan, Jenna Fisher and Amy Adams. Well not really, most of the talk is by Niel and I. But anway, I did a google search of the three and tried to find natural looking photos from red carpet type events that aren't all airbrushed and glamorized. First of all it was hard finding a photo of Alyson Hannigan where she didn't have her finger up her nose or her ass. But I did manage to find one:

Then it came time to find one of Jenna Fisher. I had trouble finding photos of her where she didn't look like a whore, or where she wasn't surrounded by more talented, more popular cast members like Will Ferrell, Rain Wilson and Steve Carell. There were also a lot of pictures where she looked drunk. I'm not saying she has a drinking problem, but the pictures and her falling down a flight of stairs last spring speak for themselves. Glug Glug. But after scrolling through pages and pages of photos, I found one! Here she's giving her, "I'm the least talented person on the Office" look.

When it came to finding a photo of Amy Adams, it was so hard to choose. There are so many photos of an oscar nominated LEADING LADY, who can sing, and is also classically trained in dance. The hard part was to find a photo where she didn't look too beautiful. I wanted to give Alyson and Jenna a fighting chance.

Billy F-ing Crystal?

2008-03-12T08:13:00.003-04:00

I feel like it's a privilege to put on the Yankees jersey and take the field as a Yankees player. It's reserved for athletes who have devoted their lives to the game they love. So when I heard that the Yankees were letting Billy Crystal play in tomorrows exhibition game, it really pissed me off.

Not only is Billy Crystal a douchbag, the guy is 60 years old! A professional baseball diamond is no place for a member of AARP unless it's Old Timers Day. The Yankees will probably put him in right field, out of harms way. But Im hoping they put him at 2nd base. And I hope he goes to cover the bag to turn two and someone from the Pirates slides in hard and takes his ass out. "This is for City Slickers Two..." BAM!!! Or better yet, put him at 3rd. Have a line drive go flying at him. The hot seat would be the perfect place for Billy. And come on, you're 60 years old and still going by Billy? To my sisters I'll probably always be Mikey, but I'm not using Mikey in my professional life.

The most pathetic thing is going to be seeing him in the uniform. Most people can get away with wearing the top of a jersey. But when you put on baseball pants, that's when you can really tell the non athlete from the professional ball player. I don't think "Billy" has any muscle tone whatsoever, so I bet his uniform pants will be all baggy and saggy. Unbelievable!

I heard the Mets are considering making Jenna Jamison on honorary member of their spring training squad. This way they will have someone who sucks more than the rest of the team. HA!!!!

So this whole Elliott Spitzer scandal, I hear that other big names may be exposed in this ring. You have to figure that if these women are getting $4000 a night, their clients all have to be pretty wealthy people. There is even a rumor that CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer used the same escort service as the NY governor. And there may have even been a Spitzer/Blitzer three way at some point. That's hot!

But seriously, I hope for $4000 that the hooker wasn't a Spitzer if you know what I mean.

Spitzer? I don't even know 'er!

Spitzer? I damn near killed 'er!

I got a million of em folks...

The Great Yogurt Conspiracy

2008-03-11T13:16:00.002-04:00

I'm a big fan of the light variety store brand of yogurt sold by Bloom and Harris Teeter. It's the right thing to do, and the tasty way to do it, damnit! They taste exactly the same, so I'm guessing they are packaged in the same plant. I noticed that at Bloom, they had 8 ounce containers while Harris Teeter sold their yogurt in 6 oz containers. So I would normally buy it at Bloom since I got 2 ounces more for the same price. Well imagine my disappointment when I went to Bloom this sunday and all their yogurt is now sold in 6 ounce containers as well. WTF? How can they just decide to reduce the content by 25% and charge the same amount?

It's another case of the consumer getting screwed. They charge is the same, but we get less. That just sucks!

What Time is It?

2008-03-10T11:00:00.003-04:00

Man, my internal clock is all screwed up. Max seemed to have a little trouble figuring out what time it was. He was a little off yesterday and ended up waking up at 3:45 last night. I got up to get him so Rachel could sleep for another hour. Max fell back to sleep in my arms, but I never fell back to sleep. So im all screwed up today. Only slept from 11:45 to 3:45, which is really 10:45 to 2:45, so Im delirious today.

Watching SNL this weekend confirmed my initial feelings that Amy Adams is the loveliest lady in Hollywood right now. They did these two sketches where they tried to say that Kristin Wiig and Amy could be twins. Yeah, right! I mean Kristin is attractive in her own way, but she's no Amy Adams. When Kristin Wiig farts, do they smell like maple syrup and pancakes? I don't think so. And have you seen that twinkle in Amy Adams eye when she smiles? She lights up the screen.

Ya know what's sad about SNL. Remember back in the day, when the show would end and the whole stage would be filled with cast members? NBC has cut back on the crew so dramatically that after the last show, even with Vampire Weekend on the stage with the entire cast, the stage looked so empty.

That new show on Fox with Karen from the Office is so bad. They try to rip off Seinfeld so much. Last night the one guy is dating this hot girl and she seems perfect. She makes him laugh, she's interesting, and they are getting a long great. Then he notices that she has this thing that looks like a cashew growing out of her back and it freaks him out. Ok isnt this the same premise that was on Seinfeld about a dozen times? The woman with man hands, the woman who dresses like a super hero, the woman with the fungus cream. Man that new show sucks.

There are drugs in our drinking water! AHHHHH!!!!!

BOING!!!!

2008-03-07T13:48:00.003-05:00

Hey you crazy kats and chics, don't forget to turns your clock ahead 1 hour this weekend!!!

Around the ol' Water Cooler

2008-03-06T10:17:00.002-05:00

A few of at work (who were gathered around an imaginary water cooler) were discussing what happened on this date. Besides being the final day of the seige on the Alamo, the start of a major US bombing offensive on Berlin during WWII, and the day Bayer first patended asperin, it was also the date that Walter Cronkike signed off as CBS anchor for the last time and the day that Magellan discovered Guam. It's also the birthday of Michelangelo. So anyway, we found this cool website (using Wifi and our hand held devices since we were gathered around the water cooler), that shows you historic facts from each day of the year. So I clicked on my birthday and was surprised at all the famous people I share my birthday with. Whitey Ford, Carrie Fisher, Dizzie Gillsespie, Charles Nobel (the Nobel prize guy) and Jeremy Miller (Ben Seaver from Growing Pains).
That is a wacky mix of people!!!

Then I looked up Max's birthday and discovered that he was born on the same day as Billy the Kid. Yikes and 14th president of the US Franklin Pierce.

Then I looked up Rachel's and it got even crazier because Rachel is born on the same day as Jane Appleton Pierce, the wife of Franklin Pierce. Coincidence? I think not!!!

Random Thoughts

2008-03-05T09:41:00.003-05:00

Wow I guess Hillary Clinton isn't dead just yet. The power of Amy Pohler!!!

McCain...Ugghhh. At least his wife is nice to look at.

We had such a wicked thunderstorm last night at around 1Am that it woke me and Rachel up. Luckily Max didn't wake up from it. Of course if I flush the toilet or drop my Chapstick down in the basement he hears that and wakes up. But the house shaking and sheets of rain slamming into the house, he sleeps like a baby. I guess he thought it was one of those nature sounds cd's.

I used to love iTunes for managing my music, but I've really grown to dislike it. It's so bloated, slow and unstable. Maybe it more stable on a Mac, but on a PC it just sucks. But Im not spending $2000 to but a Mac.

This taste of spring weather the last few days has been awesome. It's giving me the old "golf fever".

Ahh Brett Favre, you will be missed. The Packers are gonna suck so bad with Aaron Rogers at QB. I wonder how long it took before Fox, ESPN, NBC and CBS were calling Brett Favre to come work for them.

Can Amy Adams be any lovelier?

Success has turned Jerry Seinfeld into a real asshole. I mean he was always pompous, even during his show. He was the stable, good looking, mature one who had women throwing themselves at him, while his friends were all wacky losers. But now he is just the king of pomposity.

I was disappointed by Lindsay Lohans Marilyn Monroe photo spread. All those freckles turn me off, and she has flat nipples. I was expecting better. I'm not a pervert for looking, I'm empowered like those whores on Lipstick Jungle and Desperate Housewives!

Call Empire Today!!!

I was surprised to see that the new 80gig iPod "classic" is the same size and thickness as my iPod Touch.

Mrs. Obama looks like Omarosa from the Apprentice.

If Barack becomes president, will we have to start pronounce Alabama differently?

I'm a big fan of DHL. I think Fedex and UPS have gotten so big, they don't care about their customers. DHL is a distant third and they seem to try harder.

Break Dancing

2008-03-05T09:34:00.001-05:00

Don't send a lame eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

All Kinds of Awesome

2008-02-26T12:18:00.002-05:00

Wow this song rocks. What a unique collaboration of talented musicians. I think all rock bands should throw out their bass guitar players and replace them with a hefty tuba player.

Star Wars

2008-02-19T11:36:00.002-05:00

I've been reading about how the US Navy plans on shooting that troubled spy satellite out of the sky. I know we have some of the brightest minds in the world working on how this should all go down, but I'm feeling a little uneasy. Because of the "Bush factor", I'm just expecting something horrible to go wrong. We miss the satellite and it hits the international space station. Or we take a giant chunk of the moon out and the tides go nuts. Or we hit a UFO and next thing you know, it's War of the Worlds. So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm hoping for the best and expecting the worst. And what I'm suggesting is, stock on up on lots of toilet paper and canned goods.

A friend of mine at work has turned me on to international chocolates. My co-worker wasn't born here, and has always talked about how gross Hershey chocolate is. I guess when you grow up eating Hershey and Mars chocolate, you think it's pretty good. But now I realize that it's more of the nugat and the nuts that make those candies tasty and not the chocolate.

So this friend of mine gets these mysterious packages encased in dry ice from time to time. Shortly there after I usually find a small sampling of chocolates on my desk. I had one last week that contained Brazilian cacao, and I swear it was so good it made me hallucinate. And what's great about Brazilian chocolate is that it comes with a lovely yellow thong! Or maybe that's just the cacao talking. A lot of the really good chocolate has an insane amount of fat, so as with everything, eat it will moderation.

A few things on my mind...

2008-02-12T10:23:00.000-05:00

When Max is old enough to start reading/surfing the web, will I be compelled to take down this blog?

When Amy Winehouse agreed to go to rehab, did she say YES three times?

Valentines Day is such a crock. All the commercials are about buying jewelery for the special lady in your life. Why aren't there ads promoting women buying golf clubs for their husbands? Or how about a nice flat screen tv? Hey a Playstation 3 would be nice. But no, the commercials all have a central theme. The guy who goes to Zales, Kay, Shaws, etc is the big hero. And the guys who didn't shop there are jackasses.

I would love to see a commercial where the husband is out to dinner with his wife. The man opens a nicely wrapped gift to reveal a lovely new GPS! Ohhh a new audio receiver with 3 HDMI inputs!!! Woh the new Callaway driver! Instead its always the woman open a little box revealing something sparkly.

Victorias secret could make bank. Have a commercial where the special lady comes out in some nice lingerie, and she proceeds to kneel down in front of her man and unzip his pants.

Tv and a Crazy Dream

2008-01-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

I've been desperate for something new to watch on TV. There is only so much Deal or No Deal and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader one man can stand. So I read about this show on AMC called Breaking Bad. I forgot to set the DVR on Sunday when it premiered, so I scrolled through the guide last night and saw that they were replaying the pilot at 10PM. Holy crap is the show awesome. I'm actually a little worried because the pilot was so good, I don't see how they can possibly keep that level of suspense and "interestingness" up for an entire season. I guess the show may have originally been pitched to Showtime and HBO because there were curses that they had to bleep out. The show stars the guy who played Malcolm's Dad on Malcolm in the middle. He was also the crazy dentist on Seinfeld. It's a very dark show, but very entertaining. I highly recommend it.

Maybe it was the influence of watching Breaking Bad for bed, or maybe it was the turkey pepperoni I snacked on before bed, but man did I have a wacky dream...

I was sitting in a steam room with Matt Lauer, Alex Trebek and Stephen King. I'm not sure where I was, but it appeared to be some kind of resort of some kind. This is really weird because I don't think I've ever been in a steam room before in real life.

Stephen King was wearing his signature coke bottle glasses and he was getting angry because they kept fogging up. He said something like "I paid $3500 for these glasses, they aren't supposed to fog up!" And he curses a lot in short bursts like he had tourettes.

Then Alex Trebek kept handing me these little cards that had sex shops and whore houses advertised on them. He kept telling me which places were the best. When you go there, ask for Chelsea and tell her you're friends with Alex! Thankfully he didn't make a "daily double" joke.

Matt Lauer was talking angrily to someone on his cell phone. He kept rolling his eyes and slapping the walls. I remember him saying something about getting the other line, then the next thing I remember we were all in a cab. We were all dressed like 1920's gangsters with fedoras and pin striped suites. Then I woke up. Or at least that's all I remember. WTF?

On my mind...

2008-01-24T09:45:00.000-05:00

I'm so pumped for the start of Lost next Thursday. It's been a long 8 months since the last episode. It will be a bitter sweet start though. While it will be great to see the show start up again, it will suck knowing that there are only 8 episodes because of the writers strike. And apparently the part where they stopped filming is a pivotal part of the season that will leave fans wanting more. Of course noone knows how long the strike will go on, so it could be years before we see a conclusion.

At work they offered a Net benefits plan for our 401k. It's advertised as being somewhat of a no brainer approach to investing for your retirement. You let Fidelity manage your account and they are supposed to rebalance which funds you invest in periodically to maximize your returns. Well when I was managing my own 401k, I was up 12% for the year. Last year when Fidelity did it, I was up only 6%. In the 3 weeks they managed it in 2008, I've been down over 10%. Considering I've been contributing to my 401k for 8 years now, I lost a sizable amount of money. So I took the bull by the horns and opted out of the net benefits account and opened a brokerage account. I started buying and selling my own funds this week. We'll see how things go. The market has been crazy since the 1st of the year will all the talk of recession, the upcoming election and the value of the US dollar dropping like Lindsay Lohans panties. So it should be interesting. I purchased some mutual funds last year with my annual bonus, and the one TROWE Price fund I bought was up 27.91 percent for 2007. So I hope all the funds I pick do so well. Not likely, but I can dream.

Im totally addicted to this online flash golf game. Supposedly as you play and get better more courses and equipment become available to you. And hey, I think it's for charity.

I don't get the appeal of American Idol.

The woman who wrote the screenplay for Juno is kinda hot.

John Edwards was on Letterman the other night and listening to him and seeing him, he reminded me of Kenny from 30 Rock. Maybe it's just their accents. It was great when Letterman tussled John Edwards hair.

RIP Sam

2008-01-19T13:31:00.000-05:00

I was sad to hear that Allen Melvin, the actor who played Sam the butcher on the Brady Bunch passed away. I liked Sam. I wish they would have explored his character more on the show. But any man who can give Alice "the meat" is a hero in my book. RIP Allen.

Fowl Terrorism????

2008-01-03T11:21:00.000-05:00

I just pulled up the CNN website and saw this headline:
20 injured by bomb in Turkey

What kind of sick bastard puts a bomb in a turkey. Turkeys are supposed to be jammed full of stuffing, not explosives!!! I'm expanding my personal war on terrorism to include Frank Perdue and those maniacs at Butterball!!!

Oh wait...Turkey as in the country?

Looking Back..Looking Forward

2008-01-02T09:54:00.000-05:00

2007 was a big year to say the least. Rachel started a new job, which gave her more stable hours and more time at home. We got pregnant. I went from feeling down in the dumps about my career, to getting it back on track. My golf game took a turn in the right direction. I began jogging which in turn shrunk my waist by 2 inches. And of course, I became a dad.

Rachel getting a new job was really the turning point. For years she wanted out of retail, and she finally got her chance thanks to her friend Ingrid setting up an interview for her. When she worked retail, it wasn't uncommon for her to get home at midnight, sometimes later during the holidays. She was guaranteed to work at least one day every weekend, and it was just something she didn't feel passionate about anymore. We wanted to start a family, but retail made it pretty tough. Not only would I not want a woman in her third trimester working 10 hour days and being on her feet all day, but it wouldn't allow Rachel to have much home time with me and the baby either. It would have been more like two single parents raising a child instead of a couple doing so. Rachel started her new job in February, we found out she was pregnant in April. Our lives were forever changed.

