I haven’t been married for all that long, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that there are a couple of key phrases that all men should learn and learn well once they tie the knot. “I’m sorry,” “You were right and I was wrong,” etc. This isn’t to say men should turn into sniveling little weasels once they walk down the aisle, but it just makes it easier for all parties involved (meaning you and her) if you can just learn to give in and admit defeat. There’s a reason (aside from the obvious rhyme) that the saying goes, “Happy wife, happy life.” And come on, fellas, let’s be honest: the reason she rhetorically will ask you, “When am I ever wrong?” is because she is usually right anyway.
There is one thing that I think Krissy is slowly starting to learn that I am always right about, and I don’t mind rubbing it in her face at least just a little bit: I am pretty darn good at picking out TV shows that I think she will not only like, but become addicted to. Doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment, but I will take my small moral victories where I can get them. After you have been in a relationship for 4 or 5 years, you should be able to pick up on the other person’s TV habits. I always say that I have it pretty easy in terms of the battle over the remote compared to other guys. Krissy, being the sports junkie that she is, has no problem sitting through an entire Saturday or Sunday of NFL or NBA games. Pretty much anything sports-related that I like, she will watch. I’ve even turned her into a “Pardon the Interruption” fanatic, as she will remind me to put it on every day when we get home from the gym and are starting to cook dinner. She refuses to sit through an episode of “Seinfeld” with me though, and she doesn’t like some of the Discovery Channel/nature type shows that I find nerdy and interesting, but it turns out that I have a closet appreciation for a lot of the semi-girly shows that she likes. So, overall we are pretty TV-compatible.
Anyway, I think by now I have a pretty good idea of what makes Krissy tick (at list TV-wise). The 1st show I ever turned her on to was “Friday Night Lights.” FNL was a show that I had only seen 1 or 2 episodes of, but from everything I had heard it was a well-written show that just hadn’t gotten ratings for whatever reason (similarly, I had always “wanted” to watch it more regularly, but just never seemed to get to it). I told Krissy we should start taping the re-runs (we started from the 1st episode of the 1st season), and even though she had never heard anything about it I told her to trust me…she was going to love it. Well, about halfway through the 1st episode I could tell that she wasn’t hooked. She would shoot me looks during breaks of the show as if to say, “This is what you wanted me to watch?” By the end of that show, she admittedly liked it. After 2 episodes, I could tell she was hooked. After 3 or 4 shows, she had reached full-blown obsession! (One day, FNL didn’t tape because our DVR had some kind of mishap…she was not a happy camper.) At some point during the 1st or 2nd season, the network that the reruns were on stopped airing them (even though the show was always critically acclaimed, it for some reason never drew in an audience like it should have…and apparently the syndication of the show was in the same boat.) From that point, we watched the show in whatever way we could: iTunes, searching for free and usually choppy video of the show on the Internet, etc. Like a true addict, the more we watched, the more Krissy’s appetite for the show became insatiable. We ran through Season 4 on iTunes so fast that it was literally a blur to me. There was one Saturday in particular where we didn’t have anywhere to be and didn’t really feel like doing anything, so we went on something like a 7 episode FNL binge…at one point, I got tired and went to bed, but Krissy had to stay up and keep watching without me. When we finally watched the series finale, I had mixed emotions: obviously sad that the show had ended, but also somewhat relieved. All of the sudden, the show that I had gotten Krissy addicted to was gone.
Fast forward to this week, when our DVR queue looked particularly bare (what with the lack of new shows in the summertime). It somehow came to me that there was another show out there that would give us something to watch in the mean time that I thought I could get Krissy hooked on as well: “The O.C.” Much like when we started watching FNL, Krissy was skeptical that she would like it. During one moment of the series premiere (that was admittedly cheesy) she groaned that the acting was pretty “lame.” I didn’t really say much then, but as the closing credits came up for episode 1 she couldn’t help but grin…she knew that she he had been had. “Can we watch another one tonight?” she asked. By 11:20pm we had finished the 1st 4 episodes of Season 1 off of iTunes, and if I hadn’t gone to bed she would’ve stayed up and kept watching. The 1st thing I remember her saying to me this morning after waking up was, “Do you think we have time to watch an episode before work?” Looks like I’ve awoken the beast again!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Donovan "F." McNabb
In a span of less than 24 hours, the Redskins traded away what turned out to be their 2 biggest headaches from the last 2 years. Albert Haynesworth (or as I like to call him “Dana Stubblefield the 2nd”) was mercifully sent packing to the New England Patriots, who should basically have something hanging above their personnel offices that reads, “We will take whatever malcontent players you have, and turn them into stars again.” 1st though went Donovan McNabb to the Vikings for a lowly 6th round pick next year (and a possible performance-based 6th round pick the year after). At the time the Skins acquired McNabb from Philly a little over a year ago, I thought it was a great get for the team…just as I had thought so many trades and free agent signings were great pickups for them in years past. McNabb was a 6 time Pro Bowler, and he had tortured Redskins fans as a member of the Eagles twice a year for a decade. While he was finally starting to show some signs of aging, barring a freak injury it appeared that McNabb still had at least a couple of good years left before his skills went into major decline. He didn’t seem to be ancient yet by any means, and Redskins fans (or me) dreamed of at best a long term solution at the quarterback position; at worst, he would be a better than serviceable player for 2 or 3 years. No one, including myself, would have thought that McNabb would suffer through only 1 largely forgettable season in D.C. (Although maybe that’s not true in retrospect. Maybe the Eagles, who traded McNabb to a team in their own division, knew something that nobody else did.) Now, the Redskins perpetual search for a long-term solution at QB will continue, as during week 1 of this season they will use something like their 17th starting QB in 13 seasons.
