Olympic Fever, Part Deux

I mentioned a while back how much I love the Olympics, and that it's the Winter Games that really get me. I'm all wrapped up again, glued to the TV most nights watching things I'd never otherwise watch (short track skating? sure! curling? you bet!), and in my old-man, not-uncool-to-say-this-anymore state I'll even admit to watching and enjoying figure skating.

Really looking forward to the US-Canada hockey game tomorrow. As many have written, the Olympic hockey tournament is the best hockey tournament in the world. Olympic hockey rules allow for a more free-flowing, artistic game and the national pride (especially in this case for the home team) increases the passion and desire to win to a whole new level. I remember the "Miracle on Ice" fairly well, but didn't really appreciate the game at the time. The greatest hockey game I can remember watching was the gold medal game between Canada and Sweden in Lillehammer in 1994 that ended in a shootout. The shootout itself was of course exciting, but I remember the whole game as being just awesome. Hopefully tomorrow's game won't disappoint; perhaps it'll be a taste of a possible gold medal game a week away.

Snowmaggedon

UPDATE: Apparently the videos weren't playing last week. Try them again- seems to be working now.


Thought you might like to see some footage from the first half of Snowmaggedon- the first one is midday Saturday at the peak of the snow, and the second is the aftermath. That's Googs and Scully with Brendan in the driveway. Owen is off in the distance towards the end of the shot.

A FinkBowl for the ages

Every year at FinkBowl, the same stories of memorable events from previous years are told and retold- The Finkless Finkbowl, The Leaking Ceiling, The Pirate Ship Cake, The $120 4-3 pot. This year most of those stories stayed locked away in the story box (wait- that's right, there are no locks on Story Box) as we lived what will one day become the greatest of all FinkBowl stories- The Snowmageddon Finkbowl.

It was clear by Friday morning that the DC contingent would not make it here before midday Sunday unless they raced the storm out of town. Thanks to an early dismissal from the federal government, Googs, Rachel, Lady V (aka The Tiny Cuteness) and Scully arrived here in the 302 just as the first flakes were falling. Ciaran and Atti had arrived earlier in the day to help us get ready for whatever was coming. We hunkered down as the storm ruined the travel plans of all of our other Saturday Taco Night scheduled attendees (though the Min-Salvs of NY were hell bent on coming, snow be damned, until common sense prevailed). Texts and calls from LA updated us on the latest flight Judge had gotten on to, only to be cancelled soon thereafter. By late Saturday night, the unplowed streets of our development suggested that the 6 adults and 4 kids currently in the house would be splitting a double batch of gumbo 10 ways the next day.

Then, things started to turn. Plows came through around 11pm to clear the neighborhood. Locals called in on Sunday to confirm that the big show was still going on. Puddin' rolled up in his Zipcar Sunday afternoon, and soon thereafter the biggest surprise- in the front door walked Judge, keeping his 14 year streak alive by catching the 5th flight he was scheduled to be on. Final tally was about 35 non-Finks who braved the weather and road conditions to be here for our little gathering.

A great game was the icing on the cake for one of the most epic FinkBowls in history. Not looking to duplicate this mess next year, especially since it kept away many of our usual attendees. But it certainly made things unique, and offered yet another perspective on the power of friendship.

Bartlett's got nothing on this girl

I never wanted this blog to be purely a listing of all the great and funny things the Fink kids do day in and day out (thus turning it into "The Family Circus" without the cartoons), but I think I forget sometimes that part of my mission here is to do at least a little bit of that. Molly's got more quotes and quotables on a regular basis than the rest of us combined, and I really should do a regular feature on them. We keep a book with some of the best of all the kids' quotes and favorite sayings, perhaps I'll go back and dig up a few someday to post here.

She let out a great one tonight- we were watching "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian", and Ben Stiller's character was talking to the female lead, a historical museum figure come to life. I asked Molly, "Hey Molls, who's that lady?", knowing that she had just gotten a McDonald's Happy Meal toy of this character and her famous plane within the past week. She looked unsure at first, then remembered and said "Oh yeah! It's Amelia Airforce!"