Careerwise, I was afraid to admit that I was unhappy where I was. I've been with my current employer for just over 8 years now. I guess I had gotten complacent and things started to feel a bit stagnant. SO I voiced my displeasure to the powers that be at work, and luckily for me, they valued me enough as an employee to make some changes, open some doors and make me happy again. Plus having a VP and a director from two different groups fighting for you is great for ones ego. So I start 2008 with a renewed sense of self worth and with great optimism.

Becoming a dad pales everything else by leaps and bounds. I know it sounds cliche and corny, but it really is the most wonderful and rewarding experience. It's been hard at times, very frustrating at times, and very trying at certain points, but overall it's been a very positive experience for Rachel and I. While it's very rewarding, it's also a lot harder than I ever imagined. Keeping a newborn happy is a full time job in itself. Trying to do that while sleep deprived and trying to work full time makes things even more challenging. Thankfully I have a wonderful partner in Rachel. She's been a rock, and we've been each other support systems. Without each other, none of this would have been possible.

So what about 2008? First off I'm not making any resolutions. Resolutions are impractical for many reasons. Usually we start off the year with lots of enthusiasm and feel like we can conquer the world. So we set these goals for ourselves which are just too demanding and unrealistic. Sure I would like to run 5 miles every day. But it's not realistic. If I run 2 miles 2-3 times a week, I would be happy. I'd like to think that I could go without friend foods and red meat. But I know it's not going to happen. So I'll try to eat more chicken, and grill or bake it when possible, but I know there will be days when I crave some Popeyes or Taco Bell. I'll definitely make little steps like continuing to use the stairs at work instead of the elevator, and drinking less soda in the coming year. Those are realistic goals, at least to me.

My final goal is spending money more wisely. I don't have any outstanding debt, and I have a house, so I'm doing something right. But I have a tendency to succumb to impulse buys. Someone at work will tell me about a great new gadget, and I have to have one too. This year I want to try to stop myself from making those impulse buys and instead use some of the money to put into a college fund for Max or into my own personal investments. I find the stock market and mutual funds to be fascinating. I did pretty well in 2007 with personal investing. I hope I have the same luck this year.

Wishing you all a great 2008!

Merry Christmas to Me?

2007-12-13T08:44:00.001-05:00

Since I came back to work this week, I've been catching up and chatting with some of my co-workers. A good portion of the talking has been about Max, but I picked up on a bit of a disturbing trend. If it's not bad enough that the meaning of Christmas has been completely lost and commercialized, now it seems like people are buying gifts to themselves. What every happened to spoiling others?

I won't name anyone specifically, but one person mentioned buying themselves a new laptop, another an iPhone, and a third a new car. The one getting the iPhone brought it up rather humorously. He whips out his iPhone to show me. Then he says, it's a Christmas present, and that he bought it himself. So he bought it himself, and gave it to himself 2 weeks early. Sweet!

The girl who got the car totally needed it though. Her old car was such a piece of crap. We went out to lunch one afternoon and when we got back I had such a bad headache. I swear that car had a carbon monoxide leak. Amazingly she used that car to drive back and forth to Ohio dozens of times. So I guess if you could get past the mismatched paint, the dents, the overall loudness and oh yeah, the toxic fumes, it was a sweet ride.

I'm very excited about the return of American Gladiators. It will probably turn out to be a disappointment, but maybe not. I hope they learned a little something and added some Most Extreme Elimination Challenge type stuff in the show. I don't see Layla Ali and Hulk Hogan being as entertaining as Captain and Taneal of MXC. Oh and some hot gladiatorettes. I hope they didn't go the Nicole Bass/China Doll route. I did a short clip featuring a tall blond gladiator. She looked to be Scandavian or perhaps eastern European. She looked very healthy. And there appears to be water, lots and lots of water on the set. My guess is that the water will be chilly to, if you catch my drift.

Tracy Morgan was on a local radio show this morning promoting a local appearance. You gotta live Tracy. The answer to the first question they asked him as so classic.

DJ: So Tracy, is the layoff from the writers strike driving you crazy?
TM: I love cold weather, I'm a football player.

Ahhh Tracy. I think I'm gonna start answering questions like that. Give answers totally unrelated to the question.

R: Hey Mike, can you pick up a pack of diapers on the way home from work?
M: Habanera from Carmen is awesome!

I think the current president and some of the candidates are learning from Tracy as well.

Reporter: What do you plan on doing to reduce the US dependency on foreign oil?
GWB: Last night we ate some of tacos.

Reporter: What would you do to stop the increasing amount of housing foreclosures?
I [HEART] Huckabee: My three wives will agree with me when I say, a womans place is in the home.

Reporter: If you become president, what will you do help the people of the Sudan?
Hillary: I love pants suites!

Anywho, I'm off to buy myself a new iMac for Christmas!

Ron Paul

2007-12-09T00:28:00.000-05:00

I'm 99% behind Ron Paul. I think he thinks far enough outside the box to really make a positive change in this country. My only concern is his age. Bill Clinton and "W" came into office as relatively young men, and the presidency aged them quite a lot. I'm just afraid of what the rigors of the presidency will do to him.

I think a lot of people are pretty disgusted by the two major political parties. Right now there are major divisions among party lines. Democrats rather spite Republicans than do what's right and vice versa. Ron Paul actually has some members of the democratic party backing him. I think he may have enough support among both parties to help everyone find a common ground and do what's good for the country for a change.

I think the grass roots type campaign Ron is running is a lot more refreshing than funding a campaign with $1200 a plate fund raisers.

Im sleep deprived, so hopefully this makes some sort of sense.

A-Rod

2007-11-15T08:30:00.000-05:00

I'm so torn about the whole A-Rod situation. Half of me wants the Yankees to give him a swift kick in the ass and slam the door in his face. The other side of me doesn't want to see the best modern day baseball player go someplace else.

I'm trying to figure out the motivation behind his sudden change of heart. Best I can tell, there are a few reasons this could have happened:

1) Scott Boras jumped the gun and announced Alex's decision to opt out too early. Was it miscommunication? Boras taking the bull by the horns? I don't know.

2) Alex expected "suitors" to beat down his door throwing cash his way. Perhaps that didn't happen the way he envisioned it.

3) Perhaps now that the Yankees have a manager, Jorge and Mariano are back he feels that things are stabilized.

4) He's just a media whore, and likes all the attention.

Fattening of America

2007-11-12T08:27:00.000-05:00

When I was in California a few weeks ago, our trainer was Canadian. We started talking about portion sizes in Canada vs the US. He travels a lot, and said that by far American portions in restaurants are huge when compared to Canadian restaurants. He said that Australian portions are even tinier. I guess the large portions combined with the mind set that we have to clean our plates is a big contributing factor to the obesity rise in the US. Think of everyone you know. How many of them are overweight? How many of them are obese? How many of them are at or under weight.

I think lack of nutritional education. When I was going to school, I don't remember learning much about nutrition at all during science or health classes. Health class mainly consisted of our gym teacher trying to scare us about drugs and STD's. I'm not a drug addict and I don't have any diseases rotting my crotch, so I guess his message got across. So hopefully, schools nowadays are focusing a good portion (portion, get it) of their curriculum to educating kids about eating healthier.

Then this weekend I was reading about this list put together by Mens Health magazine about the 20 Worst Foods you should NEVER eat. I can't believe 1)some of these items are being sold and 2) that people actually order some of this stuff. But some of the items seemed kind of innocent, almost healthy. Like some of the drinks from Jamba Juice are 900 calories and have 10 grams of fat. A lot of people are under the impression that smoothies are healthy. And generally they are, but these damn chains find ways of making them taste better than the store next door, and they end up killing you in the process.

Quiznos makes a sandwich called the Classic Italian is a whopping 1500 calories, with 92 grams of fat and 4600 mg of sodium! Macroni Grill has a spaghetti and meatball meal that contains all the calories you should eat in an entire day!! 2,430 calories 128 g fat, 207 g carbs and 5,290 mg sodium!!! Geesh!!!

Mens Health has a portion in their magazine each month called Eat This Not That. They take an item like a cheeseburger from one chain/restaurant and offer a healthier alternative from another chain/restaurant. They are actually releasing a book in a few weeks on the same subject. A lot of times, it's hard to tell what's healthy and what's not. And sometimes doing something as simple as getting a sandwich without cheese and mayo can knock off several grams of fat.

One other thing that bothers me is that unhealthy food is so much cheaper than healthy food. I love Mama Celeste microwave pizzas. They are often on sale for $1 a piece. In comparison, I bought some Healthy Choice personal microwave pizzas and it was priced over $3.00. More than 3X's the price of the unhealthy Mama Celeste pizza which contains 4 grams of trans fat. Most shoppers (myself included) shop with their wallets and not with their brains, so of course more people are going to stock up on the pizzas that cost a dollar. How can it be that a healthier pizza costs so much more. I don't get why major brands don't have more choices of low cost, healthy foods. Probably because the unhealthy stuff sells so well.

iTunes Experiment

2007-11-12T08:25:00.001-05:00

The other night I was looking for a particular song in my iTunes library and I typed in sky. I was amazed at how many songs came up. Give it a try, type in sky and see how many songs pop up. Try a color like red. An adjective like big.

The two Joe's

2007-11-06T07:53:00.000-05:00

Seeing Joe Torre in a Dodgers jersey and hat yesterday was really weird. I'm not bitter towards Joe at all. He had a good run with the Yankees, and I wish him luck with the Dodgers. I think the Steinbrenners went about it all wrong, but I think it was the right time for Joe to part company with the Yankees. I don't see Joe winning World Series with the Dodgers, but I do think he can improve the team. It's a tough spot to come in and to be expected to win right away. Bill Parcells had great success with the Giants, but could never get a Super Bowl ring with the Patriots or Cowboys. But maybe Joe will be more like Phil Jackson and less like Mike Holmgren, who knows.

The guy I am bitter at is Alex Rodriguez. Up until this past season, I didn't feel like he was a true Yankee. I thought with the kind of season he had this year, he would surely stick around for at least one more year with the Yankees. I actually thought at one point he would sign an extension and commit to maybe 5 more years. The Yankees stuck by him during his fielding woes of 2006, and his sub .200 post season batting average. Then he turns his back on them. No loyalty whatsoever.

I see A-Rod's only motivation is money. He played like he's capable of playing in 2007 because he wanted to put up huge numbers to make him that much more attractive in the free agent market. Whoever his new team is in 2008, good luck dealing with that spoiled headcase named A-Rod. And don't expect him to hit 50+ home runs and to drive in 160+ RBI's. He will have a cushy deal, and coast through the season. Mark my words.

Losing A-Rod doesn't really hurt. If we lose Jorge Posada, that will hurt. If we lose Jorge Posada to the Mets, that will hurt even more. Of all the current Yankees, Jorge is my favorite. Mattingly was my favorite before him, Paul O'Neill followed and now Jorge. If he leaves, it's gonna really suck. Wake up Brian Cashman!!! Open the checkbook Steinbrenners.

I think Joe Gerardi will do well as Yankees manager. I don't know if he will get the Yankees to the World Series in 2008, or 2009. But I think within a few years, he will get the Yankees team back to a level of greatness. They have a solid core of young pitchers like Phil Hughes and Chen Ming Wang, and promising talent like Joba Chamberlain and Steve Karstens. The Yankees offense has remained pretty strong, but the big difference between the 2007 team and the late 90's teams is pitching. Back then they had guys like David Cone, David Wells, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte who were big game pitchers. They would step up and close the door on the opposition. Roger Clemens isn't capable of that anymore, and Andy Pettitte still does to a certain extent, but not like he did 10 years ago.

Kickin' it up a Notch...Bush Style!

2007-10-31T08:29:00.000-04:00

When I hear the word pirate, as most people, I envision a swarthy looking guy with bad teeth, an eye patch and a wooden leg. I don't think of Somali's with machine guns and rocket launchers. So it sounds funny to me to hear that the US Navy is fighting pirates. It brings to mind duals on the wooden plank and cannon fodder. Giant wooden barrels of rum, and singing sea shanties.

Go get em "Dubya!"

President Bush is taking his "war on piracy" very seriously. He plans on taking on vikings next!!! Troops are headed for Iceland as we speak.

"Let this be a warning to Captain Jack Sparrow and Capn' Crunch!"

-President Bush 10-30-2007-

Say It Ain't So Joe

2007-10-22T09:15:00.000-04:00

Thursday was a sad day for Yankees fans everywhere. As someone who sat through the miserable late 80's and early 90's, looking back it really makes me appreciate what joe Torre did for the Yankees as a whole. He transformed mediocre players like Scott Broscious, Charlie Hayes and Chuck Knoblach and transformed them into world champions. He molded young players like Jeter, Rivera and Posada and turned them into perennial All Stars and future hall of famers. So it was upsetting and angered me to see the Yankees set Joe out like yesterdays trash. They didn't have the balls to fire him, so they offer him a bogus contract then knew he would turn down. Doesn't get much more cowardly than that.

I'm not ready to say changing managers was the wrong move. That is yet to be seen. When the Yankees fired Buck Showalter and brought in Joe Torre as his replacement I was so pissed. I thought Buck was the future of the Yankees. Maybe the Yankees would have won 4 World Series rings with Buck as well. Or maybe they would have only won 1 or 2, or maybe they would have won 6, who knows.

I think if the Yankees stick with a Torre trained manager such as Joe Gerardi or Don Mattingly, I think the Yankees will be fine. I think what makes Joe stand out from other managers is his relationship with coaches. Anyone can be loud and obnoxious (see Lou Piniella), but I don't know remember hearing anyone who played under Lou say they respected him. Other than Gary Sheffield and Ruben Sierra, I haven't heard many others have a bad word to say about Joe Torre. He was more like a father to his players than a coach. I think that's important. Noone wants to let their parents down, and I think thats how a lot of the Yankees players stayed motivated.

Many felt like the Yankees dynasty of the of later 90's came to an end this year. So perhaps bringing in a new manager is the right move. I just think it could have been done with a little more class. The self part of me wants Joe to retire and never manage again. But it would be a nice slap in the face to the Steinbrenners if he turned another team around and won a world series elsewhere.

Hopefully the Yankees can convince A-Rod to stay in the Bronx as well as Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera. With the young arms the Yankees have, and the right pitching coach, I think the Yankees can be good next year. Very good. If Chen Ming Wan pitches the way he did in July and August all season long, if Phil Hughes pitches like he's capable and if Joba Chamberlain turns out to be a quality starter, the Yankees can continue to win a lot of games. They still have a veteran showing as well with Pettitte and Mussina. But there are a lot of ifs and uncertainties.

One thing is for sure, it will be strange seeing the Yankees dugout next spring without Joe Torre in it.

Damn Dog

2007-10-18T10:23:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in forever, but I finally have a reason to post. Hold on while I climb on my soapbox.

This whole Ellen Degeneris/puppy story is so ridiculous. Come on people, it's a dog. A fucking dime a dozen dog! What's so special about that dog that it's worth people sending death threats and threatening law suites? I'm not a dog person or a pet person for that matter, so maybe I'm a little incidensitive. I don't get why they can't just get another dog like the one Ellen gave to her hairdressers family. If they got that attached to THAT dog, I'm sure they would bond with the new dog as well. It's a dog. Not a child. There are millions of dogs in shelters who get put to sleep every year. Adopt another damn dog.

I think the policy of the pet placement service is pretty dumb (no pets to families with kids under 14), but threatening the poor woman who runs the service is ridiculous. All the problems in the world and Ellen has nothing better to do than cry about a fucking dog. I like Ellen and find her to be very funny and entertaining, but she's acting like a spoiled brat over this one.