What happened in the nation’s capital with McNabb is largely a mystery to me. On paper, it seemed like a perfect marriage of player, coach, and system. McNabb is in his mid-30’s now, but he had been largely productive over the last couple of years. Mike Shanahan likes mobile veteran QB’s; McNabb is a mobile veteran QB. Shanahan ran a version of the West Coast offense all those years in Denver; McNabb had run Andy Reid’s variation of the West Coast offense for basically his entire career. And yet something just never clicked…some wondered whether McNabb had gotten himself into good physical shape prior to the year. He seemed to want to ingrain himself into the D.C. community from the start, as if he wanted to make it a long-term home of his, and McNabb, as he has done his entire career, always said the right things in the public eye…which is refreshing on the one hand, but also because of that the cynical side of you always wonders, almost like a politician, if anything that comes out of his mouth has any truth to it at all. Probably the most important factor in all of this was that McNabb, for whatever reason, simply did not perform on the field. Each game early on in the year, I waited for McNabb, who was a streaky passer his whole career, to all of a sudden catch fire in a game and carry the entire offense for a quarter or 2 at a time…but that just never seemed to happen. Maybe McNabb’s skills weren’t suited for Shanahan’s offense at all. Maybe he really wasn’t in great football shape that year as some had said. Maybe (and this is something that has unfortunately been racially “coded” into football talk over the years when discussing black QB’s) McNabb just wasn’t getting the complexities of the playcalling. For whatever reasons, the team, and more specifically the offense, was not seeing positive results. And when that happens, 2 people (rightly or wrongly) are going to get the bulk of the blame: the head coach and the QB. Now, I personally wanted to give McNabb the benefit of the doubt. 1st year with a new team, a lousy offensive line, a mediocre crop of receivers, no running game to speak of…not exactly a conducive environment for a quarterback to be productive. (Truthfully, I think the “17 QB’s in 13 seasons” comment I made earlier had some weight on my perspective as well. I felt the same way with Jason Campbell before McNabb: just let him stick around, and build pieces around him. Sure, he might not be a franchise QB at this point, but you could do worse. Plus, it would be nice to have some continuity for a change, and for the love of God can we not spend any more money or draft picks in trying to get a QB?)
But even if all that was true, it became evident about halfway through last year that McNabb was not performing at an NFL starting QB level. Furthermore, it seemed that not only had he somehow lost favor with the coaching staff somewhere along the line, but there even seemed to be an antagonistic relationship there as well. Neither party bad-mouthed the other through the media, but everyone got the feeling they weren’t exactly seeing eye-to-eye and playing nicely behind closed doors. Adding insult to injury, it’s not like the Redskins got this guy off the scrap heap for a late round draft pick. The Washington coaching staff and player personnel department were convinced prior to acquiring him that McNabb was still the real deal. They not only paid him a lot of money (they did with Haynesworth as well, but as long as the Redskins manage the salary cap I don’t think that’s a big deal given that Dan Snyder has proven himself to be a walking breathing ATM), but they gave up to 2 early round draft picks in this past spring’s draft to get him as well…which means 2 things. 1st, they absolutely whiffed in their assessment of McNabb. 2nd, they continued the trend that the previous personnel regime started of wasting away draft picks to acquire high-priced veteran players. In the NFL, draft picks are the life blood of your team. They build your depth, and they are relatively inexpensive. The Redskins throw away draft picks like they don’t matter at all. (In the trade for McNabb and the trade dealing him away, the Redskins essentially traded 2nd and 4th round picks for a 6th round pick…nice going.) So, as I said before, McNabb is gone, and his brief stint as a Redskin will be barely remembered some 20 years from now. He will be lumped into that same list of revolving mostly forgettable QB’s over the last several years with Jeff George, Tony Banks, Danny Wuerffel, Patrick Ramsey, and Rex Grossman. John Beck is another name that is probably not far behind from being put on that list.
What happened in the nation’s capital with McNabb is largely a mystery to me. On paper, it seemed like a perfect marriage of player, coach, and system. McNabb is in his mid-30’s now, but he had been largely productive over the last couple of years. Mike Shanahan likes mobile veteran QB’s; McNabb is a mobile veteran QB. Shanahan ran a version of the West Coast offense all those years in Denver; McNabb had run Andy Reid’s variation of the West Coast offense for basically his entire career. And yet something just never clicked…some wondered whether McNabb had gotten himself into good physical shape prior to the year. He seemed to want to ingrain himself into the D.C. community from the start, as if he wanted to make it a long-term home of his, and McNabb, as he has done his entire career, always said the right things in the public eye…which is refreshing on the one hand, but also because of that the cynical side of you always wonders, almost like a politician, if anything that comes out of his mouth has any truth to it at all. Probably the most important factor in all of this was that McNabb, for whatever reason, simply did not perform on the field. Each game early on in the year, I waited for McNabb, who was a streaky passer his whole career, to all of a sudden catch fire in a game and carry the entire offense for a quarter or 2 at a time…but that just never seemed to happen. Maybe McNabb’s skills weren’t suited for Shanahan’s offense at all. Maybe he really wasn’t in great football shape that year as some had said. Maybe (and this is something that has unfortunately been racially “coded” into football talk over the years when discussing black QB’s) McNabb just wasn’t getting the complexities of the playcalling. For whatever reasons, the team, and more specifically the offense, was not seeing positive results. And when that happens, 2 people (rightly or wrongly) are going to get the bulk of the blame: the head coach and the QB. Now, I personally wanted to give McNabb the benefit of the doubt. 1st year with a new team, a lousy offensive line, a mediocre crop of receivers, no running game to speak of…not exactly a conducive environment for a quarterback to be productive. (Truthfully, I think the “17 QB’s in 13 seasons” comment I made earlier had some weight on my perspective as well. I felt the same way with Jason Campbell before McNabb: just let him stick around, and build pieces around him. Sure, he might not be a franchise QB at this point, but you could do worse. Plus, it would be nice to have some continuity for a change, and for the love of God can we not spend any more money or draft picks in trying to get a QB?)
