Stupid Random!

I've been busy, and have been wanting to post, yet I haven't found the gumption to sit down and write one. I didn't even do a Lost post this week! Well I am forcing myself to get at least one post out, so I might as well make it a random one.

"Back" in the field

OK the back sprain is healing pretty good and I think I am ready to go shot again. Well, it might also be that I am sick of show editing. I've not touched a camera for two weeks now and I need to start up again. I've got a small amount of discomfort when I sit, but we will see about carrying heavy items around. At times I fell the station thinks I want to get out of shooting, why else am I always getting injured? I just need to do more preventive work like stretches and actually lifting the proper way. My goal is no more injuries for at least one year. Stop laughing.. seriously, I want to be injury free for a year. OK, I'll go for 6 months, that's a good start.

Dog Watch March 08

For the last year we have had a battle of will in our house, baby vs dog. You can probably figure out who wants what. My argument is that we start with a dog and then we can see how we do there and then go for the baby thing. It's kind of like The Wife's brother and his wife, they got a dog, everyone but them realized she was going to be crazy and now that they have a baby, she is well, crazy.

Well The Wife decided to meet some of our neighbors and guess what they had... A PUPPY! and she fell in love with it. To make things even more awesome, they told her my idea was a good one. I finally won a battle!!!! I felt like there should have been balloons and confetti dropping from the ceiling. We started a search and came across Odie on craigslist. We have been emailing back and forth and then we could not check our email on Sunday and from that point on it went quiet. I emailed twice on Monday and no response, finally I open my email and see a message from the woman... Odie may be adopted to someone else. The current owner for some reason took no emails on Sunday as several days. We both would love to have this dog, now it looks like we may have to move on. We'll try and give updated.

"You Ain't No Kind of Man if You Don't Own Land"

That quote came from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou one of my favorite movies, and from it you can probably figure out we are looking at buying a house... sort of. This past Sunday, we had lunch with some friends and they happen to live near a house for sale. We look at it and it's a nice house and then we see the price has been dropped. The builder is actually selling it for less than it's worth. Then an agent just happens to show up. We are thinking this house has to be for us what are the odds of all this happening?

We look at the house and think it would be a great place to buy. Then comes the part I feared the most... figuring out how we can get a loan. You see back in aught 5 I subconsciously decided that credit was not that important and well, destroyed it. Money wise, I'm fine, yet they look at that score and cringe and usually hang up. The Wife's credit is much better, but she doesn't make enough, so we have constant problems with anything that involves credit.

I call a group that specializes in first time home mortgages and amazingly enough we get approved and at 6% fixed. Considering that is no money now... not too bad, then the bad part, the payments are 180 dollars more than we pay in rent now. We could probably make that payment, but things would be tight. We have done well in getting rid of some of our debt, I'd have to see us revert back to having problems. It's kind of hard to get that close and then find out that everything is just out of reach. At least I now know that I can buy a house if we want to.

Basketball Postseason

For the past 6 years I have been able to cover some form of basketball post season. I thought I was about to make it 7 till I was pulled from the ACC women's tournament because of "overtime" issue. Then I threw my back out and the point was mute. It just feels odd not having to travel cover pressers and rushing around trying to feed out video. It was always a lot of work, but I loved it. It all started with the MAC tournament when I was in West Virginia, I got to see Antonio Gates play basketball not football. I covered three years of high school basketball in Ohio and got to see OJ Mayo, Raymar Morgan and Bill Walker play. Last year I covered North Carolina in Winston-Salem and then East Rutheford, New Jersey.

There were rumors that I would run the sat truck, but they installed new equipment and I have no idea how to work the truck now. There could be an outside shot, but I'm not holding my breathe. We are short two photographers and no way are they going to give anyone up to sports. Yet another era for me ends.

Birthday

This will be the first time in 6 years I won't have to cover basketball on my birthday so that's a nice trade off. I normally hate birthdays and usually bad things happen around them. Nothing horrible, just random bad days that make me not want to have birthdays. This year I was hoping to get Odie, but now I might get to go to the Bentonville Battlefield reenactment. I know a Civil War reenactment... I'm a dork. I like the Civil War, it was an interesting time in our country and I live near the final battle sight so I'm going to see the reenactment.

Random Stardom

I'm not the type that needs to know what celebrity entered rehab or who is sleeping with whom, that's more of The Wife territory. Yet, there were two events that I wanted to talk about and either one does not quite deserve it's own post so here is a Hollywood random moments.

Heath Ledger If you did not know Heath Ledger died on Tuesday and I was kind of shocked, I hope it was not suicide, but you never know. He was one of those actors that everyone knew about, yet he really didn't do a lot of films. Still he has quite a few memorable rolls, starting with 10 Things I Hate About You, Patriot, A Knight's Tale, Monster's Ball, and Brokeback Mountain. I didn't think Brokeback was as good as it was hyped, but I though Ledger did a good job. I think he could have had a solid and long career.

The one thing about his death that is a little disturbing to me is the people taking pictures of his body being wheeled out. I understand the media, and I somewhat understand the paparazzi, yet there were a throng of people with their phones and cameras taking picture of his body bag. What are you going to do with that picture? You're not going to be able to sell it, too many others with better cameras, put it on your blog or are you going to show it to a friend. Will they think you are cool? "Look man, I got a picture of Heath Ledger's body bag."

Hey There, I Don't Care The Emo band Plain White T stole concepts from everyone from the White Stripes to Budweiser commercials to write the song "Hey There Delilah." It is a little catchy, but for some reason people, like The Wife, were enamored with who was the real Delilah and today the Today Show revealed it was some track athlete, Delilah DiCrescenzo. They even did an interview with her... Whoopeedee Do! Now we can get on with our lives now that we know who Delilah really is. When did something like this become important. The 80s and 90s were full of songs about people, yet we didn't need to know who the person was about, I don't want to know who the real Mandy is or who is this Mickey and why he is so fine. Just enjoy the music and use this thing called your imagination and think up a story, or can you America, can you?

Random Weekend

It was a weird weekend and I wanted to write about a few things, but never got a chance to, so I'm going to do another Random thoughts:

No Way I Could Win

Saturday night The Wife had to work and I was invited over to watch the Ohio State game with Shawn. During the game The Wife called, she asked if she could come over if she got off early enough. I asked and Shawn gave the thumbs up. Now flash forward to around half time, The Wife calls and she is leaving her sit, mentions she's tired and was going to go home and watch the game. I give an OK are your sure response and I thought that was that. Later in the conversation (as OSU is driving down the field) she mentions, "I guess you don't want me to come over." WHAT?!?!?! When she mentioned that she was going home, my response SHOULD have been, "Oh baby, come over here, I want to see you, I can not enjoy this game without you." Stupid me I did not read the signs.

