Crazy Sunday for sports

It would have been nice to have 3 TVs today. The Jets had the majority of my focus earlier, but the Tour Championship, the Chase, and the Mets were all on this afternoon. I decided to wait to look for updates on golf and the race until the two events were closer to being finished and I had the baseball scoreboard up on Yahoo to keep an eye on the NL wild card and AL Central races.

I feel a little bad for the Mets and for rooting against them today (and for the past month), but I never feel really bad for rooting against New York teams. The AL race might be settled Monday if the White Sox lose to Detroit, but will go to a playoff game on Tuesday if the Southsiders win.

The Redskins are up on Dallas at halftime, courtesy of two Jason Campbell TD tosses, which is good for my fantasy team this week. I put him back in to replace Big Ben (I'm tired of spelling Roethlisberger) since the Steelers have a terrible offensive matchup with the Ravens. Over on CBS, the Chargers appear to be having major issues being down 15-0 at halftime to the Raiders. A few Nate Kaeding FGs would go a long way for me this week so hopefully they will get their helmets on straight for the second half.

I'm working on getting more of my bills paid automatically with my new credit card, both for the rewards and that I should take advantage of the offer I got in the mail from Chase checking. I'd get a free $100 for opening a new account and keeping it open for 6 months. I think I can handle that and that will give me a good reason to close my account at the credit union since I can't stand dealing with one of the employees there.

I miss summer hours

This was the first full-day Friday after summer hours ended and the afternoon was a drag. I learned about the new deionized water system at work from about 1:30-2:00 and then that was about it for my productivity for the day. I had better things to do: check Ryder Cup scores (USA is up 5-2 with 1 match in progress), check the market and try to figure out what's best (still not too much of an idea), talk to Jolene, pretty much anything other than actual work.

I think I'm buying back into gold if GLD drops down near $80 again. I wish I would have had enough cash in my account earlier this week to get it before it jumped. This market is ridiculous and I think that's part of what's been keeping me up at night. They say that you're not properly diversified if you worry too much about your money, but I think most people are worried at least a little bit right now. With all the radical moves the Fed is making, it's really hard to even pretend to predict the next move.

I'd really like to play some poker tonight, but I'm not sure if I'll be awake or coherent enough later to play well.

2am on a Sunday night

No surprise here that I'm still awake. It seems like that's the way Sunday nights have been going lately for a while. I was actually tired when I got into bed around midnight, but couldn't quite fall asleep. I haven't been thinking about work even though I wasn't there on Friday.

I took off to play golf with Bill and Mike R at Spring Meadow in Farmingdale. We had a good time, even though I would not rate it high on my list (even given the fact that it's a municipal course). Most of the greens were a mess and it was next to impossible to tell where you were supposed to take your cart. After getting chewed out for driving on a par-3 last week (I was picking up someone's ball 125 yards from the green and apologized to the marshal, but apparently that warranted him following us for another 6 holes), I was a little gunshy about driving. Since there were only 3 of us in the group, I almost didn't take a cart so I could walk, but then I'd have no place to put my beer!

I watched Sunday Night Football tonight and complained to NBC Sports that Al Michaels was being an asshat on the air. He was just being cute by saying that the opening kickoffgot up in the jet stream, but not 5 seconds earlier, he told us that the wind was blowing east to west. That annoyed me for some reason, but I still kept watching since I was keeping tabs on Ben Roethlisberger for my fantasy team. It looks like I should have a decent lead on Chuck going into the Monday night game and I have to credit Anquan Boldin and Nate Kaeding for that, even though the Vikings' Ryan Longwell kicked 5 FGs to outscore Kaeding. I'd add the Bears defense to the list for blocking a punt and returning it for a TD, but they fell apart and allowed a bunch of points at the end of the game.

The news for Lehman Brothers isn't very good at the end of the weekend and it looks like bankruptcy is looming, possibly in the coming week. It was reported tonight that Merrill was bought by Bank of America for $50billion. I remember watching something on TV that Merrill sponsored when I was little and seeing the famous bull logo. I don't know if the bull will cease to exist, but I think I'll miss it.




I'd say I hope that this will start to stop the run of bankruptcies and failures of the financial institutions, but that would just be a waste of keystrokes. And in the time since I started this post, I see that Lehman will indeed be filing for Chapter 11. They've been around for 158 years, Merrill for 94, Bear Stearns for 85. It would be nice to hear some good news for a change.