But even if all that was true, it became evident about halfway through last year that McNabb was not performing at an NFL starting QB level. Furthermore, it seemed that not only had he somehow lost favor with the coaching staff somewhere along the line, but there even seemed to be an antagonistic relationship there as well. Neither party bad-mouthed the other through the media, but everyone got the feeling they weren’t exactly seeing eye-to-eye and playing nicely behind closed doors. Adding insult to injury, it’s not like the Redskins got this guy off the scrap heap for a late round draft pick. The Washington coaching staff and player personnel department were convinced prior to acquiring him that McNabb was still the real deal. They not only paid him a lot of money (they did with Haynesworth as well, but as long as the Redskins manage the salary cap I don’t think that’s a big deal given that Dan Snyder has proven himself to be a walking breathing ATM), but they gave up to 2 early round draft picks in this past spring’s draft to get him as well…which means 2 things. 1st, they absolutely whiffed in their assessment of McNabb. 2nd, they continued the trend that the previous personnel regime started of wasting away draft picks to acquire high-priced veteran players. In the NFL, draft picks are the life blood of your team. They build your depth, and they are relatively inexpensive. The Redskins throw away draft picks like they don’t matter at all. (In the trade for McNabb and the trade dealing him away, the Redskins essentially traded 2nd and 4th round picks for a 6th round pick…nice going.) So, as I said before, McNabb is gone, and his brief stint as a Redskin will be barely remembered some 20 years from now. He will be lumped into that same list of revolving mostly forgettable QB’s over the last several years with Jeff George, Tony Banks, Danny Wuerffel, Patrick Ramsey, and Rex Grossman. John Beck is another name that is probably not far behind from being put on that list.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Belated NBA Wrap-Up
It’s weird that it’s already halfway through July, and I haven’t written anything about the NBA Finals yet. 1st, I just have to say that this was the all-around most entertaining and compelling NBA season I can remember. And really, the postseason wasn’t spectacular. Obviously, there was a lot of drama and plenty of storylines revolving around the Finals, but the rest of the playoffs weren’t exactly of superb quality. Still, I can’t think of an NBA season that I watched more of including the regular season from start to finish than this one (all that, and this lockout is threatening to shorten or even cancel the upcoming season all together)…and this season wouldn’t have been half as compelling if it weren’t for “the big 3” (or more specifically LeBron James) landing in Miami. LeBron’s decision and the Heat were, as the saying goes, the rising tide that lifted all the other boats.
Now, for full disclosure’s sake I am a LeBron fan. If it weren’t for the way he announced the taking of his talents to South Beach or the pompous preseason victory parade (“not 5, not 6, not 7…”) I wouldn’t have really had any problem with his choice to leave Cleveland. Even aside from that, many people think LeBron is too coddled, too sheltered, and too catered to. That may all be true, but I can’t help but admire his skill set and his athletic gifts. He is, in the most positive sense of the word, a freak of nature. I think it’s because of that that LeBron-haters and fans alike were somewhat baffled at his uneven Finals series performance.
I’m one of those people who would say after stepping back and looking at the whole picture that this past Miami season was a success. If I told you that a team went from winning only 40-some games and getting bounced in the 1st round of the playoffs one season to losing in the NBA Finals the next, you would probably count that as a monumental improvement, right? Well, that’s exactly what the Heat did in one season. Now, with all the hype surrounding this team and the expectations that they put on themselves it’s probably not fair to view things in quite that way, but you see my point.
The overwhelming majority will say that LeBron choked in the Finals (or at the very least seemed to vanish for large portions of games at a time). I see it as partly that, but I think there were other factors as well. 1st, we have come to view LeBron as superhuman over the course of his career in terms of his durability. There is evidence that other stars, like Wade and Kobe, will begin to physically break down at this point in their careers when they are logging major minutes. LeBron just seems indestructible. Even in the ultra-intense, extra-physical postseason he was playing what seemed like 45 minutes a night without showing any signs of wear and tear. Maybe after 20-some games he was just out of gas. In the normally worthless segments where they would show a miked-up coach’s huddle, a number of times we heard Coach Spoelstra say something like, “You cannot get tired,” to LeBron. Maybe in the end LeBron was human after all.
What further magnified LeBron’s performance (or lack thereof) was Wade’s own superman act in the Finals. The juxtaposition of Wade playing like a madman with LeBron’s disappearing act made him look even more putrid. Wade, other than a costly turnover at the end of Game 5 I believe, played great…LeBron did not. But in today’s 24-7 news cycle world, how quickly people forget what happened a week or 2 before. Both LeBron and Wade were at the tops of their respective games in the Boston series (as for the most part they made Paul Pierce and Ray Allen look like 2 guys from the 50 and over league who accidentally stepped onto the court where the young bucks play), but in the Chicago series it was LeBron who almost singlehandedly willed Miami into the next round while Wade looked lost, slow, and injured. (To me, LeBron just about did it all against the Bulls: run the offense, score, rebound, and oh-by-the-way be the defensive stopper on the other team’s best player and reigning league MVP. By the way, I know it’s not how the MVP voting works, but if you want any evidence to why LeBron probably should’ve been the regular season MVP again all you need to do is look at Cleveland’s regular season record the previous 2 or 3 years and compare it with this year’s. With LeBron, they still probably didn’t have enough talent to win a title, but they were a 60+ win team. Without him, they couldn’t win 20.)
To me, the difference in LeBron in the playoffs (aside from a puzzling Game 4 performance) can be summed up by a quote Jeff Van Gundy uses a lot: “it’s a make or miss league.” It is virtually impossible to stop LeBron from getting off what is for him a makeable jumpshot. At the end of the day if he makes those shots, there’s nothing you can do. If he misses, you live to fight another day. Against Boston and Chicago, he was raining down jumpers from everywhere: pull-ups, 3’s, tough contested turn-arounds…against Dallas, those shots weren’t falling. In addition to that, LeBron inexplicably didn’t get to the free throw line at all in the Finals. Part of this was that he didn’t seem to take the ball to the basket as often. Part of it was because Dallas was able to contest most of his shots without fouling. And part of it was that refs just decided that a certain amount of contact wasn’t going to be a foul in that series. It’s not necessarily bad officiating; it’s just how the game was being called. In past series, some body contact on the way the rim might have constituted a whistle. Against Dallas, the officials made it clear early and often that that wasn’t going to be a foul.
