Good morning everyone. I won't lie to you, I'm pretty excited about welcoming 2013 into my life. I sit here doing my last blog entry of 2012 in San Marcos, America while we have a light drizzle outside, but after the severe drought that Texas experienced a couple of years ago, I honestly never mind seeing the rain. All signs point to my last night of work in 2012 being very busy, as it seems that every single regular customer that I have spoken to has plans to stop by Harper's/Slackers/The Veranda to celebrate the first hours of the new year... In a strange and pleasant twist of fate, I have not been scheduled to work tomorrow, the day which happens to be serving up SIX college bowl games... :) As I have said here recently, my holiday trip to Las Vegas will provide the material for many blog entries to come, so be looking for that in the near future.
I want to welcome those of you who are just finding my little blog. 'The View From Bikini Hill' was born on September 28th, 2011, and the total viewcount is currently at 19,290 clicks. I am extremely confident that 'Bikini Hill's' readership is going to skyrocket in the near future, so I wanted to take a second to let you know what to expect here. I am currently making an entry on every weekday, and I'll sometimes make a random post on weekends. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursday I write about random topics, and these entries are normally what I like to call "rambles" - these posts encompass several topics. You will get to experience my sarcasm, my sense of humor (debatable), get an insight into my personal life, learn about San Marcos, America, and get my viewpoints on all sorts of subjects. On Wednesdays I write about poker and things related to Las Vegas, and on Fridays I write about sports. During football season, the Friday posts are almost totally composed of football predictions, and I am about to start predicting the final scores of all of the NFL playoff games each week, an area in which I did remarkably well last year when it came down to picking winning and losers (and coming VERY CLOSE to a lot of the final scores). If you are indeed one of my new readers, please feel free to go back into the archives to get a better idea of what 'Bikini Hill' is about. I have posted over 200 times now in just under a year and a half, so there is plenty for you to catch up on. Please feel free to comment on anything that you read here - I think that the participation of my readers just makes the blog better.
For those of you who have been regular readers on 'Bikini Hill', I want to thank you again for your patronage. The list of blogs to the right will direct you to quality material written by friends that I have come to know since I have started babbling here in cyberspace, and the writers showcased there represent a significant portion of my original following. Also, for any of you who are reading this right now, I also plan to become more active on my twitter account in 2013, and my 'handle' is listed at the top of this page. There have been many things that have made my facebook page which haven't made the blog, and I plan on including more of those things in my twitter account also.
Back to the future now, my resolution for 2013 is to stay active. When I was teaching and coaching (nine years experience at the high school level), I was busy beyond belief, to the point that I did not have a personal life. I was CONSTANTLY making lists of things that I needed to get done, but one thing that did happen was that I DID get a lot accomplished. Although I do love having more control over my life, I don't want to feel that I'm being idle this year - I want everything that I do to have a purpose. Last year my resolution was to "trust my reads" - I feel that I did a good job of that, analyzing situations and acting on the conclusions that I reached. For this year I want to be more like the Matthew Fox character in the movie 'Alex Cross' - it's not that I want to be a villain (and for those of you who don't know me yet, I am TRULY one of the "good guys"), but the Fox character always seemed focused, like he was getting something accomplished... ;)
I will be back tomorrow with my first post of 2013, but in the meantime, I hope that all of you end 2012 on a positive note, and that you ring in the new year safely. Have a great day and I will see you again tomorrow!
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The Black Rabbit
Good morning everyone. This is an unanticipated entry for me, but I didn't work last night and I just woke up for no reason, so here you go... For those of you who have been following my blog on a regular basis during the fall and early winter, you are undoubtedly aware of the disappointment that I faced this past summer upon returning to Las Vegas (can anyone say "stolen windpants?"). Anyway, what most of you are probably unaware of is the gut-wrenching summer that I endured the previous year which brought me back to San Marcos, America. It is chronicled here in the blog, but you have to go WAY BACK in the posts.
Leading up to the summer before last, I was working for the University of Texas and had been planning my return move to Las Vegas, but at the "last minute" (the end of May), I decided to leave UT and instead get back into teaching and coaching for at least one more year. It seemed like a good idea at the time, doing the "responsible thing" - I'd be able to put a lot of money in the bank during one year, because teachers and coaches don't have a life during the school year (at least I never did). Well, after driving all over the great big state of Texas to ELEVEN interviews, and going to both "coaching schools" (clinics that were held in Austin and Fort Worth where coaches can also interview for jobs), I came up empty in my job search. I have come to the conclusion since that time that it was due to the bad economy, and the teachers/coaches with no experience being hired because they cost less. Anyway, I was jobless, my lease in Austin was up at the end of July, and because of a friend of mine, I landed a job at the Texas Music Theater here in San Marcos, America. I was still breathing fire for quite a while, angry, frustrated, and just working my tail off at TMT. It wasn't too long into this stretch of discontent that one of our bartenders took the time to point out how much she appreciated how hard I worked every single night. Last night this bartender worked her last shift at another local bar, The Black Rabbit, and she will be leaving San Marcos for the hopefully greener pastures of Austin. Lissy, I just wanted to say thank you again for your kind words just over sixteen months ago, and to wish you the best of luck in Austin. For those of you who pay close attention to this blog, YES, it was VERY UNUSUAL for me to be off on a Saturday, but I was able to take advantage of it. My friends Ryan and Nia were able to join Lissy and myself in a nice conversation for seemingly fifteen minutes before my overwhelming popularity (ha ha) seemed to bring SWARMS OF CUSTOMERS into the back bar area of the Black Rabbit, which actually put Lissy and Nia to work, but it was nice to have the opportunity to say goodbye.
I hope that all of you have a great day today and I'll see you again tomorrow!
Leading up to the summer before last, I was working for the University of Texas and had been planning my return move to Las Vegas, but at the "last minute" (the end of May), I decided to leave UT and instead get back into teaching and coaching for at least one more year. It seemed like a good idea at the time, doing the "responsible thing" - I'd be able to put a lot of money in the bank during one year, because teachers and coaches don't have a life during the school year (at least I never did). Well, after driving all over the great big state of Texas to ELEVEN interviews, and going to both "coaching schools" (clinics that were held in Austin and Fort Worth where coaches can also interview for jobs), I came up empty in my job search. I have come to the conclusion since that time that it was due to the bad economy, and the teachers/coaches with no experience being hired because they cost less. Anyway, I was jobless, my lease in Austin was up at the end of July, and because of a friend of mine, I landed a job at the Texas Music Theater here in San Marcos, America. I was still breathing fire for quite a while, angry, frustrated, and just working my tail off at TMT. It wasn't too long into this stretch of discontent that one of our bartenders took the time to point out how much she appreciated how hard I worked every single night. Last night this bartender worked her last shift at another local bar, The Black Rabbit, and she will be leaving San Marcos for the hopefully greener pastures of Austin. Lissy, I just wanted to say thank you again for your kind words just over sixteen months ago, and to wish you the best of luck in Austin. For those of you who pay close attention to this blog, YES, it was VERY UNUSUAL for me to be off on a Saturday, but I was able to take advantage of it. My friends Ryan and Nia were able to join Lissy and myself in a nice conversation for seemingly fifteen minutes before my overwhelming popularity (ha ha) seemed to bring SWARMS OF CUSTOMERS into the back bar area of the Black Rabbit, which actually put Lissy and Nia to work, but it was nice to have the opportunity to say goodbye.
I hope that all of you have a great day today and I'll see you again tomorrow!
Friday, December 28, 2012
Week 17
Good morning everyone. A lot going on here on Bikini Hill since my return from Las Vegas, but I'll churn out ten NFL predictions for you just because I love you... ;) This little blog just went over the 19,000 view mark yesterday, and I appreciate you stopping by. A LONG TIME AGO, when the blog had been viewed about 4,000 times, I had predicted that the total would be at 20,000 by the end of this year, and I think that it's pretty neat that I'll be within 1,000 of that mark. If you've been keeping score at home, remember that I was right about the world not ending on December 21st, so score ONE for me... ;)
Okay, enough stalling. First off, because I was in Las Vegas last week, I did not do any of my weekly Friday predictions for the blog. My overall record for the season stands at 76-76-2 after going 3-7 the week before last. I also gave up in the Lucki Duck elite blogger contest after the Lions got MAULED the week before last, my first losing pick of the contest putting me WAY in the hole. The final score of that game was Arizona 38 Detroit 10. For my Las Vegas sponsorship pool, I have listed ALL of our bowl bets up through and including the national championship game in my last blog entry if any of you are interested in seeing who we are rooting for there. For any of you who are betting NFL games for real money this weekend, remember that it's the last week of the season. Some teams may be resting players, some teams may be taking a look at players, etc, etc..., so please keep that in mind. Just as I did last year, when the playoffs start, I will be predicting a final score for every game, and I did very well last season... Here are my picks for this weekend:
Seattle (-10 1/2) vs. St. Louis - Seahawks have averaged 1,000 pts./game over last 3 games...
Kansas City (+16) @ Denver - Broncos won 17-9 in Week 12 first time these teams met...
Kansas City/Denver (Under 42 1/2) - Broncos won 17-9 in Week 12 first time these teams met...
Green Bay/Minnesota (Under 46 1/2) - I have VIVID memories of Vikes game last week...
Dallas/Washington (Under 49) - Important game, teams should be somewhat conservative...
Chicago/Detroit (Under 44 1/2) - Bears should influence this on both sides of the ball...
Miami/New England (Under 47) - Cold weather, Dolphins, low score...
New York Jets/Buffalo (Under 39 1/2) - Jets offense, Jets Defense, low score...
Carolina/New Orleans (Over 54) - Dome, Saints, Panthers...
Jacksonville/Tennessee (Under 42) - Can't imagine either team having any interest in playing...
There you go, my picks for the last week of the NFL regular season. Like I said, go back to my previous blog entry to see A BUNCH of bowl picks against the spread with some overs and unders sprinkled in. Have a great weekend and get ready for a lot of Las Vegas recap in the next few weeks... ;)
Okay, enough stalling. First off, because I was in Las Vegas last week, I did not do any of my weekly Friday predictions for the blog. My overall record for the season stands at 76-76-2 after going 3-7 the week before last. I also gave up in the Lucki Duck elite blogger contest after the Lions got MAULED the week before last, my first losing pick of the contest putting me WAY in the hole. The final score of that game was Arizona 38 Detroit 10. For my Las Vegas sponsorship pool, I have listed ALL of our bowl bets up through and including the national championship game in my last blog entry if any of you are interested in seeing who we are rooting for there. For any of you who are betting NFL games for real money this weekend, remember that it's the last week of the season. Some teams may be resting players, some teams may be taking a look at players, etc, etc..., so please keep that in mind. Just as I did last year, when the playoffs start, I will be predicting a final score for every game, and I did very well last season... Here are my picks for this weekend:
Seattle (-10 1/2) vs. St. Louis - Seahawks have averaged 1,000 pts./game over last 3 games...
Kansas City (+16) @ Denver - Broncos won 17-9 in Week 12 first time these teams met...
Kansas City/Denver (Under 42 1/2) - Broncos won 17-9 in Week 12 first time these teams met...
Green Bay/Minnesota (Under 46 1/2) - I have VIVID memories of Vikes game last week...
Dallas/Washington (Under 49) - Important game, teams should be somewhat conservative...
Chicago/Detroit (Under 44 1/2) - Bears should influence this on both sides of the ball...
Miami/New England (Under 47) - Cold weather, Dolphins, low score...
New York Jets/Buffalo (Under 39 1/2) - Jets offense, Jets Defense, low score...
Carolina/New Orleans (Over 54) - Dome, Saints, Panthers...
Jacksonville/Tennessee (Under 42) - Can't imagine either team having any interest in playing...
There you go, my picks for the last week of the NFL regular season. Like I said, go back to my previous blog entry to see A BUNCH of bowl picks against the spread with some overs and unders sprinkled in. Have a great weekend and get ready for a lot of Las Vegas recap in the next few weeks... ;)
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Vegas 2012 - Part 1: The Bowl Games
Good morning everyone. As you can tell by the title, this will be the first of many entries on my recent trip to Las Vegas. I will probably mix in some rambles and entries covering other subject matter as I do the Vegas series, but you will be reading a lot about my trip in the near future.
This entry is geared specifically toward the college bowl games that my sponsorship group and myself have action on during the next couple of weeks. Near the end of my trip I decided that I would budget the pool money so that each contributor would get at least 50% of their money back. In addition to that money, we still have 29 parlay tickets that are alive, including a ticket that will put $110.00 back into the pool if Alabama (-10) beats Notre Dame on January 7th, so we're guaranteed action through the final bowl game. The Bowling Green/San Jose State and Ohio/Louisiana Monroe matchups are the only games that we do not have action on. Below is the list of bowls that we do have action on, including point spreads, teaser and superteaser numbers, overs/unders, etc...
12/27 - Cincinnati/Duke - Cincinnati (+1)
12/27 - Baylor/UCLA - Baylor (+9), (Over 80.5)
12/28 - Rutgers/Virginia Tech - Rutgers (+11)
12/28 - Minnesota/Texas Tech - Tech (-5), (Over 56.5)
12/29 - Air Force/Rice - Rice (+10)
12/29 - Syracuse/West Virginia - West Virginia (Moneyline), (-4.5), (+1), (+4), (Over 73.5)
12/29 - Arizona State/Navy - Arizona State (-14.5), (-9), (-7), (-6)
12/29 - Oregon State/Texas - Texas (Moneyline), (+2.5), (Over 56.5)
12/29 - Michigan State/TCU - Michigan State (+11)
12/31 - North Carolina State/Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt (-7), (+2), (Under 52)
12/31 - Georgia Tech/USC - USC (-2)
12/31 - Iowa State/Tulsa - Iowa State (+7), (Under 51.5)
12/31 - Clemson/LSU - LSU (-4.5), (-4), (+4)
1/1 - Purdue/Oklahoma State - Oklahoma State (-9), (Under 70.5)
1/1 - Mississippi State/Northwestern - Mississippi State (+3), (+6), (Under 52)
1/1 - Georgia/Nebraska - Georgia (-10.5), (-5), (-2), Nebraska (Moneyline)
1/1 - Michigan/South Carolina - Michigan (+12), (+14), (Moneyline)
1/1 - Stanford/Wisconsin - Stanford (-6.5), (-1), (+1), (+2), (Moneyline), (Over 47.5)
1/1 - Florida State/Northern Illinois - Florida State (-13.5), (-13), (-8), (-5)
1/2 - Florida/Louisville - Florida (-14), (-8), (-6)
1/3 - Kansas State/Oregon - Kansas State (+9), (+9.5), (+16), (+17), (+18), (Under 75.5)
1/4 - Oklahoma/Texas A&M - Oklahoma (+11), (+13), (Moneyline), (Over 72.5)
1/5 - Ole Miss/Pittsburgh - Ole Miss (+5)
1/6 - Arkansas State/Kent State - Arkansas State (+5), Kent State (+12)
1/7 - Alabama/Notre Dame - Alabama (-10), (-9.5), (-4), (-2), (-1), Notre Dame (+18)
(Over 41.5)
And there you have it. This should help to keep all of us occupied until San Marcos, America comes back to life during the spring semester. Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow!
This entry is geared specifically toward the college bowl games that my sponsorship group and myself have action on during the next couple of weeks. Near the end of my trip I decided that I would budget the pool money so that each contributor would get at least 50% of their money back. In addition to that money, we still have 29 parlay tickets that are alive, including a ticket that will put $110.00 back into the pool if Alabama (-10) beats Notre Dame on January 7th, so we're guaranteed action through the final bowl game. The Bowling Green/San Jose State and Ohio/Louisiana Monroe matchups are the only games that we do not have action on. Below is the list of bowls that we do have action on, including point spreads, teaser and superteaser numbers, overs/unders, etc...
