strong as a can

it's cool that bass fishing was on at 5am this morning instead of the yanks-rays game.

so schools have dress codes. no tube tops, no trench coats, no tongue rings, no obscenely short skirts, no baseball hats, etc. but apparently if what you are wearing is "required" by your religion, you are exempt from the rules. yup, that's what the federal courts have decided. how can this possibly be justified? the girl is not being persecuted for her religious beliefs. she's was suspended, not for being muslim, but for breaking the rules that everyone else has to follow! her complaint was that other kids could wear jewelry with crosses on them. well, when necklaces are banned by the dress code, they won't be able to wear "required" garments either. i mean, now you can just say, well in my religion, it's required that i show my midriff. it's required that i wear a ski mask. it's required that i am armed at all times. thus i should be exempt from the rules of the school.

in my master's program, there were a few muslim women who wore the whole scarf-over-the-face-so-only-the-eyes-show deal. i didn't care, but it always struck me as weird that we really had no idea who the student was. it's not like on test day, the professor asked them to unveil themselves to show their identity (because that would be viewed as persecution). it could've been a different person taking the tests for them. the person who received the degree may never have even stepped on campus. do i think this was the case? of course not. but stranger things have happened.

it's not good that in america it's getting to the point where any feeling of persecution, warranted or not, allows you to circumvent the established rules/laws.

one of espn's headlines now is "yankees off to a bad start." well good thing they've only played .617% of the season then, eh comrades? i know the expectations are high and they will be scrutinized all season but cmon. what's next, "yanks on major losing streak"?

so something cool just happened at work. and by cool i mean horseshit. so a while back i had to write 1/2 a proposal, while another guy wrote the other 1/2. his part took 4 weeks longer then mine, so i was already annoyed with it. 3 of us get the whole paper last week and have a mini-review before it is officially reviewed. my sections get the a-ok, the other sections have tons of editing to be done. the changes are given to the other guy (cuz he's in charge of the paper), he "makes" the changes, then sends the paper out to the whole review team.

so i get my copy of the "edited" paper. besides only making some of the requested changes to his sections, he took one of mine and butchered it. so now it will be reviewed tomorrow and the review team will be all "what were you thinking here, ethan?" and "this is some good incoherent blather, son." what can i really say here? do i just point the finger at the other guy? im thinking of bringing a copy of the way the section used to be and passing it out. oh, and did i mention the other writer is one of my bosses? other than looking like an idiot tomorrow, do i really have any options here?

i got up at 6am today (not 5) so i missed the first 3 1/2 innings. i went downstairs to find a 2-0 yanks lead. i head to the gym figuring with the 105 tv's there, and it's opening day and all, i'll see the rest. oh but wait. all gym viewers would prefer to watch fox news. so i get home, it's 5-3 in the 7th, and the first things i see are the replay of the quantril injury and heredia throwing away a pickoff attempt (more like giambi flat out missing it though). i then proceed to watch the rays mash for 10 minutes. i have no chance at enjoying breakfast at this point. a few observations of the game:

-aubrey huff is friggin great. he hit 4 ropes today in his first 4 trips. he just rakes.

-felix heredia. ugh. he sucks. really bad. mike stanton, anyone?

-my man toby hall picks me up 7 fantasy points, sheff with 6.

-yanks had 7 hits and only 1 single.

-lance carter. they gotta refer to him as the 6th member of nsync in the clubhouse.

-gammons, ravich, and hr did the game stateside. it was weird and obvious that they weren't at the game, cuz the sound was off a bit.

-10 bucks lofton was bitching postgame (again) about hitting 9th, especially after that triple. what a great clubhouse presence. everyone knows matsui will move down in the order once they get back to america. can't kenny give the guy 2 games of hometown heroism?

-it was nice to see tino hit again. i hope he has a good year.

so europe has fined microsoft $613 million over monopolization issues. first, i didn't know a continent could sue a company. watch out mcdonalds, south america wants those super size fries back! second, the fine has been ordered because the EU thinks microsoft has violated some antitrust laws. in an interview on cnn with a european representative, the following was said:

Q. What is the EU ordering Microsoft to do?

A. The EU has fined Microsoft 497 million euros and set a precedent by asking for two specific remedies: one to allow competing server software to work better with Microsoft operating systems; the other to offer a version of Windows XP in Europe without its multimedia software.

in my mind, this translates to:

A. microsoft has the best product out there, but those other software companies need business. never mind that they're not as good, they deserve some customers. so we demand that microsoft take the time, energy, and money to make their excellent product more compatible with that of their competition. we also demand that they stop including windows media player for free with their product, because that's not fair to their competitors. in the word's of richard kingsley crump, "how can [we] sell it if [you] keep givin it away for free?" of course, this statement was in reference to his body, but that's a different matter entirely...

think i'm exaggerating? from another cnn article:

"The EU is demanding that Microsoft offer computer makers in Europe a discounted version of Windows without its Media Player pre-installed, so that rivals like RealNetworks Inc.'s RealOne Player and Apple's QuickTime have a better shot at reaching consumers.
In addition, the draft is expected to require the company to release more underlying Windows code so rival server software companies like Sun Microsystems Inc. can interface as well with computers running Windows."

