Linkstew

Little does anyone suspect that the curse is actually that Boston is only going to win it all once every 86 years.

I watched the Superbowl today for the first time since 1999. Here are the few thoughts I had about it:

1. Now I remember how much I hate football.
2. The first down line being dynamically drawn onto the field with a computer is a pretty neat innovation of some time in the last couple of years that I've never seen before.
3. I kept having to remind myself not to TiVo through the commercials.
4. It was a little weird to be watching things about 15 to 20 minutes in the past. I would hear some cheers from elsewhere in my apartment and know that the Raiders did something, and had to idly wonder what it was for awhile until I caught up with them.
5. Hm, Daredevil and Alias commercials? Damn Jennifer Garner is hot. I really should investigate adjusting my TiVo season passes to see if there's any way I can record Alias again.

That's all.

Yesterday when I stopped in Noah's, I saw this article about five A's players living in a shared house on the front page of the Chronicle. I liked the idea of five baseball players making plenty of money and yet still living together and playing video games enough that I bothered to dig up the article online so I could read it. It made me stop and say, "Hey, look, maybe they're just some ordinary guys, just like me."

Actually, that was a rather timely article, given the sparse attendance at the Coliseum in the first two games of the division series. It's the sort of human interest piece that might just succeed in boosting attendance at tomorrow's game 5.

And now that I have something to identify with, I want them to win even more tomorrow. Pity they kinda got rocked by the Twins today...

And now that I think about it more, if the A's, the Angels, and the Giants all win their division series, California's practically begging for an earthquake.

When I went snowboarding a couple of weeks back (When the Winter Olympics were still happening), I made the joke that some sketch comedy show really needed to do a Crosscountry Snowboarding sketch.

There'd be the snowboarders frantically thrusting their hips to move themselves forward a foot or two at a time. There'd be the pained expressions on their faces. There'd be the frantic grunting and random cursing. And most importantly, there'd be the dramatic commentary.

My friends liked this joke so much that several of them have since repeated it. And for that matter, I'm sure someone else has already made the joke. But I'm pretty used to being originally unoriginal.

Today, Baseball owners voted to get rid of two teams, though nothing was said about which teams would go beyond speculation that Montreal, Florida, and Minnesota were likely candidates to get axed.

In response to this announcement, AP Sports Writer Jim Litke wrote this piece suggesting what should be done to make major league baseball properly profitable and exciting. I'd have a difficult time recognizing this proposal as baseball, but I think in the long run, it'd work out. Ah well, it's not like it'll ever happen, and fans probably wouldn't go for it. Anyway.

Yeah, this makes three sports posts in a row, I know. When I'm procrastinating, I read sports news. So sue me.

Game 7s rule. However, I'm a little torn. On one hand, I sweepingly prefer the AL. But on the other hand, I'm a huge fan of underdogs.

It's pretty much a win-win situation for me and my nonpartisan ass.

Bottom of the 5th, 0-0. So far so good ;-)

"It's not like Denver had any reason to be proud when the Avalanche won the Stanley cup the year after we bought them from Canada."
-- a co-worker
"Hm, what did sports teams do before NAFTA? The tariffs on some of those multi-million dollar contracts must have been killer."
-- me

Apparently there's something called "The Superbowl" going on today. I'd look it up online to see if it's worth watching, but if I decided I wanted to watch it, then I'd have to make my way in front of the TV. Nah, it's probably not worth it. Besides, Ad Critic will probably capture all the good "plays" for my viewing pleasure.

I have spent four days out of the last week at ski resorts. Three days at the beginning of the week, followed by three days in Berkeley and then a day at another resort. First Kirkwood and then Sugarbowl. Now, I had never snowboarded before a week ago, and I had a lot of fun doing it for three days, so when I was asked if I wanted to go to Sugarbowl today I figured it'd be fun again, so I got up at 5:30 in the morning and off we went. After a breakfast at Denny's, where they somehow mistake "French Slam" for "Denver Slam", we hit a line of cars. I later discovered that this line of cars was more than three miles long, and was between us and Sugarbowl.

Obviously, we just didn't have our heads screwed on straight, because we were going to the closest ski resort to the Bay Area, on a Saturday, right before several schools start back up, on a three day weekend. Parking all over the place was full, and we had to pay $12 to park in their fancy garage. Then we had to wait in a lot of large lines.

Eventually we rented some gear and made our way into the huge line for the lift. However, since there were so m any people there, they were cramming four people onto every chair. Now, last week, I was having trouble with two people on a lift, because when I got off on the snowboard, I didn't have a whole lot of control over where I went. Being between two other snowboarders today only made things much worse, because somehow two of us ended up falling. I kind of fell down, and I planted the knee of my free leg. However, because snowboards kind of like to slide on snow, my front leg started to slide away, which I think was the start of my hip pain for the day.

So we struggled off to the side, and I plopped down to put strap in my other foot. However, while I thought I was dropping on to a fairly solid snow bank, I fell into a very soft bank. After digging myself out, I strapped myself in and we started down the hill.

