A new leaf

When I launched this blog earlier this year, it was my intent to post on a daily or near daily basis. As you can see by looking at the archives, I’ve failed pretty miserably at that so far.

Starting tonight, however, I intend to make a concerted effort to post each night before I go to bed. Hopefully this increase in the quantity of posts will not result in a corresponding decrease in quality, but like I’ve said before, this is all free to you anyway.

I dropped off The Wife and The Boy at the airport last night for their four-day Disney World vacation, so today marked the first day of my own little stay-at-home vacation. And how did I spend this day? Well, so far The Dog and I have spent 13 hours on the couch watching baseball and college football. Since one of our games is just now reaching halftime, it looks like we could reach the 15 hour mark before things are over.

One man, one remote, one (tele)vision

I had specifically planned on doing nothing productive today, but I’ve exceeded my own expectations. Upon waking up at 10:00 a.m., I found the West Virginia-Marshall game on ESPN2 and things just kind of took off from there.

My television is one of those where you can set up ten favorite channels on a single remote button, and there’s four such “quick switch” buttons on my remote. I routinely use this feature to watch three or four baseball games at the same time and annoy The Wife. Today, though, I perfected the use of all four buttons to watch an impressive number of sporting events.

Today, The Dog and I have watched:

• Astros-Mets
• Dodgers-Giants
• Cubs-Pirates
• Nationals-Braves
• A’s-Rangers
• Texas A&M-Fresno State
• Texas-TCU
• Penn State-Notre Dame
• West Virgina-Marshall
• Georgia-South Carolina
• Michigan-Oregon
• Miami-Oklahoma
• Virginia Tech-LSU
• BYU-UCLA
• South Flordia-Auburn
• Wisconsin-UNLV
• Boston College-NC State
• Colorado-Arizona State

I’ve watched so much damn college football today, I’ve seen not only one, but two games on Vs. (the channel famous for professional rodeo and extreme hiking challenges). And except for one brief 20-minute break when I took The Dog for a walk and several trips to the bathroom for both me and her, I’ve spent the entire day on the couch in my pajamas.

That, my friends, is a good Saturday.

Postcards from the edge of the couch

After watching so much sports on television today, I’ve reached a few conclusions:

• I’m really tired of seeing the Dr. Pepper commercial with the dancing lineman.
• Michigan and Notre Dame both suck. Thank goodness they’re playing each other next weekend so we can find out who’s the biggest disappointment since Crystal Pepsi.
• The post-Garner Astros look like the Bad News Bears. But watching them lose is still far better than watching the Rangers win in front of fourteen fans at home.
• Brent Musburger is apparently taking over Keith Jackson’s role as the most mumbling, rambling, barely coherent football play-by-play man on television. Given some of the comments and observations he’s made during the LSU-Virgina Tech game tonight, I hope for his sake that he’s either drunk or on medication.
• I know they’re doing this as a side job on the weekends, but those officials from the A&M-Fresno State game should be canned. They looked confused, flustered and unprepared for every single play. I can’t even begin to count the number of mistakes they made, and that’s not including the “instant” replay debacle in the first overtime.
• Between their butt-ugly uniforms and that goofy logo, the Arizona State Sun Devils look like they should be playing for a late 70s chain of taco places.
• Memo to anyone wearing those logo-emblazoned “eye black” strips: STOP WEARING THEM! It’s cute when cheerleaders or small children in the stands wear them. When football players put them on, it’s just girly.

Report from the Old People State

After speaking with The Wife on the phone, it appears that The Boy is having the time of his life at Disney World. Apparently he met the Little Einsteins gang (or at least a bunch of people in big foam character costumes) today, which is the preschool equivalent of going roller-skating with the Beatles.

Hopefully The Wife is taking some pictures that I can share with you when they get back. I doubt it though. She’s pretty good at remembering to take her camera along on trips, but not so good at remembering to actually use it once she gets somewhere. I expect a handful of hastily taken last-minute photos in the airport terminal. I also expect to get in trouble when she reads this next week.

Oh well, at least I had my glorious Saturday on the couch.