best weekend of the year

parked in front of the couch per my usual routine for the first day of the NCAA basketball tourney. like last year, had another shamrock shake courtesy of erin. this year the technology of the finkstead has been upgraded, so all the games are in HD and the wifi will allow for a running update here throughout the day.

i'll keep you posted on how my bracket fares, as well as what brilliant insights the CBS commentators impart.



3pm: purdue/northern iowa- miserable game to watch. purdue is horrible, but NIU is worse. 3 for 3 on the early games- memphis, texas A&M and LSU

3:07pm uconn/chattanooga- what an ankle-breaker move by the chattanooga kid on the opening trip down the floor. if they could possibly get thabeet in foul trouble, this could be interesting

3:36pm back to back to back 3's for uconn, went from 19-15 to 28-15. game over. so much for the mocs

4:34pm still unscathed, thanks to purdue. unc and uconn are locked in, just hoping cal holds on over md to keep me perfect on the day. spaghetti jimmy wins!

6:37pm local and national news break for the games, so it's over to discovery channel for a little "cash cab"- great concept, great show. as for the bracket, i was cursed by spaghetti jimmy- maryland went on a run starting at about 4:35 and blew out cali. finished 6 for 7 in the early games, with mississippi state (my pick for a sweet 16 cinderella) not looking so hot against u-dub in game #8.

8:09pm 'nova/american- best game of the day so far. 41-31 american at the half. 'nova getting no love from the home crowd. oh, and dick enberg has on more makeup than joan rivers did on larry king last night.

9:27pm 'nova finally gets the crowd behind them, finally uses their size and goes inside, and punishes american in the second half. fun game for a while, though. maybe akron will sneak by gonzaga and be the cinderella of the day.

9:59pm ...or not- zags just too much. so much for the underdogs today- 2 #10s over #7s, but wins by maryland and michigan can hardly be considered upsets. binghamton not looking like much of a challenge for the dukies. maybe VCU or western KY will represent for the little guys. won't find out until tomorrow, though, because i think i'm tapped out. DVR is now taping ER and grey's anatomy for erin, relegating me upstairs to watch the rest from bed. means i'll be asleep in half an hour. great day though- looking forward to tomorrow night.

top o' the mornin'

going green here on finkipedia in celebration of the holiday. made our annual irish dinner on sunday and have the leftovers for lunch today, including homemade soda bread. (green beer will have to wait until after hours). mmmm. looking forward to a shamrock shake to cap off my day this evening.

as they say in the homeland, may the road rise to meet you, may the wind be at your back, and may you be in heaven an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

in the meanwhile, enjoy the dulcet tones of shane mcgowan belting out my favorite irish tune.

finkipedia ('07, blog) **1/2 witty comments on ordinary life

not sure who really reads the tv listings in the paper anymore, but i'm glad they're still printed. the increase in channels and the prime real estate of the newspaper page has forced the consolidation of the listings down to usually a 1/2 page. for some reason, the powers that be still find it necessary to include not just the name of the program but as much pertinent information about it as the space will allow. this means that most listings get 3 to 10 word descriptions that are rarely useful but often hilarious. no true gems in today's paper, but some good ones nonetheless (the asterisks represent ratings stars):

• scifi, 8:00pm lake placid 2 ('07) * giant crocodiles
• scifi, 11:00pm eye of the beast ('07) squid eats profits
• nbc, 10:00pm law & order "by perjury" airline plaintiff murdered TV-PG (HD)
  
• tcm, 8:00 pm rocky ('76, drama) sylvester stallone. a boxer trains for a championship fight
• max, 8:00pm meet the parents ('00, comedy) *** a man meets his girlfriend's parents
• starz, 11:00pm the game plan ('07) quarterback dad
• versus, 8:00pm PBR bullriding "birmingham" (taped)
  

downhill lies

spent last weekend skiing in park city, UT with some M'97 classmates. hadn't been skiing in about 9 years, since before we left cali. was a little worried i'd embarrass myself, or worse, break a bone or two in the process. was just like riding a bike, though. after a few warmup runs on the green slopes, i made my way up to mostly intermediate runs for the rest of the weekend. the weather was great, snow was perfect, and the resorts we hit (park city, deer valley, and alta) were spectacular. mix in some great steaks, great sushi, many beers and some poker, and it had all the trappings of the perfect man-cation.


