Doctor's Visit

Maria went to the doctor today. He said if the baby isn't here by Wednesday they are going to do an ultrasound and discuss when he will retrieve him/her. Ironically, the fantasy football draft is Wednesday night. I've ranked my top 40 players which should cover my first 4 picks unless the auto-draft does something wacky and starts picking players based on position need instead of getting 3 RBs. I'll always have the fantasy MLS league if I get too far behind in fantasy football. I keep telling myself that so I can stay focused on the baby.

Harris Teeter has a program where they give a percentage of your purchases to a school of your choice. If you shop there and have a VIC card, you can link to Desmond's school. The school code is 3183. You can also link it at the grocery store. The cash registers have a button called "charity" that they can click and enter the code when you are buying your groceries.

Still No News

Still no update on the baby. Maria goes to the doctor tomorrow and they will discuss options if the baby isn't born by the due date (Sunday). It won't drag on too much longer. I know Maria appreciates that.

We watched Starsky and Hutch last night. The star of the movie was the car. It had all the best scenes. Snoop Dog was pretty good, and Vince Vaughn was hilarious as usual. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson were both good, but I didn't think the movie was that great.

I'm going to post my preseason Carolina football analysis this weekend unless the baby gets in the way. Let's just say I'm still holding out hope for the 2006 season.

No News

No baby update. Conditions are still the same w/ momma. Desmond starts school tomorrow, and parent(s) are supposed to attend w/ him for an hour. We are both plannning on going if there isn't any baby movement. I hope he behaves better than he did when we both took him to swimming lessons on Saturday, and the time I went to his school for Daddy's day. If not, I'm going to start the University of Minnesota Spankological Protocol.

We watched The Butterfly Effect last night. This was the first batch of movies we got since we joined Netflix, so my biggest disappointment w/ the movie was that we watched it instead of Starsky and Hutch. It was a lot better than I expected, and every time I thought it was going to go in a predictible direction it brought out a minor swerve. Those guys could write for wrestling. Speaking of which, Lucha Libre Latino wrestling is coming to the Greensboro Coliseum on September 11. For one night only, I'm going to refer to all sneak attacks as Al-Qaida jobs instead of the traditional Pearl Harbor jobs. Is that wrong? What if I say it in Spanish?

Still No Baby

This has got to be a little girl in Maria's uterus (there's in I in uterus). She is stubborn, breaking her momma's back, and throwing my schedule in total disarray. That sounds like a girl to me. However, there is a reason there are a billion Smiths: boys keeping the family name going. We'll see. I won't notice the difference until about age 12. I've already picked out the Nerf football I'm getting him or her for Christmas. Gotta plan ahead.

NASCAR in the rain

Qualifying for the race was rained out on Friday forcing me to get my auto racing fix another way. I've always liked the road courses in NASCAR. Watkins Glen used a support race from the Rolex series (I think that's what it was) that went on even w/ NASCAR qualifying rained out. This series was new to me, so I found plenty of interesting new racing wrinkles. They had rain tires but they only used these when it was raining really hard. You can go a lot faster on the no-tread tires even in a light rain, so they held out until there was a huge wreck. This thing seemed to go on for 5 minutes. It was in the final turn (#11 (where all the passing takes place in the NASCAR race but not one pass occurred in the Rolex race)) right before the pit entrance, and I don't know what some of the last guys in this wreck were thinking. In their defense I'll say I don't know what the person on the other end of the radio was thinking b/c the cars came flying into this turn when cars were piled up against the wall from spinning out. Crazy and dangerous. The cars were also equipped w/ windshield wipers and working headlights. NASCAR has headlights that are actually stickers that look like headlights, and they threaten to run the road races in the rain every year saying they only need a motor to run the windshield wipers and rain tires. Well, they do that every year that it's not supposed to rain. This year w/ a chance of rain mysteriously there aren't any rain tires. No wonder the other racing series mock NASCAR. Of course, NASCAR could buy them and put them out of business (or worse put them on Spike TV), but these other series aren't w/o their flaws. In this road race there were 3 categories of cars racing simultaneously. They scored them all together on the ticker, but really you are dealing w/ 3 separate scoring categories. It makes passing more interesting for everybody, but if NASCAR did something like that the field fillers might appreciate it but it would probably cause more safety problems (Kirk Shelmerdine would finally get press for something other than his struggles). I don't know, I had a good time watching it and would watch it again but for all the negative stereotypes associated w/ NASCAR, the Rolex race still had the same commercials for Sammy Hagar's Greatest Hits and spray on truck bed liner that you see on NASCAR. These other racing series wish they had NASCAR's huge dedicated fan base and that has a lot to do w/ their whining and complaining.

