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Rolando had free tickets to the Capitals game tonight, and it worked out that we could join Steve and Aurene in the suite for the game. While the Capitals ended up being a major disappointment, it was still a fun night. Alexander Ovechkin seems to be able to score a goal a game EXCEPT for the game that we go to... Figures.
So, after further consideration, I decided to return a gift I had bought and exchange it for something different, something that might be more useful. To accomplish that daring goal the day after Christmas I ventured to best buy in potomac yards. And despite the warnings on the news, I can say that the lines are not really half bad. The return line took 5 minutes and the checkout was only 5 as well. Call it efficiency, call it luck, but I'm on to the next store. Let's just hope the gamble pays off.
Normally Christmas day is one of excitement and anticipation, but I can't help but be a little disappointed that the Young Action were defeated yesterday on the Aboriginal Super Bowl quite handily. LT was shut out for the first time in many weeks, and my gamble of playing Alex Smith over David Carr or Trent Green did not pay off. That, combined with the fact that all three of his WRs caught touchdowns (Harrison, Fitzgerald, and Bruce), spelled a 104-77 beat down. Very sad.
But, on the bright side of things, it IS Christmas morning, and below is a collage of the dogs last night, and the environment this morning. To anyone who actually reads this blog, Merry Christmas! May you be surrounded by peace and love.
Alright everyone, the AFL Super Bowl has arrived. Through stellar management and the help of LaDainian Tomlinson, I navigated 15 weeks of football to land myself in the AFL Super Bowl. With a couple hundred bucks on the line, the Young Action will be facing off against Crunk Juice and Goose. Below is a shot at the matchup.
As you can see from the preview above, both teams rode the success of their running backs as both of us have terrible quarterbacks. I think I have the edge though with Frank Gore as my second back compared to Deuce McAllister. Additionally, LT is definitely the better back between him and LJ, despite my loyalty to the Penn State boys. Though in full disclosure, I had the #1 pick on my other team and picked LJ over LT, and safe to say I did not make it past the first round while one of the guys in the final in that league DOES have LT.
On the WR front, Crunk has the slight advantage, though both of us have targets on the Cardinals, which makes the San Francisco-Arizona game an interesting one to watch, particularly since I am starting Alex Smith over Trent Green this week AND am relying on Frank Gore to rack up some points.
All in all, it's going to be a tight matchup. Take a look below to see what the computers are saying about the battle, and check back throughout the weekend to see how I'm faring...
Yesterday afternoon, I joined the thousands of other DC residents in heading to their holiday destination for the weekend, leaving at the beginning of rush hour. The plan was to leave the house at 4, and meet up with Lauren somewhere along the way as she could not get out of work until after 4:30. On any normal day, leaving at 4 would have left me plenty of time to meet Lauren on the other side of DC on Rt. 50. However, after taking one look at trafficland.com, and another look at my WeatherBug, I decided to get a jump start and leave 15 minutes earlier.
I pulled out of my driveway in Del Ray, Alexandria at 3:45 and proceeded to sit on the 14th Street Bridge for about 30 minutes, and then slowly crawled through DC to 295, and 1 hour and 15 minutes later, emerged on to Rt 50. A trip that normally takes 20 minutes took an extra 55 minutes. To put it into perspective, Lauren left work at 5 (about 10 miles away), I left at 3:45, and she still ended up ahead of me on 50. When I finally emerged on 50, it was raining so hard, you could barely see more than 15 feet ahead of you AND people were driving like absolute maniacs! Between the rain and traffic, it was a horrible ride, one that I only endured because we had a wonderful dinner awaiting us in Ocean City. That, and I had some great holiday music to listen to... Four hours later, we made it in one piece and had a fantastic dinner with all of Lauren's family.
What was the lesson learned? If you can avoid it, do not leave for the holidays during rush hour traffic on the last work day before the holiday. This year it could not be avoided, but my hope is that next year will be a little different. Just thought I would share my exciting adventures with all of you.
This morning the group arrived with the finishing touches and the piece to put us over the top... our Daytona racing game. We made a little youCaster invitation to send to the WeatherBug employees inviting them to partake in the contest. You can see that here.
Tomorrow a cross-functional team will judge the 2006 WeatherBug holiday decorations contest. Instead of competing against the departments as an individual, we poached two Marketing team members and the Product group embarked on a "Blue Collar" Christmas theme. We weighed different options... like PC Christmas, the wrong holiday, corporate Christmas, the Office Christmas, etc. I think we made a pretty good choice, though the Marketing team has thrown their best efforts against us, though on the other complete end of the spectrum.
Below are shots of our team decorating tonight, and I'll let you know how the judging goes tomorrow.
Here's a shot of Mike hanging the beginning of the icicle lights that stretch across all of the cubes on our row.
