Super Bowl Sunday

At the end of December, I bought a new 47" HDTV and I was jazzed that I was going to be able to watch the Super Bowl with a huge screen and surround sound...Up until about 5 days ago when it dawned on me I'm working days that weekend.

I get to sit in my crappy office with a 13" POS TV with lousy speakers having to scoot in and out to deal with the facility.

Sometimes life just sucks.

In Football People Get Hit

You look at the play and tell me what was illegal or...anything that should have set off a brawl between coaches and parents. (The controversial play starts at 0:26 and sorry, CBSNews cannot get their embed correctly set up, gotta cut and paste)

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6910808n

Looks clean to me. Why the hell would someone put their kid into Peewee football and get freaked because their kid got clocked on a play?

I LOVE football, but I'm torn about Peewee leagues, because I can understand the love of the game, but I also take into account the damage that the sport can cause. However, two 90 +/- lb. kids running into each other doesn't equal two men at 250+ colliding.

Now because of the parents not being to act like adults two teams have no chance of making the playoffs regardless of whether they are good enough for the honor.

I hope the "adults" can at least tell their kids they should go through the season and win as many games as they can and IF they should have made the playoffs with their record, the parents were responsible for screwing up.

Is It Still 2009?

Where the hell did I go?

I said I'd be gone for a few days ...18 days ago.

Had a great time in Phoenix. My friend is not a political junkie like me, so we didn't discuss much politics, and the few things I brought up, we agreed on, which made for short conversations on those subjects.

ME: "Congress is screwing this country royal!"

Friend: "Yep."

ME: "Yep. Need another beer?"

When I got home, I still had five days off and I was in a good mood, so I avoided the news and just skimmed blogs for the next week.

Back to work was night shift...long, boring and cold, then 4 days off and the depression of being alone for Thanksgiving set in. My Mom and brother in Oregon, the wife in Montana and my boy in Korea. There was something good to lift my spirit, my neighbor made me a nice pumpkin pie, which I scarfed in one sitting. (Thank you Alexa!!)

Chris did actually call me on Thanksgiving, the first time I've heard his voice since he left, but I was paranoid of how much it cost him to call, so I kind of cut him short. He wants to come home for a friends wedding in May, and even though I'll probably only get to see him a few hours, I want him to have the cash to make the trip.

I'm getting no joy from football (again) this year. My Raiders...suck, ASU...sucks, any team I decided to root for, just to pick a side, they choose that game to play their worst.

This imbecility out of (surprise) Joy Behar,s mouth got me wound up:



While Whoopi was funny, I couldn't believe that none of them (at least in this clip, and NO! I don't watch The View) really didn't understand that this weekend, the "start" of the Christmas shopping insanity, is the point where stores start to make their profit...going from Red ink (loss) to black ink (profit).

The fact that Behar didn't know what it meant and "ASSUMED" it had some deep racial connotation to it just shows this woman knows nothing about bookkeeping or economics.

Damn near 11 months of running a store and you only make profit on that last month of the year. Working around the Christmas holiday and having to open up your business at 4AM to draw in that extra sale to make the rest of the year worth while.

I just wish the damn liberals could grasp the fact that "Black" can mean something other than a racial pejorative. Most of the time "black" is just a color.

Football Sunday

I'm a Raiders fan.

I was thrilled that my team was going to be on TV today...until the game started. Down 31-7 at halftime, that was the end of my hopes for anything close to a descent season, and I guess CBS agreed as they switched to a different game.

It's going to be another loooong season.

The other thing with football that bothered me today was regarding the news that Rush Limbaugh was interested in partnering in ownership of the Rams. The Players Union voted that they were against his owning a team.


Some NFL players wouldn't work for Rush's Rams

Word that Rush Limbaugh is interested in buying the St. Louis Rams has some African American football players swearing off any future employment with the team.

New York Giants defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka and New York Jets linebacker Bart Scott say they would never play for the Rams if Limbaugh owned the team.

Kiwanuka told the New York Daily News, "I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play." Scott said, "He could offer me whatever he wanted, I wouldn't play for him. . . . I wouldn't play for Rush Limbaugh. My principles are greater and I can't be bought." Just what the hapless Rams need: Quality players who refuse to play for them.

Yeah....Right.



Truth to Power Mr. Smith.

Will They, or Won't They?

