Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Free Stuff is Great!



Getting free stuff is great, especially when you don't expect it. I ordered a pair of soccer boots around 3-4 weeks ago from a new company in Australia, Nomis. The founder used to design boots for Adidas and has started his own firm. Anyway, the boots arrived today, and with it was a letter from the company president, congratulating me on "winning one of the 32 FREE pair of Nomis boots that we have distributed today to an exclusive group of players from all over the world". My card has been credited the cost of the shoes!

As my favorite Alaskan would say, "Woot"!!

How's your holiday been so far?


Mine has been great! It started on Chistmas Eve- went to the 'skins - Giants game with my friend Jeremy (my FW got me the tickets for my birthday). It was awesome - beautiful weather (about 53 degrees at kick-off) and a Giant ass-kicking! Christmas morning, the FW and I drove to my sister's house for breakfast (pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, grits, coffee and mimosas) and to exchange presents with my sis, my niece Kennedy and my parents. Afterwards, we drove down to visit my mother-in-law and my FW's sisters and their families. More food and present sharing followed. And on Monday (Boxing Day to my family in Ontario and in London, St. Stephen's Day to our peeps in Dublin), we drove to Charlottesville to visit my Grandmother and my Mom's family. My cousin, Patches, is an incredible chef. He made dinner, which included and incredible roast eggplant soup. Just found out he may be headed to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Based on the soup alone, the boy should go!

I don't head back to work until January 3rd, so I am enjoying the time off, hanging out with my FW and her sister Vienna, who's in town from Chicago. Tomorrow, I'm taking a roadtrip with my Dad to visit his brother, Vance, who I haven't seen in years.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Merry Christmas!!


Have a safe and Merry Christmas, everyone.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who made my birthday awesome. My FW threw me a party Sunday at the Crystal City Sports Pub - 6 straight hours of wings, beer and football. Most excellent. A good time was had by all, especially since the 'skins kicked Dallas' ass! Yesterday, the FW took me to dinner at Carlyle, which was excellent as usual - I had the surf and turf ( a really good fillet and a huge crabcake). Afterwards, I met up with my friends Callie, Laura and Jon for wings and beer at Bungalow Billiards. Very nice.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

37!!

Today is my 37th birthday, and yesterday was the birthday of 2 very special ladies who are no longer with us - my paternal step-grandmother, Josephine Beverly, and my friend since 2nd grade, Nancy Snyder-Nepo. Nancy passed away from cancer last year. We went to elementary school, middle school, high school and college together. She was one of the truly good people that come along every so often. Happy Birthday Nancy!! Happy Birthday Miss Josie. I love you both.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Finally!!

Green Bay just benched Brett Favre and brought in the rookie, Aaron Rogers. Listen, I think Favre is a great guy and has been a really good QB throughout his career. But this ass-kissing being done by Madden and Michaels is just ridiculous - you'd think Brett Favre has discovered the cure for AIDS or something. Earlier today, I read a piece by Bill Simmons at ESPN.com, in which he said:

With the way broadcasters treat Favre these days -- and it's not just the Sunday night guys, it's everyone -- we may have to change the phrase "treating him with kid gloves" to "the Favre Treatment." For years now, Favre has basically been the white Aaron Brooks -- does all the same dumb things, makes the same dumb throws, snatches defeat from victory the same number of times, but puts up surprisingly good stats year after year. Only everyone piles on Brooks and makes excuses for Favre. Hmmmmm. I'd say more here, but I'm violating Scoop Jackson's Page 2 territorial rights.

By the way, in my "Top Gun/NFL" preview before the 2003 season, I gave Favre the quote, "Wait a second … you were in a 4G inverted dive with a MIG-28?" with the following explanation: To Brett Favre, firmly entrenched in the "Marino in the mid-'90s" stage of his career. In other words, he's just great enough to win some games on his own, not quite as great as he used to be, and unable to accept the fact that he isn't quite as great as he used to be. So he forces balls in big spots, tries to do too much, and invariably ends up killing the Packers against good teams. And it has been happening for three seasons now. And counting. Now we're wrapping up Year 6. And counting. I find this interesting.


