Thanks

I promise I won't ramble this time, but just wanted to say thanks to a couple of posters over at Voy forums.  Apparently my fan club has three members (including me), woohoo.

Thanks and thanks again.

In the wee hours

I guess this is either a late night blog or an early morning blog, depending on your perspective, but it is 3am here in the Burgh, once again I can't sleep, or rather I can't get back to sleep so I figure I would pontificate a bit and see if I couldn't bore myself back to bed, though that might be a pretty stupid idea in and of itself, since I have to be at work in 4 hours. I might be better off just staying up at this point.

It has been a week of frustrations of many sorts. On the good obviously was the fact the Steelers won the Super Bowl. Tuesday was parade day for the team in town, and thankfully I was off work. Not that I wanted to go to the parade, but since it was running right in front of the newsstand, I knew it was going to be a mad house down there, one of which I just didn't want to be part of. It is just a bunch of drunken idiots and people needing but yet another reason to not go to work or school for a day. Consider this, as of the last census numbers taken, the population of the city of Pittsburgh was tabbed at 311,218 persons, making it the 59th largest city in the United States. Now consider this, the crowd estimate of the parade was 350,000. That is right, more people showed up for the Steelers parade than actually live in the city itself. And knowing that these people were going to be right outside my place of employment, well at least some of them, the sidewalk is only so big after all, the further away from work I was, the happier I was.

Mind you work is frustrating as well. Well not the work part, how hard is it to sell newspapers after all, though business did go up this week with the parade, the Super Bowl copies of the local papers and today we received our magazines, including the sports mags with their Super Bowl coverage (including the Sports Illustrated with the very sweet cover photo), so people have been coming in buying multiple copies of everything, either for keepsakes or to send to friends and relatives who had the common sense to get out of town while the getting was good. That is not the frustrating part however, what is frustrating is that we have a nice sized high def TV hanging on the back wall of the store, and during the day it is usually tuned into one of those cable news networks, using the term news in its loosest possible interpretation, as they rarely focus on news, and more on sensationalism, but that is neither here nor there. I am just tired of seeing Barack Obama on the TV every damn day. Even today he was railing on about greener cars, fuels and blah blah blah when at one point he said "The time for talking has come to an end, now it is time for action." If life ever were like professional wrestling, this is where they would have cued my entrance music, as I fired back at the TV, "Well then, stop talking!". It would be one thing if he came out once in a while, but it is every damn day. The day before he was out with Treasury Secretary Timothy Gaitner talking about the economic stimulus plan. For the record, the process still holds, just as with Bush in office, every time these guys start talking about economic stimulus, the market takes a dive because nobody trusts them any further than they can throw them. Still I am listening to Gaitner talk about executive pay caps and what not, and it is an idea I could get behind, after all these execs are asking to live on the public dole, a welfare plan for the super rich so to speak, but why is Gaitner giving us this message? His claim to fame is that he failed to pay his taxes while employed by the World Bank, so just where does he get the credibility to cap anything? And just how the hell was he confirmed by the Senate to begin with? How is the man that is going to be partly responsible to see to it that you and I pay are taxes able to get away with not paying taxes himself? Shit like that just boggles the mind.

Not that that was the only thing that was irking me about the TV, the Asshat of the Week also comes from TV and this week gets handed out to FOX News. Seems last week the economic stimulus plan was making its way through the House of Representatives. Don't get me wrong, I am not defending the plan whatsoever, but the bill managed to pass the House and was on its way to the Senate. That being said, the day after the bill passed, there was Fox and Friends telling us that it was a victory for the Republicans, because no Republican voted for it. Mind you, the bill passed the House along the lines of 244-188 or some near approximation of those numbers. Now I am not a math major, nor do I play one on the blog, but when you get you ass kicked by 50+ votes, that my Fox and Friends, is not a win. But it is Fox, and they do report and I do decide, I just decided that something that stupid was worth an Asshat, so congrats.

