Football, football, football

9/19/2010
3:55:01 AM

Yes it is early, and it is my day off so what gives with me being up blogging?  Well, suffice it to say I drank a little too much earlier and ended up in that sort of pass out/slumber like state very early (before 8pm) only to wake up and find that I couldn't sleep.  I had the opportunity to do some things yesterday, but then I didn't follow through so instead I drank.  And drank. And drank.  I think I was in the ball park of 8 or 9 beers before calling it a night, but lots of things happened before that, which I should probably get too. 

Saturday is my unofficial day off, I say unofficial because I am scheduled off, but it almost never works out that way, I usually end up going into work, if only to place the Monday order.  Technically I could place it Friday after putting the Friday order away, but it almost leaves me guessing what we will sell for the weekend, at least by doing it Saturday I can see one day of sales, if not the entire weekend, and adjust my ordering accordingly.  Plus I had some errands to run, and I could do them downtown as easily as any place else on Saturday, so it wasn't going to be a lost cause of a day.  And as a night cap, the boss on Thursday gave me his Pirate tickets (4 tickets and a parking pass) for the Saturday night game.  Now normally I wouldn't consider going to a baseball game at this point, the Pirates are just that bad, but going into Friday night the Pirates had amassed 98 losses on the year, so a loss Friday night could mean my tickets would be good for loss #100 on the year, and that type of milestone could get me to go to the ballpark.  However, while not short on cash, I wasn't exactly flush with it either and one of my errands I wanted to run was to pay my phone and electric bills, so we are saying goodbye to some coin right there.  Thus I decided maybe I better take my paycheck from work with me, while I got paid on Wednesday I hadn't actually cashed it yet, so before leaving the apartment I grabbed my check also and shoved it in my pocket. 

I had actually woke up early on Saturday so I thought about going to breakfast at Pamela's again, but I had been there too many times recently so I talked myself out of it and instead just decided to go ahead and head into work.  The place I pay my bills was along the way sort of, it is about a stop or two past where I would get off the bus for work, but I am relatively young and my legs haven't failed me yet, so I figured I would take care of the bills first, but the place wasn't open when I got there, so much for that plan.  I know they are open on Saturday's but didn't know what time they opened, apparently I was just too early.  So I instead decide I will go to work, do my thing and come back to pay my bills.  As I am cutting across the new and improved Market Square, a project designed to improve Market Square but ended up punishing many of the merchants there by all but killing and traffic that would go through.  Quite of few ended up going belly up while the project took place, others while not making money were at least able to tough it out during the project.  Now Market Square looks nicer but doesn't have as many businesses as it once had.  Maybe they will eventually come back, but for now it remains a work in progress on that point.

Anyway as I cut across the square I pass Cherry's Diner, a little hole in the wall place that I didn't even think of before when considering breakfast stops, but here it was, and it was open so I figured what the hell, I would give it a try and it wasn't too bad.  Not great but not bad.  Then again I am not all that picky when it comes to diner food, especially breakfast, the two general rules of thumb are 1) Don't let me run out of coffee and 2) Don't make me sick.  Not exactly the most demanding of qualifications, but in the morning I am just looking for something to get me started, usually the coffee is more important than the food, though the food being edible is a requirement.  All good though, and relatively cheap (two eggs, sausage, home fries, coffee under $8) so sufficiently nourished I went on into work where the ordering went relatively smoothly and I got some other stuff done as well, pulled a little more stock out of the basement and got it on the floor (stuff sitting in the basement that we could be selling is a pet peeve of mine) and started working on my next tag request form.  The guys from Sledd, our grocery provider, were in this past week and they retagged the entire store.  For the most part this was good, they brought new tags for items and pulled some tags from items that were discontinued, but they also pulled some tags from items that I need, plus there are a few items that we have been trying to get but we don't have the item numbers for, so the process to fix that is to fill out a tag request form with the item numbers of all of the tags that are needed and then fax it in and then you wait and hope that you get the requested tags in a relatively short amount of time.  It is more or less a hit and miss proposition, and speed in not one of Sledd's strong suits (as evidenced by the fact the request to have the store retagged was made in April and they just came last week).  But I did my part and with nothing left to do I figured I would go ahead and leave, get my bills paid and what not and maybe take in a baseball game.  But before I left the store I picked up a copy of the PG and lo and behold the Pirates won Friday night, 4-3, on a Ronny Cedeno RBI single in the 9th inning, so now I can't see loss #100, at best it would be loss #99.  That was just another reason to not go, add to the fact that the people I had asked to go couldn't because of other issues and my motivation for a baseball game became less and less.  I originally asked my aunt Amy, but her son Chris literally broke his face the night before doing parkour.  I guess he was trying a flip off of a wall and didn't quite make it and his knee literally came up and smashed into his face.  With her husband in Harrisburg, doing Reserve duty and a son with a broken face and her daughter Sarah having stuff to do with her school band she had to say no.  Then I asked my friend Rich, well I tried to ask him, I caught up to his daughter online and she asked him for me, since he was already in bed and he couldn't go because he had to work at 6am Sunday, so a 7:05pm game Saturday wasn't going to work.  After post game fireworks we would probably be getting in around midnight, so now he is out of the equation.  I tried reaching my uncle Will, but I didn't have his number on hand and so I figured I would call my mom and get it from her, but she wasn't home, so a third option was down.  At this point I am all about saying fuck it to the game, I'll just go and pay my bills and call it a day.  The bill paying was what it was, good that they are paid, bad that it actually costs money and worse still because when I reached into my pocket my paycheck was gone.  Now I had the cash for the bills, but still not having my paycheck was going to cause some problems.  But then I started thinking, maybe I really didn't pick it up before I left my apartment, I mean I did pick it up, but maybe I set it back down, or maybe I left it on my desk, since I was online before I left the house, so no need to panic.  But in case I did drop it I decided I better backtrack my path downtown just to see if it was laying on the sidewalk somewhere.  No dice on that plan, but still no panic from me, I still had some spending cash and worst case scenario I go into work Monday, tell the boss to stop payment on my check and hopefully just get repaid at a later date. 

