Drew Brees owes me 825 dollars.

Ok we haven't had a sports blog in a good long while and since this weekend was probably the worst sports weekend ever for me personally, I figured it was time for one.

Let's start with the Texas Rangers. After winning the first two games of the ALDS in Tampa Bay, the Rangers somehow didn't get the memo that you actually have to win the 3rd in order to advance. So now the series is all tied up at 2 games each after Tampa came into Arlington this weekend and quite frankly put a beat down on the Rangers. I still think that they will advance to the ALCS to play the Yankees, but they need to get their shit together ASAP. Luckily, I think they will have Cliff Lee starting for them in game 5 which should give them the advantage. At least the Phillies already clinched since I am quasi rooting for them in the National League.

Moving right along to the Houston Texans. I have neglected to write about them this season because I wasn't really sure how the team was going perform this year and I didn't want to jinx them. After starting out 2-0 by beating the Colts at home and the Redskins on the road in their first ever overtime victory, there was some considerable hype that this might be “the year". I'm talking, of course, about making the playoffs. (Playoffs?). ESPN had the Texans ranked number 3 in their power rankings after week 2. Well I must admit that after watching yesterday's game against the Giants, I would be surprised if they managed to finish 8-8 this season. In fact, that is my most optimistic scenario since the Texans are your classic "Myspace Angle" team at 3-2. In all likelihood, they will finish at 7-9 or 6-10 just like we always expect them to. Until they can figure out how to show up week in and week out, I just don't see the team doing anything of value. Beating the Colts at home in the season opener doesn't mean jack if you aren't able to finish out the rest of the season.

And now for the triple whammy, the New Orleans Saints. I decided to play in a Survivor/Knock-Out style fantasy game this year. The idea is that you pay 15 bucks at the beginning of the season and then pick an NFL team to win each week. No point spread or anything, just win. If your team loses, you are out and if they win you continue on. Last man standing gets all the money. The only catch is that once you pick a team, you can no longer use them the rest of the season. I had planned out a perfect road map for the season and figured that the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints would be able to beat the miserable Arizona Cardinals who were starting an undrafted rookie quarterback. Boy was I wrong. Drew Brees took it upon himself to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by throwing 2 interceptions in the 4th quarter, both of which led to touchdowns for the Cardinals. It is in that respect that I figure Drew Brees owes me 825 dollars. The game was a lock for crying out loud!

Ah, felt good to get that all out of my system. I thought it was an omen that this Sunday was 10/10/10. I figured that all 3 teams I was rooting for would get "10's" for their performance. So much for superstition. By the way, there is a slight chance that I will be going to the Texans/Chiefs game this Sunday. Should that opportunity present itself, you can bet your ass that I will be wearing a bag over my head. Look for me on tv!

*EDIT*
I forgot that I was supposed to give Christine a shout out. So here it is, go check out her blog here!

Las Vegas Road Trip

This post is a long time coming. I apologize in advance if it is TLDR. It has already been a month since I took the road trip and it was about damn time that I blogged about it. A little bit of history first, the idea to go on a road trip to Vegas originated from watching a day long marathon of History Channel's Pawn Stars. It was during this marathon that my brother jokingly reminded me that I had yet to sell the Country Legends autographed guitar that I had purchased at a charity auction earlier the previous year. I jokingly responded by saying that I should drive to Las Vegas and attempt to get on the Pawn Stars show and sell my guitar there. For some reason, we both got really serious about the idea and just sort of ran with it since 1) my brother has never been to vegas and 2) I really wanted to go to vegas again.