I know woman are hard to figure out alone, and then you have to try and figure what code. I seriously thought she was tired and wanted to go to bed. I get off the phone and Shawn it chuckling a little and asked what happens. I tell him and ask "I can't win this can I?" His response, "Nope, no way out." Woman!

I did get permission to write this, but I could have misread the signs AGAIN, so I might be sleeping on the couch for the rest of the week.

Bad Food
After getting down here, I found out that the Carolina's have their own kind of barbecue and it no where NEAR what you think it is. Instead of being a plate of cooked beef or pork covered in a delicious red sauce, Carolina BBQ is pulled pork that has been simmering in a vinegar based "sauce" and then served on a plate. I've had it enough to almost acquire a taste, The Wife.... not so much.

On Friday I had a great brisket sandwich and was craving traditional BBQ. I knew of a place that service really good BBQ, but after we got there, we found out that it was closed. We turn on the GPS and find another place 5 miles away. We get there and I already know it's not going to be what I wanted. We walk in and order some barbecue. When the order came, it was a plate of pulled pork. CRAP! I wanted the other kind of BBQ.

We start to eat and this was the salties food I have ever had, and it tasted horrible. We tried hot sauce, adding more of the vinegar sauce, and we even asked if they had normal BBQ. She brought out the stuff they cook the chicken in and it smelt like a dirty gym sock. We look at each other and just got up paid for a dinner we barely touched. I felt ill for the rest of the day, my stomach was turning over and was burping the salty taste all day.

I will never go back to that place again and I'm not sure I want Carolina barbecue any more.

FREE CHIPOTLE!

Even though I felt sick all day Sunday I knew Monday for lunch I was getting free lunch at Chipotle. For some reason I have business cards. While at The Network I gave out maybe 30 to actual people, but I put about 100 in different fish bowls at restaurants around the state. So when I got new business cards I put one in ever fish bowl I could find. I almost never win, except at Chipotle, this is my second time winning. The last was 25 free burritos and this Monday was just for 10. The only problem was it had to be before noon and it was closer to my house than the station. I found only two people to go with me, Shawn and Melissa, but I was going to order one for The Wife.

I think the greatest tasting burrito is a free burrito. It's so exciting, you go to the cash register and you don't have to give them any money! The three of us enjoyed out free food (FYI we did have to pay for chips and drinks for $2.80), then I got a great idea, I still have to order The Wife's burrito, but I still have 6 free burritos (Where is Levy when you need him!) so I ordered an extra one for dinner tonight. What's better than one free burrito? How about two! I hope I have done Levy proud.

Random Labor Day: Football edition

Because of the now healed thumb and a scheduling SNAFU I got of work Friday at 8AM and do not have to be back at work till Wednesday at 1PM. In return for not working, Wednesday starts my 10 days in a row and Friday was kind of a particle wasted day because, well I got off work at 8AM and was tired all day. Truthfully the almost 5 days off have been wonderful so far and I thought I'd just do one big random post:

GREATEST GAME EVER!

The biggest problem living in North Carolina is that normal cable and local stations do not carry Big Ten nor MAC football, I get the crappy ACC and the annoy fans of the SEC. For the most part football is football and if the game is exiting I'll watch. Honestly The Wife is the most upset about this predicament. She can't stand not watching Ohio State on Saturdays, but Shawn has Direct TV and has picked up the BigTen Network and the OSU opener can only be seen there. I'm invited over (The Wife had to work) I start watching with Melissa, but she has to go to work, and they were nice enough to let me stay and watch the game even though they were both at work. Ohio State played like Ohio State always does, boring yet dominating. In all honestly they are at times hard to watch when they play "smaller" teams.

I'm getting bored of this game when I get a call "Is that App State Michigan score correct?" Shawn asked with great shock in his voice. I text him earlier with a score of 14 all, but that's not the score he gives me "Turn over to at game App State is up 28-14!" WHAT?!?! That can't be the score, it has to be a typo on his phone. I flip over and I see 28-14 and I have a new game to watch.

That was the most exciting game I have ever watched. It seemed like the Mountaineers were going to dominate, then they would fumble, throw an interception or drop at touchdown pass. At the same time, "the state up north" did want to win. They would score and miss a two point conversion, fumble and just look bad. Finally Michigan started to play like a Big Ten school and took the lead late in the game I thought that was it Goliath would win... again. I miss judged the scrappy 1-AA school. They stormed back and took a two point lead 34-32. I was jumping up and down. Titus, Shawn and Melissa's dog, looked at me like I was an idiot. I was jumping up and down. Also during this time I got a call from The Wife and I told her about the game and I had to give her play-by-play of the game, then Shawn called and I was doing the same for him. I had to look like and idiot with a phone on each ear giving the call of the game two feet from the TV jumping up and down.

Michigan did not want to live in infamy. They threw a bomb to Mario Manningham and he makes the diving catch at the 20. I thought it was over. How can the Michigan kicker miss a gimmie like that. Shawn calls back and I tell him that the Wolverines are about to win the game with a kick. Then it happened, Appalachian State BLOCKS THE KICK! APP STATE JUST BEAT MICHIGAN! I was screaming into the phone, while shawn was laughing at me and cheering the fall of the mighty Wolverines.

I don't care what some of the football writers are saying, this was the greatest upset off all time in college football. A powerhouse Big Ten school LOSES TO A 1-AA SCHOOL! To put it in perspective it's like the Indianapolis Colts losing to Florida, LSU or USC. It's not going to happen. This should never have happened and probably will not happen again. I was lucky to get to see this game.

SECOND GREATEST GAME OF THE DAY

To open the season Bowling Green is playing Minnesota and guess what? It's on the BigTen Network so I am invited back to watch, I brought the beer Shawn ordered the pizza. Prior to the game I was unsure what to expect from BG, we are starting a young quarterback, our wide receivers are unproven and last year we forgot to play this thing called defense.

I settle in and the next thing I know BG is reeling of a drive of all drives and scores. I am shocked, I didn't even jump up and down or anything I just sat there. Minnesota came out and looked, well bad, they are installing a new offense and it looks like it has not sunk in yet so they have to punt. I think coach Greg Brandon thought he was playing Playstation and sliced the gopher D for the second time and even through in a trick play that scored a 58 yard TD. BG is dominating and I am stunned, is this the time that I have cheered for? What happened to my Falcons, don't get me wrong I'm loving it's just hard to handle is team that is dominating a "bigger" program.