are they really trying to mandate how a business can or can't sell their product? are they really trying to force microsoft to give away industry secrets? here's a novel idea - how about those companies (realnetwork, apple, sun microsystems) develop a better fucking product themselves! seriously, this is like requiring a real life point spread. you are better, therefore you must give some of your own stuff to the team you are playing. i mean, they need it therefore they deserve it! and you must comply with this order in addition to giving us $600+ million!

i think this is setting a ridiculous precedent. aren't meal combos now in jepardy? you always get the drink for free (or a few cents) in a meal combo. will wendy's now sue burger king for offering too good a value on their combos? is the EU saying you can no longer sell things as a bundle? forget getting those floor mats thrown in with your new car. you must pay for them individually! want to buy something in bulk? oh, you want a case of beer? well you have to pay for 24 individual cans then! and we just bought a sam's club membership. fuck!

maybe i just don't understand the antitrust laws. so here's a description of such laws in our country, from a cornell law website:

"Trusts and monopolies are concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few. Such conglomerations of economic resources are thought to be injurious to the public and individuals because such trusts minimize, if not obliterate normal marketplace competition, and yield undesirable price controls. These, in turn, cause markets to stagnate and sap individual initiative.

To prevent trusts from creating restraints on trade or commerce and reducing competition, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. The Sherman Act was designed to maintain economic liberty, and to eliminate restraints on trade and competition. The Sherman Act is the main source of Antitrust law.

The Sherman Act is a Federal statute and as such has a scope limited by Constitutional constraints on the Federal government. The commerce clause, however, allows for a very wide interpretation and application of this act. The Act applies to all transactions and business involved in interstate commerce. If the activities are local, the act applies to transactions affecting interstate commerce. The latter phrase has been interpretted to allow broad application of the Sherman Act."

price control is clearly the major issue here. but we don't live in the roaring twenties where railroad tycoons ruled the world. in this day and age, if a dominant business starts to overcharge, their sales will fall and competitors business will increase. apparently though, the phrase "undesirable price controls" means "giving away a product for free." so it seems i did understand these laws after all. they're sketchy as hell.

honestly. please tell me im missing something.

there have been tons of articles about zoomer this spring, and even after getting wracked around some yesterday, his spring ERA is under 3 and i really hope he makes the big club. with beck out, he's gotta have a good shot. but i didn't know it was common to bash our alma mater like he did on page 2 today. i told you guys that someone needed to help him with his cliches. at least he said some of us coulda played D1, but the reference to us as an IM softball team was a little below the belt...

it's only thursday, but im leaving today at noon and taking tomorrow off. so i'll leave you with only 4 random thoughts. river boat casino here we come!

-my favorite commercials out rite now are the quizno's ones with the cracked out floating mice playing guitars, singing "we have a pepper bar!" working for their advertising department must be fucking hilarious.

-2 words that always make me smile: pretzel keg

-back in high school, i knew this acronym for budweiser. it went something like:
Beer U Drink While Enjoying I___ S___ E___ R___. or maybe it was
Beer U Drink While Everyone Is S___ E___ R___. does anyone remember the rest of this?

-when jason schmidt gets lectured by his pitching coach, all he hears is "waa waa, wa wa wa." and you know when he was a rookie they made him prance around in this and his jock strap.

for the first time ever, we missed a new episode of the o.c. last nite.

i suppose 47 games of phothunt (and let it ride) will make you lose track of time, but no excuses. in a slightly drunken haze, nina called as many potential o.c. disciples as possible, but alas, no tivo was found. i am appalled by our lack of dedication. what's worse is that in my rush to rank all my players for sandbox, i wasn't even all that concerned with missing luke getting caught with mrs. cooper or seth getting seduced by paris porn star. on aside, waiting til the last possible nite and then ranking your players while a little sauced is not a good idea. i think i ranked nick johnson in the top 5 1b's, and probably left pedro off my draft card all together...

in other news, we both smoked a cigarette last nite. yes, it was simply an attempt to sass nina's dad about randomly buying a pack after quitting like 10 years ago. but man did i look cool.

if you work with someone who drags a 2 line joke or story into a fucking 350 page thesis raise your hand. both my hands are waving uncontrollably.

i don't like having to avoid certain people around the office but im starting to. im also having a hard time dealing with a co-worker who is a nice person but so unbelievably inefficient to the point where it is ruining my opinion of them. i find myself getting annoyed whenever i see him. is that bad? it's even worse that he's one of my bosses AND that he's working on something that i need to proceed on my end.

oh well. has anyone seen the daily show with john stewart? i read somewhere that it was the #1 news show watched by 20-somethings. is it even a real news show? i thought it was like headline news with kevin neelan...

my father-in-law should teach a class on "how to be a houseguest." everytime we walk in the door, he has drinks ready. whiskey-and-7 at 5:30pm anyone? and last nite he cooked us steak and lobster. it was amazing. it reminded me of rush, minus the zeta psi car bashing or cj's toast on the boat cruise or tom stocky showing up to baseball practice with the kicker from the football team. of course, i fear all the butter for the lobster will wreak havoc on my innards. hopefully the movie popcorn the other nite got my intestines adjusted.

