Life On The Bubble

Last year was too great. Winning the Big East, being ranked in the top 10 all year, and eventually getting a #1 seed in the tournament. Albeit it was a tad disappointing to watch them lose in the round of 8 for the second straight year to the eventual champion, it was a fun year to be a fan. The reality is Randy Foye and Kyle Lowery are gone, and this year's version is no where close to what it was last year. But at 19-9, and their RPI sitting at 21, with some key wins over Notre Dame, Texas, Georgetown, and Louisville they have a shot at making the dance. They play Uconn tonight, and Syracuse Saturday to close out their schedule. Assuming they split these games and finish at 20-10, is this enough to make it in? You would think yes, but they sit currently in 9th place in the conference, this could be tough. It may take a strong showing in New York to insure they do in fact get into the field of 65.

By the looks of it, the conference has 5 definite teams making it, with Syracuse pretty much locked in now with their recent win over the Hoyas. That means that if West Virginia, who is currently 7th makes it in, they would have to send 7 teams from the conference. That seems like a high number even from a power conference. If a team like Syracuse last year wins the Big East Tourney, then that creates even more trouble for the Wildcats. Bottom Line? I think they need at least 22 wins to get in the Dance. >21 and I think they are NIT bound, regardless of their RPI.

The Old Spice Test, And a Wasted Weekend

A wasted weekend it was. 36 hours of being sick is not fun, but sometimes it's a reality. Friday night I started feeling ill, and sure enough Saturday morning I was stuck with the stomach bug. While it's a nice start to what was to be the forthcoming "Summer Weight", I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone. What was I able to do on Saturday besides sleep and being sick? Well, I watched 3 movies, and a basketball game in which I cared nothing about. Seems like a lot of "wasted time"? Hence the wasted weekend title. It was mostly about Marty McFly, as they played Back to the Future 1,2, and 3 in succession. I only watched the 1st 2 and then managed to fall asleep for awhile sparing me the disaster that was B2TFIII. There will be no movie review for today because everyone has seen B2TF and Movie Review Monday will hopefully resume next week. Other then that what was to be a trip to Philly for the Villanova vs Rutgers game and the pick up of our new Jeep Laredo on Saturday were both foiled.

Today I took the Old Spice experienced man quiz: http://www.experienceoldspice.com/
It's a combination of sports, history, trivia, cars, general guys stuff. I actually fared pretty well. Not quite an experienced man though. Maybe in a few more years...Here is my badge to prove it:

Wade Get's Wheeled??, The Couch People

Ok, so this isn't really surprising news, but Dwayne Wade got hurt last night, as he seems to do just about every game. The difference this time was that he seperated his shoulder, and he could be out a while. It's a shame, I like Wade. The real story is the fact that he was taken off the court in a wheelchair. Yes, a wheelchair. No he did not injure his legs in any way, yet there was the former Golden Eagle being wheeled to the locker room. Are you kidding me? I'm not a doctor, and did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night but I'm sorry that was ridiculous. Obviously, the trainer felt it necessary to take him out that way (At least I am hoping) but I don't get it. You want to keep the shoulder straight, I realize that. Perhaps it was uncomfortable to walk with it, but give me a break a wheelchair? I will say this, if the guy comes back and plays this week and they mention how tough he is..I would instead have the Hollywood agents sign him up because that was about as cinematic as you can get on a basketball court. It's not all Dwayne's fault, this is probably another fall out from the Jordan saga..always trying to be a hero. I do hope DW is alright, and I hope I am wrong about this, but it sure looked pathetic to me. I've never seen an athlete get wheeled off a field/court/or rink with an upper body injury...until now that is.

So the Ice is all but gone, and on my way to work this morning I passed several houses through the city with chairs out in front of their place to preserve their parking spot. It's pretty neat, you see a variety of different types of "spot blockers" along the road. My personal favorite of the season is on W Philadelphia Street. Someone put out an entire couch to protect what they had shoveled! That is impressive! I am wondering what the thought process is with that. Well, let's start by saying that I figure anything in the spot probably prevents people from parking there as they would have to get out and move it and a casual drive by person looking for a spot is probably not going to do that. (If it's your neighbor, then that's just ignorant right?) So I would think that you would want something there that is easy to move, and something that you could leave out over night and not have to worry about it. Why a couch? It's most likely heavy, it's definitely bulky, and where the heck do you store this when your car is there? It's just a sidewalk and then the houses..Don't get me wrong it's very impressive to see someone use a couch as a blocker, but I have to imagine that has got to be extremely inconvenient. I really hope one of these mornings before all the snow is gone that I see someone just hanging out there sitting on it. The Rabbit stop is not too far away, why not relax while you wait..put your feet up, read a good book and hop on when it comes by. Just a suggestion. But props to the couch people.

