Scattered thoughts

I'll probably put some thoughts on Soriano in the Cubs blog, when it becomes official. Quick thought, though: I'm not unhappy.

This country is too nuts about football. It's bad enough with the commercials that imply that you should be watching every single Monday Night Football game. Why? Because it's on a different day? As multiple games including Raiders/Seahawks have proved just this season, MNF isn't always a great game. And even beyond that, why should I budget an entire night around watching a team I don't even root for? I don't really get that. In the playoffs is one thing, but during the regular season?

But I guess a good game is a good game. That's not what put me over the edge. It's stuff like this. Is somebody actually getting paid to do that? Worse still, are there actually people who are interested in this? "Well, I wasn't going to bet on the game, but now that I see that Ohio State won the NCAA '07 simulation, I figure it's a lock!" It just seems massively idiotic to me. Yet there was a link to this on the front page of ESPN.com the day of the OSU/Michigan game, in addition to a timer counting down the seconds until kickoff. Can we fucking get a grip here, please? Although as Tyler pointed out, it may not be people getting so insane about football as much as it is just ESPN's coverage of football getting progressively more annoying.

Alma and I went for sushi on Friday night, and I continued my theme of trying something I consider kind of crazy off the menu. This time it was octopus. It didn't really taste like much, and I think it had been at least partially cooked, but the outer edges were pretty chewy, which was kind of weird. It certainly wasn't as scary as you'd assume, though. I may try squid next time. I should stop talking about sushi before Rudnik makes fun of me again.

The next day we went to the aquarium. I hadn't been in three years-plus, so that was fun, although we got there kind of late and had to hustle through so that we could see both a dolphin show and the Wild Reef (slogan: Still Only Vaguely Worth the Extra Ten Bucks). That was disappointing because if there's one place I enjoy lingering, it's the aquarium - watching fish swim around can be incredibly relaxing, and there are plenty of cool-looking fish to check out. It almost tempts me to get a membership - you only have to go 4-5 times before it pays for itself, although since in a normal year I probably wouldn't be inclined to go more than twice, it really doesn't pay for itself at all. Although I feel like Alma bought me a year-long pass to the Botanic Gardens a couple years ago and then we went zero times that year, which I feel really bad about now that I remember (although I feel like she never actually gave me the sticker I needed for the car, for whatever reason, so it wasn't entirely my fault). I would at least go to the Shedd more times than zero. Hint, hint, maybe.

Another thing that happened in the last week-ish was we went down to Urbana for TRASH Regionals to compete against possibly the most top-heavy regionals field ever - it featured two former winners of TRASHionals, plus a team led by Greg and Stan, plus the Michigan B team (always at least decent). We finished fifth, behind those four and ahead of just three others, but I think that gives us a decent chance at getting a bid to TRASHionals considering the strength of the field and the fact that we didn't lose to anyone below us (and beat the Greg/Stan team in round robin play). I suppose we'll see, though. Personally, I had my best TRASH tournament (though not Trash tournament) since 2003 Regionals, putting up 48.5 PPG to finish third overall. So that wasn't bad. Alma and I have been planning to retire after this year, so a decent showing at Regionals was a good start to that (and even though I would have liked to finish higher, I generally don't think we could have played too much better, so I don't feel bad about it). I may make a longer version of this at some point, though I've lost a lot of the desire for that. Maybe once we're given the all-clear on the questions (which should be shortly as I believe the last regionals were today), I'll post the scores and my answers, Tyler-style.