Well BG came back down to Earth and only scored one more time before the half to make it 21-0. I think the Tim Brewster lit a fire under his team, because they started playing better and I think he found Glen Mason's old play book and started running a "Minnesota" type offense. By the 4th quarter it is all tied at 21. I am worried now, I start pacing and realize that I am watching Bowling Green and we are going to chock. Minnesota kicks a field goal and looks like they have the game locked up.

BG finally wakes up and Tyler Sheehan dismantles the gopher D and get BG with in field goal range. I'm nervous as hell. If you don't know anything about BG football let me fill you in on a little problem we have had for a couple of years. WE CAN'T KICK THE BALL! Shawn is laughing at me pacing around his house I know the new junior college transfer is going to blow it. HE MADE IT, HE MADE IT! WE MAY ACTUALLY HAVE A KICKER! I'm happy for overtime, but Minnesota wants to run a play. I can't give this play as much justice as the Futonreport did:

Weber hurls it down field at the 35, for the Hail Mary, and … nope, it’s tipped
and — wait — BG catches it. They’re going downfield. JESUS CHRIST THEY’RE GOING VERY FAR DOWN FIELD. THEY’RE PAST MIDFIELD. THEY’RE AT THE 40 YARD LINE. THEY’RE LATERALING THE BALL! THEY’RE FUCKING LATERALING THE BALL! I DON’T SEE A MOTHERFUCKING BAND ON THE FIELD! KEEP LATERALING! GO, YOU STUPID FUCKING FALCONS!!! KEEP RUNNING, KEEP LATERALING… oh, they ran out of space at the 30
yard line. Welp, how’s about overtime?

In overtime Minnesota scores first and then BG gets a fast touchdown, OK send in the kicker... what the hell is Brandon doing! He keeps the offense out there. BG goes for it, FREDDIE BARNES CAUGHT THE BALL! HE CAUGHT THE BALL! WE WIN WE WIN!

I was jumping up and down screaming in a voice only Titus could hear. What a way to end a Saturday.... just perfect!

Random Thoughts: International addition

I have a lot I want to write about so tonight, but I do not feel like writing an epic blog because

1. I worked 13 hours today.
2. I get bored when a blog entry is long, so why would I torture everyone with something I hate.

So I will just write about three things in this post and oddly enough everything has an international flair.

Children Of Chernobyl

Since moving to Raleigh we found a church called Lifepointe and they love the fact that I can actually use a video camera. When any project pops up I'm at the top of the list to shoot or give ideas. I truthfully don't mind, I have more energy and I feel like I can handle it... most of the time. This past Friday I was asked to shoot an interview for the Children of Chernobyl. If you don't want to go to the site a quick summary is that it is an organization to help an orphanage in the town of Rudnesk, these are children the state wants to hide. They are usually children with some abnormalities like MS, Down syndrome, mild retardation and crazy as it sounds cross eyed. Most are children of prostitutes, drug addicts and alcoholics, their parents don't want them so they ship them to Rudnesk.

I was asked to interview Mama Luda a woman who saw these children and felt it was her duty by God to help them. She came over to America with three of the orphans and the director Valentin. I was leery of the interview, but she answered my questions so well I only had to ask two follow ups. She gave me everything I needed. I interview the director (through the translation done by Mama Luda) and he was wonderful. Even the two orphans we that were there did a wonderful job.

I know it touched The Wife, if you did not know she spent many years in foster care and finally ended up with The In-Laws when she was 12. She has always wanted to do a missions trip but doesn't want to go and do heavy lifting and hard work in hot weather. She found her trip and wants to go to Belarus and help the orphanage. It even touched me and we are going to sponsor a child. It only cost $20 a month and hearing the stories of how the orphanage survives only because of the money sent from America made my heart grow three times it's size. I know we have it too good and we waste a lot of what is given to us.

So if you can find an extra 20 and give, if not we may becoming to you within a year for help with our trip. You have been warned, but seriously these kids have nothing and their government would rather they go away and never be heard from again, they need all the help they can get.

Hotel Rwanda
Yes I know this movie was released in 2004, but I saying I'll rent it later. Well later came in the form of Blockbuster and it finally was shipped. It took two more weeks of sitting there, but I finally watched it and I should have watched it back when it was first released.

If you do not know the movie imagine if you took Blood Diamonds (minus the diamonds) and Schindler's List and made one movie, you would get Hotel Rwanda. It's the story of Paul Rusesabagina the hotel manager at a Belgium passed resort in Rwanda. When the country was turned upside down during a revolt he helped save over 1200 people.

Rwanda is basically split between two groups the Hutu and the Tutsie. The two for the most part got along, but when trouble started to form it got ugly and part of the Hutu people thought the only way to solve the countries problem was to kill every Tutsie. It was a massive genocide of nearly a million people. It wasn't even killing people it was killing them not with guns, but with machetes, hatchets and any other sort of sharp object. It was bloody and violent and the dead was strewn about the country. In one scene Paul had to leave the Hotel compound for supplies when it was still foggy and the road was getting bumpy, he thought they were running off the road. Little did he realize till he got out of the truck was that the road was full of bodies.

To put the slaughter into perspective imagine the entire population of Franklin county Ohio, Columbus, Dublin, Groveport, Dublin... you get the idea, all dead. In North Carolina the population or Wake, Durham and Orange counties all dead. The most shocking part of the movie was not the killing, but the fact the world did not care. Paul was a man that tried to make connections and had many so that if he needed a favor he could help his family. When the killing started everyone abandoned him and the country of Rwanda. I remember hearing about the genocide while in high school and truthfully I never got how bad it was till I was Hotel Rwanda. A must watch movie.

Domo Arigato Japanese Pitcher

Now that I made everyone horribly depressed with their lives I'll do a 180 to end the post. In Durham the USA college baseball team faced off against the Japanese college baseball team. I haven't had a chance to go till today. I was asked if I could work late and I thought hey a chance to watch some international baseball, why not. I find out that we are interview a guy who is huge in Japan. He was the one that pitched against Dice-K in that 17 inning game back when he was in high school. The thing not mentioned is that he pitched all 17 as well. He was a pretty cool guy, we had an interpreter and we talked about baseball, Dice-K and the kid who pitching against the USA on Friday Yuuki Saitou. I guess he is good in 6 2/3 innings he only allowed 2 hits and 1 run in the Japan win. It's interesting to see how many Japanese media crews came over for this series. The station that is using our satellite PUP has over 15 people and there were still photographers everywhere. It's so crazy over there that Yuuki has magazines devoted to nothing but him. Imagine something like Tiger Beat magazine, People and Us Weekly devoting every page to Tom Brady or Alex Rodriguez.

