Ho ho ho

A brief summary of my Christmas, or what I remember of it. Those who were there for my Christmas Eve bender know what I’m talking about.

We drove up to Michigan Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. We lucked out and the snowstorm mostly passed to the south of us. Yes, to the south. Weird but true. We hit some lake effect around Cleveland, as we always do, but nothing any worse than usual.
Thursday, we drove up to Lansing and stopped for lunch with one of Lisa’s old roommates. Then we continued our drive up to Grand Rapids to visit Lisa’s grandmother and aunt. We met up with my brother at Chuck E. Cheese for some early presents and kid fun. Taylor was quiet as usual, and Austin had his usual permagrin on. That kid is fast too! He can out-Army crawl with the best boot camp grads, I’d wager. We had the honor of closing down the place, about the only place we can close down any more. We’re old.
Friday we visited Lisa’s grandmother in the morning, then headed back to Livonia. Lisa’s family has a traditional vegetarian (well, meatless anyway) meal, consisting mainly of perogie, stuffed shells, and soup. I got to taste the meal twice, thanks to the wine and more wine. I remember opening most of the presents, getting mad at Lisa for opening something she wasn’t supposed to, and that’s about it. Somehow I managed to get into bed myself, which is a relief at least. The highlight of my gifts was the Battlestar Galactica DVD set. Now if I only had the time to watch it.
Christmas day was rough, to say the least. We went to noon mass, and then over to Amy Balog’s for brunch. This was the first of many times this week that we forgot presents or something along the way and had to go back home to get them. Thanks to Ellie’s interminable cuteness, we are perpetually invited (aka ordered) to come back every year for brunch.
Sunday was the big Lions/Bears clash at Ford Field. After some last minute panicking over the tickets (Mike was supposed to bring them from Atlanta, but got snowed in. Yes, from Atlanta), we got to the game a little bit late (for future reference, lots of street parking on the other side of Greektown Casino), and headed to our seats. After stopping to pick up a beer along the way (I was feeling much better at this point), we headed to our seats, not realizing that they were in the Family Fun Section. AKA the no-profanity, no-beer, no-fun zone. Ugh. Chugged about half of that $7.50 Labatt’s Blue down, and gave up (yes, I’m getting old). Ford Field is really a great place to catch a game. It has a really nice small stadium feel to it, unlike the cavernous, impersonal Pontiac Silverdome. Super Bowl XL is there next year, if you have the means to pick up some tickets.
On Monday we went out to Ann Arbor for some sledding with cousin Colin. Unfortunately he woke up on the wrong side of the bed and had no interest in sledding. But Ellie had a blast. She is a real daredevil and probably would have gone down the hill on her own if we had let her. We went out for dinner on Monday night with Amy and Z to a nice brew pub. They have a nice wheat beer, and the Jambalaya is adequate, for a brewpub.
Finally got on the road on Tuesday afternoon, which wasn’t bad, thanks to the aforementioned iTrip, and finished the trip yesterday.
All in all, not a bad trip.

Ho-ly crap

Unbelievable, but our friend, Jace Herring, owner of Bloghosts, my former hosting company, finally made good on his promise to transfer Sudip’s domain to me. And with 2 days to spare until the site was set to go under. I take back most of what I said about him. Don’t let this happen to you, make sure you register your own domain yourself, don’t let your hosting company do it for you!

Giant step for DC baseball

Mayor Williams signed the legislation that finally passed the DC Council last week. This supposedly means that the Council cannot reopen the legislation for any further discussion (the incoming Coucil members were much more hostile to the stadium financing than the current ones). Mark Tuohey of the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission told Williams, “We’ll give the president the second pitch. It’s your vision.” Uh, sorry Mark, if the Prez wants the first pitch, you’ll give it to him. Anything else would just continue to show how backwards DC really is.

Back in DC

Hello again. We made it back to DC in one piece, and with our sanity fairly intact. But man, those 9 hour drives are rough. Especially tough on the dog when the rest areas are covered in snow and there’s no grass for him to do his duty on. We definitely appreciated the iTrip that I got for Christmas from my mom though. I loaded an audiobook “Villa Incognito” on the iPod, and we were able to listen to almost all of it during the drive. Definitely makes it go quicker.
Anyway, I am back in the swing of things. I’ll be posting lots of Ellie’s Christmas pictures over the next few days, so keep your eyes peeled.