I sent this to some of my buddies, including my little brother, Ken10. Ken10 and I have been having and e-mail war all day - he seems to think that I'm all about Aaron Brooks because Brooks went to UVa. My point wasn't that Brooks is great - it's that Favre hasn't been great for awhile. For all his stats, he's got exactly one Super Bowl win. The same number as Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson. And that was way back in 1999. As my friends across the pond would say "he's won fuck-all since then".

Saturday, December 17, 2005

A moment to reflect


My 37th birthday is coming up next week, and like I do every year, I wonder "What the hell happened to my body"? Actually, I know what happened - way too much beer, and only playing sports once or twice a week. This pic is of me (on the right) almost 20 years ago, April of '86, during my final high school game. I was in damn good shape, and kept it up all the way through college and my early 20s. And then, metabolism slows down and my six pack became a keg. Not a full keg, mind you, but a nice pony keg. Now, instead of being built like the striker I once was, I'm built more like an NFL QB - 6ft. 4, 217 lbs.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

RANDAL!!

"It's the Apprentice, not the Apprenti"!!

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Ford Does The Right Thing

Sane minds prevail over the wingnuts:

Ford announced that it will continue to support gay organizations and gay events in the coming year and beyond.


Ford is going to run advertisements in the gay media NOT ONLY promoting the Jaguar and Land Rover brands, but the ads will promote ALL of Fords brands, by name, including Jaguar and Land Rover.


Ford states unequivocally that it will continue to tailor its ads for the specific audience it is trying to reach, and then goes one step further. Ford challenges us to keep an eye out on their upcoming ads in order to verify that they will in fact be tailored.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Human Rights Day



Today is International Human Rights Day, marking the U.N. General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948.

Today, I marked Human Rights Day with hundreds of my brothers and sisters by picketing the White House. You see, workers in the United States still have to fight for their rights.

Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:


Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.


Workers in the U.S. have the right to form unions under the National Labor Relations Act, but some employers thwart their efforts through firings, intimidation and harassment. To strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose a union, a bipartisan coalition created the Employee Free Choice Act.

Introduced into Congress in April 2005, the act would:

require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation;
provide for mediation and arbitration of disputes that arise when management refuses to bargain a union's first contract; and
authorize stronger penalties for employers who violate the law when workers seek to form a union.

In honor of International Human Rights Day, show your commitment to our freedom to form unions as a fundamental human right. Ask President Bush to re-establish the United States as the world's leader in protecting human rights, including the freedom of all citizens of the world to form and join unions, and ask Congress to adopt the Employee Free Choice Act.

Ford Sucks Too

Don't know if any of you have heard about this, but Ford Motor Company has stopped advertising in gay publications for its Jaguar and Land Rover luxury brands, caving in to demands from the crazy MFers at the American Family Association (AFA). Not only that, but Ford has agreed to stop sponsoring gay events. Here's a question - Would Ford betray Blacks and Jews if the Klan objected? This is totally fucked up. AFA tries this shit all the time - AFA's boycott of Disney didn't go anywhere, they threatened Kraft, but Kraft had the balls to tell the AFA to screw off.

Dan Savage, a columnist and author I really like (you may have seen his "Savage Love" column in the City Paper), says the following:

HereƂ’s a list of Ford dealers (use the link to find your local dealer). Call them, tell them you're pissed. The "Built Ford Tough" boys collapsed into a puddle when the AFA assholes threatened them with a boycott. So let Ford know what you don't buy cars from companies that caves to right-wing hate mongers. And when the local dealers tell you that they didn't make this decision, tell them that's too bad. Tell them to scream and yell to Ford HQ and get this decision reversed, or you will never, ever consider buying a Ford.

And corporations can reverse themselves. Microsoft caved to right-wing Christian bullies, and then reversed itself. Tell them Ford can too. Tell them Ford better.