We finish our shot and time to play a little bit. We are near the area where kids can see how fast they throw. Well this guy through a pitch 114mph. We think it was a little off, but wow the ball left his hand fast. We end the fun part of the day and get down to business. The USA is losing the series 2 games to 1 and if they do not get the win on Saturday it will be the first time that the USA has lost a series on American soil. Japan gets out to an early lead by playing small ball. Get a man on first, bunt him over to second. Get a hit or a fly out to send the man to third and then hit the ball and send the runner in for a score. Some how the USA can't handle that style of play. Team USA goes by the philosophy of "chicks did the long ball" and swung for the fences at every at bat and pretty much never made it to first. By the time we left it was Japan 3 USA 0 in the 6th and we left, we had enough of the ass whooping. So much for baseball being America's past time. Maybe we can take curling away from Canada for a new past time... or corn holing.

Random Thoughts

I've not really posted this month and it's not from lack of substance, it's has been a case of bad timing. We went on vacation, had house guests, crazy at work. So to get caught up here are some random thoughts:

VACATION

We had a good six day vacation. It started with The In-laws visiting. To be honest with The In-laws it's a role of the dice. Either it can be a nice visit or we feel worse after they leave. Fortunately for us the dice fell our way and it was a good visit. They were surprised about how nice Fried Chicken Dr was, it almost got the the point I started to wonder if they had thought we had bought a trailer and the the Honda would be on blocks in the front yard and trash and cats would be all over the place. I take The Father-in-law golfing and we had a decent time. I started off with my usual crappy play and he started off well, but somewhere around hole 7 I started to get relaxed and as usual my game improved to a near respectable level. I started to slide back down around hole 15. I had not played 18 holes this year so I was getting a little tired. We talked about life, sports, OSU, family, and our future... the normal stuff. He finished up with an 83 and I whacked a 124... the best this year. We all met up went out to eat and had a good time.

On Thursday we head to Ironton for more golf and shopping. We stayed with my parents till Saturday afternoon and it was much needed. We got some good eats with my dad's spaghetti and it was a good relaxing time. I went to the Ironton Country Club with my dad and he helped fix my golf game. Seems I was about a foot and a half to far from the ball. Of course this one little adjustment lead to me being nearly kicked out of the family. The one family rule about golf is you don't out drive dad (It's not a real rule, but a fun joke rule). Well on the 3rd hole his goal is to get past a mound in the fairway and the past a pine tree if it's a good day... I went beyond that pine and I hit the ball at least 220. I get a nasty look and an X over that hole. By the time we finished I had 8 Xs and two of those had circles meaning my fairway shot was good. I think on the 5th hole it took Dad 3 shots to get past my towering tee shot. Dad finished with an 98 (with two pars and a birdie) and I hit a 113 (two bogeys)! All was forgiven and I was allowed back into the family.

A trip to Ironton would not be complete without a trip to the Government housing of one Wilson. We met up for some wings at the new Buffalo Wild Wings and then head out to the ranger station for a beer and a camp fire in his back yard. If notice he's holding a poster of Smokey the Bear, we used that to start the fire. Irony at it's best!

We spent most of Saturday in the car. We went to Dayton via Columbus. We met up with King Tom, DCZ and Micah at the Cop O' Joe at the Lennox. We had a good time talking about the new Transformer movie and then that lead into Gobots, G.I. Joe, Thunder Cats, He-Man,Star Wars action figures, Which toys we had and the ones we could not have. The worst was the Star Wars rip offs of Battlestar Galactica. I liked the show, but I wanted Luke and Darth Vader not a Starbuck and a Cylon. During the middle of the geek fest The Wife left to go to Target... it was too much for her, but she knew I was having a good time.

We ended Columbus with a trip to see the newest Nephew Carson. I've seen him twice and this was the first time I was allowed to hold him. He's a cute kid and I will have to corrupt him somehow. My goal is to be that cool uncle that lives far away and lets Carson do things mom and dad refuse to let him do.

We end they day and trip with a visit to The Wife's sister's (Kim) house. On Sunday there is a cook out and more family comes and it was a good time. Then we had to head back to the Forest.

WHAT DID I GET MYSELF INTO

A side reason for Dayton was to pick up Kim's kids for a week long trip to Fried Chicken Drive. Two of the kids are 16 and the other is 10. From the picture you can see that we took the Mazda and that my have been a bad move. It was a tight trip that took 4 hours longer than it was suppose to be. We took a side trip to the New River Gorge Bridge and it was not as fun as I hoped. I'll be honest... I am not ready for pre-teens and teenagers. For the majority of the time it was fine, but once they started to annoy one another it was more than I could handle. I never had a time in my life where I looked forward to going to work till this past week. Then Kim came down and the decibel levels jumped off the charts. She is a loud person and gets louder when the kids are around, and if there is a hint of attitude from the kids it gets even louder.

The Wife and I enjoyed the visit, but we are glad to have the house to ourselves again. I actually just sat around one day and did nothing but listen to the silence.

MODERN DAY OF TV NEWS

While I looked forward to work there have been some changes I will not go into the problems, but schedules were changed and the original problem is still sitting there unchanged why three people had their lives rearranged. I've wanted to talk about this multiple times but I always delete the post before I finish.

When did people in news become so soft?

I've only been in news eight years, but it has drastically changed in that time frame. I remember times when I would have a knock down drag out yelling match with producers, reporters or anchors yet at the end of the day it was water under the bridge and you did it all over again the next day. One great example was Reigna, we would fight and argue over stories, but I loved working with her, she even tried to get me to work on The Daily Buzz once she became a producer over there. Now you can't do this and I blame the fact that news has used a business model.

What do I mean? Well instead of worrying about the produce we worry about the bottom line. In the old days before large corporations bought out most of the station in the country it was thought if your product is good then people will watch and you will make money. Now it's make money and worry about the product later. So people are being hired because they are cheap, not talented. Sure they may have enough skill, but they are not ready for that market yet. In the middle markets they are hiring kids right out of college, the problem with that is they are still too raw and don't understand the business, but they are cheap and want to make a name for themselves now instead of earning it. Then you go to the top 40 markets, they higher these kids because they will give them a decent pay raise, but truthfully it's not what a seasoned person is asking for.