Weekend Recap

2007-10-01T09:18:00.000-04:00

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. My weekend was pretty cool. Rachel recently received this really cool book to document the first year of the babies life. It has cool stuff like a family tree, and little milestones like the first time the baby sits up, first trip out of town, first smile etc. Throughout the book there are pages where you can put in pictures. One of the sections had a spot for "mommy and me before I was born" and "mommy and daddy before I was born". So friday night I got out the camera, a lightstand, photo umbrella and flash and started snapping away at Rachel. Then I started using the camera timer and jumped in for a few shots as well. Pics came out really well. Processed about half of them on Friday night before bed. Had a few pics that were ruined because of shadows around Rachel's nose. I may need to add a reflector to my photography arsenal to lighten those shadows. I'll have to do some more reading tonight to figure out the cause. But regardless, we have some cute pics of us to document how we looked before the baby came along. Im sure by this time next year, we'll have a few more wrinkles and some gray hair ;-). I posted two examples of the pics to my Flickr account, I have to resize some others so I can e-mail them or post them to Flickr.

Saturday started out early. I was up at 6:15 and out the door by 7:00. Rachel's dad setup a tee time for us up in Leesburg at a course we never played before. We got there way early (traffic was light), so we had time to hit the range, the putting green and chipping area. I may have to start doing that more often. My short game was on fire. I was chipping well on the chipping area, but figured it was just a fluke. But the 2nd hole, I hit my approach shot to left of the greenside bunker. Got out my 60 degree wedge and pitched the ball over the trap, it hit the fringe and release towards the hole. Ball came to rest about a foot from the hole. BOOYAH!!! Par!!!

Next hole was a par 3. Hit my tee shot into the greenside bunker. DOH!!! Hit the ball out of the trap, rolled it to within 3 feet. Lined up my putt and it goes in. Par and a sand save!!! BOOYAH!!! I ended up shooting a 44 on the front. Rachel's dad struggled a bit and shot a 51. So I had a nice 7 stroke lead going into the back 9.

I struggled a little at the start of the turn and by the 13th hole, Rachel's dad was coming on strong. He birdied 15, and was closing the gap. I ended up parring 15, but still dropped another stroke. On 16 I hit my drive a little right into the rough. I had 185 to the hole according to the in cart GPS. I took out my 4 iron hybrid and took a confident swing and knocked the ball 5 feet from the hole. Missed the birdie putt, but made par. Long story short, I shot another 44 on the back, Rachel's dad shot a 41, so I still won by 4 strokes. 88-92. My second best round ever. So this year my golf game has really come along. I shot an 87 in June, an 80 at Kissena in August and an 88 in September. I hope I don't forget everything I learned over the winter.

While I was out golfing Rachel and her mom went to some craft show with one of Rachel's friends from her FB days. When we got done, we met Rachel and her mom for a late lunch/early dinner. When we got home, I showered and then Rachel and I took a quick power nap. Ate a little snack, worked on the pictures some more. Then we popped in Stranger Than Fiction. We had heard mixed things about the movie, so we decided to check it out. It was odd seeing Will Ferrell in a sort of serious role. I really liked the movie and thought Maggie Gyllenhaal was very engaging and sexy. I thought it was a pretty cool concept and liked the movie, Rachel lost interest about an hour in. Not my favorite movie, but pretty cool.

Sunday went so fast, it's all a blur. Highights, got the pics printed, they came out really nice. Swapped out all the incandescent "vanity" bulbs in our bathroom with compact fluorescents. They take a little time to warm up to go to full brightness, but when they do, man it's such a nice, soothing, crisp light. Glad we did. Plus they only use 7 watts of power vs 40. Since there are 8 of them, we were using 320 watts of power when we showered, brushed our teeth etc. Now we are only using 56 watts. WOOHOO!! Pizza Hut PZone and boneless wings! Giants win! 12 sacks for the G-men tying an NFL record. Sleepy time.

Losing Weekend...Fall TV!

2007-09-17T14:32:00.000-04:00

So the Jets and Giants are both 0-2. They both lost this Sunday. The Mets were swept by the Phillies. It's a good think the Yankees were able to win 2 out of 3 against the Red Sox. Over the last 12 games, the Yankees have won 9 out of 12 from the Red Sox. Man it would be nice to meet them in the ALCS. But Cleveland and Anaheim scare me... a lot! Especially Anaheim. The Angels have been man handling the Yankees since 2002. If the Yankees can make it to the ALCS and play Boston, I could see them winning the World Series. None of the teams in the NL really worry me.

But of course, now the big spoilers could be the Orioles. The Yankees beat up on the Red Sox, but have trouble beating a team 20 games under .500. I don't get it. Yankees have 6 or 7 games left against the O's. Hopefully since the Tigers have to play the Indians, the Yankees can catch a break and the Indians could sweep the Tigers so the Yankees wouldn't lose any wild card ground. It would be nice for the Yankees to win the AL East title, but considering how awful they were in April and May, the fact that they are even close to making the playoffs amazes me.

I DOMINATED in my fantasy leagues this weekend. In my one league, I scored 177 points. Thanks to the 44 points by Carson Palmer, 43 points by Steve Smith and 30 points by Randy Moss.

There's this new movie coming out called Juno. It looks pretty cool judging by the trailer. It's got Dwight from the office, Jason Bateman, that wacky kid Michael something or other from Superbad and that guy who played the skinhead Nazi guy on Oz. Check out the trailer on YouTube. The movie comes out in December. I may be a little busy, so I may have to wait till it comes out on the DVD (pronounced DIV-ID)

Im glad the new tv season is starting. Prison Break is on tonight, and most of the other shows I watch like Heroes, House, CSI and the Office start next week. Of course Lost and 24 won't be back till 2008. Janine Gerafalo is on the new season of 24, so I probably won't watch anyway. Im kinda burned out on that show, and Janine was the nail in the coffin. There aren't any new shows that really interest. Except for maybe the Geico Cavemen. I'm ashamed of myself for saying that.

There is some other show on ABC called Big Shots, which almost looks like it could be good. But I think the men on the show are way too pretty and the story lines will end up being like Desperate Housewives. If the show starred Kevin James, Jason Alexander, and Max Casella, I might watch it.

Borat!

2007-09-11T12:36:00.000-04:00

Rachel Quote

2007-09-11T11:18:00.000-04:00

-Wow...those guys must eat a lot of gumbo-

A Rachelism uttered during the LSU-Virginia Tech game.

A night in Paris?

2007-09-07T13:36:00.001-04:00

Baby Conan?

2007-09-07T11:54:00.000-04:00

iPod Touch

2007-09-07T08:55:00.000-04:00

When the iPhone first came out, I remember thinking to myself wow that would be great as a standalone device without a phone. Glad Apple was listening to me ;-). I don't know if I'll be one of those people who waits in line the night it's released, but I really do want one.

I was watching the online video demo of the features of the new Touch and I had to laugh. They have a rather jolly Asian man as a spokesperson. He speaks very clearly, but he pronounces one word rather strangely. He doesn't say button, he replaces the double t in button, with a d and says "press the buddon". There's only one other person I've ever heard pronounce button that way. I won't mention names, but YOU know who you are.

The one concern I have with the touchscreen is fingerprints. Of course in the demos the person doing the demo has super clean fingers. But what about someone like me with greasy I-talian fingers.

The one feature that Im not sure about is the camera. I know the iPhone has a built in camera. I haven't heard any mention about the iTouch having a built in camera. I have a feeling they left that out and they will include it in future versions.

As cool as the iTouch is, I think they really botched the Nano. The Nano that Rachel has is so think and sleek. It's very simple, compact and pleasing to the eye. The new Nano design is so clunky looking. It's cool that it now plays videos, but it looks like something made by Fisher Price (minus the lead paint).

Are you Ready for some foosball????

2007-09-06T10:05:00.000-04:00

I had my last fantasy draft last night. It was a 16 team league, so it was really challenging. My team is pretty lacking, so it should be interesting. Noone team is really that strong, so it's really anyones game. I ended up taking Willie Parker as my first round pick (I picked 8th). When it snaked back around to me, and it was time for my 2nd pic, I ended up taking Thomas Jones. In hind site, I probably should have taken Drew Brees. At that point, he was one of the few elite QB's left. Manning, Palmer, Brady and Culpepper were already gone. So I waited for it to come back to me. I ended up with Matt Hasselbeck. So I'm a little scared. My other two fantasy teams are much better.

I'm pretty pumped to watch the opening night game tonight. The Yankees have the night off, so I can focus on the football this evening. Should be a pretty good game. The Saints and Colts both have really powerful offenses, and not so great defenses, so I expect it to be a shootout.

I haven't run in like 2 weeks. Im scared at this point.

The mysterious girl at the neighbors house has been figured out. It's my neighbors niece. She's visiting from Poland and studying in the US for the next year. So my neighbor isn't having an affair.

Sad to hear that Luciano Pavaratti passed away. I don't know jack about opera, but what I do know is that when I heard Luciano perform at the opening ceremonies of the last Olympics, I got goosebumps. His voice was amazing. It's too bad he didn't take better care of himself and died so young.

Classic Quote

2007-09-05T09:33:00.001-04:00

"I'm not a big fan of presidents"
-Rachel-
September 4th, 2007

Jeff Goldblum

2007-09-05T08:43:00.000-04:00

Jeff Goldblum....

Gay? Straight? A little bit of both?

I once heard that when he was a young boy, he would draw pictures of penis's in his school notebook. But don't let that sway your vote.

Upcoming NFL Predictions

2007-09-03T20:52:00.000-04:00

Here are a few predictions for the upcoming 2007-08 football season. Are you ready for some foosball?

1) Tony Romo will struggle in his 2nd year as Cowboys QB. I think by now, defenses will have him a little more figured out.

2) Matt Shaub will do well as the Texans new QB, it will be doubly sweet for him knowing that the Falcons are stuck with Joey Harrington.

3) The Redskins will win the NFC East.

4) Reggie Bush will find the endzone more this year.

5) Rex Grossman will do better than people expect.

6) The department of homeland security will raise the threat level to red after noxious gas is detected in Philadelphia. Upon investigation, the source of the fumes will be traced back to Andy Reid's office.

7) Brett Favre will get injured and end his career.

Rock Star

2007-08-23T11:21:00.000-04:00

Who hasn't dreamt of becoming a rockstar. Getting on stage and playing in front of a sold our crowd. Most of us will never experience selling out MSG and coming out for an encore. But EA is working on the next best thing. Guitar Hero is incredibly fun. Now they are working on a game called Rock Band, where they add drums, bass and vocals. SO theoretically you could go all Kurt Cobain and sing and play lead guitar. Or be like Phil Collins and sing and play the drums. Here's a video of some of the engineers at EA rocking out with their virtual instruments out. Damn this looks fun.

Oh those wacky neighbors

2007-08-23T08:17:00.001-04:00

We have really nice neighbors. I'll just call them E and W. Well E and her son went to Poland to visit their family. Before E left for Poland, she said to Rachel "make sure W doesn't have any women over the house". We both assumed she was joking and kind of laughed it off. The first week E was gone, W looked very lonely. He was spending a lot of time on the front porch with his dog, reading books and relaxing. Felt bad for the guy. The 2nd week, his daughter came to visit, so he had some company. Then last weekend, I was out mowing the grass and a young girl (perhaps in her early 20's) walked out of the house with the dog on the leash. She said hello rather enthusiastically, smiled and continued walking down the road with the dog. At first I thought it was W's daughter. But W's daughter is really tall. This girl was much smaller and more petite. So I ran into the house and asked Rachel to look out. Does that look like W's daughter. Rachel said definitely not.

So about 30 minutes later, W, his dog and the "home wrecker" got in E's car with W's weedwacker and drove off. He was gone the rest of the day and most of Sunday. Sunday night they both came back and W and HW have been back at the house all this week so far. I saw HW outside getting the mail when I came home from work on Tuesday, and Rachel saw her last night.

There maybe a completely innocent explanation for all this. She could be W's niece (although all of his family as far as I know lives in Poland and I didn't detect any accent). She could be W's daughters friend who needed a place to stay. I really doubt he's having an affair for a few reasons 1) This girl is way out of his league 2) If he was cheating on his wife, wouldn't he be a little more discreet about it? 3) E & W seem very happy together.

So I think E is scheduled to come back either this week or next. If the HW leaves the day before E gets back, then we'll be really suspicious. If HW sticks around once E gets back, then we know everything is cool. I just see this turning into the Burbs before all is said and done.

Weeds Season 2

2007-08-23T07:57:00.000-04:00

I received disk 1 of the second season of Weeds last week from Netflix. Wow the second season has been great so far. The other night Rachel went to bed early, so I sat and watched 3 episodes back to back and finished disk 1. I look forward to viewing disk two when I get back from New York.

The show really offers something for everyone. There is suspense surrounding the whole drug dealing aspect of the show. Kevin Nealon and Elizabeth Perkins offer great comedy relief, although in very different ways. There's the sexual escapades of the wacky, freeloading brother-in-law, and the dysfunctional young sons. So I think the show could be enjoyed by both men and women.

There was a particularly funny episode where the plumbing was all clogged up in the house. They call in a plumber and he removes all these tube socks that had been flushed down the toilet. Turns out the youngest son had been masturbating into his tube socks and flushing the evidence down the toilet. So the mom sends in her wacky brother-in-law to set the young lad straight. The terms he used were hysterical. My favorite was when he said "when you're pitching with your Randy Johnson". Then they follow up the talk by taking the boy to an Asian massage parlor. "no do leetel boooy, un-apropriate. You take heeem hooome". There was also an interesting scene involving a banana peel.

So if you're looking for something new to watch, check out Weeds. I think they just began season 3. It's only 30 minutes an episode, so you can blow through a season pretty quickly.

Rockstar

2007-08-21T08:57:00.000-04:00

Who can get The Teutals, Grant Hill, 3-10 Mafia, Wayne Gretsky, Ted Nuggent, Gene Simmons, Hugh Hefners playmate bitches, Dale Ernhardt Jr, Kid Rock and the Naked Cowboy in the same video? Nickelback, that's who. This is a pretty cool song and video. Enjoy. Oh and how sad is it that they have to put a hockey stick in Gretsky's hands so people can identify him.

"The girls come easy and the drugs come cheep
We'll all stay skinny cause we just won't eat!"

Something new!

2007-08-20T09:08:00.000-04:00

I came across this new feature in Madden 2008 that is really great. It's called Superstar mode. They give you several rookies from several different positions to choose from. So lets say you choose Jamarcus Russell. Well you start out in training camp and you practice several different plays from your teams playbook. Here you practice reading defenses, calling audibles, hot routing receives to beat the defense and general play execution. Then you progress to your first pre season game. Here the plays are called into your helmet and it's up to you to execute. If you simply complete a pass, you get a couple of points. But if you break free from a defender trying to sack you, then throw a pass, you get more points. A short gain yields small point values. A medium gain, slightly more, when you break a play, you get boku points. I find it particularly fun being rookie RB Adrian Peterson. The best part is when your team is on defense, you can press Y and sim past all the plays on defense. So far I've tried it at QB with Jamarcus Russell, at WR with Calvin Johnson and at RB as Adrian Peterson. RB was most fun, QB was most challenging and WR was most frustrating. When you play as a WR, it makes you sympathize with Keshawn Johnson when he said "throw me the damn ball!". There's a lot of plays where you are just blocking for the running plays, and lots of times when you run a route and don't get thrown to. Quite frustrating.

I don't know what it was, but I grilled some steaks last night and they were awesome. Maybe it's because we haven't had steak in a while, maybe it was just a particularly good cut of meat, maybe because I cooked the meat a little slower, or maybe it was the rub I made (paprika, onion powder, salt, pepper and creole seasoning), but whatever the reason, they turned out awesome. Juicy, flavorful and very tender. Rachel made potato pancakes and corn on the cob as the sides. Also very good. Lime juice and chili powder are awesome sprinkled on corn.

Superbad, the #1 movie in America. Awesome! McLovin. LOL

Friday night, Rachel's dad bought tickets for the Nationals-Mets game at RKF. Rachel's brother Jonathan had never seen a professional baseball game, so along with his father-in-law to be, two brother-in-laws to be, and two of his friends, we all headed to RFK friday night. We sat out on the bleachers in left field, but the seats where pretty good. I was worried we would be too far from the action, but our vantage point was really good. It seemed like we were so close to the center and left fielders, that we could toss a hot dog at them and nail them with it. After he had a few beers, I tried to get Jonathan to throw a beer bottle at Carlos Beltran, but he just wouldn't listen. The game was pretty exciting. Lots of base runners, two home runs, two triples and a diving catch by Dimitry Young. Damn when he landed, he left a crater.

