Tom Brady for President

Some (what else) random notes:

- Rumors are starting to swirl about new presidential candidates for the 2008 election. I started wondering, how much effort should I put into this, this time around? I've never pretended that politics even remotely interests me, because they're mostly just a bunch of lying, self-interested jerks who pose with babies when the time is right. On the other hand, I don't wish to be one of those completely uninformed, doesn't vote kind of people either. I didn't vote in 2000, and 2004 I took more interest, but it was a piece of cake because it was going to be the name on the ballot that didn't look like "George W. Bush" Oddly enough, I thoroughly enjoy watching the votes roll in on election day and see all the states turn blue and red. It's the competitive nature in me, I just like the competition. And it drove me nuts when you stay up until 1 or 2am and the entire election hangs in the balance of two random states like Ohio and Montana, and then they say it's too close, there has to be a recount, and we'll know within a week. Anyways, it will probably end up like last time, I'll start reading a few articles by September 2008, watch a few debates, and just vote against the god-loving republican who is against gay marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, and basically any other thing that will help advance our society in a social or scientific manner.

- I went running tonight for the first time in at least six months. Little did I know, but it turned out to probably be the coldest night of the year so far. The frigidity was alternately excruciating, and helpful, since it distracted from the fact that I was completely out of shape.

- I don't want to toot my own horn, but through two rounds and eight games of the NFL playoffs, I have picked every winner correctly, except for the Dallas-Tony Romo fiasco that I am just going to take a mulligan on. Don't want to spoil it for you, but it's going to be a New England/New Orleans Super Bowl!

- Fair warning, the rest of this post is about the NFL, so Alex, you can pretty much just check out now if you feel like it.

- Regarding the Pats/Chargers game this past Sunday: WOW. Great game. I'm not going to lie, the Chargers are a far better team than the Pats, but they made just enough mistakes to let the Patriots win the game. Note, I did not say just enough to lose the game, just enough for the Pats to win it. I love Tom Brady. I also love exciting playoff games; I've said this before, but by the time the Pats won their third super bowl in four years, over the Eagles in Feb '05, they had reached the point that they were so dominant that it had become boring. Really. It's an awful thing to say, I know, but it's true. The Rams upset super bowl was perfect. Sunday's game against the Chargers was perfect. I might lose two years off my life if the Colts game is anything like those two, but that's the way I like it.

- Speaking of NFL playoffs, concerning betting, what's the deal with just automatically making the home team the favorite? To be fair, only two of eight road teams have won outright so far (New England and Indy last week), but six of eight have covered the spread so far. If you don't think that taking New Orleans over Chicago is the juciest underdog pick all season, you clearly shouldn't be reading this section of my post. Chicago has a better record and home field advantage, but someone out there must be smart enough to know that they are going to lose.

- I'm really not a superstitious person, but if you think Kristin isn't wearing my Patriots hooded sweatshirt for the third week in a row, I'm not wearing my #80 Troy Brown over my red long sleeved shirt for the third week in a row, or I'm not making jalapeno poppers for the second week in a row to go with, hopefully, pizza for the third week in a row, well, you just don't know me very well. And you certainly don't know anything about tortellini.

- No word yet on if my girlfriend, Carrie Underwood, has broken up with Tony Romo after the Dallas/Seattle debacle. Here's hoping.

I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener

So, I'm sitting here at work at 7:30pm as my samples run and thought I'd drop a few random thoughts:

Belated NFL Playoff Picks:
Ok, it's going to seem like I'm cheating a little bit, but I'm throwing in a first round mistake because that's how I had it:

AFC
Wild Card Round:
(4) New England over (5) NY Jets
(3) Indianapolis Colts over (6) Kansas City

Divisional Round:
(4) New England over (1) San Diego (whoever wins this game wins the Super Bowl)
(3) Indianapolis over (2) Baltimore

AFC Championship:
(4) New England over (3) Indianapolis

NFC
Wild Card Round:
(5) Dallas over (4) Seattle
(3) Philadelphia over (6) NY Giants

Divisional Round:
(1) Chicago over (5) Dallas
(2) New Orleans over (3) Philly

NFC Championship:
(2) New Orleans over (1) Chicago

SUPER BOWL XLI:
(4) New England over (2) New Orleans

--- I am, unfortunately, only 3-2 in my last five Scrabble games against Kristin. Something absurd came up last time: Kristin played the word "weiner" ... I thought, is it "weiner" or "wiener"? It suddenly became one of those words that you just can't tell for a few minutes, so I looked it up in the online scrabble dictionary. This is what you will find:

WEINER
weiner weiners \ n pl. -S wiener

WIENER
wiener wieners \ n pl. -S a frankfurter

How absurd is that?

