Cecil and the Blog

Peach's First Lost Tooth

2011-01-11T21:25:00.002-05:00

Well she finally lost that tooth that has been loose since like Thanksgiving. If I think of it and am motivated enough maybe I'll post a pick of her new smile. Anyway she told Sophie "so Mommy here is that tooth". Here she pulled it out herself. Pretty good little girl, but don't get any ideas about ripping the rest of your teeth out. Apparently the tooth fairy is pretty generous when it comes to your first tooth, especially when you pull it out yourself because Peach got a 1 and a 5. She was supposed to split it with old Dad, but she promptly went out and blew it on bigger Lego's. I fear she could become quite expensive . . .

Double Double

2011-01-11T21:19:00.002-05:00

Sampson is back playing hoops this winter and he got his first double double last week with 10 points and 10 boards. He followed it up this week with another double-double by getting 10 and 12 rebounds. He was really excited about it, but I told him right after the game he had a double double with points and turn overs, he only had 3 of those though. I sure am glad they aren't keeping score this year. . .

The Fourth Annual Helfen Christmas Letter

2010-12-26T14:05:00.004-05:00

Well this is actually after Christmas, but as you can notice I haven't exactly been blogging like crazy lately, it is possible that I may not have even done one of these last year, but anyway on to the letter. This was a pretty good year for the old Helfen clan. We took a big trip to Florida in July to visit Disney World and Universal Studios, which was pretty much the highlight of the year. We had decided last year that we were going to take the kids and just go and have a really good time and that is exactly what we did. We hit all the Disney Parks and Universal Islands of Adventure, it was a lot of walking to do in 5 days.

We also made an addition to the family, no not like that, we added a little four-legged member named Brownie. We got her in February when she was just a little pup, now she is a slightly larger pup, but she has been doing better lately. She may eventually be a good dog even if Sophie threatens to get rid of her at least once a week.

On the kid front, Sampson played baseball, football and basketball this year. Last year was his first for basketball and that sport is probably his favorite. This year he started again right before Christmas and dropped 20 in his first game. Peach had her second recital, in which she did very good. She didn't have a broken arm this year so that was a plus. She also started pre-school this year and had her first program earlier this month. She was a little lamb and did a very good job singing and reciting a bible verse.

On a professional front the year was good as well. Instead of a severing or shutting down production, we actually are restarting two of our idled pot lines. So it has been a little more busy at work at the end of the year, but that is a good thing. I also got to go to Seattle for a conference in February, which was very interesting. It was my first trip to North West and it was very pretty country, but city life is a little too crowded for my taste. I did get to go in the Space Needle for all of about 10 minutes, because it was just so busy out there.

Oh also I won this year's addition of fantasy baseball, for the second year in a row.

Well here is hoping that you have had a great year too, and wishing you the best for 2011.

Love,

The Helfens

The Bucks Win!!

2010-09-26T17:33:00.002-05:00

Sampson's team won their first game today. Way to go boys!! 18-12 I think. The got to play on the big field this year, artificial turf and what not. I think next week I will help coach so I can go down on the field.

Fantasy "Real Deal" Pitchers for 2011

2010-09-26T16:49:00.003-05:00

As the 2010 fantasy baseball season er "real" baseball season winds to a close there are a couple of things I wanted to get down to kind of be ready for the draft next season. Basically I don't care for Yahoo! rankings of players and I think their system is seriously messed up when it comes to pitchers. According to the old Y! there are 30 starters and 12 relievers that are in the top 100, but when you start looking at who can give you more in a head-to-head one-week-battle pitchers offer far less than there positional counter parts who on a good week can contribute in 5 categories on 6 days. For starting pitchers you get a max of 4 categories and usually only 1 start per week, although sometimes you get the magic 2 start week (rarely), but you can also get really hosed before and after the all-star break. For these reasons I don't feel any of the top 50 picks should go to pitchers and as I have stated before I won't risk a 4th rounder on a starter again, but should any of the following 10 guys show up around the 50th pick or so they are definitely worth a look as I would consider them proven "real deal" pitchers for the upcoming year. You know, baring injury or trades and stuff in the off season. These are in no particular order.

King Felix Hernandez - I didn't realize how good this guy was but he is way up there in innings (which actually could be a liability for next season), K's, and his ERA and WHIP are pretty stellar. Wins are a little harder to come by in Seattle.

Cliff Lee - Yeah former Cy Young winner innings eater and future pin stripe wearer (most likely), still one of the top guy and worth it if he falls to 50 or so. Lefties aren't a bad choice in NY.

CC Sabathia - Yeah former Cy Young winner innings eater and present pin stripe wearer (unfortunately), still one of the top guy and worth it if he falls to 50 or so. Lefties aren't a bad choice in NY.

David Price - Lefties that can throw high 90's wins 18, K 180 plus and have an ERA less than 3.00 in the AL East are pretty nice. Well worth a 5th or 6th round pick.

Jon Lester - Lefties that can throw high 90's wins 19, K 220 plus and have an ERA less than 3.00 in the AL East are pretty nice. Well worth a 5th or 6th round pick. At first I wasn't sure of how good this guy was, I mean he was a nice story about coming back from cancer, but this guy is a top 5 pitching talent. Definitely the Real Deal.

Roy Halladay - 200+ innings - 20 wins, 200+ K's, ERA of around 2.50 and a WHIP under 1.10. And he pitched a perfecto this year. Two Words - Real Deal.

Josh Johnson - Over 1k per inning and he pitched over 180 innings . . . before September. Which is a little cause for concern next season that he didn't pitch an entire month, but he was by far one of the best pitchers April - August. Hopefully his stock drops because without even playing month he is still in the top 30 according to Y!.

The Cardinal Tandem of Wainwright and Carpenter - Wainwright is the top rated Y! pitcher of the season 20/213 K's/2.42/1.05, just slightly ahead of Roy. Carpenter checks in around 15/175/3.42/1.20.

Tim Lincecum - He was a little off this year and well under performed his preseason Y! rank of 9, but he is a former Cy Young winner and I look for him to bounce back. He is probably at the bottom of my list and he checks in with 15 W's/220 K's/3.51/1.27. The last two categories are a little high, and that is what will get you in fantasy head-to-head, not worth a top 6 pick in my opinion, but someone will take him.

I figure a couple of these guys will be around after the fifth round as Yahoo! is sure to screw up the preseason rankings, and when they are I might even draft one. . . might.

Frogs Sprinting Down the Stretch

2010-09-21T20:08:00.002-05:00

The fantasy baseball season is quickly coming to an end and the old Ungiggable Frogs have found themselves atop the standings as the last week of action commences. It has been a long battle back as I have never been more than 10 games out of first, but I was as low as 7th during the season. Anyway I still have one more week after trouncing Stevie 8-0-2 last week. The guy I'm playing this week has been inactive for like a month, but I think he has decided to play this, oh well. We'll see if the old frogs can't bring home another title. Since the season is almost over I just wanted to get some thoughts down to remind myself of things for next season. One is trust my gut and not Yahoo! rankings. I felt like Adam Wainwright was the best pitcher available with my 4th pick, but instead I went with Dan Haren because Chris Carpenter was still on the board and Yahoo! had him ranked ahead of Wainwright and it just didn't make sense to pick Wainwright over Carpenter cause they are on the same team. Anyway that was wrong because even though Carpenter is ranked like 15 or something Wainwright is #6, meanwhile Haren is around 150 or so. Not terrible and certainly not worth dropping, but well under where I drafted him. Anyway the lesson for next year is to ignore Yahoo! cause the basically don't know what they are talking about. I don't think I'll draft a pitcher in the top 100 next year, my other pick was Beckett for Boston and he was flat out horrible. I did end up dropping him, but I mean what is the use there are tons of pitchers available during the season that do awesome. The only two starters I have kept all season are Haren and David Price. Picking up Price at around the 200th pick kind of makes up for Haren. Billy Butler is another who has disappointed, but at least been consistent. I read an article before the season of Butler vs. Morales, kind of a fantasy shake down comparison. Anyway the consensus was Morales was more ready and as luck would have I actually ended up with both out of the draft. Morales was definitely the better talent, until he broke his leg . . . in like May. I think he stayed in the top 100 for about another month, but he was sorely missed in the old frog's lineup. If I had him for the full season it is quite possible that this season wouldn't even be in doubt. As it was I managed to pick up Russell Branyan who has performed decently given he didn't even play the first month. Kind of like the anti-Morales or Bizaro-Morales. Either way he filled in nicely, but was a step below what I had. It is just very hard to replace top 50 talent during the season. If I do manage to win I think the MVP will be Troy Tulowitzki, who pretty much sealed the last week for me with 9 runs 6 HRs and 17 rbi's with a BA of .346. That might be the most incredible week of stats I have seen by one player. Well as long he continues to do that I shouldn't have a problem, lol. Did I mention he was my number one pick. Alright 2 more weeks and we'll see how it all shakes out. . .

The Greatest Moment in OU football History . . .

2010-09-21T19:43:00.003-05:00

. . . well you know not counting MAC Championships, which I don't. The Bobcats put the old smack down on one of the other large state universities this past weekend. Well at least the mascot "Rufus" put a beating on the other school's mascot "Brutus". Here is the video just in case you missed it.

The only bad thing is Ohio actually apologized for this. Why? No apology needed for something this awesome. Way to go Rufus, even if you picked up a lifetime ban for this. . . still totally worth it.

Totally unrelated, but Sampson will be playing for the Bucks this year in flag football. I guess I'll keep an eye for any Bobcats that come along, but there shouldn't be any problems as his team doesn't have a mascot.

Disney Vacation

2010-09-06T10:47:00.006-05:00

Oh yes we did get to go to Disney World. As part of the lucarative winnings of the fishing derby was an all expenses paid trip to Disney World. You just won the Beallsville First Christian Church Fishing Derby what are you going to do next - I'm going to Disney World. Ok that isn't how it happened, although expenses paid would have been an awesome way to go, we actually paid our own way and the trip was completely unassociated with the fishing derby. Anyway it was the kids' first trip to Disney, second for me, and 3rd for Sophie. You see me and Sophie went to Disney on our honeymoon, but that was pre-blog. Sophie's Mom went with us too, to help with the kids and carry all of our stuff and take our pictures and what not, just kidding although she did get to do all of that too plus ride roller coasters with me. We went at the end of July, week of the 18th to be exact, and surprising Florida is quite warm that time of year. Ok it is down right hot, but the kids did excellent at the parks. We didn't even have to get a stroller. I think the excitement kind of kept them going, plus Sophie had started them on a training regiment early in the summer getting them used to walking by taking them to the track, which turned out to be a very good idea. We did 5 parks in 5 days, which by the end of the vacation I needed another vacation, and it was very fast paced. We stayed off site at Fantasy World Club Villas, and they were very nice. I would recommend them to anyone, as they were a 2 story villa with 2 bedrooms, kitchen, living room, 2 baths and a washer/dryer. Plus where we were at was right next to the pool so that was neat. The only bad thing is there is no close stores for food, but we did take a suitcase full of food so we would have snacks for the parks and pop-tarts in the morning :D. Oh and the water sucked (insert mr. yuck symbol here). So the schedule we planned on doing was 2 days at Disney 1 day at Universal and 2 more days at Disney. By staying at an off-site hotel we could go to different parks, which in a nice advantage, the bad thing is Disney was the only park worth going to. If we had it to do over again I would say we stay at Disney and just do the last day at either Magic Kingdom or Epcot. I'll tidy this up in a bit, I have to relinquish control of the computer to the girl for now.

Fishing Derby of Aught 10

2010-09-06T10:26:00.003-05:00

This year was special because it was the first time that Peach got a trophy. She was kind of upset when Sampson got another trophy and she thought she wasn't going to get one, but when she found out she won she had the biggest smile on her face. Sampson fished with Uncle Bo and got the "Most Fish" trophy while Peach and I pulled in the one for "Smallest Fish". What? She could have won a trophy for anything and it wouldn't of mattered as long as she got one. And she actually did bring it in. Old dad was busy trying to bring the biggest fish, but my line got tangled on a old rope (which I estimate the rope's length at about 30' which would have one for longest catch, you know if there was a category for that) and it ended up costing me about 5 minutes out of our 15. If that wouldn't have happened we might have ended up with the most too. But I'm not greedy, I'm just glad Peach finally got a trophy to put on her wall. Check out how excited my little girl was. Also Nippert (from the famous sheriff election of aught 8 or so) got the win for biggest fish. See he is money at making the big catch, too bad you didn't elect him sheriff so he could be "catching" criminals instead.

Oops what happened to August

2010-09-06T10:22:00.002-05:00

Holy cow I forgot to blog in August. . . well "forgot". Sometimes I go through periods where I don't blog for a while, I mean come on how was I going to set the record between blog posts of over 2 years. Well on this "labor" day I've decided to "work" on the old blog and catch some stuff up from over the summer. Wow, I seem to be using the old "quotes" a little bit too much.

Happy 4th Everyone

2010-07-05T21:29:00.002-05:00

We had a pretty busy day on the 3rd, and just kind of took it easy around the house on the 4th. My mom did just send me an e-mail though and I thought the image was pretty powerful as it kind of puts into perspective all of the freedoms we do have and the cost with which they have been paid for. 234 years ago some very brave people were willing to give everything they had to start a new nation even if it meant giving their life. Unfortunately that kind of sacrifice is still needed, and still greatly appreciated.

