Watching Criminal Minds

Good morning everyone.  I'm still adjusting to my new job, and I'm still putting together my apartment piecemeal (evidently a lot of stuff fits into a small SUV, for those of you who were following my migration across the Southwestern U.S. about eight months back).  Long story short, I haven't been writing here as often as I'm used to, but the good thing, the blog is always here when I'm ready to come back to it.  In the time that I haven't been writing here (or at my new blogs), I 've also been watching some college basketball in my downtime, and last weekend (leading into this week) was very gratifying for me as a couple of the media darlings aren't getting the love that they were recently.  First Gonzaga, which plays in a super weak conference, and who evidently (according to one of the t.v. commentators) "cringes" at being called a "mid-major," well, they're done.  Play a team from the ACC and take a 14-point loss - who would've thought???  As for Kentucky (who is obviously good, but who also didn't play a stellar schedule, which helps in going 38-0), well, there are a few more people out there now in the media who aren't just handing the title to them on a silver platter, thinking that it's going to be a cakewalk for the Wildcats, after they survived the three-seed in their region.  Now Calipari and company get Wisconsin, and that ought to be a heck of a test too.

On my prop bets, I hit on Michigan State winning their region at 9 to 1, and I still have 3 teams (yes, everyone but Kentucky, who had low-paying odds) to win the title.  I have Wisconsin at 8 to 1, Duke at 9 to 1, and Michigan State at 40 to 1.  Go Sparty!!!  :)

Okay, I've been busy, I'm a horrible person, whatever.  Now it's time to steal from my friends again and go to bed.  First, I've had friends post a RUN of incredible photos, which make me question why I have STILL never lived near the ocean (or any real water to speak of, other than the San Marcos River)...

       
This is from my friend Scott, who lives a little further south than Austin.  This shot is from my friend Carrie, who lives in the same vicinity as Scott...

Punks...  This shot is from my friend Shae, who I met in my very first job at UT, working here as a temp back at that time...

I could get used to that.  And this photo is from my friend Destiny...

No water here, but still a good shot...  :)  I've got some water in this one, as my friend Kelly took to facebook, trying to get some help figuring out what that creature above the turtle is...

The webbed-feet make it hard to pinpoint, although "soft-shell turtle" has been the most popular vote.  My friend Penny posted this shot recently, and it appears that this grocery store is advertising their rotisserie chicken.  However, the placement of the sticker makes it looks like a label...

... for the cupcake.  Lemon pepper or barbecue pastry my friends???  My friend Tracey shared this one recently, which I think is an honest depiction of the path to success...

And last but not least, a group called 'San Marvelous' (who I messaged on facebook to see if it would be okay to share photos with some of their "models" showing off their 'San Marvelous' gear - I never got a response), well, I don't think that I'll offend anyone sharing this gem without their blessing...

You see, the campus at my alma mater in San Marcos, America, well..., it's just a LITTLE hilly...  :)  Harris is one of the dining halls on campus, and this meme made me laugh out loud when I saw it tonight.  To all of my friends who shared their quotes and photos with the blog tonight, a job well done...  :D

I hope that all of you had a great first quarter of 2015, and that you have an outstanding April!  See ya soon...

Elite 8 Picks

Good afternoon everyone.  I know that many of you aren't following the new blog where I'm moved my sports predictions to, but Joey and I have our 'Elite Eight' selections up here for those of you who are interested.  Have a great basketball weekend and expect a real post here soon...  ;)

Lots Of Basketball

Good evening everyone.  I have been pretty busy lately, but I wanted to give y'all the link to the predictions that Joey and I have made for the 'Sweet 16' games that are taking place tomorrow and Friday.  You can find our picks with scores at 'Coach's Parlay Card'  This is where I've moved my sports stuff (predictions anyway), and where all of my football picks will be posted in the future (Joey's picks also, if he keeps picking games with me).  Joey and I will put up our picks for the Saturday and Sunday games at the 'Parlay Card' site also, and I'll try to write a full entry for this blog.  I've just been busy lately, but that's a good thing.  Enjoy the rest of your week and I'll see you soon!

South By Southswim

"If someone's not getting their face beat in, I don't stay interested long..." -Leanne Calderon-


Good afternoon everyone.  I decided that I had to take a few minutes and make sure that I caught y'all up on things today.  I've been so busy with my new job that I've been neglecting all of my blogs, but I'm going to post at all of them today.  I already have my basketball picks for the day up at 'Coach's Parlay Card' , and I'll later be posting at 'Coach Goes Viral' and 'Three Chips Poker'  As you could guess, I've already got the t.v. tuned into the NCAA Tournament, watching the media darlings in the Kentucky uniforms that are struggling with a #8 seeded Cincinnati team, IN KENTUCKY...  Yeah..., they're gonna CRUISE to a 40-0 record - WHAT EVER...  Anyway, that's for another blog, and some people CLAIM to have never even heard of 'March Madness...'  My friend Leanne posted that as a status last night, which made me laugh and recount the tale of how when I used to coach softball in San Marcos, the umpires at our annual spring break tournament (Leanne played for us) would have the t.v. tuned into the tourney up in the hospitality room at our softball complex...  :)  That's where Leanne's quote from the very top of this page came from, as she's not so much of a basketball fan, but more of a fighter...