Little Red Light

Had a fun experience the other night. I was asked by the local hospital system to appear in a commercial they recorded to advertise their cancer program. The spot featured another doc and myself reading a short script about the program while standing in front of some "high-tech equipment" (actually a cardiac catheterization table, which has nothing to do with the cancer program but looked nice and scientific on camera).

We worked off of a teleprompter, which was pretty neat, and got to see the finished product on the monitor when we were done. There was really no director per se, so no one could help me explore what my character's motivation was. I was reading a script about cancer, which I felt needed to be played with a serious undertone, yet I wanted to warm up the cold surroundings of the sterile-looking cath lab with an expression that said "I care. Really, I do." Unfortunately, the internal conflict about my direction, coupled with my steadfast efforts to keep from slouching, led to an on-camera effort the likes of which television hasn't seen since Cindy Brady was on a quiz show.

Rumor has it that I may be receiving an electronic copy of said commercial; if so, I'll do my best to post it here. It'll scare the cancer right out of you.

New Look!

Still haven't gone that extra yard and learned to write the code necessary to truly customize this blog. But I have found a new template that I like, and I think you'll agree makes the posts much easier to read.

You'll also notice I returned the Twitter updates to the sidebar, but to a different Twitter account- the @finkbowl one I created for the countdown. Now even those not among the Twitterati can embrace the excitement of FinkBowl advent!

And, I deleted the "finkipedia-endorsed blogs" list. I've still got nuthin' but love for all y'all, but most of them, like my own "finkathon" blog, weren't active anymore. (Life (and blogging) still goes on at The Funny Farm, so if you'd still like to stop there and visit sometimes, be sure to bookmark it.)

Thanks for reading- hope your eyes don't suffer as much with the new layout as with the old. Would love to hear (or read) what you think.

FinkBowl ftw!

In an effort to save trees (not to mention a few shekels in postage), we opted to go the e-Vite route for the annual FinkBowl invitations. After creating them I figured, why stop there?

So this year, it's FinkBowl all over the interwebs- on Twitter @finkbowl, on its own Facebook page, and of course here at the iHome of all things fink. I gave brief thought to giving FinkBowl its own blog, but since I have a hard enough time keeping this one going, I thought it would be doomed from the start.

Follow along somewhere online as we get ready for the best FinkBowl ever! (Unless it rains, and 25 kids are hoarded into my basement. That of course would be the ultimate fail.)

Leftover Bowl

Some things I've learned (or beliefs that were re-affirmed) by watching too many bowl games over the past 3 weeks:

• While a college football playoff would be nice, the bowl system should remain. No matter whether it was the official national championship game or just the Konica Minolta Gator Bowl, most of these kids seemed to embrace each game as their own championship.
• Those biceps arm bands make most of the guys wearing them look like they're in some sort of Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka fanclub
• Marching bands both look and sound better from a blimp
• Penalties for "excessive celebration" are ridiculous. 'Bama was penalized 15 yards last night basically because the lineman who ran back the turnover for a TD at the end of the first half tossed the ball after he crossed the goal line. Taunting, I can see penalizing. Celebrating, now that's just having fun. If the other team's feelings are hurt- tough. Tell them to score more points.
• The Rose Bowl parade is amazing to watch, but wouldn't the countless thousands of hours that people put into gluing crushed walnut shells and pansy petals onto a 65-foot wingspan eagle be better used in some kind of national service?
• Since neither Army or Navy are likely to contend for the national title anymore, the Army-Navy game should be moved to Bowl Week
• College teams run way more trick plays, fakes, and onsides kicks than the pros, which makes the games fun to watch even if the quality of football is less
• Bowl games, except maybe the national championship game, should all be the week leading up to and including New Years Day.
  

Now starts the real fun though- NFL playoffs, and then the biggest bowl of them all- Finkbowl!

Dream weaver

Had a classic dream the other night. For some reason, it was determined that I had to repeat the fourth grade, despite the fact that I was now an adult. I was reluctant to do so, so I showed up late the first day. The other kids in my school had already assembled outside and were on their way into the building when I reached the school. Knowing I was late, I started run-walking through the halls, but was nabbed by Sister Laverne (the principal of the boys' school), who said "John, I know you're late, but that's no reason to run in the halls.

