If blogging had a HUD, my stamina bar would be almost empty.

I blame El Nino.

Shoe whore.

These are some of the shoes I have been eyeing. There are actually quite a few more pair than this…these are just the ones I thought to take pictures of with my phone.

Penguin

Tommy Hilfiger

K Swiss

Seven, Steve Madden, Steve Madden

DC

Origami

New Balance

New Balance

New Balance

I love shoe shopping.

Blackhawks fire Denis Savard – Joel Quenneville takes over.

After a 1-2-1 start this season, the Chicago Blackhawks have made a coaching change, ousting Denis Savard and inserting Joel Quenneville as head coach.

I am ok with this move. Savard has never impressed me as a coach and Quenneville has his name on the Cup and has taken 2 teams to the playoffs, including 7 straight appearances by the St. Louis Blues.

Breaking news on Blog Internetz is brought to you by the fact that my daughter is preoccupied watching Finding Nemo and I had 10 minutes to hear about this and write about it.

EXCITING

4 days ago was the 3rd anniversary of me getting married. To celebrate, the wife and I are spending our first night alone together away from our lovely little baby who, at 19 months, I guess is not really a little baby anymore…but still…it has been 19 months since we both spent a night without a baby monitor at our side.

So off we go in 15 hours or so to a lovely resort where we stayed the night of our wedding. We get champagne and chocolate covered strawberries and spa amenities and crackers and cheese and a couple free drinks at the bar and a 30 minute couples massage. We are also going to go a fancy seafood restaurant and eat over priced seafood and drink overpirced alcohol.

I am really kinda dreading being away from my little girl for a night, but given the shit that we have gone through recently, I am really looking forward to a day alone with the wifey to blow all types of money we shouldn’t be blowing on things we shouldn’t be blowing it on.

ECONOMY!

Late Analysis of the “Debate”

Being Mr. Mom during the day now does not offer me many opportunities to sit down and unleash my thoughts upon the internet. I decided the other day, though, that I would listen to the Presidential Debate on the radio while I was at work. Obama vs. McCain with the somehow ambulatory corpse of Tom Brokaw moderating.  I have no political affiliation. I have very little interest in politics, truth be told, but I thought I would give it a listen to see what all the hubub was about.

40 minutes into what was an absolutely shameful display by both candidates, I switched to my ipod, no longer able to take it. What I was duped into believing would be a debate turned out to be a schoolyard name calling fight and an opportunity for each candidate to get 90 minutes of free attack ads on each other. In the 40 minutes I heard, neither candidate came close to answering any of the questions posed to them. Instead, they opted to rip each other’s policies, associations, words and actions apart. They completely ignored the time limits that they both agreed upon and pretty much made complete retards of themselves.

From McCain, I wasn’t surprised or offended. McCain is on the ropes and needs to resort to whatever tactics he can to grab any undecided voters. I was terribly disappointed in Barack, though. I keep waiting for him to step up and distringuish himself. I want to vote for Barack because he is Barack, instead, I keep feeling I will be voting for him because he is NOT John McCain or Sarah Palin. Considering how royally fucked this country is after 8 years of GOP leadership and considering what a dottering old fart John McCain seems to really be, Barack Obama doesn’t need to stoop to the level of smear campaigns and attacks against his competition. His youth and his speaking skills should be more than enough to shoo him into the Presidency…so instead of beating the dead horse…rise above it, Barack.

The more and more this charade continues, the more and more seriously I consider just staying home on Election Day. I’ve voted in 2 Presidential elections…as many has there have been since I became old enough to vote. If the best the two parties have to offer are whiny children who are one step away from “my Dad can beat up your Dad” on national tv with the whole nation watching…maybe it’s just not worth my time.

An Open Letter To Battered Women

Women in abusive relationships. I used to mock them. How could I respect or feel sympathy for someone who gets beaten up her man, yet continues to go back to him over and over, only to get beaten up agian and again? How or why should I care? To me, battered woman were a punchline (pun wholly intended)…they were characters in movies and tv shows I didn’t like…they weren’t real people that I could not empathize with. I just thought they were stupid idiots.