I still think that we could bring Calderon in to intentionally foul people, but I guess that we'll just let her keep training...  :)  I joked with Leanne about airbrushing muscles onto legs, and she said that would take more effort than the actual working out...  :D  I'm extremely proud of Leanne's dedication, and I have to get myself back into shape someday (a shape other than round)...

Speaking of friends and former student-athletes, and one who did play basketball for me, it's South By Southwest time here in Austin again, except that there is A LOT of rain in the forecast...  We're actually under a flood watch until 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I'm wondering how much money that's going to cost the good people of our fair city.  Well, the city is exactly fair...  My aforementioned friend Jessica was in town to make some money this week...

Jessica does a little bit of modeling, and what initially got my attention from her facebook page this week was a hashtag to one of her statuses, where some genius evidently thought that her time wasn't worth any compensation...  The hastag was #worthmorethannothing (which I really liked), and I chatted about this with Jess a little earlier today.  I told her that I had planned on likening the situation here to one where a bar letting a drunk girl get up and dance on the bar was some sort of privilege, like letting Jessica work as a model at their event was doing her some sort of favor.  Then Jessica told me that this genius actually told her that the models were not doing an actual job.  Jessica replied, "It is a job.  It's my job.  If it wasn't a job, why can't any of you do it?  Why do you even need us?  Oh..., because you need someone else's skills to accomplish a task for your own personal agenda.  That's called a job, buddy..."  Yeah, I like Jessica...  :D  Again, #worthmorethannothing..., a very appropriate hashtag.

Like I said, a lot of rain forecast here, so I'm not sure how the rest of South By Southwest is going to play out, but I plan on watching a lot of basketball.  Joey and I will be back with our predictions for the 'Sweet 16' over at 'Coach's Parlay Card' sometime before the games tip next Thursday, and we'll give you our picks for the rest of the tournament from there on out.  Speaking of basketball, not everyone agrees with me about Kentucky, as Joey posted his "bracket" on facebook earlier this week...

Considering that the Wildcats are letting Cincinnati hang around, I still think their prospects for sweeping the rest of the tournament are pretty bleak, but we shall see...

I never did make that crawfish boil last Sunday, which was a mistake considering how this weekend is getting poured on, but I still have these 14+ basketball games ahead of me.  I hope that all of you enjoy the rest of your weekend and the start of spring as this tournament kicks into full gear, and I'll see ya soon...

BRING ME ANOTHER SMURF!

"And whenever you're dark inside, don't let go, no, don't let go, remember there's rain, and there's candy, and Christmasy winter snow, snow, snow..." -Blue October- (For My Brother)

"And this is how you remind me..., this is how you remind me of what I really am, this is how you remind me of what I really am..." -Nickelback- (This Is How You Remind Me)

"Being polite is so rare these days that it is often confused with flirting..." -Spirit Science- (via Chris Abramski)




Good evening everyone.  We have a lot to cover on this Tuesday night, with the usual segues and stolen material from my friends showing up in force.  Let me start off by mentioning that my friend Chris brought his "'A' Game" to facebook this week, and that I'm stealing from him twice in this post.  That quote right above this paragraph was shared by Chris earlier in the week, and it was just SPOT ON...  I'm a pretty good guy (despite what you may have heard), and I've seriously had girls go so far as basically flipping out on me because I was nice to them, and I was just like "WOW..."  We'll get back to Chris later in this entry...

My friend George posted a Nickelback status today, and it reminded me (pun intended, but not initially) of the lyrics quoted above.  Back when I used to run (I completed three marathons back in the day - presently my brother and I let our sis Whitney do the majority of the running in our family), I'd often have the lyrics of that song playing in my mind as I strode around 'Bikini Hill' and the rest of San Marcos, America.  As it turns out, I may be able to hang out with George and an all-star cast (including, but probably not limited to, Jackie, Nick, Floyd, and Beau) this weekend at a crawfish boil as South By Southwest (SXSW) kicks off here in the ATX.  SXSW is a little festival held in Austin during spring break every year that includes a little music, movies, celebrating, etc...  Oh, and CRAWFISH, which I happen to love...

Speaking of spring break, the weather here earlier in the week had me recalling that set of Blue October lyrics above.  BOY did we have some rain here yesterday!  I have complained countless times about the winter weather in my hometown in New Hampshire, but I don't think that I'm cut out for living in Seattle either.  Rainy and dreary and rainy and dreary...  It's great when you want to sleep in on a Sunday morning, but it gets old pretty quick.  Well, I'm more than happy to inform you that the ten-day forecast for Austin has our highs in the low 70's and our low's in the low 50's...  :D  That should make for great weather as SXSW kicks off, and I'm ready to celebrate, only having my 'New Employee Orientation' to attend on Monday...