I guess if anything good comes out of the Michael Vick case, it's bringing the ugliness of dog fighting to the public eye. Hopefully this will convince local law enforcement to crack down on these rings. One of the worst things I heard is how dog fighting "breeders" will steal other dogs from peoples back yards so the pit bulls they are training have a "sparring partner". Since these dogs are domesticated and generally friendly, they don't offer much resistance. And just to make sure their prized dogs don't get hurt, they usually break one of the domesticated dogs back legs so they can't move around much. Who's the real animal here? Geesh.

2007-08-17T10:06:00.000-04:00

Did a little bit different run last night. Rachel got home from work late, so we ordered some Thai food and chilled for a while. Rachel had a rough day, so she didn't feel like walking with me. So once it cooled down a bit, and the sun went down, I decided to do a solo run around the neighborhood. Found out that from my driveway down the block, turning right, going uphill then making another right and coming downhill past my house is just about 1/3 of a mile. Adding hills both uphill and downhill ads a new challenge. It's nice to get that little speed burst when you are tired and hit a downhill section, but you still have to maintain control. The ground was wet from the thunderstorms earlier in the evening, so it was a little slick. I finished a little off my usual pace of 11 minutes per mile. It was more like 11:30 per mile, but I couldn't really see my Forerunner because it was so dark. I usually use the forerunner to gauge how fast I am going and adjust my run to walk ratio according to stay within my 22 minute for 2 mile pace.

Talked to Rachel's brother Philip for a bit after I got back from my run. He's getting deployed sometime in the next week or so, so he won't be able to attend Rachel's other brothers wedding which is next Saturday. Keep him in your thoughts and prayers that he remains safe.

I'm so glad the Knights of Prosperity came back on. I thought it had been canceled, because the 1st season ended pretty abruptly last spring. The 2nd season has been awesome so far. This year, they are trying to steal a 1.6 million dollar ring out of Ray Romanos apartment safe. Last night I was very disappointed however. The DVR said it recorded a new episode. When I went to play it, it was an episode of According to Jim. Come on ABC, does Jim Baluschi really need to be in high def? Damn!

I have my first fantasy football draft on Tuesday. I';m pretty excited. This is the first year I am this particular league at work. It's a non keeper league which I like. Plus, it's got a flex player roster spot which I really like. So each week you have to start 1 QB, 2 RB's, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1K and 1 Defense. Plus you get to start 1 additional QB, RB or WR as your flex player. And we are doing double headers each week. So you play two games a week.

Played golf on Wednesday nice with two of my friends from work. The course we played was pretty damn awesome. The best part was because we teed off at 4:45, it was twilight rates, and we walked so it was only $27 including a pull cart. SWEET!!! I started off kind of rough, with a 7 on the opening par 5, and a 6 on the second hole which was a par 4. But I settled down after that. I ended up shooting a 45 through 9. Nine over is pretty good considering I was +4 after the first two holes. I parred 3 or 4 holes and played bogey golf the rest of the way. On the par 3, eight hole it was a 192 yards. I got out my 3 iron hyrbid and stepped up to the ball. It felt all wrong and I should have stepped away. But I went ahead and hit and ended up coming up short and to the right in a bunker. After everyone else hit, I teed up another ball. This one took off like a rocket straight for the flag. It hits the front edge of the green, releases and comes to rest about 2 feet from the cup. For the fun of it, I tapped it in for birdie. I ended up with a 4 on the ball that counted :-(. So I was this close to shooting 7 under.

Ramiro was the winner of the group, he finished at 5 over. His drives were all over the place, but they were long and he knows how to get himself out of trouble. Me on the other hand, hit 5 really nice drives, 1 mediocre drive and 1 bad drive. On only one hole I followed up my tee shot with a nice 2nd shot. The majority of the time, I needed to get my wedges out and chip or pitch on. Even when I hit the green, a lot of them ran off the back.

I'm glad bottled water has come under fire. I can't believe it's taken this long to open peoples eyes. Bottle water ruins children's teeth, the millions and millions of plastic bottles clutter landfills and often wind up in lakes and streams because people dispose of them carelessly and they charge you like a 500% markup. I don't know whats a bigger ripoff...coffee houses, Harris Teeter or bottled water companies.

Speaking of Harris Teeter, they just opened a new one near the house. It was the big grand opening, and they sent out $10 coupons for every $40 you spent. So Rachel and I went to check it out. The store is beautiful, but damn is it overpriced. $7.99 for a pound of bing cherries? $12.99 for a pound of Bored Head ham? Screw that. The other thing that pissed me off is their store brand pancake syrup. Rachel and I usually use Mrs. Buttersworth light syrup. Mrs. B was like $4.79 at Harris Teeter, and their store brand was like $3.99. So I said, hey lets try the Teeter brand. We have bought a lot of the Bloom store brand stuff and it's all been really good for the most part. Their lowfat yogurt is awesome. On sunday Rachel makes me waffles and I pour out the last of the Mrs. B on my first waffle. Then I open the HT brand and pour it on my 2nd waffle. It was like pouring cough syrup on waffles. It was awful and had a terrible bitter after taste. Yuck! So I don't think I will be going back to HT any time soon. Unless I need some free range quail eggs or yak butter.

Childrens Books

2007-08-15T10:11:00.000-04:00

I don't remember reading this one when I was a kid...

And I'm glad I didn't have an uncle Pete.

I Caved....

2007-08-15T08:55:00.000-04:00

I caved and bought Madden on the way home last night. I punched in Best Buy into my GPS as I was leaving work yesterday and I saw there was one like 5.5 miles away. I looked at the location and I practically had to drive past it (give or take 1/2 mile or so) to get home. In route to Best Buy I saw a Toys R Us. So I jumped in there, got my copy and headed home.

I played two games last night. One as the Colts the other as the Saints. I lost the game as the Colts, won as the Saints. Wow the Colts offense is crazy. I had an empty backfield formation with 5 wideouts. The 5 wideouts were Reggie Wayne, Anthony Gonzalez (go Buckeyes!), Dallas Clark, Joseph Adi and Marvin Harrison. This one particular play was virtually unstoppable. Unfortunately, so was my CPU opponent, so I ended up losing 24-21 after coughing the ball up late. The Saints are a fun team to use. With the combo of Deuce McCallister and Reggie Bush, you can spell your HB to give them a breather, or line one up as a wideout and have the other come out of the backfield. Plus they have two speedy receives in Marques Colston and Terrence ? Copper.

I like all the options Madden gives you. I feel like Payton Manning out there when I'm assigning hot routes. But sometimes I tend to do too much and have receivers bumping into one another, or I lose control of the game clock and get called for delay of game. So I have to practice a little more. I haven't messed with the defensive hot routes much. The one time I did, I ended up blitzing a linebacker, which left a huge mismatch of a speedy wideout being covered by a defensive tackle. You all know how that ended.

There is also a mini game that I love. It's you as an offensive lineman and you have to lead block for your HB agisnt 3 defenders. It's so much fun. It gives me a new appreciation for offense lineman. I thought they were just huge, fat, slow guys. But some of those guys can really move. They get out in front of the running backs in a hurry. Amazing that a 300 pound person can move that quickly.

So overall, from what I've seen of Madden, I like it so far. A lot of new stars emerged last year, and there were quite a few free agents who jumped ship, so it should be interesting. Plus you have all those rookies coming into the league like Calvin Johnson, Marshawn Lynch, Aj Hawk (go Buckeyes) and Jamarcus Russell (if he ever signs). I really hope Jamarcus gets to play this year. He amazed me how he could throw a ball 60 yards off his back leg. That guy has a cannon for an arm.

Went running for the first time in almost two weeks on Monday night. It was so hot last week, and the air quality was code orange most of the week, so I didn't think it was smart to push myself. I managed to fit in 2 miles on my elliptical last Tuesday night, but it was so hot in my garage, I felt like I was just oozing sweat. Before I stopped, I felt like I was making really nice progress. Monday night, it felt like I was almost back to square one. I ended up finishing 2 miles in 22:10. Even though I was only off my goal by 10 seconds, I was really struggling. Hopefully as I get back out there on a regular basis again, my stamina will return. I'm playing golf after work with some work friends, so I won't get to run tonight. However, we've decided we're going to play 9 holes of golf and walk the course. So I'll be getting lots of exercise. Considering the average golf hole is about 400 yards, that's about a 1/4 mile. So if we play 9 holes, I will walk roughly 2-2.5 miles. Supposedly the course is quite hilly, so it should be wacky.

Ya know, back in the early days of Hollywood, there were lots of people who struggled with substance abuse. Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Natalie Wood etc. But I guess since the reporters back then weren't so veracious, it was either overlooked, or in Dean Martin's case, used in a comedic way. But now with people like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, we know every excruciating detail of their lives. Every time they fall off the wagon, whenever they have a roll in the hay with some new guy (or gal), or whenever they check themselves in or out of rehab. I guess because Lindsay is hot, it causes the paparazzi to follow her around ever turn in hopes of getting the accidental nip slip or beaver peaker. Thanks to the paparazzi, we all got to see Britney's c-section scar is amazing detail.

I'm sure there are lots of young guys in Hollywood who have addiction problems as well. But I guess seeing Franky Munoz and Wilmer Valderama passed out in the back of a limo isn't as interesting or hot. Of course if they turn violent and get into a scuffle, or slap around someone trying to take their picture, then it's Page 6 newsworthy. I hope a few of the young stars like Hayden Pennetier, Vince Young and that little girl from Little Miss Sunshine can manage to stay out of trouble. Vince Young is on the cover of Madden, so I expect something bad to happen to him any day now. I don't know what it is about people who come into fame. They make it big, get paid and the best thing they can do with their lives is destroy it. I just don't get it.

R.I.P. Scooter

2007-08-14T14:30:00.001-04:00

When I was a little kid of 5 or 6, I remember watching Yankees games with my dad on Channel 11 (WPIX). Phil Rizutto was the voice of the Yankees at the time. Sometime my dad would get a little annoyed at Scooter because he would spent more time talking about canolis that he would talking about the game. But I always loved Scooters enthusiasm and love for the game. Sure he would get confused sometimes, but he was a simple man, from a much simpler time. It's been over 10 years since Phil announced for the Yankees, but it was fun seeing him at Old Timers Day and other events at Yankees stadium.

Rizzuto was a member of 7 World Champion teams. I believe he was also part of the Yankees dynasty that won 5 straight World Series during the 1950's. He played well before my time, so I know him more for his announcing. But the footage I've seen of him was pretty amazing. He was master of the lost skill of bunting, and I always admired his level of success despite his small stature.

With the passing of Phil, there aren't many legendary Yankees left. Mantle, Maris, Gherig Dimagio and Ruth have long been gone. Berra and Whitey Ford are probably the only two remaining Yankees greats from the 40's and 50's who are left. Reggie Jackson, Yogi Berra, Don Mattingly, Whitey Ford and Ron Guidry are the only players who have retired numbers in monument part that are still with us.

If you don't know who Phil "Scooter" Rizutto is, give the song Paradise by the Dashboard Lights a listen. He's the announced talking during the song.

Holy Cow!!!

R.I.P. Scooter!

Happy Maddenoliday

2007-08-14T09:20:00.001-04:00

Thanks to the release of Madden 2008, thousands if not millions of people are expected to call out sick today. Supposedly only the Monday after the Super Bowl and the first Friday of March Madness are the only days when more people call out sick. Perhaps we need two or three more federal holidays. We don't have any holidays on August, so why not make the 2nd Tuesday in August a national holiday?

Ironically, I think this will be the first year I don't run out and buy Madden on the day it's released. I may not even buy it at all. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I'm just tired of being burned by all the hype. Fact of the matter is that since the "next gen" versions of Madden have come out, the overall game has suffered. Sure the game looks beautiful, but a lot of what used to make the game great on the regular XBOX is now missing.

It was annoying the piss out of me, so I looked it up. In case it was bugging you, here's the explanation as to why all the NFL QB's are wearing green dots on the back of their helmets. Quarterbacks wear special helmets with radios in them so they can hear the play being called in by the coach/offensive coordinator/backup QB. Well apparently, some teams were equipping other members of their team with these special helmets as well. I guess this would come in handy if you are on the road and the crowd is really noisy. You equip your receivers and rb's with these helmets and they can hear the play being called in without having to hear the QB yell over the crowd. Not sure if the officials inspect everyones helmets before the game, so not sure how effective it will be.

Wow the Yankees game was exciting last night. Most of their wins lately have been blow outs, so it was kind of nice to have a close game for once.

The movie Super Bad looks hysterical. McLovin. HAHAHA.

I downloaded these voice add ons for my GPS. I grabbed a few different ones like Yoda, Mr. T and Ozzie Osbourne. Some of them were ok, but some of them were just really bad imitations of people. Like the one of Homer Simpson. It's the worst Homer impression ever. I think my mom can do a better job of imitating him. It's pretty entertaining hearing Yoda say "turn left, you will!". The Joe Pesci one is pretty bad as well. It's just some high pitched New Yorker who curses a lot.

“I’m too much of an erratic moody baby! I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

-Kurt Cobain-

Donnie Ballgame

2007-08-09T14:47:00.000-04:00

Better player...better stache.

And Oscar Gamble had the greatest sports fro ever!

Canadians are nice, eh

2007-08-08T10:36:00.000-04:00

For a while now, I've felt like a lot of Americans are very bitter and kind of mean in general. It doesn't bother me when someone makes jokes about self destructive people like Britney and Lindsay, they brought this mess upon themselves, and in many ways, encourage the mockery. But when I hear people making fun of the girl who lost her feet on a ride at Six Flags, or someone making fun of Tammy Faye, that is just cruel and uncalled for. Maybe Americans could stand to be a little nicer to one another.

My feelings about being mean were backed up last night while watching the Yankees game. The Yankees are playing the Blue Jays, so the MLB package broadcasted the game on the Toronto tv network. The score was something like 7-2 Yankees and it was 1st and 3rd for the Yankees and Johnny Damon stole 2nd base. When you're up by 4 or more runs, it's often frowned upon and considered "showing up" the other team if you bunt, steal bases or do anything else that could inflate the score further. Well normally, after seeing Johnny Damon steal 2nd, I would expect to hear the announcers say something like "that was uncalled for", "that's bush league" or "that's a cheap shot". Oh no, not in Canada. Those super nice Canadian announcers put a nice spin on it. "The Yankees must really respect the high powered offense of the Blue Jays. They're trying to scrape together a few more insurance runs, to put this game out of reach for the Blue Jays bats". That made me chuckle.

On a side note, I would like to thank the Mariner Moose for almost running over Coco Crisp the other day. Keep practicing and maybe next time, you'll get him! See, I'm a mean American!

Being Jack

2007-08-08T09:26:00.000-04:00

"Using a condom is like wearing a 'warm garbage bag'"

-Jack Nicholson-

Your tax money...

2007-08-07T13:29:00.001-04:00

Thanks to the crooked democratically lead House of Representatives, your tax money will now go towards welfare benefits for illegal immigrants:

Pretender

2007-08-06T21:28:00.000-04:00

"What if I say I'm not like the others?"

"What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?"

"You're the pretender!"

"What if I say I will never surrender!"

Weekend is here....

2007-08-03T08:39:00.000-04:00

Have a can of beer!!!

Went running again last night. Skipped Wednesday because we had to run and pick up the new baby furniture. Damn, why couldn't it have come in 3 days sooner. Anyway, it was a really warm, muggy night last night. When I went running at about 7:30, it was still about 85 degrees and quite humid. After I finished my 1st mile, I really wanted to quit. But I trudged on, and finished my 2nd mile. Completed 2 miles in just under 22 minutes. I think 10-11 minutes per mile is about my average. A little slower last night because the heat really zapped me. Plus the track was really crowded last night. Dumb people were out there walking their dogs around the track and riding bikes around it. It's tiring enough finishing 2 miles, but then when you have to jump over leashes and dodge bikes, it's pretty bad. I wish some people would think a little. Oh yeah and there were also people running the wrong way. Idiots!