12/27 - Cincinnati/Duke - Cincinnati (+1)
12/27 - Baylor/UCLA - Baylor (+9), (Over 80.5)
12/28 - Rutgers/Virginia Tech - Rutgers (+11)
12/28 - Minnesota/Texas Tech - Tech (-5), (Over 56.5)
12/29 - Air Force/Rice - Rice (+10)
12/29 - Syracuse/West Virginia - West Virginia (Moneyline), (-4.5), (+1), (+4), (Over 73.5)
12/29 - Arizona State/Navy - Arizona State (-14.5), (-9), (-7), (-6)
12/29 - Oregon State/Texas - Texas (Moneyline), (+2.5), (Over 56.5)
12/29 - Michigan State/TCU - Michigan State (+11)
12/31 - North Carolina State/Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt (-7), (+2), (Under 52)
12/31 - Georgia Tech/USC - USC (-2)
12/31 - Iowa State/Tulsa - Iowa State (+7), (Under 51.5)
12/31 - Clemson/LSU - LSU (-4.5), (-4), (+4)
1/1 - Purdue/Oklahoma State - Oklahoma State (-9), (Under 70.5)
1/1 - Mississippi State/Northwestern - Mississippi State (+3), (+6), (Under 52)
1/1 - Georgia/Nebraska - Georgia (-10.5), (-5), (-2), Nebraska (Moneyline)
1/1 - Michigan/South Carolina - Michigan (+12), (+14), (Moneyline)
1/1 - Stanford/Wisconsin - Stanford (-6.5), (-1), (+1), (+2), (Moneyline), (Over 47.5)
1/1 - Florida State/Northern Illinois - Florida State (-13.5), (-13), (-8), (-5)
1/2 - Florida/Louisville - Florida (-14), (-8), (-6)
1/3 - Kansas State/Oregon - Kansas State (+9), (+9.5), (+16), (+17), (+18), (Under 75.5)
1/4 - Oklahoma/Texas A&M - Oklahoma (+11), (+13), (Moneyline), (Over 72.5)
1/5 - Ole Miss/Pittsburgh - Ole Miss (+5)
1/6 - Arkansas State/Kent State - Arkansas State (+5), Kent State (+12)
1/7 - Alabama/Notre Dame - Alabama (-10), (-9.5), (-4), (-2), (-1), Notre Dame (+18)
(Over 41.5)
And there you have it. This should help to keep all of us occupied until San Marcos, America comes back to life during the spring semester. Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow!
Monday, December 24, 2012
Sitting At McCarran
Good morning everyone. I'm at the airport early, and on the brightside my plane is already here waiting and I found an outlet to plug my Droid charger into. I think it is in my best interest to do a small post so that I'm not bombarding my facebook account with quotes every two seconds. This visit was too short, as usual, but I'm looking forward to getting back home and starting 2013. Since the Mayans were wrong, I figure that I might as well capitalize on it. At some point this week I will do a post with the remaining bowl picks that I made for my group. We have Fresno State (-12.5) tonight against SMU. My itinerary today is a flight to Houston, a connection to San Antonio, hang out with my dad, then a drive home to San Marcos, America. I should have plenty of material to fill these cyber pages with coming off of this trip. I haven't finalized any plans for tomorrow, so I'm not sure if I'll be posting or not. Hopefully everyone will have better things to do tomorrow than read my blog, but who knows... Have a Merry Christmas everyone (just in case)!
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Heading Home
Taking off for San Marcos, America in the morning. The ATL/DET and Hou/Minn non-overs were painful. My group still has about 4k out there in potential winnigs on the bowl games, plus everyone is getting at least half of their money back... We have Fresno St. (-12) tomorrow night. I'll post a lot this week once I return home. Have a great Christmas Eve everyone!
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Light Action Today
Good morning everyone. I have already guaranteed that everyone in my holiday poker and football pool will get at least fifty percent of their money back, plus our football action. Today we want ULL (+3), UW (+13), ATL (-4), and REALLY WANT ATL/DET (Over 50 1/2). I may be back here tomorrow to list our ton of NFL bets... Have a good one!
Thursday, December 20, 2012
I'm Illegal To Fly This Plane...
Trying a short phone post. Title is actual quote from scheduled pilot on flight that ended up being delayed three hours. No two buck college bowl parlay cards this year, go figure... Riviera poker room closed all week. "Triples" is the new poker term for trips. :) (From Flamingo game). LVHP bowl season begins today. :) Saw my favorite LV cocktail waitress yesterday - former work and football betting buddy - hey Maly. Bought her five dollar, six team NFL parlay ticket - potential two hundred thirty dollar winner. GORGED myself on prime rib and cocktail shrimp at Flamingo Buffet. Have a nice day!
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Takeoff...
Good morning everyone. I apologize for missing yesterday's post. I was getting rested up and geared up for my trip to Las Vegas. Although I did really well calling Saturday's college bowl games, I have decided that I am not going to do a comprehensive bowl prediction blog entry like I did last season due to time constraints. I think that this will also help to avoid confusion with the members of my football betting and poker sponsorship pool for this trip.
For those of you who are part of the sponsorship pool, I will be doing facebook posts with the intials LVHP (Las Vegas Holiday Pool) until I return to town. These posts will let you know which poker tournaments I'm playing in, my cash game results, and which side of the football games we are pulling for until I get back.
For my regular blog readers, I may try to do a few posts from my phone while I'm in Las Vegas, but that didn't work very well for me back in August, so we'll see how that goes.
Have a great day everyone!
For those of you who are part of the sponsorship pool, I will be doing facebook posts with the intials LVHP (Las Vegas Holiday Pool) until I return to town. These posts will let you know which poker tournaments I'm playing in, my cash game results, and which side of the football games we are pulling for until I get back.
For my regular blog readers, I may try to do a few posts from my phone while I'm in Las Vegas, but that didn't work very well for me back in August, so we'll see how that goes.
Have a great day everyone!
Saturday, December 15, 2012
The First Two Bowls
Good morning everyone. I wanted to get predictions for these first two bowl games today on the record since I still intend on typing comprehensive score predictions for all of the bowl games before I leave for Las Vegas next week. Whether that happens, we'll see... :) These predictions have nothing to do with the pool of money that I collected for my trip to the desert, but are for amusement purposes only. For today's games, I will go with...
Arizona 42 Nevada 35 ----- This means I like Nevada (+9) and (Under 79 1/2)...
Utah State 35 Toledo 21 ----- This means I like Utah State (-10) and (Under 59)...
As you can see by looking at these first two bowl games, I am predicting them straight up, against the spread, and the over/under. Thirty-five bowl games times 3 possible wins/losses per game equals 105 total propositions that I will be predicting for these games. Again, these score predictions have nothing to do with the pool betting that I will be doing in Las Vegas for those of you who are involved. I will do a completely separate blog entry with the outcomes that we want for those bets as lines will certainly change between now and then... Enjoy the start of the bowl season and I will see you again on Monday!
Arizona 42 Nevada 35 ----- This means I like Nevada (+9) and (Under 79 1/2)...
Utah State 35 Toledo 21 ----- This means I like Utah State (-10) and (Under 59)...
As you can see by looking at these first two bowl games, I am predicting them straight up, against the spread, and the over/under. Thirty-five bowl games times 3 possible wins/losses per game equals 105 total propositions that I will be predicting for these games. Again, these score predictions have nothing to do with the pool betting that I will be doing in Las Vegas for those of you who are involved. I will do a completely separate blog entry with the outcomes that we want for those bets as lines will certainly change between now and then... Enjoy the start of the bowl season and I will see you again on Monday!
Friday, December 14, 2012
I Wanna See Miracles
"I wanna see miracles, to see the world change..." -Switchfoot- (Twenty-Four)
Good afternoon everyone. Ever since I first heard these lyrics, this song now comes to mind every time that I hear about something senseless that happens in our world. My heart goes out to those closely affected by the stabbings outside of the primary school in China, to those up in Connecticut who are dealing with the elementary school shooting that occurred earlier this morning, and to people everywhere who are dealing with this continuing random violence that is plaguing us...
As we head into this football weekend, I am coming off of a 7-3 showing last weekend, which now has me at 73-69-2 for the season. It seems that I could have gone 8-2 had I noticed that the Cowboys were (+3) against the Bengals and not (-3), but I picked the game at (-3) and I'll stick with it... Here are my picks for this weekend:
Indianapolis/Houston (Over 48) - Both have been scoring a lot of points...
Indianapolis (+9) @ Houston - The Texans haven't been blowing decent teams out...
Carolina/San Diego (Over 45) - Neither squad here is a defensive juggernaut...
San Francisco/New England (Under 47) - 49ers 'O' and 'D' units are not the Texans...
New York Jets/Tennessee (Under 42) - Will these 2 groups reach 35?...
Detroit (-6) @ Arizona - The Lions should be able to beat this free-falling group...
Pittsburgh/Dallas (Over 44) - Seems like at least low 50's to me...
Seattle/Buffalo (Under 43) - Anticipating the Bills don't have 84 turnovers...
Denver/Baltimore (Under 48) - Law of averages that a Broncos game will go under sometime...
Green Bay (-3) @ Chicago - Bears didn't look great last week, at all...
Okay, we'll see what damage I do with those picks, and yes, I kind of like 'overs' and 'unders'... :) Have a nice weekend everyone!
Good afternoon everyone. Ever since I first heard these lyrics, this song now comes to mind every time that I hear about something senseless that happens in our world. My heart goes out to those closely affected by the stabbings outside of the primary school in China, to those up in Connecticut who are dealing with the elementary school shooting that occurred earlier this morning, and to people everywhere who are dealing with this continuing random violence that is plaguing us...
As we head into this football weekend, I am coming off of a 7-3 showing last weekend, which now has me at 73-69-2 for the season. It seems that I could have gone 8-2 had I noticed that the Cowboys were (+3) against the Bengals and not (-3), but I picked the game at (-3) and I'll stick with it... Here are my picks for this weekend:
Indianapolis/Houston (Over 48) - Both have been scoring a lot of points...
Indianapolis (+9) @ Houston - The Texans haven't been blowing decent teams out...
Carolina/San Diego (Over 45) - Neither squad here is a defensive juggernaut...
San Francisco/New England (Under 47) - 49ers 'O' and 'D' units are not the Texans...
New York Jets/Tennessee (Under 42) - Will these 2 groups reach 35?...
Detroit (-6) @ Arizona - The Lions should be able to beat this free-falling group...
Pittsburgh/Dallas (Over 44) - Seems like at least low 50's to me...
Seattle/Buffalo (Under 43) - Anticipating the Bills don't have 84 turnovers...
Denver/Baltimore (Under 48) - Law of averages that a Broncos game will go under sometime...
Green Bay (-3) @ Chicago - Bears didn't look great last week, at all...
Okay, we'll see what damage I do with those picks, and yes, I kind of like 'overs' and 'unders'... :) Have a nice weekend everyone!
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Three Night Blowout
Good afternoon everyone. It's hard to believe that it's already the 13th of December. My schedule in the immediate future will be on 'autopilot' now because of where we are on the calendar. Most of final exams here at Texas State have been taken by now, so that means that for the next three nights at work, we will be BUSY... Graduation ceremonies here in San Marcos, America take place tomorrow and Saturday, so that means that there will be three FULL NIGHTS of festivities.
Last night I actually worked my whole shift (thanks for the applause), and we were much busier than you'd expect for a Wednesday night where the forecast low temperature was 34 degrees. I was manning the front doors, and these doors were closed because of the cold weather. Invariably, whenever a guy wearing only a short-sleeved shirt, or a girl wearing a skirt came walking through the doors, the ensuing comment was ALWAYS, "it's cold outside!" It's hard not to truly love the college students in San Marcos, America... :)
Another "fun thing" about working the doors is that you see hundreds of people over the course of an evening. The first joy in this comes from the customers entering the bar asking questions like: "Did a blonde girl wearing a black coat come in here?"; "Did three guys leave here?" and on, and on, and on... I'm really more focused on carding people and making sure that everyone in the bar stays calm, and it is SO DISAPPOINTING to the people posing the questions that I haven't memorized everyone that has come and gone. They can't keep track of their friends, but I am supposed to - hmmm.... :) Another result of all of the people who enter and leave the bar, and then return, is that I will card the same people multiple times. This offends some people because I am evidently supposed to remember every total stranger that I've seen on a given night. This always baffles me because it is so difficult to show someone your driver's license... "I have to do this AGAIN..., the HORROR!!!..." :)
Back to my 'autopilot' schedule for the next few weeks... On Sunday I will be scouting NFL games for next Sunday in Las Vegas, and then I will be welcoming the arrival of the holidays with my coworkers. On Monday I will be FORCED to do any packing that I have not done already (which is all of it) for my Tuesday departure to Las Vegas. For any of you planning on robbing my San Marcos, America apartment while I'm out of town, I'm bringing my Droid charger and my sweatpants with me to the desert, so I've already foiled your plans... ;)
So now that I've got the football and poker sponsorship pool all filled up to the top at $1,000.00, one of 'Bikini Hill's' loyal readers (this would make 1 of the 3 of you) showed up at work last night and promptly gave me a couple of 20-dollar bills and a poker chip lighter. Of course I wasn't going to say no to her, so Miletus, you successfully bought 4% of my action... And speaking of this angel, she also pointed out the fact that I've definitely lost weight. Without getting into any serious exercise regimen yet, other than walking around campus recently, and eating quite a bit healthier, I am now down to 223 pounds from 231 pounds. Thank you Miletus... :) Back to the money, this currently brings my share of the pool to 36%, unless any other "shenanigans" occur... Like I said before, I bought up the last 10% of the pool out of greed, so I had some wiggle room there... :)
Although I joked just a few seconds ago about the three loyal readers of this blog, it appears that the total viewcount on 'Bikini Hill' is going to surpass the 18,000 mark before I do my football predictions for this weekend. Thank you very much for supporting the blog - I really do appreciate it... I hope that you have a great day and I will see you again tomorrow with my weekend football predictions!
Last night I actually worked my whole shift (thanks for the applause), and we were much busier than you'd expect for a Wednesday night where the forecast low temperature was 34 degrees. I was manning the front doors, and these doors were closed because of the cold weather. Invariably, whenever a guy wearing only a short-sleeved shirt, or a girl wearing a skirt came walking through the doors, the ensuing comment was ALWAYS, "it's cold outside!" It's hard not to truly love the college students in San Marcos, America... :)
Another "fun thing" about working the doors is that you see hundreds of people over the course of an evening. The first joy in this comes from the customers entering the bar asking questions like: "Did a blonde girl wearing a black coat come in here?"; "Did three guys leave here?" and on, and on, and on... I'm really more focused on carding people and making sure that everyone in the bar stays calm, and it is SO DISAPPOINTING to the people posing the questions that I haven't memorized everyone that has come and gone. They can't keep track of their friends, but I am supposed to - hmmm.... :) Another result of all of the people who enter and leave the bar, and then return, is that I will card the same people multiple times. This offends some people because I am evidently supposed to remember every total stranger that I've seen on a given night. This always baffles me because it is so difficult to show someone your driver's license... "I have to do this AGAIN..., the HORROR!!!..." :)
Back to my 'autopilot' schedule for the next few weeks... On Sunday I will be scouting NFL games for next Sunday in Las Vegas, and then I will be welcoming the arrival of the holidays with my coworkers. On Monday I will be FORCED to do any packing that I have not done already (which is all of it) for my Tuesday departure to Las Vegas. For any of you planning on robbing my San Marcos, America apartment while I'm out of town, I'm bringing my Droid charger and my sweatpants with me to the desert, so I've already foiled your plans... ;)
So now that I've got the football and poker sponsorship pool all filled up to the top at $1,000.00, one of 'Bikini Hill's' loyal readers (this would make 1 of the 3 of you) showed up at work last night and promptly gave me a couple of 20-dollar bills and a poker chip lighter. Of course I wasn't going to say no to her, so Miletus, you successfully bought 4% of my action... And speaking of this angel, she also pointed out the fact that I've definitely lost weight. Without getting into any serious exercise regimen yet, other than walking around campus recently, and eating quite a bit healthier, I am now down to 223 pounds from 231 pounds. Thank you Miletus... :) Back to the money, this currently brings my share of the pool to 36%, unless any other "shenanigans" occur... Like I said before, I bought up the last 10% of the pool out of greed, so I had some wiggle room there... :)
Although I joked just a few seconds ago about the three loyal readers of this blog, it appears that the total viewcount on 'Bikini Hill' is going to surpass the 18,000 mark before I do my football predictions for this weekend. Thank you very much for supporting the blog - I really do appreciate it... I hope that you have a great day and I will see you again tomorrow with my weekend football predictions!
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Sleep
Good afternoon everyone. There's not a lot going on yet here today, but there should be... I worked last night..., well... I was scheduled to work my normal shift, but I was able to take an early out after only two hours. I ended up going to bed at least a couple of hours before I would have had I worked my full shift, and I slept for about TEN hours, which is BY FAR the most that I have slept consecutively in quite a while.
One bright side about getting through my "marathon" two-hour work session last night is that I am just that much closer to boarding the plane for Las Vegas. As I've said before, one of the many good things about this trip is that it will allow me to completely bypass that first week of eerie silence that you experience in San Marcos, America between the long semesters. At this time next week I should be somewhere in the desert, filling out football parlay tickets or playing poker or exchanging worn-down clay casino chips for fresh ones to wear down... :) Maybe I'll be sharing a late breakfast or an early lunch with one of my Vegas friends, or I'll see a pair of familiar windpants pass by me, and I'll yell, "HEY, WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE??!!" And then the chase will ensue, and you'll never hear anything about it, because "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas..." Okay, honestly, if a CHASE actually ensues, you'll probably at least read something about it... :)
As I've said, the football and poker sponsorship pool for my upcoming trip is now filled, and I am grateful for that. Now I need to figure out where and when I'll be playing poker and which football bets I like. I guess that I will be posting some bowl game predictions this week before I leave if I want to include all 35 bowl games. The first bowl games actually take place on Saturday, so I won't be able to include all of them in the ridiculous spree of parlay ticket filling that I will be embarking upon not so far into the future. Yes, I will ONLY be able to book action on 33 of the 35 bowl games my friends (sniffle, sniffle...). Oh yeah, and Week 16 of the NFL schedule, let's not forget that...