apparently hash brownies are old hat to some 5 year old from miami. he's moved on to hash lasagna. doesn't crump have nephews down there?

i don't know what's up with blogger, but it's taking like 24 hours to post things. oddly, when i "view blog" on the blogger site, i can see that people have commented on my posts before i can see them. weird...

anyhow, i figured i'd throw some march madness stats out there to make everyone with dead brackets feel better (or worse). in the first round
in 1-16 games, the 1 seed won 4
in 2-15 games, the 2 seed won 4
in 3-14 games, the 3 seed won 4
in 4-13 games, the 4 seed won 4
in 5-12 games, the 5 seed won 2
in 6-11 games, the 6 seed won 4
in 7-10 games, the 7 seed won 3
in 8-9 games, the 8 seed won 3
so if you picked all favorites, you would've been dominating the pool at a 28-4 clip.

in the second round, in 16 games, only 9 favorites won. in the sweet 16, there's
2 #1 seeds
2 #2 seeds
3 #3 seeds
2 #4 seeds
2 #5 seeds
1 #6 seed
1 #7 seed
1 #8 seed
1 #9 seed
1 #10 seed
0 #11-16 seeds

does anyone else think cbs' coverage is stupid? they'll continue showing a 20-point blowout while there's a nailbiter going on somewhere else. then they'll take you there for like the final 13 seconds, so you can't even get emotionally involved...

so those touch screen bar video games? when i got home friday, nina had found the cheapest one online. for four thousand dollars. um, looks like we'll stick to darts and a pool/ping pong table in our lounge.

after getting over the shock of the 4 grand toy, we hit up this italian joint. if you ever want a bowl full of garlic, i mean italian house salad, or a waitress with the most piercing voice ever, hit up dominic's in dayton, ohio. at least they made good canneloni. after that we went to perhaps the best movie theater ever. it's called "the neon," has only 2 screens with ~100 seats per, shows only "films," serves beer (i got one called honker ale, very fitting) and coffee, and has a cafe area with actual movie seats bolted into the floor around circular metal tables. we saw touching the void, a documentary about 2 guys who climb the tallest mountain in peru and overcome disaster after disaster to survive. we had read the book (compliments of lg) and still thought the movie was awesome. if you wanna see a movie about a mind-boggling will to live, check it out. after that, we went out and romped in our soccer game, 7-2.

saturday was spring cleaning day. sounds awful, but was actually pretty fun. i mean, anything can be made fun by blaring bon jovi's greatest hits out of every speaker in the house. plus, cleanliness begets god-liness, or something. so we danced around dusting, straightening up, vacuuming, etcetera, etcetera. obviously i had the red headband on for this extravaganza. we mixed in a trip to office max where we bought a new computer chair and found out that the cheapest color laser printer was 700 smackers. shocking. and somewhere in there i may or may not have sucked a few buds down watching a little basketball.

nina has been having a hankering for chinese food lately, and since our favorite place closed, we are in a constant search for a new one. when we were at the neon, we saw this place called chin's nearby, so we figured we'd check it out. after circling the building twice looking for the hidden entrance (i swear we passed a dozen signs saying "use door on other side of building"), we stepped in. the first sign that we were not to dine on general tso's here was the punk band unloading their gear rite past us. nor was there an asian person in sight. turns out the place was called "elbo's and chin's" so there went the wontons.

so now we're off walking in the oregon district of downtown dayton. there's tons of places, but it is nearing 7:45pm on a saturday. we're told at multiple places that the wait is an hour +. on our jaunt down the street we were at one point accosted for money by goth teenagers. i immediately thought of ann's meeting with the "homeless artist." one girl asked us for a few bucks so they could eat but her friend was all "no, give us a few bucks so we can get drunk!!" i appreciated the honesty, but told them to bugger off.

so we settled at dublin's, one of our favorite's, an irish pub. we took ahren here on halloween in fact. my dish was called a "bully beef shot," and well worth the embarassment at ordering. so we're stuffing our faces with beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, more beef, half and half's (1/2 guiness, 1/2 harp) and english snakebites (1/2 harp, 1/2 cider). then this irish band from indianapolis comes on. i don't know what they called themselves but they were awesome. one guy switched from the bag pipes to the flute and could play those things amazingly fast. he played every instrument i could imagine, even one of those celtic-looking guitars. i think the only thing he didn't play at some point was the trombone, though i was hoping we would so steve harvey could jump out from behind the bar yelling "beyonce! beyone!" my favorite band member, though, was the rather large bass player introduced as "sweaty mcgee." he wore a cheshire cat grin the whole nite, which nina thought was terrifying. and i think he was trying to make eyes with me. my second favorite character was the enormous bouncer who looked just like willum from mall rats. everytime one of the incoming customers got a little rude i expected to hear "the easter bunny isn't real!!" once the band ended their originals and started with u2 covers, we hit the door.