I've lost about an inch on my waist and my legs look and feel more toned since running. But what I really notice is my spirits are way up. All winter and most of the spring, I was really down in the dumps. I kept focusing on all the negative things in my life and kept overlooking all the positives. Listening to music is usually a great way for me to get pumped up and feel good. Even that wasn't working. Now I'm actually enjoying music again, and enjoying some of the simple pleasures in life. It feels good. When the weather turns colder and the days get shorter, I will have to start using the elliptical again.

I read an interesting article about George Steinbrenner. Apparently he was set to pass the team on to his son in law when he passes on. But his daughter and son in law divorced. Wow, how much of a bitch must his daughter be for a guy to pass on "inheriting" the Yankees. Geeesh. But the thing that really got me about the article is how they hinted that George Steinbrenner has Alzheimer's. That would certainly explain a lot. I can't help but laugh everytime I see that hump Oliver Plat playing George Steinbrenner.

After work and dinner Rachel and I are heading out to Ocean City. Im not really looking forward to sitting in Friday night traffic all the way out there, but it should be a fun time. We're supposed to meet up with Rachel's parents and Audra, Mike and the kids. Rachel's aunt has a time share out there, so we'll be staying at her time share house. According to the GPS, it's about 180 miles. But I have a feeling with traffic it will probably take 4-5 hours to get out there.

I'm not overly excited about the launch of Madden this year. Every year I get all pumped up, and it usually ends up with me being disappointed. I think the fact that EA has the exclusive rights to the NFL rosters really hurts matters. When 2k Sports used to have their own game, it forced EA and 2K to push the envelope. Perhaps Im not as excited because the Giants are going to suck big time this year. The guy responsible for like 75% of their offense last year is now doing cooking segments with Meredeth and Al. The one thing I look forward to is using Anthony Gonzalez with the Colts. I have to figure out a way to cancel my XBOX live. I haven't used it in like 6 months and it's set to auto renew in January.

I saw a really weird clip on Youtube. It's a 3 minute video of Christopher Walken cooking chicken. Very odd. Of course anything Mr. Walken does is a little odd.

I think in a few weeks I'm gonna order myself components to make a square faced driver. Im leaning towards the Mantara XL by Hireko. What I love about Hireko is that they have little sound clips to let you hear what the driver sounds like before you buy it. Very cool. My brother in law bought the new Cobra driver (I think it's one of the Speeders), and holy crap is that thing loud. It sounds like a canon going off. The first time he hit a drive with it, I wasn't expecting it and it scared the crap out of me.

Had a scary Wii moment the other night. Andrew and Ashley came over to play some Wii bowling. We secured the wrist strap on the kids wrists and they started playing. Somehow after about 5 or 6 frames the wrist strap made it's way off of Andrews wrist. He ended up flinging the Wiimote towards the tv. Luckily it hit the bottom of the tv near the speakers and not the screen. I damn near had a heart attack.

I watched the X games last night and it did not disappoint. My favorite event is the Moto X. Some guy who had never competed before tried to do a double backflip like Travis Pastrana did last year. He made it about 1 3/4 and then him and the bike just slammed into the dirt. When the bike hit, the throttle got stuck and the bike swung around and almost nailed him. It was intense. Then there was this guy, who fell like 50 feet off the air ramp. I dont know how he didnt die.

Have a nice weekend!

It was so hot yesterday...

2007-08-02T09:39:00.001-04:00

Read this as if you are Bob Hope doing a USO show....

I tell ya, it was so hot in Washington DC yesterday that Dick Cheney shot his hunting buddy in the face with a Super Soaker. HEY O!!!!

Grave Digger

2007-07-31T10:59:00.000-04:00

An older song by Dave Matthews, but one of my favorites. I saw the video on MHD the other night for the first time. It really compliments the song well. Very powerfully done, with great imagery. The beginning is slow, but worth the wait.

Buffalo Tom

2007-07-31T10:55:00.000-04:00

Really like the new CD by Buffalo Tom. They were awesome on Letterman the other night. I've always like power treos. BT creates a nice wall of sound, and they have a raw sound. Not overly processed and digitally scrubbed like a lot of todays music. Not sure what a September Shirt is, but the song rocks!! Enjoy!

Personal Best

2007-07-30T22:22:00.000-04:00

Skipped jogging on Friday because my mom was in town visiting. Audra came over with the kids after dinner to play the Wii, so I didn't think I was gonna get a run in tonight either. But they left around 7:30 to go to bed, so Rachel and I headed to the track.

We got there at about 8:00 and it started getting dark, so I figured I better run a little more tonight and walk less so we can get out of there before it's dark. I finished the first mile in 9:38. I was pumped. As John Fogherty's Rockin' All Over the World played, it fired me up for my second mile. Then some AC/DC came on, and I grunted my way around. I was pretty much walking 1/3 and running 2/3 of each lap at this point. I was at 1.75 miles and starting to really tire. I was at about 18:00 and needed to walk for a bit. I walked for about a minute, then came around the last turn and began to sprint for the finish. Rob Zombie's YEAH, YEAH encouraged me as I got closer and closer. I wanted to stop so bad. But I grunted through it and finished in 19:45. So I broke the 20 minute mark. Pretty good considering I was doing 12 minute miles when I first started and last week I finished each mile in about 11 minutes. So I'm shaving time off each week. I think as my stamina builds, I'll eventually be able to finish a full lap without stopping, then walk for 1/3 of a lap and do another full lap. That should shave another 20-30 seconds off per mile.

On Sunday, I got to play golf with Dylan my Godson which I enjoyed so much. It was such a fun time, and I got such a kick out of seeing him out there. Thankfully I didn't embarrass myself, and held my own. I was expecting to dribble one off the tee on the first hole, but I hitting a nice, high soaring drive that went about 220 yards. My brother in law Richard hit one about as far, and followed up by hitting his 2nd shot about 10 feet from the pin. He putted in for birdie. Holy crap. I ended up shooting a 97, Richard shot a 96 and Dylan finished with a legit 94. He teed off from the yellow tees (we played from the tips), but Dylan did a really good job. I may be a little partial, but he was pretty damn good. On a couple of the shorter par 4's, he hit his drives about 170 yards and followed up with a 7 iron onto the green. He had about 4 or 5 pars, way more than either of us had. Definitely want to play golf with him again.

Went to the driving range out near work with my friend from work. He is just getting into golf, so he wanted me to give him some pointers. We went to the Dulles Golf Center in his Prius which took us about 15 minutes to get to. We got there and it was like a little mini resort. Really nice chipping area, putting green, mini golf, batting cages and about 45 driving stalls. Nice! We walked up to the sign that said "Automated" and found this weird hopper. We dumped our balls in (OUCH!) and read the little sign. A pressed the green button and a ball rolled out of the hopper, settled in this little dip in the mat and this rubber tee came up and lifted the ball. AWESOME. The net, at the back of the range was 230, and I hit quite a few to the back of the net. BOOYAH!! The nice thing about the auto tees were that you could adjust the tee way up about 2.5-3 inches for your driver, an inch for a fairway wood, and like 1/2 inch for irons and hybrids. I git to practice hitting my hybrids off the tee which will hopefully come in handy on long par 3's. The other nice thing about the mats were that they were air cushioned. So when you hit your irons off the deck, it wasn't bone jarring. It was soft and almost like grass. AWESOME

The last few days....

2007-07-26T09:04:00.000-04:00

Who's More Now is ruining ESPN.

1) Is has the Stewart Scott factor.
2) It's a dumb concept that should be reserved for VH-1 and E!

Catherine Zeta Jones was on Letterman last night. About ten years ago when she was in Zoro and gracing the cover of Maxim, she was a favorite of mine. She hasn't done a whole lot lately, so I had forgotten about her. Last night on Dave, WOWWEE WEEWAH!!! Man she looked amazing. The face, the body, the accent. Damn. I don't like the full on British accent like Sienna Miller has or Renee Zelwieger tries to have, but Kate's is nice.

I'm not sure which sport is more of a joke at this point NBA basketball, or bike road racing.

The other night I grilled baked potatoes. Wow was that tasty. You stab the potato with a fork. Rub a little oil on the potato, then sprinkle with salt. Nuke for 4 minutes. Flip the potato, and nuke for 4 more minutes. Then take the potato and throw in on the grill for about 15 minutes until the potato is sort of soft. So good!!!

Another win for the Yankees. Here they come!!!

Ran on Monday and Wednesday. Monday I ran after dinner, and got some cramps in my stomach as I was running. So last night, Rachel and I went before dinner. Worked out much better. I was actually able to do 90 seconds of jogging and 120 of walking. So I've moved on to the next level. Only problem with running at 5:30 as opposed to 7:30 is that it's quite a bit warmer. The sun was pretty strong, but the track was empty. It was just me, Rachel and some girl out there. If it's a super hot day, I may have to wait till after dinner. I finished 2 miles last night in around 21:30. So my times are improving.

My mom flies in today. My sister Donna and her family will be stopping by on Saturday night on the way back from Hilton Head, SC. They'll stay the night and stay around Sunday for the shower. While the shower is going on, the guys (including Dylan) will be playing golf. My other sister Linda from MD, will be coming Sunday morning with two of her daughters for the shower. Im looking forward to playing golf with Dylan. Hopefully I don't imbarras myself in front of him.

Aaron Eckhart creeps me out. Something I don't like or trust about that guy.

For the record, I think Drew Carrey as host of the Price is Right is a mistake. I felt the same way when Katey Couric got picked to host the nightly news on CBS. People want Katey to talk about cooking and Hollywood gossip, not about the war in Iraq and the 2008 election. Who's Line is it Anyway, was an awesome show, but it wasn't because of Drew. Drew is disturbing to look at, and I don't see people tuning in to watch him on the Price is Right. But who knows.

Wow is Corey Haim's brain fried. I always thought that Corey Feldman was the kooky one, but Haim is really seems like a nut. Feldman seems to have his life back in order. It was pretty entertaining watching them on Larry King the other night. What a weird grouping of people.

Running Confusion

2007-07-23T10:36:00.001-04:00

Went jogging again friday night. The track was really empty which was nice. Not a whole lot of weaving in and out like I normally have to do. It was a confusing run to say the least.

On wednesday when I ran I felt really good, I felt like my breathing was in control and I didn't get as winded as I did the days before. It was just the opposite on Friday. I felt like I was really gasping for air and really struggled. But the amazing thing was that I finished in great time. I set the virtual trainer to a pace of 2 miles in 22 minutes. Well I finished two miles in 22:09. Pretty damn close. But I think I got screwed and finished ahead of that time. The track I run at is supposed to be 1/4 mile. I did my first lap and it seemed like when I crossed where I started it was at about .25 miles. But when I finished, as I finished lap 8 and crossed where I had started it said I was at 1.85 miles. Somewhere I lost .15 of a mile. I made sure I stayed in the outermost lane, but for some reason, it said I came up short. There's a few spots where there are trees that overhang the track. So maybe I lose my connection with the satellite briefly and it throws off my time.

It was strange also because I felt like I struggled so much and was huffing and puffing and really pushing, yet I finished in really good time. The other odd thing was that the rest of the night, my nose was running like crazy and I was hacking up "lung butter". Maybe all the running is clearing out the crud from my lungs. Im curious to see if its easier to run now.

At this point for tonight Im not sure I will run. I have a lot to get done before my mom comes down on Thursday. If I run, it will probably tire me out and I won't want to do anything. We'll see what happens. Rachel has been enjoying the walking. If I do run, I think Im just gonna use a stopwatch and do 8 laps.

Man, if only the Yankees could play the Devil Rays every day. 21-4. Geesh. That's more points than the NY football Giants score some weeks. I'm trying not to get excited about Shelly Duncan, because 1) he hit 3 home runs off of Devil Rays pitching 2) his name is Shelly.

That story about the NBA ref sounds crazy. That ref is so dead. Sounds like he has all kind of tie in with organized crime. This is just one more reason why NBA basketball sucks.

I'm not really a dog lover, or any other animal for that matter. But when I heard about how Michael Vick and his friends and family treated those dogs, it upset me. The fighting part didn't really bother me. Animals in the wild fight one another all the time. Even though dogs have been domesticated, they are still animals and have that animal/survival instinct. But when I heard about how they would body slam the dogs, use cattle prods to electrocute the dogs and how they would snap dogs over their knees, it made me sick. Makes me wonder who the real animals are.

Radio legend Don Geronimo has announced that he will be retiring in May of 2008. Not sure if it's some sort of bargaining chip or if he's serious. When his wife Frida died, Mike, Buzz and Rob did the show and the show was still really great. So I think they could do well without Don. But Don is more of a mans man than Mike, Rob and Buzz. I like when Don talks about football and sports in general. I don't see that happening if Rob, Buzz and Mike do the show. In fact Don usually determines the subject matter and drives the discussions. So not sure how things would be without him. Coincidentally, you can now download full episodes using iTunes.

Jogging Day 2

2007-07-18T22:33:00.001-04:00

Rachel and I ran a few errands after work. We stopped and picked up a quick bite to eat. I had Subway, she had Chicfila. I was feeling tired, it was already 7:30 and I started to think, I'll just skip a day. But Rachel said lets go home, change our clothes and go to the track. She grabbed her Nano, I grabbed my Forerunner, and we headed to the track...

I did the same pattern, 60 seconds of jogging, 90 seconds of brisk walking. I finished my first mile 10:55. I concentrated on getting my breathing in check during the 90 seconds of walking. Seemed to make the jogging stretches a little easier. I finished the 2nd mile in 12:05. So I completed my 2 miles in 23 minutes. Im pretty happy with that time. I only slowed down about a minute my second mile.

I talked to Audra and she runs regularly. She does about 2.5 miles in 20 minutes. So I am not too far off that pace. I think as I build my stamina and start jogging longer stretches I can get my two mile time down to about 20 minutes.

I am supposed to repeat my 60-90 alternation on Friday. Then I am supposed to progress on to 90 seconds of jogging and 2 minutes of walking. Not sure I am ready for that. I may do another week of 60-90 before moving on.

Rachel walked about 4 laps (1 miles). We finished up at around 8:55 just as it was getting dark. My left thigh is pretty tender right now. I kind of rushed to get started because it was getting late, so I didn't stretch properly. Rachel noted that my running form was much smoother tonight. My shins and ankles don't hurt at all.

Running Update

2007-07-17T11:11:00.000-04:00

I started with the 8 week from the couch to a 5k program last night. We went out to dinner with Rachel's brother and mom and when we got back, we changes clothes and went to the local middle school where they have an outside track.

Rachel walked about a mile while I did my jog/walk routine. I followed the directions and warmed up by walking briskly for 5 minutes. That was able the time it took us to walk from the car to the track. Then I ran for 60 seconds and followed that by walking for 90. I kept alternating the same amount of time for 20 minutes. I finished just under 2 miles in 20 minutes time. Not too shabby. I forgot to reset the lap time after finishing the first mile, but I think I finished the first mile in just under 11 minutes. I tell ya, jogging for 60 second intervals may not sound like a lot, but when you haven't ran a whole lot lately, 60 seconds is the perfect amount of time. So if the weather cooperates, I plan on doing the same routine Wednesday and Friday night. I feel really good today. My legs and back were killing me after my first run, but I feel great today. The backs of my ankle and calves are a little tender, but I think thats because my running form is a little unorthodox. Rachel said I run sort of flat footed. I'll have to work on that.

I did a search online last night and throughout the year, there are several 5k runs in northern Virginia. One that really intrigued me is a "fun run" in Manassas through the old Civil War Battlefield. If I actually stick with this, I may actually enter one. There is also a 5K turkey day run in Centerville on Thanksgiving Day, but thats kind of close to Rachel's due date, so I don't know if I will risk entering that one.

Next week I am supposed to progress to 90 seconds of running and 2 minutes of walking for 20 minutes. That should bring my time down to where I can finish the 2nd mile in 20 minutes. Last night I finished 1.85 miles after 20 minutes. Walked back to the car, and that brought me up to 2.05 miles.