2 things still bother me about LeBron’s game. The 1st thing is that he has still yet to develop a consistent post game or midrange jumpshot. Similar to what Kobe did after several years in the league, he got in the gym one summer following a season and worked relentlessly on those 2 things. LeBron would probably not even need to master as many moves as Kobe because he is bigger, stronger, and can jump higher. He needs to be able get the ball at the top of the key, take one dribble to get to a spot along the free throw line, elevate, and hit that shot. He also needs to just learn a turnaround and/or jumphook in the low post turning over either shoulder. That’s it. The 2nd thing is that for some reason, as big, strong, and athletic as he is, he doesn’t always seem to take the ball as strong to the hoop as he could. Shawn Marion is a decent-sized, athletic wing defender. LeBron is an inch taller, 50 lb. heavier, and can probably jump over him. There’s no need for LeBron to double and triple clutch on drives to the basket. I’m not sure if I will ever quite figure that out…unless he truly did just finally get fatigued.
And while I said from the beginning that the season shouldn’t be looked at as a failure, because of all that the title was right there for the taking. Sure, this was Miami’s 1st season with this group, Mike Bibby and Mike Miller couldn’t hit wide open shots to save their lives, and most of the rest of the Heat’s roster was utter garbage, but they were 2 games from winning a championship against a Dallas team that was flawed as well. On paper, regardless of their seeding I looked at Dallas as the weaker team in all 4 of their series. And yet in spite of all that in the end it just seemed like it was their time. In a complete contradiction to what I just said it didn’t seem as if Miami so much lost the series as Dallas won it, and by the end Dallas truly did look like the better team. I’m happy that a bunch of their vets finally got a ring. Especially Dirk and J-Kidd…it just seemed like both were too good of players to go their whole careers without at least getting one. One can only hope that after maybe the greatest start-to-finish NBA season ever that this labor issue can get solved, and we won’t miss out on 2011-2012.
Now, for full disclosure’s sake I am a LeBron fan. If it weren’t for the way he announced the taking of his talents to South Beach or the pompous preseason victory parade (“not 5, not 6, not 7…”) I wouldn’t have really had any problem with his choice to leave Cleveland. Even aside from that, many people think LeBron is too coddled, too sheltered, and too catered to. That may all be true, but I can’t help but admire his skill set and his athletic gifts. He is, in the most positive sense of the word, a freak of nature. I think it’s because of that that LeBron-haters and fans alike were somewhat baffled at his uneven Finals series performance.
I’m one of those people who would say after stepping back and looking at the whole picture that this past Miami season was a success. If I told you that a team went from winning only 40-some games and getting bounced in the 1st round of the playoffs one season to losing in the NBA Finals the next, you would probably count that as a monumental improvement, right? Well, that’s exactly what the Heat did in one season. Now, with all the hype surrounding this team and the expectations that they put on themselves it’s probably not fair to view things in quite that way, but you see my point.
The overwhelming majority will say that LeBron choked in the Finals (or at the very least seemed to vanish for large portions of games at a time). I see it as partly that, but I think there were other factors as well. 1st, we have come to view LeBron as superhuman over the course of his career in terms of his durability. There is evidence that other stars, like Wade and Kobe, will begin to physically break down at this point in their careers when they are logging major minutes. LeBron just seems indestructible. Even in the ultra-intense, extra-physical postseason he was playing what seemed like 45 minutes a night without showing any signs of wear and tear. Maybe after 20-some games he was just out of gas. In the normally worthless segments where they would show a miked-up coach’s huddle, a number of times we heard Coach Spoelstra say something like, “You cannot get tired,” to LeBron. Maybe in the end LeBron was human after all.
What further magnified LeBron’s performance (or lack thereof) was Wade’s own superman act in the Finals. The juxtaposition of Wade playing like a madman with LeBron’s disappearing act made him look even more putrid. Wade, other than a costly turnover at the end of Game 5 I believe, played great…LeBron did not. But in today’s 24-7 news cycle world, how quickly people forget what happened a week or 2 before. Both LeBron and Wade were at the tops of their respective games in the Boston series (as for the most part they made Paul Pierce and Ray Allen look like 2 guys from the 50 and over league who accidentally stepped onto the court where the young bucks play), but in the Chicago series it was LeBron who almost singlehandedly willed Miami into the next round while Wade looked lost, slow, and injured. (To me, LeBron just about did it all against the Bulls: run the offense, score, rebound, and oh-by-the-way be the defensive stopper on the other team’s best player and reigning league MVP. By the way, I know it’s not how the MVP voting works, but if you want any evidence to why LeBron probably should’ve been the regular season MVP again all you need to do is look at Cleveland’s regular season record the previous 2 or 3 years and compare it with this year’s. With LeBron, they still probably didn’t have enough talent to win a title, but they were a 60+ win team. Without him, they couldn’t win 20.)
To me, the difference in LeBron in the playoffs (aside from a puzzling Game 4 performance) can be summed up by a quote Jeff Van Gundy uses a lot: “it’s a make or miss league.” It is virtually impossible to stop LeBron from getting off what is for him a makeable jumpshot. At the end of the day if he makes those shots, there’s nothing you can do. If he misses, you live to fight another day. Against Boston and Chicago, he was raining down jumpers from everywhere: pull-ups, 3’s, tough contested turn-arounds…against Dallas, those shots weren’t falling. In addition to that, LeBron inexplicably didn’t get to the free throw line at all in the Finals. Part of this was that he didn’t seem to take the ball to the basket as often. Part of it was because Dallas was able to contest most of his shots without fouling. And part of it was that refs just decided that a certain amount of contact wasn’t going to be a foul in that series. It’s not necessarily bad officiating; it’s just how the game was being called. In past series, some body contact on the way the rim might have constituted a whistle. Against Dallas, the officials made it clear early and often that that wasn’t going to be a foul.