Fool me once

Still waiting for that first pitch of the second season before I believe it’s really here. But the DC Council passed (i.e. Linda Cropp changed her vote) the latest iteration of stadium financing, which is supposedly acceptable to MLB. We’ll see.

Starbucks factoids you never wanted to know

Coffee geek stuff for ya. I have wondered this myself for a while. Why do the sizes go: Tall, Grande, Venti? Well, it turns out they used to have Short, Tall, and Grande (I do remember them having Short). Then the supersize revolution hit, and they dropped the Short in favor of Venti. Venti is Italian for twenty. As in, twenty ounces.
I always knew that you could request any of their espresso drinks with skim milk to cut down on the fat and calories. But did you know that you can get a drink that has more fat and calories than even the whole milk version? It’s called a Breve (BREV-eh), and it’s made with steamed half and half. That makes my favorite Gingerbread Latte have 850 Calories, 580 from fat, with 65g of fat. Makes the 520 calories, 230 from fat, with 25g of fat seem downright healthy.

Controversy

Our fantasy football league is having a bit of a controversy. It was the first week of our playoffs this week. And one of the semifinal games (not involving me, I’m in the big show regardless) ended in a tie. This has never happened before, so we didn’t really have a tiebreaker set up. The Sportsline web site offers “reserve scoring” as the only real tiebreaker, meaning that the players on your bench break the tie. That seems most reasonable to me, mainly because it relies on the scoring for the week in question to break a tie, which it seems to me is the best way to break a playoff tie.
Unfortunately, one of the guys involved in the tie (who will win the tiebreaker regardless of what we pick), doesn’t like that. He argues that he would have different people on his bench if he knew this was the tiebreaker. He would rather have head-to-head REGULAR SEASON results be the first tiebreaker, followed by overall record, followed by points scored. He of course has the best overall record in the league, but not the most points scored. I don’t like this method because it has nothing to do with the playoffs and the game in question.
How does your league break ties?

Saving baseball

I wouldn’t get too excited about the news that Linda Cropp and Mayor Williams have a deal in place to save the stadium financing package. The Council still has to vote on it, which mean she still has time to screw it up. In addition, MLB still has to okay the modified deal as well.
In the meantime, check out Steven Pearlstein’s brilliant analysis from the Post’s Business section today. Pretty much sums up what I’ve been saying all along. He explains how “public” and “private” financing are not very different (public can even be better sometimes, as governments get better lending rates), and attacks the three main fallacies argued by stadium critics.

Make me drink recap

We had a little mixup with the babysitter last night. Lisa thought the party started at 8, but I thought she thought it was at 7. So she had told our neighbor, who was coming over to watch Ellie (first time someone outside the family, including the Godmother, watched her), that we needed to leave at 7:30. I discovered this at 6:40, when I was ready to go… Luckily, our neighbor was able to come over early. Unfortunately, thanks to this mixup and the lack of parking at the mall (shocker), we got to the party around 7:30. Already missed 30 minutes of open bar, doh!
I got right to work. No Mojitos here of course, as expected. So I started off with a Madras (vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice). Nice and tart. We got some food, and I went back up for more. No Red Bull either, so I’m running out of drinks. I just go with a 7&7, and the bartender mentions that the other bar might have a wider selection. It did, and it also had better bartenders. I asked if they had Southern Comfort. They did, so asked for a good ole Alabama Slammer. The bartender actually had to think about what was in it, it had been so long since he had made one. Turned out fruitier than I remembered, but good nonetheless. By the time I got back up there again, it was almost the end of the open bar. So naturally, I went double fisted. White Russian AND Alabama Slammer. Turns out to be a good move. Tony ordered a 7&7 later on and paid for it, to the tune of $7.50. So I got about $37.50 in free booze. Not bad.
Thanks for participating. Start thinking of more drinks. I’ve got a wedding coming up in March.

Basilica Bar

It just seems wrong to me somehow: Visit St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, and stop by the coffee bar before you head down.