A few weekend notes

2007-07-16T13:46:00.000-04:00

My father in law is obsessed with the Wii. We played the Wii about a month ago when Audra and the kids were in town. Rachel's dad reluctantly joined in and played. How he is hooked. He called up and asked if he could play Wiiiiiiiiiii. So he came over around 6PM. 9PM came along and he was still playing. Rachel finally played the pregnancy card and said she needed to go to bed so he needed to leave LOL. He's particularly fond of the Wii bowling and golf. As a side note, I really hope they come out with some more Wii Sport type games. I think boche ball and horseshoes would be awesome on the Wii. And perhaps shuffleboard and curling.

Shot a 103 on Saturday. The 87 is seeming more like a fluke every round I play. Played a pretty tough course, and I really fell apart at the end. Through the first five holes I was 5 over, playing bogey golf. Then the bottom dropped out on me.

The Yankees deficit is down to 9!!!! 8 in the Wild Card.

Gary Sheffield is an ass. Talk abouts our grapes.

The "newish" Mountain Dew flavor Baja Blast is awesome. It tastes like green ice pops. Although the only place I can seem to find it is Taco Bell. I wish they would start selling it in 2 liters and cans.

My legs, mostly my shins and thighs are feeling much better. They were really hurting me friday and saturday, especially after we finished golfing Saturday. Running on pavement is way harsh on the legs. I read that in extreme cases, you can actually cause stress fractures. I found a website that is supposed to take you from a couch potato (that's me), to a 5K in about 2 months time. I used to run 5K's all the time when I was at St. Margarets. Of course back then I weighed like 85 pounds and I was 11 years old. Basically the program is where you run for 60 seconds, then walk for 90, run for 60, walk for 90. You do this for 20 minutes, 3 times the first week. The second week you run for 90 seconds, then walk for two minutes. Do this for 20 minutes, 3 times the third week. Then the third week you run for 60, walk for 30. Then the third week you jog 90 seconds, walk 90 seconds. You continue to build your stamina as the weeks go on. As long as the temperatures aren't around 100 and I can find a jogging track that is accessible to the public, I think I can handle that. Supposedly by the end of the 8 weeks, you should be able to do about 3 miles in 30-40 minutes.

There was this great bit on the Espy's last night where they show a tight shot of Jimmy Kimmel in the shower and he's got a sponge and he says "it won't come off, no matter how hard I scrub, it won't come off". Then they pan out and its Jimmy trying to scrub the tattoo off Mike Tysons face. Too funny.

Turn the Page

2007-07-12T08:51:00.001-04:00

I'm looking forward to the start of the 2nd half of the baseball season. I think if the Yankees have any shot at the post season, the next month is really a time when they need to go 20-10 and gain some momentum. They have a 4 game series against Tampa Bay, then they play Toronto, Tampa Bay at home, Kansas City, and then Baltimore. These are all pretty crappy teams that any respectable team should beat up on. If Pettitte, Wong and Clemens keep pitching solidly, I think they can do well. Get a few quality starts from Musina, and they can easily go 20-10. Hopefully the A-Rod negotiations won't be a distraction for him and the rest of the team

That show with Shaq is complete crap. I love the idea behind it, but it's so bogus. The episode I watched the other night made Shaq seems like Superman. At one point in the show, his program was in jeopardy. There was a new school superintendent (Chalmers), and he didn't want his kids taking part in the Shaq program. Shaw makes a few phone calls and then the next scene Shaq is talking to the school principle and she is saying the program is back on. They made it seem like Shaq did all the leg work. When it's far more likely that ABC's lawyers climbed way up the ass of the new super intendant and told him/her that they would sue the crap out of them if they shut the show down. Plus all the bad PR. I mean, what school district wants the stigma that they don't want to help obese kids lose weight and become healthy. One interesting aspect of the show was they made the kids all run 1 mile. It took the average kid about 13-14 minutes to complete. I'm gonna run a mile either tonight or tomorrow, and see how quick I could do it. I think I could almost walk a mile in 14 minutes. I know I do 6 minute miles on the elliptical, but I think their electronics exaggerated your time a bit. I'm guessing I could do a mile in about 7-8 minutes.
I know I shouldn't be comparing myself to obese 12 year olds, but Im obsessed with statistics and performance. Like when I hear that a pro golfer can hit a 7 iron 190 yards, I love comparing that to my 155-160 yards. Or when I read in Mens Health that the average adult male cam do X amount of pushups. I like to be one notch above average.

The World Series of Pop Culture is great. I didn't know if I would like it as much as I did last year, but Im swept right back up into it. I've only watched two episodes so far, but I feel like I don't know as many answers this season. So maybe they have made it tougher.

I heard this funny story about Will Farrel. Supposidly he showed up a Neil Diamond concert dressed as Neil Diamond and "doing" Neil Diamond. Now that's funny.

What's up with James Hetfield's facial hair? I saw a clip of Metallica playing at Live Earth and he looked like he should be in ZZ-Top. I remember when Metallica used to be the epitome of cool. Now they just seem so lame.

Speaking of lame, The Smashing Pumpkins calling themselves the Smashing Pumpkins is ridiculous. It's Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain who was kicked out of the band originally for being a heroin addict. It's funny too, because the new bassist tries to look like Darcy the old bassist. But that song Tarantula is pretty awesome. I saw them perform on Letterman the other night and BillY Corgan is so smooth when playing guitar he almost looks bored.

When Apple first announced the iPhone, I thought $500 sounded ridiculous. But now that I've played with one (owned by a friend at work), I so want one. I think if the price drops to the $300-$400 range, when my 2 year contract expires next summer, I may get one. My Treo used to seem pretty awesome. Still pretty cool, but when compared to the iPhone it's left in Apple's dust. We were connected via WiFi at work, so the iPhone seemed faster than a PC. I can check my mail, browse news sites, do Google searches and stuff on my Treo, but since it uses the cell signal, it's very slow. It's like being back on dialup.

Finally tried a P'zone last night. I ordered a classic P'zone which wasn't a smart decision. I thought the classic had more meat in it, but it was filled with mostly red onions and peppers. I like red onions and peppers but not as the main filling.

I heard that they added the word ginormous to the dictionary. That's so stupid. But not as dumb as adding the word smackdown. How soon before Shizzle is in the dictionary? It's funny that they also added the word crunk. I remember when Conan O
Brien first came on the air, he wanted to make the word crunk a replacement for traditional curses. He almost got his wish. If they are going to add smackdown, they better add bitchslap and pimphand.

Random Bitching

2007-07-09T10:06:00.000-04:00

I'm really sick of Outback. The whole things where the Australian accent was ultra hip and cool was like 20 years ago. They're dumb commercials flood the radio. They take the same damn tune and punch in new lyrics for different holidays and times of the year. SHUTUP ALREADY!!! Not to mention their steaks suck. The only reason to go to Outback is for the Bloomin Onion.

I made these awesome egg sandwiches for breakfast. I've decided to call it an egg mike muffin. I don't really remember what I put in it to make it taste so good. I just grabbed a bunch of stuff from the fridge and the cabinet and started putting a pinch of this and a dash of that. But they turned out awesome. I hope I can re-create them.

Played golf yesterday despite it being July and 95 degrees. I figured hey if Tiger and friends can play over at Congressional in this heat, so can I (though not AT Congressional). We played 18 and then played 6 more holes after that. Took me forever to cool down afterwards. I drank 4 liters of water and when I got home, I barely had anything to piss out. Guess I sweated it out. Shot a 95. We didn't really keep score on the other 6 extra holes. But I started playing two balls and had two awesome pars on this par 3. I hit a 6 iron and came up short and ended up in the sand in front of the green. Then I hit a 5 iron and landed it on the green. I pitched out of the sand, and one putted for the sand save par. Two putted for par on the 2nd ball. And as a side note. Still not having good results with the hybrids on the course. Was smacking the crap out of the ball at the range, but on the course, its a whole other story. I so badly need a club I can hit 180-200 yards off the deck.

Glad to see Ratatouille doing so well. I really like Paton Oswald, so I'm glad to see he is having some success. I saw him in Reno 911 Miami and man that was sad. Sure he's the voice of a cartoon rat now, but it still seems a whole lot more dignified than his role in Reno 911. And was that really Nieci's ass in the movie?

Rescue Me is pretty great this year. And Jennifer Espisito joined the show this season. WOWEE WEEWAH.

Furniture for the nursery has been ordered. Should be here in about 3-6 weeks.

Grown men shouldn't wear flip flops or opened toed sandals (sorry Jebus).

I was watching Live Aid on Bravo and I do believe The Police did the longest version of Roxanne ever. Great song, but damn!

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but I gave up on 365 Daily Self Portraits (I was getting sick of seeing me), and started Project 365. Trying to capture an image a day to help me remember what was going on that day. I can't wait till late november/early december when I take the camera into the delivery room. HEYOH!!!

This guy in Flickr whom I've befriended is an American married to a Korean woman and living in Korea. Pretty interesting guy. He has two little kids and he does a great job of capturing cute moments from his kids each day. He does these really cool photo collages using some fancy smancy Mac program. I was able to replicate the look using Photoshop on a PC. Pretty cool idea.

It's Virtual Mikey

2007-07-06T11:06:00.001-04:00

4th of July

2007-07-05T08:36:00.000-04:00

I used to love Independence Day when I was a kid. School had been out for a little over a week and it was sort of the unofficial start of summer. But now as an adult, July 4th bums me out a bit. Because time seems to travel so much quicker as an adult, I realize that the "summer" is halfway over already.

What made Independence Day suck even more this year is that it falls on a Wednesday. So returning back to work today makes it feel like its Monday. Fortunately, next year is a leap year so the 4th of July falls on a friday next year. So that means a 3 day weekend. Then in 2009 and 2010 it falls on a weekend, so we'll have the friday before and/or the monday after off. SWEET!!!

Sorry to hear about Al Gores son. But maybe it's a blessing in disguise. A lot of people think of drug abusers as some guy or girl in a metropolitan area shooting up heroin or smoking crack. But the new trend seems to be suburbanites who abuse prescription pain killers. Maybe this impacting the son of a former US vice president will bring the problem forward and get more attention and recognition. It's scary thinking about how many soccer moms are out there driving around in their giant SUV's after popping a few Vicadin. It's somehow all a little ironic though about how Gore III was caught doing 100mph in his Prius.

I used to skip breakfast most work mornings because I wanted to maximize my sleep time. If I were to get up and make breakfast that would mean getting up 20-30 minutes earlier every day. That's like 2.5 hours of lost sleep every week. So I've been eating granola bars and cereal bars because they are quick and easy. I had been eating Powerbars for about a year and had grown born with them. So I grabbed this nutrition bar at the store called Luna. They were on sale for 10 for $10, so I figured it was worth a try. Holy crap are these things tasty. I loaded up and bought like 10 more. Well the other day I was driving to work and I looked down at the Luna bar and noticed the graphic on the label was a woman doing ballet and yoga. Hrmmm that's a little odd. Then I read above the graphic where it read "The Whoile Nutrition Bar For WOMEN". They're not infused with estrogen or anything, so I don't see why I couldn't keep eating them. Now if I could just figure out why my breasts are so tender all the time.

Vacation

2007-07-02T09:43:00.001-04:00

Man having a few days off was just what the doctor ordered. I feel so refreshed and so much better in general.

In a follow up regarding shooting an 87 the other day, it was probably a fluke. I shot a 99 on Wednesday and another 99 on Saturday. For some reason on Saturday, I lost the ability to hit my driver on the back nine. I score a respectable 47 on the front 9, but fell apart and shot a 52 on the back. I had three pars on the front 9 and only one on the back which came on 18. 18 was the only hole I remember playing from the fairway. All the rest I was in the rough, in the sand, or behind a tree. During my 87 round, I lost one golf ball. On Saturday I lost 8 :-(.

For a while I lost interest in Mythbusters. I loved the first two seasons, but I thought the show got a little stale after a while. I thought the Mythturns especially Tory and Cary (sp?), there was another girl who was a Mythturn who was really lame, I think her name was Christine. I don't think any of them really bring much to the table. With the exception of Cary who was eye candy. I liked Scotty because she wasa great welder and gear head and brought something to the table. But I digress. I think the addition of the Mythturn Grant really raised the show out of the dumps. I think Grant is smarter than Adam, and probably on the same level as Jamie (minus the awesome beret).

So far this season has been really cool. They did a show the other week where they tested to see what methods worked best at distracting ferocious guard dogs. In the end, the obvious was demonstrated. Sex and food proved to be the easiest ways to distract the attack dogs. Tory walked up the cyclone fence and held a raw steak in his hands, the dog was instantly distracted and started sniffing at the steak. While he was sniffing the steak, Cary ran in and "stole the jewels" from the safe. The dog devoured the steak while Cary ran past him and came back to the fence looking to get more from Tory.

The second way they distracted the dog is by using "bitch in heat urine". They kept referring to it as bitch urine, which cracked me up. They soaked a rag in the urine of a female dog in heat. The scent of the "bitch urine" drove the dog wild and totally distracted him.

They also tested blood hounds to see if their keen sense of smell could be fooled. Adam played the part of the escaped convict and he tried to do all kinds of tricks likes running in a zig zag pattern, pouring black pepper around, and a few other tricks like climbing a tree. None of them worked. It was like he had a GPS sensor on him. The dog found him each time. Amazing.

As part of the promotion for the Simpsons movie, a few 7-11 stores have been converted into Kwik-E Marts. I think there is one in Maryland. I may have to check it out. Here are some pics someone posted of one from California.

I saw this funny clip of this woman outside an Apple store in Dallas. She showed up with $100,000 in cash to buy out the store of all their iPhones. She planned on selling them on Ebay. Problem was that she showed up a little late, so she wasn't close to the front of the line. So she payed some kid who was first in line $800 for his spot. She strutted into the Apple store all confident that she would get her hands of a few dozen iPhones. She was told by the sales person they were only allowing 1 per customer. So the kid she gave $800 for his spot ended up getting his phone for free and then some, while the woman looked....stupid.

While I was home last week, I tuned in ESPN to see one of the lamest sporting events I've ever seen. It was the PBA All Stars skills competition. But for some reason, I couldn't turn it off.

Over the weekend we painted the nursery. Mike and Audra came up from NC to help us. While they were over, the kids stopped by and Andrew saw the Wii. Very funny trying to explain to a 5 year old and a 3 year old how to do Wii bowling. Andrew really started to get the hang of it after about an hour. Ashley didn't quite get it and decided to just be a cheerleader for everyone else.

Lastly, Rachel and I went to Charles Town, WV to the casino and horse track. Holy cow is the horse track exciting. I could see why people become degenerate gamblers betting on the ponys. The first race I bet $2.00 to win and $2.00 to place on the #8 horse. I just bet based on the horse name Fleet Chiquita. I liked the name. Rachel liked the #6 horse Queen Creole, but didn't want to go back inside to place another bet. The #8 horse was in 2nd the whole race. Then down the stretch in runs out of steam and falls to 5th place. DOH!!! The winner of the race #6 Queen Creole. DOUBLE DOH!!! #6 has always been Rachel's lucky number, it was her jersey number when she played soccer as well, so it has special meaning to her. So for the 2nd race I bet $2.00 to win on the #6 horse It's A Given. The horse starts out in 4th, first turn it takes over 3rd. The horse makes the 3rd turn and takes over 2nd. Rachel and I start getting exited and start screaming. The horse comes around the final turn and takes over the lead. HOLY CRAP!!! Go baby go!!! All of a sudden, this horse comes flying by and wins by like a neck. DAMN!!!! We didn't win, but man was it exciting. I would have stayed for all 10 races, but it was getting dark and we needed to find the hotel. By the way, we stayed at a Hampton Inn (home of the breakfast sausage whore) and I must say I was very impressed. We stayed in a suite for 1/2 price because Rachel words for the federal government. The room was awesome. Flat panel tv, granite counter tops in the bathroom, complimentary high speed internet access and a comfy ass king sized bed. Holy carp was that bed cozy and big. It was like I was sleeping in Queens and Rachel was out in the Hamptons. Plus the room had a cool digital thermostat, so before bed I set it down to like 62. By morning it was sooooo cold in our room, you could store sides of beef in there. Cuddling ensued...

