It Looks Good On Paper

Good morning everyone.  Today, this week, actually this whole month looks good on paper - we shall see...  My day off is being forecast with a high of 72 degrees, which promises to be a perfect day to head over to Bikini Hill and do some more studying for my fantasy baseball draft, which is now just a mere three weeks away...  I mentioned in a recent blog that I was randomly selected to receive the 3rd draft pick in a 10-team league, so now I have to try to figure out which players will be available in which spots as the draft proceeds through 28 rounds.  I played in my first 10-team draft league for fantasy baseball last season and finished in 3rd place (with the top 2 teams getting paid).  If I wasn't so lazy, I would have left my apartment yesterday and headed over behind Bikini Hill to watch my alma mater complete a sweep of Notre Dame on the baseball diamond.  The Bobcats earned their fifth-straight shutout win in a row, their 3rd against the Irish.  That's the Texas State Bobcats, who will become a member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in the fall - stay tuned...  ;)  My recent semi-obsession with moving back to Las Vegas (my friends, yourself included, might choose to remove the word 'semi' from that characterization) seems to leave everything else running in a distant second place on my list of interests.  Yesterday while reading stories from 1 of my 2 favorite Vegas reading sites, I was turned onto a 3rd.  I have now added the 'Las Vegas Cabbie Chronicles' to my reading list.  The website is http://lvcabbiechronicles.blogspot.com/ if you're interested in reading some true tales in the life of a Las Vegas cab driver.  Don't forget 'Life As A Las Vegas Poker Dealer' (written by a good friend of mine) at http://pkrdlr.blogspot.com/ or www.allvegaspoker.com/ if you're interested in reading some poker stories.  Back to the month that looks good on paper, this week will be FULL OF college conference basketball tournaments as we gear up for the NCAA tournament chaos that begins next week.  Remember that the brackets for the NCAA Tournament will be announced this coming Sunday (on the 11th), and I will hit you with some tournament predictions on the 14th.  Guess what I will be doing next Monday (study, study, study)...  Hopefully I get a lot accomplished at Bikini Hill today as I will be giving you my regular season MLB predictions on Friday the 23rd.  Warmer weather, the NCAA Tourney, the start of the baseball season - what more could you want?  My intention is to do some of my 'spring cleaning' today, sandwiching it somewhere in-between and around going to Bikini Hill and watching college basketball games on t.v. tonight.  As I sit here wondering what sage advice I can pass onto you on a Monday, trying to make sure that stopping by my little blog and reading this far was worthwhile to you....  ahhh, yes...  If you ever go out in public, say to a nightclub, to a live music venue for example..., I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND that you walk up to total strangers, and, I don't know.... proceed to stick your palm in their faces, before asking them if your hand smells like chloroform...  THAT was a new one on me...  Enjoy the rest of your evening, elsewhere...  Life is rarely boring in San Marcos, America...  My new most-annoying commercial on t.v. is the Totino's Pizza Rolls commercial where the kids are on the phone with their mother, unable to locate the pizza rolls which are sitting on the freezer shelf at EYE-LEVEL, right in front of them...  Now I'm not one to be cynical (okay, maybe I am). but maybe these children don't deserve to eat if they can't find these pizza rolls...  :)  HOW can you not see them?  WHO thinks that this is clever??  And they keep showing this commerical, OVER AND OVER...???  Well, I have a lot to do today, or that I SHOULD DO TODAY, so I am going to let you go now.  I hope that you have a great Monday, and I'll see you again on Wednesday.

        