2 things still bother me about LeBron’s game. The 1st thing is that he has still yet to develop a consistent post game or midrange jumpshot. Similar to what Kobe did after several years in the league, he got in the gym one summer following a season and worked relentlessly on those 2 things. LeBron would probably not even need to master as many moves as Kobe because he is bigger, stronger, and can jump higher. He needs to be able get the ball at the top of the key, take one dribble to get to a spot along the free throw line, elevate, and hit that shot. He also needs to just learn a turnaround and/or jumphook in the low post turning over either shoulder. That’s it. The 2nd thing is that for some reason, as big, strong, and athletic as he is, he doesn’t always seem to take the ball as strong to the hoop as he could. Shawn Marion is a decent-sized, athletic wing defender. LeBron is an inch taller, 50 lb. heavier, and can probably jump over him. There’s no need for LeBron to double and triple clutch on drives to the basket. I’m not sure if I will ever quite figure that out…unless he truly did just finally get fatigued.
And while I said from the beginning that the season shouldn’t be looked at as a failure, because of all that the title was right there for the taking. Sure, this was Miami’s 1st season with this group, Mike Bibby and Mike Miller couldn’t hit wide open shots to save their lives, and most of the rest of the Heat’s roster was utter garbage, but they were 2 games from winning a championship against a Dallas team that was flawed as well. On paper, regardless of their seeding I looked at Dallas as the weaker team in all 4 of their series. And yet in spite of all that in the end it just seemed like it was their time. In a complete contradiction to what I just said it didn’t seem as if Miami so much lost the series as Dallas won it, and by the end Dallas truly did look like the better team. I’m happy that a bunch of their vets finally got a ring. Especially Dirk and J-Kidd…it just seemed like both were too good of players to go their whole careers without at least getting one. One can only hope that after maybe the greatest start-to-finish NBA season ever that this labor issue can get solved, and we won’t miss out on 2011-2012.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Egg-Credible
The dog days of summer are really the dog days of sports too. No football or basketball means we are relegated to things like golf, tennis, and soccer. I’m not saying that I haven’t watched any of these over the past couple of weeks, but I doubt you’re going to find me caring enough to publish a blog post about any of them. Baseball I actually enjoy following from time to time, but the times I’ve actually sat through entire baseball game from start to finish on TV lately are probably few and far between. The lack of sports topics combined with how busy work has been lately all adds up to, for lack of a smarter sounding way to put it, not a lot of writing by me…but something happened last night that compelled me to open up a blank Microsoft Word document and start typing.
(Fair warning: for anyone who may randomly come across this blog when trolling through the barren wasteland of the Internet, don’t expect anything particularly profound to be revealed here in the next few paragraphs…there, I think that is a proper disclaimer.)
My wife Krissy is allergic to a good number of things. I feel bad because even though she may love to pet a cute and cuddly puppy or go on a cleaning rampage at her parents’ house it doesn’t change the fact that the dog hair or dust turns her into a sneezy, itchy, eye-watery person. All of that sucks, but to be completely selfish and narcissistic for a moment there is only one of these allergies that really affect me (I will be eating my words 5 years from now when I really want to bring home that black lab or German shepherd pup): eggs. It wasn’t until a few years ago that Krissy went to the allergist to see what in fact she was allergic to. There were a bunch of the usual suspects that we already expected like animal hair, dust, pollen, etc., but when eggs was cited as one of the things she was allergic to it pretty much rocked our worlds. You would have thought that one of us had just found out we had a terminal disease or something, but it was a dagger on a couple of levels. 1st, it just seemed like (especially to me, who isn’t really allergic to anything) a really random thing to be random to. 2nd, we had eggs all the time. Eggs were one of our favorite things to eat: scrambled eggs, poached eggs, hard-boiled eggs, egg salad. You name it, we ate it, and yet we never knew. After that, it started to make sense why Krissy would get headaches a lot of times in the mid-morning…coincidentally on a morning where we had eggs for breakfast earlier.
I think one of the very 1st times I slept over Krissy’s apartment when we 1st started dating she made her egg specialty, “bread eggs.” Bread eggs consist of buttered toast with a little hole cut out of the middle of the bread. The toast is put in the frying pan, and an egg is cracked in the middle of that hole. The white of the egg seeps through the bottom of the hole and cooks while congealing with the underside of the bread, and the yolk sits in the middle of the whole. The gooey goodness of the semi-cooked yolk is like the cherry on the top of the sundae. (That little bread hole is then perfect for sopping up the extra yolk that invariably spills out as you’re trying to eat the whole thing.) I’ve heard of other names for this concoction since like “a Cyclops,” but no one had ever quite made eggs like that before, so just like that I had a new favorite way to eat them.
Now, it might seem odd that Krissy’s egg allergy would have any kind of effect on me. After all, what’s to stop me from continuing to buy eggs and eat them on my own? Well, the problem was that I wasn’t the only one in the house that loved eating eggs, and despite the fact that she knew what they would do to her, anytime I made eggs for myself Krissy couldn’t help making some to eat for herself or trying a little taste of mine. (Her reaction to them was pretty sensitive for a while too. She would make brownies or something, which take an egg or 2 to make the batter, and even licking a smidge of the uncooked batter off of a spoon would make her feel not too hot.) Anyway, I figured it was just easier to not have them in the house at all, so we stopped buying them. On rare occasions, we would buy a half dozen so she could make brownies again or something, and I would devour them the 1st chance that I got when I was home alone…partially to eliminate the temptation for her and partially because I’m a pig. So when Krissy got re-tested by the allergist this past week she had hopes that the shots she had been getting would have cured most of her allergies. Some were much better. Some, like her reaction to animal hair, were as bad as ever. She even discovered she had allergies to a couple of things they forgot to test last time, like milk and corn. However, one of the things that showed slight improvement was her reaction to eggs. I’m honestly not sure who was happier out of the 2 of us. Naturally, we celebrated by having an egg feast over the last couple of days. Last night, I made sort of an omelet for myself for dinner, and Krissy hard-boiled some eggs for her to cut up and put into a salad. We made enough hard-boiled eggs so that I could make myself an egg salad sandwich for lunch at work today. Together we are basking in the glory of eggs again, and there’s no looking back now.