As poker players and sportsbooks throughout the desert cry, I'm probably not going to be moving to Las Vegas anytime soon because I received a job offer that was too good to resist.  The change in my job classification will have me attending the orientation on Monday, so some low-key partaking of crawfish with friends this weekend is probably in order.  While we're on the subject(s), we can't mention crawfish or new jobs without congratulating our friend Alyssa (remember, she's the one who doesn't peel crawfish quite as fast as me - that's my story and I'm sticking to it) on her new job.  Congratulations Alyssa!  :D

Okay, let's see what else my friends have done this week...  Well, we were talking about food.  My friend Claudia shared this little peanut butter cup the other day...

"Reese's who?" was all that I could think to ask, as this thing weighed in at 230 pounds.  Turning our attention to breakfast, my friend Susan shared this photo this morning...

Susan's description was "Something does not belong here.  #boys #dinosaursforbreakfast"  My immediate thought was "fossil fuel."  Do you see what I did there?  I can be semi, sort-of-clever every once in a while, kinda...  ;)  And then there's Brittany, who has probably managed to get herself in this blog almost as many times as Alyssa.  Although we don't have Brittany posing with Emmitt Smith this time around, she did share this informative photo about beverages...

And that's why we keep Brittany on the payroll...  ;)  I told you that we'd get back to Chris, and if you were wondering about the title of tonight's post, here ya go...

This is another photo that Terrell Suggs (Baltimore Ravens) posted, and I don't know who initially looks at this photo and comes up with that caption, but it did make me smile (however unfortunate that may be)...  :)

As Gonzaga just handily disposed of BYU in the West Coast Conference title game, let me take this timely opportunity to remind you about one of my other blogs.  You can find yesterday's post, 'Kentucky Is Going To Lose (& Gonzaga Will Too)' at 'Coach Goes Viral'  In this entry you can read my thoughts as to why Kentucky won't go unbeaten this season, and why Gonzaga shouldn't be a #1 or #2 seed (and will also lose).  Currently I'm chatting daily sports with my brother, but Joey and I will be back at 'Coach's Parlay Card' with basketball picks once the 'Sweet Sixteen' begins.  I'm actually making almost nightly picks there now, but visitors are still struggling to find my fledgling site...  :)

That's it for tonight, but I hope that all of you have a good one, and I'll see you soon!

Spring Forward

"Thanks to everyone who posted on my birthday.  To the rest of you...  You are dead to me..."
-Pete P. Peters-

"I think my ponytail is on too tight..." -Yvonne Gonzales- (Yvonne's response to not getting a reference I made).

Grrouchie:  "Excuse me, where do you have the ears of corn?"
Smith's Employee:  "Umm, I don't even know what that is..." -Grrouchie-

"No matter how much times passes, great friends always pick up right where they left off..."
-Summer Rodriguez-

"This is what happens when it snows in Texas..." -Gisele Verissimo-


Good evening everyone.  Long time, no see...  With the weather that we've had recently (and that we're forecast to have this weekend), I've pretty much accepted the fact that I'll stay home this weekend.  It's not like there's nothing on t.v., or that I have nothing to do here, but I'm ready for our Texas winter to be over.  My friend Verissimo posted this photo with that quote above when nasty weather hit the Metroplex (Dallas-Fort Worth area) recently...

Click on that photo and you'll see a lot of bad news for drivers.  You can see from the top of the photo that this took place at about noon also.  Here in Austin (and at the University of Texas more specifically) we've had delayed starts to workdays because the biggest threat to drivers has been ice in the early morning while the temperatures are still below freezing.  It's not supposed to get quite that cold this weekend, but it will still be cool enough, and we have an 80% chance of rain on Sunday, followed by a 100% chance on Monday.

Like I said a minute ago, there's plenty to watch on t.v., and I have plenty to do.  The conference tournaments are starting up in men's college basketball, and I still have my NHL and NBA.  I'm noticing just now that my Bovada account is down only $2.24 from what it was on February 8th (with no deposits, and with microbet upon microbet).  I still haven't downloaded the Bovada poker again, but that's something that might happen pretty soon.  As always, I have plenty that I can do around the apartment.  This isn't even taking into account the blog reading that I've gotten behind on.  It seems that's almost all of my fellow bloggers (listed on the right) have made at least one post that I haven't read yet (while some have posted several times).  A vast majority of the time I will comment on my friends' entries after they have posted, just to let them know that I've stopped by at the least.  There hasn't been much commenting on my part this week...  :)  This just shows a bunch of laziness on my part, especially since I didn't have to report to work until 1:00 p.m. yesterday...  As a preferred night owl, my first move when discovering a delayed start at work the next day is too stay up later that night.

In addition to having reading to catch up on, I've also been neglecting all of my blogs.  I waited so long to rant about Gonzaga not deserving a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament that they went and lost a game before I did.  While I'm talking about college basketball (and this isn't a rant), I'll go on record right now with my belief that I don't think that Kentucky will go unbeaten this season.  The Wildcats have been tested a few times in a conference that isn't very tough.  If Kentucky played in the ACC, they'd probably have more than one loss already.

Since I mentioned it, I've been pondering downloading the Bovada poker (just for research for my poker blog, of course)...  :P

I think I'm gonna let y'all off the hook for now, but you may see me here again this weekend.  Have a good one until then, and remember to set your clocks ahead an hour before you go to bed on Saturday night!