Movie Review Monday: National Treasure

It was a good night of TV Sunday with the opening night of the Amazing Race All Stars, The Apprentice, and then I watched in full, National Treasure courtesy of Starz. I had seen this movies previews a few years back and had wanted to see it. What better time then 10:00 PM on a Sunday night?

Nicholas Cage is the main star in the flick with Jon Voight also playing a prominent role in the film. It is an action/adventure film about a hidden treasure that among other clues, has a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. If you are a history lover, and like action films, this is definitely one to check out. The settings are mostly in Washington DC, Philadelphia, and New York City. I really enjoyed the film, and would watch it again if it was on. It even has a sort of heist flare to it when Cage decides he must steal the Declaration from the National Archives Museum in D.C. After that they head to Philadelphia to the Liberty Bell and City Hall to continue to search for clues before ending up in NYC for the somewhat anti climatic ending to the film. I liked all but one part of the film, which i won't disclose so anyone who hasn't seen this and wants to doesn't have it ruined for them.

I give the movie 4 out of 5 stars, but my interest in history probably helped to give it the 4th star. If anyone out there has this movie, maybe I could borrow it some time?

4 Coupons, 2 Surveys, 1 Contest, and No Straw

Well my return to Taco Bell today was pretty successful. Hit the drive thru today for lunch, and while I enjoyed my meal, I didn't enjoy my drink without a straw. I did however get coupons and a chance to win 1000 dollars by calling in this survey. Honestly, I would be happier to have just gotten the straw, but maybe I'll get lucky enough to win the cash. (As if they actually give out a prize.)

The snowice has really made it tough to park here at work. Only 3 spots are shoveled and those are already taken, so it's not that easy to find parking on the side city streets. I have a self made spot that I barreled through today, so I'm pretty fortunate at least for today..no one else can get their car in there. The Mariner gets in there no sweat.

The much anticipated All Star Break is upon us in the NBA. That means that all of us fantasy players will be getting our injured stars back in a few days. I anxiously await AI and Yao's return to my lineup. I told myself I wouldn't watch the Slam Dunk Contest again after last year's disgrace. Andre Igoudala has the dunk of the night, yet loses to the diminutive Nate Robinson because he dunked over the beloved Spudd Webb. Cool idea, but one thing about his flush over Mr Potato Head, it took him what 50 tries to do it? There has to be some sort of penalty for missing that many times, or a cap on how many times you can try it. Give me a break, none of us have that sort of attention span anymore, it's the internet age.

No plans for the weekend, it looks like it will be a play it by ear weekend, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

One last thing, why do people feel the need to say something polite when being a creep or doing something to you that obviously sucks. 2 Examples, 1 recent one. I got a letter from the Lancaster Tax Collection Bureau stating that I owe $58.00 in back taxes from 2002, and if they aren't paid by July, they are going to garnish my wages. Funny thing is the tax was already paid, and we went through the same thing last year, with the same tax. Whatever. But the most irritating thing about this is the letter comes in a envelope stamped with a snowman and the words "Season's Greetings" attached to it. Thanks a lot, have a good holiday..creep.

Example 2 is from a few years back, wow, I guess 7 years now. At the beach I parked my car in a tow away zone (which was marked no parking from 7 AM to 3 PM) Parked there after 8 that night, and when I got up the next morning to move it at 6:30...gone. They towed my car..nice. Well I went to get it out of the impound, which was a nice $130.00 bill and as I pay this fine the lady gives me a receipt with the message "Thank You Please Come Again" at the bottom, followed by the comment..."Have a Great Day." Come again..have a great day? Come on now. I'd rather them just say something rude, or just laugh. Maybe the statement "Sucks to be you" at the bottom, or "You're going to jail you tax evading jerk" on the envelope. Now that I could get behind.

Blogging the Grammy's

I watched some of the Grammy's last night. Rarely can I make it through a whole awards show of any sort, but the Music ones are usually the best. I prefer the Billboard, or the World Music Awards, mostly because the music getting awards last night was out so long ago it seems like old hat. Anyway, let's take a look at some of the winners:

Album of the Year:

Winner- "Taking the Long Way", The Dixie Chicks

I was surprised by this choice. I was thinking that Justin Timberlake or Mary J Blige would win this award. One of the big reasons is that with the Chicks outside of the song of the year "Not Ready To Make Nice" none of the others on this compilation really stick out. I thought either JT or MJB was more deserving, but congrats to the DC for being able to win awards without being politically correct all the time. Heck I would think every artist would want to give the finger to country music people at some point.