The group didn't think I could fit a tube sock on my head. I proved them wrong and probably did some brain damage in the process.
Here's a shot down our aisle as the team began hanging our "decorations" from the ceiling.
Our Christmas tree.
I wanted to take a moment in the middle of my busy day to give quick shout outs to everyone who has joined the blog world...
First, a big wazzup to Gene who launched his blog today. You can read Gene's blog here.
Second, I wanted to congratulate the Hills on the recent addition to their family. Owen Arthur Hill was born at Friday night at 11:59 PM. You can read all about it here.
It seems that the holiday season has created all kinds of magic!
So this year, I tried to order as many of my gifts online as I could, and some of my gifts are from Best Buy. Well, Best Buy has the whole order online and come in for a fast pickup. Supposedly anyway. I have been standing in line now for 15 minutes while I could have just picked it off the shelves, gone to the checkout, and have been out of here in 5 minutes. So much for progress.
At least I can send in a Blog entry while I stand here and waste away an unseasonably warm December day.
With the end of the NFL season rapidly approaching, it can only mean that fantasy football owners are either sitting at home on Sundays, bemoaning the fact that they no longer have an interest in any game but their home team, OR, if you're like me, you're sweating out every single game that is on in hopes that you can last one more week.
That's right, Young Action is currently in the Aboriginal Football League semi-finals, playing The Lost Tribe. This will be 3 years out of 4 that one team from the Clark family has made it to the semis, with the teams advancing to the Super Bowl in each instance as well. In addition to Young Action's hopes of champagne dreams, The Menominee Eagles (Aurene's team) is on the other side of the bracket battling Crunk and Juice for her chance to play for the AFL crown as well.
So far both of us sit ahead in our matchups, with Aurene holding a 15 point advantage with one player remaining, while her opponent also has one player remaining tonight. Aurene places her hopes on the outspoken, but prolific scorer, Chad Johnson, while Crunk can only hope for a big night from Johnson's chief competitor for receiver of the year, Marvin Harrison.
Meanwhile, in the game that really matters, I cling to a 33 point advantage, done for the week while my opponent has the other big Colts receiver, Reggie Wayne left to play. Having done my research, Wayne has had ONE game this season where he scored 3 TDs and had over 100 yards for a total of THIRTY-THREE points, but outside of that freak occurrence, he has averaged in the pedestrian range of 15/game.
Stay tuned for the results of these intriguing match-ups as there is a good chance that it could be an All-Clark AFL Super Bowl.
See how we've fared thus far this week...
As I promised earlier, I took a picture of my decorations at night to show you my handiwork. Unfortunately, without so many bushes, there is not a lot to hang lights on. Sadly, the front window is not really even long enough to hang the icicle lights properly. It's almost as if the icicles are melting on the left side of the window...
Here's a shot of my dad placing the star on the Christmas tree. Tonight, Steve, Aurene and I went down to the rent's house to decorate the tree.
Here's a shot of the completed tree. I'm still trying to find the best way to take a picture with lights in it and not ruin it. If you take the picture with the flash it doesn't come out right, and as you can see, without the flash, the decorations are really highlighted, but the lights are kind of blurry.
It's almost like an image straight from "T'was the Night Before Christmas" with our stockings all hung with care. Each one of the stockings, except for my mom and dad's, were made when each family member joined the family. Thus, my mom made my stocking while she was in the hospital, and Aurene got her stocking after she and Steve got married.
My mom surprised us by digging out all of our old Christmas decorations that we made while we were in elementary school. Most of these works of art are mine, and each comes with the grade I received, the grade I made it, and what year it was. Some were A's, and some were B+'s. I'm not entirely sure how you can give a kid in 2nd grade a B+ on something as magnificent as what you behold here... I guess some people just don't appreciate true talent.
I have to blog at least once about my favorite show on TV right now... Man vs. Wild, found on the Discovery Channel every Friday night at 9. Bear Grylls has got to be my hero. The man has put himself in so many challenging situations, in so many different parts of the world... it's just unbelievable.
This past week, Bear parachuted down into the African Savanna in Kenya and made his way from the desert floor up to a glacier (as Bear would pronounce, GLAY-see-er) mountain. On his way he encountered snakes, rhino, hippos, lions, and elephants. In one situation, he even had to suck some elephant dung for water. Of course he found a stream about an hour later, which was pretty funny.
Anyway, if you haven't set your TiVo for this show, you need to... It's easily the best show on right now... AND it's educational.
Sadly, I am off my game this year, and it has taken me until today to complete the Christmas decorations for my house. I'm not too sure why it has taken me this long to get into the holiday spirit this year. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's been in the mid 50's to mid 60's off and on for the past month, maybe it is related to the fact that I've been working more than I wanted to, or maybe I don't get the enjoyment out of decorating like I used to. I'm not sure which one it is... but in any case, here are the daytime pictures.