(Fair warning: for anyone who may randomly come across this blog when trolling through the barren wasteland of the Internet, don’t expect anything particularly profound to be revealed here in the next few paragraphs…there, I think that is a proper disclaimer.)
My wife Krissy is allergic to a good number of things. I feel bad because even though she may love to pet a cute and cuddly puppy or go on a cleaning rampage at her parents’ house it doesn’t change the fact that the dog hair or dust turns her into a sneezy, itchy, eye-watery person. All of that sucks, but to be completely selfish and narcissistic for a moment there is only one of these allergies that really affect me (I will be eating my words 5 years from now when I really want to bring home that black lab or German shepherd pup): eggs. It wasn’t until a few years ago that Krissy went to the allergist to see what in fact she was allergic to. There were a bunch of the usual suspects that we already expected like animal hair, dust, pollen, etc., but when eggs was cited as one of the things she was allergic to it pretty much rocked our worlds. You would have thought that one of us had just found out we had a terminal disease or something, but it was a dagger on a couple of levels. 1st, it just seemed like (especially to me, who isn’t really allergic to anything) a really random thing to be random to. 2nd, we had eggs all the time. Eggs were one of our favorite things to eat: scrambled eggs, poached eggs, hard-boiled eggs, egg salad. You name it, we ate it, and yet we never knew. After that, it started to make sense why Krissy would get headaches a lot of times in the mid-morning…coincidentally on a morning where we had eggs for breakfast earlier.
I think one of the very 1st times I slept over Krissy’s apartment when we 1st started dating she made her egg specialty, “bread eggs.” Bread eggs consist of buttered toast with a little hole cut out of the middle of the bread. The toast is put in the frying pan, and an egg is cracked in the middle of that hole. The white of the egg seeps through the bottom of the hole and cooks while congealing with the underside of the bread, and the yolk sits in the middle of the whole. The gooey goodness of the semi-cooked yolk is like the cherry on the top of the sundae. (That little bread hole is then perfect for sopping up the extra yolk that invariably spills out as you’re trying to eat the whole thing.) I’ve heard of other names for this concoction since like “a Cyclops,” but no one had ever quite made eggs like that before, so just like that I had a new favorite way to eat them.
Now, it might seem odd that Krissy’s egg allergy would have any kind of effect on me. After all, what’s to stop me from continuing to buy eggs and eat them on my own? Well, the problem was that I wasn’t the only one in the house that loved eating eggs, and despite the fact that she knew what they would do to her, anytime I made eggs for myself Krissy couldn’t help making some to eat for herself or trying a little taste of mine. (Her reaction to them was pretty sensitive for a while too. She would make brownies or something, which take an egg or 2 to make the batter, and even licking a smidge of the uncooked batter off of a spoon would make her feel not too hot.) Anyway, I figured it was just easier to not have them in the house at all, so we stopped buying them. On rare occasions, we would buy a half dozen so she could make brownies again or something, and I would devour them the 1st chance that I got when I was home alone…partially to eliminate the temptation for her and partially because I’m a pig. So when Krissy got re-tested by the allergist this past week she had hopes that the shots she had been getting would have cured most of her allergies. Some were much better. Some, like her reaction to animal hair, were as bad as ever. She even discovered she had allergies to a couple of things they forgot to test last time, like milk and corn. However, one of the things that showed slight improvement was her reaction to eggs. I’m honestly not sure who was happier out of the 2 of us. Naturally, we celebrated by having an egg feast over the last couple of days. Last night, I made sort of an omelet for myself for dinner, and Krissy hard-boiled some eggs for her to cut up and put into a salad. We made enough hard-boiled eggs so that I could make myself an egg salad sandwich for lunch at work today. Together we are basking in the glory of eggs again, and there’s no looking back now.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
More Quick-Hitters
It’s been a minute since my last post, and I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about the Mavs-Heat series or anything else (the draft is tonight…maybe that will spark my creative juices or something) so I figured I would do a couple of quick-hitters again.
- 195 lb. isn’t usually considered a common benchmark for the bench press…225 lb., 300 lb., even 185 lb. or 200 lb., but 195 lb? It’s not exactly a nice, round number, so why is it a number of interest to me? Well, when our gym just recently installed a standard bench press station, it gave me my first opportunity to use a “real” bench (not a Smith machine or any other hybrid workstation) in probably 4 years. For the entire 3 previous years we had belonged to this gym, they had no such bench press station, and the year prior to that while at the gym we previously belonged to I was nursing an injured shoulder that prevented me from benching. Anyway, 195 lb. was my previous 1-rep max 4 years ago. I’ve sustained some other injuries since then that might have taken away some potential strength, but I’ve also upped my weight from 165 lb. to between 190-195 lb. as well. Even though probably 95% of guys who take weight training even somewhat seriously can bench 195 lb. easily, that number will still always carry a little extra significance for me. For that reason, as I try to reach new 1-rep maxes, whenever I cycle through a day at 195 lb. it triggers a little mental footnote in my head. So, while it wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire, when I was able to do 3 sets of 3 reps each (9 total reps) yesterday at 195 lb. without much difficulty, it reminded me of the progress I’ve made, as back in college 1 total rep for the whole day at that weight pretty much did me in…unfortunately, it also served as a reminder of what I still need to do to get where I eventually want to be. In other words, there’s more work to be done.