Song of the Year:

Winner- "Not Ready To Make Nice", The Dixie Chicks

I don't have a problem with this selection. I'm just glad James Blunt didn't win, that song was way overplayed. Heck I think I only heard the Chicks song maybe 4 times this year.

Best New Artist:

Winner- Carrie Underwood

I'm an Underwood fan, although that tribute she sang last night was painful to watch, it really was. That being said, Chris Brown should have won this one. He got hosed at the Billboard awards too losing to Jamie Foxx..give me a break.

Best Pop Vocal Album:

Winner- John Mayer, Continuum

This was the most shocking one of them all for me. Mayer took out Timberlake and Aguilera and won out in this category. Please tell me this has nothing to do with him dating Jessica Simpson. I'm flat out shocked on this win by John. The only song on this album that I have, I don't even like.

Best R&B Album:

Winner- Mary J Blige, "The Breakthrough"

Agreed. Out of the other participants in this category MJB stood head and shoulders above them all. "Be Without You" is a great tune, and this one also won for Best R&B Song, and For R&B Vocal Performance. Well Done MJB and congrats on a great year.

Female Pop Vocal Performance of The Year:

Winner- Christina Aguilera, "Ain't No Other Man"

Not her best performance on her album, but she is deserved of the award. I also liked Natasha Bedingfield, and Sheryl Crows "Good is Good", but I have no problem with CA winning. Her performance last night was also phenomenal, well done.

Best Male Vocal Performance of the Year:

Winner: John Mayer, "Waiting on the World To Change"

I'm waiting for the results on this one to change! John Legend was hosed, and if someone can honestly tell you that Mayer's vocals are better then John Legend's in "Save Room" then they are lying to you, or smoking something. Wow, I must really dislike Mayer...but I really don't. Although I don't really like him that much either.

There you have it, a quick run down to the main awards given out last night. In the end the Grammy's weren't a big enough hit to keep me from tuning in to Trump last night at 9:20. Hey Mayer...YOU'RE FIRED!!

627 Yao

Last night's nice line at the alleys left a little something to be desired. I missed practice, and then proceeded to leave 4 splits in the first 5 frames. The good news? I made 3 of them (none of which were the baby variety), and then got it rolling by finishing with the final 6 to record a 211. Following a 224 game in which I again punched out in the 10th we were looking for a much needed 3 games from "Dem Franchize Boyz" Team. Fast forward to the last game, 9th frame. I strike in the set up frame, so a strike in the 10th and the double puts us up comfortably with Geesey to follow. The shot felt good, but it hung up in the oil a bit, leaving it a bit short and I was left with the 4,8. Worried about pushing past the 8 and getting only the 4 I put a little extra on it, and chopped the 8 off instead, leaving me at 192. We won the game, but lost total pins by 11..I feel like this one was on me. My average now will go back to 190, but we really needed those points. Hopefully we have a big run left in us.

I acquired Yao Ming in the fantasy league yesterday, along with the enigmatic Ron Artest who was absolutely awful for me earlier in the year. I sent the Mighty Dirk and Andris Biedrins in the deal. This is one of those deals that either makes or breaks your team. The good news is that my team has been broken all year long, so maybe this helps fix it. Yao Ming was traded with Chris Webber for Joe Johnson, and Ron Artest. Joe Johnson was traded with Ray Allen and Carlos Boozer for Billups, Marion, and Bibby. Finally Ming was acquired for Dirk in more then anything, a positional switch. According to Basketball Monster, I made a good deal..we shall see.

If by chance Allen Iverson reads this..please sit out at least until Monday and get your ankle healed. We'll need you down the stretch little big man.

Speechless, McFever, Larry Brown at Nova

I saw the movie Speechless many years ago when it came out. (Ah the days of the cheater box..) Well, I saw it again on Monday night on Encore. It's a pretty good flick starring Michael Keaton and Geena Davis. This was right around the time when Keaton was making all kinds of movies, so I actually kind of forgot about this one. The paper also released around this time was a really good movie, MK has got quite the resume on the Big Screen. Easily one of the top A List actors of all time..yes I am serious. Come on GUNG HO..need I say more. Keaton plays a campaign speech writer that ends up meeting the other candidates speech writer (Davis) and they hit it off. Neither of them realize that the other is working for the other party at 1st and when they find out at a school event..that's when the comedy starts. Superman, (Christopher Reeves) makes an appearance in this movie, I thought that was pretty cool as well. It's probably a 3 of 5 star movie, but you could do worse.

I listened to the Katharine McPhee CD yesterday. It is decent for the idol product. I swore if she sang that somewhere over the rainbow song on the record I wasn't listening to it, but she managed to leave that off. There were 2 songs on there that I could find myself listening to on a regular basis, and 1 other one that wasn't bad either. Over it, and Open Toes are catchy Pop hits. I haven't heard Hicks effort yet, but I am thinking that it will fall short of Daughtry and McPhee's releases. I would say it's worth checking those 2 songs out if you like music that is similar to a JoJo sound.