So I decide to come back home, stopping along the way to pick up a weekly bus pass for the coming work week, and get into my apartment and no check.  Not good, but not bad, I call Ed and let him know what is up, that he may have to cancel it if I can't find it.  At this point I am thinking I will just spend the rest of the night in my apartment when the phone rings.  I think maybe it is my mom with Will's number, we still had time for the game.  He would have about an hour drive down here, but it wasn't even 3pm yet so there was still ample time.  But it wasn't my mom, it was the desk attendant from Point Park Apartments.  Point Park University is one of the two schools in which Smithfield News is located between, The Art Institute of Pittsburgh being the other and while we do a decent amount of business with their students and employees, there would be no need for them to call me, let alone call me at home.  But it turns out someone had found my paycheck on the street in front of their building and turned it in and they went to the trouble of looking my name up in the phone book and tracking me down, which was way cool on their part.  But now, in order to get my paycheck I had to go back downtown and I am thinking that maybe I will end up going to the game after all, since I have to be down there anyway, or worst case scenario maybe I will find someone at work and give them the tickets to use instead. 

Blabber much?  I do.  Or in Yoda speak that would be "Blabber much I do."

So I venture back into town, walk over to the school and the desk attendant brings out my check.  I tried leaving a tip ($40) or a finder's fee or whatever you want to call it, but no one would take it.  So now I am back to having cash again, or more cash at least but I still am not enamored with the prospect of the baseball game, so I figure that maybe I will go into Smithfield News, and if Alex was there, give the tickets to him so he and his roommates can go, but he was working second shift (3pm-11pm) so that ruled him out as well.  So I have tickets and I can't get rid of them even.  I decide that before I lose my paycheck again I am better of just going back to Oakland, cashing it and deciding what I want to do from there.  Back in Oakland I cash the check, decide that I will go have a beer at Uncle Jimmy's and then go from there, so I grab a Miller Lite and decide to drop $5 in the poker machine.  One beer, $5, in and out and then decide what my evening fate will be.  Except I couldn't lose on the poker machine.    It gets over $20, I am thinking maybe another beer will do while I play off the credits.  A triple 7 lineup on a cherry bonus and I am over $30.  I play some of the credits back down, double my bet and and an all fruit pops up.  Over $40.  Maybe I should get out while I am ahead, but it was only a $5 investment, absolute worst case scenario is I am down $5 when all is said and done.  Drink up Johnny, beer #3.  I realize that the entire time I have been in the bar no one is playing the jukebox.  Fix that.  We got music, we got beer and then Jeff and Jen come in.  Once again I try pawning off the baseball tickets, but they have plans so no dice there.  Okay fine, I will go as soon as I get rid of these stupid credits on the poker machine.  Back to doubling my bets and I get a screen of all oranges.  That's a $40 hit right there and now I am sitting around $65 dollars or so, but still it is only a $5 investment.  More beer please.  Drop the bet back down, no need to be stupid, even if I am not too worried about losing this money, might be nice to not blow it all at once, but instead I keep hitting.  A cherry bonus good for another $20, then one for $40 and all of a sudden I am sitting around $100.  Surely my luck will run out at some point, but my beer already has.  Barkeep, bring me another.  Another drop in credits and I am starting to think maybe it is time to get out take my $60-$70 and be happy for the transaction when it starts hitting again.  Shit I am never going to get out of here, meanwhile the empties are piling up on the machine.  Speaking of empties, I could use another.  And nobody is playing music, back to the jukebox.  Now is when the fuzzy math starts, the math you do in your head when you are starting to get tipsy.  I got $15 tied up in the jukebox, probably another $25 tied up in beer, $5 in the machine.  I cash and cover my expenditures here and maybe make a shekel or two.  But I still have music on the jukebox, I can't leave the bar while my music is playing.  More beer please.  The reasonable side of me, which is losing a battle with the inebriated side of me is saying walk, take the money and go.  Drunk guy is saying, the next song on the jukebox is cool, I should know, I played it, stick around.  In this scenario let's be honest, drunk guy is wrong 99% of the time.  Too many bad things can happen including 1) getting drunk enough to be sick, 2) doing something stupid that makes you look like an ass in your local watering hole, 3) losing your money on the poker machine then in a drunken logical sort of way, throwing more money into it in hopes of winning back what you should have already walked with, etc, etc.   The only realistic good outcome is that you make more money, which is kind of like pissing into a fan and hoping you don't get wet.  Well piss away my friends, somehow drunk guy was right.  I ended up cashing out at $140 on $5.  Of course I now drank and gambled my way out of the baseball game, because it starts in 5 minutes.  And I am not in the shape to be boarding a bus back downtown let alone navigating my way to the stadium.  Instead I just go to the Cuban place, get me some eats and call it a day. 