Now they think they are on the move and feel like they are entitled to being treated as a big time news person. They have not had to battle there way to get the job and part of me wants to say good for you, but when you get that feeling of entitlement you loose something. The ability to take criticism, most of my complaints are about stories that are being pitched or lack of decision making. Instead of looking at it as the idea is bad it's now, "he doesn't like the idea I pitched so he is not giving me the respect I deserve. I will get him for attacking me." This line of thinking is heavily present in my current and former job. People need to toughen up and realize this.

This is why I think ratings for news is in a downward spiral and no one wants to acknowledge this and once we do, maybe we can get back to worrying about the produce not the money. If you create something people want to see then they will watch it.

GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE

HyCLoR bought a book about dressing like a gentleman and the first thing I thought of was "When do you wear and ascot?" I've always thought ascots were funny and why would you wear one. Well according to the book the only time you can were one is when you are wearing a velvet smoking jacket and embroidered slippers. Also noted in the book was the only time you can wear a velvet smoking jacket is when you entertain a black tie even. Then a side note of if you do wear a velvet smoking jacket your friends may consider you eccentric. Then I got to thinking who would I know that would wear a smoking jacket? If I did know someone I could call them out on it. Unless you are Bruce Campbell and you are in an Old Spice commercial PUT THE VELVET SMOKING JACKET AWAY!

SWEAT
It's still freaking hot out and only getting warmer. This past Thursday I was sent to Durham for a follow up to a shooting. I know Durham... shooting? NEVER! Well there were two and the police called a community walk through to see if they could get a lead. Well it followed a few officers and the next thing you know I am soaked. We wrap up and I get in a cool live truck. We run to our live location and then I have to get out and do it all over again. I do not think I have sweet so much for a story. I'm not looking forward to August.

Random Saturday

Today was a busy day, I did a little bit for work, got a hair cut, took a swim with The Wife and then hit some balls so to get this all out here is my Random thoughts on a Saturday:

Work

Late last night I was sent to a scene, but no one knew what was going on or were the exact location of the scene was; all I knew was Rogers Rd. I get out there find out something is going on and that's all the sheriffs will tell me. I had to get up early to judge a contest at work so I though "hell, I'll go out and roll of some day light video." It's not to far from Fried Chicken Dr and won't take that much longer for me to drive into work. I leave early inform them that I am going out so we don't need to send a crew out. I arrive to the middle of nowhere and I have multiple sheriffs and a helicopter flying over head. Well because of my little trip I found out there was a body out there and it may become the lead for the news. SCORE ME! I know a dead body is a sad thing, but this is a morbid business and people love to see this kind of stuff on TV.

And the Award Goes To...

Almost two months ago I got a call see if JDOG-17 would want to judge a contest from Ohio Photographers Anonymous (OPA). We agree and we did the judging this morning. I was really excited because usually you can steal some ideas and I was never able to win one of these contest while in Ohio. Truthfully I was not horribly impressed. There were three or four really good stories, but hell I don't know why I stopped sending in stuff for these awards, I could have placed a few times! It maybe a little hind sight 20/20 but man I bet I could have won a few more awards than I did.

Snip Snip Snip

It's been a while since I got my hair cut and what better time to get one before I go on vacation. I head over to the local semi cheap SportsClips. I got a decent cut, but afterwards I started to think about all the cheap hair cut places I have gone. It's truthfully a roll of the dice if you get a good hair cut, so why do I go? It cost under $20, that's why. Over the last few years I started to notice a few things as well. The people cut the hair usually have bad hair cuts. Why is that? they are "stylists" shouldn't they know if you are a larger woman you may not want ultra short purple hair, or you might find someone with extremely teased out hair. On the other hand if I go to an semi-upscale salon/spa I usually get a great hair cut. Then I see the price and then add in a tip and it can get expensive. I guess you get what you pay for. Go cheap you will look cheap, go up a step pay 15-20 you will get an ok hair cut most of the time. Pay $20-40 and you will get a good cut. I guess you get what you pay for,

Splish Splash

The Wife has been bugging me to go to the pool for about two weeks now. I'm not a big fan of pools, but with a lot of marriages, the wife has veto power and The Wife, well... vetoed me and we went to the pool. I was getting ready and for some reason I thought it would be funny to grab some black socks and put my sandals on. The Wife got the joke, but was not going to let me out with them on. Trust me I was never getting near the door with that outfit on. I still want to know how did any guy think that black socks and sandals was a good idea... just bad... bad. LOOK AT THE PICTURE!

Fore! Well Only When I Can Hit the Ball

The Wife had to work and since the father-in-law is coming in Wednesday to play a little golf and then I'm playing my dad in Ironton I though I might want to get a little practice in. I grab my clubs and my shades and head out in the sweltering heat and head to the driving range. I start out a little off and by a little of I mean I can't hit a broadside of a barn with a club. More and more people are hitting near me and I start tensing up and get worse. It gets to the point where I am going to start throwing clubs and call the father-in-law and tell him to leave the clubs. I dip my head and look at the ball sitting there mocking me "You can't hit me... Oooo feel the breeze!" I take my new sunglasses off to wipe my face and everything seems farther away. I bought a pair of polarized sunglasses, these glasses refract light and I think it was making the ball seem closer than it was and I was topping the ball. I put the glasses on my bag and I start hitting the ball farther and straighter.

So what have I learned today, work likes dead bodies, I should have entered more contests while in Ohio, I need to spend more on haircuts, black socks are not cool and I can't wear sunglasses while hitting a golf ball. I guess knowing is half the battle.

Lots to Talk About

For most people Monday is the start of their week, for me, Monday is my Wednesday, which usually means it's not very exciting or filled with interesting tidbits that I would wish to share, but today for some strange reason everything seemed like I should write about it, so for the second straight post here is a little thing I like to call Random Items.