So we set out. I drove from Houston to San Antonio to pick my brother up from his school on a Friday after work. The next morning we woke up around 6:00am and proceeded to drive to Albuquerque, NM, some 800 miles away. That first day was rather uneventful. Getting stopped at the border control stations along the way always makes me nervous for some reason. I mean, I am a legal citizen who is also not a drug mule but nevertheless I always think in the back of my head that I am one of those drug mules who doesn't even know it and I would end up going to prison like in that awful Claire Danes movie Brokedown Palace. I was also pleasantly surprised at how nice of a city Las Cruces was. I guess I really never had a reason to think it would be a dump other than the fact that it is in the middle of the freaking desert and I just figured it would have more of a The Hills Have Eyes kind of vibe. I couldn't have been more wrong; Las Cruces had a Jack in the Box and Super Target and everything else you would expect to find in a civilization. Albuquerque was nice too.

Ok so the next morning we got up early again and hit the road bound for the Grand Canyon. This segment of the journey really struck me at just how empty the parts of northern New Mexico and Arizona really are. At best we would see a truck stop every 80 or so miles but pretty much everything else was just flat plains with the occasional mountain range. Oh, and the 4 for $20 Indian t-shirt deals that were advertised every 4 miles or so. That day's trip was relatively short compared to the epic 13 hour drive the day before. We arrived in Williams, AZ around 1:00 local time and attempted to check into our hotel. The story about this hotel is so long and ridiculous that I will spare you it right now for another blog post. Anyway, check in time was 3:00 so we decided just to grab some food real fast and do all of the Grand Canyon stuff that day before checking in to the hotel later at night. The Grand Canyon was awesome as usual.

I was pretty surprised at the amount of foreign visitors that were there. I would say that maybe 30-40% of the folks there were French and maybe another 20% of the people were from Asian countries. I didn't remember it being so culturally diverse the last time I was there.

Quick tangent: On the way to the Grand Canyon, my brother and I got the opportunity to go to Meteor Crater. Set aghast by the $15 dollar admission fee, I began plotting my revenge. While exploring the crater, I picked up a small rock on the outer rim and put it in my pocket. I sure showed those guys! Now fast forward to being at the Grand Canyon. I decided that it would be in mine and all future generation's best interest if I hurled the rock from Meteor Crater into the Grand Canyon. And I did exactly that. Think about it, in 8 brazillion years (that's 4.7 years in metric), alien archaeologists are going to be poking around in the Grand Canyon, find my rock and say "By golly, Grog, this rock shouldn't be here, this throws my whole view of ancient Earth in a New Light I tell ya". Grog is the name of an alien, in case you couldn't pick that up through context clues. Also, the aliens are from the southern region of whatever alien world they come from.

Moving along, the next day was the day we would be driving into Las Vegas! Having driven this route before, I remembered that we would be passing over Hoover Dam. This was an unexpected bonus from my brother who had never been there before. The water beneath the dam looked even lower than the last time I was there when it was already pretty damn low. According to Wikipedia, the entire basin is expected to be dried up in the next 20 years. Scary thought for folks like me who like Las Vegas having electricity and running water. But that is a problem for future people to figure out…it was time to do some gambling! We stayed at Bally's since I had complimentary nights there. I like staying at Bally's because it is right in the middle of the strip and you don't have to walk too far in either direction to get where you want to go. So we did some gambling and my brother won quite a bit of money right off the bat with his bullshit beginner's luck while I had a pretty heavy dose of veteran gambler's luck. I managed to win a poker tournament at Mandalay Bay the second day we were there, the very same Mandalay Bay which began a series of unfortunate events that led to me being kicked out of the Luxor Hotel and Casino last time I was in town.

So we stayed in Las Vegas for 2 nights. There was a plan to stay for 3 but we were both pretty vacationed out by this point. I laid some money on my Super Bowl picks and we headed out to the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop that was the main reason for this whole trip anyway.

