So the last few days have brought about a few random thoughts, but first I’d like you to give an update on everything that’s been keeping me so busy…
- House-hunting/Moving – Well after making a few more calls, going to see a few more places that really weren’t all that great, and then looking ahead to my calendar, I have come to the conclusion that I will not be moving at the end of the month as planned, and I have renewed my lease for another 6 months, so that I’ll be out around Christmas time. This may prove to be more than I bargained for, as I’ll actually be out of town over the new year for NCSC Conference, so I’ll probably have to end up moving out SUPER early.. Oh well. This feels a lot better though, and the stress level has been lowered… This may actually be an opportunity for me to buy as well. We’ll see how things go…
- NCSC Colorado Visit – Booked flights for Erin & Maureen to come I’m excited that all that has been taken care of. Looking at the numbers I think we’re going to go ahead and have everyone at my apartment… It actually should be pretty cool, but now I’m devoted to having my place SUPER clean in less than a week! So I’ll be a cleaning fool this weekend. In all actuality, the downstairs is fine, but the upstairs more than makes up for it. Hmmmm
- NCSC Western Retreat Planning – I need to get in gear for this one. Luckily I now have all of the information I need, it’s just a matter of delegating and getting the ball rolling. I think it should be pretty cool though.
So with that out of the way, some things have happened that have triggered some thoughts…
I fire up my RSS feed of ESPN this morning, only to find this story: Nationals acquire OF Wilson from Rockies
What?!? DAMMIT! Would it kill the Colorado Rockies to actually keep a good player for a year??? I am so tired of the Rockies dealing anyone who has a batting average over .300. "Uh-oh, he’s too good for the Rockies. Time to deal Preston Wilson!". Arggghh… I’m sick of this stupid "We’re rebuilding, we’re looking for prospects. Please be patient with us." spin they always give us. They’ve been telling us that for three years. Now I understand that you guys can’t contend for anything at this point, and I’m willing to accept that. But as a Rockies fan (and first off what’s wrong with me??) would it be too much to expect that we have at least one good player on your team?? I don’t want to pay $10-15 for a ticket, $6 for a beer and $5 for a brat to come out and see over glorified high school players out there. I might as well just go down to Rolland Moore Park here in town and watch the Little League teams play – at least it’d be more competitive. The Rockies also dealt Joe Kennedy as well. He was struggling lately, but he had a really good start and was good prospect, but nope… I guess he’s too good for the Rockies! And what the heck is a trade for cash?? I need to go get a keyboard for work tonight… Maybe I should go into Office Depot and say "I’ll trade you your keyboard for a first-round fantasy baseball draft pick for next year and CASH." I could say the same thing. Rockies, you freakin SOLD Wilson. Argggh…
You know it’s only a matter of the time until they ship Helton’s butt out of there.. Maybe I should give the Rockies an offer… I’ll give them a 2nd round fantasy football pick in my league, a minor league prospect (me) and a 40 pound bag of dog food for Todd Helton. Done!
Sticking to sports, we just got word that the NHL and Players Union have reached an agreement (in principal) and that we’ll now have hockey next year. FINALLY… I have to admit that I’m STILL pissed and skeptical about this whole thing. I wasn’t a rabid hockey fan, but I was pretty darn passionate. In the last 3 years I had been to about 10-15 Avalanche games in person (including 2 playoff games), and I always did plan my schedules around the Av’s play-off runs. I have a Patrick Roy jersey actually got to go to Roy’s # retirement (that was cool!)… So that’s where I sit…
But like I said, I’m still not sold on this. I’m bitter that the players and owners took a year to come to an agreement, and didn’t really seem all too concerned about cancelling a season. They don’t seem to realize (or care) that they’ve pretty much set the sport back 10 years by doing this, and it’ll be a long time before the casual fan comes back around to this sport.
My only hope out of this whole ordeal is that THEY LOWER TICKET PRICES! We’ll see… Supposedly now that there’s a salary cap, players’ salaries should be lower which means we should see lower ticket prices – SHOULD is the key word though. I’ll tell you what though, with the Av’s gone last year and Joel and I always going to Nuggets games, I’m just as apt now to go see the Nuggets as I am the Avalanche… And Nugs tickets are 1/4 of what it costs to go to a hockey game!
What’s exciting is it looks like they’ll be getting rid of the Red Line, as well as making the goalies wear smaller padding – hopefully this will result in a more fluid game with more goals (and more amazing performances by the GOOD goalies). It also looks like they’re changing the way they do Overtime – 5 minutes of 4-on-4, 3 minutes of 3-on-3, then a shoot-out. That’s awesome! I can’t tell you how many games I’ve gone to that resulted in ties.
Also last week Bethany and I went to go see War of the Worlds.. I have some thoughts on that, but will get into them later