Hey kids! I must admit, a very decent weekend, though I have only myself to credit for that. When we last spoke I was still pretty cranky, having my blog entry eaten by the internet demons that sometimes plague me. Well, here is what happened after that........
I left work, but not until after showing some people the Barney/Tupac video (see highlighted blog entries) and needless to say, it is a smash hit around the office. Not sure it was wise to let so many people at work know where my blog page is, but for the most part, if I am calling people out, it is more a political rant than anything work related, so all should be good there. Anyway, I had to cash ye olde paycheck and stop by the mall to check on some nursery stuff for my mom. No, there is no brother or sister in the offing, apparently her neighbor was looking to decorate her nursery in Blue Jean Baby stuff, whatever that is, and I said I would stop to see if K Mart had rugs of said name. Not that they did, I did a prelim check on Kmart.com and didn't see them there, so I highly doubted that they would be in the store, but I figured I could cash my check and get this done all at the same time (not to mention, stop by the comic book store and pick up the new releases that came out Thursday).
As expected, no luck there, so the next thing was to head downtown to do a switchover of buses and while in the neighborhood, pay the phone bill. Verizon doesn't have a bill paying office in town, but there is a newsstand where I can pay the bill, at only a fee of a dollar. I would rather pay that way then use the mail and hope it doesn't get lost or hand out credit card or bank account information to Verizon itself. This way is almost instantaneous and I know it is done, plus I then had the opportunity to get the collector's edition of Sports Illustrated celebrating the Steelers Super Bowl win. I will read it, but I want to send it and the issue that the one that came out after the game to my uncle in Iraq. I figure it might be a nice piece of home to send him, since he and some of his fellow soldiers were going to watch the game, which meant they had to get up roughly around 3am Iraq time in order to catch the game.
Back to Friday, after making it home, I felt it would be a good idea to get out of the house and go do something, otherwise I would end up just having a blah evening at home. Anyone who knows me, knows that one of the ways I get out of one of my funks is to spend money on myself. So, off to The Waterfront I went, with some cash in tow. I have been wanting to go to Barnes & Noble anyway, since I have run out of things to read around the house, save for magazines and comic books, I needed something a little more intellectually challenging. I got two books for Christmas, 1776 by David McCullough, and The Camel Club by David Baldacci plus I bought Leadership by Rudy Guliani but I have since finished all three books and was looking for something new to read. I had seen a book over vacation that I wanted, but given I had three unfinished books at the time, I held off. Now, I was going in search of the newest book by Neil Cavuto. For those of you unfamiliar, he does the business show every afternoon on Fox News, though it isn't the typical news show, making a lot of financial information understandable for the layman and not hawking stock tips or anything of the like. The other thing about Neil is that he is a cancer survivor and is now battling MS, so you get the feel from watching his show that he doesn't treat money as the be all end all that a lot of financial shows do.
Of course when I got to Barnes & Noble, I must have spent 35-40 minutes looking for the book, to know avail. Like a guy who doesn't need directions, I kept meandering through the store, checking different sections, biography, current events, history, all of the non fiction places one would expect to look, but came up empty. Finally I caved it, and went to the desk to ask for help. Sure enough, the girl who assisted me took me right to where the book should be, except it wasn't. Hah, vindication for not asking for directions after all. She mentioned they could order the book in (B&N is very good about such things, one of the reasons I like them), or I could check their South Hills store. Mind you, I didn't want to be traversing all over Pittsburgh for the book, if they had it great, if not, so be it. I did notice though, that while they didn't have his current book, they did have his first one in paperback so I figured I would get that instead. Now, since I was planning on spending about $25 bucks on a new hardback, and the paperback of the earlier was only $16, in my way of thinking that meant I had more money to spend, so I went to the bargain books and see what was floating around there, which is when I came across a steal for 5 bucks. Titled Talk of the Devil, it is a first person account of the author's interviews with 7 of the worlds most hated dictators after they have been removed from power. I already have finished the first section, which was his encounter with Idi Amin. Really interesting stuff for those who are into such things.
Having made myself happy with such a coup (no pun intended, though one may be inserted at your preference) I headed over to Red Robin for dinner, with is basically a gourmet burger joint. They have some other stuff on the menu, but it is the burgers and the bottomless french fries that they are know for. Once you finish your fries, you can just ask for more and they will bring them. And I just love french fries, a guilty pleasure of mine to be sure, they should be there own food group. They are good with so many things, cheese, gravy, salt, seasoning salt, ranch dressing, onion salt and cheese, cayenne pepper- seasoning salt and cajun seasoning are just a few of the ways I will eat french fries. I got the Royal Red Robin, which is a burger with fried egg and bacon on it. Yummy! I haven't had a burger with egg in ages, so this was a big plus.
