DING!!!!!

I'm finally ready to rejoin the rest of the world. But first, I trip to urgent care for my nice ear infection I got over the weekend.

Me and Thrall

Just hanging out in Garadar in Nagrand.

The Hills at night

So...if you know me, you know I have an issue with scary movies. I mean, when I was younger, I was scared to death every time the Thriller video would come on. And then V hit and they ate the Guinea Pigs and I lost it. So we fast forward to today. It's 12:30am. I should be asleep, instead I just finished up grinding to 3/4 of the way through 64 (longest...level....ever). I figured I would unwind with a movie, I scroll through the movie channels and find, the Hills Have Eyes. I knew I should have kept on scrolling.

I watched it....all of it. A buddy of mine gave a review on it and he was pretty spot on about most of it. The dropping of the gun next to the "dead" bad guy was terrible. I actually thought it was the married sister who seemed to be the level headed one was going to be the survivor. The blowing away of the mother, the fire scene, the dude waking up after taking one in the head were all pretty good "holy freaking crap" scenes. The rest of it was pretty predictible. I don't think it was as bad as Mr. Heimlich's...err sorry, Dr. Heimlich (Yea I know you didn't go to years of doctor school to be referred as mister) assessment.

Speaking of which, I don't think I would have been able to sit down and watch this movie (despite my heart beating out of my chest) without the expertise of Kyle/Evan. They sat me down in October a couple years ago and it was " a scary movie a night". This was the first time I've seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, etc.

Freaking Quasimoto

So imagine if you will, the pain you feel when someone punches you really hard in the arm. It stings and then eventually goes away. It makes your arm feel like dead weight in the interim. Now...imagine someone does that to the top of your foot, but it doesn't go away. It just continues to feel like dead weight and you don't want to move it because if you do in the slightest, it will be very very painful. So you have to practically drag your foot behind you for fear of actually bending at a joint and passing out from pain.

That's pretty much what it feels like to have the gout.

Keeper League - Baseball

So I joined a co-workers keeper league. This is the first time I have been in a keeper league, here is my current team. I get to keep 5 of these peeps.

C Kenji Johjima SEA
DH David Ortiz BOS
2B Jeff Kent LA
Aramis Ramirez CHC
Miguel Tejada BAL
Carl Crawford TB
Ken Griffey Jr CIN
Magglio Ordonez DET
Austin Kearns WAS
Adam Laroche ATL
Tom Glavine NYM
Kyle Lohse CIN
John Maine NYM
Joe Saunders ANA
Bobby Jenks CHW
Brad Lidge HOU
Takashi Saito LA
Jason Varitek BOS
Carlos Guillen DET
Randy Johnson ARI
Cliff Lee CLE
Jared Weaver ANA
Dontrelle Willis FLA

These are the ones that I am thinking of keeping for this season -
SP John Maine
SP Dontrelle Willis
RP Brad Lidge
DH David Ortiz (ugh)
LF Carl Crawford

What do you think?

Oh yea...we are hot. Marnie and I on our brand new Blood Elves. Try not to drool on the keyboard too much.

Half way to 61

I knew I should have take tomorrow off....errr...today off

Some New Years Footage

This is what happens when you fall asleep too early. You get pounced on....by rather large men. Ok..DaPengiun isn't really large.

First Loss

Well it had to come sometime or another. I finally lost at the credit card game. This is a new game I have learned while living in California and working with a bunch of gamers. This bunch of gamers is different than the last bunch that I worked with, not necessarily better, just a bigger game.

So the way this game works, is you have a bill after eating. The more people, the bigger the bill. Each person that wants to play needs to pitch in a credit card. A person shuffles up the credit cards and holds them out of sight and someone picks a number. That number in the rotation is safe, so that credit card is given back to the person and he or she isn't paying. For instance, if 3 is picked, the person with the cards counts off from the top of the stack until he hits the third card. You repeat the process until there is only 1 card left and that person picks up the tab.

I'm a gambling man, so this game really appealed to me. Up until yesterday, I had never lost and to be sure, I was getting pretty filthy with my bids. Last week, we had Sushi Taisho. My bill was about 6 bones and the entire thing was like $120+ because someone got dirrty with the rolls (Kibler). I had horrible odds, but there were like 4 people that gamed it and I was feeling good about my odds. I didn't have to pick it up, Kibler ended up taking it home. Yesterday, we went to the sports bar and after some gaming of BR and I (I broke even, I had Detroit and 8 points, they lost by 12+ and he had GS and 1 point for the first quarter), the bill came. Ant and Gary didn't want to game so I heads up'd it with BR. I lost and that was the first time that I had lost the credit card game.