Okay, I better get to some of the "constructive" things that I could be doing. I hope that you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow!
One bright side about getting through my "marathon" two-hour work session last night is that I am just that much closer to boarding the plane for Las Vegas. As I've said before, one of the many good things about this trip is that it will allow me to completely bypass that first week of eerie silence that you experience in San Marcos, America between the long semesters. At this time next week I should be somewhere in the desert, filling out football parlay tickets or playing poker or exchanging worn-down clay casino chips for fresh ones to wear down... :) Maybe I'll be sharing a late breakfast or an early lunch with one of my Vegas friends, or I'll see a pair of familiar windpants pass by me, and I'll yell, "HEY, WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE??!!" And then the chase will ensue, and you'll never hear anything about it, because "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas..." Okay, honestly, if a CHASE actually ensues, you'll probably at least read something about it... :)
As I've said, the football and poker sponsorship pool for my upcoming trip is now filled, and I am grateful for that. Now I need to figure out where and when I'll be playing poker and which football bets I like. I guess that I will be posting some bowl game predictions this week before I leave if I want to include all 35 bowl games. The first bowl games actually take place on Saturday, so I won't be able to include all of them in the ridiculous spree of parlay ticket filling that I will be embarking upon not so far into the future. Yes, I will ONLY be able to book action on 33 of the 35 bowl games my friends (sniffle, sniffle...). Oh yeah, and Week 16 of the NFL schedule, let's not forget that...
Okay, I better get to some of the "constructive" things that I could be doing. I hope that you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow!
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Bah Humbug
Good morning everyone. I hope that all of the "it's FINALLY going to be cold" people in San Marcos, America are happy now... It's almost 9:00 a.m. as I begin typing this and the temperature is THIRTY-FOUR degrees - BRRRRR... And yes, I AM armed with hot chocolate for the second day in a row at the keyboard...
There are many of you who are not friends of mine of facebook, so you're probably unaware of the fact that at the end of last week, on the last class day of the fall semester at Texas State, I had made a comment about the student population being preoccupied. This came as a result of a walk that I was taking around campus, and seeing some "unusual" driving, which is saying something for the college town of San Marcos, America... Well, fast forward to last night, when I'm driving down the hill to go watch the "confrontation" between the Houston Texans and the New England Patriots (I'm looking like a GENIUS right now if the Seahawks hadn't destroyed the Cardinals on Sunday, or even if Mojo hadn't picked the Seahawks)... :) Anyway, I reach the convenience store at the bottom of the hill, which already has a police cruiser in it accompanying the heavy traffic for this small parking lot. SUDDENLY I'm SLAMMING MY BRAKES as a BIG pickup truck decides to make the left turn across my nose, coupled with the BRILLIANT DECISION to then STOP right in my path, which probably resulted from a combination of hearing my brakes AND realizing that there was really nowhere for him to land in that parking lot. Thankfully my vehicle stopped after slightly fishtailing and skidding closer to his truck. At that point I had nothing left to do but hit my horn as his truck creeped its way into the crowded parking lot, just hoping that the police officer had either seen or heard the near miss.
So back to football, I went 7-3 on my predictions for this week, and am now 4 games above the .500 mark for the season. I had an interesting comment on yesterday's blog entry that the Dallas game may have been the Cowboys (+3) when I picked them to beat the Bengals, but I went back and saw that I had typed in (-3) when I selected them. I would have taken Dallas (-3) in that game, so I'll stick with taking the loss (especially considering that there was no money riding on it). My mistake in giving away the six extra points if the line did not actually change that much. As I sit here typing this, I'm thinking that maybe the line could have changed almost a touchdown due to the fatality accident involving the Cowboys nose tackle and one of the practice squad players this past weekend. I enter my picks with the Friday morning lines, and I stick with those numbers regardless of any subsequent movement in the lines. Thank you M. Prosk for trying to make me look better though, which is definitely a monumental task... :)
A couple of short stories from my station in the hallway at work this week for ya... At the "checkpoint" that I monitor, where no beer bottles or glasses are allowed to pass, the customers are required to transfer their beverages into plastic cups. Well a few nights ago (although I should honestly NEVER be baffled by anything that I see at this point), as a guy holds the plastic cup while the girl that he's with pours her beer into it, he holds the cup parallel to the ground so that the beer won't foam up (which I really appreciate). The problem is, he NEVER tilts the cup upward, and the beer inevitably spills from the STILL parallel cup onto the floor... :o Merp...
Someone actually made me smile later in the week without me having to clean up anything... :) A couple of the university's football players were ascending the stairs on their way to The Veranda (which I have been told on more than one occasion are quite numerous, and thank you very much for pointing that out to me), when the second of the two grabs his hamstring in jest as they pass by... I'm now surprised that it took almost three months for someone to think of that...
Oh, one more from work, and this made me laugh out loud when it happened... There is a corner that you have to round before you approach the doorway cutout (there is no door there) that I am stationed behind, and I was using the top of the doorway to stretch (basically imagine me signaling a 'touchdown' while propped up on my tippy toes - I'm six foot tall to begin with also)... As the first girl in a group rounds the corner, she looks to her left, then looks back to her right, up at me, and GASPS... I start laughing as she backtracks into our 'shot bar' EXCLAIMING, "that was terrifying..." :) By the time her group made their way past me a few minutes later, I was immersed in a conversation with... somebody??, and was unable to let her know that I get that reaction all the time... ;)
I hope that this little ramble is enough to get you through this cold and bitter day, and I'll see you again tomorrow with some Las Vegas vacation chatter... Have a great day!
There are many of you who are not friends of mine of facebook, so you're probably unaware of the fact that at the end of last week, on the last class day of the fall semester at Texas State, I had made a comment about the student population being preoccupied. This came as a result of a walk that I was taking around campus, and seeing some "unusual" driving, which is saying something for the college town of San Marcos, America... Well, fast forward to last night, when I'm driving down the hill to go watch the "confrontation" between the Houston Texans and the New England Patriots (I'm looking like a GENIUS right now if the Seahawks hadn't destroyed the Cardinals on Sunday, or even if Mojo hadn't picked the Seahawks)... :) Anyway, I reach the convenience store at the bottom of the hill, which already has a police cruiser in it accompanying the heavy traffic for this small parking lot. SUDDENLY I'm SLAMMING MY BRAKES as a BIG pickup truck decides to make the left turn across my nose, coupled with the BRILLIANT DECISION to then STOP right in my path, which probably resulted from a combination of hearing my brakes AND realizing that there was really nowhere for him to land in that parking lot. Thankfully my vehicle stopped after slightly fishtailing and skidding closer to his truck. At that point I had nothing left to do but hit my horn as his truck creeped its way into the crowded parking lot, just hoping that the police officer had either seen or heard the near miss.
So back to football, I went 7-3 on my predictions for this week, and am now 4 games above the .500 mark for the season. I had an interesting comment on yesterday's blog entry that the Dallas game may have been the Cowboys (+3) when I picked them to beat the Bengals, but I went back and saw that I had typed in (-3) when I selected them. I would have taken Dallas (-3) in that game, so I'll stick with taking the loss (especially considering that there was no money riding on it). My mistake in giving away the six extra points if the line did not actually change that much. As I sit here typing this, I'm thinking that maybe the line could have changed almost a touchdown due to the fatality accident involving the Cowboys nose tackle and one of the practice squad players this past weekend. I enter my picks with the Friday morning lines, and I stick with those numbers regardless of any subsequent movement in the lines. Thank you M. Prosk for trying to make me look better though, which is definitely a monumental task... :)
A couple of short stories from my station in the hallway at work this week for ya... At the "checkpoint" that I monitor, where no beer bottles or glasses are allowed to pass, the customers are required to transfer their beverages into plastic cups. Well a few nights ago (although I should honestly NEVER be baffled by anything that I see at this point), as a guy holds the plastic cup while the girl that he's with pours her beer into it, he holds the cup parallel to the ground so that the beer won't foam up (which I really appreciate). The problem is, he NEVER tilts the cup upward, and the beer inevitably spills from the STILL parallel cup onto the floor... :o Merp...
Someone actually made me smile later in the week without me having to clean up anything... :) A couple of the university's football players were ascending the stairs on their way to The Veranda (which I have been told on more than one occasion are quite numerous, and thank you very much for pointing that out to me), when the second of the two grabs his hamstring in jest as they pass by... I'm now surprised that it took almost three months for someone to think of that...
Oh, one more from work, and this made me laugh out loud when it happened... There is a corner that you have to round before you approach the doorway cutout (there is no door there) that I am stationed behind, and I was using the top of the doorway to stretch (basically imagine me signaling a 'touchdown' while propped up on my tippy toes - I'm six foot tall to begin with also)... As the first girl in a group rounds the corner, she looks to her left, then looks back to her right, up at me, and GASPS... I start laughing as she backtracks into our 'shot bar' EXCLAIMING, "that was terrifying..." :) By the time her group made their way past me a few minutes later, I was immersed in a conversation with... somebody??, and was unable to let her know that I get that reaction all the time... ;)
I hope that this little ramble is enough to get you through this cold and bitter day, and I'll see you again tomorrow with some Las Vegas vacation chatter... Have a great day!
Monday, December 10, 2012
Bleak
Good afternoon everyone. Things are pretty bleak here on 'Bikini Hill' right now, and in every way imaginable... After the temperatures reached a high of 79 degrees here yesterday, the current temperature is only 45 degrees, and yes, I'm drinking hot chocolate right now... I am not a fan of the cold weather at all. The forecast high for today is only 54 degrees, and the low temperature tonight is supposed to be 27 degrees - BRRRRRR... Final exams are also ongoing as I type as this is the last week of the semester on campus, and the last week before San Marcos, America becomes eerily quiet for a whole month. One of the old gang who is out at Texas Tech right now probably captured every student's mood in a facebook post a little while ago when she stated, "hope my Spanish final doesn't rip out my heart and light it on fire!!!" Good luck to all of the students across our great nation who are currently taking their final exams - it's a very stressful time indeed... I would normally sleep for no more than a couple of hours at a time when I had to take my finals, and then I would sleep for about three days straight after the semester ended...
After being greedy and gobbling up the last 10% of my Las Vegas sponsorship pool (for a personal total of 40%), the $1,000.00 goal has been reached and I have collected over $830.00 of that total. The outstanding money is as good as gold considering who hasn't paid me yet (comprised of a small group of people that includes my dad), so I'm pretty close to being ready to leave for the desert next week. Back to the weather, because this particular blog is the most interesting one ever, this current cold snap has me recalling some brutally bitter winter nights in Las Vegas where the wind actually blows quite hard... Again, BRRRRRR...
I watched as much football as I could stand yesterday after working through a very busy weekend, and I was able to see my picks finish the day with a 5-3 record. The total amount of points scored in the Dolphins/49ers game was 40, and I picked under 39, so I was that close to going to 6-2 for the day. I also selected the Cowboys at (-3) over the Bengals, and Dallas won the game by just one point, so I was that close to going 7-1 on the day... :) Anyway, tonight I have the Patriots (-3) over the Texans, and I have Houston and New England combining to score more than 51 points.
Speaking of football, while I was watching yesterday's late action unfold, I happened to open the blog application on my Droid and saw that my friend grrouchie had done a short blog post. In the very elite Lucki Duck blogger football prognosticator contest, which has been very tightly contested at the top, Mr. Grrouchie made the observation that Memphis Mojo must have the ability to see into the future (or that he went back to the future, Marty McFly style.., I don't really remember)... Anyway, in this contest where every single point that your team wins by benefits you, Mr. Mojo happened to pick the Seahawks this weekend, and yes, Seattle just scored again, and the score is now 58 to NOTHING... I happen to have the Patriots in this contest tonight because I don't believe that the Texans play much defense, so don't judge me if I'm rooting for the final score to be 70-0 New England... Great week Mojo - WOW...
Speaking of Droids, a little while back I touted amazon.com for the very inexpensive Body Glove protective case that I had purchased online. While I still tout amazon.com, the top of this case very quickly lost its hold on my Droid, so I ordered another, even cheaper case (less than $2.00), to replace the Body Glove one. Funny story, when the new case arrived, I COULD NOT remove the bottom of the Body Glove case from my Droid, and I didn't want to damage my phone by going all out to do so, and this leaves me with a hybrid phone case. I have a metallic blue top piece, and a black bottom piece... My apartment manager told me that the case looks like it could have been sold like that, so that's good enough for me... :)
Speaking of football (I did a while ago), did anyone else watch my Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday??? I don't think that I can ever recall a team having such horrid starting field position throughout the course of an entire game. What's worse is that my Steelers, who have lost SEVERAL close games this season, are STILL the sixth-seed in the AFC playoff race with a mediocre 7-6 record. The only team in the AFC North that did win yesterday was the Cleveland Browns - what a crazy football season...
Speaking of speaking of stuff, I have quite a few errands to do today, so I will leave you with rooting for the Patriots and more than 51 points to be scored tonight as your good deed for the day. Bundle up and have a good one!
After being greedy and gobbling up the last 10% of my Las Vegas sponsorship pool (for a personal total of 40%), the $1,000.00 goal has been reached and I have collected over $830.00 of that total. The outstanding money is as good as gold considering who hasn't paid me yet (comprised of a small group of people that includes my dad), so I'm pretty close to being ready to leave for the desert next week. Back to the weather, because this particular blog is the most interesting one ever, this current cold snap has me recalling some brutally bitter winter nights in Las Vegas where the wind actually blows quite hard... Again, BRRRRRR...
I watched as much football as I could stand yesterday after working through a very busy weekend, and I was able to see my picks finish the day with a 5-3 record. The total amount of points scored in the Dolphins/49ers game was 40, and I picked under 39, so I was that close to going to 6-2 for the day. I also selected the Cowboys at (-3) over the Bengals, and Dallas won the game by just one point, so I was that close to going 7-1 on the day... :) Anyway, tonight I have the Patriots (-3) over the Texans, and I have Houston and New England combining to score more than 51 points.
Speaking of football, while I was watching yesterday's late action unfold, I happened to open the blog application on my Droid and saw that my friend grrouchie had done a short blog post. In the very elite Lucki Duck blogger football prognosticator contest, which has been very tightly contested at the top, Mr. Grrouchie made the observation that Memphis Mojo must have the ability to see into the future (or that he went back to the future, Marty McFly style.., I don't really remember)... Anyway, in this contest where every single point that your team wins by benefits you, Mr. Mojo happened to pick the Seahawks this weekend, and yes, Seattle just scored again, and the score is now 58 to NOTHING... I happen to have the Patriots in this contest tonight because I don't believe that the Texans play much defense, so don't judge me if I'm rooting for the final score to be 70-0 New England... Great week Mojo - WOW...
Speaking of Droids, a little while back I touted amazon.com for the very inexpensive Body Glove protective case that I had purchased online. While I still tout amazon.com, the top of this case very quickly lost its hold on my Droid, so I ordered another, even cheaper case (less than $2.00), to replace the Body Glove one. Funny story, when the new case arrived, I COULD NOT remove the bottom of the Body Glove case from my Droid, and I didn't want to damage my phone by going all out to do so, and this leaves me with a hybrid phone case. I have a metallic blue top piece, and a black bottom piece... My apartment manager told me that the case looks like it could have been sold like that, so that's good enough for me... :)
Speaking of football (I did a while ago), did anyone else watch my Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday??? I don't think that I can ever recall a team having such horrid starting field position throughout the course of an entire game. What's worse is that my Steelers, who have lost SEVERAL close games this season, are STILL the sixth-seed in the AFC playoff race with a mediocre 7-6 record. The only team in the AFC North that did win yesterday was the Cleveland Browns - what a crazy football season...
Speaking of speaking of stuff, I have quite a few errands to do today, so I will leave you with rooting for the Patriots and more than 51 points to be scored tonight as your good deed for the day. Bundle up and have a good one!
Friday, December 7, 2012
Poise And Rationality
"It's much better to face these kinds of things, with a sense of poise and rationality..."
-Panic! At The Disco- (I Write Sins Not Tragedies)
Good morning everyone. When I woke up before work yesterday to have a snack and play some timed MSN chess (don't judge me), for some reason I decided that I would play the song shown above through my YouTube during the game. This song came out when I lived in Las Vegas between 2005-2007. The funny thing is that I rarely listen to the song and I do not know the lyrics to it. As I listened to the song, the lyrics shown above really caught my attention. They are very relevant to me right now as I prepare to embark on my trip to the desert with $1,000.00 of mine and my friends money. What better advice could you get for playing poker and picking football games to wager on than the lyrics shown above? Poise and rationality - very nice... I have currently collected $670.00 of a pledged $790.00. A friend who is already in the pool for over $100.00 said that he would go in for another $100.00 if I needed it at the end, so I'm pretty confident that I'll reach my bankroll goal. It is pretty exciting to have my first sponsorship deal of any sort, and it is extremely gratifying to have so many friends who trust me to this extent.
