Warm Weather

Saw where it snowed in Seattle last night. Here in Connecticut we are not even close to a snow storm. I've been delivering my mail route in a short sleeve shirt since Thanksgiving. This past Sunday I even had to do the lawn one more time. The other shoe will drop, but till then we will enjoy the heck out the warm weather...................

Captain Vanilla and the Chase

So the Na$car season is over. I didn't watch very much this year. (TV ratings back me up, they were down for almost every race). I think that Na$car took the wind out of the sails of what was once a great series. It seems that is you look cross eyed at another driver you are going to the big yellow and black (formally red) trailer for a severe tongue lashing and possibly the loss of precious points. So it seems that it really has become a bunch of cars going around in a circle.

Captain Vanilla (Jimmie Johnson) is the new champion. Na$car could not want for a better representative of their bland brand of racing. Toe the line, be kind to other animals, and you too could be a multimillionaire "race" car driver.

The Chase for the Cup sucks. Why? Let's look at my favorite driver Tony Stewart. He fell short by 16 points of making the Chase and finished 11th in the standings. But here are the top drivers under the old point system (Thanks Jayski.com)

Unofficial 2006 "Classic" Points Standings...
1) #48-Jimmie Johnson 5158
2) #17-Matt Kenseth, 5154, -4
3) #29-Kevin Harvick, 4838, -320
4) #20-Tony Stewart, 4727, -431
5) #11-Denny Hamlin, 4725, -433
6) #8-Dale Earnhardt Jr., 4641, -517
7) #24-Jeff Gordon, 4567, -591
8) #31-Jeff Burton, 4535, -623
9) #9-Kasey Kahne, 4497, -661
10) #6-Mark Martin, 4484, -674
11) #99-Carl Edwards, 4428, -730
12) #5-Kyle Busch, 4416, -742
13) #16-Greg Biffle, 4075, -1083


Tony would have wound up 4th and there is no reason to think he wouldn't have tried a little harder if he had a shot at the championship. It must be kind of depressing in a way.

On a positive note I want to give a big thumbs up to Bootie Barker, crew chief of the 00 Busch car. He calls things like he sees them, and he called out Na$car by stating that cutting testing dates actually costs the teams more money. RCR for example built this full scale simulator to reproduce track conditions at a cost of unknown millions. Bootie says every time Na$car tries to say them money they wind up costing the teams ten times as much.

Random Thoughts on a rainey night........

It seems that all I've been doing lately is working. Started at 6:30 am and worked till 5:00 pm the last two days.....UGH....Well it's part of the job.........

Jericho keeps getting better and better...I grew up with the bomb and often thought about what life would be like.....Jericho shows what happens to a small Kansas town after multiple nuclear bombs are set off by terrorists, or so they think so far....Anyway, on going story, ensemble cast, I like it....

Why oh Why (OK I know why, it's the end of the calendar year) do they have open season to pick our health benifits at the busiest time of the year for us? I can hardly keep my eyes open and now I have to go through health plan brochures...and now we are finally getting dental and vision plans...more brochures!

BTW your friendly mailman will be working without a contract on Nov. 20. Don't worry, we can't strike....ya think the management big wigs take that into consideration when they come to the bargining table? Could be.....

Still very warm here for the middle of November. Short sleeves all week. Might go into the 50's tomorrow. Rain, rain and more rain tonight...with a little thunder and lightning.........

And here is a picture of me and the bad kitty, Dee Dee..........(Just testing out the new blogger 2.0)

Devils 4 Panthers 2

Kind of on a whim the sainted wife and I decided to head out to the Meadowlands to see the New Jersey Devils faceoff against the Florida Panthers. First off we hit a lot of traffic for a Saturday night and didn't get to the parking lot until almost 7:00 for a 7:30 game. Then I screwed up in the parking lot by missing the entrance to the handicapped lot and we wound up nearer to Giants Satdium than to the arena. Fortunately we found a shuttle bus to take us up to the arena so we were OK. It turned out to be an entertaining game with the Devils winning 4-2. A couple of fights and one of the Devils had a Panther's stick wind up between his helmet strap and his cheek! Never saw that before. We Tivo'd the game and watched it when we came home, which is kind of cool. Some points:

1) $52.00 a seat. Center ice? Yes. Near the ice? Nope. We were in the upper bowl closer to the back wall than the gate. And they wonder why attendance down?

2)Along those same lines....$7.00 for a Coors Light. $4.00 for a bottle of water. $5.25 for a small hot fudge sundae. OUCH!

3) On the other hand we only paid $2.05 for a gallon of gas on RT 46 coming home from the game

4) But then it was $6.00 to go over the George Washington Bridge......

I used to go to 15 to 20 games a season plus the playoffs.....Not at these prices!

Anyway I'm still a fan so...LET'S GO DEVILS.....

Buffalo

I had this past weekend off so the sainted wife and I loaded up the new Toyota and headed north and west to the fair city of Buffalo, NY. My brother and his family had just moved out to a suburb of Buffalo so we wanted to see his new house. Seven and a half hours, most of it on the New York State Thruway, after leaving home we arrived. OK so there wasn't 50 feet of snow on the ground. It was a little bit colder than home. We stayed at my bro's house and he has got himself a really great home. Nice and big with a fair sized bit of land, and for a fair price too. The highlight of our trip was a journey to the Anchor Bar, the home of the Buffalo Wing. To be sure we polished off a large tray of wings and a local sandwich called beef on wec. A "wec" is a kind of roll with salt and caraway seeds. Anyway it was all good and we drove home yesterday. Some thoughts about Buffalo:

1) They like food. Wings, natch. But hot dogs from Ted's, Webber's mustard, Tim Horton's Donuts are all part of the basic Buffalo food pyramid.

2) Thus, I felt like a real skinny person

3) We did see some snow on the ground from the big storm last month, but the temp wasn't bad. My bro lives outside the so called snow belt, ie: he'll only get 4 feet when in town gets 8....

4) They love their Sabers and Bills up there...

5) The NY State Thruway is one of the smoothest highways I've been on in the Northeast..

6) But $28.00 in tolls round trip? Add the gas and food and it may be cheaper to fly....