Found my classroom and class, who were already all seated at their desks. The teacher (happened to be Owen's teacher this year) said something like, "I know you're supposed to be with us, but if you're OK with not being here, I don't think you need to be here". I gladly left, wandered through the halls, passing by a room set up for a retirement luncheon for "Sister Joseph James" (no idea who that's supposed to be, but I remember thinking in my dream that it's always been weird to me that some nuns take male names when they take their vows). I met Sister Laverne in the lobby again on my way out, and told her I was leaving. She was OK with it, but pointed to a 10 year old now standing next to me and said "Since you're leaving, can you please take Anthony home too? He lives around the corner from you". So I did.

That's about all I remember. I relayed this story to Erin when we woke up, thinking that it was one of the more classic dreams I've ever had. She replied, "I had a dream las night that I got hit in the neck with a B-2 bomber". Always has to do me one better.

The Aftermath

A whirlwind of a few weeks around here. Erin had her foot surgery two weeks ago, and since then we've had: 1) Molly's Christmas pageant, 2) 2 feet of snow, 3) Christmas, and 4) a post-Christmas weekend in NJ with my folks and sister's family. Throw in a busy office schedule, and it's been a little busy for me, to say the least.

Nevertheless, it's been great. Erin's foot surgery went well, and she's been a model patient so far. Two feet of snow was a pain to clear from the driveway but made for some great sledding on the dirt mound across the street.

Christmas, as usual, came and went too fast. I did get a Flip video camera from Erin and the kids, which hopefully will mean some short clips here on the blog sometime soon.

Visions of Sugarplums

Owen, some night last week. The anticipation is killing him...

Let it snow

Had our first taste of the white stuff around here this weekend. It's all gone already, but the inch or so that fell yesterday was enough for the kids to get all decked out in full snow regalia and spend an hour or so attempting to sled and make snowballs. Fun to look at from inside while seated fireside watching some great football.

Quote of the day

Brendan: "Can we watch a movie in the car?"

Erin: "No, we don't need to watch a movie. Let's just talk."

Brendan: "That's so 1990's."

I'm sure Ringo Starr never had this problem

I have a love-hate relationship with Silly Putty. It fascinates me from a science/chemistry standpoint and is a great stress-reliever at times. I even have a Silly Putty egg in my top desk drawer at work, and often will stretch and pull the stuff while I'm on the phone. But the kids know that one of my biggest pet peeves is finding empty Silly Putty containers around the house, because an empty Silly Putty container means that somewhere else in the house there's Silly Putty stuck to something. (I hold the same disdain for magic marker caps for much the same reasoning.)

Molly's been playing around with Silly Putty lately, and fortunately gets it back into its ovoid home most of the time. Unfortunately last night, she was thwarted in her attempts to put away the Silly Putty properly as it had become adherent to the surface she had smoothed it out on- the rubber-coated drum head of the Guitar Hero drum controller. To her credit, she came to report the situation right away, but in a somewhat comical exchange, was pointing to the family room because she couldn't get the words out to explain what had happened. (This condition, which I refer to as "Fonzi's palsy"- named so because of Arthur Fonzarelli's inability to say the words "I'm sorry"- is quite common in the preschool population.)

It was clear immediately that the Silly Putty was not going to be removed easily. Cooling it with an ice pack for 20 minutes or so made it a little less pliable, but still didn't get it to chip off as I hoped it might. So I sat down, and for the next 60 minutes or so, slowly scraped away pieces of Silly Putty with a razor blade until only a stain remained.

Molly was happy to see that she hadn't caused any permanent damage, and didn't bat an eye when I told her I was throwing the Silly Putty away. Hopefully any further attempts at Silly Putty play will involve just the Sunday Comics.

Housekeeping issues

I realize my pace of one post every few weeks has dropped readership to an all-time low, but after finally getting some spam-type comments, I'm having to beef up security around here just a little. You'll notice now that if you do choose to comment on a post, you'll have to enter a security word first before your comment can be posted. As for now, the comments aren't being moderated, so play nice.

