Not a terrible Monday by any stretch of the imagination. I got a bunch of stuff done at work, including some requests for other people to do some things for me. They don't take too much effort so hopefully I can get them back tomorrow and file some documents.
Julio took Meriam and I out to lunch today. We tried to go to a Portuguese place in Roselle Park, but when we got there, they were closed. LOL places other than salons being closed on Mondays. We ended up at Theresa's in Westfield (after walking by a bunch of other places that were closed). The sauce for the calamari was phenomenal and the pasta special was really good too. Pasta with chicken, spinach, bacon, and a parmesan sauce.
Sunday ended up being a pretty blah day as I spent most of it dozing on the couch. I did see the Jets win after giving up 3 INTs and a 91 yard return. I don't remember how long Favre's contract is, but please don't bring him back next year.
Penn State beat Ohio State in Columbus to take the lead in the Big Ten and keep their #3 BCS ranking. Oh yeah, party at Alyssa's! We had a great time on Saturday night. Costumes and beer pong and the name game. I have to bother Ilya since he didn't make it, but I saw some people from the last party and the Avalon house when I was down there a couple summers ago. I don't see why it's so hard to get a picture to show up where I want it here, but I think I got it right. Here's me with some pirate booty...er, the hostess. :)
Niiice. The boys are in Columbus for Penn State-Ohio State tonight. People have been talking about Texas-OK State this week, but the majority of the conversation has been about the matchup at the Horseshoe. I'll be on the road for the first half and then at Alyssa's, but hopefully we can check in on the game at the party. I'm sure we'll keep tabs on the World Series game too since we'll be right outside Philly.
I know it's going to rain today, but my car was filthy from all the dirt and stone dust from construction so I had to wash it this morning. It got a wax too and it's nice and shiny..for probably about two hours. It'll still look black after the rain though as opposed to the brown tint it had earlier this morning.
Could you please just pick a station to broadcast the playoffs? It's really annoying trying to remember if the game is on TBS or Fox. If you do choose one, here's a hint: not TBS. I bet Craig Sager's wardrobe knocked out the cameras tonight.
Love,
Baseball sucks, but I still watch the playoffs anyway
Thank you, Dr. Dungy.
I have a bunch of probable/questionable/unpredictables on my fantasy team this week. Marques Colston will play, but likely with a splint on his thumb. Clinton Portis and his hip flexor practiced today; we'll see more news on Sunday. Darren Sproles has an injured ankle and is predicted to see limited action. Will that be limited backup for LDT or limited return opportunities, which is the main reason I picked him up? Joseph Addai did something to his hamstring, but nobody knows the extent of his injury, including his coach so he's probably staying on my bench.
I have Lance Moore, whose value will nosedive once Colston is totally healthy again, and Michael Bush (RB vs. NYJ), to possibly replace Sproles, except that the Jets have the #3 run defense in the league. Arizona has a bye, which eliminates Steve Breaston from accepting a role this week.
It looks like I'll be leaving the majority in from last week, giving me a lineup of:
- QB - Jason Campbell (vs. Cleveland; #11 pass defense, #17 total defense)
- WR - Marques Colston (@ Carolina; #2 pass defense, #3 total)
- WR - Anthony Gonzalez (@ Green Bay; #7 pass defense, #20 total)
- RB - Clinton Portis (vs. Cleveland; #22 run defense, #17 total)
- RB - Matt Forte (vs. Minnesota; #4 run defense, #7 total)
- TE - Dustin Keller (@ Oakland; #25 pass defense, #24 total)
- WR/RB - Darren Sproles (@ Buffalo; #18 run defense, #9 total)
- K - Nate Kaeding (@ Buffalo; 12-15 FG, 18-18 PAT)
- DEF - Chicago (vs. Minnesota; #15 total offense)
Why can't the American public/marketmakers just have a slow decline instead of the up-down-up-down nonsense? Everyone knows we're in a recession and we didn't need any PPI or formal consumer spending numbers to tell us that. So settle down! You're just making everyone crazy, including me who has to listen to people at work note every uptick and downtick during the day. OMG the Dow's up 50 points..now it's 52..come on you can do it!!
Ugh.
- 900+ points to the good for Wall Street
- the Giants are letting the Browns march up and down the field (maybe that's just a MNF 2008 thing)
- most of my day at work
I'm not even going to try to explain points #1 or 2 since I haven't been paying complete attention to the game. I don't even know what made work so bad, except just a combination of everything. Marketing made a mess of a bunch of artworks that need approved by tomorrow, I have to give a presentation on the seminar I went to where I didn't enjoy or learn anything, and people kept talking about our group lunch tomorrow. That's not going to be a good time.
Like I said to LP earlier, I hope I can get uncranky in time to kick some butt at volleyball tomorrow night. We're playing the team that is tied with us for first place (13-5). She's bringing her videocamera to tape the games so I had better get my blocking in order before it gets on film! This could be a really good learning tool for some of the people who don't have as much of an organized volleyball background.
Work, what? No no no, Spread HD with Daryll Clark, Evan Royster, and Derrick Williams! I was trying really hard to make this a mature blog, but Penn State just turned Wisconsin over and is up 41-7 in the 4th quarter at Camp Randall, so Bielema...suck it. Payback for being an unsportsmanlike piece of trash in 2006.
I can't wait until Toyota's current 0% financing deal is over. I've lost track of how many times I've heard their jingle today. "Saved by Zero" or something...knock it off!!
The same goes for the kids early this afternoon and the smoker next door. I keep opening and closing my front window, depending on if she's outside hacking and smoking. The smoke wafts right upstairs and in my window. Yuck!
