The Doctor is In

I don't really have much time to write anything, but I am off to California tomorrow night to join my brother in his celebration of adding 'Dr.' to the beginning of his name. After seven years of blood, sweat, tears, he is about to earn his PhD. The dissertation is done, sent to various publications, and at least half of his committee has signed off. All that is left is his presentation on Thursday, which should be a relative walk in the park. I'm really happy for him. I was worried for a while that he might not make it due to his stormy relationship with his advisors, but it looks like he is about done. This weekend should be a good celebration with friends and family.

Introducing

The newest additions to my apartment this week:

Close ups

Hopefully they get enough light despite that huge bush that blocks two of my three windows.We'll see how inept I am when it comes to taking care of plants. I'll consider it a success if the plants survive through the start of the college football season.

Gifts are courtesy of the wonderful DrT.

Also introducing...

W.W.B.D.
(From my brother)


And finally...
Just kidding about the last one. I just wanted an excuse to repost this picture of TheCrazyCanuck's cute dogs.

Stubbornness

After the family reunion to celebrate my grandfather's 90th birthday last May, there was talk over trying to do something like this on a more regular basis. Well, my dad and his brothers have had some discussions about planning a 2008 reunion recently. I learned of the tentative details today in an e-mail from my dad that was sent to all of his brothers and their families.

My grandfather is about to turn 91 years old. His condition, sadly, has been deteriorating in recent years. He cannot move around well anymore and his eyesight is failing. He no longer ventures far from his home and has trouble traveling anywhere these days. Given this, wouldn't the perfect location for a 2008 reunion be where he lives? Who cares if we went to visit him in 2006. We should be going to Tucson so that it is easy for my grandfather to attend a family reunion.

Unfortunately, my dad is adamant about wanting everyone to come visit him in Asheville, NC. I know for a fact that at least one if not two of my dad's three brothers disagrees with this idea based on initial rumblings from my aunt and uncle in Philadelphia when I visited them earlier this month, but my dad is still pushing the plan. My grandfather still wants to attend and spend time with the family, and who can blame him.

So what is the grand plan to get my grandfather from Tucson to Asheville? Well, the e-mail my dad sent out this morning volunteered me as my grandfather's personal chauffeur. Yes, I have been volunteered by my dad to spend four days flying across the entire country to escort my grandfather to and from the reunion. Add on a few days of the actual reunion and my dad has volunteered 20+% of my 2008 vacation time to fly around the country WITHOUT FIRST ASKING ME how I felt about it. Also never mind that my dad and two of his brothers are either retired or do not have to work during the summer months and have much more flexibility to handle this responsibility than I do. Unfortunately, the brothers that have the capacity to help assist my grandfather across the country are the ones opposed to the idea of a reunion in any location other than Tucson in the first place. Since they all still view me as a child with no responsibility in life since I am an unmarried/childless "kid" that has not completely rebelled and disowned this side of the family, I am considered the best option to bring my grandfather to Asheville. Apparently, having a full time job with somewhat limited vacation time is not very important to them.

I politely responded to my dad and asked if this was in fact the best option for a 2008 family reunion, but knowing how stubborn he is, I'll get an earful if I start pouting and refuse to spend four days helping my grandfather travel to and from the event in Asheville. I think the reunion is a great idea, but any reunion planned while my grandfather is still able to attend should be in Tucson.

What do I do?

Boredom

Our softball team improved to 4-0 today with another boring thrashing of a team in our league. 28-4 this time. We've played four games including one against Son of a Pitch so far in May. We've outscored those four opponents by a score of 89-15. 89-15. We're tied with the Swarm at 4-0, and only us and Son of a Pitch have more than one win through four weeks. It's actually kind of boring to win games like this. Our toughest battle was a 10-4 win against Son of a Pitch, and we were in control for most of that game. It's kind of disappointing that no one can really play with us this season. We'll only play four really tough games all season since the Beerbuddies, one of the top teams, had to fold this week because too many of their girls left the company or are expecting and unable to play this season and they were forfeiting all their games. Hopefully FlyingV's team will pick things up when the new hire from Duke starts next week and gives their team a boost.

Sadly, our dominance of the company league going to change starting in June. Hawkeye turned in her notice a little over a week ago and is moving back to Iowa to be closer to her family at the end of the month. In addition to losing a good friend and founder of the Pitchers & Catchers, we are losing the best girl in the company co-ed softball league. The team dynamic will change considerably once we start playing games without her.