Best Round Ever

2007-06-26T00:17:00.000-04:00

I took a few days off work this week. Work has been extremely stressful and I have been feeling really burned out. So I met Rachel's dad at the commuter lot today around 1:00PM and we headed down to a local golf course in Woodbridge. We checked in and they said we could tee off at around 2:00. So I hit the putting green, hit about a dozen balls off of the mat, and then it was time to tee off. One more thing to consider, I shot a 101 on Sunday. I seemed to be putting really well on the putting green, but I figured it was just a fluke. About 1:45 they called us inside and by about 2:00 we were on the first tee. SWEET!!!

The front 9 started out pretty average for me. I was 9 over after the first 5 holes. Good, but not great. Then I parred 7 and parred 9, I was starting to hit the ball really well. I ended up finishing the front with a 45. Slightly better than usual for me, but I didn't feel like I was making really crisp iron contact. We tee off on the par 5 10th and I hit a nice drive, lay up about 120 yards out and my third shot lands about 20 feet from the hole. I knock my 1st putt close, and tap in for par. Two pars in a row. Number 11 was a 135 yard par 3. I hit an 8 iron and land it in the front of the green, two putt for another par. Three in a row!!! Now I'm starting to get really exited, waiting for my luck to run out and for the "wheels to fall off the bus". Number 12 is a 155 yard par 3. Hit a 7 iron a but right, ball lands, kicks left and rolls into the green. Two putt for par. Four pars in a row. My longest stretch ever.

Number thirteen is a short par 4. I grab a 5 wood and in hind sight, should have used driver. Hit an awful tee shot with the 5 wood, hit my recovery shot into the bunker, hit it our of the bunker but short of the green, chipped on and two putted for a 6. The streak was over, but my confidence was still pretty high. Ended up parring 3 of the next 5 holes and shooting 42 on the back 9. That included a bit of a meltdown on 18 where I ended up with a 6. Ended up with a final score of 87!!! Not only did I break 90, but I beat Rachel's dad by 10 strokes!!! BOOYAH!!!Ended up with 8 pars overall and no 3 putts on the back 9.

We are supposed to play again Wednesday if the weather cooperates. So I'll get to see if it was a fluke, or if I "made the turn" and my game has started coming together.

Hybrid?

2007-06-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

Who knew the Rockies had such a dominating pitching staff. Seems like all their starters have ERA's in the 2's. Geesh. Stupid thin air of Colorado. I wish Steve Balboni could played a game at Coors field. I would live to see that tub of lard legging out a double at 5000 feet above sea level.

I'm really digging the message of Ron Paul. He talks about how dangerous it is forcing democracy throughout the world like the current administration. He talks about making things better stateside which I haven't really heard many others discuss. He talks about responsible spending and budgeting, not spending money like a sailor in Times Square during feel week errr fleet week. And he talks about doing all those things without stretching the limits of the US constitution. Amazing. Problem with Ron is that he a white guy, who's a republican from Texas. People won't do the research and just assume he is another "Dubyah". Another reason for getting behind Ron is because his name kind of sounds like a porn actors name.

A friend at work just bought a new Prius with all the bells and whistles. I road in it for the first time yesterday. I was pretty disappointed. Other than the really cool navigation system, the inside of the car is ugly and laid out really weird. It was just so weird for him to throw the car into gear and stomp the gas and take off without "starting the car". It was like being in a golf cart. And you have to press a button on the dash to put the car in "park". If I get a hybrid, I would lean towards a Civic. Although $22,000 for a hybrid Civic is kind of pricey when you only increase your gas mileage about 10-15 mpg over the regular gas engine. I would have to drive a lot of miles before I made back that $4000-5000 difference over the regular Civic. Something like 8 years of driving 15,000 miles a year to save $4000 in gas. But regardless, the styling of the Civic wins hands down.

Ahoy hoy!

2007-06-19T12:21:00.000-04:00

I love Steve Carell, but that movie Evan Almighty looks ridiculous. Im not going to be suckered in to seeing it at the movies. Maybe Ill check it out on Netflix.

I just heard that Jack Black is set to star in a comedy called Manwitch. And no, it's not about Sloppy Joes. Supposedly it's about a school teacher (played by Jack), who discovers he has mystical powers. How does Jack Black continue to get starring roles?

Tiger Woods wife had a baby girl yesterday. They named her Sam. Hrmm you think Tiger is a little upset his first born was not a boy? I thought the Nike commercial where they make the clubs for "baby Woods" was clever. Wow imagine if his daughter looks like her mom and can hit a golf ball like dad? Look out Natalie Gulbis!!!

The results of the chromosomal triple test came back. All three came back negative. So no Down Syndrome, no Spina Biffida and no Edwards syndrome.

Holy carp is it hot out today. They have been saying how hot it was supposed to get, but yesterday and the day before were tolerable. Today it's like walking into Satan's crotch outside. It's not the heat, it's the humidity you bastards!!! 88 degrees with a heat index of 113. Yowsa!!!

Mario Party 8 for the Wii is pretty cool. Rachel and I played it a little last night. Took a little time to figure out what the hell was going on, but once we did it was fun. I was particularly fond of the mini game "Surfs Way Up"!!!

The huntress becomes the hunter, the hunter becomes the preeeeeyyyyyahhhhaaaayyyy.

Best Buy blows.

Fathers Day

2007-06-18T16:01:00.000-04:00

Fathers day started out nicely. Rachel had bought me a few baby related items like a cool Yankees bib, and a little baby shirt that says My First Yankees Tee. Then we went for breakfast over at her parents house. Audra and Mike were still in town with the kids, so we spent some time with them and I got some cool Godfathers day presents. Including a Titleist hat with the Yankees logo on the side. Combining two of my favorite things, golf and the Yankees. GENIUS!!!!

Audra and Mike left at around 1PM. We said goodbye, and since it was a pretty hot day, Rachel and I decided to go swimming in her parents pool. I had a slight headache when we went in, but by the time we got out, my headache had gotten a lot worse. I don't know if it was from being in the sun or what. By the time we got home, my head was pounding. I went upstairs to lay down while Rachel started dinner. After laying down for a few minutes, I got sick to my stomach. Long story short, my headache got so bad I threw up for the next 8 hours or so off and on. SO I didn't get to see the end of the US Open or the finale of the Subway Series. But luckily today I am feeling much better and Im quite hungry.

Got my hands on an advanced copy of Icky Thump. By far my favorite song is Conquest. It's a pretty different sound, which included Mexican style trumpets. Very cool song. Little Cream Soda is also very good. Sounds like a song you would expect from the White Stripes. Kind has a bluesy feel to it. Bone Broke is pretty awesome too. The title track is fun, but the rest of the CD isn't so hot. So maybe 1/2 of the songs are good, the rest of the CD Im not too impressed with. You Dont Know what Love Is, has potential.

The party for Mike's parents 40th anniversary was a success. They looked genuinely surprised and seemed very happy to see people from Vermont they hadn't seen in several years. The video seemed to be a big hit as well. It was funny watching peoples reactions to some of the baby pictures of wedding pictures of Mike's parents.

Happy Thursday

2007-06-14T13:27:00.000-04:00

Wow 8 in a row!!!I almost hoped the Yankees lost last night, just so they wouldn't potentially be going for 10 in a row vs the Mets tomorrow. The Yankees are on a roll, while the Mets are slumping a bit. Good combination. And as predicted the Red Sox have come back down to earth. So the Yankees started out 2 weeks ago 14.5 games back and have since gained 6 games on the Sox. I think the Yankees just need to jump over to the National League. So far they are 6-2 vs the national league.

The new Queens of the Stone Age is pretty good. It sounds more like the Songs for the Dead CD and has some Eagles for Death Metal feel to it. I didn't like their last CD much, but this new one is pretty good so far. Not sure Dave Grohl did the drumming on this album, but the beats are pretty awesome. Especially on In the Hollow and Sick, Sick, Sick. Makes you just want to start banging stuff. Turnin on the Screw is just so trippy. Makes you want to eat some magic mushrooms and go see Circe De Soleile. Awesome!

Adobe Lightroom is pretty awesome. I've switched to shooting RAW and processing my photos in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw 4. The pictures in Raw format look quite dull and lifeless like an old negative, but you really have a lot of creative control. I was even able to take a pretty ordinary shot from golfing in PA, and really make the image pop. Click the photo for a larger size.

If your camera allows you to shoot RAW, I highly recommend doing so.

So glad Rescue Me started it's new season last night on FX. Summer TV is pretty bad. Although I have been oddly drawn to American Inventor and Hells Kitchen. If you don't watch Rescue Me, you should give it a try. It's really a well done show. I think if it was on a major network it would be up there in the ratings with ER and Grays Anatomy.

While working on the anniversary video for Mike's mother and father, I really got hooked on the song The Wonder of You by Elvis. It was his parents wedding song, and it's really a great song.

I was bummed to hear that Mr. Wizard died yesterday from bone cancer. I used to love that show.

Yesterday as I was getting out of work this crazy line of thunderstorms moved through the area. The sky got so black and the winds were pretty gusty. Then came the downpours and the hail. Then the winds became pretty stiff and consistent and it got really loud. Turns out there was a small tornado spotted near Dulles Airport.

Some weekend stuff

2007-06-11T14:53:00.000-04:00

Does Al Roker deserve to be fired? Apparently Al was one of the driving forces behind Don Imus getting fired. Now Al has made some rather insensitive remarks about people with epilepsy. Better be careful what you wish for Al.

Wow the Yankees have won 6 straight. Amazing what happens when the middle of your lineup comes alive. Bobby Abreau and Robinson Cano in particular have really been helping the team lately. They have been scoring bunches of runs every night like that lineup is capable of. Lets hope they can continue this trend through the next few months and make the pennant race interesting.

Audra and Mike are in town with the kids. Went swimming with the kids yesterday. They really enjoyed dunking Uncle Mikey, maybe even a little too much. They were giggling pretty loudly the whole time. Andrew seemed to take great pleasure in forcing my head underwater.

It's been a while since I drank beer out of a can. Drank a Michelob Ultra on Saturday and it was like drinking tin foil. Gross.

Got Rachel a iPod Nano. Holy crap are those things tiny. I never realized how much nicer and brighter the new color displays are. My 2nd gen ipod still works, so I can't justify replacing it, but man I have the itch.

Been working on this video for my brother in law Mike's parents. They are celebrating their 40th anniversary in July. So we have been compiling pictures of them from their child hood, to their wedding, baby pictures of Mike and his brother and photos of the grandkids. A lot of work so far, but Im pretty happy with how it turned out so far. Apparently, one of Mike and Audra's neighbors does these kind of videos and gets like $500 a pop for them. Maybe if I get good enough and efficient enough at it, I can turn it into a little side business. The video for Mike's parents I did for free, but Audra is pretty handy with a paintbrush, so she's agreed to help paint the nursery. WOOHOO!!!

A-rod could finish the season with 100 home runs and 300 RBI's and the media would still find something to pick on him about. Geesh, give the guy a break.

Got to use my DSLR camera for the first time in a few months on Saturday. Rachel's aunt and uncle threw an engagement party for Rachel's brother and sister in law to be. Was cool to see the Pennsylvania crew up there. Haven't seen Rachel's "pop pop" in over a year. He's now 92 and looks pretty great. He has trouble with the circulation in his legs, so he has to keep his legs wrapped and wear surgical stockings, but he still faster than some 20 year old I know. Got a cool picture of him while he was telling Mike and I a story. I'll have to post some of those pics later on.

If anyone is looking to learn how to do camera lighting rather inexpensively (~$100), check out Strobist. They are gearing up to start their Lighting 102 Online class. It's free and very informative. So if your camera has a hot shoe, all you need is a hot shoe flash that can manually have the power adjusted, a way to fire the flash remotely (you can order these remote triggers from Ebay for about $30), and of course, a hot shoe mount on your camera. A tripod, umbrella and umbrella clip are also helpful, but not really necessary at first. You can bounce the flash off a wall or ceiling like I did here. Give nice balanced lighting when you play around with it a bit. Much better than relying on your indoor lighting.

Squilkdaddy

2007-06-04T08:59:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been a while. Not sure what happened between my ISP host and Blogger, but I've tried numerous times to fix it myself and make a few phone calls to tech support last week and noone can seem to figure it out. So I'm back to using blogger webspace.

So I'm really curious about the father in law in this TB scare case. Lets see, the guy who has this rare strain of TB has a father in law who works for the CDC and specializes in TB. Sounds like the father in law may be up to no good.

I'm bummed to hear that Rockstar will not be back on CBS anymore. Damn, I loved that show. And no more Brooke Burk in hot outfits. Damn!!! But there is a new show coming on this week called Super Stars and Fast Cars or something like that. The basic premise of the show is that athletes, former athletes and William Shatner (WTF?) go to this Nascar Fantasy camp sort of place and learn to drive stock cars. My money is on Tony Hawk. I think to do the kinds of things he does on a skateboard, you have to have a few screws loose, so I think he will be more aggressive and a little crazier than Gabby Reese and Shatner. I can't wait for Steve O and Wee Man to show up on the show to pull a prank, like stuffing a giant dildo in his exhaust pipe.

Even though the Yankees are still 12.5 games behind the Red Sox, it was nice to see them take back to back series from the Sox. I'm not giving up just yet. No way the Red Sox are going to continue to play .700 baseball. And if any team knows how to blow a giant lead, it's the Red Sox. Plus there is always the wacky wild card. With Giambi gone for the season, and Mientkevic gone for about 2 months, I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Texiera wound up in the Bronx. Would be nice to have an American born guy on the Yankees for a change. Or bring Tino out of retirement ;-). But for now, I really like Josh Phelps. Not sure why he wasn't getting more playing time to begin with. The guy is a spark plug.

Went to see Knocked Up on Friday. The movie wasn't bad, but it had way too much chick flickidness to it. Any movie where two women lay on a bed eating ice cream bashing men belongs on Lifetime. If it was a true classic like Animal House, or Old School, the two said women would have been topless and kissing. And the birthing scenes at the end scared the crap out of Rachel and I. I almost passed out watching those parts, I don't know how I'll do when it's for real. I do know one thing, I'm staying up top near Rachel's face, and nowhere near "south of the border" if you know what Im saying.

Wow Apple must have some real pull with Fedex. Ya know how when you get free shipping with a lot of companies, it's usually ground service and it takes like a week to arrive? Well not with Apple, they can get a package from SHENZHEN China, to Dulles VA in 3 days, even when two of those three days are weekend days. Booyah!!!

I'm glad the FBI caught those "terrorists" over the weekend. But it sounds like these guys were not very bright. It's like Moe, Larry and Curly turned Muslim and declared jihad. I though Richard Reed the shoe bomber guy was dumb, but these guys take the cake. When I heard a few of the suspects were from Trinidad, someone who will remain nameless immediately came to mind.

Celebrity Jail Club

2007-05-10T14:45:00.000-04:00

With jail time looking like a certainty for Paris Hilton, I think VH1 should jump in on this opportunity and start a new reality show where hot, young celebs spend a month behind bars. As far as Im concerned Britney, Lindsay, the Olson Twins and Nicole Richie should all behind bars anyway, so why not let them entertain America while doing hard time. And just to make things interesting, they should find away to make Cameron Manheim a part of the show as well. Make her a celebrity correctional officer. Then have people like Heidi Fleis, Amy Fischer and Tanya Harding act as counselors since they have spent time behind bars for real. And maybe Mrs. Garrett (if she's still alive). Mrs. Garrett straightened out Joe and Tootie, she can straighten out Britney.

And if you think my idea is crazy, just imagine this...Paris, Lindsay and Britney in a three way shower cat fight!!! RAAAAAAAHHHHWWWW!!! Need I say more. Of course Nicole Richie and the Olson twins are so skinny they run the risk of being sucked down the drain.

And they should have someone like Dakota Fanning on the show as the sort of scared straight person. She is still young and impressionable and I fear that without being scared straight, 5 years from now we're gonna have another Lindsay Lohan on our hands.

Odds and Ends...

2007-05-02T23:08:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Work has been nuts. Worked 6:00 AM to 11PM on friday. Then Monday I worked from 7:30 AM till around midnight. Then Tuesday I worked from 10AM to 11PM. If I was was hourly that would be awesome, but unfortunately I am salaried. Luckily today I was able to work from home and had a much needed relaxing day.