Tim Tebow & Taylor Swift

Good afternoon and Happy Texas Independence Day everyone.  I've got another ramble for you today, but we're getting closer and closer to the point where we'll have predictions on Fridays once again, at least for a little while.  Sports will be mixed in with today's ramble as a consolation prize though, as I'm going to hit you with a few funny things from my fantasy baseball magazine.  I have been playing fantasy baseball for close to 15 years now (I'm not EXACTLY SURE which year was my first), and throughout my 'playing career' I have purchased the Athlon Sports baseball magazine.  I like the magazine because the layout isn't "busy" (their stats aren't arranged in some bizarre matrix that is intended to give their readers migrane headaches) and they include every team's schedule.  In this year's 2012 edition, the magazine did a 'Calendar of the Weird' from which I will share a few events which made me smile.  In April of last year, Ryan Braun attempted to contact a fan who had proposed marriage to him, but he wasn't able to get a hold of her because she included her phone number on the sign that she used at the ballpark and received a TON of phone calls...  :)  In a game last May, the Kansas City Royals used two pinch-runners in the ninth inning of a tie game who BOTH managed to get picked off of first base...  :)  In early October a 97 year-old man in Milwaukee called '911' because he wanted to watch the Brewers and Arizona Diamondbacks playoff game but he couldn't find his TV's remote control.  The BEST PART is that the police responded to the call and found the remote...  :)  Oh, and if you did join my fantasy baseball league, don't be drafting all of the Phillies just because I predicted that they will be in the World Series this year...  :)  So I was browsing through the Yahoo! headlines a little while ago, and happened upon one suggesting that Tim Tebow and Taylor Swift might be an item...  And you were wondering how Tebow was going to keep his name in the media during the offseason...  :)  In the little poker story blog that I found at AllVegasPoker, I read about something which I never really thought about doing in Vegas as a sports fan, but that it might be a fun idea for a football junkie.  This fan was mentioning how he went to one of the casinos to watch the NFL Draft.  It looks like they have a lot of fun doing that in New York City, and if you could get the casino packed with football fans, that definitely seems like it would be a good way to spend the day.  On the DYING TO MOVE BACK to Vegas front, I received some potential good news from a friend of mine.  It seems that he might be needing a house and dog-sitter and the end of August and start of September.  If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you know the thought that ran through my mind...  'Looking after the house, taking care of the dogs, and studying football FERVENTLY with the fast-approaching football season coming...'  Yep, I'm available...  :)  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE San Marcos, America, but the ability to play poker and/or make sports bets at the drop of hat (or a 'Benjamin')...  As I look through the poker stories as the AllVegas site, it seems that there a lot more 'Aces-Cracked', 'High-Hand' promotions, and 'Freeroll' tournaments for poker players in Vegas as the poker rooms compete for business.  Oh, and more tournaments with assorted buy-ins.  When I dealt poker in Vegas five years ago, brand new poker rooms were still being opened in the casinos as 'Texas Hold-Em' was exploding onto the scene.  The blog has now been viewed over 4,300 times for those of you tracking if I'll reach my predicted 20,000 views by the end of the year.  I'm so close now I can TASTE IT...  ;)  Okay, make sure that you start doing your scouting during the coming week for your NCAA Tourney Brackets if you haven't been doing so already - 'Selection Sunday' is now nine days away...  :)  Have a great weekend and we'll see you again on Monday!
              