Exhaustion

I think I finally hit the post Vegas wall today. I managed to stay up way too late the past two nights after returning to CT and I've been dragging all day today. I did manage to get to the gym, though the damage of four days in Vegas and ten days away from the gym was pretty bad. :(

Since I got home to relax for the evening around 7:30, I've been spent. No offense to those who wanted to drag me out for no reason whatsoever tonight, but I'm glad that I just did my own thing this evening and stayed in. I wouldn't have been very fun anyway. I also received a few phone calls tonight from some friends and family. By 9PM, I was just completely mentally spent and unable to keep a meaningful phone conversation. I do appreciate the calls though, but I'll need to do some following up over Memorial Day weekend to have real conversations with the people that tried to call today. Now it's time for bed.

HBD (in 2 hours) to Mpls Ju. Too bad you were born one day too late to be special.

It Was Fun While it Lasted

The Wings are out of the playoffs. :( However, the frustration is minimal since they fared much better than they should have. This team was not as good as the three championship teams of the last decade. Their will and desire, however, was unmatched. Watching us steal a series against San Jose was awesome, even if we choked golden opportunities against Anaheim in games 4 and 5 to blow this one. I'll happily accept the outcome and casually enjoy the remainder of the playoffs. I'll also enjoy getting a good night of sleep again. These late nights have been killing my productivity at work lately.

That still leaves the Pistons and Tigers as hopes for a title in 2007. At least there will be hope in Detroit this summer. Imagine what it used to be like back in the day when all we had in the summer was baseball and the upcoming NFL season.

FIRE MILLEN!

Ju - Details Please

Ju - I saw your post on the CC blog. Does the 'spectacular' comment mean what I think it means? If it does, keep me posted this week!

Recovering

I returned from Vegas this morning after an overnight flight that included a wonderful three hour layover in Atlanta. Amazingly, I was asleep for the entire Vegas-Atlanta flight and then slept an additional 1.5 hours in the Atlanta airport while waiting for the second leg of my return trip, so I am not completely exhausted right now! I managed to sleep more on the flights home than I did the first night in Vegas!

The trip was fun, but the gambling results were disappointing. On Friday night we went to see Jay Leno at the Mirage. Redneck was the highlight of the night though. He managed to spend all of Friday getting completely trashed and losing a lot of money gambling. We didn't think he'd even make it to the show, but he showed up wearing his sunglasses and unable to stay awake for more than a couple minutes at a time. A doo wop group opened the show. At one point, they asked for a male volunteer to come up on stage. We all pointed to Redneck and yelled his name. When the act requested that the volunteer be as trashed as possible, we all stood up and started yelling for him. Unfortunately, we were 20ish rows back and I don't think the guys on stage even saw us. Truly a shame. FlyingV took a couple of good pictures of Redneck in this rare form, so maybe I'll post one once FlyingV puts the pictures on facebook.

As for Leno, he was ok. The pace of his stand-up was intense, which left me mentally exhausted at the end to keep up. It was almost like a 90-minute monologue for the Tonight Show with time spent talking to Kevin Eubanks. Some of the jokes were great, but the topics were not always that timely (OJ Simpson, Mel Gibson's issues, etc). I was just amazed that he moved so quickly from one topic to the next for such a long period of time.

We went to the best steakhouse ever on Saturday. I am not really a steak fan and I rarely order a steak at a restaurant. However, we decided to have a group dinner at the steakhouse in MGM Grand on Saturday for anyone interested since we like to have one nice/fancy meal each time we go to Vegas. This was without a doubt the best steak dinner I've ever had. No comparison. Not even Morton's steakhouse compares. Since I've never seen it on a menu before, I ordered a 10 oz bison steak. That's right, ITAMFBAS. It was amazing, and there was almost no fat on the steak.

As I mentioned earlier, the gambling did not go well. I managed to stay within +/- $150 the entire trip, but I went from +50 to -125 on the last day, primarily due to a poor poker sitting in the waning hours of the trip while I was killing time between dinner and leaving for the airport. I would have lost more if not for my first ever successful sports bet in Vegas. Unfortunately, every sports bet I've made has been an emotional hedge against a Detroit sports team in a key playoff game, so I never want to actually collect on the bet. Stupid Red Wings. I'd rather have lost my $20 than had the wings lose the game. Grrr....