as a fine close to our shabbas ("i don't roll on shabbas, donnie"), we worked on o.b. for the rest of the nite while using a killian's as a buffer to the bud cans. nina will finally have some pieces in the next issue. as i watched her type, i could tell everytime she was writing something funny cuz she would get this 1/4 smile, which would grow to a 3/4 smile, then go back to her pensive tip-of-the-tongue-between-her-lips look. it was adorable. and we drunk dialed lemmer as pay back for the previous weekend. unfortunately, the two of us mildly inebriated couldn't even compare to the "yellow and blue" song ahren sung us last week...

yesterday, nina's dad came in town. we haven't seen him in 15 months. about 8 months ago, he got that stomach staple surgery. it was shocking how thin he is. he looks great. we ate lunch at friday's, then spent the day watching our brackets go to shit (at least pitt is still alive), had homemade lasagna, then saw taking lives as a nitecap. it was pretty good and spooky but the butter from the popcorn made me slightly ill. when will i learn to lay off that shit.

what a good and busy weekend. only 3 1/2 days till the next one.

i just got back from the best leave-work-lunch ever. ninja finished her last final at 11am, then picked me up. we went to BW3's, which is a wings joint/sports bar. she is officially on spring break now, so naturally i deserved some end-of-quarter celebration by association. we chomped on buffalo, thai, terayaki, and captain's morgan's flavored wings and had huge 22 ounce brews (i've been told it was okay to have a beer at lunch during work hours, but no one specified what size). and played photo hunt, 11 ball, and some other bar video games. and watched the top ten on sportscenter, which included some grandma doing squats (no im not a wee bit sauced, well, er, there really was a granny doing power squats).

we also confirmed the fact then when we move and buy a house, it must certainly include a huge wooden bar with an attached touch-screen video monitor. we are currently searching the web for sales of such a product...

we have a soccer game tonite, so it must be friday. and even though i heard some guy at the gym today tell his friend to "wake up, man. TGIF!", with all the hoops on it should be a good one. i went 14-2 yesterday, losing with southern illinois and the always unpredictable arizona. still a good start to the tourney.

-im very stubborn when using microwaves. when i heat something up, no matter what the outcome (completely cold or done just rite) i force down whatever i just nuked. i can just never bring myself to re-microwave. knowing this, you might say to just over heat everything. but even worse than tasting cold soup is that burnt, bubbling, hissing smell/taste/sound that you risk by over heating.

-this week utah eliminated the firing squad as a type of legal execution. that leaves only idaho and oklahoma with this as a potential method for the death penalty.

-i'll never understand why mlb teams bring back former drug addicts as spring training instructors. caminiti, gooden, strawberry, etc. are these really the guys you want working with your impressionable 20 year old prospects?

-this week i did the expert minesweeper level in 100 seconds.

-are tv timeouts during basketball games not the weirdest fucking things? they literally alter the game for commercials. could you imagine that in baseball? the inning is pretty long, your team is scoring a lot, their pitcher is cashed. oh wait let's give him a 3 minute break and kill the momentum. it's just plain dumb.

thank heavens for gamecast. oh wait, espn is not using it. instead, members of that insider club get real time updates. that is some serious crap for crap. oh well, at least i can refresh every 30 seconds: go manhattan jaspers!

can any laws of logic be used to complete the following proof:
Givens:
ethan had corned beef sandwiches for dinner yesterday
ethan drank killians with his corned beef yesterday
ethan was reading a book about the irish revolution yesterday
ethan (completley by chance) wore a green sweater yesterday
if ethan drinks killians and eats corned beef on st. pat's day, there is a 25% chance he is irish.
if ethan ever wanted a pin that said "kiss my ass, im czechoslovakian" there is a 2% chance he irish.
Conclusion:
ethan is at least 10% irish

is this for real? or is it another biblical interpretation by mel gibson?

im crossing my fingers. espn.com seems to be back. i guess i should pick up all the books i threw off the shelves in my furor.

anyway, i figured some of you may be looking for a tourney pool to enter, and my baseball team is doing one. it doubles as a fundraiser though, meaning half of the entry fee goes towards our summer tournament fees and half goes to the pot (tho not the kind of "the pot" that makes vivas sleepy). it's $5 to enter, or $5.50 if you use pay pal cuz i guess they charge for their services, with prizes for first and second place. if you're interested, you can fill everything out and find out all rules here on the dayton ranger's website. i don't expect anyone to actually do this, but i said i would "tell people" about it and you 5 are "my people." for any of you who actually even think about joining the pool, thanks.

houston, we have a problem. my work just blocked espn.com. i just keep closing my browser and re-trying like that will help. this is purely diabolical. seriously. what the fuck? no gamecast for the tourney, no morning box scores, no sports guy ramblings, no gammons, no page 2, no instant stat source for blog arguments. im pretty much close to tears rite now. that or raging uncontrollably. god help the person using the microwave when i go heat my fucking soup.

i can't stop shaking.

i have serious issues with the industry in which i work. any job where i am told to not be so efficient is crap.