Peach's 2nd Recital

2010-06-10T20:10:00.002-05:00

We have a pretty jam packed weekend coming up, with Peach's second recital and the Fishing Derby. This year Peach is in 3 classes, so she will get a little more face time at the recital, unfortunately not until the 3rd and 4th act though. Also me and Sampson get to defend our title of most fish at the fishing derby. Can't Wait...check in for the results.

Oh also we have avoided (well at least through today) any broken apendages that may effect the dance recital. . . .

Baseball Season is Over - Well Rays Pinto Season

2010-06-10T19:53:00.009-05:00

Well today the Pinto Rays finished their season a respectable 6-4-1. We started out like gang busters, but dropped 4 of the last 5. It seemed like we were a lot better than some of the teams to start the season, but we just didn't improve as much. Either that or the hot weather got to us. I think we got a little out of sorts when we were off for 10 days and didn't really play. Oh I kept working with Sampson on the weekends and I think he really did do better as the season went on, but some of the situations we ended up in were really difficult to prepare for. Just different scenarios with runners on and where the forces were at, stuff like that. Sampson did have all 3 out unassisted in one game at Bridgeport though. He played 3rd base all season and the other team happened to get runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs and the next 3 people lined the ball right to him and he just grabbed it and stepped on the base. Sometimes he really impresses me with what he does and just surprises me. I'm really proud of the way he played this year, we even had what I would call our first real game of catch in May at Maw's house. Well the season did end on kind of a sour note, with out team getting mercy-ruled by 10 runs in the last 2 games. This last left me Really upset, not because I thought we could come back and win, but in the bottom of the fifth inning after we had gotten on of the kids out at first the first baseman went to through the ball back to the circle and he threw it to the opposing coach. Well "Coach Super Bad Sport" (as he will be referred to for infinity) ducked, wait did you catch that he DUCKED out of the way so that the ball would go out of bounds and they would get another base on the over throw. Well the kid was awarded 3rd base and then scored on the next play which was a fielders choice from the short stop which would have held the runner at second with 2 outs and we would have had a chance to get to the 6th. I just thought it was really poor from a sportsmanship standpoint to do something like that to 7 and 8 year-olds. The bad things is that since it was a continuation of a game we had already started, Sampson didn't even get to bat tonight. So that is all for this season since we won't have enough kids to compete in next weeks playoffs, eh I was ready to be done, just a little disappointed in the way it ended.

My biggest gripe may be the stupid rule about the circle. We never had the circle growing up and in my opinion it is stupid. That blunt enough for you. It teaches terrible fundamentals, in my opinion was the ball is secured in the infield by any of the infielders the base runners can't advance, period. When they get to high school someone isn't going to make the turn to third when the second baseman has the ball, it just teaches horrible base running habits. I don't like it and I think it ought to be changed. That circle is just bad and you don't need the thing, get rid of it.

Ok now for some happy pictures of the season, well after this weekend maybe. Oh did I mention I kept book for the team. It was pretty hectic keeping up with the kids, I only made one mistake all season. And if you believe that . . . Well I will say this the other coaches on the team said that they had no doubt that someone wasn't going to pencil whip us. And they wouldn't have.

Survivor Finale

2010-05-16T21:51:00.001-05:00

Just watched the worst suvivor finale ever. I had such high hope and then they were dashed when Sandra the worst player ever won again - by default. Please Survivor no more 3 person finals, just go an extra day or so and go all the way down to two.

Mailing One In

2010-04-13T21:33:00.001-05:00

Well time is tight right now around the old Helfen Household. We got baseball 3 days a week and dance one night. Soon dance will go to two days a week, so I wanted to practice the old mail in the posts and see what that looked like since I might have to start mailing them in.

New Fantasy Season

2010-04-13T21:13:00.002-05:00

Well we drafted about two weeks ago and the "Ungiggable Frogs" have emerged as the early leaders in the new fantasy season. Well actually I think I'm tied for fourth or so, but we are coming on strong. I ended up drafting 14th, which didn't end up being as bad as I thought it would be. I picked up a SS Troy Tulowitzki and 3B David Wright with my first 2 picks and they are both in the low 200's right now. Wow, way to go guys, what did you do check to see if I drafted you. Anyway I would have taken Reynolds then, but I didn't want to reach to the 15th spot on him, I thought that was too early, we'll see. Anyway I kept with the Frog theme, since it has worked so far, the ungiggable part came from the pass word for the league which was something like "letsgofroggigging". Stevie has gone the revenge route with "Coalminer's Revenge". You know what they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after last year's "Revenge of the Frogs", but unfortunately in fantasy baseball imitation can only get you to second place. My draft started to fall apart in the last 7 picks or so. I ended up with Eric Bedard who won't play until the second half and my back-up second baseman doesn't even start. Oh well, just have to pick some people up and make a go of it. At least I got Kurt Suzuki with my 12th pick, now I don't have to worry about catcher. Sure he isn't great, but catchers are notoriously bad fantasy players and I have found not worth the moves to try and find a diamond in the rough.

Well a new twist this season, I have branched into the 'B' category of fantasy players. I have 3 teams, but I still manage them with an 'A' type personality, checking the waivers, and free agents constantly. I haven't completely annoyed Sophie yet . . .yet. Anyway one of the teams is in a league with Mom. She wanted to play. Well I'm pretty sure she did after the constant badgering that me and Stevie give her. We also got Bo to play, so it should be fun. Probably not too much smack talk in that league, well very little. Ok probably A LOT. Anyway good luck everyone in all leagues, have fun fighting for second.

A New Poem (It's the Bomb, trust me)

2010-03-25T20:00:00.003-05:00

Well in honor of Big Chief Red Metal's recent run-in with the law and his penchant for telling stories in the poetic style, I have constructed the following poem. Hopefully it will illustrate the hilarity (oh yes hil-ar-ity) of the whole bomb episode.

The time had come, oh yes it had
For all to leave, times had gotten bad

Well old Chief Red Metal stayed to help
"No problem Dale", he said with a yelp

He'd check the plant day after day
But one item eluded his vision's stray

When Consol had bought the place
Shock and Aw did fill their face

For in the Big Chief's office did they find
One big detail he had left behind

It was not a mess or ISO files on his desk
It was the fake bomb he made for that safety test

His pride and joy it was
But that darn Consol had called the fuzz

They came with lights and the sirens blared
They even shut down Route 2 to show they cared

Consol did not want their new plant blown apart
So they began their search for the owner of that car in the parking lot

All signs pointed back to the Chief
"It's a fake" he said but to no relief

They couldn't figure why he left it out
It's all Dean's fault he began to shout

It must have been that spider bite
That left him not thinking right

But he stayed right there he would not run
"I'll blow this place to kingdom come"

Oh wait, no it really was a fake
Being a prison bride he could not take

He got off for now, the police did not arrest
But I'm sure he'll land on the no-fly list

Ok, well this is just getting to be ridiculously long now, so I'll just revert back to the prose I'm more used to. Anyway I don't think he got arrested, but I suppose he is still at risk, and probably up for the no-fly list and what not. Oh man, I forgot I really wanted to come up with a rhyme for no-fly list . . . Well I changed the last line of the poem to reflect it now, but I'm too lazy to erase what I've already typed. Actually I'm not even sure that arrest and list rhyme, but that's the best I got. Hope you enjoyed it.

New Robin Hood

2010-03-25T19:57:00.001-05:00

You'll always be the gladiator to me Russell Crowe, always.

Sampson's New Team

2010-03-23T18:31:00.007-05:00

Sampson got on the Rays!!! Once a schedule and stuff comes out I'll be sure to let you know.

Also in honor of the new baseball season a little something to get you in the mood for baseball . . . or not.

It's Peanutbutter Jelly Time !!!! (better late than never)

2010-03-23T18:30:00.003-05:00

Ooops, forgot the video. Well here you go.

Let's Go Bobcats!!!!!

2010-03-18T19:16:00.001-05:00

Watching the Bobcats play G-Town in the Tourney. Up by 12 at the half, LET'S GO CATS!!!!

Changing Seasons

2010-03-14T21:35:00.002-05:00

No not the weather - sports. I haven't been keeping up with the old blog too well lately *cough games*, but Sampson finished basketball at the end of January. He did very well, he even poured in 16 points one game, old dad has the video footage too. Last week we signed up for baseball. It should be pretty exciting this year as they keep scores and outs and what not. I think it is coaches pitch, which is essentially what they did during instructional league so that shouldn't be too bad. I'll have to get him out and work some of the rust off if it would ever not snow or rain. Well hopefully I'll do better keeping track of the new season. Oh also his team was undefeated in basketball, even though they didn't keep score for two full games, but that is mostly do to the fact they were blowing the other team out. I think he really enjoyed it. I can still take him though. At least in his room on the little rim he got for the back of his door at Christmas.

Sampson Trades Rooms for Magic Beans

2010-03-14T21:13:00.002-05:00

Well not quite magic beans, but 2 packs of Marvel figures. Of course that is what Sophie thought he traded for, turns out Sampson thought the deal was Super Hero Squad bed sheets, a new paint job in the room AND the two marvel packs. Well that is what he started telling everyone else he traded the room for, so in all likelihood Sophie is going to have to throw in the stuff now too. The sweetheart part of the deal for him though is that he thinks he traded for a bigger room too. Unfortunately buddy you didn't, but after we started moving all of Peach's stuff into Sampson's old room and his stuff into Peach's old room, it did look like Peach's old room was bigger. Well I know for sure that the closet is smaller and that will be big for her later, trust me. Anyway the whole reason that came about is because I broke the piece of crap computer chair that we had in the kitchen. Sophie says I can have a nice big chair fully capable of supporting me if we can move the computer and stuff down stairs, but in order to do that we needed to move the doll house upstairs, which required a larger room for Peach, which means Sampson needed to switch rooms with her, which meant that Sophie needed to bargain with him to do it, which she did for 2 Marvel Packs. And apparently some other stuff, but really he could have asked for the kitchen sink and probably got it. So buddy someday you'll realize you gave up your room to your sister and there it is. Hope it works out, I know it will for me, I'm getting a new chair!!!

USA WINS!!!!

2010-02-21T22:12:00.002-05:00

The US Hockey team just beat the Canadian team 5-3, in Canada even. Yeah, take that Canada, now that victory over our women's curling team isn't quite as sweet is it? That was the first time we had beat them since 1960, so you know I have been waiting for this opportunity for a while. Well not really, but it sure was convenient. Anyway Congrats U.S. Team and keep up the good work. I forgot it was on until there was 5 minutes left and the US let the Canadians score with 6 seconds left in a power play late in the third period. Then the goalie Miller saved about 20 shots in 2 minutes and one of the defensemen added an empty netter. Pretty awesome win for the US.

Jimmie "wins" 5th Championship

2010-02-21T20:37:00.002-05:00

Well he hasn't yet, but judging by the first real race of the season HESCAR hasn't done anything to slow him down, plus they conveniently bend the rules for him so he can get back out front after late cautions when he is on pit road. Plus HESCAR left all the chase tracks the same, so it is only a matter of time before Jimmie gets number 5. I don't know if I can watch anymore of the season, I'm so disgusted right now.

New Dog

2010-02-03T21:14:00.003-05:00

Well Peach is finally going to get herself a new dog. You see she has been begging and begging for a puppy ever since, well I think since she could talk pretty much. And at first we told her we would get one if she potty trained, but then we didn't want to get one when the weather was going to be bad. Then the timing just never really worked out until recently and one of Sophie's Mom's friends had some pups she was giving away. So since the price of free is always in my ballpark and the pup was a beagle mix we decided that we should go ahead and get one. Sophie and Peach went to look at them yesterday and Peach was in love. The only problem was she thought she was going to get to bring it home, but the pup isn't weened yet. Anyway I guess she threw the fit of all fits when she had to leave the puppy, but Sophie got her calmed down a little by promising her a DVD or something. Ghesh, you promise a kid a dog, then you got to bribe 'em on top of that. Can't wait until she is ready for a car or something then maybe we'll have to bribe her with a laptop or jewellery. Anyway here are some picks of our new dog Brownie. Named for the Browns of course. I can't tell who is more excited Sophie or Peach.

Quick Fact

2010-01-17T19:13:00.002-05:00

Did you know India consumes about 46% of the total butter produced worldwide? Well that may have been before the USA got Peach, cause that girl likes her butter. Watch out India here we come.

Surviving Sophie

2010-01-17T16:54:00.002-05:00

I imagine if our fish had a blog that is what the title of this post would be. Either that or 'The Adventures of Mac and Cheese' cause that is their names. Anyway last night I had just laid down in bed and Sophie started yelling for me to come into Peach's room because she needed help and the light was off in her room. So I came running in there and here Sophie had started to feed the fish and the lid had fallen off into the fish tank along with about half the can of fish food. So she is standing there trying to get the pump unplugged and I just imagine the fish are swimming in there going "Hallelujah". The fish tank was pretty well filled with food at this point and Sophie was in pure panic mode as she hustled the tank down stairs and did the fastest tank cleaning job she had ever done. As she was pulling the fish out of the tank with the little net it was impossible to not get some food in with them, so they were setting in the little temporary bowl with food still floating around. I wish I would have gotten a picture, but given the circumstances that it was already past midnight and Sophie's head was hurting a little it probably wouldn't have been a very good idea. Old Kirk could have ended up "sleeping with the fishes" if you know what I mean. Anyway Sophie cleaned all the rocks and stuff off as best she could and I cleaned the fish food lid off and the filter stone and carried the clean tank back up stairs. It was definitely something unexpected, but hey now it will be a while before the tank needs cleaned again . . . hopefully.