Speaking of my friends... :) I know that I don't usually inject humor into my football Fridays (some of you would argue that I don't inject humor into ANY of my blog entries), but when I arrived at work last night, I happened upon the BEST conversation between my manager and another bartender. The two of them are competing in the same fantasy football league. My manager would have a playoff spot if the season ended today, and the bartender, who is the commissioner of the league, does not currently hold a playoff spot. Evidently, the bartender contacted my manager's opponent for this week and gave him some advice on who he should be starting in his fantasy lineup this week - the opponent is not in contention for a playoff position. The opponent took the bartender's advice, and after being a 20-point underdog with his old lineup, he is now only a 7-point underdog with the revised lineup. The BEST PART of the conversation occurred when my manager stated, "you called him and told him to change his lineup!..." The bartender's response was, "I didn't call him, I e-mailed him..." :) Good luck to all of you who are still participating in fantasy football leagues this season...
Well, this promises to be a "scary" weekend in that all ten of my football predictions will have to be NFL related. Of course, this is what I will face when I'm wagering our pool money on NFL Week 16 action, so let's take a few trial runs... I went 5-5 last weekend, which brings my overall season total to 66-66-2. Below are my NFL picks for this weekend:
Arizona/Seattle (Over 35) - SUCH a low number...
New England (-3 1/2) vs. Houston - The Texans don't play a lot of defense and...
Houston/New England (Over 51) - the Texans do play a lot of offense...
Tennessee/Indianapolis (Over 48) - Both teams score, game is in the dome...
Dallas (-3) at Cincinnati - Cowboys just seem a tier above the Bengals...
Philadelphia/Tampa Bay (Under 47 1/2) - Feels like around 40 to me...
Atlanta (-3 1/2) @ Carolina - One loss Falcons at mediocre Panthers...
New York Jets/Jacksonville (Under 38 1/2) - Jets don't score or yield scores...
San Diego/Pittsburgh (Over 41 1/2) - I expect some big plays in this game (inc. D/ST)...
Miami/San Francisco (Under 39) - The 49ers would have to score most of this...
I hope that all of you have a great weekend and I'll see you again on Monday!
-Panic! At The Disco- (I Write Sins Not Tragedies)
Good morning everyone. When I woke up before work yesterday to have a snack and play some timed MSN chess (don't judge me), for some reason I decided that I would play the song shown above through my YouTube during the game. This song came out when I lived in Las Vegas between 2005-2007. The funny thing is that I rarely listen to the song and I do not know the lyrics to it. As I listened to the song, the lyrics shown above really caught my attention. They are very relevant to me right now as I prepare to embark on my trip to the desert with $1,000.00 of mine and my friends money. What better advice could you get for playing poker and picking football games to wager on than the lyrics shown above? Poise and rationality - very nice... I have currently collected $670.00 of a pledged $790.00. A friend who is already in the pool for over $100.00 said that he would go in for another $100.00 if I needed it at the end, so I'm pretty confident that I'll reach my bankroll goal. It is pretty exciting to have my first sponsorship deal of any sort, and it is extremely gratifying to have so many friends who trust me to this extent.
Speaking of my friends... :) I know that I don't usually inject humor into my football Fridays (some of you would argue that I don't inject humor into ANY of my blog entries), but when I arrived at work last night, I happened upon the BEST conversation between my manager and another bartender. The two of them are competing in the same fantasy football league. My manager would have a playoff spot if the season ended today, and the bartender, who is the commissioner of the league, does not currently hold a playoff spot. Evidently, the bartender contacted my manager's opponent for this week and gave him some advice on who he should be starting in his fantasy lineup this week - the opponent is not in contention for a playoff position. The opponent took the bartender's advice, and after being a 20-point underdog with his old lineup, he is now only a 7-point underdog with the revised lineup. The BEST PART of the conversation occurred when my manager stated, "you called him and told him to change his lineup!..." The bartender's response was, "I didn't call him, I e-mailed him..." :) Good luck to all of you who are still participating in fantasy football leagues this season...
Well, this promises to be a "scary" weekend in that all ten of my football predictions will have to be NFL related. Of course, this is what I will face when I'm wagering our pool money on NFL Week 16 action, so let's take a few trial runs... I went 5-5 last weekend, which brings my overall season total to 66-66-2. Below are my NFL picks for this weekend:
Arizona/Seattle (Over 35) - SUCH a low number...
New England (-3 1/2) vs. Houston - The Texans don't play a lot of defense and...
Houston/New England (Over 51) - the Texans do play a lot of offense...
Tennessee/Indianapolis (Over 48) - Both teams score, game is in the dome...
Dallas (-3) at Cincinnati - Cowboys just seem a tier above the Bengals...
Philadelphia/Tampa Bay (Under 47 1/2) - Feels like around 40 to me...
Atlanta (-3 1/2) @ Carolina - One loss Falcons at mediocre Panthers...
New York Jets/Jacksonville (Under 38 1/2) - Jets don't score or yield scores...
San Diego/Pittsburgh (Over 41 1/2) - I expect some big plays in this game (inc. D/ST)...
Miami/San Francisco (Under 39) - The 49ers would have to score most of this...
I hope that all of you have a great weekend and I'll see you again on Monday!
Thursday, December 6, 2012
You're Like A Gummy Bear
Good morning everyone. Today is the official last day of classes at Alma Mater U. That means that I better get ready to work this weekend and that I better get myself in gear for my trip to Vegas. I have now collected $530.00 of a pledged $700.00 toward my goal of $1,000.00, and tonight is the night that I'm really going to start asking people if they want to be involved in the sponsorship pool... ;) When I mention how we'll have action on every random bowl game that comes on t.v. while we're in-between the fall and spring semesters, well..., everyone seems to light up at that prospect as much as I do... :)
I have probably mentioned that I make several trips to the campus library of my alma mater. I recently realized that when I look the windows at the lights of San Marcos, America, I ponder the same question as when I'm looking out at the lights of Las Vegas: what is going on out there?...
Recently I was in the check-out line at Wal-Mart (this seems like a frequent occurrence lately) when I spotted this item in this packaging on the shelf (I SWEAR that I'm not making this up): "Pajama Jeans: Pajamas You Live In - Jeans You Sleep In..." I can't say anything to improve on that... :)
So I was at work just last night... :) I was positioned outside behind our tier of three bars when the following occurred... During the slower nights of the week, our middle bar is closed, and our customers initially make their way up the "fire escape" stairs to go up to The Veranda, which is our rooftop destination. Obviously, the customers also exit down this same stairway when leaving. Let me say at this point that the low temperature for San Marcos, America last night was supposed to be 46 degrees. I was wearing two sweatshirts to combat the elements, my favorite forest-green Nike sweatshirt, and my heavier gray Polo hoodie. This Polo hoodie is big enough that it EASILY slips over the Nike sweatshirt underneath when I'm wearing the duo together. So these four young ladies are making their way down the stairs. Two of the girls are well ahead of the other pair. As the first of the two ladies approaches me at the bottom of the stairs, she inquires, "aren't you cold out here?" The Veranda has heaters, and these girls had just walked down the long indoor hallway (through "the maze" as some people might call it - GRRRRR....), so this question was understandable (and thoughtful)... :) I nodded that I was fine when the first girl came up and gave me a hug. Right behind her, the second young lady came up and hugged me, and then she EXCLAIMED..., "You're Like A GUMMY BEARRR!!!" :) I couldn't stop myself from laughing (nor could her friend), as she made this "discovery" - of course this was followed by immediately turning toward the entrance to Harper's, our lower-level bar, stating, "He's Like A GUMMY BEARRR!!!" I'm assuming that this was due to the marshmellowy clothing that I was wearing, looking and feeling (evidently) much like a preppy version of the Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man (for all of you 'Ghostbusters' fans out there)... :)
I'm not going to improve on that little tale, so I'll see you again tomorrow when I post my football picks for this coming weekend (ALL of which must be NFL - YIKES!!)... Have a great day!
I have probably mentioned that I make several trips to the campus library of my alma mater. I recently realized that when I look the windows at the lights of San Marcos, America, I ponder the same question as when I'm looking out at the lights of Las Vegas: what is going on out there?...
Recently I was in the check-out line at Wal-Mart (this seems like a frequent occurrence lately) when I spotted this item in this packaging on the shelf (I SWEAR that I'm not making this up): "Pajama Jeans: Pajamas You Live In - Jeans You Sleep In..." I can't say anything to improve on that... :)
So I was at work just last night... :) I was positioned outside behind our tier of three bars when the following occurred... During the slower nights of the week, our middle bar is closed, and our customers initially make their way up the "fire escape" stairs to go up to The Veranda, which is our rooftop destination. Obviously, the customers also exit down this same stairway when leaving. Let me say at this point that the low temperature for San Marcos, America last night was supposed to be 46 degrees. I was wearing two sweatshirts to combat the elements, my favorite forest-green Nike sweatshirt, and my heavier gray Polo hoodie. This Polo hoodie is big enough that it EASILY slips over the Nike sweatshirt underneath when I'm wearing the duo together. So these four young ladies are making their way down the stairs. Two of the girls are well ahead of the other pair. As the first of the two ladies approaches me at the bottom of the stairs, she inquires, "aren't you cold out here?" The Veranda has heaters, and these girls had just walked down the long indoor hallway (through "the maze" as some people might call it - GRRRRR....), so this question was understandable (and thoughtful)... :) I nodded that I was fine when the first girl came up and gave me a hug. Right behind her, the second young lady came up and hugged me, and then she EXCLAIMED..., "You're Like A GUMMY BEARRR!!!" :) I couldn't stop myself from laughing (nor could her friend), as she made this "discovery" - of course this was followed by immediately turning toward the entrance to Harper's, our lower-level bar, stating, "He's Like A GUMMY BEARRR!!!" I'm assuming that this was due to the marshmellowy clothing that I was wearing, looking and feeling (evidently) much like a preppy version of the Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man (for all of you 'Ghostbusters' fans out there)... :)
I'm not going to improve on that little tale, so I'll see you again tomorrow when I post my football picks for this coming weekend (ALL of which must be NFL - YIKES!!)... Have a great day!
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Thirteen Days
Good morning everyone. I'm just less than two weeks away from my trip to Las Vegas and I'm still not as prepared as I would like to be. I did manage to copy the complete bowl schedule by hand at the library over the past couple of days, and I will probably be looking over it most every day until I depart for the desert. At some point in time before I go I intend to give you my predicted final score for all thirty-five bowl games, along with how those scores relate to the spread and the overs/unders. When you look at these games for yourself, be sure to note that there are a significant number of teams that are playing in their home states. As always, it will be interesting to see how much the lines move between now and the kickoff for each of the games. As I've also said here recently, I will be wagering on the NFL's Week 16 games, and that Sunday is a day that I plan on spending at the LVH with all of the big screens broadcasting the action, specifically for me of course... ;) While I'm typing about it, there won't be an NFL Monday night game in either Week 16 or Week 17 this season. I'm assuming that is because those days happen to be Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. My incredibly difficult-to-peg Steelers are about to host 3 of their final 4 games, for the one Steelers fan that I may have who follows this blog... :)
On the poker front, I have to get focused and figure out which tournaments I want to play in when I visit town. After my abrupt departure from Vegas at the end of August, I have brought up the Bravo Poker Application on my phone maybe once. The only reason that I'm really thinking about it right now is that the app was one of several that I updated on my Droid earlier this morning. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this application, it gives you the distance that are you from any poker room participating in the program. It also tells you how many cash games they are running, when their tournaments are held, and basically any other information that they take the initiative to enter (like room promotions, etc...). For the month of August, I basically broke even in the cash games that I participated in, and I didn't play in any tournaments that required a buy-in. I have traditionally done well in tournaments, and quite honestly, I should probably dedicate a larger portion of my poker bankroll there when I do play. Throughout the course of my life, I have been fortunate to have some sort of talent in many different areas, but this can also serve as a detriment to me because I'll often feel that I have the ability to do anything successfully (for example, to play as well in cash games as I do in tournaments)... And YES Rob, and I am looking forward to playing in a cash game with you, and I'm hitting town from the 18th-24th, so be sure to mark it on your calendar... :)
If there are any of you who read this blog who want to get together to enjoy some poker or football when I am in the desert, you can contact me through the comment section here (something that I won't publish of course, unless you want that). You can also contact me through my twitter account listed at the top of this page. My sponsorship pool is up to $590.00 in pledges now, and I have collected $520.00 of that, so I'm pretty confident in being able to raise most, if not all of the $1,000.00 goal that I've set.
Have a great day everyone and I'll see you again tomorrow!
On the poker front, I have to get focused and figure out which tournaments I want to play in when I visit town. After my abrupt departure from Vegas at the end of August, I have brought up the Bravo Poker Application on my phone maybe once. The only reason that I'm really thinking about it right now is that the app was one of several that I updated on my Droid earlier this morning. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this application, it gives you the distance that are you from any poker room participating in the program. It also tells you how many cash games they are running, when their tournaments are held, and basically any other information that they take the initiative to enter (like room promotions, etc...). For the month of August, I basically broke even in the cash games that I participated in, and I didn't play in any tournaments that required a buy-in. I have traditionally done well in tournaments, and quite honestly, I should probably dedicate a larger portion of my poker bankroll there when I do play. Throughout the course of my life, I have been fortunate to have some sort of talent in many different areas, but this can also serve as a detriment to me because I'll often feel that I have the ability to do anything successfully (for example, to play as well in cash games as I do in tournaments)... And YES Rob, and I am looking forward to playing in a cash game with you, and I'm hitting town from the 18th-24th, so be sure to mark it on your calendar... :)
If there are any of you who read this blog who want to get together to enjoy some poker or football when I am in the desert, you can contact me through the comment section here (something that I won't publish of course, unless you want that). You can also contact me through my twitter account listed at the top of this page. My sponsorship pool is up to $590.00 in pledges now, and I have collected $520.00 of that, so I'm pretty confident in being able to raise most, if not all of the $1,000.00 goal that I've set.
Have a great day everyone and I'll see you again tomorrow!
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Rainy Day Ramble
Good afternoon everyone. I know that usually says "good morning" over to the left, but you know how when it's raining and you just stay in bed??? Well, I wasn't even aware that it had been raining in San Marcos, America this morning until I ventured to the bank, and as I returned home via the 'Bikini Hill' route, I was painfully reminded that I got a slow start on my chores yesterday and had decided that I would visit 'Bikini Hill' today. Yeah, not so much...
Last night I did get a significant amount accomplished as I visited the campus library for four hours. Yes, you read that right, for FOUR HOURS, and that was all spent sitting in the same place at a table where my Droid charger could reach an outlet so that I could listen to iHeartRadio while taking my first official look at the college bowl games. I did not even go near the couches or the magazine rack, which is the reason that I usually make the trek to the library anyway. Another pitfall of the hole in time between the fall and spring semesters here in San Marcos, America is that the library's hours will be severely cut - THERE ARE NO CLASSES... Ugghhh... I will escape this dead quiet for one week when I venture out to the desert, and I'll at least have the bowl games to distract me until the 7th of January, but still... By the way, today is the perfect backdrop for the upcoming month of quiet about to hit town - grey..., bleak..., yuck... :)
So I hit WalMart at about 9:30 last night after leaving the library. I usually do my shopping after work, sometime after 4:00 in the morning. There are actually PEOPLE in WalMart at 9:30 at night, believe it or not... :) The most interesting (and odd) thing that I noticed last night as I did my shopping is that the idea people behind the scenes at WalMart have eventually run out of them... You know those merchandise islands that I wrote about not too long ago, one of which 'backpedaling guy' crashed into... Well, I thought that those point of those was to spotlight some special item that the store wants to draw attention to in hope of really boosting its sales. You'll NEVER GUESS what item I spotted on a merchandise island last night. Go ahead, try to guess... :) Freakin CRACKERS were displayed on the merchandise island (okay, they had both salted and unsalted, I'll give them that), but..., CRACKERS?! I know, the things that amuse me...