Rachel's brother Philip was in town this past weekend with his Air Force squadron. So we went to the air show at Langley AFB to see him on Sunday. I love the Virginia Beach/Hampton area, so it was a fun day. Audra, Mike and the kids as well as Rachel's parent made the trip as well. The F-22 Raptor is such an amazing plane. We'll see Philip again in August when Rachel's other brother gets married, but shortly after that he is schedule to get deployed to Iraq. So we may not get to see him for a while after that.

I saw that Tiger Woods played a round of golf together today. They should have added Lance Armstrong and Roger Federer to make one kick ass foursome!!!!

The other day I was at the driving range and there was an older man there hitting a bucket of balls. When I first got to the range I walked passed him and didn't notice anything unusual. A few minutes later, I looked up and noticed he had a rather unorthodox swing. I looked a little closer and noticed he only had one arm!!! I didn't see him hit any woods, but he seemed to be hitting his irons VERY well.

I just bought Guitar Hero II for the XBOX 360. Holy crap is that game fun. I only played it about 30 minutes, but man I was having a blast. Playing Woman by Wolfmother and Heart Shaped box is awesome. I did really well, but I only had it on the easy setting. I tried playing Heart Shaped Box on the next level and I was awful.

The curse of the Bambino was legendary in the 20th century, I think the Yankees are the cursed team in the 21st century. Phil Hughes has a no hitter through 7 innings and then blows out his hamstring. Darn the luck!!! At least the Yankees still won. But now their momentum gets stopped by a rain out in Texas. Oh yeah and Steve Karstens got his leg broken on Saturday. Wonderful!

The new Southern Style Arizon Iced Tea isn't very good. Regular lemon and raspberry Arizona is awesome. The Southern stuff, not so much.

I can't stop calling people rude, thoughtless little pigs.

I always though Alec was the "normal" Baldwin brother. I guess he's as kooky as his other brothers Daniel, Stephen, Billy, Andy, Ralph, Eddie, Tiito, Jose and Mohammed Baldwin.

The MacFarlane figure of Hurley from Lost is an awesome likeness.

I love how the Panthers dropped Keshawns ass. Im sure he will get picked up by another team, but its fun while it lasts.

I was surprised that I felt sorry for Don Donatello when he was kicked off the Big Break this week.

My backyard is infested with caterpillars. Im gonna have to start neutering all the males so they can't be caterpillar daddies anymore. I sprayed the crap out of them tonight, probably did me more hard than it did the damn critters.

This screen cap is why Lost is so great...

2007-04-25T09:28:00.000-04:00

Tv needs more guys with eye patches!!!!

And of course the lovely Kate and my new favorite Juliette!!!

A Couple of Things...

2007-04-24T23:21:00.000-04:00

The Yankees may not win a lot of games this year, but at least A-Rod is on pace to hit 267 home runs and 500+ RBI's. Everyone keeps saying its great that A-Rod is doing well now, but what about in the playoffs. If the Yankees keep playing the way they have the past 5 days, that won't be a concern because they won't be in the playoffs. But the baseball season is very long, so Im not quite ready to panic just yet.

I read yesterday that if Hillary Clinton is elected to be the next president that she is going to have Bill act as an "ambassador to the world". Sounds like a pretty good idea. The past 7 years haven't been so good as far as the worlds opinion of the US is concerned, so having a likable guy like Bill acting as ambassador is a pretty smart idea. And think of all the international poon Bill can get :-).

I was flipping through Rachel's copy of In Touch magazine and they had a picture of Rain Wilson and his little son. The kid is surprisingly cute, I guess he gets his looks from him mom.

I always though Alec was the "normal" Baldwin brother.

Blood Diamond is a pretty powerful film. Not sure how accurate it was, but if the senseless violence in Africa is anything like it was portrayed in the movie, man what a scary place.

Prik King is my new favorite Thai dish. It makes my nose run like a m'fer, but man is it tasty. I love green beans, so its right up my alley.

I was excited to hear that Cake is coming out with a new CD of cover songs. They are supposed to d a cover version of War Pigs by Black Sabbath. I can't imagine what a Sabbath song would sound like with a horn section, but maybe it will be good.

I've been listening to Korn Unplugged alot lately. The duet with Amy Lynn from Evanescence and the "mash up" of Make Me Bad/In Between Days with the Cure are both pretty amazing.

The LPGA has a lot of hot young women on the tour now. I thought Natalie Gulbis was the only one, but Paula Creamer, Britney Lincicome and of course Laura Davies are all very hot as well. A lot of people at work say how MIchele Wie is hot. I don't see it, she looks too much like a character from Hot Shots golf or a Japanese animation.

El Picante...OUT!!!!

Rockabye Squilky

2007-04-19T20:37:00.000-04:00

Rachel and I have discovered this series of CD's called Rockabye Babies. We play them before we go to bed at night to sooth the save beast. They take popular music by artists like Bob Marley, Radiohead, Nirvana and U2 and record the songs as lullabies. Some of the music by Coldplay and the Beatles translates really well as a lullaby. Other songs by Metallica and Nirvana not so much. Although Fade to Black sounds pretty cool. I think Radiohead and Coldplay sound the best. A lot of COldplays music sounds kind of like a lullaby anyway. Check em out. Very soothing before bed for young and the not so young.

Golfing-Nor'Easter Style

2007-04-16T10:20:00.000-04:00

We lucked out as far as weather goes on Saturday. The drive down to NC took a little longer than usual because A) it was the weekend and B) It was raining in VA. But we got down in time to attend the kids birthday parties. After the kids party we headed back to Mike and Audra's house so the kids could open the rest of their birthday gifts. We ate dinner, checked weather.com and saw the rain was well west and south of Raleigh, so we headed on over to Knights Play golf course to play golf under the lights ;minus Rachel's brother Jonathan, but that's another post in itself.

When we got their my father in law suggested we play holes number 19-27 to start out since none of us had ever played there. It seemed like a good idea, but once we started playing we saw why most people don't play 19-27. Most of the holes are very similar to one another, so there isn't much variety. 6 of the 9 holes fell in the 100-120 yard range. I hit my pitching wedge about 110-115 yards, so I had a lot of difficulty dialing it down to only go 100. Looking back, I probably should have just choked down a little and the ball would have gone a little shorter. Didn't think of that at the moment though. So a lot of the 1st nine I ended up flying the ball over the green. Finally by the time we got to the 5th hole which was also about 100 yards, I decided I was going to try to tee off using my 56 degree flop wedge. This lead to me having a US Open/Masters moment. I hot my tee shot and it goes way high, the wind grabs it, but it hits the front of the green. Since it was a flop wedge, I guess it had a lot of backspin on it, and the ball hit the green and backed up into the water!!!! DAGGER!!!!

I did much better on the 2nd set of 9 that we played. The highlight was on the 13th hole. It was a 176 yard shot, slightly uphill. I was last to go in our threesome. Mike goes and takes a big healthy cut and ends up hooking into the sand trap in the front left of the green. My father in law, using a 5 wood tops the ball and send it about 75-80 yards. So I get out my 4 iron hybrid and tee my ball up. My brother in law Mike says to me $10 if you knock it on. With the way the wind was blowing, I didnt think I had much of a chance. I get up and hit the ball towards the right side of the green, it looks long enough, but I think its too wide right. Then I don't know if it was the wind (aka gust from the gods), or if I put a slight draw on the ball, but the ball took a slight left turn and landed soft smack in the middle of the green. BOOOYAH!!!! I missed the birdie putt, but did make my par putt. Double Booyah!!!

I used a few of the balls I ordered from lostgolfballs.com. I gotta tell ya, I may never buy new golf balls again. I got a dozen Titleist NXT's along with a few others that I haven't tried yet. The balls I ordered were all 3rd quality. Looking at them, you can definitely tell that they weren't new. They didn't quite have that nice sheen a brand new ball has, but there were no dings or cuts on any of them. I really liked the NXT, I seemed to be hitting the ball really crisply when I used them. The cover they use on the NXT's is fairly soft too, so it has a nice feel to it. I used a Pinnacle on one of the holes with water on it, and it felt like I was hitting a rock in comparison. I definitely noticed a big difference in the feel at impact.

Overall it was a great time. My tee shots were all pretty good, my putting was just horrible. I 3 putted on just about every hole. The sweetest part was that about 30 minutes after we got back to Mike and Audras, the rain finally started. So it held out just long enough for us to get in 18!!!

Random Stuff...

2007-04-13T09:24:00.000-04:00

Thank God You're Here was disappointing. I was expecting it to be more like WHo's Line is it Anyway, but the people they had on just dont have the improv skills. The dad from Malcolm in the Middle and the guy from E! were ok, but Newman and Stifflers mom sucked.

The Office last night was awesome, although I was hoping Michael actually jumped. I was glad Patrice O'Neill was back on the show, even though it was only briefly.

Damn what a miserable morning as far as the weather is concerned. Cold, drizzly, gray. Brrrr...this global warming stuff really sucks.

Prison Breaks season finale was really lame.

When is Al Sharpton going to apologize to the Duke lacross players?

I find the sound of a clarinet to be very irritating. Not irritating like bagpipes, but just generally not soothing to the ears.

My spelling is atrocious. Ironically I just nailed the spelling of atrocious. But generally I am way too dependent on spell check.

Two nights ago, I was driving home from work. It had just begun rain a little. Im stopped at a red light. Im in the left lane and there is a left turn lane to my left. To the left of the turn lane is a small concrete median. Some young jackass makes a right on red on the other side of the street, his tires spin out on the wet pavement and he starts to fishtail. His back end swings around and crosses the median and hits the two cars directly next to me. Phewwww

The new Bruce Springsteen CD is pretty awesome. Mary Don't You Weep and Pay Me My Money Down are amazing.

I was watching the VH1 Rock Honors featuring Queen, Def Leppard, Judas Priest and Kiss and when Kiss was "honored" a super group featuring Rob Zombie, Slash, Scott Ian and Tommy Lee did a cover version of God of Thunder. Seeing them up there, particularly Slash and Tommy, made me realize how sad the state of rock music is right now. These are guys who have devoted their life, their look, and their life style to rock and roll. You have a few modern day musicians like Travis Barker who do a pretty good job, but its mostly these wanna be's like those twin douchbags from Good Charlotte who pretend to be all hard core, but they really aren't. Because if there is one thing I have learned from Jack Black, it's...."you're not hardcore, unless you LIVE hardcore".

Peace out bitches...

The Masters

2007-04-09T08:14:00.000-04:00

I'm still in shock that Tiger didn't win yesterday. When he went into the final round only one shot back, I thought he would win for sure. Sort of refreshing to see that even Tiger Woods has bad days once in a while. Was kind of nice to see an underdog win. When someone like Mickelson or Tiger wins the Masters, Im sure it makes them happy, but its kind of like been there, done that. When Zack Johnson won yesterday, he seemed so genuine, humble and down to earth. Was a very sweet moment when he kissed his little baby boy.

The course just seemed like it caused such frustration. You get the impression watching these guys week to week that there are certain shots they could do in their sleep with one arm tied behind their back. That definitely wasn't the case with the Masters this year. Every shot had to be carefully planned and executed. The slightest flub could mean the difference between a birdie and a double bogey.

As far as my predictions....

Tiger finished 2nd obviously

Vijay Singh finished 13th

Geoff Ogilviy and Mickelson finished 24th

Charles Howell finished 30th

and my dark horse Jason Gore I don't think he even played. I never saw him or heard him mentioned.

Not bad 3 of the 4 finished in the top 30.

Way too cold this weekend to play golf. We even got a little snow saturday morning. We are headed down to Raleigh this weekend for Andrew and Ashley's combined birthday party. Andrew turned 5 last month, Ashley will be 3 in a few weeks. We have a tee time for Saturday night for a par 3 course called Nights Play. It's a pretty cool course where you can play 18 holes under the lights. Would have liked to play a regular course, but the schedule just wont allow for that.

Masters Predictions

2007-04-04T08:50:00.000-04:00

Obviously the most obvious pick to win the Masters is Tiger Woods. I think when he's playing at his best, noone can come close to beating him. So Tiger is my choice to win. But you never know, he could have an off day or two, so that leaves the door open. Here's a few guys I think have a shot and should finish in the top 5.

Geoff Ogilvy-He's quiet and unassuming, but plays great golf.

Charles Howell III-He weighs like a buck fifty, but man the guy can smash the ball. He's been playing well all year. I think that continues this week at Augusta. Don't know if he has the confidence to win it all, but I expect to be close to the top.

Phil Mickelson- He's got the distance off the tee, and the shot shaping skills. But can he keep his mind in check and prevent himself for another meltdown?

Vijay Singh-The man may be pompous and chauvinistic, but he's an awesome golfer.

Jason Gore- This is my dark horse, but this guy is a beast. He's built more like a linebacker than a golfer, and he's fun to watch.

Late Show With Adam Sandler

2007-03-22T09:16:00.000-04:00

The other night David Letterman came down with the stomach flu, so Adam Sandler hosted the show. Originally Adam was scheduled to be a guest on the show to promote his new movie Reign Over Me. The show was pretty wacky. Even though Adam Sandler looked super nervous, the show was pretty entertaining. This was one of the funnier moments. Enjoy!

Random Stuff

2007-03-15T08:43:00.000-04:00

Jeff Goldbloom looks frightening in High Def. Damn!!!

The Comcast upgrade has finally taken effect in Dale City!!! Only been waiting for this for 5 years! Now I actually get ESPN2 and TNT in HD, along with basic channels like MTV2 that we never got before. There is also this HD music channel called Music HD which really cool. They are supposed to have a HD Red Hot Chili Peppers concert on there tonight. It's on during the Office, so it will be DVR'd. Now I just have to call tonight to find out if I can get the MLB package so I can watch Yankees games on tv instead of my laptop.

Wow this warm weather feels awesome. I actually got to stop at the driving range the last two days after work. The first day wasn't so good. Yesterday I was hitting the ball really well. Especially with my short irons. Towards the end I was hitting my hybrid 4 iron really well too. It was going about 175-180 yards in the air which is about right for me. I just don't always hit it straight like I was doing with my shorter irons. With the short irons, I was getting them very close to the flags from 150 yards and in.

LOST has been great the last two weeks. Claire looked really hot as a brunette. Kind of like Jenny McCarthy. She looks great with blond hair, but she looks like a little sex kitten with black hair. Last weeks episode looks amazing. I find John Locke to be one of the most mysterious characters on the show, glad we get an episode about him next week. The ending was too funny last night. Jack palling around with Tom was great.

I remember after Sept 11th, 2001 everyone pointed out how the news was packed with nonsense, and having something tragic happen really opened everyones eyes. I think we are back to that ridiculous levels of news coverage. More time gets spent talking about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Anna Nicoles corpse. It's almost as bad as that stretch in the 90's where everyone was obsessed with Joey Buttafuoco, Tanya Harding and John Bobbitt.

Squilky...OUT!!!!

How well do you know US Geography?

2007-03-05T08:22:00.000-05:00

http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/usaquiz.html

I scored 146 out of 150. I had a teacher in the 5th grade that made us memorize all the states and their capitals. The capitals for a lot of states, I've forgotten, but Im still really good with the location of all the states. The ones that trip me up once in a while are New Hamphshire and Vermont and Alabama and Mississippi.

I did pretty bad on the European quiz. I knew the obvious ones like Spain, France, Germany, Sweden and Greece. But then when it got down to places like Muldova, Belarus and Slovenia, I tanked.

http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/euroquiz.html

A few things...

2007-02-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

Jim Carrey was on Letterman Monday night promoting his new movie "The Number 23". With his new longer hair, Jim resembles one of the Geico cavemen. Seriously!!!

Im intrigued by the movie because 23 has been a favorite number of mine since I was a kid. Mostly because it was the uniform number worn by Don Mattingly. But there are other tie ins with the number 23. For instance, if you take my full name and Rachel's maiden name and add the letters together, it adds up to 23. Dr. Pepper is my favorite beverage, it has 23 delicious flavors. My favorite talk show host is David Letterma. Mike Kraus + David Letterman=23 letters. 23 seconds is the average time it takes for me to finish a session of sweet love. I own 23 sets of golf clubs, 23 watches and 23 pairs of shoes. Scary!!!!