- Somehow 2 of my most recent posts involve me discussing the trials and tribulations of my Madden franchise…talking about Madden that much is probably sad and pathetic, but the only people who read this are me and occasionally Krissy, so who’s kidding who here? Anyway, I was given a little bit of false hope as I followed up a 0-16 rookie season with a still terrible but slightly better 2-14 season the following year. That false hope was extinguished pretty quickly early on in my 3rd season, as I’ve stumbled to something like an 0-10 start, and I’m not even sure if I’ve kept any of those games that close either. I believe there are 3 main reasons for this. 1st, my schedule has been ridiculously hard, as I think I’ve only faced 1 team under 0.500. 2nd (and this is something that happens in real life too), as I have begun to plug up certain holes on the roster, other holes have emerged as players have aged, gotten injured, regressed, etc. The prime example of this right now is Donovan McNabb, who even when I call the perfect play and end up with a wide open receiver is routinely spraying the ball 5-10 yards away from wherever the intended target is…sounds eerily familiar I know, but as I’ve mentioned before there isn’t much room for error against the super-human All-Madden CPU’s. The 3rd thing is that I’ve officially decided that I hate Mike Shannahan’s playbook. In Madden ’11 at least (maybe real life too), it’s stale, vanilla, and unimaginative. Maybe I would feel the same way about any playbook after using it for about 54 games, but it just seems like I could do better. Anyway, I finally broke down and started a franchise on All-Pro as well. I will keep the All-Madden franchise too as I do think it has helped me get better, but a guy can only be bludgeoned so much without any positive reinforcement. Case in point: in my 1st game in my new All-Pro franchise I promptly won 13-0 and unlocked a gamer achievement in the process for the 1st time in about 4 months.
- 195 lb. isn’t usually considered a common benchmark for the bench press…225 lb., 300 lb., even 185 lb. or 200 lb., but 195 lb? It’s not exactly a nice, round number, so why is it a number of interest to me? Well, when our gym just recently installed a standard bench press station, it gave me my first opportunity to use a “real” bench (not a Smith machine or any other hybrid workstation) in probably 4 years. For the entire 3 previous years we had belonged to this gym, they had no such bench press station, and the year prior to that while at the gym we previously belonged to I was nursing an injured shoulder that prevented me from benching. Anyway, 195 lb. was my previous 1-rep max 4 years ago. I’ve sustained some other injuries since then that might have taken away some potential strength, but I’ve also upped my weight from 165 lb. to between 190-195 lb. as well. Even though probably 95% of guys who take weight training even somewhat seriously can bench 195 lb. easily, that number will still always carry a little extra significance for me. For that reason, as I try to reach new 1-rep maxes, whenever I cycle through a day at 195 lb. it triggers a little mental footnote in my head. So, while it wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire, when I was able to do 3 sets of 3 reps each (9 total reps) yesterday at 195 lb. without much difficulty, it reminded me of the progress I’ve made, as back in college 1 total rep for the whole day at that weight pretty much did me in…unfortunately, it also served as a reminder of what I still need to do to get where I eventually want to be. In other words, there’s more work to be done.
- Somehow 2 of my most recent posts involve me discussing the trials and tribulations of my Madden franchise…talking about Madden that much is probably sad and pathetic, but the only people who read this are me and occasionally Krissy, so who’s kidding who here? Anyway, I was given a little bit of false hope as I followed up a 0-16 rookie season with a still terrible but slightly better 2-14 season the following year. That false hope was extinguished pretty quickly early on in my 3rd season, as I’ve stumbled to something like an 0-10 start, and I’m not even sure if I’ve kept any of those games that close either. I believe there are 3 main reasons for this. 1st, my schedule has been ridiculously hard, as I think I’ve only faced 1 team under 0.500. 2nd (and this is something that happens in real life too), as I have begun to plug up certain holes on the roster, other holes have emerged as players have aged, gotten injured, regressed, etc. The prime example of this right now is Donovan McNabb, who even when I call the perfect play and end up with a wide open receiver is routinely spraying the ball 5-10 yards away from wherever the intended target is…sounds eerily familiar I know, but as I’ve mentioned before there isn’t much room for error against the super-human All-Madden CPU’s. The 3rd thing is that I’ve officially decided that I hate Mike Shannahan’s playbook. In Madden ’11 at least (maybe real life too), it’s stale, vanilla, and unimaginative. Maybe I would feel the same way about any playbook after using it for about 54 games, but it just seems like I could do better. Anyway, I finally broke down and started a franchise on All-Pro as well. I will keep the All-Madden franchise too as I do think it has helped me get better, but a guy can only be bludgeoned so much without any positive reinforcement. Case in point: in my 1st game in my new All-Pro franchise I promptly won 13-0 and unlocked a gamer achievement in the process for the 1st time in about 4 months.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Calorie Deficit
By now I should know not to I believe everything I read…especially online. This is especially true with fitness-related stuff, as you never know when the next training or dieting craze will emerge. One site that I at least semi-trusted before was AskMen.com. Most of their fitness stuff is low-level to mid-level, but generally speaking it’s usually pretty good. Today I started reading an article from that site that – get this – made note that the average adult male should consume at least 1,200 calories a day…meaning that some dudes out there are in fact at that minimum level, which seems absolutely crazy to me! I am not a huge guy by any means, but I am in decent shape, and at the very least I am a pretty active person. So, with that being said, maybe me daily caloric intake is slightly higher than the average dude. Still, I feel like I eat maybe 1,200 calories per meal (averaging snacks into meals), not a day. Krissy is constantly trying to lose a pound or two (despite my protests), and as a result one of the things she does is count her calories. Being extremely active as well, she normally burns between 2,600-2,800 calories a day, and consumes between 1,600-1,800. Even when she is at the high end of that, she is usually fighting herself from grabbing a late night snack because 1,800 calories (plain and simple) just isn’t a lot of food to eat in one day. If she only ate 1,200 calories, I would be worried about her passing out somewhere during the day. As a guy, I naturally have more overall body mass and muscle than her, and if I even ate the 1,800 calories a day that she does, I think I would look like a stick figure. At 1,200 calories, I think I would keel over. Now, if I wasn’t going to the gym and playing ball regularly, my metabolism probably wouldn’t be as high, and, therefore, I wouldn’t have to eat quite as many calories a day. Still, based on my sex, age, height, and weight my resting metabolic rate is a shade over 2,000 calories a day…meaning if I just lied in bed all day without moving a muscle, in theory I would still need to consume 2,000 calories a day just to maintain my current weight. By the end of the day, I will probably have eaten about 2,700 calories (and that doesn’t even factor in any type of post-dinner snack). I once read somewhere else (again, not sure how credible the source was) that the human body has to consume at least 1,000 calories a day just to keep from going into starvation mode…being that 1,200 isn’t that far off, I can’t see that being a healthy option for anyone, even if they are trying to drop a couple of pounds.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Driving Like Goofy
I’m a shade over 26 years old, which means that I’ve been driving for around 10 years now, and yet I’ve never had any type of traffic/moving violation. Now, 10 years isn’t exactly a huge sample set (God willing, I could be driving for another 50years), but I think it goes without saying that your average Joe (or Jill) probably drives faster in their teens and 20’s than in their 30’s, 40’s, and beyond. So, I think the fact that I had managed to make it this far without getting a speeding ticket is kind of amazing…fast forward to this past Saturday, when Krissy and I got pulled over on the way to the gym.
