The Adventures of TMLSB
I'm a little bit country and a little bit rock n' roll
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Monday, February 13, 2006
This is my 300th blog entry
I feel quite an awesome responsibility in making this 300th post. I'd like to be intelligent, profound, witty and political, but I'm not sure I can even fake being any of those things. So I will be content with being semi-reflective and boorish.
This was to be a big sports weekend on television and in person. Friday afternoon brought the almost for real return of Nextel Cup cars to the track in the form of practice for Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout.
For those that don't know, the Shootout is a non-points paying event similar to the Winston. To qualify for the event, a driver must have either won a pole in the last year or be a previous winner of the Shootout.
Although the guys don't use their "official" Daytona cars, you get a good idea about what each of them has and how things are going to look. But more importantly, it's CARS BACK ON THE TRACK!!! The 500 is only six freaking days away!!!
To celebrate, we decided to have steaks for dinner (surprise). But not before UnkTodd and Heather took urchin 1.0 to my eldest nephew's basketball game. Anytime anyone takes any of the urchins anywhere is greatly appreciated by the wife and me.
We also watched some of the opening ceremonies. In a nutshell, I always think these things are a disappointment, especially considering that the face value on some tickets was over a grand.
That said, I enjoyed the lighting proper (although the final four torch bearers were a little anticlimactic) and I thought the spider people were cool too.
Anyway, dinner was good and the company was better (as always) and we got to bed at a reasonable hour since our weekend looked to be full from that point forward.
A note here: For about the four of the last five nights, I have been visited by an apparition...a ghost...or possibly a ninja in the form of Lauren, my 3.75 year old daughter.
The thing that's odd here is that she can't do ANYTHING quietly. And yet, in the silence of our collective slumber and in the dead of night, she can get out of bed and her room and not be detected by the monitor, open our door without us knowing and walk around the bed and climb up on the sideboard thingy and stand there, perfectly balanced, and stare at me without making a sound about three inches from my nose.
And when I do finally detect her, it takes all of the restraint in the world not to scare the shit out of all of us when expressing my surprise.
Anyway, I just thought you should know what we're going through. She only did this twice last night under the guise of "I had a bad dweam" and "I'm firsty."
Anyone got any suggestions on how to curb this? Seriously. As my friends often joke, I've got a cardiac condition and I shouldn't be getting frightened like that.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled recap.
Saturday was to be the same as any other Saturday. 5am wakeup for a Sophia feeding, then a 6am-ish workout (turned out to be four miles at 6:35am), Lauren's soccer gactice (game and practice), a trip to the Krogers for some $1.99 per pound pork loin, some turkey tenderloin (yum) and a little London Broil. We then spent the afternoon watching some olympic coverage, cars on the track again (sort of, at least until weather messed everything up), and finally a quiet family evening of our famous pork loin, a couple of cold beers and bed at around 10:30pm.
We are now officially old.
Sunday started with a sensible breakfast of OJ, some eggbeaters with cheese (yummy!) and some new and exciting (get this) SQUARE BAGELS!!
How do they do that, you might be asking yourself? Making a traditionally round thing very square and intriguing? I have no idea, but I had to buy them and I had to eat one asap. And do you know what?
They were freaking awesome. I ate two yesterday (one for breakfast with peanut butter) and one as a sandwich for lunch.
The morning was also spent watch the airing of the rain delayed ARCA race from Daytona. I have concluded that, for whatever reason, these people are incapable of driving more than 10 laps without wrecking.
Ever.
Then it was Front Row qualifying day (and basically time trials for everyone else). Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon won those guaranteed spots but both had some trouble in post-qualifying inspections, and the final details have yet to be released but I expect to hear about penalties and related info accordingly.
UnkTodd helped me with hanging a key holding cabinet thingy in the kitchen which was tougher than it sounds because the fucking screw holes in the back were uneven and it took me about half an hour to do something that, had I simply eyeballed it, would have taken about 3 minutes.