It's pretty fun, I didn't feel bad losing because I'm still up. Silly gamers and their big games.

My thoughts go out

...to a loved one. I recently had a loved one fall ill of http://www.bellspalsy.ws/. He/she is doing ok and has seen a doctor about it. The doctor is optimistic that he'll/she'll recover in a couple weeks because he/she saw a physician so early in the process (evidently people wait a day or two to see if it clears up itself). It is not life threatening (that we know of).

He/she has to wear an eye patch though, which is kinda humorous. I hope he/she gets better and my thoughts go out to him/her.

2007 is here and I tried something new

So since I have been working at Upper deck, I have been to http://www.sushitaisho.signonsandiego.com/1.html just once. I ordered the Chicken Teriyaki bowl and was pretty closed minded about the Sushi. My standing was that it had a lot of vegtables and I was probably going to choke on the seaweed.

Fast forward to today. We all head to Sushi Taisho for lunch. I get the chicken teriyaki bowl and start eyeing Kibler's roll when it shows up. I talk to Danny about it and I decide that I am ready to go and give it a try.

I had the following -

Zig Zag RollSpicy snow crab soft shell crab avocado & cream cheese wrapped in soy paper and a Ninja RollSpicy tuna double-wrapped seaweed lightly fried in panko and dressed w/eel sauce. Just a couple pieces of each. Not to shabby, I am looking forward to the next time we go.

Meh...I could be smarter

Dirt Bikes and cahwazy drivers

So I came back to Cali yesterday. It's roughly a 5 and a half hour drive and I have done it plenty of times now that I have the quickest way (actually through Maricopa to the 8, not out the 10 to the 85 to the 8).

Upon my trips, I go by the sand dunes right outside of Yuma...twice. Once going to AZ and then coming back. Since I tend to travel during peak travel times, there is a lot of "dune traffic". I have an opinion about who these types of people are (yes, I am one to jump to quick assumptions about stereotypes). They drive these big RVs, toying a rack of bikes/4-wheelers/golf carts that are jackedup 6+ inches with mag wheels on them. They also drive them like they are the pickup trucks.

One in particular. It was a newer SUV. It cut me off coming on the highway from Gordon's Well. I was going at a pretty quick clip. I get over in the fast lane and let him on with no issues, but then he swerves into my lane almost immediately. I slam on my breaks and swerve into the other lane. Thankfully there was no one there. He pulls up along side of me, his buddy laughs at me and flips me off. I speed up to get away from them and they speed up. I slow down and they keep on going.

I curse them, but then I'm ok, they are gone and I'm back on the straight and narrow back to Cali. I pick them up again coming off an El Centro on ramp. They don't do anything this time, but there is another white Mitsubishi Galant keeping up with me and we blow by the SUV. He doesn't give chase until the hills (right around the Golden Acorn). He's playing cat and mouse with traffic and not getting anywhere. Traffic starts to get heavier than it already was and then it happened. He cuts of the Galant in front of me and slams on his breaks (to the point of smoke). The Galant in front of me does the same and I do the same, he and I have to swerve left into the rumble-bumps in order to miss the SUV. There was no traffic in front of the SUV. I almost lost my lunch. I was going to get out of the car but the SUV sped away. The Galant and I gave chase. The SUV exited and the Galant in front of me followed it. I hope he kicked the crap out of them.

They had a sticker on the back of the window that said "Desert Rats like it dirty". I hate Dirt bikers.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE

First off, I did something very stupid tonite. After about a half an hour lying awake at a friend's house, I drove home....after a fair bit of drinking. To be honest, this was probably a mistake in my judgement. I made it home and I'm ok and I was probably the soberest of people on the road. I drank a bunch of water/soda before I snuck out.

As for my last post of 2o06, the year was certainly interesting. I found a new job, same career. Something that I love doing and I think that I'm not too shabby at (even though some other people think that I'm not good at it). I am still married and I love my wife Marnie and our two dogs. But let's not look at the past, let's look to the future.

In the coming days, I will be posting interviews of people some people that I know and that know me (friends and family). I did a bit of camera work over the break. Did a couple of interviews and I am going to post them to my blog along with what I think/feel about the person. I didn't get a chance to do everyone that I would have liked to do, but it is an ongoing project and I hope to continue it, especially for people that I haven't had a chance to get that I should absolutely interview before our time is up.

Again....happy new year and may your 2007 be as good, if not better than your 2006.