i talked to ali for 5 minutes last nite and she was saying she would be willing to take 3/4's of her salary in exchange for working 3/4's of the hours. this is an utterly fantastic idea. you could either have every friday off, or more time each afternoon. among other things, coaching while working a non-teaching job would become possible. if i don't teach at the next place we live, im going to seriously consider this.

ohmygodohmygodohmygod. why do i have such an easy time finding humungous flaws with our education system? oh yeah, that's cuz IT SUCKS. in case you don't wanna read the article, here's a quote:

"The changes are most sweeping for rural teachers, thousands of whom who will get an extra school year -- until spring 2007, three years from now -- to show they are qualified in all topics they teach. Newly hired rural teachers will get three years from their hire date."

are you fucking kidding me? 3 years to show that you are qualified in all topics you teach???? who are they hiring????

ok, deep breaths. im not even sure that it should fall on the shoulders of the government to provide schooling, but in our current system fixing the education system should be right behind protecting the country in order of importance. yes, i think it should be even higher than fixing the economy, whatever that means.

in other more fun news, zoomer threw another scoreless inning and has now allowed only 1 run in 6 1/3. and with rod beck back drinking in his trailer, i think z's got a good shot to make the big club. someone needs to help him with his cliches, though, because saying "physics doesn't apply to baseball" isn't a good quote.

with all the ncaa hoopla going on, im hearing about a lot of "clutch" players. at least for baseball, i know most of us subscribe to the bill james theory on clutch-ness. but if we defined clutch as performing better than normal (by normal i mean a player's average numbers) in late-close game situations, isn't it possible for a player to be clutch (what a weird word by the way)?

you always hear about jeter being the ulimate clutch player, but his numbers in the post-season mirror his career numbers so he is just plain good and performing as expected. it seems there are many more non-clutch players (i.e. performing worse than they do in the regular season, such as bonds), but doesn't this have to do with facing superior competition/pitching in the postseason? if so, then jeter hitting, say, .320 in the postseason would be better than .320 in the regular season when his numbers are padded by all the #4, #5 starters and crappy teams he faces?

i suppose, for most post-season players, it is hard to judge cuz they don't have a large enough sample of post-season at bats. but for guys like jeter and bernie williams who have like 300 post season at bats, is this a fair assessment? or what if we don't just limit it to post season and just compared late-close stats to all the remaining stats? oh im all over the place...

in other sports it is hard to make claims cuz they don't have such exact late-close game stats. opinions?

for whatever reason, this article reminded me of the senior prank pulled at a high school in melbourne, florida last spring (not where i worked, but a neighboring school). the seniors got their hands on 3 pigs, numbered them 1, 2, and 4, and let them loose on campus during school hours. the adminstrators spent a week straight looking for pig #3.

two quick sports related notes:

-am i the only one who thinks okafor is overrated as a pro prospect? he dominates in college cuz he's the only real big man, but he will not be blocking so many shots against guys who can jump out of the gym (i.e. every pro guard). also, his offense is very suspect. sure he can out-muscle all the 20 year olds, but going up against shaq? i mean cmon. he should not be drafted in the first 5.

-since i have a hard time listening to barry melrose due to the distracting mullet, can we get our resident hockey expert's opinion of the whole bertuzzi incident? i don't know shit about hockey, but my initial feeling was that had bertuzzi not knocked moore out cold with that first punch, it would've turned into a mismatched fight/brawl and he would've been fined a little and maybe suspended a few games for the cheap shot punch from behind. but since the punch DID knock moore unconscious (man he must punch really really hard) all this hoopla is going on. is this a valid assessment or is this further proof i don't know dick about the sport? cmon hockey fan(s) i know yur out there...

this high ankle sprain has got me moving around like verbal kint. i want to get in one of those oxygen-rich body healers that all the pros use. maybe now that zoomer has thrown 4 1/3 scoreless innings (with 1 hit allowed, 3 bb's, 2 k's) he can help me find one. at least it's friday.

-i know they make chicken with cashews or peanuts, but on wednesday at the local china buffet i had chicken smothered in peanut butter (my guess is it was skippy). it was both wonderful and grotesque at the same time.

-on more than one occasion in the past few weeks, we have heard our neighbors in the throes of passion. oh the moaning. i bet they were wearing their red headbands. i think i am getting too old to live in places with paper thin walls. when their kids run up and down the stairs on saturday mornings, i hop out of bed expecting to see a swat team breaking down our bedroom door.

-i don't know how many of you live in places were 3/4's of the population have pick-up trucks, but the size of those things is getting out of control. when they pull up to you at a light, you have absolutely no chance of seeing around them or thru their windows (which are like 8 feet off the ground). if they park on either side of you, you have to literally put 2/3's of your vehicle in the aisle to see if anyone is coming. unless you have a landscaping business, i just will never see the functionality of a 25 foot long, 8 foot tall pick up truck.

-apparently pier one is a firm believer in conservation of mass. they replaced kirstie allie as their spokesperson with 2 guys from Queer Eye. i hear they may need a third to make the scale balance.

