Multiply 365 Day 15 - Sports Saturday

I said in the last blog entry that I was looking forward to sleeping in, and sleep in I did, if 7am is considered sleeping in.  For me it is, I am usually at work by that time.  Instead it is almost noon and I am still sitting here in front of my computer, starting a blog that will almost certainly not be finished in one sitting, simply because I have to go in and place an order at work yet, and go buy my bus pass for next week.  I'll be honest though, I have little desire to get off of my ass at this point.  The simple reason being that it is a pretty big sports Saturday here in Pittsburgh.

It starts with hockey, and that is probably the least important game of the day.  The Penguins are on the road, traveling to Boston to take on the Bruins.  Both teams have had good seasons to this point, Pittsburgh is 27-14-4, Boston 24-12-7.  It will be the Penguins 5th straight game without Sidney Crosby, who is still out with concussion-like symptoms.  Boston has been a thorn in the side of the Penguins this year, having beaten the Penguins in their previous two meetings, once 7-4 after Pittsburgh surrendered a 5-2 lead after two periods by allowing 5 third period goals, then 4-2 when Boston scored 4 goals in the game's final 3 1/2 minutes.  

After hockey comes football, and what a game it will be.  The Pittsburgh Steelers play host to the Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round of the AFC playoffs.  The last 5 times these two teams met the margin of victory was just 3 points, the 6th time the margin was 4.  All that is at stake is a trip to the AFC Championship game.  Both teams finished the regular season with identical records of 12-4, Pittsburgh won the division based on a better division record (5-1 vs. 4-2) and in the two meetings this year the teams each won on the others home field, Baltimore by a 17-14 count in Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh 13-10 in Baltimore and in both games the winning score came with less than 3 minutes to play.  

If that weren't enough, there is also college basketball on tap today as well.  Duquense plays host to #19 Temple and #5 Pittsburgh plays host to Seton Hall.  It would be a great day to just sit down and follow games and do nothing else, but for the time being work is going to get in the way.  Don't you just hate that?  I know I do.  

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Okay, I am back from work and just in time for the football game.  I will not bore you with a glog, but depending on how the game plays out I may give you a score update from time to time.  I made it into work about 2:30 or so, after first grabbing my bus pass and then picking up a couple of essentials (break, snacks) that I needed in my apartment.  Then it was a relatively painless order at work, a little rearranging of some products on my part, but for the most part everything went smoothly.

I did mention a few game earlier and since time permits I should say that the Penguins beat the Boston Bruins 3-2.  That means I now owe the blog two hockey videos, I haven't posted the last game yet and now I have this one as well.    

And not sure if this a a sign of more good things to come, but Duquense upset Temple 78-66 in college basketball.  Duquense used to be a really good basketball school, in fact they were the best of the local colleges at one point but as the dynamics of college basketball changed, kids going to junior colleges for two years, other schools recruiting kids who play for one year and then opt for the NBA draft, Duquense just didn't keep up.  They went and built a  nice on campus facility for basketball in the Palumbo Center, but there have been more lean years for them than prosperous ones since the 1970's.  This year they are off to a decent start, they are now 11-5 and a win over a ranked Temple team may be a sign of better things to come, or it could just be a minor blip on the radar.

I did make a mistake before going into work today.  Normally if it was a weekday I would stop at my corner store and grab a cup of coffee and drink it while riding the bus to work.  Then after I get to work, through the course of the day I may have one more cup of coffee.  But since today isn't a normal weekday, so instead of going to the corner store I decided to make a pot of coffee at home, and then I drank the entire pot.  I don't think I have been this fully caffeinated in quite a while.  It has been a few hours since I finished it off and my eyeballs still seems to be dancing all over the place.

We have a score in the football game, Pittsburgh 7  Baltimore 0 , 1st quarter.

I need to do some catching up online.  I owe a few people messages and what not, and I have some other things I need to enter, codes for games and such, that I have been neglecting for a couple of days.

Well, it is now Pittsburgh 7  Baltimore , still in the first quarter.  I am busy entering losing lottery tickets on the state's lottery website for a second chance drawing.  Not that I will win anything, but who knows.

And just as I start doing that, a swagcode gets released, so now I am chasing that down as well.  8 more swagbucks, I'll take them, they are free after all.  Plus I just redeemed another 450 for a $5 Amazon gift card yesterday, so I need to rebuild my account.  I should have a few hundred coming to me in a couple of days.  One of the bonuses to buying my parent's HDTV from WalMart.com is that they are one of the shop and earn sponsors, so for every dollar you spend with them you get 2 swagbucks.  I should get about 400 swagbucks from it, but I have to wait 30 days from the date of purchase, which should occur sometime next week.

Well it is now Baltimore 14  Pittsburgh 7, still in the first quarter.  I just might have made a mistake by attempting to blog while this game is on, especially if the score continues to change at this pace.  

Well I managed to get the lottery tickets done. I now have 4 entries for the $5000 Hershey Getaway, 2 $500 Prize entries, 1 $250 entry, 1 $100 entry and 5 $50 entries.  The best part is, like my coke caps, a lot of these tickets I didn't even buy, I just found them and entered the codes on them.  

I got as far as getting to my Coke cap page before we have another score by Baltimore.  It's now Baltimore 21 Pittsburgh 7.  The thing is, if this keeps up, this town will be on suicide watch come tomorrow.  Not me, but plenty of people here are so invested in football that how the team does directly affects their mood.  

Hey, at least they let me get my two caps in without scoring.  I was afraid I was going to be at this stuff all night the way things were going.  

I checked on my Amazon order this morning, it is already in Leetsdale, PA.  Hopefully it will be here Monday.  Usually they say around 10 days, I am looking at about half that time, unless they find some reason to take forever to go a few miles.  I am so ready to start burying my nose in books again.  

Well, I think I am going to take a break, I should be back at least once more before posting this, if for no other reason than to do a quick wrap up.  But for now I am just juggling too many windows to pay specific attention to any one of them.

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Okay I am back.  And I am glad that I left, as I actually got to watch the rest of the football game.  When I last left this entry it was Baltimore leading at the half 21-7.  Now let's review what I said before about this series.  On one hand, the game was decided by more than 4 points, but again the game winning score was late, with 1:33 remaining and Pittsburgh came back from two touchdowns down to win 31-24 to move on to the AFC Championship game.  After Pittsburgh got the ball first in the second half and ended up punting, Baltimore turned the ball over on their next three possessions, 2 fumbles and an interception which resulted in 17 points for Pittsburgh and a 24-21 lead.  Baltimore would kick a field goal to tie it, but facing a 3rd and 19, Ben Roethlisberger hit Antonio Brown for 54 yards to the Baltimore 4 yard line.  A few plays later Pittsburgh comes up with the game winning score.  

So I come off of my caffeine buzz only to be on a football one.  Of the four games I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, Pittsburgh is now 3-0.  Maybe I should go check on that Pitt basketball game.

Okay, it is about to be 4-0, Pitt has a 22 point lead with about a minute to play.  It is indeed a good sports day in Pittsburgh.  And its a final, #5 Pittsburgh 74  Seton Hall 53.    

I am not sure what I could write to top a 4-0 Saturday, so I am not even going to try.  Good nite from Pittsburgh.