Buh, Buh, Buh... Another Year Bites the Dust

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm back from my hiatus (11 days off from work will do that to the best of bloggers). I spent the christmas half of my break at home in MA, and the New Year's half back in NY. I think I'll just throw some things out there as I think of them, ideally in chronological order.

- Sat. Dec 23rd: As an early christmas present, I wanted to take my uncle, Chris, to a Bruins game. He's a solid Red Sox/Bruins/NY Giants fan, but he and my aunt live in VT. (Yeah, I don't know how that last team fits in, but it must have something to do with Rutland not being very far from NY) As I found out later, he hadn't been to a Bruins game since the late '80's, Boston Garden style, so he was initially a bit shocked and then very pleased to be going. So I went to the game, against the Montreal Canadiens, with him and my dad. As a bonus, it was a fantastic game. About one million times better than the one I went to last year, a dreary, lifeless 4-1 loss to the Maple Leafs where there was really very little to enjoy besides the company of Ms. Courtney DeFrancesco. But I digress. The B's jumped out to an early 2-0 lead despite being completely outplayed for the entire first period, but Montreal eventually tied it by half way through the game. Then in the third period, Milan Jurcina got a power slap shot goal and Stanislav Chistov scored a very pretty deke the defender, nail the top right corner from the left side goal. After that, Montreal completely fell apart, and the Bruins went on to win 5-2. It was close, exciting, and the place was nearly packed and really into it (suprised on both accounts). I think Chris had a really good time, so I was overall very pleased about how it all went.

- Sun. Dec. 24th: Got out of going to church for the second year in a row. Phew. Also completed my xmas shopping on this day (though, in my defense, I was nearly done FIVE days before xmas, which for me is quite a feat).

- Mon. Dec. 25th: Santa visits.

- Tues. Dec. 26th: Saw my high school friend Ali for the first time in about a year, we went to Fire & Ice. If you don't have one of these near you, you're missing out. It's one of those dump lots of things in your bowl, pick a sauce, watch them cook it on the big circular grill. I generally rotate between BBQ chicken, chicken alfredo, and fish in the fruit sauce (might sound weird, but it's good). This time I made two trips for the bookends above.

- Fri. Dec. 29th: Spent all day in NYC for really the first time ever.

Sat. Dec. 30th: Slept almost 12 hours. Got up for three. Slept three and a half more. Classic vacation day.

Sun. Dec. 31th: New years eve! Kristin and I spent the evening with Adam & Lindsay and Mike & Jen and played games for the most part. Started with a game kind of like ... I can't remember the name of either game, so never mind. All I know is that I ruined the second game because I couldn't get anyone to say "Aretha Franklin" :) Then we moved onto the bowl game, the Vermont incarnation that we have now passed on to other friends. After Adam and Lindsay gave us the boot because Adam had to work in the morning, the remaining four of us stayed up until about 6:30 am playing Balderdash. I must comment on a horrid moment that occurred during the night, however. I'm not really into the new years TV stuff, but we flipped it at about 11:50 to catch the ball drop. Let me just say - I have no idea what Dick Clark was thinking. The man had a stroke and only slurs out his words now. Perhaps the idea is that he keeps on keepin' on or that it was supposed to be an uplifting story of perseverance or something, but we pretty much all agreed that it was actually just sad and depressing. Hang it up, Mr. Clark. You had a good run. But when it gets to the point that your countdown is about 4 seconds behind the real one, so you skip about 5 numbers and are still off by a second or two by the time midnight rolls around... you're done. I can't stress this enough. Embarrassing.

Mon. Jan. 1st: Kristin allegedly defeats me in Scrabble. I have no comment to the press.

Tues. Jan. 2nd: I win Tuesday Night Poker for the third week in a row. Eric says hey, I've been getting the cards, but you don't just win three weeks in a row, this time in a nine person game, by accident. He also made a comment earlier that night that he wished he could take me out. Oh yeah. I'm getting under his poker skin. He's jealous.

Football playoff picks coming soon!