-when nina was little her mom call this thing a hokey pokey. then she'd say "ok kids, who wants to hokey pokey the living room?" i think her mom is a genius. if my mom would've called cleaning the toilet "going to the amusement park" or if my dad would've referred to sweeping the driveway as "kickin ass" maybe i would've enjoyed my chores more.

hey laur - what are you gonna do without yur monkeys?

boy do i feel out of the loop. the last two days i was stuck in day-long meetings with experts from out of town. when i came in yesterday morning at 8:30am, i found, much to my delight, an absolute deluge of new blogs from tuesday. usually i sit in my office and refresh blogs every, say, 3.5 minutes, and on the two days i can't it's rainin' blogs!

so i figure i got about 30 minutes (before another day long meeting) to peruse the new material and comment and it's gonna be great. but i just have this feeling. everytime i hear someone walking down the hall i get all anxious like "no! this bastard is gonna ask me to do something before the meeting and im only 1/3 thur roy's vegas stories!" sure enough, by 8:45 i get a call to go set up the conference room (yes i am the bitch boy, i mean lowest ranking employee, here). so all day i was teased knowing the plethora of reading and enjoyment that awaited me when ever the meetings were over.

with that said, there were some positives to the meetings i attended. let's call the two experts who came to guide us thru our current work quaqmire "moose" and "squirrel." why? cuz that's how they referred to themselves. it was hilarious from the start. both were rather large (yes even squirrel) former military men who were enthusiastic, smart as hell, quick with a joke (and to give someone, anyone, shit) and genuine. they came from some office down south that apparently is filled with former pilots and whatnot. i know this cuz all the calls they received over the two day span were inevitably from "buzz" or "bama" or some other crazy-yet-typical military moniker. all phone calls ended succinctly with "moosey and squirrel out." this never got old. squirrel had great commentary: he was constantly saying "saa-weet!" when we did something rite and excused himself to the bathroom to "make a download." more than once he used the phrase "vicey-versey." trust me, when a guy in his mid-50's is doing this stuff, it's funny. and with these guys here, i think it was the most efficient i've seen anyone in my office ever work. they were like celebrities. people would stop by the conference room to say "hey moosey! good to see you!" i swear this is how tom and phil will be in like 20-30 years.

anyway, those two busy work days our over and all the blogs were still waiting for me today. it was a relief to take them all in uninterrupted. unfortunately, i rolled my ankle playing hoops before work today, so now im a gimp for the next few days...

sounds suspiciously like former SAE prez chipper albrecht is up to no good out on the west coast.

according to my dilbert desk calendar, today is commonwealth day (canada). little help here greg? is this like july 4th for canadians? anyway, thus far in spring training, zoomer has thrown 2 scoreless innings with 2 walks, 2 strikeouts, and no hits allowed. his bid for making the padres 25 man roster seems to be going well.

on saturday nite, we went to an 80's party. going to themed dress-up parties always builds character. nina and i had fantastic costumes if i do say so myself. ninja wore a hot pink mini skirt with white stockings and a black lace shirt under a small black leather-esque jacket. and huge pink hoop earrings. oddly enough, when she picked up these items at tj maxx for the costume, they were in the current fashion section. weird.

after unsuccessfully attempting to get zoobas (ya know those leopard print pants that johnny pumps STILL wear to the gym) and a midriff-baring cheap trick t-shirt, and also passing on the ball-huggers with spandex underneath a la larry bird, i went with small gray sweat pants covered by even smaller red shorts, tube socks, a sleeveless (cut off of course) inside-out gray champion sweathshirt and a red head band. pretty much i was the older brother from goonies who steals the little kid's bike. that or kevin klein in his running outfit from the big chill.

there were a number of mullet style rockers, but the best costume had to be our friend ted, who went as marty mcfly. he even had the headphones and everything. the only thing missing was the skateboard. the best part was his nike hightops with velcro straps across the ankles. classic. a close second was a guy who not only dressed exactly like glen gulia from wedding singer, but looked like him too. i swear he drove a delorian and told his buddy he wanted an alabama slammer but had to piss first and would meet him at the bar. and he tried to fight the cd player when billy idol came on.

i know it is slightly embarrassing to dress up like an idiot, but isn't it much worse to go to one of those parties sans costume? there were like 5 guys there who were clearly "too cool" to look like a moron and just couldn't resist normal non-acid washed jeans and polo shirts. clearly they were 10 times more mortifying than the rest of us jackasses.

then on the way home we stuffed our faces with gorditas and chili cheese burritos from t-bell. and drunk dialed lemmer. good times. also, for the rest of the weekend (and i don't see this trend ending) i paraded around the house in the red headband. first i claimed it was my x-box-playing headband, then my eating-jumbalaya-on-the-couch headband. this morning i even used it as my post-workout-ironing-my-pants-cuz-it's-the-other-monday headband. this has limitless potential.

a red robin burger joint just opened around the corner from us. now i don't think i'll ever be able to eat there. all i can say is eeewwww. pure vomitosis.