But the highlight of the weekend, without question, was our family's first outing to a professional sporting event as a foursome: a Gwinnett Gladiators game!
There was a special deal where you got four tickets in the lower level (not behind the goal either) plus two hats, two programs, and a coupon for a box of chicken from Kroger along with a two litre bottle of chek cola. (Do you like how I spelled litre all European like)? That's a deal in anyone's book, so we did it.
And it was AWESOME!!
Both of the girls were great. I even let some woman I'd never met hold urchin 2.0 for about 15 or 20 minutes. I know this sounds absurd, but I think a lot of folks do stuff like that with their second child.
Here's a picture of the nice lady holding my baby:
We spent as much on concessions as tickets. Considering the $7 beers that the wife and I had two each of, that wasn't hard to do at all.
A sidenote on $7 beers here. I'm not bitching at all about the cost. Charging $7 for a 24 ounce beer is like charging (stay with me here) $3.50 for a 12-ounce beer. Hell, you can't even get that price at Outback Steaks, let alone somewhere really fancy. And the bottom line about concessions is that if you don't want to buy them you don't have to buy them, so bitching about the prices is extra pointless.
Here are some pictures from the day:
Lauren expressing some general excitement, possibly after the Zamboni laps or a puck toss.
Oh, and to prove that I didn't make up anything, here's the box score. Notice the attendance. This was the perfect sporting event with both bigger and smaller children. The arena was very nice and clean, the place only seats about ten thousand full, and from door to door leaving was almost 15 minutes.
Can you say season tickets?
This was to be a big sports weekend on television and in person. Friday afternoon brought the almost for real return of Nextel Cup cars to the track in the form of practice for Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout.
For those that don't know, the Shootout is a non-points paying event similar to the Winston. To qualify for the event, a driver must have either won a pole in the last year or be a previous winner of the Shootout.
Although the guys don't use their "official" Daytona cars, you get a good idea about what each of them has and how things are going to look. But more importantly, it's CARS BACK ON THE TRACK!!! The 500 is only six freaking days away!!!
To celebrate, we decided to have steaks for dinner (surprise). But not before UnkTodd and Heather took urchin 1.0 to my eldest nephew's basketball game. Anytime anyone takes any of the urchins anywhere is greatly appreciated by the wife and me.
We also watched some of the opening ceremonies. In a nutshell, I always think these things are a disappointment, especially considering that the face value on some tickets was over a grand.
That said, I enjoyed the lighting proper (although the final four torch bearers were a little anticlimactic) and I thought the spider people were cool too.
Anyway, dinner was good and the company was better (as always) and we got to bed at a reasonable hour since our weekend looked to be full from that point forward.
A note here: For about the four of the last five nights, I have been visited by an apparition...a ghost...or possibly a ninja in the form of Lauren, my 3.75 year old daughter.
The thing that's odd here is that she can't do ANYTHING quietly. And yet, in the silence of our collective slumber and in the dead of night, she can get out of bed and her room and not be detected by the monitor, open our door without us knowing and walk around the bed and climb up on the sideboard thingy and stand there, perfectly balanced, and stare at me without making a sound about three inches from my nose.
And when I do finally detect her, it takes all of the restraint in the world not to scare the shit out of all of us when expressing my surprise.
Anyway, I just thought you should know what we're going through. She only did this twice last night under the guise of "I had a bad dweam" and "I'm firsty."
Anyone got any suggestions on how to curb this? Seriously. As my friends often joke, I've got a cardiac condition and I shouldn't be getting frightened like that.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled recap.
Saturday was to be the same as any other Saturday. 5am wakeup for a Sophia feeding, then a 6am-ish workout (turned out to be four miles at 6:35am), Lauren's soccer gactice (game and practice), a trip to the Krogers for some $1.99 per pound pork loin, some turkey tenderloin (yum) and a little London Broil. We then spent the afternoon watching some olympic coverage, cars on the track again (sort of, at least until weather messed everything up), and finally a quiet family evening of our famous pork loin, a couple of cold beers and bed at around 10:30pm.