The pawn shop is a lot smaller than it looks on TV. None of the people you see on the show were working the day we went there. This was a disappointment to my brother who really wanted to meet Chumlee. They had some of the stuff from the TV show in the show room and a merchandise area that I have never seen on the show. My brother and I both picked up a Chumlee t-shirt and we went back to the car to bring the guitar inside and do some dealing. After standing in line behind a guy who was pawning his Xbox 360 for what I could only assume was drug money, we stepped up to and placed the guitar on the counter. The counter where we were at was the place where you usually see them paying people on the show for the items that have been brought in. It was really cool seeing the desk behind the counter where the old man sits. Long story short, the guy pretty much offered me the same amount of money for the guitar that I had bought it for. "I can't even get near the 2k you are looking for", he said. Discouraged, I took my guitar with me back home where it will no doubt lay in anguish for a while until it appreciates a little more in value. Fail.

So we left Las Vegas, headed back over the Hoover Dam and proceeded to drive to Tucson, AZ. The original plan was to stay in Tucson for a night, explore some of the things around there the next day and then drive back to Las Cruces for one final night. It turns out that we were so sick of driving that we decided to forgo the final night of our trip and just drive straight back to San Antonio from Tucson. This was hardly the scenic route that we took on the first half of our trip. Driving through the empty desert is certainly not as nice as driving through forested mountain ranges and plains. Luckily with these new fangled phones and cars, we were able to listen to hours and hours of uninterrupted music which definitely cut down on the mundanity (not sure if that is a word…) of driving 867 miles. We made it back into San Antonio around 8pm, only 13.5 hours after we departed Tucson. 80mph speed limit zones really help out on long stretches of road like that.

All in all it was a fantastic trip. Getting back out to the Grand Canyon and finally getting to see Meteor Crater were definitely highlights of the trip. My brother had a great time in Vegas. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time in Vegas as well, I just would have had a better time if I had got the $2000 I was hoping for at the pawn shop. At just over 3300 miles, it was a little bit less than driving from coast to coast. As much fun as it was retelling this story, you must absolutely stay tuned for my post about the adventure we experienced at the hotel in Williams, Arizona. It was nothing short of a debacle.

Ok, I am just under 3 full pages in Microsoft Word right now, better stop typing. This is by far my longest post on this blog yet and should make up for the utter lack of updates recently. If you actually read through this whole post then I applaud you for being able to fight through my incoherent rambling. Be sure to leave a note in the comments on if this post even made sense. Hopefully I will be able to get back to updating this thing with some kind of regularity.

And now for some keyword selection...

Finally football

Ok, wow, super late on posting anything lately mainly due to my trip to Vegas this past weekend. While I do plan on giving that a good write up perhaps later next week, it will not be the focal point of this post. Were here today to talk mainly about football, more specifically how the Texans season is already over, how the Bills and Raiders decided to not be the Bills and Raiders on opening night and why Adrian Peterson is not human.

First off, the Texans. For some reason or another, the Texans managed to secure the spot of pre-season "sleeper" status. How this managed to happen I have no idea. Watching both the FOX and CBS pregame shows unanimously pick the Texans to not only win the game but also be playoff contenders pretty much sealed the deal for their season. Matt Schuab took a play out of David Carrs book and proceeded to throw for a measly 18 for 33 with 160 yards. Steve Slaton built on his solid rookie year by carrying the ball 9 times for an incredible 17 yards.

I really had high hopes for the Texans this year. I really did. I guess I just got sucked up in the hype that they would be a playoff contender this year. However, after this past Sunday's performance, finishing at .500 would be nothing short of a miracle. I will still watch them and hope that they do well, but it wouldnt surprise me if they finished 5-11, 6-10 at best. Perhaps I already knew deep down this would happen since I decided that betting the Texans at -7 was probably going to be a bad idea.

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum we have the Buffalo Bills and the Oakland Raiders. Perennial losers, these teams managed to cost me 100 bucks with their sudden lack of horrible play. At +10.5 and +7 respectively, these games were two of my locks that I had picked before even heading out to Vegas. The bills were playing the freaking Patriots! I figured Tom Brady would come back from being out last year and throw for 9 TDs and 4 thousand yards. G'luck. Brady looked very rusty and the Bills were going down the field every possession with ease. Oakland pretty much did the same against the Chargers. Both teams played well above their expectations and still lost, just not by the correct amount of points I needed for a win.