hard to tell from the free sample image, but that's me, looking like quite the ski dork in my great gazoo helmet and trendy scarf.

wonder if they have a shamrock version?

if you've never checked out thisiswhyyourefat.com, go and take a peek. it may gross you out a bit, but it might just make you feel a little less guilty about the cheeseburger you had for lunch when you realize what some of your other options were. this is one of the less revolting images you'll find in the archives there.

it's a pic of the mcnuggetini, a delectable cocktail made from a mcdonald's chocolate shake and vanilla vodka, rimmed with barbecue sauce and garnished with a mcnugget. if i were a cardiologist, i'd refer to this as "business".

the pestilence returns

this time, it's brendan. not GI-oriented this time, which is good, but it looks like the poor guy has the flu. came out of school today with his head hung low, stating "i just don't feel good, mom". not what you expect from a second grader on a friday afternoon.

achy, feverish, sore throat, belly ache- just miserable. hopeful that a) it doesn't last long, and b) it starts and ends with him. full quarantine in effect.

"fifty-seven thousand six hundred minutes..."

the easter season gets no love. easter is a more important holiday on the christian calendar than christmas, yet it gets nowhere near the commercial attention. hard to say whether the holiday drives the lead-in season or vice versa, but either way the weeks leading up to easter have nothing on those before christmas. i can't really say that advent gets any special billing, but the generic "christmas season" certainly gets its fair share. the pre-easter season kicks off with dirty foreheads, winds down with free palm leaves that clutter your house until you get rid of them just before the next year's holiday, and ends up on a total downer of a holiday, so-called "good" friday.

lent needs to go mainstream, get the people talking about it to drive up the word on the street. mel gibson tried, but he just brought everyone down with "the passion" (besides, the merchandising options were awful). we need something with a little life in it. so, as a means of bringing some much-needed attention to the season, i'm going to propose to the u.s. conference of catholic bishops that someone there just adapt a popular broadway show and create "lent- the musical". sure, they'll have to groom over some little things (like the gay sex and the aids and the drugs and all), but the songs are way better than anything from church!

c'mon, isn't lent really a "season of love" after all?

geography bee

being the pedagogic parent that i am, i insisted that if i was going to have a pokemon battle with the boys on saturday afternoon, they would have to play a quiz game with me. i tried to get them to agree to state capitals, but they talked me into just quizzing them on the 50 states. turns out, that itself was an adventure enough.

the game went like this- i'd give them a letter, and they would have to provide me with all the states that started with that letter. first letter i gave them was L. owen's quick response: "lakota?" let it be said that the kid is well read, and he did go to custer's battlefield this summer, but i didn't realize he believed in statehood for native american tribes. with only a little prompting ("think south, near texas"), one of them quickly got louisiana and calmed my fear that this might be more of a lesson in futility for me than of geography for them.

we went on, covering most of the states with fair success on their part and only a few incorrect guesses (most were cities instead of states, as well as the almost expected incorrect guess of "new england"). then came T. right out of the box, both gave texas simultaneously, then paused for a good bit. finally, brendan broke the silence with "talabama?". classic. i believe i gave them tennessee because i couldn't bear the thought of anything worse.

but there was, sort of. i think the last letter we hit on was R. silence again, until owen responded with "richigan?". obviously he was playing off brendan's previous response, but when i gave him a "come on..." look, he replied "what? that's how scooby doo would say it." now the silence was on my end. you just can't argue with logic like that.

leading me here, despite my destination

almost 2 weeks without a post, and now two in 45 minutes. couldn't let this wait, though. i'm adding this to my bucket list- somehow, someway, i want to see this with my own eyes. (i'd post the picture here, but it's a panorama and wouldn't fit.)

speaking of bucket lists, that sounds like a good idea for another day's post...

back off the DL

about 90% recovered from a nasty go-around with the stomach flu earlier this week. owen came home early from school on tuesday with it, and was still feeling the effects into the evening. i was fine all day, had a great dinner, went to bed a little early more for the rest than anything else, then started having that not-so-fresh feeling.

at about 10pm the fun began, with visits to the vomitorium about every 60-90 minutes throughout the night. one trip was a touching father-son moment- owen staggered into our room sometime around midnight, vomited on our carpet, then finished the job in the commode. once i knew he'd run dry, i gently nudged him aside and contributed my share. now there's bonding.

the other 60% of the family has emerged unscathed so far. here's hoping diligent hand washing and personalized water bottles keep it that way.