My sleeping schedule continues to be all fucked up, as if you couldn't tell by me being up at 3am blogging wasn't a pretty big clue. Obviously Sunday's football game didn't help, but Monday after work I do some stuff then come home and when I did try to sleep I couldn't because I had a toothache that every time I would start to nod off a little the pain would wake me up again. It wouldn't be till late Tuesday morning (11am ish) that I would even get my head onto a pillow and grab enough slumber that I could consider it actual sleeping. The problem was that I slept right through a phone call from Fred, my uncle, who called to see if I wanted to go to the Penguins game Wednesday night as he had an extra ticket. Well, having missed the first call ( I didn't even hear the phone ring, which shows how exhausted I must have been), he called again on Wednesday, but I was at work, so I am now two for two in missed calls. After work I ran some errands and didn't get in until about 7pm, at which point I check my phone messages to find that rather than dropping my stuff down and just settling in for an evening on non entertainment, I could at that point be at a hockey game. I called to apologize for not getting back to him sooner, but still I felt like such an idiot for missing the calls to begin with. Luckily he found someone to use the extra ticket, but as it turns out it was quite a game (see the Pittsburgh Tampa Bay video for what I missed, located in your updates and my video section, as are all Pens games), with Pittsburgh coming back from 3 goals down to win in overtime.

About the only thing that has gone relatively well is the change meter just continues to blossom this year. If this is what happens when we have an economic downturn, the change meter wishes we would have them more often, even if my wallet doesn't. The new total stands at a robust $49.39, as I have almost pulled $10 since the start of the year. Part of that comes from tips at work, which I allocate to the change meter, since I am in a job that I don't deem tippable, therefore it is still money that people are throwing away, and therefore addable to the change meter total. If I were in the service industry and part of my income was based on tips, that would be one thing, but I am not, so if you are just leaving me money, then you are throwing it away, which was the meters job to come up with in the first place.

Okay, I have rambled on enough, and nearly killed an hour to boot, so I am going to try to grab a quick two hour nap and then get back at it for the morning grind. We will see what happens on that front.

The best laid plans

The plan was relatively simple. Somehow I managed to have Sunday off of work, not that I work Sundays all that much, but given that it is Super Bowl Sunday I expected someone to request off leaving me to fill in. But alas that wasn't the case, rather I did end up with the day off. Of course I did work overnight, 11pm Sat to 7am Sun morning, so I had a plan, come home form work, do some prep work to make chili for the game, sit down and try to glog the festivities. Ah but the best laid plans of mice and men.

Some things did go right, the work shift went off without a hitch. Given I work Saturday nights with Mark, any night where he doesn't have another seizure I have to consider at least a small victory. I still worry that if it happens again I am going to be stuck there by myself for the rest of the night, while dealing with just way too much crap, but so far nothing has happened so I will take that as a win. After work I headed off to Giant Eagle to do some small grocery shopping and to pick up my Feb. bus pass. I finished my most recent book on the way to the grocery store, picked up a few items I needed and a couple that I didn't but were on sale (yes, the frozen chicken was on sale again, 3lbs for 5.97, can't pass that up) then I hopped a bus and headed home.