Texas came out on top in the Red River Shootout today. I think they did a great job hanging with OU and got a few questionable late hit personal foul calls in front of the Longhorn bench. I don't think they would have been called on the other sideline.
I just finished up the lasagna that I was making for football at Susan's tomorrow. Hopefully Susan and Joe are just Jew-ish because I forgot and put sausage in the sauce. I'm an irresponsible teammate!
My Halloween costume will be finished as soon as I bring my stapler home from work. I haven't been this excited about Halloween (or anything) in a while. I think this would top Beaker two years ago, except for the fact that my hair was completely orange that night.
I added some mushrooms and extra mozzarella to some pizza and I'm flipping back and forth between the race in Charlotte, Penn State trying to give Wisconsin a second straight loss at Camp Randall, and maybe I'll check in on the Sawx-Rays game as well. It would be great if my remote could have a three channel rotation instead of just two channels on the return button (or whatever it's called).
Edit: And I forgot about the Mizzou-OSU and LSU-Florida games too! Baseball's going to have to wait tonight so that's ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, and CBS(Comcast 3, 74, 7, and 2).
Not talking about Bubba J this time. Dude, you can get anything you want fried today in Dallas.
Texas at Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry Shootout. I've been excited about this game all week, even though I have no real rooting interest in who wins. Everybody is saying that Oklahoma is all over this game and I agree, but we'll see if Colt McCoy can get to the Sooner secondary enough to keep the Longhorns in this one.
OU 14, UT 10 early in the 2nd after a bobbled OU pass that eventually ended up in the hands of another OU receiver and Texas returns the ensuing kickoff 96 yards for the score
I just learned that Abraham Lincoln created the Secret Service on the day of his assassination. It was a shame he didn't do it earlier, although their original (and often overlooked) purpose was to combat counterfeiting.
I was doing pretty well today until I opened an article and saw that today's Dow plunge was the worst percentage loss since October 1987. The good news is that today's loss was (only) 7.3% while Black Monday checked in at -22.6%. I suppose that's good news anyway.
In actual good news: football tonight, tomorrow is Friday, football party at Susan's on Sunday (Sunday Sunday). I have to figure what to make.
This is what I wanted to post last night, but got distracted by nothing important. Mom asked me this weekend why there weren't more election signs out by the roads and I didn't know. But they all appeared this week! Seeing ten signs over a 50 yard section of road will not make me vote for someone over one sign in the same section of road. It's not like someone driving will miss the first nine and then see the tenth. "Oh my god, I'm glad they put up ten signs since I was daydreaming for the first 48 yards, but now I know I know what to do!"
In addition to the print advertising on the road, TV commercials have exploded. I was tired of hearing that "Linda Stender is a spender" since I remember hearing it last election. Heeeyyy campaign managers, it didn't work last time; time to find a new slogan.
I didn't really want to get out of bed this morning and it turned out that I would have been better off staying under the covers. Somebody (still not sure who) signed me up for a seminar today to learn about color. Someone else from the hair color lab was there with me and we both agreed that it was fairly pointless for us to be there. I won't say it was a waste of time until I look through the materials in our folder, although if I only get something out of the handouts, there really wasn't a need for the actual all day presentation. I realize that wouldn't go over well with the vendor (Konica Minolta) and they wouldn't have the chance to sell some instruments to us, but we didn't really need to be there.
I mentioned that I don't know who signed me up for this--that person also neglected to tell me that I was going and I found out about 45 minutes ahead of time from someone else who was signed up. So much for getting anything substantial accomplished in the lab today. My conditioner will have to wait until tomorrow.
Mom was here this weekend and we were planning to go to Drew to see them play Scranton on Saturday. One problem: they weren't playing in Madison. I must be a bad alum since we passed on the 2+ hour trip to Scranton and went to Princeton. I've been to Harvard, but never to Princeton so we thought that would be a fun trip.
I wasn't sure if they would let us in since we were commoners and not wearing orange and black, but we snuck in through one of the open gates. We got there early and I took a couple pics from the new stadium that they were dedicating.
It turned out that I was rooting for Dartmouth based on the way the Princeton players were diving and generally being little babies. We were sitting on the Princeton side so I kept it pretty quiet until the second half and overtime. Dartmouth dominated most of the two overtimes, but couldn't break the 1-1 draw. Dartmouth doesn't list stats like height on their roster page, but their keeper had to be at least 6'5. He grabbed every ball that came near him in the air without much of a challenge.
When I announced at Drew, I remember reading a statement that had something to do with sportsmanship, but at Princeton, they asked us to act with class. Hopefully a few of their players heard that since they got a little upset at the end of the game and took a few swings at a Dartmouth player. Maybe they were just mad because the Tigers are 2-6-1 so far, but I really enjoyed heckling Antoine for that and his dirty play in the second half.
- cleaned my apartment pretty well
- had dinner
- went for groceries
That's pretty good for a Thursday night. I needed to clean before Mom gets here tomorrow. Hardwood floors are impossible to keep clean so I broke down and decided to try a Swiffer. I got both the wet and dry kits. I have to say it does a pretty good job. The cleaning solution on the wet mop smells good and I like the spray button too. :p
No ridiculous adventures at the grocery store tonight for a change, although I had to backtrack a few times since some of the product arrangements don't make too much sense.
We have a choice of 5 soccer games on Saturday: Drew is now at Scranton at 1pm so we might go out there or we can stay nearby and go to FDU-M vs. Alvernia (1pm), FDU-T vs. Temple (1pm), Princeton vs. Dartmouth (4pm), and Rutgers vs. DePaul (7pm). Plenty to choose from so I'm sure we'll find something to do.
Edit: Add filing to the completed list. Lots of stuff to shred at work tomorrow!
