Opening Day Video

In my post about attending the Royals’ home opener earlier this year, I mentioned the spectacular rendition of The Star Spangled Banner that Mike Phillips played, holding a note for about thirty seconds as he waited for the flyover.  Well, I finally managed to edit that video and post it to YouTube, so here you [...]

I Told You So

People have this tendency to say “I hate to say I told you so, but…I told you so”, whenever something happens that makes them look particularly prescient.  That’s a lie, really, because people don’t really hate to say that they were right.  In fact, people love proclaiming how right they were.  That’s why people do it.  They [...]

Channeling Socrates

“It is a wise man who knows that he does not know.”
That’s not a precise quote from Socrates, basically because it’s impossible to quote Socrates exactly since he never committed his thoughts to paper.  But that is the general gist of one of the thoughts attributed to him, and it’s always struck me as, well, wise.  [...]

Sony, Sony, Sony

In 2005, we made the mistake of spending over $2,000 on a Sony Wega rear-projection LCD television.  My wife and I thought, at the time, that Sony was a brand we could trust, one known for quality, and therefore it was justified to spend the additional money over some competitors’ models.
Big mistake.
In case you aren’t aware (like we [...]

Odds and Ends

A few minor thoughts, feelings, observations and reactions on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend:

Funny how some embarrassing situations make one group of people feel terrible, while another group thinks it’s hilarious.  And yes, I am talking about the debacle Kansas State University finds itself in after the revelation that their last athletic director made [...]

Why I’m Not Catholic

In a couple of previous posts here I’ve described myself as a lapsed Catholic.  In retrospect, that description really isn’t all that accurate, since I never made a choice to be Catholic at any point in my life.  My parents were Catholic, and therefore raised their kids in that faith, but there was never any [...]

The Paul Project: Weigh-In #5

Paul not happy.
Weight: 229;  BMI: 35.9
Weight Loss: 0;  BMI reduction 0.0
Total Weight Loss: 9 pounds; Total BMI reduction: -1.4
Here’s the chart, back to that nasty horizontal look again:

I guess, looking on the bright side, I’m nine pounds lighter than I was five weeks ago, I haven’t had a week where I gained any weight back, and [...]

Odd, Yet Admirable

While scanning the headlines earlier today, this one stopped me:
“Palin camp eyed Clinton alliance”
Now, on the surface, that headline screams of being a typo.  I mean, it’s hard to imagine two more different women than Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, so an alliance between them is a dubious linkage, at best.  Maybe, I thought, they [...]

The Amazing Race – Season Finale

Okay, I’m waaaayyyyy late in posting this, but that fact alone should tell you a lot about how well I liked the season finale of The Amazing Race.  It was everything I expected, which wasn’t much.
The three remaining teams all flew on the same plane to Maui, where they were immediately tasked with taking a cab [...]

Luck

Yesterday, my son’s team had a baseball game.  As usual, I was the scorekeeper, so I had our lineup with me before the game as I sat in the stands, copying it into the scorebook.  Up walked a guy wearing the hat of the other team, carrying his own scorebook, and we chatted briefly as [...]