so the old man whose office is across the hall from mine was on hold with his health insurance provider for like 30 minutes this morning. how do i know this, you ask? HE WAS ON SPEAKER PHONE THE ENTIRE TIME. seriously, i know older people don't hear so well, but i think the guy eating at hardees across the street was covering his ears at the volume setting. and it wasn't just awful elevator music. every 30 seconds an automated voice would come on to remind him and everyone within a 5 block radius that all the operators were busy and they would be with him as soon as possible.

this is the same guy who i have heard 3 times in the last 2 days ranting about the greatness of the republican party. i'd say i would never again recognize his presence, but his wife makes the cakes for the monthly birthday celebrations in our office and her pecan pie is the shiznit. so ill just keep the scathing commentary to my blog.

f-r-i-d-a-y. before i start, i hafta ask - does everyone else cringe when co-workers say "TGIF"?:

-i swear on wednesday i woke up being spooned by oscar, the older of our 2 cats who is commonly referred to by guests as "the bigun" or "the fat one." he had somehow stretched his rather large ocelot-like frame across 2/3's of our king size bed, and had successfully crammed nina and i into a space the size of a pillow. this is the same cat that snaps the elastic cord on one of nina's binders at 7am if we haven't put food in the bowl yet. a very wise feline indeed. or perhaps not so wise owners.

-let's recap the big nfl news this week: the broncos trade one of the top 3 players in all of the nfl straight up for, um, a corner back. at first i thought it was a money thing, but then the skins paid $50 mil over 5 years for portis and the broncos paid $63 mil over 7 years for bailey. broncos = dumb. and if you think about the brunell deal, which means now the skins are paying brunell $43 mil over 7 years to hand off 80% of the time, he may make the most money per pass attempt ever.

-one time in college, someone who we'll call dicole nifonzo told me i looked like kevin bacon. while nina started sobbing in the corner, i told dicole "thanks. he may be one of the top 5 weirdest looking humans ever." she tried to make up for it by being all "oh he was hot in footloose," but the damage had been done.

-is there a more racially biased sports writer than ralph wiley?

-two mornings a week i play basketball before work. sometimes on those days i get out of my desk in the afternoon and walk around hunched over like i need a cane. im waiting for the day when i uncontrollably start singing "the old gray mare she ain't what she used to be..." like hans moleman. im fairly sure arthritis will set in by age 28. then ill need some of lauren's sudafed.

it's a good thing that i grow facial at the rate of most 9th graders, cuz i am an absolutely terrible shaver. maybe it's lack of practice (i only shave 4 times a week max), or that my dad used an electric razor and never showed me the ropes. maybe it's cuz i use the same razor for like 4 months. i swear the last time i bought new blades was when we lived in florida (i.e august 2003). or maybe it's that i sometimes shave without my contacts in. regardless, i think the 3 in mach 3 stands for the number of sections of facial hair i routinely miss. or for the number of times per minute of shaving that i am guaranteed to slice my jugular.

i also really suck at ironing. it takes me like 20 minutes to do a pair of pants and when im done, it's like the iron wasn't even on. due to this fact, ive taken to ironing my work pants every other monday morning. and dress shirts - oh what a disaster. i can't wait for everything - every single piece of fabric - to be made wrinkle-free. about the only things im remotely good at ironing are nina's BDU's, but that's prolly just cuz you can't see wrinkles in all that camoflauge. or that she's just being supportive when she says "sure, they look...great."

a while back, i tried to get my sister to make a blog. that didn't exactly work out, so instead i'll post an excerpt of an email she just sent to me. i asked her for some reading recommendations and geez-louise (that's an ism from my sister) she didn't disappoint. here's what she had to say:

I'll try to bring home a copy of Marlow's book, too...been meaning to get that to you since CHRISTMAS, geez...Jon's got a copy but its prolly been long since used as diapers or something! Glad to hear you are reading...with all the knitting spinning and dogs, I've been turned into a terrible slacker on that front as of late. Loser!! But marlow and I had a big discussion as to suggestions for you this morning and I got all inspired and have a stack of 15 or so novels sitting right here waiting to be checked out. Yippeee!! Anyway, this is what we came up with:
-The Sportswriter-John Ford (marlow's rec, I never read it)
-A Sense of Where you Are-John McPhee (about Bill Bradley)
-Coming into the Country-John Mcphee (about Alaska)
-Into the Wild-John Krakauer (he's an ass but still an interesting read)
-The Wasp Factory-Iain Banks
-A Secret History-Donna Tartt
-The Razors Edge-Somerset Maugham (also all his short stories are great)
-Starship and Canoe (a marlow rec, I don't know that author)
-The Eden Express-Vonnegut's son
-An American Childhood-Annie Dillard (the best of all time)
-Rabbit, Run-John Updike
-The Autobiography of Malcolm X
-Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest-Ken Kesey
-Fire-Sebastian Junger (essays)
-The Palace Thief-Ethan Canin (4 great short stories, as are his novels I'm sure)
-The Last American Man (non fiction, I don't know the author offhand)
-Tracks-Robyn Davidson (girl treks across australia)

abba zabba, that's a lot of reading. but kudos to krissi for all the offerings...