Last Night I went to the Villanova game to see them play St. Joe's. The Hawks managed to put up 39 points, failing to reach that elusive 40 point barrier. It was an ugly win for the Wildcats, but one that keeps their NCAA hopes alive, and with 4 more wins they should secure a birth with a pretty decent RPI. Their freshman Reynolds can play, but it will be up to Curtis Sumpter to take this team into the tournament if they are destined to do so. I'm still not sure why he didn't come back last year when he could have...the Cats could have possibly been victorious in that Elite 8 game last year. But the real story was the sighting of Larry Brown at the game. Apparently he comes to a bunch of games according to Scott who sees him there all the time. He was constantly writing stuff on different players, and really didn't talk to anyone. What do you think he was writing? Whatever it was, he was getting paid a ton of money to do it. (He loves New York ya know) I probably could have talked to LB because I walked right behind him at halftime and was tempted to pull a Dick Enberg on him, but thought better of it. LB was out shortly before the 5 minute left mark, I guess he wasn't concerned that St Joe's might in fact hit 40.

Honorable mention: Also at the game was Kerry Kittles..I was really hoping to see B West instead. Kittles probably looked better then Westbrook would have in that blue be ray however.

A Guy's Weekend (Superbowl 41 Recap)

This was definitely a guy's weekend for me. Saturday night there was the poker night for the bowling team, plus my brother in law showed up to take everyone's money, or something like that. What a miserable night of cards for me. After it was all said and done I walked out with a loss of 40 cents. All things considered I'll take that. It started off alright, but then I stuck around in 2 large pot hands only to have the 2nd best hand in both of them, once losing with 4 Queens and the other with 5 of a kind. The following hand I folded on a 50 cent bet, only to find after that call was made I would have won the hand with my full boat. It was one of those nights.

Following Sunday was of course the Super Bowl party and oh, yeah there was a game too. After suffering through the worst fantasy football season in memory, I suffered again as I lost out on 15 dollars at the end of the 3rd quarter when Robbie Gould kicked through the 17th point for the Bears...his appearance as my kicker would later cost me our SB fantasy picks. Should have known to never pick a Penn Stater. I ended up 0fer at those games as well, which makes for a no win weekend for me. Bummer. Silver Lining? I did end up 2nd in the Draft Lottery..I look forward to trading that pick away in a few months.

The game itself was actually pretty good. Despite the fact that the Bears never had the ball, they trailed by 5, 17-22 with 11 minutes to go in the 4th. Just enough time for Grossman to throw his 2nd TD of the game, although this one went to the Colts Kelvin Hayden, and that pretty much sealed the deal. What did we learn? Rex Grossman really did not play well. He looked out of his element on the games biggest stage and the Bears offense really let their defense down in this one. I'm not going to blast Wrecks Grossman because he gets enough heat, but it doesn't look like he has the mental game to play consistently well at that level. Maybe he will continue to improve, but he may not get that chance as a starter..we'll see. I think the Colts got pretty fortunate that the Bears self destructed with 4 turnovers because they had a real shot at the end of it to win the game, they just couldn't mask their QB this time and much like it happened with San Diego, it finally caught up with them.

It's a Girl!

The 1st post and it is a major announcement! Laura and I are having our second baby girl due in June. We just found out today what we are having, so the suspense is finally over. I'm very excited, and now we can continue on with the preparation of her new room!

Avery update: Lizzy is fine, word from the doctor revisit is that it is healing wonderfully. She had burnt her hand on a curling iron yesterday but is back to her normal self and we don't have to wrap her hand anymore. What a relief!!

I should note that now that I have this blog you will find out information about the goings on, and also some completely incoherent thoughts and maybe just maybe you will learn something or think, hey I like the way this guy thinks.. We shall see.

So much for the snow...1-3" try nothing. I want a job as a meteorologist, never have to worry about being right and hey you get to be on TV. You don't even have to sign up to get a "Weatherwatcher" umbrella either, I assume you can just take as many as you want.

I do want to touch on the Superbowl. I am thinking that the Colts will have their way with the Bears and win pretty easily. Something along the lines of 41-20. On a side not about the game, why in the world is Tank Johnson allowed to play? The man is under house arrest, and shouldn't even be a free man much less playing in this game. If any non celeb person had those charges against us we would be locked up for 5-10 years. The best thing is this guy is out at the clubs in Miami living it up. You know for sure he is packing, if you are going to the game and happen to see him down there on South Beach, DO NOT confront him.