February Bonus Day

Good afternoon everyone.  Once every four years we get this day, February 29th.  Just sitting here thinking about it, I cannot recall having known anyone whose birthday is today.  I'm going to give you another ramble today, but I feel less guilty about it looking at the calendar.  In just a few weeks it will be very easy to fuel my Friday entries with sports material for a couple of months, with the random Wednesday sports blog.  Although I like doing this blog on a regular schedule (Monday, Wednesday, Friday at the moment), I do not want it be a chore, which is why I don't spend hours researching random sports-related topics just so I can have something to write about on Fridays.  Football predictions, the NCAA basketball tournament, etc..., when I am guaranteed to be following what is happening, writing the Friday entries is EASY...  ;)  To recap my gameplan for a couple of entries that I will be making next month, I will be making a multitude of different NCAA Tourney predictions on Wednesday, March 14th, and I will be making my regular season Major League Baseball standings predictions for every ballclub on Friday, March 25th.  'Selection Sunday' (the announcement of brackets) for the NCAA Tourney will be taking place a week from this Sunday, on the 11th of March.  I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I returned home from work last night regarding my fantasy baseball league.  I signed up for my spot a few weeks back (going on 3 weeks maybe), and at that time I was 2nd of the 10 teams needed to make the league go.  If 10 teams don't sign up for a league by the projected draft time, that specific league doesn't 'make', and you have to sign up for another one.  Seeing that my draft was scheduled for Sunday, March 25th, I really wasn't worried about the league not having enough teams, but it's nice to know that your league is 'locked', and also fun and helpful to find out which spot you have in the draft.  Well, when I left for work last night, the league only had 6 teams in it, but when I returned home to find out if anyone else had joined, I couldn't find my league's draft time on the list.  Sure enough, when I checked my e-mail, I had the confirmation that my league is officially 'locked', and the e-mail came at 7:45.  This means that in about 2 hours, 4 people signed up for my league.  Anyway, I found out that I will have the 3rd overall draft pick in my league.  I picked 7th out of 10 teams last year under the same format.  What I obviously like about selecting 3rd is that if someone asks me to list my top 3 prospects for the draft, I am GUARANTEED to get one of them.  This is a 'snake draft' for any of you who have played fantasy football under the same draft format, so picking 3rd means that I will next pick 18th when it comes back around, and then 23rd, and then 38th, etc, etc... for 28 rounds.  Each team owner has 75 seconds to make their selection each time, and 280 players are drafted all together, so the draft takes a little while (I believe that it took 2 1/2 hours last year).  If you have been following the blog regularly, you already know at this point in my life that baseball season and fantasy baseball just get me to the next football season.  I'm still shaking off that 300 dollar bill on my vehicle repair, and doing everything that I can to make a move back to Las Vegas at the end of the summer.  Hopefully I can save enough money and the economy will cooperate enough to allow me to do so.  It will definitely give more punch to the blog if I have action on the predictions that I am giving to you...  I saw something nice on facebook today when one of my former co-workers who I mentioned here a little while back (the milk story) noted that she was glad that she wore her heels to work today.  This notation was accompanied by her posing in a photo with David Robinson...  She recently received a well-deserved job offer from a radio station in San Antonio and is already 'living the dream'...  I ended up being a 'trooper' and watching the whole Daytona 500 on Monday night.  As I watched the race, I realized that auto racing is one sport that I could not compete in.  I am weary of the idiots on our nation's highways when they get too close to me while we're driving 70 miles an hour.  The prospect of racing HOUR AFTER HOUR on an oval track where I would be driving in a 'pack' of cars traveling at 200 miles per hour does not appeal to me.  The world of auto racing is one of the sports arenas where my brother has managed to outdistance me in life.  I have never been to a live NASCAR race, a live fight (boxing or UFC/MMA, etc...), or an NHL game.  Don't get me wrong, I have been to an NFL game, and NUMEROUS Major League Baseball and NBA games (including all of the Western Conference Finals and Finals home games in the Spurs' title runs in 1999 and 2003).  This doesn't mean that my brother isn't a punk however.  :)  I definitely need to make connections if and when I get back to Las Vegas to take advantage of the opportunities to view these sporting events.  I hope that each of you had as good a month as I did (outside of the vehicle repair).  One of my friends brought me a calendar from Las Vegas for 2012, and I received it at the end of January.  Since the February photo was a picture of a statue (outside of the Statue of Liberty, I could not care less about statues), I ripped the statue photo out so I could look at a Strip photo that features that redone Aladdin, which is now the Planet Hollywood Casino.  I can remember doing this like it was yesterday, and now tomorrow is March.  For all of the little sayings that I may have problems with for whatever reason, you better BELIEVE that TIME DOES FLY...  I hope that you have a great day and I will see you again on Friday.
      

I Won't Lie, It Hurts...

Good afternoon boys and girls.  I apologize for missing my Friday entry here.  I was a little preoccupied with the condition of my vehicle, and today I found out the damage - THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS...  The alternator needed to be replaced, so hopefully I won't have the urge to eat very often this week... ummm, month...  I'm trying to save up money to move back to Las Vegas, and that bill was painful to say the least.  Weather permitting, I will have the chance to watch other people with car trouble tonight as the Daytona 500 is scheduled to start in about two hours.  Yesterday the broadcasters said that this is the first time that they've ever had to change the day of the race, and we'll see if they can actually race tonight...  With my engine running, I was able to do an errand for my friend today, which allowed us to witness an amusing confrontation...  (Yes, this is my normal Monday ramble now...).  As I was leaving the grocery store after picking up a rotisserie chicken to eat my depression away, my friend called me and asked if I could pick up some cigarettes for him (while I'm sitting in my car with my then-hot chicken - what are the odds??)...  Anyway, I go back in and pick up the smokes, and then proceed to my workplace.  My friend and I go out front after I drop off his delivery, and happen upon a confrontation that is occurring in the alleyway, as two drivers are trying to use the same one-car alley, and are yelling at each other from behind the wheels of their respective vehicles (maybe they knew I needed material for my ramble).  The cars are facing each other left-bumper to left-bumper, head-on, with the guy who had obviously just turned into the alleyway (I know this because he has advanced maybe 10 yards into the alley) yelling at the driver of the other car, "you'll have to back up because my car doesn't go in reverse..."  (true story).  The woman driving the other car yells something back at him (it was easier to hear the guy because his open driver's side window was literally facing us and was feet from where we were standing), to which the guy responds with something to the effect of "it doesn't bother me..." (as if he is prepared to sit there for the long haul)...  After about another minute (count out a literal minute to yourself) they start chirping loudly again, and then the guy somehow manages to squeeze his car in-between the lady's car and the wall of the opposite building - Freaking surreal...  :)  This all followed the events of about 45 minutes earlier when I walked to pick up my vehicle from the mechanic, and had to use the same crosswalk where I was almost rundown a few months earlier (the incident which I described in a blog entry a little while back)...  I am waiting to get the go-ahead from the crossing light, and as the light turns red, a truck pulls up to the signal, stops at the red light, and then GUNS IT, BLOWING THRU the light as the opposite light turns green and we get the go-ahead to cross...  I roll my eyes (I WAS NOT on the crosswalk yet, thankfully) and the girl crossing from the opposite side of the street sees what happens and my reaction, and I nod as she says something to me about his genius driving in passing...  There are a few people from San Marcos, America that I would like to enter at Daytona tonight - I think they would spice things up a little...  ;)  There is still room in my fantasy baseball league at www.cdmsports.com if anyone is interested in joining.  Under the 'Draft & Play' option, it's a 25-dollar league that is drafting on Sunday, March 25th at 11:00 a.m. CST using rotisserie-style scoring (not points).  The 10-team league still had 5 spots open when I looked this morning.  I hope that all of your vehicles are working and that you get to enjoy the race tonight.  I will see you again on Wednesday.
    