'roid rage

at the risk of starting a war of words in the comments section between wiley and 2white, i feel obliged to acknowledge the recent developments in the life of one alex rodriguez.

first of all, this news should come as no surprise to anyone who follows baseball. i've yet to see any of those before/after photos of a-rod, like the ones that sports outlets love to put up on bonds and clemens, but it's fair to say that a-rod now is nothing compared to the lanky shortstop that came up with the mariners. in a league where performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) were/are rampant, it's foolish to believe that after signing that almost immoral $250M contract, a-rod would have just turned his head and taken the moral high ground when presented with the temptation to cheat to succeed.

the signing of that contract, along with his antics on and off the field in NY, establish a-rod as a person with extremely low self-esteem. that low self-esteem was no doubt what drove him to feel the pressure to "'roid up", so as to avoid the ridicule that failure would bring after signing for 1/4 billion.

i give him some credit for owing up so fast. sure he's known for 5 years that there's a positive test on him, but if MLB wasn't going to leak it, why would he? his cop-out excuse seems lame, but i'm sure it's true- just make sure you interpret his feeling of "pressure" as more accurately an "immature fear of failure and loss of stature".

MLB is the real loser here. a-rod is the anchor brick in their steroid jenga tower- it all comes down now. there's no reason to believe that the 90's and early 00's were anything but a PED-fueled power trip. MLB must acknowlege that, acknowledge their outward denial, and allow all the records to stand and all the players during that period to be treated as equals. either that, or disavow the whole decade and a half and start anew.

those darn kids and their myface

finally succumbed to the pull of the black hole that is facebook. signed myself up yesterday, and already have found some old friends from high school and earlier whom i haven't heard from (or even about) in years. from what i hear that's the point, right? (that, and posting ridiculous photos from those early years)

still trying to figure out all the ins and outs of the site and figure how it will factor in to my online life. at the very least, maybe it will direct a little more traffic this way.

friend me up, 'cause i may have some dirt on you somewhere just waiting to find its way to cyberspace.

finkbowl recap

another great finkbowl has come and gone. thanks to all those who came from far and near- you are the ones that make the party what it is. some great food helps too, and i must say, this year's feature of BBQ pulled pork was a taste sensation that's sure to return next year.

a few special thank yous:

• to the 2parm clan for making the trip for tacos on saturday
• to the cast of lovemomworklife for sharing your whole weekend with us
  
• to 2white for representing with GH-world tour
  
• to googs and RK-K for being a great uncle and aunt and even greater friends
• to puddin' and "jello" for homemade beer, NY cheesecake, and companionship during the finkbowl 5K
• to CTB for a fantastic cake in a solo effort
  
• to judge, for continuing to fly across the country every year just for the sake of a good party (and for finally losing back some of the money you've taken from us over the years)

hope to see all of you next year at finkbowl XIV, for which i invoke the divine right of party kings and hereby christen "the sun bowl"

things i love: convenience stores

i've probably written in the past about the little things in life that i love, but i'm not sure i made it any kind of formal post. figured i'd start a new somewhat recurring series of posts about some of the esoteric things that bring me joy.

i love convenience stores. much of the appeal is derived from my love of road trips, which are always punctuated with frequent stops at gas stations and thus the convenience stores they often have. i love scratch and win lottery tickets (more on that in another "things i love" post), packaged processed food, and coffee- all staples of the convenience store. i love the classless atmosphere of the convenience store- guys in beamers and suits waiting in line for their coffee behind hardened women buying marlboro lights and mexican day laborers buying iced tea by the half gallon. i love the fact that you can see all these things whether it's three in the afternoon or three in the morning.

next time you stop for gas, see if you can appreciate the inner beauty of the quickie mart. it's america in a 600 square foot fluorescent-lit room (that smells like hot dogs).