I noticed three things fairly soon after this: 1. The snowboard I had was much more flexible than the one I'd had the week before, so while I was trying to slide down the hill on my heel edge, the board kept bending with all the bumps in the snow, which frequently helped me fall. 2. It was snowing, meaning there were little drifts of snow all over the place for my toe edge to catch in and make me fall. Also, it wasn't a very steep hill, so the angle between my board and the snow wasn't very big, making it easy for me to catch my edge. And 3. My feet were too far apart.

Between 1 and 2, which accounted for my falling, and 3, I found myself in a lot of pain half way down the run. My toe edge caught, causing me to fall to my knees. It wasn't a very hard fall, because I hadn't built up much speed, but I hit hard enough to dig myself into the snow a little. When I tried to get up, I immediately noticed a pretty sharp pain in the hip which I'd hurt at the top of the hill. Because my feet were too far apart, my knees were pushed together, putting a strange strain on my hip. I sat there for probably five minutes totally unable to move as I attempted to unfasted the buckles on the boots. Eventually I got undone, turned around, and refastened and made my way down the rest of the hill very slowly. No matter how slow I went, though, I couldn't avoid falls because of 1 and 2, and each fall caused me more pain. Once at the bottom, I went and sat down for awhile, analyzing what had gone wrong.

After resting awhile, I tried to get back onto the board, but I find that twisting my foot to put it in the binding caused a lot of pain. You see, at Kirkwood, their rentals used a "click in" binding, which didn't require any twisting of my leg, only a normal bending of my knee. The problem with click-in's was that snow and ice built up on the bottom of the boot, making it hard to get into. At Sugarbowl, they had "step in" bindings, which were much easier to get into until I hurt my hip. To use a step in binding, it seemed like you had to bend you knee in so that the side of your feet was angled against the binding. This motion hurt like hell.

So step-in bindings are not the thing for me. I still like the looks of the strap bindings, though I haven't used them yet. Most of the snowboard instructors at Kirkwood seemed to use strap bindings, and so does almost everyone I know who owns snowboard equipment. The straps seem like they wouldn't have much of a snow/ice problem, and they aren't limited to any particular boot, and they don't require strange leg twists to get into.

So, unable to get back onto my snowboard, I called it a day after what was effectively a half of a small run. I think that, before I go to Sugarbowl again, I'd want it to be a not busy day and to have my own strap-in snowboard.

The up shot of the day? We only paid for half day lift tickets, and most everyone else seemed to have a fair amount of fun, despite a couple of hard falls and a broken binding on a brand new snowboard. Better than a broken, especially considering the broken binding can be replaced. Oh, and I read some of Science of Discworld and had a nice nap on the way home.

Having just spent three days straight Snowboarding, I'm finding out that there is truth to the phrase "I hurt in places I didn't know I had." Wowza! You see, I've never snowboarded before, let alone done anything recreational on anything resembling snow (unless you count Ice Skating, which I don't). It was a fun, though expensive, trip. I had to buy a few pieces of gear to save my ass (from freezing in wet pants, notably). The first day was old snow, while the second day it was snowing, and the third day was sunny again, though it started snowing near the end. Of the three days, I actually enjoyed the second day most. The first day I was too new to the snow to have much fun, because getting up was so tiring. The third day I was too tired to handle the faster snow well. The second day, though, the fresh snow kept me at a reasonable speed while I wasn't too sore to have fun.

The trip home was really long and tedious, though. We started out on a snowy road with chains on, and just as soon as we took the chains off, we found ourselves in really thick fog and rain. Blah.

It was a fun trip, though, and I look forward to going snowboarding again, if for no other reason than to use the equipment that I had to buy. I had fun, though, and if I do it enough, I'm sure it won't be so painful.

Last night we attempted to go Ice Skating at the outdoor rink at the embarcadaro in San Francisco. Note the "attempted", because that's what happened. We went, tried, and failed. You see, unlike certain movie theaters I could name, which sell too many tickets, leaving us sitting in front of their theater for two hours for another showing, the rink at the embarcadaro made sure to sell only part of the tickets they had avaiable, to make sure that they wouldn't run out of ice skates. Reasonably smart of them, really. Only, since we hadn't bought our tickets at 10 am, we were amongst the people hoping that we'd be able to get in later. That wasn't to be, though, because they ran out of skates for guys with larger feet, of which there were several in our party. So we went to Chevy's and had some dinner and then went home.

Chevy's was kind of weird, though, because they had a "Fiesta Menu", which were the only things that parties larger than 8 were allowed to order. Oh yeah, they charged us an 18% tip, too.

Well, it slipped my mind. Not that I would have watched it anyway, if I'd been thinking about it. I was working all afternoon. I had no clue who was playing until something like halfway through the game, when I overheard someone talking in the hall.

Now, while it's true that the game is over and I already know who won... I would have rooted for the Rams, because that's my birth sign. I work on such simple principals... At any rate, I've wasted enough time on that thing which wasted everybody elses time today. On to more pressing issues.