Month: June 2008

Celtics Woohoo!

I have to admit that I didn’t watch any of the playoff games all the way through — they were on too late. OK, now that you ask in that manner — I didn’t watch much more than bits and pieces and probably never finished a whole quarter all the way through. But go Celtics. NBA Champs. You rock!

Maybe it is more of a re boarding of the bandwagon. As I said the other day, I grew up in New England, so my natural sport team allegiances were to those from Boston. Growing up my mom would not spring for the more expensive Converse All-Stars (after all, I was just going to tear them up), so I always wore Bob Cousy sneakers from the local discount store (they did have a cool Celtic green sole though.) With the first paycheck from my first job I went out and spent $20 on a pair of high top black canvas Converse All-Star sneakers and tossed the nine dollar Cousy’s aside. But it was too late, some of the green of the soles from those discount sneakers through osmosis had entered into my bloodstream.

I bought one of those shiny Starter jackets, back when if you wore something like that gang members might rob you and take the coat, but leave your wallet (somewhere in the early eighties.) Celtic life was good then; Parish, Bird, Mchale, DJ and Danny Ainge. While living in New Orleans in 1985 we even went to a Celtics – Atlanta Hawk game at the then new Lakefront Arena to see those guys play. Larry Bird scored a team record 60 points (just nine days after Kevin Mchale scored 56 to take the record from Larry) that still stands 23 years later. The Glory Days.

When that core group hung up their short shorts and knees socks, the Celtics and my fanhood faded. I still kept my eye on the scores and standings, but couldn’t name a player. Last year they totally stunk up the league with a record of 24-58. Then a couple of guys from the old fab five, in the off-season, had a hand in forming this years championship team. Minnesota traded 2004 league MVP Kevin Garnett to Boston and things started to come together. Minnesota’s General Manager? Kevin Mchale. Boston’s GM? Danny Ainge. Thanks guys.

Besides the Blue Sun Travel Posters I bought with my scrap of the Economic Stimulus Payment, I also purchased a Grantec PC to Video EZ. Both items arrived today. I had just enough time to run a trial of the Video EZ on the small TV before getting called to dinner.

My initial verdict is it seemed OK for video, but it sucked for text, so surfing the web is a blurry affair. Tomorrow I’ll hook it up the the big TV in the living room and do a more in depth check there. Don’t know when we will use it in the near future though, as we still have 4-1/2 discs of House: Season 3 to watch, 4 more episodes of Due South on Disc 1 of Season 1 that arrived in a red envelope today and there is a Netflix movie that will be here tomorrow.

I’m a Yankee, born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, so I never really heard of this soda until I moved south. I’ve lived in Dixie for nearly 20 years now and I still hadn’t tasted one. Until today.

I’m pretty much a Diet Dr. Pepper guy, but when I went to the vending area at work this afternoon looking for a carbonated beverage, the machine that normally has the DDP didn’t. I checked the other two machines and as expected they didn’t either, so back to the first machine I went, looking for an alternative drink.

It did have regular Dr. Pepper, but that tastes too sweet to me now. Lemonade, nah. Lipton Brisk Iced Tea, not a chance as that stuff is an aberration. Bottled iced tea is to real iced like instant grits is to regular grits and to quote Sam Tipton of Wazoo, Alabama, “No self respectin’ Southerner uses instant grits.” Wait a minute here is a row of 20oz. bottles selling for a buck instead of the $1.25 of all the others. Let’s see, there is Sundrop and Cheerwine, Sundrop looks lemon lime like and I didn’t want that taste, so I guess I’ll go for the Cheerwine, how bad can it be?

When I got back to my desk I twisted off the top and took a smell. Smelled kind of like paint. Pour half a bottle over ice and tasted it. Tasted vaguely like paint too. I drank three quarters of it in hopes I would become accustomed to the taste, didn’t, so I poured out the last bit into the sink in the Men’s room. Color was kind of dark and it took me three rinses to get the water to come out of the mug clear. When I dried out the inside of the mug with a paper towel the towel came out red tinged, kind of like paint.

Must be an acquired taste.

I’m not one myself (although I do try and treat my godson Gnorm like real family) so I sure hope I didn’t violate any laws of the universe by treating it like one, i.e. sleeping in late and lazing away the afternoon on the couch watching baseball.

Mal: “Jayne, how many weapons you plannin’ on takin’? You only got the two arms.”
Jayne: “Well I just excitable as to choice, like to have my options open.”
Mal: “I don’t plan on any shooting taking place during this job.”
Jayne: “Yeah well, what you plan and what takes place ain’t ever exactly been similar.”

I put the Serenity movie back in my rental queue. It was there before, but I pulled it after I pulled the DVDs of the TV show. I watched like the first 15 minutes of the pilot and turned it off. Turns out I really needed a Browncoat to guide me through the bumpy beginning, because I ended up really liking the show.

In the last 3 days between my internet purchases, Donna’s books, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond, we dumped nearly eleven hundred bucks back into the economy. With the exception of the Blue Sun Travel Posters everything we bought would have been purchased eventually, but thanks to W the time table was moved in. Matter of fact, if the first round of checks didn’t do the trick, we have an idea on what to spend the sequel on.

For a moment, earlier this evening, I thought we might not need a second economic stimulus payment, I checked our ticket in the Mega Millions lottery drawing from yesterday. First number I look at is the mega ball, because if you don’t have that, you don’t have squat. We had it! We didn’t have the first regular number but we did have the second one. Hey wait, we have the forth too. Alas, that was all though. The ticket is worth $10, so our next 5 weeks of draws will be on the house.

On Monday Goody’s Clothing Stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. By Wednesday we knew the store in Aiken was one of over a hundred stores they were going to close. Today they had human pop-up ads on the busy street corners in town. While we were out and about buying other stuff today, we decided to pop in and check out the prices. I’ve got a pair of Levi’s Squad Cargo Shorts I bought there a month or so ago and I thought I might pick up another pair or two. Apparently I was not the only one in town with that idea, their parking lot was jammed, it was never that busy, even the day after Thanksgiving or the weekends before Christmas. I didn’t even want to go in, but Donna talked me into it. Everyone of their half dozen registers were open and the lines at each were, I bet, 20 deep. We didn’t stay long. A friend of ours (Hi Rae) reported she saw us come in and go out while she spent her 40 minutes in line (she did say she got some good deals.) My weekend hourly rate is pretty high so I would have to be saving a lot more than 50% off on a pair of $30 shorts for me to stand in a line for 2/3 of an hour. We went next door to Target where I bought a pair of Mossimo Destroyed Cargo Shorts in Bootcamp Olive.