My Nose is Running A Marathon
Some of you may realize that my car is not yellow but silver. For the past few weeks, I thought I some how slept walked and painted my car yellow. The picture is not the best in the world, but my car is covered in pine pollen. This stuff is everywhere, our cars, windows, sidewalks, puddles of water, you name it, it has this yellow crap all over it. This pollen is too big for me to inhale it and make my allergies go haywire like it did not so long ago, but every other type of tree and plant is throwing off pollen and I feel like I'm going to die. I can't breath, I cough till my eyes and lungs hurt. My throat is sore to the point where I can not talk at times. It is insane, Ive been told that this is the worst season in recorded history for pollen in North Carolina, so of course it's my first year here. I've been on a cocktail of allergy medicine ranging from Claritin, Benadryl, Sudafed with pseudoephedrine, Sudafed with that other crap that's not as good as pseudoephedrine and Mucinex. One drug does not seem to be enough. Claritin gets me to the point where I can sort of breath, Mucinex will clean me up, but you can only take it once every 12 hours. I think I'm becoming immune to Sudafen. Benadryl works, but it has the tendency to make people drowsy, in my case "may cause drowsiness" means will knock you on your ass till it's out of your system. Hopefully with the nation wide cool down the trees will stop trying to create little sapling and go back to normal.



More Computer Fun

The new computer is up and running so The Wife and I thought it would be a good idea and see if some one can transfer all the files off the old computer onto the new one. We decided to try the Geek Squad at Best Buy, because we bought the computerfrom Best Buy. I walk in with old tower in hand. I go to the counter and the geek gives me the run down and I already know they are going to charge $156 dollars plus tax for the transfer, I except the large payment and then I'm told "It's going to be 3 to 5 days before we can get to your computer." WHAT, three to five days? I can get a new transmission put in my car within two days, why so long? Well I guess they are "really busy" and have a lot of people ahead of me. That's not a good enough answer, I mean what kind of staff do they have? One monkey with a mallet and a screw driver?

Thing about it this way, if one guy works on a computer and gets it done in an hour he theoretically can complete 6 in a given work day. Think about it some computers will take less than an hour while some will take more, that's a good average for a day, I would think it would be more, but I have been wrong before. They are open from 10am till 9pm so that's 11 hours and if you have 6 people on average per day that's about 36 computers per day, that means you would have 108-180 computers ahead of me and I don't think they would have that many computers at one time in their stock room. So I tell the guy to shove off.

I remember for some strange reason a computer shop in downtown Wake Forest I go there they tell me it can be done within two hours and will only cost me $50 and hour. Hell yeah! Even if they have a problem and go three hours that's still less than those other bastards! I drop off the computers, tell them which files to transfer and I'm on my way. Much later in the day I get a call (they forgot to inform me that there were other people ahead of me and that the two hours was the working time not actual finishing time) and come to find out that the problem with the computer was not the motherboard or the CPU but the hard drive itself. Since is was older and we were stupid and left it on for days on end the barrings gave out and everything is lost.

So what's the damage: over 3000 photos, over 4000 songs, all of The Wife's financial information for this year and a honeymoon video I made for The Wife. Part of the photos are lost forever, including all the pictures we took on our digital camera dating back to the honeymoon I think that's the worst blow to me. We also lost about 1/3 of our music collection. When we moved we thought we would be smart in selling a large portion of our CD collection, but burn the songs we like. I know that's sort of illegal, but we were saving space and in doing so we now have to go out and buy a lot of those songs now. The lesson we learned is we need to back everything up to a CD, flash drive or possibly to a new external hard drive for safe keeping.

New Shift

I started part of my new schedule today, 3-midnight. I will be honest it was a lot more work than being day side. We did a live shot and package for the 7pm show and then did a live and package for the 11pm. You have to realize, that normally the day side crews get from 9-6ish to get a story done for the 6 or 7pm shows. We did not start our story till almost 3:30. Lets just say we were in a little bit of a rush to get things done. My reporter actually lost track of time and did not realize that it was 6:30 and he was still writing. I get in there and crank out a short package within 15 minutes, feed back to the station and finish the set up for the live shot. It was very hectic for that last half an hour. Things calmed down for the late show, but still it was work.

While reading the above paragraph you might think I am complaining. For some strange reason to be honest that is not a complain, it was busy, but I enjoyed it. For so long at The Network, we really did not have deadlines or if we did they were always soft and could be pushed back. I think it made me a little lazy and complacent, I missed the rush of scrambling to get things done. Do I want this every day? Hell no, but it's nice to get that feeling back and know I can get things done when things are tight.

Random Items

It's been over a week since my last post so some may be asking, what happened? Well a lot of thing truthfully, but a lot of it was not worthy of a full post or I just did not have the gumption to write a post on a topic. So now I'll just do a group post I like to call Random items.

Office Space
Part of the problem of me not being able to post is the fact that we changed our office room around. It started with my reimbursement check I received from JDOG-17. If you remember back during the trip I talked about shifting some money around. Part of it was a check from the movers for damages to out TV stand and headboard. We go out and buy a computer desk. We spent the better part of three hours that night attempting to put it together. I hate putting together furniture, I always get confused with the manuals and the pictures that are never as helpful as they could be. So from Wednesday till Friday the office was a mess, the desk is in a new corner and everything had to be moved around to make things fit. I also installed new shelves, we got an idea from a magazine to use old hard back books as the selves to give it a more artsy look. They look pretty good, I've mostly use the selves for my Pez collection and other small collectibles.

Oh so Close
I was told a couple of weeks ago that I would be changing schedules which means I'll be moving off of the 2AM Saturday/Sunday deal. To make it even better I'm moving Monday thru Friday, the only not so good news is I'll be night side (3-midnight). I'm still happy, because I get weekends off, the only catch for this schedule is the fact I have to train a girl who has never edited news how to edit news. Truthfully, editing news is not that hard, but the tricky part is being fast and efficient. In an eight hour shift she will have to cut and or attach video for 5 half hours of news. You have to know what you are doing to get it done. She's doing ok, but has not gotten the speed down yet. So I need to spend another week watching and helping her find little tricks to get things done. I really want off this early mornings thing, I need her to pan out

Why Won't Saturday End?
Saturdays are currently my worst day. I don't sleep Friday nights so I generally go almost 24 hours with out sleep. I end my training shift a little disappointed with the fact I will spend one more week editing. I call my chief and give him an update. Find out that I needed to take a live truck to the shop. Well, the engineer who was suppose to help me was off. So I get to turn around and the chief will meet me there to take the truck in. There is an electrical problem and the windows will not roll up... and it rained all night Friday. The seat is soaked so my ass is now wet. On the way home The Wife tells me that the computer is not working (more on that below) right. Come to find out that it is dead. We then spend the next 5 hours looking for a new computer. I finally get to bed at 6pm. That's 33 hours without sleep. I hit the pillow and the next thing I know it's 1am and I need to get to work. I'm the kind of person that needs sleep. i know some people can go long lengths of time without sleep, but if I do it I can not function well. I'm still feeling the effects of not sleeping.