9:37:49 AM

Sorry but I took a break.  Okay really I took a nap, I don't know if that officially constitutes a break or not, but it was still way early, so I snoozed for about an hour or so, then checked out for a breakfast of chorizo, eggs and coffee.  The coffee to wake up my brain, the chorizo to wake up my ass.  The chorizo worked faster, I managed a pretty loud and long fart on the walk home.  Thankfully I had snuck down a back alley and it was still early, so no one actually heard my ass explode.  It is a bad joke I play at work now when I am in the basement, where we have no ventilation and only a fan to try to keep it cooled down, a process that doesn't work all that well, and even less when they turn on the office air conditioner, which does a mediocre job of cooling off the office, but those of us on the other side of the air conditioner just get the hot air end of the deal.  It is worse when my ass decides to act up, I usually just go up to whoever it is I am working with and say, "Piece of advice, don't fart in front of the fan"   which usually means I did just that.  Bad enough to fart, worse to then have the fan blow it around the place.  No wonder we have high turnover at work.

The funny thing is, when I first set down to do this blog I planned on talking about nothing but football, football and more football.  Needless to say that plan has been somewhat compromised by my incessant need to chatter.  So, in order to get back to what it is I was planning on doing I guess I should go ahead and start another paragraph.

As anyone who has visited this page on a frequent basis knows I do play fantasy football, as well as a handful of other fantasy sports and as last week was the first week of the NFL season, I might as well go over what it was I actually did.  First would be the Madden app on Facebook, not that it is a fantasy football game, it is more along the lines of a Mafia Wars type app,  with the added bonus that you don't have to increase the size of your mafia in order to win, though the number of friends you have using the app is a plus as it helps you in receiving gifts and in scrimmages, which are free contests where you can get a modest amount of experience and cash (30 each) but also the opportunity to win game tickets, which are needed for play in either the season or Super Bowl modes.  One of the features of the game is a thing called Predictor, where you guess the winner of all of the NFL games each week, and assign each game a point value from 1-16, 16 for the pick you are most confident with down to 1 for the one you are least confident about.  Each pick you get correct you get the subsequent points for and after collecting enough points, you earn bonuses in the game.  The first bonuses are at 500 points, and after one week, where I went 11-5 in my choices, I tallied 99 points. 

The first of my fantasy games, since I am in two leagues this year, would be my matchup in Sports Illustrated Fantasy football.  Honestly I don't care about this league all that much, by signing up for it I got some free swagbucks, so I did it mostly for that reason.  And based on the fact that I am the only guy who has made any moves in that league, I have to assume that is the reason everyone else did it as well.  So it isn't much of a surprise that I managed a 89-39 win there.  As the season wears on maybe I will see other people pay attention to that league, but I am not holding my breath at this point.  Whereas I am much more interested in my bar league , where I am two time defending champion, I lost what can best be called a heartbreaker by fantasy football standards 69-68.  Worse I was the victim of one of the worst rules in the NFL, which most certainly cost me a win. 





This is really a case of the NFL telling you to believe the rules and not your eyes.  The rule requires that when making a catch in the endzone the receiver must complete a second act with possession of the ball.  The problem is there is no real definition of what a second act actually is.  It is clear that he has the ball with both feet clearly in the endzone, so that much isn't at issue, but the ruling is all about the second act.  Is the second act when his knee hits the ground?  Apparently not.  Is it when his ass hits the ground? Again apparently not.  How about when his off hand, the hand without the ball hits the ground?  No again.  None of those actions apparently constitute a second act, rather it is when the ball hits the ground and then rolls away that we are finally graced with the second act.  Anything that happened before that apparently doesn't count, even though I would argue he had clearly established possession of the football, the NFL asks you the viewer to not believe your eyes.  And since I have Johnson on my fantasy team, that call costs me 7 points, points that would have turned my week one loss into a win.