Desmond wanted his picture featured next to the Space Ace 

The forlorn Space Ace 

The Monitor

I had to link the Christian Science Monitor after reading this article. It doesn't surprise me that alternative energy sources could be used today and provide the power we need. The NC GreenPower project had me doing math. I've figured it would cost about twice as much to use alternative fuel sources, so the approximately $900 I paid in power bills last year would have doubled to $1800 using the rates the NC GreenPower group uses ($4 for a block of 100 kwh). When you talk about doubling to cost of utilities, people are going to be angry (although Greensboro is tripling the cost of garbage service w/ the closing of White Street Landfill(even that search yielded more alternative energy sources)). But back to NC GreenPower, they use hydroelectric power as one of the alternative energy sources. This can't be prohibitively more expensive than coal or gas burning plants. Niagara Falls? Hoover Dam? Don't these places provide loads of power. I wonder why Dick Cheney's energy commission couldn't come to the same conclusion as the Princeton researchers in the Monitor article.

No baby yet

Maria is still having irregular contractions. The doctor has offered to break her water, but she considers that cheating. Maybe it will be a girl born on the 15th (like Maria) to match the boy born on the 13th (like me). I would have an easier time of keeping things straight in my head.

I'm drafting 9th in the fantasy football draft. If Randy Moss is there, I'm taking him. There are a few running backs I hope slip to me, but I'd like to take Moss right in front of Dave Reich so he panics into a bad choice.

Obsessed w/ Peter B. Smith, esq.

I don't care what any stupid judge says. Just because I've plastered Pete Smith's name all over my blog that doesn't mean I'm mooching off Pete Smith's good name. I'm merely trying to get more hits on my fledging blog. Think of this as the Billy Beer of Blogs.

Watch Out Pete Smith!

I have a blog now too. I'll be sure to include my incoherent ramblings from late at night as well as my belligerent early evening ramblings.

The baby will be here soon. Maria is having contractions, but they are not at regular intervals. I'm hoping it will be tomorrow, so he or she's birthday will be 8-13. Desmond is 9-13, and I'm 11-13. I know a guy who can doctor Maria's birth certificate, so hers can be 10-13 (it currently is 7-15 if you are curious) then we'll be a real family.

Let's get down to serious business. I've read Pete Smith's blog, and it is better than the other sports talk sites/shows that I spend hours and hours of my time on. I'm going to steal his blogitude just like I've been stealing his persona for the last umpteen years. The current nonsense (can I say bullshit on here? I hope so b/c the asterisk key on my keyboard is broken and I need my swears) that the Giants didn't overpay for Eli Manning is ridiculous. The Giants are going to stink this year and will give next year's 1st round pick to SD. The Chargers and Rivers aren't close on a contract. So what? They have a history of not getting players to camp on time. Rivers isn't going to start the 1st game of the season. That footage of Rivers in a Chargers uniform throwing a football that I've seen on ESPN isn't digitally altered. He's been in the mini camps learning the playbook. They will get a deal done before the preseason is over. He'll get his chance. If Eli Manning has a better career than Philip Rivers, it won't be b/c he got to training camp earlier. The Chargers will have a chance to draft an offensive lineman next year high in the draft and still get an impact playmaker w/ their own high pick. While of the 72,000 Giants fans at the Meadowlands who say they could block better than insert Giants lineman name here only 70,000 will be full of Jersey bluster and the other 2,000 will be right.