Catching up on past promises

It has been a while since I made up an agenda of topics to discuss on my blog. Some of these I did intend to follow up on. See below.

Baseball:

-Omar Vizquel has signed a 1 year contract and will be back for 2011 with the White Sox, but how much more after that. Already the talk is negative with the articles I read framing it as such that this would be a nice year to transition into coaching. Bollocks! Vizquel is at 2799 hits and must go for another 200 games or so to get those 201 hits.

-Jamie Moyer at 268 wins is so close to the magic mark of Hall of Fame acceptability for a pitcher. 300 wins and you are an automatic inn as the feat is getting more rare and rare. But he has hit a stumbling block with his arm. It appears he may need career ending surgery. I thought Moyer should have gone for Tommy John surgery at the mid-point of the season and aimed for a longer recovery time. He opted to try to go without surgery.

-Trevor Hoffman is the only closer to ever reach 600 saves, topping out the season at 601. For a while, it was looking dicey if he would get to that mark, as he had lost his job as closer and the confidence of his manager. In the end he got there, but his margin for safety is only down to about 50 as Mo' Rivera of the Yankees will look to close in and surpass this record. Not surprisingly, Hoffman is done, as the Brewers declined a $7.5 million option.

-I am watching like a fly on a wall the ongoing negotiations that are going on with Jeter. I think both sides realize they have to come to an agreement here. It doesn't make sense for Jeter to leave a place where is value is so much more than anywhere else. His sponsorships and media coverage is tied to being in the New York market. The Yankees on the other hand don't want to risk a fan backlash and in this season where Jeter will hit the 3000 hit mark, why part company? For as storied a franchise as the Yankees are, they have never had a player in uniform get to 3000 hits!
I say Jeter should accept if the Yankees come up with 3 years at 21 million per (his rate the past years). Jeter should be guaranteed to be the starting shortstop for at least one more year but then be open to changing positions in 2012.

Summer Road Construction:

-God d amn the gov for doing this big stimulus road construction season all at once. Ottawa looked like we were building the city for the first time. Carling was the bain of my existence in the summer and I don't even use the road; however, it impacted the parallel Richmond Rd quite a bit. Also my runs to the Coliseum movie theatre were encumbered by this delay.

Baseball hats:

-At last I have figured out the Lids system for ordering hats! They have free shipping to any store in Canada (unlike last year when they wanted to charge $20). Thus I ordered two hats (Buy 1, Get 1 1/2 off), a Blue Jays and an Expos one in size Medium. They are pretty nice but I may try a Large next time. See pics below.


Who I met recently:

-Tom Green, at a fund-rasing show for Rene Ficher, a man who lost his ability to walk in a hockey game. Tom was totally chill and made us all laugh. I get the feeling he is pretty unlike his persona when he is off stage. Good local boy. See pictures.

-Jim Watson, at the Remembrance Day ceremony in Carlingwood Shopping Centre. Jim is totally engaging and is the type of guy/politician to leave you with that warm fuzzy feeling after. I said Congratulations and wished him good luck on his term. He appreciated this.

-WWII veteran Len H. from Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. He said he was 15 and a half when he fought and if he entered the war in 1940 for instance, I placed him at about 85 today. He was a tall man who was still very mobile. He left with his wife. Len said that maybe a third of guys were under the permitted age of 16 when they enlisted. I thanked him for his service and he told me to, "Take care, son."

Sick of:

-I am absolutely sick of egg salad sandwiches at work for lunch but it is the most cost effective thing and probably healthiest unless I just start eating salad. There is a Subway now nearby so I could get into that. The foot long would be a bit too much in both food and money to have everyday. Unfortunately Subway got rid of the sub card and now have some points program.

The movie theatre on Tuesday:

-It is not as busy as I made it out to seem in the summer, when the crowds looked like evacuations from disaster areas and holdover groups from Canada Day downtown. I still try to schedule my show either really early (around 4) or late at night. But I ensure that the movie has been out for some weeks before I attempt. There is nothing worse than sitting scrunched in between strangers as I don't have the courage or ferocity to take the arm rests away from people, whether they are alpha males, emo hipsters or just little kids. Sometimes I get the drink and popcorn combo when I am there and that will substitute as my dinner. For some reason they charge $1 for adding butter to the popcorn but you can get 'butter flavouring' for free where the napkin station is. You just keep pumping the nozzle for more - unreal!

Movie rentals:

-I have settled on a place nearby work where I am renting my movies. Videoflicks (but not the same exactly as when I was little) is my place, and weird enough, there are many locations across the city but all unrelated to each other. I always get the same deal - 3 (non new-release) movies for 7 nights for $6. The only issue here is that this place is slow to move movies to the 7 day section. Movies that are still 1 day rental include 2008 titles such as Cloverfield, Bruno etc. Now, with a movie deficit of 40 titles to work through, that policy is just not going to cut it.

Around Ambleside:

-As the seasons change,some residents pass away and others who are a few years younger move in to fill their place. The big news here is that my building had the whole entire lobby re-done and it looks like a real nice thing going on. With the help of my dad, I finally got my bed up to respectability again. If you recall it had all collapsed on me one evening and for the past two months I have been forced to sleep on the mattress and boxspring on ground level. We put the supports back under the spring and mattress and raised her up. "Still no jumping on the bed, however!"

Haircuts:

-I am still going strong on doing my own hair. With the introduction of HST, I estimate I am saving big bucks. It is doubtful I will ever go back to getting my hair cut, unless I try to grow my hair longer. Buzz cuts for now, and for the interim.

Commute time to work:

-I am getting in in about 15-17 minutes and then a walk of 10 minutes. This ends of being a little bit longer than it took with the bus but the comfort level is much improved. Plus, I can blast Simple Plan to and from the office.
Area code:

New 343 area code coming:

-Apparently, Ottawa is getting a new area code - 343 - to be issued to those who get new numbers. To me, this is absolute horses hit. We are a small city and if anything we need to re-align the area codes. Ottawa and Kingston should not be sharing the 613Things have changed since 1960's ok. Just make a big switch and launch an information campign - All of Ottawa gets 343 and let the outlying areas use 613 as there will be enough to last decades and infinity beyond for these sparsely populated areas. I don't care if these people get weird phone calls for up to 1 year after from people trying to reach Ottawa people's former phone numbers. It is a sacrifice we all will have to go through. I can't stand the idea of having two area codes in the same region for a city of this size.

-Another option is to start purging unused fax, pager and cell phone numbers. Or rationing them off and charging families who have more than 2 cell phones, or individuals with more than 1 cell phone. Anything is better than 2 area codes.

Switch in milk consumption:

-I am on 2% milk now and loving every minute of it! See pics.