Happy New Year!!!

2010-01-01T14:32:00.001-05:00

Well happy new year everyone. Hope 2010 is a great year for you!!!

Invite Friends To Play Cyber Nations

2009-12-26T20:25:00.000-05:00

Invite Friends To Play Cyber Nations

if you want to play cyber nations use this linky. It helps me :D.

Bobcats Bowl Game - Live Event Blog

2009-12-26T12:19:00.003-05:00

12:20 PM- I'm going to try and do something new and capture an event as it is unfolding. Right now it is about 40 minutes before the Bobcats get ready to take the field for hopefully their first ever Bowl win. I'm going to keep updating as time elapses. Should make for an interesting read, I hope. I see Bill Simmons do it for the Super Bowl one year. Right now Sophie is out picking up the pizza. Little Caesar's of course.

12:37 for the pregame I'm actually watching 'Overboard' with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Funnier movie than I thought it would be.

12:57 - ok, ESPN has just switched coverage over to the game. I'll have try and catch the end of that overboard movie sometime. Still waiting on Sophie and Pizza.

12:58 - Sophie arrives - With Pizza :D

1:01- kick off and we are underway. stumble in the endzone for OU. O-H-I-O gets the ball first, let's go Bobcats

1:03 - Sophie gets the mail, Christmas letter from the Simmons' is in there. Well time to load up on pizza. Little Caesar's no less. Dang 3 and out for the 'Cats. Good punt 50 yarder. Crap I hope the Punter doesn't turn into the MVP for us.

1:06 - 'Cats hold the Herd to 3 and out. At least Brazill is playing this time.

1:10 - first little Caesar's commercial telling me there is going to be a special deal this weekend. Hope we got that. Whooo hoo 'Cats get the first first down of the game. An end around by Brazill.

1:15 - working on my 3rd piece of pizza.

~1:18 - Ohio drive stalled inside Marshall territory. Lot of positive yardage this drive.

1:19 - Ooooo Marshall Penalty. I hope they don't do a bunch of cheap shots like Central Michigan did. Also Sophie says she is full. Pizza very good after 2 full days of ham.

1:21 - Marshall gets a first down. Yuck

*an observation - I don't like the "little Caeser's" logo in the endzone. I mean it is in the middle of the field and all over the promos - we get it. The team names should have been in the endzone. That is all.

1:26 - 'Official' review of Marshall ball carrier. Peach is playing here new DS and screaming 'Fly'. Yeah. Now it is 4th and 1 good review. Apparently there is a female ref. thanks ESPN.

DANG 17 yard run Marshall

1:30 - Marshall scores, thanks to some horrid tackling from OU. Dang it. Sophie says there are just some things women shouldn't do and I have to agree, why would a woman even want to ref a football game. well 7-0 bad guys.

1:37 - crap another 3 and out for the bobcats. And Marshall scores on the punt. Ghesh.

1:39 - Little Caesar's has a coupon for 3.99 pizza for today and tomorrow only. Sophie is a little hot since she paid full price and was wearing her OU stuff.

1:41 - it may be time for another small piece of pizza.

1:44 - mercifully the first quarter is over. Oh crap personal foul penalty against the bobcats. Terrible call, but the Marshall guy seems to be in a lot of pain. Well maybe it wasn't a bad call. Oooo a play update presented by "Flomax", that just doesn't seem right.

1:49 - no it was a terrible call, he came up and tried to run into the offensive player who defended himself. Well let's see if the 'Cats can tackle this time. Another flag. catch interference i bet.

1:51- Yep catch interference. 15 yard penalty for that, seems a little excessive. They should have varying degrees of interference cause that would be a 5 yarder. Sophie is unimpressed with the announcers, one of which is also a woman who stated that the Bobcats haven't scored yet. Really?!? I guess that is why they have 0, who knew.

1:53 - apparently this game is a snooze fest as Sophie's mom managed to take a nap.

1:55 - Crap another penalty. pass interference on a horribly thrown ball. You know if the receiver has the run into the defender that is not the defenders fault. We need a turnover right here.

2:01 - Shoot another TD, from the hated Herd. 21-0.

2:08 - Turn over OU. Hey isn't there a tuck rule in college? If there was that woman ref probably wouldn't know it. Oh complaints of a phantom whistle that stopped OU players. TO Herd, run back . . . TD for the 'Cats . . . flag on the play . . .fingers crossed

2:10 - TOUCH DOWN OU!!!!!! whew we needed that. Holding on the offense penalty declined 21-7. Maybe a little momentum shift. Way to go Ballard.

2:14 - Sophie's mom wakes up to catch replay of Touch down.

2:22 - OU stops Marshall and the 4 on 4th and 1. WHOOO. That was dumb. Chance to get some more points before the half easy kick and they go for it by pitching the ball and Noah Keller comes up to make the stop. Man if OU can take the ball down here and get something before the half that would be a HUGE shift.

-New Allstate commercial with a dummy, funny stuff

2:26 - well Marshall blew the first play up and called a timeout. OU can run the clock out though as Marshall only has one timeout left. Also Sophie's Mom went back to sleep. Marshall shouldn't even call a timeout. How dumb. Just run it Frank and run the clock out or kneel, yep kneel. Duh. Well we'll have to try and mount a come back the second half.

2:29 - time to check on some laundry

2:47 - Well while I have time I check the old fantasy sports over at Yahoo.

2:50 - Here we go time for a come back, Oooo tackle behind the 20 by OU. Good way to start.

Wow Noah Keller had 11 tackles in the first half. Come on guys don't forget this is for the BELL!!!

2:53 - Oh nice tackle there. 3 and out for the Herd. Let's see if we can get one here from Brazill. . . nope, but well start near mid field.

2:54 - Big pass to Price . . . Here we go . . . O-H-I-O.

2:56 - 3rd and 11, Pryce picks it up but comes back doh! 4th and 1 . . . depends on the spot.

Stopped by less than an inch. Dang.

3:04 - Good Defense OU. Got 'em into 3rd and 12 and then got the sack. Then I think there was a crappy punt too. Sweet. 'So you're saying there's a chance'.

3:08 - Yep crappy punt, then a face mask, OU operating inside the Marshall 25. Little Caesar pizza may be catching up to me. Our yelling about a run inside the 10 wakes up Sophie's Mom.

3:10 - a timeout. Dang my stomach is aching. apparently peanut butter cookies are not a good chaser for bread sticks and then throw in some squirt.

3:12- I (Sophie) have to step in to tell you about the OU TOUCHDOWN because hubby is indisposed. Go Bobcats Go!!!

3:19- Oops Marshall was that supposed to be a punt...Go OHIO!!!

3:22 - Ohio FIELD GOAL!!! 21-17 come back Ohio stop Marshall.

3:29- Hubby's back we will see if he is bad luck guy.

3:31- end of the 3rd quarter.

3:33 - (Kirk) I guess the aching could have been from the chocolate orange slices I had too. Sampson had 5 pieces of pizza. Better get ready for your own belly ache son. Hans was supposed to be here too, but so far he is a 'no Show'.

3:35 - 20 yard pick-up on 2 and 25 . . .Nice bobcats nice, way to start the fourth. Oh yes First down.

3:37 - exciting 4 yard loss by the bobcats . . . But a flag on the play 15 yarder on Marshall . . . Another First Down!!!!! Almost a TD. the flanker pass goes incomplete, but Price was wide, wide open. Another timeout Ohio. Boy I hope we don't need those at the end of the game.

3:44 - Oh yes throw that flag lady! Late hit Marshall another pick up on 3rd down.

3:47 - 4th down, field goal try 29 yards . . . no good. Dang.

3:54 - Ohio stops Marshall on 3rd and short. Oh man that Brazill gets a lucky bounce to retain possession. He is exciting every time back there, whether he returns the ball or not, unfortunately. Hans called apparently he got busy and now is not going to make it. 7 minutes left and the Bobcats need a TD to take the lead now as they trail 21-17.

3:59 - Ohio has to punt the ball away and play defense now. Another Turnover would be real nice. Dang another 1st down Marshal.

4:03 - Another Marshall first Down - less than 3 minutes left now.

4:04 - Ohio has to use its last time out. 1:47 left. Only a flicker of hope remains now for the Bobcats. Sophie and her Mom agree that the Bobcats are done, but I'm holding out for history. What better way to win their first bowl then the come all the way back from down 21 to win.

Starting to wish I had watched the end of that 'overboard' movie. Wonder how that ended.

4:08 - 4th down Marshall. On the 21, 1:02 remaining. Good chance the Herd will go for it. Nope field goal . . . Oooooo Miss. Only his second miss all year.

Here we go 'Cats.

57 seconds left

Incomplete - that's ok it was a short pass anyway.

47 seconds - complete to Brazill out of bounds 4 yard gain. Brazill hurt a little

Interception!!! Game Over.

well Dang it. The bobcats come up just a little short on their first ever bowl bid. Man I was so hopeful. Well there is always next year. Hope you like the post anyway.

New Year's Music

2009-12-26T12:03:00.001-05:00

In order to help people transition from Christmas to New Year's I've put a little "New Year's" music up. 10 Auld Lang Syne to help ring in '10. Happy New Year.

Eternal Couturiers Men's Page

2009-12-19T00:52:00.000-05:00

Eternal Couturiers Men's Page

Check these out from my good buddy Casca. Lots of neat Religious Shirts just in time for the Christmas season.

Peach the Vet

2009-12-13T21:21:00.002-05:00

Peach said today that she wanted to be a vet, but that if someone came in with a skunk pet that she would not look at it. Because "skunks could get their stink on you." So in the future if you are thinking about going the the Peach Helfen Home of Healthy Animals with your skunk you might want to rethink that because she isn't going to even check your skunk. Then you'll just have to go somewhere else anyway.

Bobcats Win!!!

2009-12-13T21:03:00.004-05:00

Sampson won his first ever organized basketball contest. Yah! Overall the Bobcats played pretty well, you could tell the second year kids from the first year kids though. Our second year guys really carried the load this first game. Sampson did start contributing late in the second half as he scored his first ever basket and then later scored his second ever basket. So good job buddy and I got it all on tape er I made a digital recording of it anyway. See Sophie and the kids let me have my Christmas present a little early so that I could record his game. In HD no less. It is funny watching him play because I go over a lot of stuff with him and we even played at Maw's house yesterday working on rebounding, but when he got in the game and started playing it was like he forgot everything. Oh well, he has a game Thursday hopefully he remembers to REBOUND. We'll work on it. I think his stat line was something like 4 points, 1 assist, 2 rebounds, maybe a steal or two and at least one turn over. The final score was like 32 to 24 or so. I could check the tape again. I made him watch the game film already. Well I mean I wanted to see it hooked up to the TV anyway so we just went ahead and watched it. Good stuff.

Oh also the OU Bobcats are going for their first ever bowl win on December 26th around Noon Eastern or so against the Marshall Thundering Herd. This is also a rivalry game, so I wonder if they will put the "Bell" up for grabs. I mean the splendor and history of the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl should probably be enough, but I mean why not throw it out there for a little extra. If you happen to be thinking about it on the 26th think some positive thoughts for the old Bobcats. Thanks.

"Bones" Jones - Future LH Champion

2009-12-11T22:40:00.004-05:00

I watched Jon "Bones" Jones on the ultimate fighter finale last Saturday and just let me say I think he is very impressive as a fighter. He is in that light-heavy weight division that is severly stacked, and even though he "lost" I honestly think that in the next 4 years he will be the light-heavy weight champion. No pressure kid. But seriously he really handled Matt Hamil and I thought Hamil was pretty decent. He ended up getting DQ because of illegal elbows, but that was after he beat Hamil in the mount for about a minute straight. He is extremely long and throws very high impact unorthodox shots from crazy angles. Right now I don't see a good defensive strategy because he can out reach you and he has the more dangerous wrestling background of Greco-Roman which is tough in MMA because they like the clinch around the waist and most regular wrestlers like to grapple higher or lower. Honestly because of the crazy 84" reach I don't know how you get to this guy, I guess just shoot early and hope for the best cause if the fight stays standing I'll take "Bones" in the first. But I just wanted to call it on the old blog that by the end of 2014 "Bones" will probably be hoisting the belt. I see a good match between maybe him and Cantewell as he is a good up and comer too. Then maybe a Jardine, which would be interesting because of the two unorthodox styles. Next would be Evans or Griffin and then Machida or Rua whoever isn't champ and maybe a few other fights in there for good measure but within the next four years it will be difficult to keep him out of a title shot, just like it was difficult to keep out Machida.

Also during the finale Kimbo Slice finally looked like an MMA fighter. He was down to 112 lbs. which is pretty impressive considering he is all muscle and only weighed about 230 before. He said he wanted to try and fight at 205, which would probably be better for him than fighting heavy weight, but he is definitely improved. I think he could probably beat Seth now straight up, but the top of the 205 lbs. ranks would give him fits. Houston Alexander was a little disappointing, because he's got that knockout power, but I think he over-thought the fight by trying to key on the leg so much. I think he should have keep throwing the kicks, but he kept distance too much. The circling the whole first round was just way too much for me. If anything the first round could have been 9-9 because of the lack of action. But I thought in the end when it came down to a decision that Kimbo should have won because if nothing else he controlled the center of the ring.