I got home a little after 9, sat down at the computer and proceeded to undo a blog I had written, showing once again my skill set for all things Multiply. I had written a Reset blog yesterday, it was something that I would work at a little, then walk away from, then come back to. As a result, I would save my work as a draft and come back to it. When I finally finished I posted the blog and got dressed for work. Well when I came home today, there was the blog, no comments had been made on it, but I noticed that a version was still in my draft folder. Thinking since it was posted i no longer needed the draft copy, I went into the folder and deleted it, of course Multiply took it to mean I also wanted the blog entry itself deleted, so it erased that as well. Suddenly the day didn't seem so bright. Nonetheless, I went about putzing around on the web, I hopped over to Pogo and played a game of Monopoly, simply because I only needed to pass Go two more times for my next rank, so I knocked off a quick game, played some Bejeweled 2 as well, washed a few dishes and realized that since the game didn't kick off for another 7 hours or so, I didn't have to start making my chili just yet. Now I am in a time perspective, in no mans land. Monday morning I will work from 7am-3pm. If I go to bed (it is roughly around 11 am by now) I fuck up my sleep schedule. If I don't I am going to be exhausted come time for the Super Bowl. I needed a diversion, so to the bar I went. Jake was doing some set up for tonight's game, they were throwing a small soiree, just some pizzas and sandwiches and potato and macaroni salad for the regulars and the crowd that will come in to watch the game. I saw some of the last Steeler playoff game there and knew that It isn't the type of crowd I want to hang out with for the football game, thankfully I had my chili plans already in motion at my place and I was just killing a couple hours of time till I could start cooking. That being said, I helped Jake out a little bit, going down to the bar's basement and bringing up a cover for one of the pool tables so it could serve as a buffet table, and I had a few beers when I realized that I might be coming an alcoholic.

Let me rephrase that, it wasn't the beer that brought about that realization, but rather a discussion about the game that brought it about. See, the bar was running a block pool for the game. For those that don't know what a block pool is, allow me to elaborate. A 10x10 grid is created and people purchase blocks within the grid, until all 100 of the blocks are sold. After all of the blocks are sold, the two teams, in this case the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers are then added, one team along the left side of the grid, the other across the top. Then the numbers 0 through 9 are randomly selected, first for the rows, then for the columns, with one number corresponding to each row and column. Each intersection of row and column (a block) then gives you two numbers, one representing one of the teams, the other representing the other. The goal of a block pool is to have the correct last digits of both teams playing in the game. Most pools work by quarters, so for each quarter of the game there will be two digits, and whoever holds that block in the pool wins money. I was thinking that I hadn't even gotten in one this year, so maybe I could hop in on this at the last minute. Problem was, the pool was sold out, being Pittsburgh and all, that isn't surprising with the Steelers playing. That still isn't the troubling part, the troubling part is apparently I had already bought two blocks and honest to God, I have no memory of it whatsoever. I don't know if I was drunk or stupid or what, but I don't remember spending any money on this pool at all. I had a faint recollection of a block pool, but I thought it was something that kind of came to me in a dream and then faded away, as my dreams have been prone to do recently. I am having vivid dreams when I sleep, but I only sleep for an hour or two, then I am up for an hour, then I go back to bed and the process repeats itself until I have to be up in the morning, or evening if I am working overnight. So I thought maybe my faint reminder was just one of those dreams and not that I actually signed up for one. But apparently I did, and I have no idea what each block costs, though I am thinking they were 10 bucks a piece.

Anyway, I look at the pool and I have one shitty block, it was like Arizona 5 Pittsburgh 2, numbers that are hard to come by in a regular NFL game, the other showed more promise, Arizona 7 Pittsburgh 0. Oh well, i figure, I will just file it in the back of my cranium, and move on. I head home and start putting the chili together, browning a pound of ground turkey (it is cheaper than beef and works just as well for this purpose), and started adding the rest of the ingredients to the crock pot. 3 cans kidney beans, 1 can tomato sauce, 1 can diced tomatoes, 2 chopped yellow onions, liberal amounts of black pepper, red pepper. cayenne pepper, chili powder and hot sauce and mix thoroughly. Once the turkey browned, I drained it and added it to the crock pot, mixed again and set the crock pot on low. By now it is almost 4pm, that leaves a good two hours for it to cook until kickoff so I lay down on my bed. Bad move as I nodded off, at least long enough to miss half of the first quarter of the game. So the chance of glogging is now gone.

