I’m starting this at 1:05 AM, EDT. Election eve and sleep is elusive for me. A tumbler of Glen Livett to my left. My notebook to my right. A slumbering 13 week old on the baby monitor. I’m now voting not just for me, but for the hopes and dreams I have for my daughter. I’ve mistakenly said throughout the year that my vote for president won’t count, since I live in Indiana, which always goes overwhelmingly for the Republican candidate.
Kerry: 299 (MN, WI, MI, OH, , NH, FL) Bush: 239 (IA, NM, CO, WV) Kerry wins popular vote by a margin between 500,000 and 1,000,000 votes Kerry wins Florida easily and early; Ohio is this year’s problem child. Fortunately, Kerry wraps things up without Ohio so the issues there don’t drag the final result out for six weeks. I wrote this late last night so it may not match what a few of you have seen via e-mail the past couple days.
How does a new father get ready for election night? By going to the grocery store and purchasing Similac and Sam Adams Winter Lager, of course! There must have been a lot of other parents making similar purchases, because the guy working the register didn’t bat an eye at the two items in my basket. It may be a bit early for Winter Lager, but I love it so I bought it.
The NFL is stupid. I’m doubly glad I’m not a gambler, because I would have no idea how to bet on games this season. Jacksonville beats the Chiefs and Colts, then looks awful against Houston. The Falcons look like a bad high school team against the Chiefs, then destroy Denver. Minnesota looked like a Super Bowl team, then decide to get rolled by the Giants, who got rolled by the Lions last week.
Baby’s first Halloween was a bit of a bust. Saturday night, we went to a kid-friendly party in full costume. M. never got her late afternoon/early evening nap in, and thus decided to cry for most of the two hours we were at the party. When she really got cranked up, we decided to flee rather than be the people with the kid that ruined the event for everyone. Naturally, as soon as we were out of the driveway and headed home, M.
Thoughts accumulated during the Red Sox series clinching game four win in St. Louis. So if people all over New England were waiting for the Red Sox to win a World Series before they died, should John Kerry be concerned about losing potential voters between now and Tuesday? Seriously, I think a lot of bitter, old New Englanders that have been holding on a little too long are going to collapse in heaps of hysteria in the coming days.
Prepare to be bombarded tomorrow by articles and columns claiming we saw “vintage Pedro Martinez” tonight. That was not the case. However, Petey was exceptionally impressive over his last four innings. He can’t hit 97 and blow people away anymore, but when he’s on and pitching smart, like tonight, it’s a thing of beauty. So do Sox fans start to relax knowing they have four games to win one, or does the traditional pessimism still hold, especially after what they did to New York?
Geometry sucks. Seriously, I’m feeling moderately confident about my GRE math review so far, but ever since I hit the geometry crap, I’ve got no clue what’s going on. Do I really need to know how to get the area of the shaded part of a triangle that has been drawn inside a rectangle with a superimposed circle over everything? I highly doubt it. So a break for some better things.
I busted out the sacred chili pot Friday night. I have to say, for the first time ever, I disappointed myself. I went with my chicken-white bean recipe which I perfected last year. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I got a rather bland concoction rather than the tangy, slightly spicy treat I expected. It’s most concerning and something I’m going to spend many hours rectifying. We’re hosting a get-together the day of the Kansas-Missouri and Indiana-Purdue games at which I’m supposed to produce both versions of my near-legendary chili.
This is going to be a very, very good World Series, I think. Two teams that absolutely deserve to be there. Both are great on offense, have spotty starting pitching (I’m not ready to accept Schilling will be able to provide two starts at full health yet), great bullpens. They play similar styles of baseball. They have arguably the two most rabid fan bases in the Majors. Loads of history on both sides of the field.
Paul Hamm keeps his gold medal and the Red Sox beat the Yankees. The downside to all of this is I think M. is a Yankees fan. She cried when David Ortiz went yard Sunday night. She cried when he knocked in the game winning run Monday. She cried when A-Rod was called out on the play at first base Tuesday. And last night, she cried when Johnny Damon hit his grand slam.
If you told me last Friday that the Red Sox would be able to force a game seven, I would have slapped you in your face. Hard and with impunity. Yet here we are, in a baseball fan’s nirvana: game six of the incredibly entertaining NLCS this afternoon and then the final showdown between the Yanks and BoSox serving as the nightcap. Looks like another evening with no studying is in my future.
I’ve watched almost every inning of the last three Yankees-Red Sox games. I’ve taken copious notes of things I could write about. But sitting in a basement in Carmel, IN and being a Yankee hater isn’t like being at Fenway as a lifetime Sox fan. I recommend (big surprise) Bill Simmons' excellent summary of the absolutely incredible games four and five. The surreal life at Fenway As a Yankee hater, I’ve become a defacto Sox fan over the past few years.
S. is out of town for a couple days, which leaves the house to just M. and I. While I already had great respect for housewives (and househusbands), that respect has increased immensely over the past 24 hours. M.’s in a bit of a clingy phase, making it tough to put her into her crib, swing, bouncy seat, or really anything and have 10-15 minutes to accomplish things. Unlike S., I apparently don’t have the gene that allows for carrying out regular activities while holding a baby.
1:00 AM, my night home alone with M., and I can’t sleep. I don’t get it. I’m basically off the caffeine. It’s not like I did anything this evening that got me hyped up so that I couldn’t sleep. Perhaps, though, this is how I get her to sleep when S.’s working. Of the last five nights, M. has slept for at least seven hours during four of those nights. The other night, she slept only four hours then had a two hour fit.
OK, I can admit when I’m wrong. Fox knows what they’re doing. They knew the Red Sox had no chance to compete with the Yankees, so they’re giving disheartened haters like myself something else to watch. What’s going to hurt worse for Red Sox fans? Last year, when it took a small miracle to get past Oakland just to play the Yankees, then they were five outs from winning and only lost on an 11th inning home run?
Forget all the asinine cross-promotion (Am I the only one who noticed the guy in the Homer mask knew exactly when to jump up as the Fox cameras highlighted him last night?) and exploding scoreboard features. The fact they’re airing Game 1 of the NLCS at the same time as Game 2 of the ALCS tonight is probably the dumbest thing they’ve ever done. After two hours on the couch with M.
I never thought I’d have to give up on Game One of the ALCS before the 4th inning even started. I can only hope this was a little like Atlanta’s outburst in Game One of the 1996 World Series and the Sox right things tomorrow. I was contemplating the long-term effects of a Yankees loss, though, and am a little concerned. The two biggest names on the free agent list for this off season are Carlos Beltran and Carl Pavano.
I used to really be into omens, mostly concerning up-coming basketball games, but I was never afraid to extend them into other sports. As an example, the first day of the 1993 NCAA tournament, it snowed in Lawrence, KS. I got very excited, because the last time it had snowed in the KC area on the first day of the tournament was 1988. KU did make the Final Four in ‘93, but the karma didn’t translate into another title.
I’ve had the argument many times about the best sporting month. I contend March is the best, mostly because college basketball is my favorite sport and the drama of the NCAA tournament is unmatched. I must admit, though, Saturday was a most excellent day here in Casa de DDB. There were about 1,000,000 college football games on. Between CBS, ABC, NBC, ESPN, the local Big 10 games, and then some bonus coverage I seem to be getting, I had an almost limitless supply of games to choose from.