GRRRRRRRRR.....

Good afternoon everyone.  Today's post will be an impromptu ramble after I didn't make a trip to 'Bikini Hill' for the third day in a row on a BEAUTIFUL San Marcos Wednesday...  GRRRRRRRRR.....  Instead I have wasted half the day (over two hours, divided by a lunch break) trying to start my car after it decided to revert back to its behavior of a few months ago.  The battery has juice, but the connections to the battery aren't giving me the necessary charge to start the engine.  GRRRRRRRRR.....  This seems to be a result of me having to hit the brakes pretty hard in a parking lot last night to avoid a collision with another vehicle, at which point the battery and brake lights lit up on my console.  GRRRRRRRRR.....  Anytime that this happened during the summer or fall, I was able to readjust the battery cables and get the car to start.  I will probably end up giving it another go later tonight because I am really not keen on the idea of paying to have my car towed and then paying again to have it fixed...  After working and cleaning up after work last night, I can confidently say that my least favorite part of Fat Tuesday is feathers...  Little orphan feathers, laying all over the place...  I can't do a ramble for you without another bank story.  This time when I went to the bank, I had a cup full of change that I have been saving since I moved back to San Marcos in August.  After I gave the cup to the young lady to dump into the change machine in the back of the bank, she reappeared to let me know that there would be a 2% service charge if my change totaled $100.00 or more.  My initial response (in my head) was that I hoped the total didn't go over 100 so I wouldn't have to pay a fee, but then it occurred to me that if the total DID go over 100, I'm only giving them 2 dollars for EVERY 100 that I get back.  Human nature is a funny thing...  As it turns out, she asked me to guess how much change I had after the machine had counted it (the tellers like playing this game with their customers as this has happened to me before).  I guessed that it was $50.00 and it turned out to be a little bit more than $65.00...  If you find a moral to that story then you are a better person than I am...  :)  Leaving the grocery store last night I saw that there is a new 'tabloid' about reality shows.  It is really sad that we have gotten to the point that we have so many reality shows that there is enough drivel to fill a tabloid with on a regular basis.  Yeah, I'm pretty bitter because my car won't start, but still...  If you've been following the blog regularly, you've probably figured out that my t.v. viewing habits are sports, 'The Big Bang Theory', sports, 'Law & Order', sports, poker, and sports...  I am going to give up for today because I am a little tired after pointlessly attempting to get my car to start.  I hope that you're having a better day than I have, and I'll see you again on Friday.
    

President's Day & 'Toddlers And Tiaras'