When I open my eyes it is Pittsburgh 3 Arizona 0, which is how the first quarter would also end, so that wasn't a block winner for me. Second quarter underway and Pittsburgh gets a short touchdown run from Gary Russel and it is Pittsburgh 10 Arizona 0. Arizona answers back with about two and a half minutes left in the quarter when Kurt warner finds Ben Patrick for a touchdown and it is Pittsburgh 10 Arizona 7. Wait, I own the Arizona 7 Pittsburgh 0 block, I might make some cash here. Pittsburgh gets the ball back and Ben Roethlisberger throws an interception deep in his own end and my dreams of cash are slowly fading, surely Arizona will at least get a field goal here and tie the game, sending my dreams of cash off into the Pittsburgh night. Arizona gets all the way down to the Pittsburgh 3 yard line with 10 seconds left, kurt warner drops back to pass and is intercepted. It is still 10-7 and my cash is safe, but wait, Arizona forgets to tackle james harrison after the interception and he runs 100 yards the other way with it as time expires in the first half. tack on the extra point and Pittsburgh leads 17-7 and in 10 seconds I went from having money to not so much.

Third quarter Pittsburgh puts together a long drive, aided by three two unsportsmanlike penalties on Arizona. Pittsburgh kicks a 28 yard field goal and it is 20-7 Pittsburgh, but my numbers are matching again in my block. Wait, foul on the kick attempt, on Arizona, take the points off of the board, Pittsburgh has a first down inside the Arizona 10. The cardinal defense stops Pittsburgh again and they still end up with a field goal, so it really is 20-7, and that field goal is the only scoring in the quarter, so I believe when I go to the bar next, I get the third quarter kitty from the pool.

4th quarter and this is where I really wish I would have glogged the game. Arizona scores on a touchdown pass, Kurt warner to Larry Fitzgerald and it is 20-14. The teams exchange punts and Pittsburgh starts a drive inside its own one yard line. Third down and ten, 3 minutes and change left in the game, Pittsburgh looking to kill some clock but they need a first down and Ben roethlisberger finds Santonio Holmes for 23 yards and a first down. Wait, penalty on the play, offensive holding on Pittsburgh and since the penalty took place in the end zone, that is an automatic safety for Arizona and it is 20-16 and Arizona gets the ball back on a free kick. Pittsburgh kicks the ball away and a couple of plays later Warner again finds Fitzgerald going down the middle of the field and he races some 65 yards or so for the go ahead touchdown, 23-20 with just a little over two minutes left in the game. Pittsburgh gets the ball back and in one of the greatest drives in Super Bowl history, goes 70 = yards in under two minutes and a leaping catch in the back corner of the endzone by Santonio Holmes, who managed to get both feet down and Pittsburgh has retaken the lead 27-23, laving just 35 seconds on the clock. Arizona can do nothing with the ball, they complete a couple of passes but with 15 seconds left, kurt warner drops back to try a Hail Mary pass, is hit and fumbles the ball and the Steelers recover and win the game, and their 6th Super Bowl 27-23. I am happily tucked away in my apartment right now, as I imagine the rioting will take place well into the wee hours of the morning. The craziness doesn't stop there though, Pittsburgh City Schools will operate on a two hour delay simply because the Steelers won. Any excuse to not work I guess. Holy crap, I just turned on the news and they are running school delays on the bottom of the screen. Not weather related delays, the weather tomorrow looks fine, but these are just football related delays. Unfucking believable. I would list all of the schools that are running delays, but my fingers would get too tired from typing. meanwhile, local sporting goods chain Dicks reopened as soon as the game ended, at almost 11pm just so they could sell new Steelers Super Bowl merchandise. Don't worry, if you don't get anything tonight, they are opening again tomorrow at 6am. Meanwhile, according to the news chopper flying over the neighborhood, some idiot set fire to something or another. And you wonder why I am happy to be safely tucked away indoors right now.

Oh well, I better get off of here, I do have work in the morning and I have leftover chili to put away. Nite all