My First Blog Award

A while back my friend Dianne gave me a Brillante Weblog Diamond Award on her website Dianne’s Dishes.  Thanks, Dianne!  Because of how my September turned out, I never did get around to passing it along per the instructions.  But there’s no time like the present.

Here’s how it works:

1. When you receive a diamond, make a post about it on your blog.
2. Name the blogger who gave you the diamond.
3. Award the diamonds to seven other bloggers.
4. Link to the bloggers you award.
5. Go tell them that you’ve given them a diamond award.

Seems simple enough, but heavens do you know how hard it is to narrow it down to seven?  I read about 100 times that many blogs on a weekly basis.  I look forward to reading every one’s blog entries because it keeps me posted with what’s going on in their lives or keeps me updated on a subject I love.  I even discovered that some of my choices aren’t listed on my right side bar navigation, which my regular readers might not know about some of these.  Consider this my opportunity to introduce you to my little corner of the blogosphere.  In no particular order, here are my diamond blogs…

1. Home is Where Brent and Rachel Are (this one is about to go private, so catch it while you can)
2. Rob and Kathryn
3. Gulick News
4. The Free-Range Monkey
5. Tiff’s Thoughts
6. Wrighting Chinese
7. Watch with Kristin

Ok.  There you have it.  Aren’t you proud of me for not putting on blog on there that related to sports specifically?!?!  I could do a whole other list of 7 for that…definitely!

Happy Reading!

#2

#2 isn’t always the first loser when you’re talking AP College Football Polls…at least not during the season.

I’m starting to wonder if Alabama actually read my blog entry prior to the season about how I wanted to see some care and intensity in their play.

That game last night…well the 1st half anyway…was one of the best football performances I’ve seen from them in a long time. And the team was rewarded by the AP poll voters with a #2 ranking today. (Also thanks to Oregon State and Ole Miss for beating their opponents this weekend, which made a little extra room at the top of the poll.)

I think my team…the team that I always knew was there under all the 2nd half let downs and blood sweat and tears…is back. I also think I’m in love with Terrence Cody #62 and Mark Ingram #22. Gosh they make me happy. Let’s keep it up!

ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!

Dome Sweet Dome

Today at 10:30 am ET the RCA Dome roof will be deflated in preparation for the expansion of the Indiana Convention Center.  Thanks for the memories BIG GUY, not the least of which was the AFC Championship game between the Colts and Patriots on Sunday, January 21, 2007.  You have made us Colts fans loud and proud for many years.  I already miss you!

Updated:

Yeah…that’s about how we fans feel about the team, too.

Taking The Reigns

I leave y’all alone for a few weeks while I’m visiting my nephew and battling a sinus infection, and this is what I come back to?  Really?  Do I have to do everything around here?

Seriously it seems like the only people who were capable of surviving without my input was actually the last group of people I expected: ALABAMA FOOTBALL.  Interestingly enough they’re now 4-0 and ranked 8th and 10th nationally.  The wins against Clemson and Arkansas really made me smile.  Western Kentucky was certainly a great win, but Tulane left a bit to be desired even though they did still win.  Even still, Alabama seems to be surprising me left and right.  This weekend is Georgia, which is our first BIG test this season.  Georgia called for the blackout game, which means they’ll be wearing their black jerseys.  Not sure how that helps them play better, but we’ll see.

So let’s catch up on what has transpired while I was away from the blogosphere and see if we can’t get this camp back in order.

