The year is 2/3 over...

There's just 4 months remaining to fulfill those New Year's resolutions!

Recent Happenings

Work finally relented and stopped kicking my ass. It was brutal for a while there. Getting your ass kicked when you have a broken pelvis is especially unpleasant. Sandy is home sick with the flu. It hasn't really been pretty for her. I'm doing what I can there.

It's not a whole lot of fun these days, not being able to work out and everything. I feel like I'm up about 15 lbs. Honestly, I'm scared to check. My daily routine has consisted of sitting in the office all day long and then playing online poker for 2-4 hours/night. I'm taking a night off tonight because I am just playing too much. I'm tired and focusing is becoming difficult with the fatigue. This clearly is the antithesis of marathon training. Still, it's not like I can really do anything about it. It's sort of sad when this level of activity is actually what I'm supposed to be doing.

I just bought some Friedman, Billings, Ramsay stock today. Ticker symbol is FBR. If you are looking for a stock tip, there you go. Buy some Altria (formerly Phillip Morris) too for God's sake. Just trust me.

Weekend Update

Well, before I get into the weekend, I wanted to update everyone on my injury. Basically, I have a pelvic fracture. My marathon training has been dead for 3 weeks and I'm officially on Injured Reserve from doing pretty much anything. Thankfully, my ability to play online poker hasn't been inhibited. Outside of that, I feel like I'm sitting around gaining weight. I'm out probably another 3-8 weeks.

Anyway, the weekend was a good one. I got brunch at Stanley's on Saturday. I'd never been for brunch, but they do a pretty good job. The mac and cheese is available, so you can never go wrong there. Saturday night, we ended up at Souk on Milwaukee. They have a belly dancer, a band singing your favorite hits in arabic, and hookahs filled with apple flavored tobacco. The food was great and we were *earmuffs kids* hitting the hookah. At the end of it all, I sort of felt like I had gone to some sort of Middle Eastern wedding reception. I would love to talk about some of the things I saw taking place on the dance floor. My words would fall well short of painting an adequate picture. I do recommend the place though, it is an experience.

Sunday, I managed to sleep in again and do a little unsuccessful shopping. Then, I cooked up a pasta dinner for Sandy and I before settling in for The 4400. All in all, a solid weekend. The Bears even won!

Congratulations to Daniel

Daniel Negreanu is getting married today at the Wynn. Daniel is one of my personal favorite poker players. In fact, I would say he is my favorite. It's been an off year for the man in 2005. Let's hope his marriage is more Tiger Woods than Pete Sampras, for the sake of his poker.

Incidentally, Leheney is in Vegas right now. I just called him and he answered at 8 am Vegas time! At least he was in bed, not at the Barbary Coast having Steak, Eggs, and a Heineken for $3.95. I encouraged him to crash the wedding, of course. Hopefully, he'll at least head over to the Wynn and spot some poker pros in their monkey suits.

If you like Entourage....

I love that this site exists. Check out the song in the downloads section. That's fan devotion.

Go Limestone!

Those of you that know me well, or visit this site frequently, probably know that I spent my adolescent years in Bourbonnais. Yes, the Bourbonnais where the Bears have training camp. That's my 'hood. Anyway, when I was in college, my parents moved from Bourbonnais to Limestone. Limestone is a smaller town outside of Kankakee and next to Herscher. My little brother has been in the Limestone schools since he started his educational endeavours. My brother played minor league ball this year, one age group below little league.

Well, the Limestone Little League team is on the verge of something historic for the area. Tomorrow night, they'll be playing to go to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. The game will be on ESPN tomorrow (Saturday) night. I believe it's at 6 pm. Check it out if you can and cheer for my 'hood. There's a kid on the team that's 5'11" - 180 lbs. at 13. That's just slightly bigger than me! It's unreal. Grown adults are saying, "he just crushes home runs". Other things I've heard are things like "he hits 300 footers". My stepfather coached with some of the coaches in the past and my brother even donated $20 of his own money to the team for their travel expenses. He'll be there tomorrow to cheer them on!

Some more information on the regional is available here.

One More Thing....

Does that G Love Coke commercial piss off anyone else? I love G Love. I'm all for him getting paid, even if it has to come to pitching some product. I just hate this commercial though. It's like someone did a poor job of stealing G Love's style to sell Coke. The fact that the someone in this case is G Love just pisses me off. Alright, that's off my chest now.

The Good and the Bad

First the good. My poker streak has turned around nicely. I'm on a good little upswing on Party recently. I'm trying to play more and I'm in a groove at the moment. Let's hope that continues. Unfortunately, I've had more time for this due mostly to the bad news.

The bad news is related to my hip. Last week, I played tennis on Tuesday and ran that night. Since then, I've been in pain on my left side. I'm not sure what the story is, but it isn't good and my marathon training is pretty much shot at the moment. I was at the doctor yesterday and I'm hitting the orthopedic guy on Friday. Until then, I can't work out at all. Not that I could anyway, because my hip pain is such that I'm considering amputation as a reasonable strategy to relieve it.