Hopefully you'll see some more posts coming up in the next few weeks. I'm hoping to get back to about a twice weekly schedule by late December so as to keep the traffic from the post-Christmas letter bounce. But you're here now, which makes you special. You were always my favorite anyway.

The Punt of Red October

Now that Satan's Series has begun, I should have plenty of time to catch up with the ol' blog here. Take a minute or two to read the great post that I linked to above- it's from one of the best Mets blogs out there, and puts into words just how most of us who bleed blue and orange are feeling right now.

There is no way I can root for either team in this series. The lesser of the evils may be the Yankees, but only because of the fact that I now live in the Den of Iniquity (otherwise known as the greater Philadelphia area). Yankee fans may be annoying and self-righteous, but Phillies fans are downright insufferable. God forbid the Phils win this year and become back-to-back champions- the city will demand that Congress return to Philadelphia after over 200 years and proclaim it the capital of the United States of Philmerica.

But there's no way I can root for the Yankees either, not with their $200M payroll and their Bronx attitude and their claims of ownership to October, as if they were some baseball team emeritus who get to come back and play in the World Series whenever they damn well please. Not to mention the grief I'd get from Yankee fans for rooting for their team, proving in some way that my team wasn't worth rooting for in the first place.

No, there is no team to root for. I'll root against both teams, pray for rain every night, pray for more horrible umpiring that will surely make the loud, annoying fans of each team more loud and annoying, pray for snowstorms and bug swarms and all the plagues that have corrupted World Series past. And I'll pray for February 15 to come soon, so pitchers and catchers can report to spring training and redemption can begin.

Off to the races

The big weekend has finally arrived- heading out in the morning to Chicago for the marathon. Weather doesn't look stellar, but it seems like they've taken the rain out of the forecast so it'll only be the cold to deal with. Amazing to think that last year's race was run at 85 degrees, and this year will struggle to break the 50 degree mark.

Wish us luck- I think we're ready. If not, we'll be the youngest people riding those annoying motor carts in the airport on our trip home Monday.

Wicked good weekend in Bah Hahbah

Had a blast this past weekend in Bar Harbor, ME celebrating the nuptials of Nappi and his new bride Christine. Nappi, as you may know, was the best man at our wedding, and has been saving himself for all these years for the perfect woman. By all accounts he has succeeded, finding someone who matches him in wit and charm (though is certainly better looking).

The weekend was fantastic- great times with old friends, beautiful fall weather and enough wine and spirits to bring out the breakdancers in a bunch of old farts like us.

Mazel tov, dear friend, and thanks for a great party.

Cakes + Snarks = Fun!

Got a new favorite blog- Cake Wrecks. Don't remember how I came across it, but it's one of my daily stops on the interwebs now. Photos of unintentionally hilarious cakes, all done by so-called professionals (many of which seem to be from supermarket bakeries), and hilarious comments from the blog's author, one Jen Yates.

Definitely worth trolling the archives for some of the classics, like the Olympic Rings cake, the Fireman cake, and the iconic Naked Mohawk-Baby Carrot Jockeys cake.

Are you ready for some football ?

Despite the fact that it's far from what Big Jack (aka Gov. Markell) wanted, today marked the renaissance of sports betting in Delaware. As you may have heard/read, Delaware was ready to go full hog into sports betting this fall, but thanks to heavy lobbying from the big leagues (namely the NFL), the state was limited to offering only sports betting at the level it was offered over 30 years ago. This means (at least for now) the state can only offer parlay bets- combo bets with the point spread on 3 or more games. They're also offering modified spreads which offer bigger spreads for lower payoffs.

Stopped in at Dover Downs this afternoon and got my two $5 parlay tickets- one for a 3-team traditional parlay against the spread, and another one for a 3-team "teaser" parlay, which essentially expands the spread by 6 points per team. If both tickets hit, it'll pay off about $46. If they don't, the investment will hopefully keep the dream of sports betting in the First State alive and the ticket stubs will be a nice memento of the day it all started.