• Former UTEP basketball coach Don Haskins passed away on September 7th.  He coached the then Texas Western College basketball team to a National Championship in 1966.  The story of that team was dramatized in the movie Glory Road with Josh Lucas playing the coach.  It’s a fabulous movie if you’ve never seen it.  Coach Haskins changed the face of Division I Basketball by selecting African-Americans to play for him.  It was an uphill battle, but he got it done and continued to coach at UTEP until 1999.  He’s quite possibly the only person I’ve ever heard of who wasn’t afraid to stand up to Adolf Rupp, a courageous act I wish more people had been capable of.  Rest in peach, Coach Haskins.
• The RCA Dome is scheduled to have its roof deflated on Wednesday, September 24th so that construction/expansion of the Indiana Convention Center can begin.  I think I may start a petition to keep them from doing that in the hopes that the city of Indianapolis will let the Colts move back in since Lucas Oil Stadium is CLEARLY not working for us…more on the Colts later.
• So Michael Phelps hosted Saturday Night Live‘s season premiere.  And I wish I had fantastic things to say after that sentence.  Hilariously, wonderful things to say, but alas I do not.  Is it just me or can we no longer count on the general skits of SNL to be funny?  The best part of the show was the Palin/Clinton bit at the beginning.  It was spot on!  And then Michael came out.  The thing that bothered me the most was that Michael had mentioned to the press earlier in the week that at the table read-through the writers had nailed every topic.  So, I ask the general viewing public who may have seen the episode: what topics pertaining to Michael Phelps other than his diet and his mother were nailed that night?  I’ll give you a little bit of time…humming Jeopardy theme music…oh, can’t think of any.  That’s ok.  I can’t either.  I also noted that the locker room skit that was done when Peyton hosted was re-created for Michael.  Now, I don’t watch SNL on a regular basis so I’m not familiar with whether this skit is recurring more often than those two instances, but it seemed kind of stupid to me to repeat that skit.  All in all, I thought Michael didn’t do too badly considering the material he was given to work with, but definitely, Michael, keep your day job.
• I have a Blackberry for work.  For those of you who don’t have one, steer clear.  They’re addictive, and they ruin your social life as well as your grammar skills.  You see the wonderful people at Blackberry have made it incredibly easy to be a horrible speller and horrible at grammar because they automatically fix things for you with auto-text.  The biggest thing they fix is contractions, i.e., if I type in arent, my Blackberry auto-changes it to aren’t.  This has become a big problem as I have noticed myself typing things that way on my regular computer, which does not auto-change them.  This in turn frustrates me and bad, bad things ensue.
• ABC has deemed this week “National Stay At Home Week” because most of their fall programming begins this week.  I’m thrilled that the network has ordered me to stay home so I have an excuse now since every week seems to be stay at home week at my house.  But, hey…when you’ve got 56″ of glorious HDTV staring back at you, why would you go out?  Happy Fall Programming EVERYONE!
• Before I get back to the Colts who are pretty much the only ones who REALLY couldn’t handle things without me, let me address the situation that occurred last weekend in the Denver/San Diego game.  It seems head official Ed Hochuli is the first referee to ever make a bad call or at least that’s what one would think if you read the sports section at all last week.  God bless him, he deserved better from the Football Fans of the World.  Did he inadvertently blow the whistle causing the play to end?  Yes.  Was it a mistake? Absolutely.  Was it a fumble?  Yes.  Should it have been San Diego’s ball?  Certainly, had the play been allowed to go on and San Diego recovered.  Did Ed deserve to be raked over the coals the way he was?  Absolutely NOT.  And here’s why.  HE IS FREAKING HUMAN!  Until this game is somehow not judged by humans, there will be mistakes.  Furthermore, Denver was not ahead at the time the call was made.  They still had to score a touchdown and a PAT (to tie) or a two-point conversion (to win).  That’s incredibly hard to do for any team really.  But here’s my biggest thing: San Diego doesn’t really get to complain about this.  Had they done their job during the rest of the game the outcome never would have come down to that one call.  So, if San Diego wants to point fingers at someone not doing their job correctly, perhaps someone should buy that team a mirror.  In the end, Ed Hochuli followed through with what he could do because of the inadvertent whistle.  Is it a stupid rule?  Sure, but until that rule is changed, the rule must be followed to best of our ability as humans.  Ed ended up apologizing profusely during the game and afterwards when really one “I’m sorry, I made a mistake” would have been enough.  Instead, the NFL chose to announce to everyone that he would be marked down for his error in the game.  Every official is marked down for every little mistake they make in a game.  This is not news.  The NFL threw Ed under the bus by fueling the media fire with that one.  Death threats and hate mail were sent, which by the way, if you sent one…get a life.  Ed actually came out and said he was devastated by what had happened.  Yes, people…Ed Hochuli deserved better from us because though he didn’t necessarily give us his best that Sunday afternoon, he has given us his best countless times before.
• Now to the Colts.  I don’t even know where to begin.  I think the new stadium is cursed or maybe it’s the whole team.  The lack of a run defense is back and that has nothing to do with Bob Sanders being injured cause it sucked the first two games of the season when he was playing.  I’m really tired of having to listen to the team say we need to get better.  No, I really want you to say, “we couldn’t stop a turtle if we tried.”  I want them to say, “we really suck right now and we don’t know what the heck we’re doing” because really, that’s what it looks like right now.  I don’t want the sugar coating.  I want the brutal, honest truth…from them, not you guys.  I want them to own up to what we all can see when we watch the games.  We have no business being 1-2.  We should be 0-3 along with the Rams.  I’m quite frankly tired of the come from behind victories.  I don’t care if we go back and forth and the game is tied the whole time, but this let’s be down 15-0 going into the late third quarter or down 20-14 late in the 4th is not working for me.  I used to think it was awesome that you couldn’t count the Colts out if there was a minute or more left on the clock.  Now, it’s just plain annoying.  I got really peeved last night when Dan Patrick while doing his recap of the game said that David Garrard out-Manning’d Manning.  I took great offense to this.  Of course I know he is not playing the way we all know he can play.  I’ll be the first one to pick out every single one of his flaws, but I have NEVER understood why football games are described as this QB against that QB.  The QBs do not play each other.  Manning got outplayed by the Jags defense and David Garrard (technically the Jags running game) outplayed the Colts defense.  So, if we’re going to anoint Peyton as the king of all come from behind victories late in the 4th quarter, then just in yesterday’s games, Peyton was out-Manning’d by his own brother, Brian Griese, and Trent Edwards.  And I honestly think that we can all agree that David Garrard, Eli Manning, Brian Griese, and Trent Edwards have a long way to go before their careers can be considered in the same breath as Peyton Manning…maybe not Eli so much as the other guys…but still.  I just abhor the QB against the QB argument, so someone’s gotta come up with something better.  Thankfully…MERCIFULLY…this is our BYE week, so we can’t lose.  I still love every single one of my boys including Freddie “pass interference on 4th and 1 with 29 seconds left” Keiaho, but I certainly don’t have to like them all that much right now.  Pull it together guys.