I could have went home happy at this point, but I figured I would stop by Target while I was there and look for the nursery stuff my mom had mentioned, though I found out from her via email before I left that the Blue Jean Baby stuff had been discontinued before I left on my shopping trip, so I didn't expect to find anything at Target either. I didn't so my expectations were met there, but I did get to ravage the discount DVD bin. I snaggged The Cooler with William H Macy and Alec Baldwin for 5 bucks, and while I hadn't seen the movie before, I figured even if it sucked, it was only 5 dollars I would be out of. Then I headed over to the section that has TV shows on DVD. I was seriously considering getting season two of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (for those of you who don't get my fascination with the show, you probably never will, for those of you that do get the show, check out the quiz in the highlighted blog section). I struggled with getting season two, and almost did, but then I saw something cheaper that I also wanted, and if nothing else, by the way I snagged a book out of the bargain bin and my DVD snatch earlier, you should know I am a bargain shopper. Sitting at the end of an aisle, for just $6.50 was The Best of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. At that price, it was indeed a must grab for the collection. After that also coup, I figured I better go home, before I got carried away with spending too much money on myself.
Both DVDs were decent, definitely worth the price of admission, as I would watch both of them after I got home. Given how cold it has been outside this weekend, DVDs were definitely a good call. Before I got a chance to watch the DVDs however, I tuned in the Olympics just to see how the days events went after I left work. The hockey game I referred to in the last blog obviously was over, and in a shocker, Sweden beat the US in a shootout to go to the gold medal game against Canada while the US will have to play for bronze. Not thet the US played a bad game, but any hockey fan will tell you, when you run into a hot goaltender, anything can happen and the Swedish goaltender did turn away like 40 shots or some crazy number. I could be upset about the game, but if that adds a new player to the world stage, then hockey is better for it, and hopefully there will be better things to come on that front in the future.
The argument has been made, especially here in the States, that we shouldn't send professional athletes to the game. To that I say hogwash. The idea of the Olympics is to find out who is the best in the world, you don't do that by sending amateurs. Sure as a result, it means some countries will have advantages in certain sports, but if in the end, it results in better games being played by all the teams involved, then aren't we getting closer to seeing who the best in the world really is? No one can then say, well we didn't send our best, so if we don't medal it doesn't matter. Men's hockey is a prime example of what happens when everyone does send their best. No one nation can lay claim to being the best because the professional talent pool is so spread out. Sure there are favorites, but it isn't that shocking to see Sweden beat Canada or Slovakia being undefeated in round robin play when you look at the players on their rosters. Heck, Czechoslovakia, which won the gold medal 4 years ago, is only 1-2 so far, which goes to show just how even things really are.
Anyway, back to watching the Games. I sit down in front of the TV to watch women's snowboard cross, which is like downhill skiing, except on snowboards and the gold medal race has all of the competitors on the course at the same time racing each other. The finals would have one American, two Canadians and someone from Sweden (I think). As they get underway, the American takes an early lead, as one of the Canadians wipes out on an early jump. They continue down the mountain and the other Canadian opts for a course that involves flying through the snow fence, which is both painful and not part of the course. She would end up leaving the mountain on a stretcher. This left the last two snowboarders, US and Sweden, though the US skier has opened up a huge lead, almost three seconds which you almost never see in downhill events of any kind. Anyway, as they approach the final straightaway, there is just one jump left and then a short shot to the finish. Being so far ahead, the US boarder opted to try a trick on the last jump, reaching down to grab her board as she twisted it in the air. The problem is that you need to land on the board, and not on your ass, which she did. Till she got up, the Swedish chick had passed her and took the gold, while the US had to settle for silver. I listened to the pro-America announcers talk about what happened. Hell the guy doing color for the event said that if he had that big a lead he might have done the same thing. To that I say, WTF?
Listen, we don't need to be reminded about how the US is perceived in the world. We aren't the most loved nation most days, and while I can live with that, you would like to think that when sending athletes to the Olympics, they would represent the best of your nation. This little stunt just showed the world that we have no problem rubbing your face in it by showing off, rather than just competing. You would think spending four years getting ready for the opportunity to win a gold medal at the Olympics would be enough motivation, that should you have a great opportunity to win win one, you wouldn't mess it up by trying to show off, rather you would get off the course as quickly as possible and gracioulsy accept your gold medal. Unfortuneately, these games, at least from the US perspective, is more about self serving athletes, and their egos than it is about country representation and national pride. In a way, this touches on Angie's blog about alliegance. If you don't want to represent your country by doing your very best at the Olympics games, do us all a favor and don't go. I look at guys like Dominik Hasek and Jaromir Jagr, who have been injured in mens hockey, trying their best to get their team a gold medal, then I look at some jackass like Bode Miller who doesn't even care how he finishes, or the men's speedskating team, which has members that don't even talk to each other and are content to not congratulate each other on individual achievements, and to be honest, I am sick of all of those sorry ass rat bastards. Kudos to the female downhill skier from Croatia, who has won two golds at these games, the first gold medals ever won by Croatia in any Olympics sport and piss on those athletes who treat the Games as some sort of inconveniece to their schedules.
Wow, there was a rant I wasn't planning on. Well, I better get going, I am in the middle of taping here at work again, and eventually I will be out of the 24 minutes segments of Sinatra and into the 30 second spots which allow me less free time to pontificate. It is going down to 10 degrees tonight. All I can say to that is "Brrrrr!".
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