If you'd like to meet Mr. Jones here you go - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsy8aT--bGU&feature=related

Browns Really Did Win This Time. . . No Seriously

2009-12-11T22:01:00.002-05:00

For the first time in the history of the blog (yes, for real the very first time since before '04) the Browns have beaten the hated Squeelers. Ending the streak of defeats at 12 and hopefully starting their own winning streak. At the heart of the win was Joshua Cribbs (Note to Cleveland: GET THIS GUY A HUGE CONTRACT) who did basically everything, but play defense, and actually the defense itself which played good enough to not need Cribbs. Cribbs kind of reminds me of the "Water Boy" that way like "com'mon guys you gotta help Josh out there. He can't do it all himself. (then the coach turns to Josh) Ok Josh you are going to have to do this all yourself, cause you have absolutely no help out there." Unfortunately we were without two of the bigger name players on the team and bigger players for that matter in Jammal Lewis and Shaun Rodgers. I wish Shaun could have played cause then maybe the defense would have had about 12 sacks. As it were they pretty much raped the squeeler offense (oops, sorry big ben fans) and held them to only 2 field goals. As a side note, it was the coldest game ever played between the two teams so for those people who said the Browns could only win if hell froze over, I guess it finally did on December 10th 2009.

Browns Win, Oh Wait Nevermind

2009-11-22T22:27:00.003-05:00

No they didn't win, in fact they actually came up with a new way to lose. They were actually down in the fourth quarter and came back to score a touchdown and get a two point conversion to go up by 6. Then they stopped the Lions with like 3 minutes left, but couldn't run out the clock so they had to punt back to the Lions. I'm not sure how much time was left at that point, but it didn't really matter. You see the Browns allowed the Lions to make it down to the 1 yard line before coming up with a stop as time ran out. Well it seemed like a stop, but apparently it was pass interference. So the Lions get one more untimed down. And they scored a touchdown to tie the game, then got the extra point to win 38-37. You see in the last few years I've gotten accustomed to Romeo ball, where you get really far behind then make a charge at the end, but still come up short. Apparently with Mangini ball you can actually take the lead, but if it looks like you might win - even though you couldn't run out the clock and I guess you thought throwing on 3rd and 5 was smart with a 6 point lead (it isn't you should run the ball, always run the ball, don't get cute) - you just commit penalties to keep giving the other team shots at the endzone so they can win. I didn't think it was possible, but way to disappoint me in a completely new way.

I also heard a story that some people went to a Browns game and the Dad got arrested and a kid got his noise maker taken off of him and broken right in front of his face, because "people aren't allowed to bring anything into the stadium". Now if this is true, this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of, and if it happened to me I would quit rooting for the Browns right then. I mean if it wasn't painfully obvious that you have an organizational problem it should be after something like that. If you are going to put a team out there that is as bad as the Browns are now, you should let people bring in what ever they wanted to make the game more enjoyable. I mean let 'em bring in noise makers, or something that could give you some home field advantage. You need to be extra nice to the fans right now, because let's face it you aren't winning any new fans because of the awesome effort you are putting out there on the field. But you know I don't even blame the players, because the fact is that other than a few really good players here and there - Joe Thomas, Josh Cribbs and Shaun Rodgers - these guys just aren't capable of winning games. Right now Cleveland just has a severe lack of talent and that is the fault of the front office in my opinion and I don't think that Mangini is all he is cracked up to be. I would have rather had Mike Shanahan myself - a proven winner with a good zone blocking scheme that made any running back look good. Just ask the Browns about Reuben Droughns remember him, he rushed for like 1200 yards for the Broncos and the Browns traded their entire defensive line for him and he ended up doing squat for the Browns. I guess he did rush for 1,00 yards . . . once. Ok I'm done I need to think happy thoughts before going to bed.

Basketball '09

2009-11-22T22:07:00.002-05:00

This is Sampson's first year of basketball and he is only 7, so I worry about pushing him too hard too fast and sucking the enjoyment out of the game, because right now I think he really likes it. You see, me and him play NBA 2K7, yeah I know it is old, but it serves its purpose, on the PS3 and he really likes that, and when we play outside I think he enjoys that too. Plus, of the sports he has played I think he most looked forward to playing basketball. I signed up to help coach too. What, I should be fine remember it isn't like they are 11 and 12 year-olds, only 1st and 2nd graders so I should be good, right? Well maybe I'll pick up a couple of new ankle braces just to be on the safe side. He had an open gym today, conveniently on Maw's 80th birthday (Happy Birthday Mom), but he did good. He just needs to work on his handle and getting stronger to push the ball up. Unfortunately they will always play on Sunday in this league, so no trips to Mom's on Sunday, but there are only about 4 teams so it shouldn't be too bad. I guess they play 16 minutes halves with continuous clock, on 8 foot rims. Should be good, hopefully he gets on a team were he can contribute. He said he didn't make as many baskets as he would have like too, well keep trying buddy you'll get there.

Parade Odessy '09

2009-11-22T21:33:00.002-05:00

Well Peach is old enough to go on the float for the Dance Factory in local parades. Right now she only gets to ride on the trailer and the older girls dance behind. They did really well in the first two parades we went to this year, I mean as well as a four year old can do just kind of sitting there waving and being all cute and all. First we had the St. Clairsville parade on Thursday night and that was her first parade ever, so that was neat. Then on Friday we had the Wheeling parade, "the big time". I guess last year there were like 50,000 people that came out to watch the parade and judging from the traffic I would say it was pretty close to that again. While I was watching the parades, I realized that I'm really not a parade person. Not that they aren't nice, but I just wouldn't go out of my way to watch the old parade if I didn't have a personnel interest in it. I mean if they came up with a virtual parade that I could download or watch on YouTube then I might do that, but someone would probably have to send me a link. Just kidding, I probably wouldn't watch that either. One funny thing from the parades though, other that Moon Dog following Santa at the Wheeling parade which is tradition, was in the middle of the Wheeling parade there was like a color guard with a bag pipe player, and following them was a float for a hospital or something. But in between the two were two people dressed up as super heroes, wait it gets better. One was dressed up as Bat Girl and the other one was Spiderman, but it looked like a chick in the Spiderman outfit, plus one is Marvel and the other is DC comics, so there is like no continuity, but the funniest part was I couldn't figure out which float they went with or if they were just like their own float. I think that would be hilarious if they were just random people that kind of slide in between two floats dressed up as superheros. Kind of like parade crashers, but who is going to pull them out of the parade. I mean wouldn't that be great to kind of just randomly join a parade. That is a new goal of mine, to dress up as a super hero and just get in a parade, but I think I would need someone else to do it with me to kind of add legitimacy. I mean in these type of parades there are always random characters and I bet if someone asked you could just say you were with one of the floats, and if the people behind you asked you would just say you are with the people ahead of you and if the people in front of you asked you would just say you were with the people behind you. Genius.

More from the Barn Painter

2009-11-21T11:03:00.002-05:00

Well even though I'm not a huge Buckeye fan (understatement), I found this contribution from the barn painter to be very good and well worth the time to view. So head on over to youtube and check it out. Oh also if you are lucky you will even see a couple of vids of me in my youth. But you might have to look hard. Anyway here you go . . .

Also Go BLUE!!

Just How Good is that Romo?

2009-11-11T19:45:00.002-05:00

Did you know that Tony Romo ranks third in all-time passer efficiency rating. ALL-TIME. As Kanye would say "He is the Third best passer of all-time, ALL-TIME". This interesting fact was brought up today at work just to stir the pot a little. Apparently he is behind only Steve Young and Peyton Manning. I said he is also down on the list in a couple of other categories. Like did you know that the current active leader in rapes at the QB position is Ben Roethlisberger. Oh yeah everybody knows that. So I guess Romo is like tied for second in this category since he has none, along with the rest of the active quarterbacks in the league. Just another thing the Squealers are on top of in the NFL.

HESCAR boots Jimmie

2009-11-11T19:30:00.002-05:00

In what can only be described as a desperate move by HESCAR to appeal to the old blog and all of the readership, Jimmie was forced out of the race Sunday. Well he was wrecked out on the third lap by a combination of two of my new favorite drivers Sam Hornish Jr. and David Reutimann. I had forgot the race started at 3:30 (dumb time to start a race, but HESCAR will rectify this next season when all the races will start at 1PM / 4PM / or 7PM) so Bo called and told that I needed to watch the race so I could catch Jimmie wrecking. Oh it was nice. I mean I never want to see anyone get hurt, but watching him wreck out brought a tear to my eye . . . tear of JOY. All I can figure is that HESCAR is trying to even out the Chase, so that it will look like Mark Martin has a chance to win before Jimmie pulls off a Miracle in the final race to get his fourth "championship" in a row. Yeah I put "championship" in quotes because had it not been for the chase Johnson would have 0 championships, and likely Tony would be winning his third this year. The two worst things to happen to HESCAR in the last 10 years were Jimmie and chase. Among other bad things was taking a second race off of Darlington for California, and taking Rockingham off the schedule completely in all series. You can't tell me that with the lucrative sponsorship agreements and television deals that actual gate revenue is driving these decisions. It is horrible for the drivers, horrible for the sport, and worst of all horrible for the fans. Hopefully HESCAR can pull their heads out of their exhaust pipes and get back to being a fan friendly sport like NASCAR used to be, instead of some bleed every dime out of every sucker by any means possible because it won't be long before people quit watching all together. Seriously I'm about done. No seriously this time, if Jimmie wins another what is the point. He will just win next year and the year after that too, because the chase is totally catered to him. Also Junior has a chance to win his first race of the year this week at Phoenix, same as he has had every other week this year. This is just a fun fact Sophie and I like to remind ourselves of at the beginning of EACH race. Also Bobby Labonte has a chance to win his first race of the season. Sorry Sophie.

Sampson the Ice-Man

2009-11-11T19:26:00.002-05:00

Well Sampson is on such an ice kick right now that maw had to buy a new refrigerator just to keep up with ice production. Actually I think she just got it because her's was getting old but between Sampson and Peach when they go out there I think they eat a tray of ice. Just the ice, not like in a drink or anything just eating ice cubes. Sophie says she used to do that, so I guess they get that from her.

Bones

2009-11-05T21:00:00.002-05:00

Sophie says she is sick of all the tension between Bones and Booth. It is driving her nuts!!! Just Hook up already.

Also on CSI she says she is ready to right a strongly worded letter. Not because it was too bloody or gory but because in the opening scene a Nikon camera got thrown. Better watch out CBS, Sophie didn't think too much of that. I told her I'm sure it was a stunt camera though and no high end photographic equipment was hurt during the filming of the episode. You might want to add that disclaimer though.

Tuesday Elections

2009-11-05T20:44:00.004-05:00

Tuesday the Republicans won the Governorships of New Jersey and Virginia after taking a butt whooping last year in the general election. One other race of interest was the New York 23rd district for congress (not sure if that makes a lot of sense but essentially it was the 23rd congressional district of New York state). You see what happened was Pres Obama nominated John M. McHugh to the secretary of the Army, which vacated the position needing a special off year election to fill it. Now what seems funny to me is that there was no primary for this office rather the republican leaders of the district nominated Dede Scozzafava. And Dede happens to be a very liberal minded republican for this conservative leaning district. Plus the Democrats got to put their own liberal candidate. So now it was playing out that no matter who won was going to be more left leaning than the person they replaced. Well the conservative part of the republican party didn't want Dede to get elected so they got behind Doug Hoffman who ran as a conservative (in New York you can be a registered Conservative - with Hoffman and Sean Hannity they probably have like over a hundred registered). So within a month of the election a bunch of big name conservatives came out in support of Hoffman, only it was too little too late. You see the damage had already been done, because the republican party ran ads against Hoffman and in the last day of the race Dede dropped out, because I guess she didn't want to split the vote. The vote with her liberal counter part that is, because she ended up ENDORSING THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE. Let that sink in for a moment. The republican party spent over 900 grand trying to get her elected and then when the leaders of the party realize she wasn't what they wanted, she dumps them and goes with the democrat. Say what? That doesn't make any sense to me. I mean if I saw an election was lost and a group had spent a lot of money on me I don't think I would support someone completely out of the party. Unless you know I didn't really belong in that party anyway. So here is my theory - Obama nominates McHugh to the all powerful and coveted position of Secretary of the Army, and then works out a deal with the locals of the district to get someone elected who would be more inclined to vote his agenda forward. Now what the people of the district would have got in return I'm not sure, but I would bet (yes I said bet - you know what that means) that there will be some sweet kick backs coming to that district over the next year. I guess will just wait and see. My favorite quote from the whole deal was from former Gov. Mike Huckabee who said the Democrats didn't win it because they were smart, the Republicans lost the seat because they were stupid. Well Mike stupid yes, but just how sneaky the democrats were remains to be seen.

The 4th Worst Race in HESCAR History

2009-11-03T22:50:00.004-05:00

Well this past Sunday's race was one of the worst I have personally witnessed. I would say it is probably fourth behind the New Hampshire restrictor plate race(3rd), the Kansas race of '07 (2nd) and Indy '08 (1st), but I never saw the New Hampshire race thus the "personally witnessed" disclaimer. Anyway I will fill this spot in later, if you get a chance to watch the two wrecks at the end of the race you should watch those as that was the only interesting thing that happened.