Alright.  That’s all I got for right now, but now that I’m back perhaps we can restore some order around here.

Lincoln Turns 1

These are just the ones from my camera.  I’ll set up a slide show with the ones from Lincoln’s grandpa and mimi a little later.  Enjoy!

I’m Alive

Just so you’re not worried…the three of you who read my blog regularly.

1. I haven’t jumped off a cliff following the Colts’ week 1 loss to the Bears although I thought about pushing a couple of the players off one.
2. I haven’t kidnapped my nephew so that I can spend all of my time with him though that sounds a whole lot better than what I’ve been up to this week.
3. I haven’t gone down in a plane crash on my way back from Florida.
4. I haven’t detoured to Tuscaloosa to tell Nick Saban I told you so about how uninspiring Alabama would play against Tulane.
5. I haven’t been tapped to be on the Vince Young search team for the NEXT time he goes missing.
6. I haven’t been practicing my hallelujah chorus over Tom Brady’s injury.  Quite the contrary.  I’m actually bummed he’s out for the year.  It makes the Colts/Pats game much less worthy.  I’m guessing that Chiefs player didn’t have TB on his fantasy team.

No…none of those things are correct.  I have, however, been sidelined with a nasty sinus infection.  Once I am well…the blog will be flowing with new material because I’ve got tons to say and millions (yes, millions) of pictures to show you from the cutest 1 year old’s birthday party EVER.  Let’s just say that cake didn’t stand a chance once Lincoln got a hold of it.

More later.  I gotta go take some more medication!

Day Dreaming

This past weekend I was cleaning out the storage room in my basement.  I had boxes of “stuff” I had saved over the years going as far back as when I was 13 years old.  I figured it was time to purge as much of it as I could and reorganize the room, so it looked a little neater.  As a result, I spent a lot of time knee deep in memories.  Since then, I’ve been thinking A LOT about “the one that got away” mainly because I found pictures of him that reminded me just how “into” him I was.  It’s funny because he’s the one person in my life that I had a crush on and never told him how I felt.  If you don’t know me well you should know that that is incredibly rare for me.  I’ll pretty much tell you if I’m interested in you simply because I try to live my life without regrets.  I don’t want to wonder, as I am now 12 years later, what might have been if I’d just had the courage to say something. 

He was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.  Genuinely funny, incredibly talented, and wise.  That’s rare, I think, to look back now and know that an 18 year old was wise.  Wisdom and intelligence are two different things.  I wonder what he’s doing now.  If his dreams that he told me about in high school came true.  I’m certain he’s married because I believe the last email I remember from him when I was in college mentioned something about him being engaged.  I wonder if he has children now and if he loves what he does for a living.  When we were in high school, the job he hoped for after college was one of the coolest jobs I’d ever heard of, so I hope he made it happen.  We went to different colleges (and I actually do think about him whenever I hear something about his college on SportsCenter or whatever) and kept up with each other our freshmen years, but the correspondence fell off after that, and I never told him how I felt. 

I don’t know that telling him would have changed anything, but I guess as I looked at those pictures this weekend, I sat and wondered what life would have been like if he and I had ended up together.  In any case, I hope he is happy wherever he is and making people smile and laugh as he did with me.  I’ll just hold onto my memories.

Daggummit

Well that was fun while it lasted cause Michael Phelps we ain’t.  You know Sports Illustrated, just because you hate Nick Saban because he chooses not to cower to your every whim or request doesn’t mean you should punish the whole team.  My hope is that Clemson is featured enough on this cover as well so that perhaps we can spread the wealth that is the SI cover jinx.

Nuf Said

Saw this bumper sticker on a car yesterday when I was running errands.  Gotta say it’s my favorite one: