If all the Romans jumped off a bridge...

As I am sure that everyone who would read this knows, throwing heavy objects down a slippery surface with the objective of scoring points as an excuse to drink beer is a very important part of my life. For many years now, I have used bowling as my outlet to satisfy this need. But I am quite pleased that I now have the opportunity to get my fix from a different source. Bowling is just a gateway sport to the harder stuff…curling.

I previously reported my attendance of an open house of the DFW Curling Club with my sister. While there, I put my name on a list of people who would be interested in joining a novice level spring league. It’s going to be 8 weeks long, and each team of 4 will consist of 3 beginning curlers and one experienced club member to act as the skip/captain. Well, this past Sunday was the first organizational meeting/practice of this league. I went, I joined a team, and my first game is this coming Sunday.

Now before I go on, let me explain something. There is a trait that seems to exist in my family that when you go somewhere you should immerse yourself in the culture. For example, my sister pretended to joke that when she moved to Massachusetts that she was going to date a Kennedy. While that did not exactly happen, she did manage to attach herself to the next best thing, namely the grandson of Kennedy’s economic advisor. So far in my life I have not had much opportunity to exhibit this behavior (although I did try to emulate the natives during my high school trip to Rome). Moving to Texas has given me the opportunity to rectify this however. I guess in Texas the analogous situation to finding a Kennedy in Massachusetts would be to find a member of the Bush family. Well much like my sister, I have failed in achieving the optimum objective, but I am proud to report that I have also achieved the next best thing.

So in the grand Texas scheme of things, who would be second to a member of the Bush family? Well, I would think that it would be obvious. Who else could possibly be as revered around here almost as much as a Bush than…(drum roll please)…a nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host. Unfortunately they don’t make female versions of those (who wants to hear a radio program about doing laundry and making sandwiches? ), so romantic involvement is out of the question. But I did manage to get Mark Davis, whose radio show airs nationally on weekdays from 9am-11am on the ABC Radio Network and SIRIUS Satellite Radio, as my curling skip. That’s right, from now on me and Mr. Davis are going to be tight. And his young teenage daughter is going to be on the team (she’s only 13…don’t get any ideas), so I am not only going to get to know him but his family. I’m telling you. We’re tight.

The upcoming curling league could not have come at a better time though since my bowling league is now over. Today was unfortunately my last day of bowling until the league picks up again until September. The season has changed from bowling to curling, but I won’t go into that since I already used the Byrds/Ecclesiastes reference a few weeks ago. Posted below is a picture of my bowling team (in part to justify the $7 I spent on purchasing the team picture).

I accept that fact that you may think that we sacrificed a whole bunch of our Tuesday evenings for whatever joy bowling could bring us. But I think you’re crazy to make me write a blog telling you about us. You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions (losers). But, what we found out this past season is that each one of us is: a brain (David. He went to MIT), and an athlete (me…I do both bowling and curling), and a basket case (Steve), a princess (Karen…the only girl), and a criminal (Chuck...possible Russian mafia connections).

Sincerely yours, the Pin Hackers.

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray…

Sleep. Pure, blissful sleep. Pleasant dreams filled with sugar plums, super models, and world domination. And just when Switzerland is about to break its precedent of neutrality in order to swear fealty to…

…EARTH SHATTERING SIREN….

I was rudely awaken this morning to find that I was no longer surrounded by Victoria’s Secret models / surrendering foreign officials (they can be both), but was in fact back in my apartment. But there was something out of place that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. After only a moment, I realized “oh yeah, it’s the madly deafening fire alarm that is threatening to afflict me with permanent hearing loss.” I looked to my window, and the mother of all storms was raging outside. While I didn’t see a cow flying around, I am quite confident that there surely had to be one given the ferocity in which the wind was blowing. It must have just been soaring behind the other building or something because the nearly constant string of lightning strikes illuminated the entire area very well and I would have had no trouble spotting it if it were in the open. Sneaky cows.

After assuaging my fears that the apocalypse was upon us (I only ever saw three horseman…couldn’t be the end of days), I crawl out of bed (as the fire alarm is persistently implying that I should do). Given the extremely close proximity of those lightening strikes there was definitely a non-trivial chance that the alarm is legitimate. I flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. A quick glance at my clock confirmed that the power was indeed out. After checking my watch (2:00 am), I started to fumble around in the dark for a pair of pants.

Using my backlit cell phone screen to see (who needs a Maglite), I found some pants, my wallet, and my keys. I open up my front door and look around. Several of my neighbors were also poking their heads out, and fortunately none of them appeared to be on fire. Seeing no smoke or anything like that I assumed that I was not in immediate danger, and due to how bad the storm was I was probably more safe staying sheltered in the breezeway than evacuating the building. At any rate, it did not appear that my life was in immediate danger. Having established that, I go back inside to get my cat just in case there was a problem and we really did end up having to evacuate.

Sarek was nowhere to be seen. Like any good cat, he is quite gifted at hiding when he wants to. He has a plethora of spots to choose from…under the bed, behind the couch, etc. I was actually quite impressed with myself in how quickly I found him. I guessed where he would be on my first try. There was really only one place that offered sufficient cover and was as far away from both the windows/storm and the fire alarm speaker that you could get. My closet.

Having located Sarek, I needed to prepare him for potential travel. This was the fun part. My cat was in full Swiss Army knife mode, absolutely terrified of the raging storm outside and the piercing alarm inside. Now all I had to do was forcibly shove him (and his claws) in a tiny cardboard box. In the dark.