There aren’t too many sinking feelings quite like seeing a police car pull off the shoulder as soon as you pass by, followed by seeing the red and blue flashing lights in your rear view mirror. As I pulled off into the shoulder, I knew I was had. The section of road we were traversing goes from 30 mph to 40 mph to 55 mph in only about a mile. Going in the opposite direction, I usually am careful to drive slowly there because it’s an obvious speed trap. In the direction we were going, I usually don’t care as much, and I almost always speed up to about 60 mph before the 55 mph an hour sign. Anyway, as I said before I knew I was caught. If a cop happened to have been sitting in that exact spot, it was just pretty much up to his discretion how big of a dick he wanted to be…and this cop, while not necessarily a dick, decided for whatever reason not to let me off easy. With a spotless driving record up until that point and cited for only driving 55 mph in a 40 mph zone (I didn’t think I was going above 52 or 53 mph, but then again I wasn’t paying that much attention either), I thought he could have possibly let me slide with a warning this one time.
When this officer approached our truck, he asked for my license and registration and asked the typical, “Any reason you were going so fast?” question. Later on, Krissy remembered a time her and her friend got pulled over, and Krissy made herself throw up on the side of the road to get out of the ticket…her friend told the officer that Krissy had her period, started to feel ill, and her friend was simply trying to drive to anywhere with a bathroom quickly so she wouldn’t have to throw up in the car. Somehow, it worked. In fact, Krissy has estimated that she has been pulled over at least a dozen times in her life, and has never – I repeat, never – gotten a ticket. That is quite a legendary streak if you ask me…and also some ridiculous sexism at work. Just goes to show that if a pretty girl bats an eyelash (or induces her own vomiting), she can get out of almost anything. My initial reaction was that if it had been a girl cop who had pulled us over I could’ve gotten out of the ticket…and yet because of the differences between how men and women think I don’t even think it would’ve worked like that. Anyway, my answer to the officer’s question was simply, “I don’t really have a good reason, sir…just lost track of how fast I was going and was maybe anticipating the speed limit bumping up to 55 mph.” I figured maybe shear honesty combined with being a first time offender might work out for me…yea…no…$90 and 2 points on my license. The points I can most likely get out of just by showing up in court and pleading “guilty with an explanation.” Still, it was a definite bruise to my ego. To add insult to injury, we were so close to the 55 mph zone where we got pulled over that I could have picked up a rock and hit the speed limit sign with it. And while my streak of going without a speeding ticket may point to me being a generally safe driver, it mostly points to my luckiness, as there have probably been 50 times that I could have gotten a ticket but never got stopped for one reason or another. In the end, just one more thing to chalk up to experience.
There aren’t too many sinking feelings quite like seeing a police car pull off the shoulder as soon as you pass by, followed by seeing the red and blue flashing lights in your rear view mirror. As I pulled off into the shoulder, I knew I was had. The section of road we were traversing goes from 30 mph to 40 mph to 55 mph in only about a mile. Going in the opposite direction, I usually am careful to drive slowly there because it’s an obvious speed trap. In the direction we were going, I usually don’t care as much, and I almost always speed up to about 60 mph before the 55 mph an hour sign. Anyway, as I said before I knew I was caught. If a cop happened to have been sitting in that exact spot, it was just pretty much up to his discretion how big of a dick he wanted to be…and this cop, while not necessarily a dick, decided for whatever reason not to let me off easy. With a spotless driving record up until that point and cited for only driving 55 mph in a 40 mph zone (I didn’t think I was going above 52 or 53 mph, but then again I wasn’t paying that much attention either), I thought he could have possibly let me slide with a warning this one time.
When this officer approached our truck, he asked for my license and registration and asked the typical, “Any reason you were going so fast?” question. Later on, Krissy remembered a time her and her friend got pulled over, and Krissy made herself throw up on the side of the road to get out of the ticket…her friend told the officer that Krissy had her period, started to feel ill, and her friend was simply trying to drive to anywhere with a bathroom quickly so she wouldn’t have to throw up in the car. Somehow, it worked. In fact, Krissy has estimated that she has been pulled over at least a dozen times in her life, and has never – I repeat, never – gotten a ticket. That is quite a legendary streak if you ask me…and also some ridiculous sexism at work. Just goes to show that if a pretty girl bats an eyelash (or induces her own vomiting), she can get out of almost anything. My initial reaction was that if it had been a girl cop who had pulled us over I could’ve gotten out of the ticket…and yet because of the differences between how men and women think I don’t even think it would’ve worked like that. Anyway, my answer to the officer’s question was simply, “I don’t really have a good reason, sir…just lost track of how fast I was going and was maybe anticipating the speed limit bumping up to 55 mph.” I figured maybe shear honesty combined with being a first time offender might work out for me…yea…no…$90 and 2 points on my license. The points I can most likely get out of just by showing up in court and pleading “guilty with an explanation.” Still, it was a definite bruise to my ego. To add insult to injury, we were so close to the 55 mph zone where we got pulled over that I could have picked up a rock and hit the speed limit sign with it. And while my streak of going without a speeding ticket may point to me being a generally safe driver, it mostly points to my luckiness, as there have probably been 50 times that I could have gotten a ticket but never got stopped for one reason or another. In the end, just one more thing to chalk up to experience.
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