The FW and I have a Volvo, which is owned by Ford. I'm going out to buy a rainbow sticker today to put on our car. I'm also going to call Don Beyer Volvo and see what they have to say. Don Beyer was the former Lt. Governor of Virginia and headed up Howard Dean's fund raising efforts during the last campaign - he's a good Progressive and I doubt if he's very happy about this.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Shouldn't Today Be A National Holiday?

On December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified. Seems to me this date should be a National Day of Celebration, right alongside Independence Day. What say you?

Monday, December 05, 2005

Hilary Sucks

My wife thinks Hilary Clinton is awesome. I thinks she sucks - well, not really. If she did, Bill wouldn't have gotten into trouble. Anyway, Hilary:

is supporting new legislation to criminalize desecration of the United States flag _ though she still opposes a constitutional ban on flag attacks.


She'll obviously do anything for a vote.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

How do you

Get back in touch with old/lost/former friends? It's the holiday season, so I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for old friends and family.

I used to hang out with a group of friends and had a major falling out with them about several years ago. I would go into detail about it, but I'm still not exactly sure what happened. I pissed them off, apparently, so much so that they pretty much cut off contact with me, but not until after one of them, who was my best friend at the time (best man at my 1st wedding, hung out with him all the time) told me I pretty much sucked.

Now, at the time, I was going through a pretty rough patch. Within the span of a little over a year, I was in a pretty serious accident, got divorced and lost my job. So I probably wasn't the best friend to have at the time. However, since then, I've gone through some pretty incredible personal changes, and feel I'm a much better person than I used to be. My ex-wife and I are on friendly terms - I would even say that we're friends, except I don't really see her or interact with her that much (though we do share the occasional e-mail). So I don't know why I haven't been able to reestablish contact with my former friends.

My relationship with them, looking back, was like a lot of my friendships growing up - I was pretty much a follower. There were 7 of us, including 2 couples. One dominant male personality, one dominant female, and the rest of us. We were very tight, though also very cliqueish. I often got into arguments with my ex-wife about them, she felt that they didn't like her and that I always took their side on any difficulties that arose (she was right, I totally took their side all the time).

I should clarify that and say that I do have a good relationship with one of them, Vicki, but it's more of an e-mail every few months, check-in kind of thing. The rest of them, nothing. I've tried e-mailing, inviting them to parties, baseball games, etc. Not a nibble. That's not exactly true. My former best friend responded to one of my e-mails (I sent a mass e-mail to everyone I knew, saying that I had a spare Nationals ticket and wanted to know if anyone wanted to go)with a really ugly response. It was pretty cryptic, actually, saying something along the lines of "some things are never forgotten nor forgiven". Whoa!! Let me reiterate that I never physically harmed, stole from, or anything else from him. I have no idea where the vitriol comes from. The last thing he said to me was that I wasn't honest with them during my divorce. I'm not sure what exactly I was supposed to have been honest about - my wife and I had some serious issues, neither of us were equipped to deal with it, and we broke up (it's a lot more complicated than that, but you get the idea). If the 2 of us were able to deal with it, move on, and remain friendly, then WTF is going on with my former friends? My response to him was basically this -
Dude, I'm sorry you feel this way, but I've moved on with my life, have a great wife and family, awesome friends, and just wanted to go to a baseball game. Sorry you feel that way. Take care of yourself.


I told my little brother about it, and he was probably more pissed than I was. I had to talk him out of calling my old friend up and cussing him out.

My circle of friends has grown immensely since the break-up with my old crew, and one may wonder why I feel this need to reconnect. I guess it's partially closure, partially a genuine concern about what's going on their lives.

Christ, this has been one long, rambling post. Lucky for me hardly anyway reads this, eh?

I Knew It!!!!

It took our friends in the British press to break the story of the year!

I love this game!

This is a compilation of some incredible soccer moves. Check it out (you'll need a high speed connection).