Ok it's later, lol. We were at my mom's house and because Talladega is such a boring race (except for the final 10 laps - normally) I decided we could leave with 48 laps left and make it home before the end of the race. My reasoning was because there is usually a couple of yellows from a wreck and sometimes a red flag, and boy was I right. I only made it home to catch the last lap, but still we made it home. This week HESCAR decided it wanted to make Talladega "safer" by putting a bigger restrictor plate in and telling the drivers not to bump each other in the corners like they normally do. Well all that worked for about the first 182 laps of the 188 lap race and then all heck broke loose. First Ryan Newman got flipped end over end, that is right end over end, then he landed upside down in the grass and couldn't get out. Well that was more than enough to draw out the usual red flag. Because there weren't that many laps left it set the race up for a green white checkered. Which normally would be interesting, except the rules that were set up shouldn't provide that kind of finish . . . or could they. Just ask Mark Martin what he thought of the end of the race as he was the second driver to end up spending a little time on his roof Sunday. Here is an idea HESCAR - take the plates off. That will spread the field out a little and the bump drafting won't be an issue. I would think you could make the engines smaller and that might accomplish the same thing, so as to put a cap on the top speed but leave the field separated, because some engines will be better that others. But what I really liked was when Jimmie said 'take a bulldozer to the corners to flatten them, because cars will have to slow down." To which HESCAR basically said that was the dumbest idea out there. ha ha. Nice try Jimmie. Anyway it was a dumb idea to tell the drivers to not do what they normally do anyway, because all it did was push the big wreck to the end of the race rather than somewhere in the middle, poor predictable HESCAR. You could have done that by just racing 50 laps and it still would have been as good of a race, plus I probably could have seen the whole thing at Mom's house. At one point the entire field was just riding single file, putting in laps - boring (unfortunately I couldn't take a nap during this as I was driving, but I bet if you were watching at home it would have put you right to sleep). Hey that gives me an idea, me and HESCAR can team up and make DVD's of the most boring races, this one, New Hampshire - any rain out race this year and sell them as sleep aids. Well be rich! Well I guess HESCAR is already rich, but it would help make me rich!

Ok new paragraph that one was getting a little long. So HESCAR has other problems too. It isn't surprising that Chad, er "Jimmie", is going to win his fourth championship since all the races are basically the same every year. What HESCAR has done is make some of the tracks completely invaluable and a driver can pick to just tank it certain weeks and not really matter. I mean let's face it, if a road course or Bristol or even Pocono were in the Chase instead of Martinsville, Dover and Lowe's that Jimmie wouldn't even finish in the top two. What HESCAR has allowed is that Chad can focus on just the last 10 tracks to build cars specifically for those tracks, and as long as they grab a couple of wins on the way there, no worries about not finishing in the top 12. Then when the final 10 races roll around there is Chad waiting to capitalize on all the suckers that spent time setting up cars for the road courses, pocono, Bristol, Darlington. I mean how awesome would it be to see the final race of the year at different tracks. What about a finale at Daytona a complete circle of a season with a wild card at the end of the year, man that would be awesome. Just move the Indy race to July 4th and problem solved. Or what about Darlington in the chase or Bristol just for a change of pace. I mean as long as the last 10 races stay the same there is a good chance that Jimmie is going to keep winning Championships*. You know that under the old points system Jimmie wouldn't even have one Championship. It is the equivalent to having the Superbowl at the exact same stadium every year, and every playoff game at the same place. Anyway one other thing HESCAR needs to do is change what happens after the first 26 races. They need to seed people based on where they finished the first part of the year. It is fine if they want to give an extra 10 for wins, but who ever is ahead should still get something for doing so well and putting on shows at tracks like Pocono, Bristol, and the road courses because lets face it, if it were up to Jimmie and Chad we wouldn't even watch those races. Well I have definitely cut back my watching this year, and if things don't change I probably really will be done watching because they have made the entire season pointless.

Betting @ Work

2009-11-03T22:40:00.003-05:00

I had to teach my old buddy Chuck a little lesson last week at work. You see he though Cincinnati had been beat this year in college football. To which I said no they haven't. Well he was a little stubborn and didn't "believe" me, so I said "How 'bout we bet a piece of pizza on it?" Which he jumped on, because he thought he was right . . . but he wasn't, and I enjoyed a free piece of pizza for lunch. If he would have followed the Kirk Helfen Guide for Betting he wouldn't have been in that situation, see I only bet if I'm going to win. Makes it easier that way.

Back to Evony

2009-11-03T22:38:00.003-05:00

Well the gang wanted to hook back up and play a little, so I decided to start playing again. This time though we went to server 91 and I'm now ChuckNoris. And Chuck Norris is pretty tough if you didn't know. Also blogging may take a little bit of a hit in the mean time. sry.

Browns Problems

2009-10-27T21:27:00.003-05:00

Well new season, new coach, new GM same stinky browns. I'm not sure exactly what all their problems are, but I'll start a list.
1) You have an organizational problem. Clean up your facilities. The only thing a Browns wide receiver or tight end has caught in the last 3 years is staph infections. Get some bleach or something. You really should have gotten a clue this year when 20% of the team caught the flu so quickly. I mean put up some of those hand sanitizer stations, and maybe offer the players a flu shot. If I owned a team you can bet your rear-end that all of my players are getting a flu shot. And also they will be encouraged to wash their hands frequently.
2) Stop trading people to the Jets. Are we absolutely sure that Mangini isn't still working for the Jets. I mean someone check his bank account to make sure. First we trade our #1 pick away so they can get Mark Sanchez, meanwhile we are stuck with Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn. Yes I'm saying stuck with Brady Quinn although now I would say we need to go back to him. Then with the 19th pick or something we get Massaquoi or whatever or a center or something stupid, while Jeremy Macline is setting there. Dumb. And Braylon Edwards was worth more than Chansi Stuckey and some special teams guy. Ultra dumb. Seriously we are trading away first string guys for 3rd and 4th tier players.
3)Why have you not extended a contract for Josh Cribbs. I haven't heard anything bad off the field with this guy (I mean at least he hasn't gotten into a fight or killed anyone a-la Donte Stallworth), he is consistently a bright spot every week, he runs the Browns wildcat and is efficient (other than that pick) and he is an Ohio guy.

Ok, I'll stop for now but please stop being dumb, and also get some hand sanitizer and bleach.

Down but not Out

2009-10-27T21:23:00.002-05:00

Even though Sampson came home sick today, it was still parent/teacher conference day. Sophie went so she could meet the teacher this time. She got Sampson's report card, which was essentially all A's (good job Buddy, just like old Dad. Hey that is how I remember it). So hopefully he will feel better soon and he can try and soak mom and dad for some stuff. Like I said, I am more than happy to pay for A's.

Corrections

2009-10-27T21:18:00.003-05:00

Man I make a lot of mistakes. Apparently there are some there/their mistakes and I left the n't off of wasn't a couple of times. I would hope people are paying more attention when they read. . . but then I guess I should pay more attention when I type. Hey don't try to turn this on me. As soon as I can afford a proofreader I'll put one on the job, to make sure all my ideas are transmitted in a friendly easy to read way manner, with correct punctuation. Also I seem to leave prepositions at the end of sentences a lot, but you'll have that. Besides I think I already addressed that.

Illness 2009 edition

2009-10-27T21:10:00.003-05:00

Well Sampson is the first one to come down with the Flu or flu-like symptoms. The Swine flu is the really big deal now, and since he got the regular flu vaccine you would be inclined to think that he has the swine flu. The bad news is he was signed up to get a shot like this Saturday or so and now I don't know what he'll do. Hopefully he can handle it, he says he is in pain, in his neck, legs and arms. I hope it isn't the swine flu though, as that is supposed to be pretty nasty. I guess the thing hospitals are doing now is just diagnosing everyone with the swine flu whether it is or not. That way they are at least erring on the side of caution. You wouldn't want to diagnose someone with regular flu that had the swine flu, but so what if you do the opposite. I guess that is okay, but when we are still waiting to see the real spread of this flu I think they would take more precautions. Like actually checking people to make sure they really have it. Anyway, whatever he got we will probably all get, so the good news is I'll get to update the blog a little more. Hopefully no one gets too sick. I hate sick kids. Well you know.

I gave Sampson a bell to ring if he needed anything, so he didn't have to try and yell. If I didn't know better I would say Sophie is not a fan of the old bell.

Sampson Scores his first points

2009-10-25T20:49:00.002-05:00

Saturday finished the season for the old M.F.C.Y.F.F.L. (Martins Ferry Civics Youth Flag Football League) and the buckeyes came in 3rd. Sampson got to run the ball for the first time, or maybe the second time this year, but either way it was the first time he scored in flag football. It was so exciting and unexpected even though they were playing 8 on 8 since the other team didn't have all their players. Then he hiked the ball and even played quarterback some. It was really exciting to see him do everything, did I already say exciting? I guess it was just really awesome to see him do stuff for the first time and see him succeed at it. Then he scored again later when he got the ball and it was awesome because he started to the right and he seen a bunch of people there so he cut it back to the left side of the field and it was wide open and he ran it in untouched. Sorry for all the conjunctions there, but it was pretty exciting (man there is that word again) to see him score again. The coach looked over at me at goes "Why didn't you tell me he could do that?" and the truth is I didn't know he could. I mean I would like to think he could do that, but until he did it I didn't really know he was capable of pulling that off. Which is kind of ironic because when I look at him I just see so much potential and I really think that someday he can do whatever he wants, the sky is the limit. But I almost don't want him to depend to much on sports I want him to concentrate more on school, because I know if he works hard at that I can really help him. When it comes to sports I try to help, but I know if he is successful it will have more to do with him then it will with me. Not that that is a bad thing, but old dad wasn't exactly an all-star on the field of play. I mean the only sport I really enjoyed was basketball and it gave me nothing but hardship. I guess he gets his sportiness from his mother, which is cool, because it means he isn't an exact clone of me and all that potential hopefully means he'll end up better off than old dad. Not that dad isn't happy, but there is nothing I want more than for my kids to end up better than me.

Ok that got a little philosophical there but all good stuff. Anyway Sampson's old team ended up winning the championship, but we didn't stick around cause we wanted to go watch Astro Boy. Our chairs ended up sticking around though because Sophie traded our seats for a couple of pictures with her friend Trisha's camera. Sophie didn't bring a camera because it was a little overcasty (oh come on google overcasty is so a word, ah overcast would have worked, but I leave this here to see my thought process, "exciting" stuff huh?) and since we had good seats because we were at the early game it was a fair trade. I might post some pics later once I get some good ones. I got a couple on my phone, but they aren't that great.

Oh two more things. 1) When Sampson was asked where he learned that cut back move he said he got that from dad, because dad taught him to run where the people weren't. I guess dad did help a little there. 2) Shoot what was I going to say here, oh yeah since we were playing in the 3rd and 4th game all the pressure was off so to speak, even though this is still like an instructional league and there really shouldn't be any pressure. And since the pressure was off everybody got a chance to run the ball and hike the ball and sometimes during the regular season it is hard to get everybody the ball. Especially if the game is close or the first year kids don't really understand what they are doing, but it does make for a much more interesting game. Also I think the kids get into it a lot more and since Coach said at the beginning of the season everyone was going to get to run the ball I was glad to see it actually happen. I would have hated for him to promise that and then not been able to deliver because we "had to win at all costs". Anyway I thought it was great and was glad that it happened, even if it meant we played for 3rd, because that way the season ended on a really good note.

Civic league playoffs. . . playoffs, don't talk about playoffs

2009-10-20T20:01:00.003-05:00

Well the old flag football season is winding down and what is a kindergarten/1st grade playoff without a little controversy. We lost tonight in the first round thanks to some creative score keeping, but since it just happened I will recount the events as they are fresh in my mind. Also Sampson got two flags tonight and he blocked really well, way to go buddy. Ok so the Broncos started with ball in the first half drove down and scored 0-7. Then we drove down and scored 7-7, it was actually kind of dramatic as the Buckeyes had to convert a fourth down in order to keep the drive alive and a penalty on the conversion gave the Bucks a much needed second shot on the conversion. Then they scored 7-14. Then we scored but missed the conversion 13-14. Then the Broncos scored to make it 13-21 before the half. We got the ball one more time, but ran out of time before the half ended. Little kids flag football plays two 20 minute halves with a continuous clock until the last minute of the half and then apparently the clock stops for everything, so games last like 5 hours. Just kidding it is like an hour, but tonight's game took a little longer.

