Dumping Grounds

Not really all that much to say for today it was drive, drive, drive.

Although for â??roughing itâ? I’m in an awfully nice hotel with free internet, and had a fantastic dinner of crab and shrimp enchiladas with a poblano pepper and mushroom cream sauce.

Mmmmmm, mmmmmmmm.

Tomorrow will likely be a little rougher

I really hope that neither my dogs nor my parents have killed one another.

No pictures for today, but there will be plenty, believe me.

This is the first time I have tried to post a picture to my blog that was hosted in my collection at Flickr. Let me know, please, if it does not work correctly for you.

I really liked this shot, but unfortunately, this little dude did not play for the Jets, so I decided to post it separately, rather than in their team library. I know that I was on the other team, I would not have wanted to this guy any more.

Flickr tags: (football, kids, sports)

â??Power Runningâ? by ender3

If you check out my photostream (just random shots at the moment) and you have a Flickr account, add me as a contact or leave me a content. I don’t know anyone who has one, and I feel lonely there

In 2003… Alex Rodriguez played for the Texas Rangers.

• They finished 71-91, 25 games back. One year later, without Rodriguez, the best player in baseball, they improved to 89-73, finishing only 3 games back.

Before the 2004 season, the Boston Red Sox passed on acquiring Alex Rodriguez, instead allowing him to go to their biggest rival, the New York Yankees.

• The Red Sox broke one of the biggest jinxes in baseball history in 2004, and won the World Series.

The New York Yankees have not gone more than 2 years without a world series in 10 years… winning 4 world championships in that time.

• Until now. Since acquiring Rodriguez, the Yankees have been eliminated from the playoffs before reaching the World Series twice in a row.

Coincidence? I think not. No matter how talented Alex Rodriguez is, no matter how gaudy his statistics, he is a team cancer who will never win a world championship, simply because he has no idea of the meaning of the word TEAM.

Are you listening, Terrell Owens?

I am going to re-design this site.

I already have an idea for the look and feel. I’m going to split the photography from the blog.

Here’s my question… would you rather:

• Keep story navigation the way it is… with a short (usually useless) synopsis and a link to my full rambles… [This way causes an extra click]
• Present the whole story (or last 5, or whatever) on the home page, so you don’t have to load a second page. Then have a link to archives. [This way leads to LOTS of extra scrolling]

I actually prefer option 1, because it makes it far easier for me to tell who is reading what (yep, I keep an eye on this thing), but I have gotten complaints about it in the past.

I don’t care if you are a first time visitor, a long time visitor, or a secret visitor who thinks that I don’t know that you still read this site (trust me, I know). Drop a line below to let me know what you think. Leave it under an alias, I don’t care.

OK, I admit it. I said more than a few not nice words that contain the letter â??fâ? after that humungous stinking pile of puppy poo that was the first period Wednesday night.

I retreated to pleading with the Stars to suck less.

I accused Marty Turco of being on drugs. (Although for those who know their Stars history… cough medicine was more like it…)

I even told them that win or lose, the game could not end until Jeremy Roenick bled. (NOTE: I later found out that the poor SOB did have to get 5 stitches above his left eye. Well done, Stars!)

And then a funny thing happened…

The passive, lackluster, seemingly bored team of the first period disappeared. They got aggressive. They goaded Los Angeles into stupid penalty after stupid penalty… and MOST importantly, they took advantage of the mistakes LA was making. The team that historically has gotten too cute with the puck, always trying to score pretty instead simply fired up there… hoping that good things would happen. And that the puck would find the back of the net.

Good things did. And the puck did. After digging a colossal 4-0 hole, the Stars opened a can of whoop ass on the LA Kings for the final 40 minutes and took home a 5-4 victory. It was, quite honestly, one of the more exciting hockey games I have ever seen. Despite that, I still hope that every game doesn’t have 9 goals, and that the Stars don’t feel that they have to lay such an egg in order to make for a dramatic comeback.

Sergei Zubov (who long time readers will remember is hardly one of my favorites, was nothing short of spectacular. Jason Arnott and Bill Guerin (who is one of my favorites) were also good. Mike Modano managed to make the score sheet (1 assist) but was not a tremendous factor. And no matter how good Marty Turco was in the final 40 minutes, the image of the 4 goal 1st is very difficult to get out of my mind.

All in all, a good win. 15 teams in the NHL are 0-1, and I am glad the Stars are not one of them. And I’m glad hockey is back.

The area around Stonebriar Mall (Highway 121, around the Tollway and Preston Road) is all the proof I need that Satan exists, and he hates us and wants us to be miserable. Only a creature of ultimate evil could have designed that traffic pattern, and caused all the lights to short cycle at the same time.