I'm just about done uploading my vacation pictures. Finally. Look for those soon.

Have a great rest of the week.

The NCAA Ban on Indians

The NCAA banned Indian mascots from performing at postseason events. Read about it here. Fortunately for my Illini, we don't bring the chief to the men's tennis championship. We should be okay for a few years.

Are Indians really the worst of it? There are a lot of "devils" out there. Aren't those bad? What about natural disasters like Hurricanes. Do we really want to be glorifying those? Kids could get the wrong idea. How about stupid mascots. Can we ban things like the "Zags". Seriously, Gonzaga had to come up with a mascot and the best they could do was the "Zags"? I guess Gonzaga isn't exactly Yale. Speaking of the Ivy league, what about colors? For example, the Harvard Crimson. I'm sure that has gang conotations somewhere. We better get rid of that too while we're at it.

As a recap, here's my list of mascots that should be banned in my mind, if we're banning Indians:

1. Anyone with the word "devil" in their mascot.
2. Anyone named after a natural disaster.
3. Anyone that uses just a color.
4. Anyone with a stupid mascot that doesn't make any sense.

By the way, why is it not okay to have the Fighting Illini, but it is okay to have the Fighting Irish? The Irish are cool with it but the Illini aren't? Hmmm......

Vacation Recap - Day 7 – Thursday July 7

Day 7 started off with some serious driving. It was about 500 miles from Hartford to Toronto. We got started reasonably early which was a good thing. I was a little bit tired, but not as tired as Sandy. She probably got 3 solid hours of car sleep on the way up there. We rolled into town early, due to my driving at insane speeds. We stumbled across our hotel pretty quickly which was a Sheraton on what is basically the Lake Shore Drive of Toronto. It was in a fairly good spot, away from the city. The surroundings were sort of nice though. We checked in and got settled.

After checking in, we were pretty much out of there. We rolled into downtown and found the SkyDome, now called the Rogers Center after a little bit of cruising around in traffic. I needed to hit the ATM. We tried a couple and it was no dice. I never had a problem with any ATM in Canada before, so this was perplexing. After a call to Bank One, we got it straightened out and found an ATM on the proper network.

After scooping up some Canadian cash, it was time to hit the game. The Blue Jays were playing Oakland with Rich Harden throwing. It was shaping up to be a good game. We ended up scalping tickets and not because they were sold out. In Toronto, the scalpers sell tickets at below face. We paid $20 each for two $23 tickets. We ended up sitting in the 2nd row of the outfield right in the left-center power alley. The place was mostly empty, especially in the upper deck. We could have relocated to anywhere but our seats were rock solid.

The first silly thing that happened was the Blue Jays dance team coming out and performing in center field before the game. I’ve never seen such a thing at a baseball game before. It felt like a Chicago Rush football game or something. We ended up getting some reasonable hot dogs. The nachos they have there are these prepackaged, plastic-wrapped, nacho kits with the chips and cheese inside. Let’s just say that didn’t look appetizing. I wanted to get a beer, but my only options were Budweiser or Bud Light. It’s no wonder no one is going to the games in Toronto! You can’t even get a Canadian beer! I wanted a Molson in the worst way. I never really recovered from this absurdity the whole game.

The game was a tight one. The crowd where we were sitting was surprisingly spirited. They were really getting after Eric Byrnes, who was playing left for the A’s that day. He ended up driving in two A’s runs in about the 4th inning. In the bottom half of the same inning though, he let a ball fall into the outfield with 2 outs. He should have made the play. Amazingly, they didn’t give him an error. Anyway, this left runners on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs for Vernon Wells. Vernon is by far the best Blue Jay player. Needless to say, Vernon took the ball out of the yard to put the Blue Jays ahead 3-2, a lead they didn’t relinquish. In the 5th, the fans reminded Byrnes of his error with frequent, loud chants of “it’s all your fault”. The following inning brought even more chants of “it’s still your fault”, repeated again and again and again. I was impressed, to say the least. These were real baseball fans!

After the game, we retired for the evening. Of course, we got lost on the way home. That was sort of my fault, and I take full responsibility for it. These things happen though, especially when you just drive off blindly in a strange city.

Another Quick Update

So I've been lazy on posting lately. I admit it. I feel like I'm not getting enough sleep. I'm not eating right. I might be working too much. I'm in a mini poker funk. My hip is absolutely killing me. It's brutal. I'm in danger of being forced to not run. Clearly, I can't afford that at this point in marathon training.

To be honest, I just haven't had too much that's good to talk about, nor the time to talk about it. I apologize to you the reader. I'm still not done talking about my vacation and that was weeks ago!

Anyway, did you catch the Cubs game last night? The Cubs are the only team in the wild card hunt that can lose a game on a passed ball. I promise you that.