We are now officially old.
Sunday started with a sensible breakfast of OJ, some eggbeaters with cheese (yummy!) and some new and exciting (get this) SQUARE BAGELS!!
How do they do that, you might be asking yourself? Making a traditionally round thing very square and intriguing? I have no idea, but I had to buy them and I had to eat one asap. And do you know what?
They were freaking awesome. I ate two yesterday (one for breakfast with peanut butter) and one as a sandwich for lunch.
The morning was also spent watch the airing of the rain delayed ARCA race from Daytona. I have concluded that, for whatever reason, these people are incapable of driving more than 10 laps without wrecking.
Ever.
Then it was Front Row qualifying day (and basically time trials for everyone else). Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon won those guaranteed spots but both had some trouble in post-qualifying inspections, and the final details have yet to be released but I expect to hear about penalties and related info accordingly.
UnkTodd helped me with hanging a key holding cabinet thingy in the kitchen which was tougher than it sounds because the fucking screw holes in the back were uneven and it took me about half an hour to do something that, had I simply eyeballed it, would have taken about 3 minutes.
But the highlight of the weekend, without question, was our family's first outing to a professional sporting event as a foursome: a Gwinnett Gladiators game!
There was a special deal where you got four tickets in the lower level (not behind the goal either) plus two hats, two programs, and a coupon for a box of chicken from Kroger along with a two litre bottle of chek cola. (Do you like how I spelled litre all European like)? That's a deal in anyone's book, so we did it.
And it was AWESOME!!
Both of the girls were great. I even let some woman I'd never met hold urchin 2.0 for about 15 or 20 minutes. I know this sounds absurd, but I think a lot of folks do stuff like that with their second child.
Here's a picture of the nice lady holding my baby:
We spent as much on concessions as tickets. Considering the $7 beers that the wife and I had two each of, that wasn't hard to do at all.
A sidenote on $7 beers here. I'm not bitching at all about the cost. Charging $7 for a 24 ounce beer is like charging (stay with me here) $3.50 for a 12-ounce beer. Hell, you can't even get that price at Outback Steaks, let alone somewhere really fancy. And the bottom line about concessions is that if you don't want to buy them you don't have to buy them, so bitching about the prices is extra pointless.
Here are some pictures from the day:
Lauren expressing some general excitement, possibly after the Zamboni laps or a puck toss.
I know this was after what turned out to be the game winning goal:
And this is three of the four of us (the old lady was taking the picture):
Oh, and to prove that I didn't make up anything, here's the box score. Notice the attendance. This was the perfect sporting event with both bigger and smaller children. The arena was very nice and clean, the place only seats about ten thousand full, and from door to door leaving was almost 15 minutes.
Can you say season tickets?
DATE - 02/12/06 Trenton ( 3) AT Gwinnett ( 4)
SCORE BY PERIODS
Trenton 1 2 0--3
Gwinnett 0 1 3--4
I was going to post the rest of the box score here, but it screwed up the formatting, so I
had to say forget it.
Here's a picture of the Gladiators coach immediately after the win:
Then it was home, urchin 1.0 to bed (followed by ninja visits at 11:34pm,
which was 31 minutes after I fell asleep) and again at around 12:30 or for
"bad dweams" and a full pullup.
Well, that about covers my weekend. Since it's my 300th post, I figured
I should writesome sort of haiku:
300 entries.
Talk about wasting some time.
That's a lot of words.
Happy race season everybody!! In just two days and a wakeup, we'll
be watching racing full on. Here's the schedule for the week:
Thursday: Nextel Cup Twin 150 mile qualifying races
Friday: Craftsman truck race at night
Saturday: Busch Series race
Sunday: Daytona 500
(Insert Dukes of Hazzard rebel yell here).
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