I've decided never to gamble at MGM Grand again since I lose money there every year. I did play craps for the first year at a dive casino near Circus Circus. Hooray for $2 tables! Given the extreme volatility of craps, I wanted to learn the game cheaply. It was a lot of fun. I'm sure I'll play more craps the next time I am in a casino. It's a fun game to play with a group of people and the odds are not horrible.

So I guess that's all of the Vegas story. Now I am just recovering, but I was ready to come back last night. A four day weekend is enough for a Vegas trip. Not that there was any scandal, but if there were, I wouldn't post it anyway.

Thuggery. And VEGAS!!!!

The NHL made a rare good decision today. They suspended the right punk for a brutal attack on Tomas Holmstrom last night, despite the fact that the referee penalized the wrong player during the game.

Chris Pronger is a thug, and the Ducks are super screwed without him for Game 4.

Oh yeah, and I am off to Vegas tomorrow for the annual weekend of gambling and such and such. Hopefully my first attempt at no limit Texas hold'em in a casino is successful. Vegas, WOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

Low on the Timeliness Scale

I meant to post this yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to do this since I had other plans after work yesterday.

Sunday was a difficult day for a Detroit sports fan. After watching the Pistons lose a playoff game, the Tigers get whooped on Sunday night baseball, and the Red Wings lose a big playoff game at home in overtime, I think I felt like Steve Nash did on Saturday night.


Kicked in the nuts. Never pleasant.

Here's to all three teams bouncing back tonight.

Dead on Arrival

My iPod died. :( I've only had it for about a year and a half, but it died nonetheless. I have no idea what happened. I was at the gym a couple weeks ago and it just stopped playing and the screen indicated that it had a disk error. I followed all of the steps for troubleshooting this type of error on the Apple website, but nothing changed.

I finally went to the Apple store today and they were unable to do anything either. The tech dude there only tried for about 30 seconds and then said there was nothing he could do. He was not very friendly either. Since my one year warranty expired, I was told that I could pay just over $100 to ship it to Apple. For that amount, they would either fix or replace my iPod nano and send it back to me with a new 90-day warranty. My other option is to get 10% off the price of a new iPod. That's crap. Are iPod's really this cheap and worthless that they break or did I do something wrong? I have no idea what caused it to break. My uneducated guess is that I should do a better job of protecting it from sweat when I use it at the gym, but who knows. I did have a cover for it.

Now I am trying to figure out what to do. Do any tech people have a suggestion (ahem, Mouse)? I am open to any option including buying a music player from another company if the quality will be better.

Right now, I am leaning towards just buying a new iPod nano since it's only about $75 more than sending my current one to get fixed, and who knows how long the one they send back will last. However, I am not thrilled about buying another Apple product right now since I don't know if the problem is my fault or their fault.

Bad News Bears

We had our second softball game today. We were looking forward to what was supposed to be a good test before our early season showdown against Son of a Pitch next Tuesday. This team played SOP last week and lost 18-17 in extra innings, so our expectations for a tough game and good test before our first showdown were high.

Well, the game was the longest, most agonizing one hour and forty minutes of my company co-ed softball career, and the game only lasted five innings. In two different innings today, we scored fourteen runs. That's right, two separate times in the game, we batted around the lineup twice.

The ending was really sad. We were trying to make outs without obviously trying to make outs. We'd hit pop ups or goundballs to the shortstop, yet they'd make an error every single time. Short of intentionally striking out, we were doing everything we could do to get through the top of the fifth inning so that we could get them out in the bottom of the fifth and invoke the mercy rule. The other team was just horrible. Even the ump had pity on them. He was calling every pitch a strike once we had two outs in the fifth inning just to try and speed things up. Eventually, the ump had enough. When Hyphen-Lady hit a ground ball to third base and their player successfully fielded the ball, the ump called the batter out before a throw or tag was ever made. It didn't really matter since I was running from second to third with the intention of getting tagged out on the play, but still, we were not going to complain.

We ended up winning 39-1 once all the runs were added up afterwards. The sad thing is despite the fact that this game wasn't a whole lot of fun in the end and we all wanted to go home, I sort of wish we scored forty. Just to say that we did.