All of that being said, today is week two and a chance to hopefully fix the mistakes of week one.  One of the mistakes I had was actually with my computer, I was watching some NFL games online, and the site I was using became more and more problematic.  Feeds kept cutting in and out, so I am going to try a new site that I experimented with earlier this week, if all goes well I will have a new place to watch games online.  Don't get me wrong, I could just watch the games on TV, but online I can jump between games and have access to the entire schedule, rather than a handful of games.  I am thinking if all goes well I may glog the upcoming Steeler game in a couple of hours, when Pittsburgh plays Tennessee. Both teams are 1-0, Pittsburgh winning 15-9 in overtime against Atlanta, Tennessee had a far easier time dispatching Oakland, 38-13.  Tennessee features one of the best running backs in the NFL in Chris Johnson (who I have in my Sports Illustrated league) where Pittsburgh will be led for the second straight week by quarterback Dennis Dixon while Ben Roethlisberger continues to serve his 4 game suspension for whipping his cock out in public and having sex in a public restroom in Georgia.  Note I didn't say rape, I am only going with what was established in the public record and not was alleged.  I will leave that to far greater minds than my own.

We still have time before kickoff however, so I am going to use this time to check up on any freebie swagbucks offers that may be around.  I have been slowing down on those recently, I don't think I earned a single gift card last week.  I did pick up some partner site swagbucks, sites similar to swagbucks but where the bucks earned can only be used on either those sites or on swagstakes entries.  I usually use them for the latter, there is nothing I want on say the Green Bay Packers site, but if I can buy an entry to win something else why not go ahead and do it.  Oh well, found another 3 bucks, not great but every little bit helps.  That is three more towards another gift card. 


9/21/2010
10:31:33 PM

And look, you've been spared.  I was all set to glog the Steeler game Sunday afternoon, I had breakfast in my belly and plenty of cigarettes and what not ready to go.  I even located the link online to watch the game so I figured while the pregame show was on I would just go sit in my recliner and watch that until game time.  Then my eyes closed.  Not for an incredibly long time mind you, I woke up maybe ten minutes into the broadcast.  Sadly that might have been the most important part of the game, the Steelers scored their only touchdown on the opening kickoff and the game from an offensive standpoint spiraled downhill from there.  Not that Tennessee was any better, committing 7 turnovers through the course of the game.  In the end it was pretty much a mess, with Pittsburgh winning 19-11, and I feel better having not had the actual responsibility of glogging such an awful game.  As a side note, I went 9-7 on my NFL picks and saw my fantasy teams go 1-1, losing in the Sports Illustrated league but winning in the bar league, so both teams are 1-1 at this point.  Not great but not bad. 

But instead of glogging I went ahead and did some other things, including adding more Coke points to my account.  Again I managed to max out for another week, but then I splurged and spent 800 points on the first season of "The League" on DVD.  Not sure if I will like it or not, the basis for the show seems funny enough and right up my alley, but then again since I haven't seen it yet, the acting could suck and the jokes could be non funny.  Thankfully it was at least free.   

And Monday night was the season premiere of "Chuck".  Sadly I didn't watch the show in my Nerd Herd T shirt, but I don't know if I am getting tired of the show or if it is has just jumped the shark, but it doesn't have the same feel for me as it did originally.  I would attribute that to a few things, for starters many of the supporting characters that were in the first two season weren't in the season premiere.  I have to wonder just where Big Mike and the guys from Jeffster actually were.  Not to be seen in the first episode apparently.  Plus I always have a problem with a show where part of it is set up on the supposed sexual tension between two of the characters, because once you pair them off then that part of the story is just lost and it becomes almost impossible to get it back..  You see it all the time, fucking is bad TV.  Look what happened with "Moonlighting" once  Bruce Willis and Cybil Sheppard started fucking, the show went downhill.  Likewise the same thing happened twice with "Cheers" and only happened the second time because they rid themselves of one of the first fuck mates. Even when you look at Ellen DeGeneres' comedy many moons ago, I had no problem with her character, much like her real life persona being a lesbian, I did have a problem when the sole focus of the show seemed to be who her character was fucking.  Fucking is just bad TV, unless it is porn and that isn't allowed on regular TV, that is why we have the internet.  Well that and this blog, but really, what else is there? 

Okay, I better stop before my ego gets away from me.  Besides, I have a feeling I have a lot of spell checking to do.  Nite everyone.