Then…last night…I realized that I am in an abusive relationship. Not with my wife. I don’t beat her, she doesn’t beat me. Instead, my abusive relationship is with the Chicago Cubs. A team to whom I have devoted my time and my heart for over 20 years. A team I keep coming back to, despite their repeated efforts to drive me away. A team who keeps breaking my heart. Last night, I came to the realization that I was a battered woman, and as soon as I realized that…I decided that I was done. I took a huge step forward towards liberation from this cycle of heartbreak and emotional scars. After the 5th inning of game 2 of the Cubs and Dodgers of the NLDS, I took my first step away.

I shut the game off.

I was at work listening on the radio, and I decided that I had had enough. I shut off my radio and switched on my iPod. I was not going to take it anymore. There was no ending to that game that could have warranted my listening to the first 5 innings. 16 full innings of Cubs playoff consumption is a larege enough sample size for me to cut the cord from this team. If they aren’t interested, then neither am I. 16 innings of listening to the kids on the LA Dodgers play like men and the men on the Cubs play like kids. That is all I needed to hear to come to the conclusion that their entire regular season of dominance was not only an abberation, but it was completely meaningless. They won 97 games to set themselves up for the playoffs, and they have wasted it. There is no performace they can put forth from here on out that will casue me to reinvest in this team. They have burned all their capital.

I am done with the 2008 Chicago Cubs. With any luck, I am done with them forever.

163/PLAYOFFS/OCTOBER

So the Chicago White Sox have spent the last week damn near dribbling the season down their damn leg. They took a 2.5 game lead into the Metrodome last week to face the Twins and got their silly asses swept, leaving town with their tails between their legs and suddenly trailing the piranhas by half a game with 3 days left in the regular season and the Sox holding a game in hand – a make up of a rainout against the Tigers that was supposed to be occur – IF NECESSARY – on Monday. Well…neither team was able to put it out of reach in the last 3 games of the season, so the woebegone Detroit Tigers rolled their sorry asses into town the Monday when every other non-playoff team was setting up tee-times and the Sox managed to beat them on an Alexei Ramirez grand slam (his 4th of the season – an MLB rookie record) which meant the Sox and Twins finished in a tie for the AL Central title which means there would be a 163rd game at U.S. Cellular on Tuesday.

Since I am working nights now I did not get to watch, but I listened very intently to what was one hell of a game. My kind of game. A tense pitcher’s duel in which a 7,000 foot solo home run by Jim Thome was the deciding factor – and the only run. The Twins were only able to muster 2 hits off John Danks who threw the best game of his life. More important than the 0 runs on 2 hits he allowed is the fact that he went 8 full innings, allowing Ozzie to keep the shaky Sox bullpen from factoring in. Bobby Jenks came in in the 9th for a quick 1-2-3 inning that featured a nice diving catch by Brian Anderson to seal the deal.

Just like that…after beating 3 different teams in 3 consecutive days the White Sox are the AL Central champs and Chicago has 2 playoff baseball teams for the first time in 102 years.

The Sox earned the right to head down to Tampa and face the surprising AL East winning Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and once the excitement of the final 3 games of the season died down…I came to realize that we could be looking at a short playoff stint for the Sox. Not only is the Trop a tough place for a home run reliant team to play, but it appears that Javier Vasquez will get the nod to start the first game…and Javy hasn’t exactly distinguished himself of late, going 0-3 in his last 3 starts and lasting only 12 innings in that time, allowing 18 earned runs on 18 hits…so…that does not bode well at all. If Carlose Quentin somehow makes a miraculous comeback and returns to the lineup in the series 100% healthy and bashing the cover off the ball like he was, I like their chances a lot better. On the brighter side, though, Griff Jr has always hit well at the Trop and Thome, A.J. and Alexei have all hit well there this season. Steal the first game and the series is up for grabs. The streaky Sox offense has to rise to the occasion quickly, though, in a short series.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs will host the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles tonight in game one of the NLDS, and to be completely honest, I am not nervous or excited or anxious about it at all. The Cubs were far and away the best team in the National League this season and it would render useless the 161 games they played (they also had a make up game scheduled for Monday but it went unplayed as it was of no consequence to either team) if I got all freaked out about matchups at this point. The Cubs went about their business like a machine all season, and I owe it to them to assume that type of play is going to continue. I would be lying if I said that is how I truly felt, but I am trying my Goddamn hardest to think that way.