(Switch to Dramatic Mode)
So the Buckeyes were down at half time, but not dejected. Determination shown through on their little faces as they took the field for the second half and the referee signaled 1st down Buckeyes to start the half. Methodically the Buckeyes marched the ball down the field to score and draw back to within a point, 20-21, of the hated Broncos. Well not hated, but greatly disliked at least tonight. Anyway we let them go back down the field and score and make it an 8 point game at 20-28. On the next possession the Buckeye marched down and scored, but failed on the two point conversion leaving them in a two point hole at 26-28. On the Broncos next play from scrimmage a seldom used 1st-year player was given the ball, I assume he was a first year player because he instinctively ran backwards where he was taken down for a safety, allowing the Buckeyes to draw even at 28-28. I give the Broncos credit for giving the ball to one of the younger guys in that situation as it would turn out to be pivotal, unless they just thought they had the game in the bag then that was silly. After the safety, by rule, the Buckeyes get to go back on the offensive. Now with the game even and new life breathed into the offense again the Bucks went to work dismantling the Bronco D for another score 34-28 Bucks as they took their first lead. But missing on the conversion had left the door open for the Broncos to come down and score and tie the game, before converting and regaining the advantage at 35-34. Undaunted the Buckeyes huddled having less the a minute now to work they had to be quick yet manage the clock. Two running plays and two timeouts moved the bucks near the goal line, but not in. Now in a creative genius mode our coach pulls the boys together and decided to go for the deep ball. I say deep, but really a pass play in flag football is pretty spectacular at any yardage. Our QB drew back passed the ball to a wide open slanting receiver who caught the ball, but stopped short. Desperate the bucks used their last timeout, because let's face it trying to line up a bunch of kids in a timely manner is like herding cats. So effectively if the Bucks failed now it would be game over. Calmly and probably not realizing the enormous weight of the moment the QB settled under center now, quick snapping the ball and running into the end zone for the go ahead score 41-35 Bucks, after the conversion. The crowd was going crazy now, but the Bucks had made one error . . . too much time remained 33 seconds showed...the broncos would need only 22. Two plays and they succeeded in making a touch down and subsequent conversion vaulting them ahead and seemingly leaving the Buckeyes staring at the short end of a 41-42 score. All hope was lost, down 1 point, no timeouts and facing an entire field, but hope was not lost not yet the 5, 6, and 7 year-olds lined up. Knowing no fear they stared down the enemy for one last play. . . Go said the QB and the Bucks where off, but the hand off had been mistaken and the ball dropped to the ground. Game Set Match Broncos. . . but wait. A penalty, off sides Defense. New life had been given to the Bucks and this time fate would be made their b... well fate was dealt a blow as the Bucks answered the bell with now only 4 seconds left. Go they yelled and this time there would be no one catching the speeding back as he zigged and zagged through the Bronco D one last time to cap the scoring and deliver the win to Bucks, 47-42. But wait, controversy had reared its ugly head and the score was in doubt. Down by 2 the Ref Said. WHAT?!!?!? Panic set in on the crowd for the Bucks as they would now have to score a two point conversion just to "tie" the game. Alas the Bucks were stopped short yet again and the Broncos were announced the winners and would move on to the championship game. Disgusted by what I had just seen, and feeling terrible for the boys as they had played hard and deserved to win the hard fought game (legitimately as they had scored more points) I yelled at the ref to voice my concern, but to no avail. I pleaded with the coach who agreed as did several of the by standers, which relieved me because then I knew I wasn't some insane parent just ranting and raving for the sake of being a lunatic. So we confronted the head ref and he kept score on like a sheet of paper with no rhyme or reason. Our coach looked at it, he pleaded one last time and I think he thought he had made his case but the announcement had been made. Now what... the Bucks play for third.

Sophie's Surgery - Done

2009-10-13T19:43:00.002-05:00

Sophie got out of her surgery fine. Thanks for the prayers. It took a little over an hour and then she was in recovery for like another hour. By the time she got to her room she was a little groggy and in some pain. So the nurse gave her a couple of shots after they got her status updated in the computer ( and I don't mean her face book status, I had to update that for her). Then I went and picked up the kids, brought them home, got them something to eat and then took them down to the hospital to see her. She should get to come home tomorrow. I'll let everyone know. Now I just have to make it through the night with kids . . .

Sophie's Surgery

2009-10-10T10:14:00.002-05:00

Sophie goes for surgery Tuesday. So if you could shoot out a prayer for her that would be great. She is getting her gal bladder taken out. They said it could have been the cause of her back trouble and stuff too, so hopefully after it comes out she will feel a ton better. She is in a lot of pain right now and any time she eats she gets doubled over, but she is very nervous about her surgery. She has to stay in the Hospital over night too, so I get the kids all by myself. Hey shoot me a prayer too. Thanks.

The Bucks

2009-10-10T10:05:00.002-05:00

Sampson is playing flag football again this year. He is doing much better his second year and is usually one of the biggest kids on the field. He isn't exactly angry guy though so he gets pushed around a little, I keep waiting for him to just explode though as he can pack some punch for a 7 year old. Today we complete the regular season. So far we lost 1 game to his team from last year. That is the first game he lost and it happened to be the second game of a double header, which was tough on the youngsters. He couldn't get on his old team because Sophie's brother had his little boy and they wanted them to be on the same team. Next year though Sampson moves up and Sophie has already declared that she wants 'her friends' back.

Peach is dancing again too. This year she picked up ballet along with tap and acro. She can touch her head with her feet when she does her seal now too. I think Sophie was a little disappointed that she liked ballet so much, because Sophie hated it when she took it. Peach is definitely her own little person though. This year we will try and keep her away from any injuries so she doesn't have to wear a cast for her recital.

MMO RPG Reviews

2009-10-10T09:25:00.004-05:00

I finally finished Evony. Well I quit playing anyway, which should be obvious since I am blogging again. So I finally figured out that the deal with MMORPG's is that there is no way to get out. They just kind of drag on for ever and ever, and you get to a point were you have done everything you wanted to and there just isn't anything else to accomplish. Evony ended up being pretty good one of the best things about it is the alliance chat, i don't like the idea of being attacked when your not online and because people are from different areas it becomes very easy for them to attack you when you are sleeping. Unless you never sleep which didn't seem to be a very good option for me. The other thing I didn't like was the war system itself. Once you get an army to a certain size it becomes unsustainable and the only thing you attack on a regular basis is NPC's. Granted it takes a while to get there, but then you have to keep your army up to defend yourself. Then the bigger alliances just get a bunch of their member to send 100k troops at a time to bring your defenses down. I achieved the highest population in the game for a short period, before I started getting attacked by an old alliance, conveniently while I was off line, but I had already decided to quit by then anyway. Someday I may recap the story of my old buddy Casca Van Furey and how he held the evil VersusB alliance at bay when I was off line, lol.

So after I quit evony I was looking for something that didn't require as much time, that you could play when you wanted to and was failure secure if you were off line. So I started playing Tribal Wars, but it is like a watered down evony, without the alliance chat. I don't really care for it but I log on every once and a while and upgrade stuff. I guess I need to upgrade my army in that game too since I just got attacked.

Next I tried Tagoria, which is just a game where you control one single player. You complete quests and fight other people in order to gain experience and gold. It is all text based too essentially, as it is your stats versus someone else stats. It at least is a fairly quick game, but it gives you something to do on a day to day basis. you can only attack every 10 minutes or so then you just wait so not too bad, but definitely not the most exciting game on the web.

Then I found Dogs of the Seas. This game is fairly unique among the MMO's as you actually take the battles in your own hands. You pilot your own ship, complete missions and look for treasure. You have your own home base that you can build ships in and cannons and when you need supplies you can go out and plunder or fight an NPC. And if you were really skilled you could take down a bigger ship with a smaller one as it is not completely based on text stats. I reminds me of the old pirates game I had for the Tandy 1000SL. Anyway your home base is protected when you are off line (yeah) and you only put at risk the ship you are sailing. You could also join up with an alliance and double team or triple team an enemy. But if you are good I think you could pretty much get out of anything as you could navigate back to your home base or to a protected area. It seems like a pretty decent game at least, probably the best of the ones I have played so far.

Random Stuff

2009-10-10T09:13:00.003-05:00

Have you noticed that Tony Stewart is now endorsing Burger King and the Whopper. Hey didn't he endorse Subway last year? Burger King is probably a better fit.

Taylor Swift's video was better than Beyonce's.

This is just funny:

Techno Stuff

2009-10-10T08:53:00.002-05:00

If you get a smart phone that isn't an iphone, you can download a browser capable of full web browsing with flash capability (which the iphone doesn't have). The browser is 'Skyfire' and it works well on the LG Incite.

Fantasy Baseball - 2009

2009-10-10T08:18:00.005-05:00

Well the old Ninja Frogs were transformed into the 'Revenge of the Frogs', and did exact their revenge on the league this year. After being mired in 3rd or 4th for most of the first half the Frogs kicked it up after the all-star break. The good thing this year was that I had a decent enough team that I didn't have to trade much or hit the free agent wire. Once A-rod came back off the DL my team was pretty well set. Ian Kinsler did go on the DL for 15 days in August, but other than that he was pretty dependable. I didn't mess around with catchers even though Russell Martin severely underperformed he was still solid and not worth tieing up a roster spot with another catcher. I had too many outfielder to start with, but they were all pretty decent and I held on to Corey Hart for as long as I could before I ended up dropping him when A-Rod came off the DL. I think that was how that worked or else Gil Meche went on the DL right about the same time and bought Hart another month. Either way out of Bay, Damon, Eithier, and Fowler I had to get rid of Hart. I didn't want to get rid of Fowler because I thought he would be decent, but he never got enough playing time, oh well. I think I still like the Roto format better as head to head provides for new opportunity every week there are some match-ups that people just flat out tank. The guy I took over for second played a guy he beat 10-0 one week then the last two weeks of the season I played the same guy and he beat me 7-2-1, go figure. Anyway I had a 10 game lead so it didn't matter. Oh and for Stevie, well he limped in at third ha ha. I guess his team name the '3 peters' meant he was going to come in third. Who knew. It definitely wasn't because he 3-peated as league champ. Hey at least you had a good run, but in the last year and a half I have taken over as fantasy champ. If it wouldn't have been for the first half of baseball season last year when I was learning about fantasy sports I could have won that too. Well maybe not, but next year the Frogs will look to "repeat" themselves.

Pres Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-10T08:18:00.001-05:00

Wow

I'm Back.....

2009-10-10T08:16:00.001-05:00

Well at least for now. What were you worried? I took off 2 years before, 4 months is nothing.

New Obsession

2009-07-03T15:48:00.002-05:00

Evony. That's it, that is the new obsession. It is all real time MMORPG, so that is all. If you want to play join sever 9 and look for Kirk Helfen. My alliance is pretty fun we like to do conquering parties, but not on Wednesday. That's 'No Plunder Wednesdays'. If you want to check it out it is www.evony.com, but I warned you - it is very time consuming. Right now I've got 5 cities and I conquered my first player controlled city yesterday. It took 3 hours, but shawn helped so it wasn't too bad. Anyway it is fun, but I barely even have time to blog. Fortunately I didn't have to go to work to day, so I can get caught up a little. Well see you there.

VBS Week

2009-07-03T15:02:00.003-05:00

The week after Father's day happened to be VBS week this year, and every VBS week we always stay at Mom's house. That is because it is a lot closer and Sophie and I help out. I often don't get to see her much though because by the time I get back from work, it is dinner time then at 6:00 we had to go in for VBS. It didn't end 'til 8:30 so needless to say I was usually pretty tired by the end of the day. Plus this week I got to play Jesus. It was pretty dramatic, one day I even had the audience in tears with my performance. Well Peach was in tears. The theme of the week was Jerusalem and it was for the period when Jesus went to for passover and they crucified him. Well we did the last supper one night, and then when Jesus was betrayed the next night. Well the second night I was Jesus praying in the garden and when the Judas came the guards took me and put me into the Jail they had set up. Well Peach was very upset that Daddy was put in jail. She thought it was for real, and she was crying and screaming. I guess I was just too good, and some people couldn't tell the difference. Just Kidding. Anyway I also got to do recreation, which wasn't too bad. The only bad night was the one that it rained and we had to do stuff inside. Then on Thursday they brought in the inflatable obstacle course so that the kids could play and really have fun. Of course I was concerned that Peach would have a hard time what with her cast and all, so I went with her :). The second time I was just trying to keep her spot and when we got to the front the other kids behind us had matched up, so they wanted me to go against a little boy. Well I won't go into detail, but if you get a chance you should definitely ask Sophie what happened. All I'll say is that the kids weren't embarrassed, but Sophie was. Sorry honey, I thought it was funny myself, but like I said I'll try to spare her any further embarrassment. The last night they always do a slide show, but some of the pictures were too big to use so they had to print them out and scan them in. But the power went off when there was only about 30 minutes until show time. So they came and asked me if we could do something and we hurried up and put the pictures on a flash drive and did a slide show using the picture viewer. It actually worked out pretty well, I did that in about 7 minutes to get it ready, loading the pictures took a while because of the size, and then when it got to the end I hit space bar to pause it on the slide with title on it. I thought that was awesome because I thought the space bar was the right button to pause it but I was only about 60 % sure. Probably 62.8%. Yeah definitely a little higher than 60%. Anyway that worked and if you didn't know any better I don't think you could have told it was just kind of thrown together, but hey when you got Jesus on your side (the real Jesus in this case not me) nothing is impossible. So all in all VBS week was pretty good, and next year should be good too as the theme is like the secret early christian church where they met in caves and they are going to do the whole fellowship hall like a big cave, so it should be pretty good. Well see you there.

Fishing Derby '09

2009-07-03T12:38:00.004-05:00

Well this year we finally got a trophy. After seven years of trying with my little buddy we finally brought home the big one. We got the most fish trophy. Sure he carried most of the load and after we finished I didn't even think we would win, but we finally pulled it out. One year we would have won if he could have caught just one fish because I caught like 8 myself, but he was either 10 months old or 1 or so, either way he finally delivered the goods. He also caught the smallest fish, but I guess there is some rule about only getting one trophy, oh well. Peach reeled one in too, with her cast and all. She was using Sampson's old Ninja Turtle pole to start out with, but she came over by me and I casted with her and hooked one and let her reel it in. The fishing derby is definitely one of my favorite things to do with the kids, even though they are lucky to stay interested for the 15 minutes we get to fish together. Here are some picks from the derby. Oh and if you wondering if worm inflation had continue to skyrocket, I really can't tell you. I would have paid a dollar a worm to win with one of my kids (although Sampson did catch 5 in a row with the same worm, or varying amounts of the same original worm, way to be efficient buddy). Now I just have to win one with Peach, provided you know, she can carry the load. No pressure sweetie.