When Ctrl, Alt, Delete Won't Work
I mentioned above that out computer decided to die. It was expected. The computer is at least 6-8 years old. I got it from my friend Shorty after my first computer blew out a mother board. It was starting to act slow and I knew something was up. I call The Wife on the way home from work and she mentions that the computer needs a boot disk. Well since I did not buy the computer and I did an upgrade from Windows Millinuim to XP I did not have the proper boot disk. We try a couple of other disk, like a systems recovery disk and even the XP installation disk. We finally give up and decided to go out and by a new one. I would have normally waited, but since The Wife freelances, we need to keep track of the miles she drives and how much she gets paid, and with the computer we can keep a better track of everything.
What I learned from out trip is you just can't go out and just buy a computer anymore. We had to go through financing, programs, and then they will properly install everything (for a small fee of course). The process took about 5 hours and two Best Buys. I'm happy with our Hewett Packard computer and hopefully this one will not die a horrible death like the others. I have also learned that I need to buy portable hard drive or at least put everything on a CD as a back up.

Hopefully I will get back into form and start posting with more regularity.

March Madness 2: The electric-boogaloo

Due to some previous problems, I am going to do one of my random post for my first post of the new trip so let's get too it.

Hello New Jersey!
I am continuing on my journey with the North Carolina Tar heels, and last week I was in the exciting cities of Winston and Salem, so where did I land this time? East Rutherford, New Jersey. I know, I know you all wish you where in my shoes, and as a bonus we landed in Newark, it was thrilling! Seriously, could I not get New York, San Antonio or somewhere that's not East Rutherford? I can see my Manhattan from the lobby, so why don't we kick the NIT out of Madison Square Garden and we go there. I know of four things that came out of New Jersey, Bon Jovi, all the Kevin Smith movies, Bruce Springsteen and King Tom. So out of respect for the King I will leave Jersey alone... for now!

I Hate Banks
Over the last seven years TV has not been the best paying job. I've not helped by making some really bad job choices and poor money management, but The Wife and I have made a huge turn and we have seen daylight in our dark debt world. So with that said, the problem i am having now is that we have money, but nothing is clearing fast enough. The Sheraton Meadowlands (more on these guys later) charges you up from for the room. Well due to the fact that things from last weekend are still working their way through I did not have enough on my credit card for the room. We kept making payments every time something popped up so that we would not have this problem, but the credit card people are holding all transactions for up to three days. So now The Wife and I are playing Money's version of Russian Roulette. I had to use money from our bank account that is technically not there so I can get a room. We maybe overdrawn, but I get paid at midnight so is anything going to over lap and throw everything off and we get charged with large fees, or are we going to somehow slip through and be fine. I hate banks for holding money and causing these kinds of problems.

Hotel Cost
I know I am in the shadows of New York, but $187 a night for a hotel that is not that good really necessary? Also that is with the traveling media discount! For me I normally stay away from hotels that cost more than a hundred, I know a lot of times that means I get places like Howard Johnson's and Days Inn, but sometimes they are not all that bad. So when I pay this much I would think I'd get a pretty nice room, not so much. The room is decent, but I have had better for much less. Also the Internet it not free. I am paying $20 for access, if it was not for work I'd not get the Internet, but I have to feed out video at night so I kind of need it. So somehow Red Roof Inn Internet is free, but at the Sheraton where it's more expensive, you have to pay for it.
Also somehow my reporter got bumped up to a nicer room. He has a living room and a refrigerator and I have well, a bed. How am I drawing the low card on this trip.

What the Hell is on HBO
I have no idea what is on HBO right now, but I just watched a guy get disemboweled. It's 10am and I am not accustomed to this kind of violence this early. It's some kind of show about England in involves Mary the Queen of Scots. I was just typing and then the next thing I see is two guys cut open with people throwing their innereds onto a fire while they sort of watched, then they throw, I guess, an important character on a table and cut him open. I saw them open him up and there was his spleen. How are they getting away with this on at 10am. I know this must be an encore from last night, but damn! I normally like my disembowelings after a good lunch, not before.

Ok enough complaining, about the last day. I hope things will get better and I can be chipper.

Random Hits

I can't pick one issue today so today I'll give you a potpourri of topics.

The First Wendy's
Dave Thomas is rolling over in his grave as the first Wendy's restaurant is going to close. The store is located in downtown Columbus and I have eaten there. I will admit the parking is awful and may not be the greatest location, but it's the first one. I also understand that ever since COSI moved business for the first story pretty much dried out. Why not make it a landmark and museum instead of just closing it down. This is what Bob Evan's has done, I know Bob Evan's is on Mr Evan's country farm, but come on, this place gave us the Frostie, a girl with red hair and a blue and white striped dress and the square hamburger which you can make into a triple.

A little Chippy
At the beginning of the month I chipped my tooth pretty good. I will admit this I am a finger nail bitter and while doing this nasty habit i noticed something was wrong and then I cut my lip. I had taken out a large chip on my front tooth. It was not as bad as the one to the left but still bad. The earliest appointment I could find was this past Thursday. I go in he looks at it and was going to file it down a little till they can get me in to fill it. He begins to scrap and my leg shoots straight into the air and I felt a sharp pain shoot from my tooth to my entire body. "I thought you said it wasn't sensitive?" Asked the dentist. "Umm it didn't hurt till you poked it." Somehow the pain was a good thing because he decided just to do the fill now. He gave me a shot, did some work and BAM! My tooth is done. You can hardly tell it was broken.

Weight Lose
As I have mentioned in the past The Wife and I are trying to loose weight. I'm tired of being "big" and I know I'm going to suffer this summer if I can not drop some of this weight. As of this past Wednesday I have lost 12 pounds since the third week in January. I may have put on a pound since then, but I might get out tomorrow for a little walk, if the rain holds off. 12 down 28 to go.

Reading
A new goal for me this year is that I want to read 10 books this year. I know what you might be saying. Only ten, why such a low number? I'll be honest yet again, I am a slow reader. It's not that I don't comprehend what I am reading, but it's more like I read slower and that allows me to comprehend it better. When I pick up my reading tempo I loose a little bit and have to go back and re-read. So far I have finished The Old Ball Game, which is about the two leaders of the the early 1900s New York Giants, if you like baseball give this one a try, a little different read, but still good. Now I am reading Eight Men Out, the story of the fixing of the1919 World Series. I normally don't try to read similar books back to back, but while reading The Old Ball Game it mentioned that Christy Mathewson was one of the people who helped figure out which players were part of the fix. Here are the other books on the list for this year Trojan Odyssey, Brian Piccolo: A Short Season, and Treasure of KHAN!!!!!!!!!. If anyone has a good read let me know. I'm thinking something Civil War related or a classic novel. I've tried Don Quixote three times and can get through it, I liked what I read, but wow that's a long book.