(will be updated if I wake up enough)
There are only four games being played this afternoon (1 PM PST). Now I would think that the Denver-Raiders game would be shown here on the left coast, but TV guide just says TBA.

I'm on graveyard, so I have to set my alarm to wake me up IN THE MIDDLE OF MY NIGHT to see if the game is on.

Road Trip Report

I know you’ve all been dying to hear the details of my trip. Overall it was good, there were some bumpy moments, but overall I’d give it a 7 out of 10.

The Flight Up

Chris’ girlfriend got us to the airport in plenty of time. The only thing that pissed me off was that security made me throw out new bottles of shampoo, conditioner and my aerosol deodorant (nothing over 3.6 oz.). The flight was only half full, left only 15 minutes late, but arrived on time.

Our arrival was another of those little bumps. There were no signs in the terminal saying drop offs this level pick up that level, so we went out the front doors on the top and waited for my brother, who was circling the lower level. My brother doesn’t have a cell phone, so it was just luck that after about 40 minutes he decided to check the top.

Wonderful Beaverton

Good news here, my Mom was home, so even though she’s pretty much bedridden now, still sharp as a tack, just no energy, so we got to visit without the hassles of visiting hours and travel to and from the hospital. It kept the stay up there relaxed.

Grandma and Unca Doug got to see Chris for the first time in over 8 years (10 to 19 is a huge chunk to miss). They were impressed with how well he’s turning out and amazed that I had managed to teach him so well in the ways of the Dark Side knowing what a lib his Mother is.

Being a major reason for the trip was to get Grandma’s car for Chris, he was constantly chomping at the bit to go somewhere, anywhere so he could drive his new toy. It’s a ’99 Buick Century Limited, blue-gray, with only 27K on the dial. Leather seats and electric everything. Damn, my kids got a better car than I do.

Drive Home (Pt. I)
Beaverton Or. To Oakland Ca.

Out of bed at 5:30 AM and on the road by 7:45 AM, real close to the schedule I had in my head. I drove the first hour, then I gave up control to the boy. I’ve been the primary driver for so long now that I was amazed at how nice it can be to just sit and watch the scenery flow by and it is beautiful country up there.

It was smooth sailing till we got past Medford and the highway turned inland and started into the mountains and we hit rain. Not a hard rain just a constant drizzle that no matter what speed you set the wipers at, it was to fast or to slow.

Coming down out the mountains past Mt. Shasta, I was doing a crossword and started hearing Bott’s dots on the passenger side and the emergency corrugation strip on the driver’s side. Without looking up I just told Chris “Let’s try to stay between the lines for a bit.” He said he was getting tired (5 ½ hours behind the wheel) and there was rest stop a mile ahead and he wanted to change anyway. When we stopped and I got out of the car, I got blasted by about 50 MPH winds,. He had kept it steady enough that I hadn’t noticed, so I felt like an ass. I drove the next 5 hours to the Bay Area, mostly straight highway with no view due the clouds.

Bay Area

This will be my last trip there!!! Traffic sucks! We got into the area just after dark, it was foggy and really raining. We could see the freeway well enough, but nothing beyond it so I lost all sense of direction.

After a “brief” meandering tour of the hills of Berkley (I have no idea how we got there), we finally found Oakland. I should mention that I was so disoriented, that I actually stopped and asked for directions at one point, which at least got us headed in the right direction.

Due to a bunch of circumstances, I hadn’t reserved a motel. I paid dearly for this. There really isn’t a hell of a lot of motels in the area, and they’re spread all over the place. We hit six that were booked up, one that had one room at $109.00/night (HA!). We were getting farther and farther away from the stadium and I was just hanging onto my sanity due to fatigue and the stress.

I was really starting to wonder how comfortable the seats in the car were for sleeping when we spotted a Motel 6. Three rooms left and $114 for two nights. SOLD!!!

The place was crazy with Raider fans, but maybe because it was raining, it was quiet and we got a good nights rest.

Game Day

Woke up to the sun shining, something good to offset the karma from yesterday.

We arrived with plenty of time to spare, turns out the motel was only about 15 miles down the freeway , but good thing I have a mania about leaving time to deal with the unexpected, cause it came in handy. There is little signage directing you anywhere around the stadium and half of what they have is cryptic to the point of making no sense. There were plenty of cops around, but rather than direct traffic, they just sit on the pretty Harley Davidson motorcycles in groups of four and look cool while chaos flows around them.