Peach's Recital

2009-06-20T11:04:00.003-05:00

Even with a cast the show must go on . . and on . . and on. Well I say that because it seemed to go on for a really long time. Especially since she didn't get to go on until the fourth Act. If I was thinking ahead of time I would have said I'll be a little late ;), but no we were there for virtually the whole thing. I don't know how you could make little 3 year-olds wait 3 hours to go on, but they did really good. If I get the tape on the computer I'll try and post the video. Since she had the cast she couldn't do her acro part, but she could still tap. She was soooo cute walking across the stage smiling holding her hat. That darn cast though, arghhh I hate that thing. Next year she isn't allowed to do anything 6 weeks before the recital. After the show we gave her some roses with a barbie dancer in, and she was really excited. She did a really good job. Next year Sophie said she was going to put her in Jazz, ballet, acro, and tap plus private lessons so that when we are sitting at the recital for four hours we will at least get to see her some. Some of the girls we saw a lot. a lot. a lot. It got a little annoying, but some day that will be my little girl so get ready.

Peach's cast

2009-06-20T10:28:00.003-05:00

I promised a couple of pictures of her cast, so here you go. She looks really sad about having that cast doesn't she. Hopefully she will get it off Monday the 22nd. They may have to put a small one on, but man I hope not. I think she is going to go nuts when they come at her with that saw. I don't think she has thought about how the cast comes off, but she freaked out when I had tweezers to try and take a splinter out of her foot. Good luck Sophie.

I have hated having to watch her do stuff with that thing on, it just makes me feel so bad. It really is a sad predicament at least for Mommy and Daddy, but she had done really well with it. I don't know that she has learned anything from breaking her arm, we'll just have to wait and see how long it is until she breaks another bone. Incase you were wondering the cast hasn't slowed her down a bit. I'm just glad it has been unseasonable cool so that she hasn't been miserable. Expect it to start getting hot on the 23rd though.

First Grader

2009-06-20T10:25:00.002-05:00

Sampson made it through Kindergarten. Next year we'll have a first grader on our hands. He did really good this year, he ended the year with 15 Masters so Mommy and Daddy were pretty excited. Of course he has been using that as an excuse to try and soak some money and/or presents out of people. Good job Buddy.

Blog Break

2009-06-20T10:21:00.001-05:00

Okay, we have had a lot going on lately, but I'll try and bring you up to speed. :)

Tony and Lyoto Win (Welcome Back)

2009-06-20T09:59:00.003-05:00

I was wrong about Tony, but not about Lyoto. I haven't blogged in a while and why not start with a correct prediction about Lyoto Machida winning the light heavy weight belt in UFC. He beat Evans back in May, but fortunately I had already called it, so even if you missed it you should have known what was going to happen (gee whiz look at all those conjunctions, don't worry I'm just a little rusty). As for Tony . . . well after the all-star race and since he was running up front all year I though he actually might have a chance to win. But when he left Gibbs last year I didn't really know if would happen or not given the recent success of Micheal Waltrip and Robbie Gordon, fortunately Tony is probably a little bit better driver than them. Also he is apparently a good bit smarter as he is using Hendrick stuff. (which I guess would kind of make him a member of HESCAR) Anyway he won the Pocono 500 at Pocono June 7th. I actually had to fight Mom for control of the T.V. because the Red's had gone into extra innings, but since she is such a great Mom she let me watch the end of the race so I could see Tony's first points win. Then the Red's gave up 3 runs so I could see him talk too.

My Jinx

2009-05-15T22:06:00.004-05:00

Well it is all my fault. Yesterday I wrote about worrying when our next visit to the E.R. would happen. Turns out it was today. Peach and Sampson were playing on the swing set and sure enough Peach falls off the slide and we end up at the emergency room. . . again. I hope they just put a folder for Peach out front because this is the second visit in three months. And she broke old Dad's record for first broken bone, cause I was about seven and she is only three. According to the ER X-ray she has a real slight break in both of her forearm bones. The radius and ulna. That means she'll get a cast on Monday and have that for about 4 or 6 weeks, which runs in to her butterfly school recital. Hey, if you bought tickets already too bad. No I'm just kidding if you would need the money back just let us know. I mean she might be able to tap still she just won't be able to do the tumbling stuff. Maybe she will be able to get her cast off on the day of the recital, because I don't think she will actually be able to get her dress on with a cast. Once we get the cast I'll be sure to post pictures.

Outside Fun

2009-05-14T19:51:00.002-05:00

I decided that even though basketball has given me three sprained ankles and a broken wrist, that is still ok for me to play with Sampson. See we set up our little 6 foot hoop in the back tonight and I taught him how to play knockout. Then Peach climbed on the monkey bars pretty much all buy herself. Although I think I taught her that it was Ok to reach out and swing, I just hope she doesn't get daring and decide to do it when someone isn't close. Otherwise we could be in for another trip to the E.R. Of course if I keep playing basketball with Sampson we could be headed there anyway.

On an inside note, Sophie is watching the "Bones" finale. So far she said it was the dumbest season finale she has ever seen. Two minutes left. . . Oh snap the dude woke up and didn't have his memory. Sophie says it was still bad and she might not even be interested for next year. We'll see. . .

Go Fish

2009-05-14T19:46:00.002-05:00

Sampson has found a new favorite game - Go Fish. Only Sophie bought it for Peach so she could learn some of her colors, but Sampson has managed to hijack it. Now he wants to play it continuously, and there is no way to stop him. He is kind of like me that way, when I find something fun I just do it, and do it until it isn't fun anymore and then I don't want anything to do with it. Well we finally broke the streak tonight, but he would play 10 or 12 games a night easy if you let him. Did I mention the cards were Care Bear cards? Oh if you have any other go fish cards please send 'em this way, something for boys. Like bugs or different kinds of weapons or even transformers, something for boys just not Care Bears.

Responding to a comment

2009-05-14T19:37:00.003-05:00

I noticed this comment recently-

"hey here at the triple c we notice your not in a cast."

This was in response to the pictures from Maw's house where we were playing basketball. Of course given my recent history with basketball people may expect to see me in a cast after hooping it up. Well I just wanted to let people know that against the elderly and small children - I OWN! Now you start getting into the kids that are double digits and you gotta watch out cause those kids are trouble. They don't only get you down, they keep you down and then jump on your ankle and next thing you know... well let's just say 10 and up you gotta keep yourself safe first.

Happy Mother'stine Day

2009-05-10T21:09:00.002-05:00

That is what Peach told Sophie today when she woke up. 'Happy Mother'stine Day'. I guess it is like a cross between Mother's Day and Valentines day and apparently it is good for anyone as she wished me and Sampson the same thing. Anyway hope everyone had a good Mother'stine day.

Our normal Mother's day dinner on Sophie's side didn't disappoint this year. Normally there is always something that happens. Last year we went to Cheddar's with about 10-12 people so we waited a while for a table, then when we were seated we waited for a while to order. Then after everyone's food came I waited an extra long while, because apparently they forgot to put my order in. I had to wait until almost everyone was done eating before I got my food. Needless to say I haven't been back since. This year though we decided to have breakfast on Saturday before the T-ball game. So we went to Bob Evans with Sophie's brothers and Mom and when we got there we ordered the table for 10. Well Ricco said that the manager was giving a lot of attitude for having to fix the dining room up for 10. So he wanted to leave. And he did. And then we did. We all kind of followed out into the parking lot and decided to go to Denny's, which didn't bother me all that bad because I was wanting to try the new grandslamwhich (by the way it was awesome - although the syrupy french toast type bread was maybe a little too much on the sweet side). At least I didn't get left out of the food this year, but I would say the total time I had to wait to eat was probably still over an hour from the time I thought I would be eating. Maybe it is me, maybe I'm the bad luck guy when it comes to Mother's day meals. I know one thing, next year I'm packing a snack when we go out to eat.

Blog Neglect

2009-05-10T20:56:00.002-05:00

Well I have neglected the old blog for the last couple of weeks, but not without reason. See I've been at war with my cybernation Helfenland and it has been taking up a good bit of my time. Anyway the war is over for now I things are starting to get back to normal. Other than that not a whole lot going on. My job is still in a state of flux, hopefully this week we'll find some more out. Sampson has played a couple of games of T-ball, Peach continues to practice for her recital in June, both kids got their pics taken, and Sophie has been working out. Sampson is also really into playing basketball outside. He reminds me of me when I was young. We got a little 6' hoop that he uses, and I put a new net on it last week. Today we brought home my little OU basketball so he could use it, since it is a little bigger than the one he was using. Hopefully now I'll be able to updated the blog a little more regularly, unless you know war breaks out again. Also that was the reason for the 'Fightin Music'. In case you didn't notice the change.

Unbridled Fun at Maw's House

2009-04-19T20:40:00.003-05:00

Mom always said she wished she had gotten a scooter when she was younger, so for Easter she bought the kids Scooters. We told her she needed to try it out and it looks like she really liked it.

I hope she doesn't wear it out before the kids get to really use it. Also Mom was showing off her mad balling skills. Check it out.

Just goes to show you can't have too much fun at Maw's house.

iPhone obsession - over

2009-04-16T21:01:00.002-05:00

I had badgered Sophie pretty bad about letting me get an iPhone, but she never gave in. Anyway I think my obsession with the iPhone is over. It is $200 plus you have to get a data plan for an extra $30 a month. Currently I have changed my focus to an LG Incite, which I can get for $50 with no increase in the plan. And I think there is a way to get around the GPS monthly charge and have the GPS work as stand alone, plus it is Wi-Fi capable and has windows mobile. I worry about picking up another 2 year contract though, maybe I shouldn't. I'll probably just wait.

Work Update

2009-04-16T20:53:00.002-05:00

The black cat strikes again. There is some talk that the Big-O may have to idle production due to a lack of ore. As more details become available I will let people know, but right now Sophie and I aren't panicking. Maybe we should though, I guess you just get used to it after about the 4th or 5th time. Anyway if it does happen it won't be for at least 3 weeks, so we'll have that. There might even be some things happen that would allow for just about everyone to stay employed through the end of the year. That would be a positive. I just hate putting life on hold because of worrying about this kind of stuff, but I don't know what to do to avoid it. Eventually the recession will end because there won't be anymore jobs to lose.

Fantasy Update - Cause real life sucks even more

2009-04-16T20:45:00.002-05:00

The Ankle Breakers have WON!!!! My first ever fantasy championship. I wonder if I can get Sophie and the kids to put up plastic everywhere and then when I get home from work I'll get some champagne and celebrate. or not. The 'Revenge of the Frogs' had a little tougher start at 4-5-1 in the baseball league, but so far this week I'm 9-0. Poor Stevie started out in last. Hey at least he let me borrow his car, while the van is in the shop. Peach says she likes it because 'it goes really fast'. Yeah it does, but the steering wheel shakes when you get much over 110 mph. Just kidding. It shakes over 80 mph. No seriously I never drove it that fast, I guess it just looks really fast.

Random Thought #9

2009-04-16T20:24:00.002-05:00

The Command Module Pilot Job for the Apollo space missions is probably one of the most over rated jobs in the history of mankind. Only 12 people have ever been on the moon, but 6 were really, really, really close.

Getting My Feet Washed

2009-04-16T20:09:00.002-05:00

I know what you are thinking and yes I do wash my feet on a normal basis, at least once a week whether they need it or not. But this is about Holy Thursday and Sophie asked me to get my feet washed at her church. Since she is Catholic they really celebrate all aspects of holy week and the washing of the feet takes place on Thursday when Jesus and the disciples would have had the last supper. Basically it was me and 6 other guys and we went up front and took one shoe off, got it washed by the priest, dried and then that was it. I did it because Sophie had read the kids a story about Jesus washing the disciples feet and I thought this would be a good opportunity to do something for her church and hopefully set a good example for the kids. I even got a 50 cent piece during the ceremony. Originally they asked for me and Sophie, but then they only wanted guys to do it so Sophie had to sit it out. I was kind of nervous because I had never even gone to the Thursday service before, so I had not seen the feet washing before and I was sure what all it entailed. (Oooo check that out, entailed . . . hope that is spelled right) Anyway I put the old left foot up there since that is the one I was conducting the "experiment" on and figured that the holy water and blessing and stuff would help it out. Then Sophie told me that the water wasn't holy water, but I mean the priest is handling the water, you're on the alter and what not, can it get much holier (er . . . holy-er) than that. No miracles yet, but I'm willing to give it a little time.

Blood in the Water

2009-04-16T19:48:00.002-05:00

I think the kids at T-ball practice must have sensed weakness or something today as they started to act up during practice. I about made Sampson run laps, I told him "You are going to be the first person in the history of T-ball to run laps." But I didn't. Then we lined up and were doing fielding and we had about 4 kids with gloves on their heads. I had two kids, one being Sampson, tell me they were going to quit. I about said go sit with your moms then. Yeah, I'm the coach . . . well assistant coach . . . I actually don't think I have the power to dismiss anyone, plus you know it's instructional league so as long as the kids show up for the games and don't get seriously injured that is about as good as you can do. I think all the kids were a little stir crazy because it has been so cold and rainy lately. I'm still waiting for the old global warming to kick in. I mean is couple of days of 60° weather too much to ask for.