I'm not dead yet

As I sit here and type I notice "Hey it's been a while since I posted." I'm not giving up, I actually had a year ender for 2006, but I never finished it, plus we had a late Christmas trip to Ohio from the 3rd till the 8th. I was going to post about that. I've not really been busy, I've just not wanted to go onto the computer. So I'll do a Totally Random post of things that have been going on and hopefully I'll get the "gumption" to start posting again.

2006 in Review
Here is the fastest summary for 2006 that I can think of.

• The Wife got fired
• We had financial problems
• We got married
• Had a great honeymoon
• I hated my job
• Had money problems
• Found a new job
• Doing better with money

That's it in eight lines. I know, not that exciting. All the cool stuff that happened were technically filler.

We drive 1400 miles and all we got was this lousy post.
Well we decided to visit our families for a belated Christmas for what we thought would be a wonderful trip. We see family we laugh we hug you know the vision that was racing trough our heads. We that was not what we got. The best part of the trip was the Howard Johnson hotel in Beckley we stayed at. My family was fine, but it was too short.

With her family if felt cold and we left hurt and 160 dollars less. We have been fighting over money. Our former condo was owned by The Wife's parents, so for some stupid reason it was decided that all the bills would be routed through them. So they tell The Wife we owe them 215 dollars. Never mix money and family, it is never good. I will always remember two things about them 1. when The Wife was fired they would not let her pay less on rent. I know rent is rent, but this is your daughter and she needed your help and you forced us to borrow money to pay you. 2. A cold Christmas that we owed you money.

Also I got to meet my new nephew Carson, but was only allowed to see him from a distance and I could only look at him if I used Purrell on my eyes, cause I might give him some kind of germs. I kid about the Purrell, but not about getting near him. The Wife, who deals with kids all the time almost didn't get to hold him. She is very self absorbed person and I've had problems with the way she has treated The Wife. I could not leave Columbus fast enough.

Then we went to see The Wife's biological family and well, half was fine as usual the other half was well their usual Jerry Springer-esque.

I never want to drive that much for that much pain again.

O-H-i-OH NO!
We drive back as fast as we can to watch the National championship game between Ohio State and Florida. Why did we do that? It was an ugly awful game that I could have done without. Not only did Ohio State get slaughtered, they kept showing video of BG play OSU and it wasn't pretty. Then they kept mentioning Urban Liar coached at BG, well you know what, I don't care! He lied to our program, left, then insulted us by saying we were second rate. You can chock on your large trophy Urban. Oh if you ever read this remember you never won us a conference title and never took us to a bowl game, you fell short EVERY TIME! You failed here!

A New Year a new J DOG
One the drive from hell the wife was reading an Oprah magazine and saw an article about how Oprah lost weight and her trainer has a new book out. So she is on a weight loss kick, which makes me now on a weight loss kick. I'm actually attempting to do this. The last two days I have walked almost two hours on the tread mill and I am going to try to go to the driving range tomorrow. I know the driving range isn't the greatest exercise, but it's better than nothing. Every week I need to do at least 30 minutes 3 days a week. So I'm going to try to post the days I work out, if it's the tread mill I'll post the time and the supposed calories I have worked off. I want you guys to get on me if I'm not posting about this. I want to lose at least 30 pounds this year. I want more than that, but I'll take 30.

Trying something new.
I've been wanting to try a new idea, but I've been too lazy to do it. I call this new addition "An Open Letter." Basically write a letter to someone or thing like radio in the triangle area and tell them what I thing of them. Hopefully this will be more successful than the Vesuvius Times.

Totally Random

Today at work was just a mish mash of different assignments: shooting an enviromental justice presser, a debate intro segment, and Baja Fresh (a Mexican chain that is owned by Wendy's). Non of these assignments had anything to do with one or another so I'd thought I'd do a blog reflecting my work day. A few random tidbits and info that could not really fill one blog.

Mileage: It will be three years in December since I bought my Mazda and I'm just over 45,000 miles. My work Explorer is just over a year old and has 38,000 miles on it. I'm wondering which car will reach 50,000 first. I'm betting on the Explorer.

Columbus Marathon: This weekend is the Columbus Half Marathon and I think every single person I know will be running in it. If you think I'm kidding Wilson will be driving up from Ironton to "run" in this race. So with so many people I know running in this race you would think I'd be at the finish line watching every one struggle to finish. NAY I'm going to Bowling Green for homecoming.

Ohio Renisanse Festival: Due to financial un-peace I will not be attending this years Ren Fest. We just don't have the money to go to homecoming and drive to the Ren Fest. I did shoot a story, but this will be the first time in five years neither I nor Wilson/Radcliff/Joe will not be attending. I was really looking forward to a turkey leg and seeing some wenches, but alas I can not go. I think this is some kind of sign for an end of an era. I hope not, but if it did I got a lot of great stories and wasted many house in a trailer out in a Holler.

Jackass 2: I went and watched this "movie" with Jeff and Dave from work. All I have to say it that I almost threw up during the "movie." It's everything you expected to see in the TV show, but in a film. I was shocked though that they did sensor some scenes by either blurs or the black bar. I'm happy they used the black bar sometimes, but it was odd so see them. It must have been to keep the film rated R not NC-17.

Best of times worst of times: I'm in a Strat-o-matic baseball league (it's a game that allows you to field a team comprised of any player from any era). I currently have two teams, the Cleveland Indians and the Montreal Expos, and both teams have been the total opposite of each other. Montreal is 81-55 and 8 games up on the second place team, while Cleveland is 59-77 and 9 games back of the team with the worst record to be leading in a division. I acquired Montreal and have not done a lot to them, just added a couple of players to boost some of the week spots, while Cleveland is now on it's third make over, I went for power hitting and then was convinced to move to a larger park to help my pitchers. Well, that hurt the power guys so I had to trade a couple of them off and now I'm back where I started. With Le Expos I'm gearing up for the play-offs and trying to get guys healthy, Cleveland is now looking at back-up guys that may not make the team next year and at the same time tank some games to get a better draft position. Is it a bad idea to drink champagne and Mylanta?