After an epic battle worthy of Homer I was finally able to get this poor cat in his carrier (and the doctors say that I may regain most of the use of my arm). Sarek in hand, I head back out into the breezeway and sit just outside my door and try to reassure my poor kitty. After about 20 minutes of the alarm going off (just enough time to ensure that if there really had been a fire we all would have died) the fire truck shoes up. Several firemen go up and down the stairs to verify that nothing is wrong. After about 5-10 more minutes, they finally turn off the alarm and leave. The storm had mostly died down at this point. Very tired, I go back inside and let my cat out. The power is still out, so I set my phone as my alarm. I crawl back into bed and try to fall asleep.

About 15 minutes later, the power comes back and all the lights I tried to turn on in my initial confusion now pop on, pulling me out of any potential sleep I may have fallen into. I get up, turn the lights off, and reset my actual alarm clock (grumbling that at this point, 3:00 am, I am setting it for only 3 hours in the future).

Suck.

Jesus has risen? Quick! Hide all the eggs!

Well I just got back from visiting my family for Easter. Beyond just seeing my immediate family I also got to see my cousins too, so that was cool. The main problem with seeing eveyone all at once is that I got to hear the question "So why haven't you updated your blog?" about 1.3 billion times (I admit, its been a while). I thought about making a really stupid post containing only a 5th grade level fart joke and telling them all "I updated it...happy?", but then I realized my cousins are UGA educated and thus would probably enjoy such a post more than any of my others. I guess I should just be happy that some people actually read this occasionally to kill time and notice when there is a lull.

This past weekend was not the only chance I had to see my family. Two weeks ago my dad flew out here to visit me and see the Red Sox come to play the Rangers in the season opener. This was the first time I got to see Ameriquest Field. It actually is a nice stadium. Its no Fenway, but then again the Rangers are no Red Sox. The main difference can be seen by looking closly at the picture to the left. I bring attention the upper deck, where entire sections are COMPLETELY EMPTY. You will never, ever, see that at a Red Sox game. I dont care if they are playing the Devil Rays, the game sells our weeks in advance. This is made even more bizaare by the fact that a large portion of the fans there were Red Sox fans. Very sizable chants of "Lets Go Red Sox!" broke out several times. I assume that means that the attendence was boosted by the sizable contingent of Red Sox fans and other games would draw a smaller crowd. Thats sad. I had fun though, and will need to go back at sometime when I can cheer for the home team. Maybe when they play the Yankees. I can break out my Yankees Suck t-shirt and gleefully shout my theories about the sexual orientation of and activities engaged in by the Yankees infield. It will be just like old times.

I'm not fat...I'm festively plump

I was browsing Google News today as I always do to kill time at work. I stumbled across this headline and almost burst out laughing:

American Children Getting Too Fat For Car Safety Seats

Apparently over 250,000 big-boned American children under the age of 6 exceed the maximum weight limit of standard car-safety seats for their age groups. Little Johnny may only be six, but he weighs in at a 10-year-old level. Apparently you shouldn't put a Frosty in your kid's bottle instead of formula (but I thought they were both just diary). Actually this sounds a whole lot worse than it really is. While it is true that the protection offered by a weight-exceeded safety seat is largely diminished, such children inherently have more built in padding to protect them in case of an accident.

This is just the latest news story talking about America's growing obesity problem. And it is a legimate concern, given that according to the site by the American Obesity Association well over half of Americans are overweight (64.5%) and nearly a third (30.5%) are obese. Heart disease, the risk of which is greatly increased by obesity, remains the number 1 killer in America (~700,000 in 2002) and causes more deaths than the numbers 2 and 3 (cancer and stroke) combined.

This is the part of the post where I get to come off as a complete asshole. If obesity is such a huge problem in America, why was there (at least when I was younger) such a backlash about messing with kid's body image? Magazines were evil because they portrayed unrealistic bodies of models. Barbie was evil for being impossibly proportioned. I distinctly remember having to sit through lectures about the dangers of anorexia when I was in middle school. But doing a quick search on anorexia, I found a page on emedicine.com that says that anorexia affects about 1 out of 100 adolescent females mostly in the middle-to-upper socioeconomic groups. The mortality rate ranges from 5-10%. It seems to me, that while it is bad that people get such an eating disorder, America is way the hell on the other end of the problem spectrum. One percent of rich adolesent girls is sure a whole lot less than a third of all Americans. Shouldn't we be telling our kids that they need to look a little more like the magazine models and less like Santa? That while Barbie or GI Joe may be unachievable, they should be more of a goal to aim for than say the Hamburgler? Telling a kid they're fat may hurt their self-esteem, but at least they might be motivated to actually try and fit their fat ass in their safety seat.

< /done sounding like an asshole >

Sadness is...

Its a Saturday afternoon. I have no plans for the weekend. I saw "V for Vendetta" last weekend (pretty good), and there aren't really any other movies out that I want to watch. I am eating a bowl of chili from a can that I just heated up and desperately flipping through the channel guide trying to find something to entertain me. And then, behold, I see listed the movie "Spartacus." My heart leaps and I shriek a joyful "I am Spartacus!" as I change the channel. I am suddenly content as I am confronted with an image of a young Kirk Douglas yearning to be free. But as his clefted chin lowers and his first words come out, I realize that something is terribly wrong. At the end of the movie, all the actors will be shouting "Yo soy el Sparticus!" The cannel showing this masterpiece of cinema is one of the Spanish channels.

Thats right. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh awayeth. Or rather, translates into Spanish. And while I remember enough of my year of high school Spanish to be able to ask a Spanish speaking Sparticus where the bathroom is (Donde esta el bano), much of the non-simple-directions-asking aspects of the dialogue will be lost to me.

The sad part is that it is still the best thing on.