Good morning everyone.  I hope that you are enjoying your President's Day.  As I stumble out of bed to do my ramble today, I am doing so after enjoying about as much sleep in a 24-hour period as I have for quite a while. I went into work for an early event on Saturday, which meant that I slept less than normal beforehand.  Of course this was accompanied by working longer than I usually do for a normal shift...  Anyway, I am well-rested now, and if the weather forecast holds up, today may be the first day of 2012 that I make a trip to the actual 'Bikini Hill'.  It is supposed to be 67 degrees and sunny this afternoon in San Marcos, America, which would be perfect for stretching out and digging into my fantasy baseball magazine on my day off.  In the meantime, let me do some rambling...  Last week one of my friends showed me a clip from the show 'Toddlers And Tiaras' on her phone.  GOODNESS GRACIOUS...  This may be the most disturbing thing that's ever been on television.  The clip that I saw focused on a six year-old girl who is a little beauty pageant contestant, and she was hamming it up for the cameras...  At one point as she's dancing around she actually says, "A dollar makes me holler"  WOW...  This is actually someone's CHILD!  Completely unacceptable...  On a much lighter note, as much as I will bash commercials that I don't like, I found one that I do like this weekend.  Clorox has a commercial where a mother and child are waiting at a bus stop and the child is wiping his nose with his sleeve.  The mother says, "don't use your sleeve" - the boy then proceeds to wipe his nose on the sleeve of the white dress shirt of the man that is standing beside him...  Well played...  :)  I read something from the AllVegasPoker website that I have referenced here before that I truly had a hard time wrapping my brain around.  A poker player was discussing sports betting in his story and he made this statement:  "I have a feeling with sports betting (that) you can bet either team and as long as there isn't an upset, you have a good shot at winning..."  HUH??!!  If you bet the FAVORITE and there isn't an upset, then...  :)  My brain just FROZE for a moment as I tried to process his statement...  As I try to determine whether or not I'll be able to make a move back to Las Vegas at the end of this summer, I am reminded of the movie 'Apollo 13'.  There is a point in the movie where they are going through a checklist of problems that will need to be solved in order to bring the crew back, and someone basically points out that we'll worry about that when we get to it because we're only this far down the list right now...  (The actual movie quote is much better, but I can't seem to find it online right now).  Between saving up money, and finding a job in the desert where the current unemployment rate is 12.7%, and finding a place to live, and, and, and....  Well, I have this afternoon to look forward to if the sun does indeed break through as forecast...  Oh, by the way, 'Bikini Hill' has gone over 4,000 views now, so we'll see if we can get 16,000 more views by the end of the year to reach the 20,000 that I predicted...  :)  I hope that you have a great day and I'll see you again on Wednesday.    
                           

Approaching Tipoff

Good afternoon everyone.  There is a lot of housekeeping going on in San Marcos, America today at the home of 'Bikini Hill'.  Not your literal housecleaning, but preparations being made for future blogs and things of that nature.  With the NBA All-Star Game being played next Sunday on February 26th and the NCAA Men's Tournament Selection Show taking place on Sunday, March 11th, I am slowly but surely gearing up for MY basketball season.  I may have touched on this before, but for those of you who may be new to the blog, this is what my sports year looks like at this point:  Football Season; Basketball Season (beginning with the college conference tournaments and the NBA playoff run); Hockey Season (beginning with the playoff run); Baseball Season (picking up on the heels of basketball and hockey finishing).  I play fantasy baseball to get me through the summer and to September when the football season starts over again.  Intertwined in the sports year I will watch the Golf 'Majors', the big NASCAR races, various UFC fights, the World Cup every 4 years, the Olympics every 2 years, etc...  As I typed in a moment ago, the NCAA Men's Tourney brackets will be released on Sunday, March 11th.  I have decided to do my blog with various NCAA Tourney predictions on Wednesday, March 14th.  The tournament will actually begin on that day, so my blog will come out early to precede any action.  One of my predictions that was gold last March (I made the prediction on facebook because I did not begin writing this blog until September) was my call that NONE of the #1 seeds would reach the Final Four - NAILED IT!!!  ;)  Come back on March 14th and we'll see if I can get anything right this year...  Regardless of what I predict on that Wednesday, I will predict games up through and including the national championship game in subsequent Friday blogs.  By the way, if you are an NCAA hoops fan and a Las Vegas fan, the opening weekend of the NCAA Tourney each year (Thursday - Sunday) is the only event that rivals the Super Bowl in the desert annually for the amount of action that is wagered on games.  In a nutshell, it's a GREAT PLACE to watch basketball games for four days if you ever get the opportunity.  If you are a baseball fan, I will be releasing my regular season predictions for the upcoming MLB season on Friday, March 23rd.  This will include my guess at the records for each team this year, just like I did for the NBA regular season a few months back.  One of the predictions for the MLB season that I made last Friday is that the Philadelphia Phillies will win the National League's berth to the World Series this year.  They just have SO MUCH pitching.  For any of you who are looking for a place to play fantasy baseball, I play at www.cdmsports.com and have been playing there for years.  The league that I joined actually has eight spots left in it if you are interested in competing in the same league as me.  I am playing in a 25-dollar rotisserie league using players from the American and National Leagues (that's the cost for the whole season).  It is a 10-team league under the 'Draft & Play' option, and the draft is on Sunday, March 25th at 11:00 a.m. CST.  CDM offers various other options (AL or NL players only, different entry fees, different scoring types, etc...) if the framework of my league doesn't suit your taste.  If you do join my league, my team's name is the Bikini Hill Giants.  I am going to let you mark all of those dates on your calendars now, and I will see you again on Monday with my ramble.  I hope that you have a great weekend!