All was not lost however as the Cowboys and the Vikings both covered. Not too much to say about the Cowboys, they played well against an ok Tampa Bay team and got the win easily. The Vikings are another story altogether. Adrian Peterson is going to single handedly win the Super Bowl for them. Book it, done. He was annihilating the Browns defense like he had the Madden settings on super rookie mode. They would have scored another 8 or 9 times if Favre hadnt attempted to throw the ball so damn much. The Vikings are legit and Adrian Peterson will be your 2010 MVP.

I, quite frankly, watched a lot of football this weekend and is a lot more that I am not going to cover here like the Patriots and Broncos final drives. Those have been written about to death over on ESPN and the like. I will go ahead and give a shout out to the Houston Cougars. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was telling me that I needed to take more medication if I thought that the Cougs would beat Oklahoma State, let alone cover the 16 point spread. Not only did they win, they won handily by 10 points. Great way to start the season and now they are ranked 21 in the nation. Beating Texas Tech next week would really start to raise some eye brows nationally if they haven't already been raised.

And with the start of the NFL season, I officially bid farewell to the Astros who I will no longer be following. Here's to the next 3 months of nearly non interrupted football awesomeness. From the looks of it, it's going to be a great season.

Not much going on

Not too much to report on lately. I took my CHL class this Saturday. It was a bit of a drag going from 7:30am to 6:30pm but learned some valuable information nonetheless. In celebration of finally getting off my ass and taking the course, I treated myself to a brand new Glock 27 that I picked up at the Pasadena Gun Show Sunday afternoon. In case you dont already know, the Glock 27 is a .40 caliber subcompact semi automatic pistol which should be a perfect equilibrium between power and size in terms of concealment for personal protection.

In other news, the Accord is holding up well. After putting nearly 750 miles on it on the recent trip to New Orleans, I averaged about 29.5 mpg with 4 people. This is considerably more mileage than I could have ever dreamed of in the Exploder which would barely hit 20 mpg on a downhill slope. All in all Im still really happy with the purchase. Still feeling the hit to the bank account a little bit though...

My love, hate, love, really hate, love relationship with the xbox 360 continues. I have it in a condition right now where it will run most of the time with little to no screen tearing. By condition, I mean it is currently sitting on my coffee table without its case with a large room fan blowing on it constantly. Occasional screen tearing can be remedied by pressing down on the center of the motherboard which only strengthens my belief that warping of the board is one of the main reasons so many of the xbox 360s break in the first place. With the recent price drop, I am seriously considering just biting the proverbial bullet and picking up a new one. We will just have to see how much more I can take with the current model.

Next Saturday I will be making my return to Las Vegas. After last years awesomeness, I have no reason to doubt this trip will be any less satisfactory. This go around we decided to rent a condo on the strip in lieu of staying at one of the casino resorts. This was done for several reasons, the main one being we have more people this go around and will be able to fit everyone in one condo instead of having to worry about multiple hotel rooms. Champagne brunch is definitely on the agenda as well as sipping mimosas at the sports book on Sunday. The Sunday we are there is opening day for the NFL so expect me to lose several hundred dollars betting on guaranteed locks. (Still cannot believe I lost that Giants bet last year...)

So thats pretty much it. Long weekend coming up means smoking a pork shoulder this Sunday. Nothing, and I mean nothing, taste better than a pulled pork sandwich smothered in cole slaw on a kaiser roll bun. Add in some potato salad and some beans, garlic bread and baby you got yourself a BBQ going. Champagne Campaign is on the horizon as well as soon as Christine gets her hundred bucks. If I was a betting man, and I think it's clear that I am, I would say that the easy money would be on the event taking place some time in mid October. If consuming 40 bottles of cheap champagne is wrong, I dont want to be right.