So now I have collected $520.00 of the pledged $590.00 of the $1,000.00 that I am raising for my trip to Las Vegas in two weeks. Can't you just FEEL the wiseguys at the sportsbooks CRINGING as my fingers hit the keys on my keyboard, and the poker players around town suddenly feeling uneasy??? ;) I have once again started playing the free poker with the fish at MSN to prepare myself for life with the fish in Las Vegas... A few days ago I flopped two-pair and a guy with Q 3 chased a gutshot straight draw and hit runner-runner queens to beat me in the hand. That's the most memorable suckout of the past few days, but it is free, ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES for playing badly, so it's hard to say much (you KNOW that I told him "good call" though, don't you?)... :)
So here's a couple of obligatory work stories for you from this week. This first one actually happens quite frequently, but since we had a busy weekend with the last home football game of the season, this occurred just that much more. I can (and often do) have a line of twenty people or more waiting to go up to The Veranda (our rooftop bar). I try to get these people to stand to the right side of the stairwell so that the people going downstairs have room to pass by them. Inevitably, especially this past weekend, I'd have groups of 3 or 4 come up the stairs, bypassing the WHOLE LINE on the left side and walking right up to me. This always leave me gesturing and nodding my head toward the group lined up against the wall on the stairwell as the words, "that's a LINE" come out of my mouth, to which I more often than not get an, "OHHH" in response... REALLY??? :)
What also happened this weekend was that when a couple who is new to the bar passed by my station, going up the often complained about "million stairs" (YES, someone actually said that the walk to The Veranda was made up of ONE MILLION stairs this weekend...), the woman turns to the guy and says, "how is this place going to stay open?" I turned my head toward the couple when I heard her inquiry, just in time for the guy to remark, "actually, they're pretty successful..." I looked down at my counter and was sure that she would soon realize this as there were already 160 people enjoying themselves up on at The Veranda... If you're not aware, the combination of the three bars that I work for, Harper's/Slackers/Veranda are the most successful bars in San Marcos, America, and it's not even close... "How is this place going to stay open?" Pfffttt... :)
I hope that all of you have a great day and I will see you again tomorrow with some more specific and detailed football and poker chatter... ;)
Last night I did get a significant amount accomplished as I visited the campus library for four hours. Yes, you read that right, for FOUR HOURS, and that was all spent sitting in the same place at a table where my Droid charger could reach an outlet so that I could listen to iHeartRadio while taking my first official look at the college bowl games. I did not even go near the couches or the magazine rack, which is the reason that I usually make the trek to the library anyway. Another pitfall of the hole in time between the fall and spring semesters here in San Marcos, America is that the library's hours will be severely cut - THERE ARE NO CLASSES... Ugghhh... I will escape this dead quiet for one week when I venture out to the desert, and I'll at least have the bowl games to distract me until the 7th of January, but still... By the way, today is the perfect backdrop for the upcoming month of quiet about to hit town - grey..., bleak..., yuck... :)
So I hit WalMart at about 9:30 last night after leaving the library. I usually do my shopping after work, sometime after 4:00 in the morning. There are actually PEOPLE in WalMart at 9:30 at night, believe it or not... :) The most interesting (and odd) thing that I noticed last night as I did my shopping is that the idea people behind the scenes at WalMart have eventually run out of them... You know those merchandise islands that I wrote about not too long ago, one of which 'backpedaling guy' crashed into... Well, I thought that those point of those was to spotlight some special item that the store wants to draw attention to in hope of really boosting its sales. You'll NEVER GUESS what item I spotted on a merchandise island last night. Go ahead, try to guess... :) Freakin CRACKERS were displayed on the merchandise island (okay, they had both salted and unsalted, I'll give them that), but..., CRACKERS?! I know, the things that amuse me...
So now I have collected $520.00 of the pledged $590.00 of the $1,000.00 that I am raising for my trip to Las Vegas in two weeks. Can't you just FEEL the wiseguys at the sportsbooks CRINGING as my fingers hit the keys on my keyboard, and the poker players around town suddenly feeling uneasy??? ;) I have once again started playing the free poker with the fish at MSN to prepare myself for life with the fish in Las Vegas... A few days ago I flopped two-pair and a guy with Q 3 chased a gutshot straight draw and hit runner-runner queens to beat me in the hand. That's the most memorable suckout of the past few days, but it is free, ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES for playing badly, so it's hard to say much (you KNOW that I told him "good call" though, don't you?)... :)
So here's a couple of obligatory work stories for you from this week. This first one actually happens quite frequently, but since we had a busy weekend with the last home football game of the season, this occurred just that much more. I can (and often do) have a line of twenty people or more waiting to go up to The Veranda (our rooftop bar). I try to get these people to stand to the right side of the stairwell so that the people going downstairs have room to pass by them. Inevitably, especially this past weekend, I'd have groups of 3 or 4 come up the stairs, bypassing the WHOLE LINE on the left side and walking right up to me. This always leave me gesturing and nodding my head toward the group lined up against the wall on the stairwell as the words, "that's a LINE" come out of my mouth, to which I more often than not get an, "OHHH" in response... REALLY??? :)
What also happened this weekend was that when a couple who is new to the bar passed by my station, going up the often complained about "million stairs" (YES, someone actually said that the walk to The Veranda was made up of ONE MILLION stairs this weekend...), the woman turns to the guy and says, "how is this place going to stay open?" I turned my head toward the couple when I heard her inquiry, just in time for the guy to remark, "actually, they're pretty successful..." I looked down at my counter and was sure that she would soon realize this as there were already 160 people enjoying themselves up on at The Veranda... If you're not aware, the combination of the three bars that I work for, Harper's/Slackers/Veranda are the most successful bars in San Marcos, America, and it's not even close... "How is this place going to stay open?" Pfffttt... :)
I hope that all of you have a great day and I will see you again tomorrow with some more specific and detailed football and poker chatter... ;)
Friday, November 30, 2012
I Don't Trust David Stern
Good morning everyone. Today I am still going to give you my football picks for this weekend, but a timely basketball story arose that I must give some attention to. Shortly after arriving at work last night, I saw on a muted t.v. screen that David Stern is planning on giving the San Antonio Spurs sanctions as punishment for resting four of their players last night. Nevermind that the Spurs were playing their 4th road game in 5 nights, and disregard the fact that this was also their 6th road game in 9 days. The 10-day road trip that San Antonio just completed was also tacked onto a 6-day road trip that the team endured earlier in the month. Coincidentally, for this nationally televised Thursday night game in Miami, the Heat were only playing in their fifth game PERIOD over the last 2 weeks... The Spurs are resting their veterans to put their team in the best possible position to compete for a championship, and David Stern is upset with San Antonio because the NBA schedule makers (who happen to be working for, you guessed it..., DAVID STERN) put the team in this position with their brilliant scheduling... Oh, and NBA, I'm sorry that we weren't competitive last night, getting "blown out" by a score of 105-100, playing IN MIAMI, and under these circumstances. David Stern, please do us a favor and try to be a bigger joke...
Well, after going 6-4 on my football picks last weekend, I am once again at the .500 mark for the season with a record of 61-61-2. I would really like to start heating up now since I will be returning to Las Vegas in less than three weeks. And for all of you "haters" out there, USC did show up last weekend, didn't they, even without Matt Barkley?... I took the Trojans plus 7 points and they ended up losing the game by 9, and that was after getting stopped for no points on a first-and-goal situation late in the game. ANYWAY, here are my picks for this week:
Texas/Kansas State (Under 63 1/2) - Coach Diaz HAS TO stop the bleeding...
Boise State/Nevada (Under 59) - The Wolfpack usually play the Broncos tough...
Alabama/Georgia (Under 50 1/2) - VERY big game, should be tough and lower-scoring...
West Virginia (-19 1/2) vs. Kansas - Can Kansas score enough to keep up?
New Mexico State/Texas State (Over 57 1/2) - Just for us Joey, two STELLAR defenses...
New England (-7 1/2) @ Miami - The Patriots 'O' has been potent...
Houston/Tennessee (Over 47) - The Texans score and don't play much defense...
Tampa Bay/Denver (Under 51) - The weather is getting worse in Colorado...
Minnesota/Green Bay (Under 47) - The weather is also getting worse in Wisconsin... :)
Indianapolis/Detroit (Over 51) - The dome has no weather... :)
Have a great weekend and I'll see you again on Monday!
Well, after going 6-4 on my football picks last weekend, I am once again at the .500 mark for the season with a record of 61-61-2. I would really like to start heating up now since I will be returning to Las Vegas in less than three weeks. And for all of you "haters" out there, USC did show up last weekend, didn't they, even without Matt Barkley?... I took the Trojans plus 7 points and they ended up losing the game by 9, and that was after getting stopped for no points on a first-and-goal situation late in the game. ANYWAY, here are my picks for this week:
Texas/Kansas State (Under 63 1/2) - Coach Diaz HAS TO stop the bleeding...
Boise State/Nevada (Under 59) - The Wolfpack usually play the Broncos tough...
Alabama/Georgia (Under 50 1/2) - VERY big game, should be tough and lower-scoring...
West Virginia (-19 1/2) vs. Kansas - Can Kansas score enough to keep up?
New Mexico State/Texas State (Over 57 1/2) - Just for us Joey, two STELLAR defenses...
New England (-7 1/2) @ Miami - The Patriots 'O' has been potent...
Houston/Tennessee (Over 47) - The Texans score and don't play much defense...
Tampa Bay/Denver (Under 51) - The weather is getting worse in Colorado...
Minnesota/Green Bay (Under 47) - The weather is also getting worse in Wisconsin... :)
Indianapolis/Detroit (Over 51) - The dome has no weather... :)
Have a great weekend and I'll see you again on Monday!
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Backpedaling...
Good morning everyone. Evidently I should focus on photography instead of writing. Quite often I will choose what I think are inspirational or clever quotes or tweets to serve as my facebook status. A POPULAR status might earn in the neighborhood of seven 'likes'. Last night from work, I stood on the rooftop at The Veranda and used my Droid to take a photo of the nearby "Sights & Sounds of Christmas" celebration which is located nearby. This annual event in San Marcos, America includes over one million Christmas lights, among other things. Well, this very amateur photo received over 14 'likes' in less than 3 hours. Thank you Trisha, Jennifer, Allison, Alyssa (Merp), Rene, Connie, Alyssa, Mandy, Kathryn, Erika, Penny, Carly, Denise, and Floyd for pointing me in the right direction... :)
Well, I have some good news and some bad news about the viewership numbers for this little blog of mine and a prediction that I made about 11,000 views ago. Sometime later today or very early tomorrow, the total viewcount for 'Bikini Hill' is going to pass the 17,000 mark. This month will be the blog's biggest month in terms of total views, with that number finishing at right around the 2,000 mark. This might seem like good news for my prediction that 'Bikini Hill' would reach a total of 20,000 views by the end of this year, but do the math. The blog that has NEVER reached 2,000 views in a month now has to receive THREE THOUSAND total views in December to reach this mark. So much for my prediction (???), and where do I go to take up photography? :)
So I went to Walmart yesterday - yes, Walmart, and I'm getting THREE paragraphs out of this... The first item that I was searching for was those elusive windpants that our blogging friend Rob has never seen... My heart leapt for joy when I reached the clothing section and discovered that 'Starter' windpants were selling for $11.96 a pair. I currently own ZERO PAIRS of windpants after my Las Vegas break-in at the end of August. The 'Starter' windpants don't have the zipper pockets that I like, but they are much cheaper than the $30.00 Nike windpants that I looked at last week. After dropping three pairs of these windpants into my shopping cart, I started rolling along when I discovered..., THICK sweatpants, WITH a well-made velcro pocket located on each leg, all for the low, low price of $15.97. At this point I feel that I should give you a travel tip. I have flown several times, and you want to be COMFORTABLE on a travel day. These sweats have comfortable written ALL OVER them... Back to the rack went the 'Starter' windpants, and into the shopping cart went two pairs of 'And 1' sweats. Sorry that I won't be able to show you what a pair of windpants is Rob, but maybe I can dunk on someone for you at the poker table. For those of you unfamiliar with what the cool kids are wearing these days, 'And 1' markets itself as a basketball brand, as in, "he's fouled 'and' he gets '1' free throw - 'And 1'..."
So I walking down the aisle in search of black olives. These are one of the myriad of things that I have been putting into the 17,000 salads that I have eaten during the month of November. When I reached the cans of black olives..., well..., have you ever played..., "Vegetable Jenga"? This of course is the game where you try to pull out the awkwardly stacked cans while not making the whole pyramid CRASH DOWN onto the Walmart floor... Sorry my friends, but I WON, and the cans didn't go tumbling to the floor - look for your trainwreck somewhere else... ;)
Are you looking for a trainwreck by any chance? So the trilogy of this little Walmart story happens when I'm rolling my cart down the main walkway, past the 'endcaps' of the food aisles. To help you picture this at home, I'm headed in the direction of the front door, with the food aisles to my right, and those little..., 'merchandise islands' on my left (you know, where they sell the randomly grouped items - cases of Pepsi products, four-packs of Campbell's soups, etc...). Well, as I'm rolling my cart along, this... BACKPEDALING GUY (yes, he was literally backpedaling), comes RIGHT OUT IN FRONT OF ME, narrowly missing my shopping cart. I stop and give him a GOOD rolling of my eyes, but whatever item he is trying to size up as he looks skyward down the food aisle that LAUNCHED HIM still has his attention, as he ignores me, and KEEPS GOING, his back LANDING UP AGAINST one of those merchandise islands... As the SUDDEN STOP causes him to stumble, he starts mumbling something, probably wondering WHO would put a merchandise island THERE, but I kept my eyes GLUED straight ahead and kept pushing my cart, NOT wanting to be a witness to this trainwreck... Goodness gracious people!... :)
I hope that all of you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow with my football predictions!
Well, I have some good news and some bad news about the viewership numbers for this little blog of mine and a prediction that I made about 11,000 views ago. Sometime later today or very early tomorrow, the total viewcount for 'Bikini Hill' is going to pass the 17,000 mark. This month will be the blog's biggest month in terms of total views, with that number finishing at right around the 2,000 mark. This might seem like good news for my prediction that 'Bikini Hill' would reach a total of 20,000 views by the end of this year, but do the math. The blog that has NEVER reached 2,000 views in a month now has to receive THREE THOUSAND total views in December to reach this mark. So much for my prediction (???), and where do I go to take up photography? :)
So I went to Walmart yesterday - yes, Walmart, and I'm getting THREE paragraphs out of this... The first item that I was searching for was those elusive windpants that our blogging friend Rob has never seen... My heart leapt for joy when I reached the clothing section and discovered that 'Starter' windpants were selling for $11.96 a pair. I currently own ZERO PAIRS of windpants after my Las Vegas break-in at the end of August. The 'Starter' windpants don't have the zipper pockets that I like, but they are much cheaper than the $30.00 Nike windpants that I looked at last week. After dropping three pairs of these windpants into my shopping cart, I started rolling along when I discovered..., THICK sweatpants, WITH a well-made velcro pocket located on each leg, all for the low, low price of $15.97. At this point I feel that I should give you a travel tip. I have flown several times, and you want to be COMFORTABLE on a travel day. These sweats have comfortable written ALL OVER them... Back to the rack went the 'Starter' windpants, and into the shopping cart went two pairs of 'And 1' sweats. Sorry that I won't be able to show you what a pair of windpants is Rob, but maybe I can dunk on someone for you at the poker table. For those of you unfamiliar with what the cool kids are wearing these days, 'And 1' markets itself as a basketball brand, as in, "he's fouled 'and' he gets '1' free throw - 'And 1'..."
So I walking down the aisle in search of black olives. These are one of the myriad of things that I have been putting into the 17,000 salads that I have eaten during the month of November. When I reached the cans of black olives..., well..., have you ever played..., "Vegetable Jenga"? This of course is the game where you try to pull out the awkwardly stacked cans while not making the whole pyramid CRASH DOWN onto the Walmart floor... Sorry my friends, but I WON, and the cans didn't go tumbling to the floor - look for your trainwreck somewhere else... ;)
Are you looking for a trainwreck by any chance? So the trilogy of this little Walmart story happens when I'm rolling my cart down the main walkway, past the 'endcaps' of the food aisles. To help you picture this at home, I'm headed in the direction of the front door, with the food aisles to my right, and those little..., 'merchandise islands' on my left (you know, where they sell the randomly grouped items - cases of Pepsi products, four-packs of Campbell's soups, etc...). Well, as I'm rolling my cart along, this... BACKPEDALING GUY (yes, he was literally backpedaling), comes RIGHT OUT IN FRONT OF ME, narrowly missing my shopping cart. I stop and give him a GOOD rolling of my eyes, but whatever item he is trying to size up as he looks skyward down the food aisle that LAUNCHED HIM still has his attention, as he ignores me, and KEEPS GOING, his back LANDING UP AGAINST one of those merchandise islands... As the SUDDEN STOP causes him to stumble, he starts mumbling something, probably wondering WHO would put a merchandise island THERE, but I kept my eyes GLUED straight ahead and kept pushing my cart, NOT wanting to be a witness to this trainwreck... Goodness gracious people!... :)
I hope that all of you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow with my football predictions!