Twitter

2009-04-08T21:11:00.003-05:00

I don't really care for it myself. It is the equivalent of text messaging a blog. I think it is dumb. If you want to put the time in just sign up for a blog on blogger, it ain't hard. Plus you can add pictures, video and other neat stuff. Or just answer the question 'What are you doing?' every post. Maybe I'll change my mind, but I ... wait hold the phone I could use twitter for shameless self promotion. YES, that's it, that is all it is good for, kind of a 'Hey, Look at me' and then redirect them to the old blog, where AdSense is waiting to cash in. Oh happy day. Check me out on Twitter.

Harold and Kumar go to the White House

2009-04-08T20:53:00.002-05:00

Well Kumar at least. I guess Kal Penn has had enough of the Hollywood life, you see that is the guy who played Kumar in 'Harold and Kumar go to White Castle' and the follow-up hit 'Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay'. Haven't seen those, well he was on House M.D. on the Fox channel too... at least until Monday. This is so funny every time I need a laugh I think I'll come here and read this. See he wanted to go work for Obama, but to do that he had to leave House. And all I can figure is that Fox is somewhat of a conservative network and when he told them he was leaving they were like 'Okay, where you going' to which he said,' To work for Obama'. Then the probably said,'Yeah, don't worry we'll take care of you.' So in his last episode he is killed off. Wait not just killed off, apparently his character committed suicide. I guess he won't be coming back there. The other funny thing about this is that 'kumar' is kind of a weed addict in the movie, so now Obama is going to have this guy working for him who played a weed smoker trying to get over the munchies, a doctor who commits suicide, oh and by the way he also did a guest appearance on the show '24' as a terrorist. What's the matter did Obama run out of tax cheats to appoint to positions. Ha ha. The only position I figure he'll fit in is the Secretary of Entertainment / Snacks. Basically he would be in charge of getting good deals on refer and whenever the prez is out doing his town halls or celebrity appearances, Kal would be in charge of knowing the fastest route to the nearest White Castle. Also he could advise the president on Gitmo since he has intricate knowledge of that facility. Oh man, that is comedy gold. I really hope someone comes up with some good material for that.

Condit loses for the first time in 9 fights

2009-04-05T21:23:00.003-05:00

Just a note I didn't think Condit should have lost in a split decsision in his first welter weight fight in the UFC. I mean I don't think Kampmann deserved to lose either, but Condit fights off his back better than just about anyone and I thought the fight was judged wrong. I mean it was a split decision so that is tough to call, but it's Condit. Oh well he'll be back. And Lyoto Machida will get his shot at the light heavy weight title in May, just like I said he should.

HESCAR Strikes again

2009-04-05T20:53:00.002-05:00

For the second week in a row HESCAR has pushed one of the Hendrick cars into victory lane. This week Jeffy was able to get his first victory in 47 races. And at a place he had never won before. And he didn't even have the best car. But those details don't matter in HESCAR. What allowed Jeffy to win was when Greg Biffle was pushed out of the way courtesy of Dale Jr. Biff was probably the class of the field for the parts of the race that I watched, he even ran down Tony Stewart for third at the end of the race. Tony's run was very impressive as I figured he would end up way back in the field since this was his team's first try at Texas, but he proved me wrong. It really makes me appreciate his talent as a driver though, because how many people could leave a championship team go to a team that basically had nothing and yet when he starts driving for them he is competitive. I think that really speaks to his ability and I doubt that some of the other drivers could what he has done. Especially someone like Jimmy, who is only in a position to win races because he has the smartest crew chief (even though his personality is terrible and I don't care for him), and his owner spend all kinds of cash for the best stuff. If he left Hendrick he would likely be back in the pack, because let's face he is short on driving talent as evidenced by his "pass" of Denny last week. Denny made a flat out awesome move to get by on a restart, but Jimmy couldn't get by without almost wrecking Denny. Jimmy would probably run like he did in the truck series when he drove for Randy Moss and ended up 34th... out of 36... way to go... who won that race anyway, oh yeah Kyle Busch. Tony doing well is keeping me interested, but I don't know for how much longer...

Peach goes for a ride

2009-04-05T20:47:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of Robbie or Captain Insano as he likes to be called. He took the kids a ride on a 4 wheeler around the yard and they just thought it was great. Now I think Peach wants to go for a ride on his motorcycle. Yeah (sarcasm). Anyway I think it will be a while before Robbie is allowed around the kids again. But he did do something awesome last week as he was able to get Mom to make some bread and homemade jam. No hotdog buns though. (not buns that you put a hotdog in, these are buns with the hotdog already baked in, and man are they tasty). Also this week we picked up some up the creek mustard, that would have been really great on some hotdog buns. Just kidding Mom, Love ya.

The Circus

2009-03-31T20:45:00.005-05:00

We got to go to the circus yesterday and it was a lot of fun. I just want to give a shout out to Bo for the tix, thanks Bro. Next year Sophie says she wants to ride a camel, I just wanted to write that down so we won't forget. The kids got to ride an Elephant and some ponies and I think they had a pretty good time. One of the clowns that did a diving routine really had Sampson cracking up, it was funny because it was all slapstick stuff and he was just eating it up. My least favorite part was when the two guys went on that Ferris wheel two circle dealy thing and they were running on the outside of it. It wasn't that it wasn't entertaining, but man the safety aspects make me sick, though I guess that is kind of what the circus is about. I'll put some pics up tomorrow when Sophie gets them downloaded (I'm still not allowed to touch the camera).

"Terrible" Draft as it turns out

2009-03-29T18:51:00.002-05:00

I watched ESPN's fantasy special last night and the first thing they said was to stay away from Ian Kinlser because he is injury prone and then to not draft A-Rod before the 5 round or so. But if the stupid Yankees would just put him on the DL already I could still have him on my roster and pick up someone to fill the active roster spot. Other than that I think I did alright, but they were saying the starting pitching was deep and don't pay for saves, which I agree with. They also said catcher was deep, but I don't buy that. If there are 5 catcher that contribute you're lucky and the difference between 1 and 10 is probably about 200 ranks and I had a heck of a time last year finding a catcher, but finally found Chris Ianetta late in the second half of the season. Granted catchers don't contribute as much, but have a distinct advantage at that spots could be the difference. I don't know about the head-to-head format, but it can't hurt.

On the basketball front, I re-picked Gilbert Arenas and he did well his first night of action too bad I have only got 4 games at point left. At least I'll get about 4 games out of him, when the season started I thought I would get about half but he stayed out until Friday's game. All I have to do is coast to the finish line, Stevie is closest, but all the categories are pretty much too far away for anyone to make too much of a move, you know unless Stevie can pick up about 10 points in FT%.

Sophie almost wins

2009-03-29T18:21:00.002-05:00

Every year Sophie and I fill out a bracket and battle amongst ourselves for supremacy. Unfortunately we have started thinking too much alike and our brackets looked fairly similar, and this year we only guessed one final four team differently. Today actually decided the winner since both of our championship teams have been eliminated. If Oklahoma wins, Sophie wins, if UNC wins, then I win. Fortunately UNC won and I won for like the 7th or 8th year in a row. Now if only I can finish ahead of the big O, who is currently in about the 53rd percentile on ESPN. I think I might still be able to finish ahead of him as long as UNC loses. Oh well. You know if you are president it is actually pointless to do something like that. If you win people will come up with wild conspiracy theories, if you do poorly people will think you are wildly incompetent. I guess he didn't think that all the way through before he filled out the bracket. Hey, maybe he didn't have all the facts, I know he likes to have all the facts before he does stuff.

My Jury Duty Experience

2009-03-25T19:53:00.002-05:00

It turns out Jury Duty really isn't that bad, especially if you don't end up having to participate in the trial. Basically all I had to do is show up endure about an hour and a half of jury selection and then leave. It was neat to see the procedure of the court and be a part of the system. It was a good thing they had as many people there though, as there were about 10 deferrals in order to get 8 jurors. It was a civil trial and the one lawyer asked if any of the jurors had ever contributed to TORT reform and I was thinking 'no, but I'll take up collection if it gets me out of here'. Just kidding it wasn't that bad, but the whole time the jury members are being dismissed you keep thinking 'who's next' and they're reading off a list so it isn't like avoiding eye contact is going to keep you out of it. But the judge started out asking questions, then the lawyers had a turn, then they got to boot people without cause, re-screen some more jurors and then pick and alternate. The judge was good about all the people that couldn't be impartial and in the end he called the seat that everyone was vacating 'the hot seat'. I didn't have any problems though I just kind of sat there in my "I'm not prejudice, I hate everyone" T-shirt waiting for my name to be called, but it never was. So I didn't get out until 11:00 and by then it was too late to do any good at work so I just took the rest of the day off, and went home to celebrate with my $30.00.

Post 400 - The Blog Quiz

2009-03-24T20:43:00.004-05:00

For Post 400 I wanted to do something special so I came up with the blog quiz to see how well you've been paying attention. Answers will be posted later, you know if you can't come up with them. Without further ado...

1) What day did the blog start?

2)What did I build to celebrate Post 100?

3)How many stitches did Peach get?

4) How long was the unofficial record the old blog set for longest period between posts?

5) Before the Indy race with the tire issues what was the worst HESCAR race in history?

6)Who was the last player picked up during my first year of Fantasy Baseball (remember I said there might be a quiz, I wasn't joking)?

7)What title did I give the post where we decorated Sophie's brother's house for the Brown's Bengals game?

8) Who makes the 'World Clock' located over there on the left?

9) What was the name of my Fantasy Football team? and where did I finish?

10)When Stevie had to go to Iraq what base did he end up at?

Have Fun!!

Trouble Brewing

2009-03-24T20:23:00.002-05:00

Yesterday while Sophie was walking Peach and Sampson back from dance class a motorcycle went by and Peach said almost half crying that she couldn't wait until she can ride on a motorcycle. Which made Sophie sigh, and when she told me I sighed, then we asked Sampson if he wanted to ride a motorcycle and he said, "No". Sophie happened to be taking a drink when I asked him and she just about spit it out. Not because he said no, but because he said it so fast. Oh also Peach thinks tattoos are pretty . . . man are we in trouble.

The 400 mile tank

2009-03-24T20:14:00.002-05:00

I got my first 400 mile tank yesterday and my mileage came in at about 32.4 mpg. I think the warm weather is really helping. I almost need to do another 'control' run to get a better idea of how my mileage is better since I've made my changes. I think I'll wait a little longer though. I could have went a little longer instead of filling up on my way home, I mean the fuel light wasn't even on yet, but I was too excited about getting to 400 miles that I wanted to fill up and see what my mileage was. Turns out I could fit over 12 gallons in the old tank.

Fantasy Update - Cause real life sucks

2009-03-22T20:59:00.002-05:00

Real life is kind of troublesome lately for some, what with the economy and all. Plus the President's bracket had him in the bottom 4% of folks on ESPN, gosh can this guy do anything right? Anyway as far fantasy stuff goes basketball is almost over and I have about an 8 point lead. I guess the wheels could really fall of here the last few weeks, but at this point I have done pretty well to hang on considering two of the people I lost to injury are still in the top 100. On the baseball front there is 2 weeks to opening day, and my team hasn't changed yet. I have emailed Yahoo! and the Yankees! organization about placing A-Rod on the DL, but to no avail. Maybe by the end of the week they'll put him on the DL and then I'll be able to pick up another player. Right now I'm content, because once the season starts some people are going to come out of nowhere and it is all about picking them up more than it is about getting frustrated before the season starts. I figure I've got one of the best catchers in Russel Martin and probably the best second baseman in Ian Kinsler so they will probably both get hurt. But if they stay healthy and A-Rod comes back I should be in pretty good shape. Here is a copy of the response from the Yankees! as well as my letter. Please note that the person who responded is 'Bryan', which I can only assume is an alias for their G.M. 'Brian' Cashman.
Yankees:
Response (Bryan) - 03/19/2009 05:23 PMDear Kirk Helfen,
The New York Yankees thanks you for your letter. We assure you that your comments and support are appreciated.
You can write directly to a player or team official at the following address:
Yankee StadiumBronx, NY 10451.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
Regards,Yankees.com

Here is my original letter:
Please put A-Rod on the DL, 30 day, 60 day it doesn't really matter. I just need the roster spot opened up in my fantasy league. Please do it for the fans. I don't want to drop him but even with rehab and what not you know he is going to be out for at least a month. Also you guys have way toooo many outfielders, you should trade a couple for a catcher like chris Ianetta. Seriously. Thanks, Kirk

I guess if the Yanks make a trade for Ianetta we will know who thought of it first. Plus if they trade Johnny Damon that would give me an outfielder playing his home games in Colorado - Bwah hah hah. Let the games begin!
Please note: I think both the Yankees! and Yahoo! are Yucky! Sorry, I thought that kind of fit, but I really don't care for either institution. Well at least Yahoo! fantasy sports, the rest of the site is cool.

Draft Day '09

2009-03-22T20:48:00.002-05:00

Well we're Pirates again. Apparently Sophie had the time wrong, but since he was already on a team he gets to go right back to the same team. No word on practices or opening day yet, but I'll post as soon as I know. Also Sophie got me a sign for the back of the window. It says, "MF Baseball Fan". I told her it is almost like it could be taken two ways.

Happy St. Patty's Day

2009-03-17T04:55:00.002-05:00

I was going to make the whole blog green and what not, but I forgot to do it yesterday so all I got is this one green post and some Irish music. But hey, what better way to celebrate possibly the greatest saint of all time, I mean he did drive the snakes out of Ireland right. You know what, saint hood probably isn't enough. He should be elevated to like comic book status. Yeah that's it, 'Anti-Snake Man' or something cool like that. Anyway have a great SP day.