I checked the scoresheet after the game. As a team, our on-base average was roughly .800, given that we don't count sacrifices that scored runners as at-bats. That's sick, even if it was mostly inflated due to errors.

I guess that leaves us somewhat untested and at 2-0 leading into the big game next week. At least our first game last week was fairly tough.

Quack Quack Quack Mr. Ducksworth

They can have their Flying V formation and their knuckle puck shots, but the Ducks are going the way of the pathetic movie they are named after.

Here's to two more weeks of late nights watching hockey! WOOOOOOOOO!!!

A Hell of a Good Card Game

Last weekend, I spent a good amount of time during the weekend playing cards with my aunt, uncle, and brother. Needless to say, my brother and I are ridiculously competitive, even as adults. The game of choice was 'O Hell', a popular game in our family growing up. I've played it with a few of you as well, so I'll spare the rules.

In the first game, which was the only game that included my aunt, I jumped out to a commanding lead after hitting my bid in five consecutive hands. By luck more than anything, I managed to hit my bid on the last trick at the expense of my aunt, who was starting to get frustrated. After putting a huge guilt trip on me, she decides to intentionally miss her made bid on the sixth hand and takes an unnecessary trick just to keep me from making my bid. Needless to say, I was shocked. However, she then proceeded to smack talk me the rest of that game, even as I started a quick slide into third place, where I managed to finish that game. I have never been smack talked by a 70+ year-old lady before, yet alone my aunt. I had no idea how to react to the vicious verbal beat-down that game. I can't fire back. She's my aunt! Worse yet, my brother won the game and let me hear about it the rest of the night.

I decided that I needed to get even. My uncle, brother, and I played four more games on three-way 'O Hell' the next morning. Talk about a volatile game. Three way 'O Hell' is a completely different beast.

Back on my game without my aunt to smack talk, I managed to win twice. My uncle won the other two games, giving each of us one more victory than my brother. However, my brother tried to claim victory over me during the five game series. Despite the fact that I won more games, he outscored me in three of the five games. I called shenanigans since clearly winning championships is more important than being the first or second loser, but my brother does not like to claim defeat. Given that he usually lags his wiser, taller, smarter, and younger brother, he has to hold on to whatever edge he can manufacture. Oh well, he can go back to DC thinking that he proved his superiority in 'O Hell' this weekend. I'll take my two victories to his one! :)

Family Fun Time

I went to Philadelphia this weekend. My time was split between my friends in the area on Friday night and the rest of the weekend with my aunt, uncle, and brother. I just got back and need to get some sleep, but be prepared for some great card game stories from the weekend with the family. For those of you who have played the card game 'O Hell' with me, you'll enjoy tomorrow's post.

Gary the Psychic

Bright calls me from the game in San Jose after the Wings tied the game in the last thirty seconds of the third period.

Bright - "I have Zetterburg for Detroit and Rivet for San Jose in OT. Who do you have?"
Gary - "Mathieu Schneider. He's so overdue."
Matt - "Who do you have for San Jose?"
Gary - "Schneider is going to score the winner. I'm not picking anyone from San Jose." (he forced me to pick a Shark, so I took someone, but still)


BOOM! What an amazing comeback from a game I swore was lost. And yes, Schneider scored the goal. GO WINGS!

I am going to be tired in the morning.

Band Stuff

I received an e-mail today introducing the new Michigan Marching Band director. Interesting, huh? Well, it's interesting to Mpls Ju and I, but probably no one else. I think it was Scott Boerma's third attempt to get the job as director of the MMB, but probably just the first time he was taken seriously. Boerma ultimately left his job as a highly esteemed high school band director in southeast Michigan to direct the Eastern Michigan band a few years ago in order to round out his resume for this job, and it ultimately paid off.

Why do I care? Well, his wife was my high school band teacher, and I think they are both great people. I have no idea if Boerma will be more like Nix, who focused on entertainment over substance (good), or Dr. Tapia (director 1999-2000), who focused on producing a refined and technically strong, yet very boring halftime shows (bad). I guess we'll find out over the next few years.

On the bright side, I'm sure I'll see my high school band director every time I go back for a game, which is exciting. I used to see her on weekends in college when we were doing a show that was musically arranged by her husband. I suspect that she'll be at most games now.