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
Good morning everyone. The title of this entry doesn't have me moving back to Las Vegas or canceling my upcoming trip, so don't get excited... Late yesterday afternoon I decided to take the short hike to the Texas State campus library because they have magazines and I don't. For most of the day I had been kicking around the idea of driving down to New Braunfels like I had exactly two weeks earlier for the same reason as before, to watch 'Alex Cross'. I had already blown off the 4:50 p.m. showing, but the idea was still rumbling in my head for the next couple of hours at the library. The library disappointed me, as the main reason that I had gone was to find the December issue of Texas Monthly. "But Coach, it's only November" you're saying. Yes, but my response is that I have seen that issue in stores at least as far back as last weekend, and I am looking forward to reading the second part of a two-part story where an innocent man was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife. Well, let's just say that I walked back home and started up my car at exactly 6:55 p.m. to try making a 7:10 p.m. showing of 'Alex Cross' in New Braunfels. First I had to get to I-35, access it at Exit 204, and then fly south to exit for the theater at Exit 188. Well, somehow Coach was IN HIS SEAT at 'Alex Cross' by 7:19 p.m... ;) The 110-seat theater had FOUR TIMES AS MANY moviegoers than it did 2 weeks ago (yes, there were 4 of us this time). 'Alex Cross' isn't a comedy, but I thought that I'd share the funniest line of the movie with you (this is no way spoils the plot). Alex is in a conversation with his partner when he says, "you know I love you from the bottom of my heart, I really do, but I'd rather take advice from a ham sandwich..." ;) Again, Matthew Fox was an outstanding bad guy, and is the motivated person that I need to transform myself back into...
I'm twenty days away from my "Las Vegas Christmas Vacation" now and I have done almost nothing tangible to prepare for the trip. That would be nothing more than booking my reservations exactly twenty-two days ago. Once this college football season ends and the bowl matchups are finalized, there will be A LOT of studying focused on those bowl games. Just a little while ago I was skimming through 'Phil Steele's 2012 College Football Preview' magazine. Now Phil (and others) consider Phil to be a pretty smart guy when it comes to forecasting college football. For those of us who have not correctly predicted the outcome of every contest this season, we can take heart. These are some of Phil's preseason college football projections for the 2012 season: 4. USC; 7. Texas; 21. Notre Dame; 30. Texas A&M... This makes me feel better anyway... :)
On the poker front, I was reading my friend Grrouchie's blog post earlier today, and it seems that some mysterious character (and blogger if I read this right) named @cokeboy99 (twitter handle) won a Treasure Island tournament on Monday and then finished the Aria Tournament with a five-way chop yesterday for $1,800.00... Do we actually have to BE GOOD AT POKER to blog about it??? :) An $1,800.00 cash almost accounts for any of my TWO BEST DAYS on the green felt... Congratulations @cokeboy99 - I will be looking for your blog shortly after finishing this entry.
With only five full days (and two travel days) in my upcoming trip to Las Vegas, I have pretty much resigned myself to playing in only a couple of poker tournaments at the most because I plan on spending most of that Sunday (the day before I return to Texas) watching NFL games and begging for my parlay tickets to hit. I also know that at least a few hours of one of my days in the desert will be spent filling out my college bowl season parlay tickets. I am strongly leaning toward doing the same thing that I did for this blog last year regarding the bowl games, which was predicting the final score of EVERY SINGLE GAME, and in effect giving you my thoughts on how the spread and the over/under will come out for each contest, along with the outright winner of course. According to the blog stats, that has been my most viewed post ever... Yes, we were talking about poker tournaments. I really do want to play at least one deep-stack tournament if I find the funds to do so (this being in the $100.00 to $150.00 range) while I'm in Las Vegas. In my mind, you cannot fathom how short a time period only five full days in the desert is, although others will tell you that's WAY TOO LONG to visit...
I'm going to do some other fun things like starting my wash now (one very nice perk to this apartment Lindsey), but I hope that you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow with another ramble. Have a great day!
I'm twenty days away from my "Las Vegas Christmas Vacation" now and I have done almost nothing tangible to prepare for the trip. That would be nothing more than booking my reservations exactly twenty-two days ago. Once this college football season ends and the bowl matchups are finalized, there will be A LOT of studying focused on those bowl games. Just a little while ago I was skimming through 'Phil Steele's 2012 College Football Preview' magazine. Now Phil (and others) consider Phil to be a pretty smart guy when it comes to forecasting college football. For those of us who have not correctly predicted the outcome of every contest this season, we can take heart. These are some of Phil's preseason college football projections for the 2012 season: 4. USC; 7. Texas; 21. Notre Dame; 30. Texas A&M... This makes me feel better anyway... :)
On the poker front, I was reading my friend Grrouchie's blog post earlier today, and it seems that some mysterious character (and blogger if I read this right) named @cokeboy99 (twitter handle) won a Treasure Island tournament on Monday and then finished the Aria Tournament with a five-way chop yesterday for $1,800.00... Do we actually have to BE GOOD AT POKER to blog about it??? :) An $1,800.00 cash almost accounts for any of my TWO BEST DAYS on the green felt... Congratulations @cokeboy99 - I will be looking for your blog shortly after finishing this entry.
With only five full days (and two travel days) in my upcoming trip to Las Vegas, I have pretty much resigned myself to playing in only a couple of poker tournaments at the most because I plan on spending most of that Sunday (the day before I return to Texas) watching NFL games and begging for my parlay tickets to hit. I also know that at least a few hours of one of my days in the desert will be spent filling out my college bowl season parlay tickets. I am strongly leaning toward doing the same thing that I did for this blog last year regarding the bowl games, which was predicting the final score of EVERY SINGLE GAME, and in effect giving you my thoughts on how the spread and the over/under will come out for each contest, along with the outright winner of course. According to the blog stats, that has been my most viewed post ever... Yes, we were talking about poker tournaments. I really do want to play at least one deep-stack tournament if I find the funds to do so (this being in the $100.00 to $150.00 range) while I'm in Las Vegas. In my mind, you cannot fathom how short a time period only five full days in the desert is, although others will tell you that's WAY TOO LONG to visit...
I'm going to do some other fun things like starting my wash now (one very nice perk to this apartment Lindsey), but I hope that you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow with another ramble. Have a great day!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The Little Things
Good morning everyone. I just went to my mailbox about fifteen minutes ago (this sounds like the lead-in to the MOST EXCITING blog entry that you've ever read, right?)... Eight days ago (last Monday) I searched all over San Marcos, America (4 locations) for a new case for my Droid 2 Global phone. After coming up empty, I decided to look online for a case. I ended up at Amazon.com, and a company called Bastexwireless was selling a Body Glove case (yes, the same Body Glove that all of the cool kids like) for $4.10. Since this particular case retails for over $25.00 (as would any of the cases that I would have bought from Verizon if they had any in stock), I quickly set up an account at Amazon and put the total of $5.19 (w/tax & shipping) on my plastic. I am VERY HAPPY to say that my Droid 2 Global now has a new home... The little things... Neither here nor there, but I am STRONGLY endorsing Amazon.com as an online shopping option... ;) The funny thing about this (you knew there would be a funny thing) is that when I retrieved the yellow envelope from my mailbox, it turns out that Bastexwireless is located in Bastrop, Texas... For those of you who are unfamiliar with your central Texas geography, Bastrop is only about a forty minute drive from here. However, just the price of the gas to get me there would have run me about the same amount as the case did, let alone driving home and the time that I would have spent chasing it down. Neither here nor there, but I am STRONGLY endorsing Amazon.com as an online shopping option... ;)
So exactly three weeks from today I will be heading out to the desert for a week. As I've said numerous times before, the sports betting (football predominantly) and poker on tap are the only real draws to Vegas for me. As it turns out, I really haven't missed either nearly as much as I thought I would this fall, which is one of those life surprises that I briefly alluded to in a recent post. I do have that winning parlay ticket and some worn down clay poker chips that I can cash in though, so I might as well make the trip. It's not lost on me that December 21st, 2012 falls RIGHT SMACK IN THE MIDDLE of the dates that I will be in Las Vegas. In addition to not wanting to be wrong about my prediction that the world as we know it won't end three weeks from Friday, I REALLY DON'T want to die in Las Vegas. I honestly don't know where I do want to perish, but the desert can just be SO DEPRESSING...
Let's see, some more stuff from work... (Oh, my phone just feels so good in its new case)... :) Okay, twice last week at my post in the "hallway of mazes" (don't get me started)... well, I witnessed this: guys with sunglasses on their shirt collars at 1 a.m. walking up to The Veranda (our rooftop bar). OOO KAYY... And this, ugghhh... BEING IGNORED - This has happened on several occasions, although it is far from the norm, and it just bothers me to no end... In the most recent instance, I was at my post and a group of five people walked up the stairs and went past me to go to the Veranda. The people in the group were not actively engaged in a conversation at the time, and as each one passed, I greeted them, and in succession, ALL FIVE of the people in the group blew me off and continued walking... I have a decent memory as it is, and that's the type of thing that I will remember... In an ironic twist (you knew there would be an ironic twist), one girl that was in a group of 3 young ladies a few nights ago called me "the nicest guy on the Square..." Another member of the group was celebrating her 21st birthday, and I wished her a "happy birthday" as she went up the stairs. The girl who gave me the title of "The Nicest Guy On The Square" (each word SHOULD be capitalized, right?) said, "SEE?! And he's the ONLY ONE who wished me a "happy birthday" when it was my birthday too!" I have a decent memory as it is, and that's the type of thing that I will remember... ;)
In case any of you are interested in reading a good blog today, you might want to click on the link to Lucki Duck's blog listed on the right hand side of this page, specifically the recent entry where I am now in SECOND PLACE in the standings of the very elite "bloggers predicting football games contest"... DON'T EVER count Coach out! ;) The Pittsburgh Steelers are currently plagued by injuries and are tenuously clinging to the sixth and final playoff spot in the AFC, but two Steelers fans are at the top of the leaderboard in this contest - go figure...
That is all that I have for you today, but I will return tomorrow with more about my rapidly approaching trip to Las Vegas and the poker world. Have a great day!
So exactly three weeks from today I will be heading out to the desert for a week. As I've said numerous times before, the sports betting (football predominantly) and poker on tap are the only real draws to Vegas for me. As it turns out, I really haven't missed either nearly as much as I thought I would this fall, which is one of those life surprises that I briefly alluded to in a recent post. I do have that winning parlay ticket and some worn down clay poker chips that I can cash in though, so I might as well make the trip. It's not lost on me that December 21st, 2012 falls RIGHT SMACK IN THE MIDDLE of the dates that I will be in Las Vegas. In addition to not wanting to be wrong about my prediction that the world as we know it won't end three weeks from Friday, I REALLY DON'T want to die in Las Vegas. I honestly don't know where I do want to perish, but the desert can just be SO DEPRESSING...
Let's see, some more stuff from work... (Oh, my phone just feels so good in its new case)... :) Okay, twice last week at my post in the "hallway of mazes" (don't get me started)... well, I witnessed this: guys with sunglasses on their shirt collars at 1 a.m. walking up to The Veranda (our rooftop bar). OOO KAYY... And this, ugghhh... BEING IGNORED - This has happened on several occasions, although it is far from the norm, and it just bothers me to no end... In the most recent instance, I was at my post and a group of five people walked up the stairs and went past me to go to the Veranda. The people in the group were not actively engaged in a conversation at the time, and as each one passed, I greeted them, and in succession, ALL FIVE of the people in the group blew me off and continued walking... I have a decent memory as it is, and that's the type of thing that I will remember... In an ironic twist (you knew there would be an ironic twist), one girl that was in a group of 3 young ladies a few nights ago called me "the nicest guy on the Square..." Another member of the group was celebrating her 21st birthday, and I wished her a "happy birthday" as she went up the stairs. The girl who gave me the title of "The Nicest Guy On The Square" (each word SHOULD be capitalized, right?) said, "SEE?! And he's the ONLY ONE who wished me a "happy birthday" when it was my birthday too!" I have a decent memory as it is, and that's the type of thing that I will remember... ;)
In case any of you are interested in reading a good blog today, you might want to click on the link to Lucki Duck's blog listed on the right hand side of this page, specifically the recent entry where I am now in SECOND PLACE in the standings of the very elite "bloggers predicting football games contest"... DON'T EVER count Coach out! ;) The Pittsburgh Steelers are currently plagued by injuries and are tenuously clinging to the sixth and final playoff spot in the AFC, but two Steelers fans are at the top of the leaderboard in this contest - go figure...
That is all that I have for you today, but I will return tomorrow with more about my rapidly approaching trip to Las Vegas and the poker world. Have a great day!
Monday, November 26, 2012
Hootie & The Blowfish
Good morning everyone. I just peeked at the blog statistics a few seconds ago and it looks like this month is going to be the most viewed month in the almost 14-month history of 'Bikini Hill'. Now if only I had something interested to write about...
When I last saw you, I was about to attend a hockey game in San Antonio on Friday night. The contest was an American Hockey League (AHL) battle featuring the San Antonio Rampage and the Houston Aeros. The quality of the hockey was outstanding except for the players' lack of ability to control the puck, so I'm saying that... Yeah... At one point I turned to my brother and said, "do you realize that with the NHL Lockout, this is the BEST hockey being played in the United States right now?!..." Merp... The Aeros beat the Rampage 2-1 for those of you keeping score at home. It turns out that we went to the wrong game, as our contest featured ZERO fights, and the San Antonio fanbase was just CLAMORING for a fight. It turns out that on Saturday night, there were several fights, one of which included penalty minutes totaling three-quarters of a period (that's 15 minutes for those of you keeping score at home) for one player. I know this because I have friends who have season tickets to see the Rampage, and they were posting photos of the "teddy bear toss" at Saturday night's game. You guessed it - Friday night DID NOT have a teddy bear toss, so somehow I feel slighted... The Saturday night game also went to a "shootout" to determine the victor - Friday night, not so much...
The game being played in the car to and from the AT&T Center was my third-grade niece quizzing me on the names of the EIGHTEEN students in her class. The neat thing about this game is that my niece kept naming the eighteen students in order (including herself) because she was seeing them IN HER HEAD in the order that they line up for lunch. The sad thing about this is that my niece gets her lunch last EVERY DAY because the students are lined up alphabetically based on their last name. Shouldn't it occur to her teacher at some point that it isn't fair to make the SAME CHILD get her lunch last EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN DAY?! You can just imagine me sitting by her in the car as I was learning this, can't you? "Why do you get your lunch last every day?" Merp... The most names that I remembered at once was ten by the way, and I had made the deal before that round that if I got ten kids right, the game would end... :)
So jump back to Wednesday night, which is when my brother and I went to the bar that my dad manages to grab one beer after the family dinner at Rudy's Barbecue. The fact that we spent about three hours at the bar is neither here nor there... At one point we were 2 of the only 3 customers in the bar. The bar is configured in a square, much like the bar on 'Cheers'... Anyway, we are almost at the far right end of one side of the square, where going from left to right on your computer monitor, it's my brother, myself, then an empty seat. Going up the next side of the bar is an empty seat and then a stranger, so we have basically the corner of the bar and two empty seats separating the stranger and myself. I had played some music on the jukebox, and the song currently playing is the last song from a very popular album, which happened to be the highest-selling album of 1995 (I just looked it up). This song WAS NOT on the mainstream playlist, but it's a very good slow song, so I quizzed my brother - "which band do you think this is?" My brother is mulling over the answer to this question, and you can tell that he recognizes the voice of the lead singer, and that he just needs to listen to a little bit more of the... "HOOTIE & THE BLOWFISH!!!"... BLURTS OUT the stranger sitting near us... "He has a very distinctive voice..." That was quite possibly the worst moment of my brother's family's visit for me... It's the bar that my dad manages, so I'm not going to say anything, and really, what could I say, but..., THIS ISN'T A FREAKIN GAME SHOW!!!... I was asking MY BROTHER who sings this, NOT YOU... Merp... Goodness gracious... :) Anyway, the album is "Cracked Rear View" by Hootie & the Blowfish if you're looking for some good music to listen to today...
Here's a story from work last night that the doorguys should enjoy... :) So I'm working the back entrance, which includes watching the back staircase which leads to our rooftop bar, The Veranda. A couple that I had met upstairs about an hour earlier was now descending the stairs, about to go home. I am assuming that they were a couple because I had met them together earlier and they were holding hands as they approached me. Well, after the girl hugged me for about the THIRD TIME, she hugs me AGAIN, while kissing me on the cheek and telling me that we should go out on a date, and this is while her other hand is holding the hand of the guy that she is with (you can't make this stuff up)... At this point, I'm trying to figure out how to respond to her while making sure that the guy isn't about to PUNCH ME, and of course the side of my face that she's kissing is in-between myself and her date... Merp... (The word 'Merp' means "Ugghhh" by the way, for those of you who are new to the blog)... Long story short, no one got punched, and off they went... :)
And in other news, my decimated, struggling, playing with the third-string quarterback Pittsburgh Steelers, who currently sit at 6-5, coming off of a loss to the CLEVELAND BROWNS yesterday, are STILL the sixth-seed in the AFC freakin playoff hunt... WOW... (and merp...). I bounced back on my football predictions with a 6-4 record this weekend and am now back to .500 (61-61-2) for the season. We'll talk more about that later this week...