We ended up in an “Overflow” parking lot (mud flat) about ½ mile from the stadium. It wasn’t a bad walk and once inside the parking for the stadium, we had time to cruise around a check out the tailgaters. Man, there were some parties going on. We entered on the wrong side (of course) and proceeded to the top of the arena to be told “You’re on the other side, go down two levels and around.”

The seats weren’t bad, tween the 20 and 30 , sun behind us and nice people in our section, even if some were Bears fans. I was a little disappointed, all these years, I’ve heard the stories of the “mean, nasty Oakland fans.” There was only one fight during the game. I’ve seen more violence at a Dodger game. It may be that a lot of the fight has gone out of both Raider and Bears fans (My sucky team doesn’t suck as much as your sucky team).

It was an action packed thriller with the score 3-3 into the 4th . As one Bears fan put it “two of the most inept offenses to ever bump heads on a football field.” With 4:04 remaining we kicked a 52 yard field goal to jump ahead. Followed by the Bears throwing 59 yards for a TD, followed by McCown getting sacked and fumbling on our own three, which the Bears ran in for another TD. Final 17-6.

Back to Oakland Base

We could have if we had really wanted, driven home right after the game, but I’m getting older and the idea of a long drive on top of a busy day just isn’t that easy anymore. We went back to the motel and watched the Sunday nite game where the Chargers, up 23-0 into the second quarter, did everything possible to lose to the Colts. The Chargers only won because the Colts missed a 29 yard FG in the closing minute. Final 23-21.

Drive Home (Pt. II)
Oakland to L.A.

Slept in a bit, didn’t want to rush out into “rush hour” traffic, so we left about 10:00 Am for the 6 hour sprint home. Traffic was moderately light, so traveling down I-5 was just a long boring cruise. Chris drove the whole way. (Gotta show the new toy to his girlfriend). Home around 4:30.

It’s nice to be home, and it was good to see my Mom again. I’m still a little travel weary, but I don’t go back to work until Saturday afternoon, so I think I’ll just take it easy.

A Hiatus From My Hiatus

Well no, I'm going to be posting, not even sporadically for the the next week. I'm going to be out of town. My son and I are flying up to Portland. This was a planned trip, but the timing is extra lucky.

The original plan was to get Grandma's car for my son and drive it home. Just a road trip for us guys. Now my Mom isn't doing well and is incarcerated in the hospital again, so it's probably a last chance for my son to see his Grandma.

Even though I'm beyond broke right now, the plane was cheap (using credit card miles) and the Raider's game we're going to on the way back home was paid for months ago. This will be his first Pro football game, as the Raiders left L.A. the year he was born. It's our Raiders (2-6) v. Da Bears (3-5), so it has a chance of being a good game. Of course with the tickets I could afford we're in another time zone from the field, but we are on the home team side and usually those are some of the most entertaining fans to be with. We're planing on wearing a lot of Silver and Black.

To fund this little adventure we loaded up the F-150 with aluminum cans that I'd kept stashed in a back section of my garage. It was like a vault that I'd draw on to have extra cash for Vegas and such. The lady at the recycling center seemed to take a liking to me and due to the amount of cans we brought in bumped the price from the base of $1.15/lb., up to $1.75/lb., then decided that I was so damn nice and incredibly handsome (HA!), she raised it up to $1.80/lb. With two trips there, I got just under $500, and there's still some left in the vault.

We'll probably drive Portland to Oakland on Saturday, 11 hours, but two drivers and being my kid just got his license about a month ago, will be hard to get him out from behind the wheel. It'll mean we can't do the Eureka/Fortuna stopover that I wanted so he could see my Dad's family's home base, but it will allow more time in Portland with my Mom and brother.

I'll be back Monday and still won't have work until Saturday. I'm using all my vacation time being vacations are forbidden between Thanksgiving and New Years, except for the guy we just rehired who already had a British Isles Christmas vacation set up, so I could be looking at some good overtime before the end of the year.

I'll have no internet access until I'm back in L.A., so if you drop by BisW, post a couple of snarky comments on the Rott for me til then.

Why College Football Is Fun

I needed this. From my last few posts, I'm sure you know I'm in a major funk and in need of something to brighten my mood. I ran into this over at Hot Air via Allahpundit.

Excuse me while I go back and count how many laterals there were.