i just got the following email at work, with a subject of "Some Fun":

"We have a couple of days coming up that might be of some fun to some of you. We have Brian and leather man coming in on March 9th. He has some new items and is wanting to show them to everyone."

i just sat here for like 5 minutes contemplating some sort of funny commentary to go along with this. but really. WTF????

have any of you seen that show on espn, Dream Job? on it the contestants are trying to win a job as an espn sportscaster. anyway, i saw an episode last nite and some things about it need to be said. first, it is a great idea and they have some entertaining contestants. the shaggy guy who wears retro suits is awesome. his content is fantastic and he is very original, but naturally he got slammed by the exec judge (there are 4 judges, i'll get to that in a minute). the suit said he lacks credibility cuz of his scraggly hair and that viewers wouldn't accept his credibility. although all the sportscasters now are clean cut, and that funny-nerd approach works, i just think it is just wrong that viewers won't trust him. i bet more espn viewers out there can identify with him than with, say, stuart scott. plus, wouldn't the chemistry between a scruffy guy with a braided necklace and a straight laced kenny mayne make for a phenomenal sportscenter?

now, for the judges. im not exactly sure how the voting works, cuz the judges voted someone off last nite but i think the public also votes someone off. anyway, as i mentioned, one judge is an exec. that's fine, and expected. and one is tony cornheiser, who has been a sportscaster/sports reporter for decades. also a good choice. now, for the last two judges: first we have one of the girls from cold pizza. yes, the horrible morning show that has been ripped repeatedly on this blog by myself, greg, ann, and ahren (that's like 80% of my readers). she gives opinions like she is some embattled professional that has been doing this for more than, um, 6 months. terrible selection.

the last judge gets his own paragraph: none other than the eloquent lavar arrington. if you were gonna pick one athlete to give his opinion on this matter, would it really be lavar arrington? there wasn't one other athlete who they thought would be more credible? to his defense, he is just fucking enormous. but conversely, having lavar arrington critique potential sportscasters is just insane, especially given the fact that of all the judges he gave the most comments. he even repeatedly made fun of the really short guy for being little. i mean cmon, lavar. do you really STILL need to pick on the little guys? im sure he's been the biggest guy since, well, FOREVER, so you think making fun of a guy for being 5 foot nothing woulda got old in like 3rd grade. also, for you american idol viewers, lavar was obviously trying to be a cross between randy jackson ("im feelin you, dog") and simon cowell (lavar flat out said one guy was funny looking).

knowing all of you are espn addicts as well, what are your takes on the show?

was this the quickest weekend ever or what? wow did it fly. on friday nite we went to dinner at quizno's, rented simpson's hit and run (again) and planned to drink beers on the couch (C-O-U-R-are you going to the mall today?). we had just got home (6:45ish) when we got a call and an invite to a cookout. since we don't really have any friends, we agreed but had just stuffed our faces with enormous subs. when kristina got off the phone, she was all "hope you can handle 2 dinners," at which point we contemplating "pulling the trigger." we decided not to, and luckily we didn't wind up eating dinner numero dos until 9ish and downed some beers first (which always whets the appetite).

on saturday we got up early and nina made this scrumptuos smorgasbord of homemade waffles, scramby eggs with ham, peppers, and mushrooms and toast. i was ready for a nap by 9:45am. nina went off to coach soccer and i played ssx (how do spell addiction?). we sort of took a nap (college hoops was on but i dozed during the second half) until i had to go to my baseball "tryout," which consisted of 15 minutes of throwing and 20 minutes of groundballs. apparently im the new shortstop for the dayton rangers. so that worked out well.

after i got home we order pickup from olive garden, and i went into the restaurant in gym shorts and a 3/4's with a sleeveless mit gray over it. pure class. the church group waiting with like 30 people were not amused when this ragamuffin got to cut the line for his phone in order. then we watched intolerable cruelty, which was okay but a bit disappointing for a joel coen movie, and this was followed by our indoor soccer game. we crushed them, but i also got kicked in the face and am still seeing stars like 36 hours later.

i don't even know what happened on sunday. i swear i took like a 5 hour nap. at like 1pm. i even outslept the cats, which is nearly impossible. while nina tried to study, i think i played some grand theft auto. someone at the cookout on friday lent it to me, and i realized this game is just a (much) more violent version of simpson's hit and run. we ate dinner at this brewery called the thirsty dog, and then went to barnes and nobles where i bought this book trinity by leon uris. it comes highly recommended from a high school buddy (anyone ever heard of/read this?). this book looks almost like a romance novel but i swear my friend would never advertise something like that. then we saw welcome to mooseport which was reasonably funny but weird cuz gene hackman plays the same role in every movie now. lastly, before bed we saw this documentary on hugh heffner on A&E. that is one fascinating individual. a purely self-made man who has had a amazing life, and not just for all the blond conquests. i can't believe the shape he is in for a 77 year old.

i didn't really think we did anything, but that i read this, i know why the weekend went so fast. oh yeah, and jaw if yur reading this, can you get some comments on yur blog?