Have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow!
When I last saw you, I was about to attend a hockey game in San Antonio on Friday night. The contest was an American Hockey League (AHL) battle featuring the San Antonio Rampage and the Houston Aeros. The quality of the hockey was outstanding except for the players' lack of ability to control the puck, so I'm saying that... Yeah... At one point I turned to my brother and said, "do you realize that with the NHL Lockout, this is the BEST hockey being played in the United States right now?!..." Merp... The Aeros beat the Rampage 2-1 for those of you keeping score at home. It turns out that we went to the wrong game, as our contest featured ZERO fights, and the San Antonio fanbase was just CLAMORING for a fight. It turns out that on Saturday night, there were several fights, one of which included penalty minutes totaling three-quarters of a period (that's 15 minutes for those of you keeping score at home) for one player. I know this because I have friends who have season tickets to see the Rampage, and they were posting photos of the "teddy bear toss" at Saturday night's game. You guessed it - Friday night DID NOT have a teddy bear toss, so somehow I feel slighted... The Saturday night game also went to a "shootout" to determine the victor - Friday night, not so much...
The game being played in the car to and from the AT&T Center was my third-grade niece quizzing me on the names of the EIGHTEEN students in her class. The neat thing about this game is that my niece kept naming the eighteen students in order (including herself) because she was seeing them IN HER HEAD in the order that they line up for lunch. The sad thing about this is that my niece gets her lunch last EVERY DAY because the students are lined up alphabetically based on their last name. Shouldn't it occur to her teacher at some point that it isn't fair to make the SAME CHILD get her lunch last EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN DAY?! You can just imagine me sitting by her in the car as I was learning this, can't you? "Why do you get your lunch last every day?" Merp... The most names that I remembered at once was ten by the way, and I had made the deal before that round that if I got ten kids right, the game would end... :)
So jump back to Wednesday night, which is when my brother and I went to the bar that my dad manages to grab one beer after the family dinner at Rudy's Barbecue. The fact that we spent about three hours at the bar is neither here nor there... At one point we were 2 of the only 3 customers in the bar. The bar is configured in a square, much like the bar on 'Cheers'... Anyway, we are almost at the far right end of one side of the square, where going from left to right on your computer monitor, it's my brother, myself, then an empty seat. Going up the next side of the bar is an empty seat and then a stranger, so we have basically the corner of the bar and two empty seats separating the stranger and myself. I had played some music on the jukebox, and the song currently playing is the last song from a very popular album, which happened to be the highest-selling album of 1995 (I just looked it up). This song WAS NOT on the mainstream playlist, but it's a very good slow song, so I quizzed my brother - "which band do you think this is?" My brother is mulling over the answer to this question, and you can tell that he recognizes the voice of the lead singer, and that he just needs to listen to a little bit more of the... "HOOTIE & THE BLOWFISH!!!"... BLURTS OUT the stranger sitting near us... "He has a very distinctive voice..." That was quite possibly the worst moment of my brother's family's visit for me... It's the bar that my dad manages, so I'm not going to say anything, and really, what could I say, but..., THIS ISN'T A FREAKIN GAME SHOW!!!... I was asking MY BROTHER who sings this, NOT YOU... Merp... Goodness gracious... :) Anyway, the album is "Cracked Rear View" by Hootie & the Blowfish if you're looking for some good music to listen to today...
Here's a story from work last night that the doorguys should enjoy... :) So I'm working the back entrance, which includes watching the back staircase which leads to our rooftop bar, The Veranda. A couple that I had met upstairs about an hour earlier was now descending the stairs, about to go home. I am assuming that they were a couple because I had met them together earlier and they were holding hands as they approached me. Well, after the girl hugged me for about the THIRD TIME, she hugs me AGAIN, while kissing me on the cheek and telling me that we should go out on a date, and this is while her other hand is holding the hand of the guy that she is with (you can't make this stuff up)... At this point, I'm trying to figure out how to respond to her while making sure that the guy isn't about to PUNCH ME, and of course the side of my face that she's kissing is in-between myself and her date... Merp... (The word 'Merp' means "Ugghhh" by the way, for those of you who are new to the blog)... Long story short, no one got punched, and off they went... :)
And in other news, my decimated, struggling, playing with the third-string quarterback Pittsburgh Steelers, who currently sit at 6-5, coming off of a loss to the CLEVELAND BROWNS yesterday, are STILL the sixth-seed in the AFC freakin playoff hunt... WOW... (and merp...). I bounced back on my football predictions with a 6-4 record this weekend and am now back to .500 (61-61-2) for the season. We'll talk more about that later this week...
Have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow!
Friday, November 23, 2012
Turkeys And Pucks
Good morning everyone. This would be your Friday ramble since my football predictions hijacked the post yesterday. I had a pretty good day of football yesterday as I managed to double my win total for all of last weekend. Thanksgiving football started off great as the Texans and Lions easily covered the 'Over 50' (65 total points). The ruling on the play where the officials messed up by not blowing their whistles, which resulted in the Texans ball carrier getting SEVENTY free yards and a touchdown, which WAS NOT REVIEWABLE after the Lions head coach wrongfully threw his challenge flag on a scoring play (which was to be reviewed anyway) was a total crock however... You also had to love the part where an extra fifteen penalty yards were tacked onto the kickoff - awesome... After the ruling I immediately went to facebook and posted, "NFL Rules Committee - SERIOUSLY???" This would be the appropriate time to apologize to grrouchie and Mateo (another friend of mine) who asked what had happened in response to my facebook post - there is no way that I was going to type all of that out... :) In the final Thanksgiving game, I took the Patriots (-6 1/2) over the Jets - final score: Patriots 49 Jets 19... The even better news is that I also took the Patriots in Lucki Duck's elite blogger contest this weekend, a contest in which I have not picked a losing team to this point... :) And then there was the middle game yesterday, Dallas vs. Washington... Dear Dallas Cowboys, thank you for not showing up for the first half of your Thanksgiving Day game (Redskins 28 Cowboys 3 - halftime)... Sincerely, Coach... So I went 2-1 yesterday (taking Dallas (-3), but that's already better than last weekend's 1-9)... My remaining picks for the weekend are in yesterday's post if you are interested in checking them out...
So, yesterday turned out SO MUCH BETTER than last Thanksgiving did... I drove down to San Antonio (okay, to Schertz if you want to be technical) and ate at my sister's house (stepsister if you want to be technical) with my twin niece and nephew, stepmom, and my brother's family, which included him and his wife, and another niece and nephew (there will be a quiz on this at the end of the post)... There was also one non-family member present for the meal if you want to answer the extra credit question... My meal consisted of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, dressing (all of the above covered with gravy), green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese shells, deviled eggs, rolls, and banana split cake. All of this was on one plate (except for the dessert), and it had my youngest niece inquiring, "are you going to eat all of that Uncle Chris? that's a lot of food..." I am proud to say that I did indeed finish all of the very tasty meal... :) I hope that all of you had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving also. I would also like to thank my friends Nicole & Scott, Lindsey, and Debbie for inviting me to stop by their places for Thanksgiving. I ended up working at 10:00 last night, but it wasn't bad at all, and I had a very enjoyable day.
So tonight I am returning to San Antonio (all the way to San Antonio this time) to watch a hockey game with my brother's family. The San Antonio Rampage (who I have never seen before) are the city's minor league hockey team. The home ice for the Rampage is the AT&T Center, which is also the home of the San Antonio Spurs. I thought that the NHL Lockout had ended yesterday when my brother informed me that my ticket was going to cost over $30.00 - YIKES!!! Of course this ticket was purchased online yesterday and had an assortment of fees and taxes associated with it, but it is in the row right behind my brother's family, who purchased their tickets at a time when we didn't know what my work schedule was going to be for this week. I cannot complain though because both my brother and his wife have served our country in the military, and as a result have lived in several different places, so it's not often that we have been able to get together and do things...
I think that I am going to stop here for today so that I can get some more sleep and be rested up for the night with my brother's family (I got home from work at about 4:00 a.m. and then did my laundry, ate, etc...)... I hope that all of you have a safe Thanksgiving Weekend and I will see you again on Monday!
So, yesterday turned out SO MUCH BETTER than last Thanksgiving did... I drove down to San Antonio (okay, to Schertz if you want to be technical) and ate at my sister's house (stepsister if you want to be technical) with my twin niece and nephew, stepmom, and my brother's family, which included him and his wife, and another niece and nephew (there will be a quiz on this at the end of the post)... There was also one non-family member present for the meal if you want to answer the extra credit question... My meal consisted of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, dressing (all of the above covered with gravy), green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese shells, deviled eggs, rolls, and banana split cake. All of this was on one plate (except for the dessert), and it had my youngest niece inquiring, "are you going to eat all of that Uncle Chris? that's a lot of food..." I am proud to say that I did indeed finish all of the very tasty meal... :) I hope that all of you had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving also. I would also like to thank my friends Nicole & Scott, Lindsey, and Debbie for inviting me to stop by their places for Thanksgiving. I ended up working at 10:00 last night, but it wasn't bad at all, and I had a very enjoyable day.
So tonight I am returning to San Antonio (all the way to San Antonio this time) to watch a hockey game with my brother's family. The San Antonio Rampage (who I have never seen before) are the city's minor league hockey team. The home ice for the Rampage is the AT&T Center, which is also the home of the San Antonio Spurs. I thought that the NHL Lockout had ended yesterday when my brother informed me that my ticket was going to cost over $30.00 - YIKES!!! Of course this ticket was purchased online yesterday and had an assortment of fees and taxes associated with it, but it is in the row right behind my brother's family, who purchased their tickets at a time when we didn't know what my work schedule was going to be for this week. I cannot complain though because both my brother and his wife have served our country in the military, and as a result have lived in several different places, so it's not often that we have been able to get together and do things...
I think that I am going to stop here for today so that I can get some more sleep and be rested up for the night with my brother's family (I got home from work at about 4:00 a.m. and then did my laundry, ate, etc...)... I hope that all of you have a safe Thanksgiving Weekend and I will see you again on Monday!
Thursday, November 22, 2012
I'm A Hazard To Myself
"I'm a hazard to myself..., don't let me get me, I'm my own worst enemy, it's bad when you annoy yourself..., so irritating, don't wanna be my friend no more, I wanna be somebody else..." -Pink- (Don't Let Me Get Me)
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Last week the question here was, "five weeks in a row?" - the answer to that question was a big, "PFFFTTT!!!" After posting winning records on my football predictions for four straight weeks (6-4, 7-3, 6-4, and 8-2), last week I went a HORRIFIC 1-9 (yes, you read that right - ONE and NINE...). As I was sitting here formulating my picks last week, I found the slate of games to be pretty difficult, and the thought actually occurred to me - "what if I go 0-10 this week?"... Of course I laughed that off with a, "right, 0-10..." Well, I managed to come PRETTY CLOSE, and it seems appropriate that I'm making this week's predictions on Thanksgiving, because I was DEFINITELY a turkey last week... The only winner that I had was the Patriots (-9) against the Colts, and I will be taking New England again this week because they have a similar line against the Jets, who are not setting the world on fire. My overall record for the season now stands at 55-57-2. Here are all of my predictions for this week:
Texas State (-1 1/2) @ Texas-San Antonio - I like this one quite a bit actually...
USC (+ 7) vs. Notre Dame - Putting my "money" where my mouth is - I think the Trojans show up...
Oklahoma (-7) vs. Oklahoma State - Sooners at home for 'Bedlam'...
Louisiana Tech/San Jose State (Over 75 1/2) - Tech OFTEN in contests with video game scores...
BYU (-29) @ New Mexico State University - The Cougars show up this week if they have any pride...
Houston/Detroit (Over 50) - Ideal scoring conditions forecast for the dome today...
Dallas (- 3) vs. Washington - The Cowboys are at home and have been winning...
New England (-6 1/2) @ New York Jets - The Patriots score, and the Jets have trouble doing so...
Oakland/Cincinnati (Under 49) - Scoring 49 would be a big deal for these 2 squads...
Green Bay/New York Giants (Under 50 1/2) - Highly contested playoff rematch from last year...
And there you go... I will see you again tomorrow. I hope that all of you enjoy your football today and have a very Safe and Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Last week the question here was, "five weeks in a row?" - the answer to that question was a big, "PFFFTTT!!!" After posting winning records on my football predictions for four straight weeks (6-4, 7-3, 6-4, and 8-2), last week I went a HORRIFIC 1-9 (yes, you read that right - ONE and NINE...). As I was sitting here formulating my picks last week, I found the slate of games to be pretty difficult, and the thought actually occurred to me - "what if I go 0-10 this week?"... Of course I laughed that off with a, "right, 0-10..." Well, I managed to come PRETTY CLOSE, and it seems appropriate that I'm making this week's predictions on Thanksgiving, because I was DEFINITELY a turkey last week... The only winner that I had was the Patriots (-9) against the Colts, and I will be taking New England again this week because they have a similar line against the Jets, who are not setting the world on fire. My overall record for the season now stands at 55-57-2. Here are all of my predictions for this week:
Texas State (-1 1/2) @ Texas-San Antonio - I like this one quite a bit actually...
USC (+ 7) vs. Notre Dame - Putting my "money" where my mouth is - I think the Trojans show up...
Oklahoma (-7) vs. Oklahoma State - Sooners at home for 'Bedlam'...
Louisiana Tech/San Jose State (Over 75 1/2) - Tech OFTEN in contests with video game scores...
BYU (-29) @ New Mexico State University - The Cougars show up this week if they have any pride...
Houston/Detroit (Over 50) - Ideal scoring conditions forecast for the dome today...
Dallas (- 3) vs. Washington - The Cowboys are at home and have been winning...
New England (-6 1/2) @ New York Jets - The Patriots score, and the Jets have trouble doing so...
Oakland/Cincinnati (Under 49) - Scoring 49 would be a big deal for these 2 squads...
Green Bay/New York Giants (Under 50 1/2) - Highly contested playoff rematch from last year...
And there you go... I will see you again tomorrow. I hope that all of you enjoy your football today and have a very Safe and Happy Thanksgiving!
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
I'm Batman...
Good afternoon everyone. Before we start talking about Las Vegas and poker and those fun sorts of things, let's talk about my life as a superhero. After playing the hero twice recently, both times coming to the aid of the same girl, who happens to be one of my newest friends, I decided that I needed a superhero to identify with. And before you start mocking me (too late?), I am well-suited to play this role. I am one of the good guys, and I will fight tirelessly against evil, at least until the football game is about to start or dinner is ready... Since I can be dark and brooding and I have those private demons that no one knows anything about (hence the word 'private'), and because I'm a night owl by nature (or 'bat' as the case may be), I'm going with Batman...
So a couple of weeks ago Batman was sitting at Harper's (shameless plug) in San Marcos, America, and he was talking to a couple of young ladies. The ladies were disappointed because they didn't have a Randy Rogers autograph. Randy Rogers has a little country band and puts on performances predominantly throughout the great state of Texas. The ladies had seen Randy perform that night (I believe at the Texas Music Theater), and they had been too shy to ask him for his autograph. They knew that Randy was currently upstairs at the Veranda (another shameless plug), and that's when Batman sprang into action. Batman told the young ladies that the worst thing that could happen was that Randy would say no to their request, so off they went, Batman leading the two young ladies up the stairs... Upon finding Randy, who was speaking to one of the owners of the Texas Music Theater (who Batman happens to know), Batman told Randy that the two young ladies would like an autograph. Randy politely obliged, and asked the ladies if they would like a picture with him also, which Batman happily took (the picture came out EXCELLENT, Batman must say)...
The above story brings us to last night, where Harper's and The Veranda (two shameless plugs) were EXTREMELY BUSY for a Tuesday. Batman was working, and at closing time, he learned that the same damsel had lost an earring that belonged to her grandmother. She had searched all over the two bars that were open, and came up empty. As luck would have it, Batman found the earring after closing and even drove out to the San Marcos Outlet Malls (a shameless plug which in no way benefits Batman) to return it... After performing this heroic deed, Batman went over to the Nike Outlet Store to see if he could replace one of the three pairs of windpants that was stolen when his Las Vegas apartment was broken into at the end of August. Batman ultimately decided that the current selection of windpants was too expensive to justify purchasing, but he is still looking forward to his trip to Las Vegas next month.