they're the people that you meet, when you're walkin' down the street...

a story from the holidays that i never got around to posting...

we (the 5 of us) joined fellow stags stacey and irish and their kids in NYC just after christmas to do the holiday city thing. met at 30 rock, saw the tree, walked up 5th to see the windows and made our way to FAO schwartz. cut across 59th from there to columbus circle to make our way back down broadway, walking along the park side of 59th street. (those unfamiliar with NYC- disregard that paragraph, as it adds absolutely nothing to the story other than the setting.)

we were across from the NYAC when a few black suburbans pulled up to the curb right next to us. a few guys get out to stop the westbound traffic on 59th so that someone from the car could get to the NYAC across the street. stacey and erin stood around watching to see who would get out, while irish and i marched forward with the kids. we walked back to ask what they were doing, and erin replied "watching some middle-age woman waiting to cross the street"- right at about the same time that stacey realized that the woman was hillary clinton. stacey clapped and gave a little cheer, and senator clinton came right over to her and erin and engaged them in conversation.

the guys and kids made it back to them in time to have the kids at least say hello and wish the new secretary of state well. i realize that while she wasn't campaigning she's still a politician, but she was nothing but pleasant, genuine and friendly. let's hope her meetings with heads of state are as enjoyable for her as this was for us.

a new beginning

put aside your political ideology- today is a day to identify yourself only as an american. as with any new endeavor, the only way to succeed is to begin with the belief that we will. if you believe in the merits of intercessory prayer, then take a few minutes today to ask for God's grace on our new president and the country as a whole. if you don't believe in prayer, then at least wish president obama well.

then, republican or democrat, god-fearing or godless, pledge to do your part to correct this mess and get this country headed the right way again.

can't wait until he's in a group of his peers

if you happen to check on the official finkipedia blogs, you might notice that delegate steve's blog now redirects to a new site: steve shannon for attorney general. steve's been in the virginia house of delegates for a while now, and is trying to take his platform of support for the police and victim's rights to the office of the attorney general for the commonwealth.

check out the site and support him with your good wishes and even a few sheckels if you so choose. i'd love to be able to blog about steve meeting his colleagues from other states, if for no other reason than to use use one of my all-time favorite pluralizations.

liberal media? you decide.

as you know if you've been reading along, i voted for barack obama, and truly believe that he can make a difference. but i'll be the first to admit that in a broad sense, the media treated him with kid gloves and gave the mccain/palin ticket a much shorter leash on most issues. this of course won't stop now that the election is over- i'm sure we'll find that issues that arise during this presidency will be presented in an entirely different light than during the last.

case and point: just read that obama's nominee for treasury secretary, timothy geithner, has been found to have made some tax mistakes and had some issues with an immigrant housekeeper. nominees have been railroaded for both these issues in the past, yet the articles from wsj.com and washingtonpost.com both seem already to give geithner the benefit of the doubt. it may very well be true that these were honest mistakes, but both the journal and the post (especially the post in this blog post here) seem ready to sweep this under the rug so as not to disrupt the coronation next week.

only XXVII days to go!

christmas and new year's festivites are over with, which can only mean one thing: time to get started planning finkbowl. creeping up fast- less than 4 weeks away, if you can believe it. preparations include: scouring the cookbooks for fun new recipes, paying for everything in large bills and asking for singles as change, and brainstorming for this year's saturday night contest (think i've got a good one this time).

and here's the official announcement of something i leaked to some of you over the past few months- super sunday this year will include the inaugural finkbowl 5K, to be run on sunday morning at 10AM. there'll be a 1 mi fun run and a full 5K, with prizes to the winners. i'm planning on designing some t-shirts too, hopefully will have them available for purchase at cafepress soon.

may be a bit ambitious for the morning after a finkbowl eve celebration, but i think it will be a fun way to bring a little fitness (not to mention yet another competitive event) to a great gathering. now get out there, get in shape, and show us what you've got.

happy new year

winding down the christmas break. all the decorations are down, house is back to "normal" (whatever that term means), and the christmas music is gone from finkipedia.

should get back to a more normal schedule of posting here over the next week or two. some great stories from the break that, as erin likes to say, are "blog-able". hope to get the time to jot them down here.