My trip to Las Vegas is now only 27 days away, and I still have many (a ton of) preparations to make. Not the least among these is studying my football seriously so that I can successfully wager on the NFL's Week 16 and the college bowl season. I also have to prepare myself to sit down at a poker table and take some of Rob's money, since he is SO BEGGING for it by repeatedly mentioning that he never got to play poker with me while I was in the desert this summer. Yeah, I'm sorry that my place was broken into, thanks for the sympathy... :) I have many, many worn down clay casino chips that I will also be returning to various spots along the Strip when I visit. I am going to be staying in the desert for six nights, and this does not seem like enough. I talk to SO MANY people that say they cannot be out in Las Vegas for more than three days - WHY even spend the money to fly out there? :)
I mentioned here yesterday that the 2013 World Series of Poker will be taking place in Las Vegas at the Rio from May 29th - July 16th this summer. Since I believe that it is very unlikely that I will move back to the desert again this summer (unless I really CRUSH the bets on these December parlay tickets), I think that I am going to try to return to Vegas again for some of the WSOP.
I have decided that I am definitely going to put together a 'Team Coach' sponsorship pool (that name may change) for this upcoming December trip, so if any of you are interested in getting a piece of my football (disregard the fact that I went 1-9 on my picks last weekend) and poker action next month, just let me know. I am trying to collect $1,000.00 total, and I am going to have 30% of the action. My mom has already pledged $50.00 of the remaining $700.00, so I will be trying to collect $650.00, where $10.00 buys one percent of the action. These parlay tickets will give me something to monitor throughout the bowl season anyway, and San Marcos will come back to life with the return of the college crowd shortly thereafter. This town is SO QUIET during the break between the fall and spring semesters, CREEPY QUIET... :)
I hope that all of you travel safely and are successful in your Thanksgiving preparations, and I will see you again tomorrow with my football picks for the long weekend. Have a good one!
So a couple of weeks ago Batman was sitting at Harper's (shameless plug) in San Marcos, America, and he was talking to a couple of young ladies. The ladies were disappointed because they didn't have a Randy Rogers autograph. Randy Rogers has a little country band and puts on performances predominantly throughout the great state of Texas. The ladies had seen Randy perform that night (I believe at the Texas Music Theater), and they had been too shy to ask him for his autograph. They knew that Randy was currently upstairs at the Veranda (another shameless plug), and that's when Batman sprang into action. Batman told the young ladies that the worst thing that could happen was that Randy would say no to their request, so off they went, Batman leading the two young ladies up the stairs... Upon finding Randy, who was speaking to one of the owners of the Texas Music Theater (who Batman happens to know), Batman told Randy that the two young ladies would like an autograph. Randy politely obliged, and asked the ladies if they would like a picture with him also, which Batman happily took (the picture came out EXCELLENT, Batman must say)...
The above story brings us to last night, where Harper's and The Veranda (two shameless plugs) were EXTREMELY BUSY for a Tuesday. Batman was working, and at closing time, he learned that the same damsel had lost an earring that belonged to her grandmother. She had searched all over the two bars that were open, and came up empty. As luck would have it, Batman found the earring after closing and even drove out to the San Marcos Outlet Malls (a shameless plug which in no way benefits Batman) to return it... After performing this heroic deed, Batman went over to the Nike Outlet Store to see if he could replace one of the three pairs of windpants that was stolen when his Las Vegas apartment was broken into at the end of August. Batman ultimately decided that the current selection of windpants was too expensive to justify purchasing, but he is still looking forward to his trip to Las Vegas next month.
My trip to Las Vegas is now only 27 days away, and I still have many (a ton of) preparations to make. Not the least among these is studying my football seriously so that I can successfully wager on the NFL's Week 16 and the college bowl season. I also have to prepare myself to sit down at a poker table and take some of Rob's money, since he is SO BEGGING for it by repeatedly mentioning that he never got to play poker with me while I was in the desert this summer. Yeah, I'm sorry that my place was broken into, thanks for the sympathy... :) I have many, many worn down clay casino chips that I will also be returning to various spots along the Strip when I visit. I am going to be staying in the desert for six nights, and this does not seem like enough. I talk to SO MANY people that say they cannot be out in Las Vegas for more than three days - WHY even spend the money to fly out there? :)
I mentioned here yesterday that the 2013 World Series of Poker will be taking place in Las Vegas at the Rio from May 29th - July 16th this summer. Since I believe that it is very unlikely that I will move back to the desert again this summer (unless I really CRUSH the bets on these December parlay tickets), I think that I am going to try to return to Vegas again for some of the WSOP.
I have decided that I am definitely going to put together a 'Team Coach' sponsorship pool (that name may change) for this upcoming December trip, so if any of you are interested in getting a piece of my football (disregard the fact that I went 1-9 on my picks last weekend) and poker action next month, just let me know. I am trying to collect $1,000.00 total, and I am going to have 30% of the action. My mom has already pledged $50.00 of the remaining $700.00, so I will be trying to collect $650.00, where $10.00 buys one percent of the action. These parlay tickets will give me something to monitor throughout the bowl season anyway, and San Marcos will come back to life with the return of the college crowd shortly thereafter. This town is SO QUIET during the break between the fall and spring semesters, CREEPY QUIET... :)
I hope that all of you travel safely and are successful in your Thanksgiving preparations, and I will see you again tomorrow with my football picks for the long weekend. Have a good one!
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
As Far As It Takes
Rumplestiltskin: "How far are you willing to go?"
Evil Queen: "As far as it takes..."
-Once Upon A Time-
Good morning everyone. You can chalk up the above quote to keeping an open mind and never knowing who or what is going to have an impact on your life. For someone who is inclined to look at information and circumstances and make a lot of predictions, I will be the first to tell you that I have been surprised many, many times throughout the course of my life. I hope that each of you is entering this holiday season with many things to be thankful for and with optimism for the new year.
I am going to use today's "Potluck Tuesday" in the blogging schedule to do an extra ramble for this week. Let me once again thank you for stopping by and checking out my blog. One of the predictions that I made A LONG TIME AGO was that this blog would reach the 20,000 viewcount mark by the end of this year. If someone wants to earn some extra credit, you can sift through my old blog entries to see exactly when I made this prediction. I believe that my blog had somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 views at the time that I threw this prediction out there. Based on the rate that traffic has picked up here recently on 'Bikini Hill', even if the 20,000 mark isn't reached by 2013, it's going to be respectably close. What is going to hurt that drive is my upcoming trip to Las Vegas the week before Christmas. For those of you who don't remember my arrival in the desert in early August, I have the WORST TIME trying to make blog entries from my phone. However this prediction turns out, I really do appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to check out my little piece of cyberspace , and I have a feeling that you will be joined by many others in 2013.
One of my favorite things about the increased traffic here on 'Bikini Hill' is the appreciable rise in the quality of the advertisements that are placed with my blog. For so long, the ads that I received were strictly print ads. Now my blog is attracting multicolored, scrolling advertisements from the likes of companies such as Nike... "Just Do It..." ;)
One of the high points of the past few days for me came on Sunday, and this was as the result of me acting like an idiot at work on Saturday night. There was no one at my station when some of my friends showed up, and my newest friend in the group had a beer bottle, so I gave her a cup to pour it in. She tried to step by me about three times, and I told her about three times that the beer must be poured into the cup. At this point, she told me that she was just trying to get out of the way of the guy who was standing in line behind her, and I felt COMPLETELY STUPID... The neat thing about this story occurred when I went into work the next day to get my schedule before making my trip to San Antonio for my "Chinese Thanksgiving" with my dad. As I was leaving the area behind the bar, this girl summons me from her bar stool, the first that I had seen of her until this point. I motioned to her that I would be there in just a second, came out from behind the bar, and as soon as I reached her, we both INSTANTLY started apologizing to each other for what had happened the night before... Again, I'm really sorry Jackie. Thank you for taking it in stride... :)
My week-long trip to Las Vegas is now a mere 28 days away, and I will write much more about that tomorrow. One thing that I did want to say today is that I went online last night and discovered that the 2013 World Series of Poker will be taking place in Las Vegas at the Rio from May 29th - July 16th. The 'Main Event' will be taking place from July 7th - July 16th, with the final nine being determined on the 16th.
Don't be surprised if I decide to make my weekly football predictions on Thursday this week due to all of the games that will played on Thanksgiving Day. If I like ANY of those games once I start reviewing the lines, you will see those picks a day early. One prediction that I made at work last night involves the Notre Dame/USC game. It is not a lock that USC will win, but going into the game with a 7-4 record, and fresh off of a loss to UCLA, I GUARANTEE that the Trojans will show up for this game... How must it feel to be Matt Barkley right now, returning to school to go 7-4 to this point? This game could make the season for USC...
That is all for today folks. Have a good one and I will see you again tomorrow...
Monday, November 19, 2012
Bad Day
"And she swears there's nothing wrong, I hear her playing that same old song, She puts me up and puts me on..., Oh I had a bad day again..." -Fuel- (Bad Day)
Good morning everyone. Well, that was painful... After going 8-2 on my football picks last weekend, I followed that up with..., wait for it..., wait for it..., a 1-9 weekend... UGGHHH... My pick in Lucki Duck's elite blogger contest even almost lost to a ONE WIN team... YIKES!!!
Now that we have that out of the way, I was able to enjoy an early Chinese Thanksgiving Dinner with my dad last night? No, we're not Chinese, and it wasn't Chinese Thanksgiving - he's leaving town before Thanksgiving, so we went and ate some Chinese food... Anyway, before I ate Chinese food last night, and finished the leftovers five minutes ago, I weighed in at 225 pounds yesterday, meaning that I have now lost 6 pounds since I have ALMOST totally stopped drinking sodas and have a little less almost totally stopped eating foods with carbohydrates.
Speaking of carbohydrates, let's talk about my friend Nick, who is a good sport and a great guy. I work with Nick and he has a second job delivering carbohydrates with melted cheese and several tasty toppings. Nick agreed to let me share this story which happened in the aftermath of me initially going to the wrong house a week ago... So it's now after 3:00 in the morning, and we're sitting around the fire at my friend's house. There are four of us left who are keeping the dying fire alive, chatting, and finishing our last beers. I was one of the people who was keeping the dying fire alive, which matters in a minute. At this point in the conversation, we learn that the two girls left in our group (both from Pennsylvania coincidentally) both HUNTED GHOSTS growing up as teenagers... This was just something to do in the towns that they grew up in, and they definitely both believe in ghosts. Nick, who I was sitting by, DOES NOT like ghosts or hearing about ghosts, at least on this particular night... Since I'm the nice guy that I am, and I happened to be breaking branches and twigs to feed the fire, I SLOWLY reached around behind my friend and managed to just graze the back of his neck with the end of a small branch... This is when he JUMPED OUT of his chair and almost into the fire... "HA HA Coach, that's NOT FUNNY!!!" The rest of us were freakin DYING laughing... And for some reason people say that I'm a nice guy...
The story above would probably remind my younger brother of a time growing up when he was in elementary school and we were sitting side by side on the couch watching the movie "Carrie"... I had seen the movie before, and this is the final scene in the cemetery, where serene music is playing in the background, and someone is visiting a grave. At this point, a hand COMES UP THROUGH THE SOIL and the music goes all HELTER SKELTER... And yes, when this dead zombie arm came up through the ground, I grabbed my brother's thigh and he SCREAMED!!! In retrospect, I probably DESERVED to go 1-9 on my football predictions this weekend...
On the account for my blog, I have the ability to see what some of the older posts are that my readers are clicking on. Well, a few times during the past week, people have clicked on my fantasy baseball draft strategy and 2012 major league baseball predictions posts... BA HA HA if you remember how poorly I fared in these two areas this past season... :)
It seems that if I want to share humorous stories from work, I will probably never run out of material for this blog. This past week when I was manning the post that leads up to our rooftop bar, I stopped a small group and had them pour their drinks into plastic cups (we do not allow glass to go up to The Veranda). Well, we keep these glasses in a tub, and one of the girls just TOSSES HER GLASS into the tub that is FULL OF GLASSES, resulting in a CRASH that caught my attention (I did not envision her THROWING THE GLASS and therefore did not see it while it was happening)... I was so STUNNED that as she apologized to me, I was looking at her SPEECHLESS, and like she was from another planet... After her group walked away, I found that she had managed to break two of the glasses that were sitting in the tub - UGGHHH...
Something else that I witnessed a couple of times this weekend was guys walking past me to our rooftop bar at 1:00 a.m. with sunglasses hanging from the shirt collars - way to be prepared?????
I think that I referenced this topic a long time ago in the blog, but I keep seeing the 'North Face' clothing in our bar and around town as the weather gets cooler. The thought that keeps coming to me is, "what, the North Face of the step on the sidewalk that you had to climb when you entered the store at the outlet mall to buy that jacket???" Sometimes I can be SOOOOO CYNICAL...
To recap the..., NEWEST blog schedule here, I will be posting five days a week, Monday-Friday. Monday and Thursday will be rambles, Wednesday will be Las Vegas/poker-related, Friday will be football predictions, and Tuesday will be potluck...
I hope that all of you have a great start to the week and I will see you again tomorrow!
Good morning everyone. Well, that was painful... After going 8-2 on my football picks last weekend, I followed that up with..., wait for it..., wait for it..., a 1-9 weekend... UGGHHH... My pick in Lucki Duck's elite blogger contest even almost lost to a ONE WIN team... YIKES!!!
Now that we have that out of the way, I was able to enjoy an early Chinese Thanksgiving Dinner with my dad last night? No, we're not Chinese, and it wasn't Chinese Thanksgiving - he's leaving town before Thanksgiving, so we went and ate some Chinese food... Anyway, before I ate Chinese food last night, and finished the leftovers five minutes ago, I weighed in at 225 pounds yesterday, meaning that I have now lost 6 pounds since I have ALMOST totally stopped drinking sodas and have a little less almost totally stopped eating foods with carbohydrates.
Speaking of carbohydrates, let's talk about my friend Nick, who is a good sport and a great guy. I work with Nick and he has a second job delivering carbohydrates with melted cheese and several tasty toppings. Nick agreed to let me share this story which happened in the aftermath of me initially going to the wrong house a week ago... So it's now after 3:00 in the morning, and we're sitting around the fire at my friend's house. There are four of us left who are keeping the dying fire alive, chatting, and finishing our last beers. I was one of the people who was keeping the dying fire alive, which matters in a minute. At this point in the conversation, we learn that the two girls left in our group (both from Pennsylvania coincidentally) both HUNTED GHOSTS growing up as teenagers... This was just something to do in the towns that they grew up in, and they definitely both believe in ghosts. Nick, who I was sitting by, DOES NOT like ghosts or hearing about ghosts, at least on this particular night... Since I'm the nice guy that I am, and I happened to be breaking branches and twigs to feed the fire, I SLOWLY reached around behind my friend and managed to just graze the back of his neck with the end of a small branch... This is when he JUMPED OUT of his chair and almost into the fire... "HA HA Coach, that's NOT FUNNY!!!" The rest of us were freakin DYING laughing... And for some reason people say that I'm a nice guy...
The story above would probably remind my younger brother of a time growing up when he was in elementary school and we were sitting side by side on the couch watching the movie "Carrie"... I had seen the movie before, and this is the final scene in the cemetery, where serene music is playing in the background, and someone is visiting a grave. At this point, a hand COMES UP THROUGH THE SOIL and the music goes all HELTER SKELTER... And yes, when this dead zombie arm came up through the ground, I grabbed my brother's thigh and he SCREAMED!!! In retrospect, I probably DESERVED to go 1-9 on my football predictions this weekend...
On the account for my blog, I have the ability to see what some of the older posts are that my readers are clicking on. Well, a few times during the past week, people have clicked on my fantasy baseball draft strategy and 2012 major league baseball predictions posts... BA HA HA if you remember how poorly I fared in these two areas this past season... :)
It seems that if I want to share humorous stories from work, I will probably never run out of material for this blog. This past week when I was manning the post that leads up to our rooftop bar, I stopped a small group and had them pour their drinks into plastic cups (we do not allow glass to go up to The Veranda). Well, we keep these glasses in a tub, and one of the girls just TOSSES HER GLASS into the tub that is FULL OF GLASSES, resulting in a CRASH that caught my attention (I did not envision her THROWING THE GLASS and therefore did not see it while it was happening)... I was so STUNNED that as she apologized to me, I was looking at her SPEECHLESS, and like she was from another planet... After her group walked away, I found that she had managed to break two of the glasses that were sitting in the tub - UGGHHH...
Something else that I witnessed a couple of times this weekend was guys walking past me to our rooftop bar at 1:00 a.m. with sunglasses hanging from the shirt collars - way to be prepared?????
I think that I referenced this topic a long time ago in the blog, but I keep seeing the 'North Face' clothing in our bar and around town as the weather gets cooler. The thought that keeps coming to me is, "what, the North Face of the step on the sidewalk that you had to climb when you entered the store at the outlet mall to buy that jacket???" Sometimes I can be SOOOOO CYNICAL...
To recap the..., NEWEST blog schedule here, I will be posting five days a week, Monday-Friday. Monday and Thursday will be rambles, Wednesday will be Las Vegas/poker-related, Friday will be football predictions, and Tuesday will be potluck...
I hope that all of you have a great start to the week and I will see you again tomorrow!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)