Google, who owns blogger.com, has indicated that the typical blog is read by just one person. The reader of this blog (if there is one) should realize that I have no site to reference with that number, and I don't even know if the "one person" is the writer of the blog or someone else. If it's the writer, well, how sad. But even if it's someone else, it begs the question, "Why don't I just write a letter to that person who cares about me?"

 

But, of course, I don't necessarily write here to pass information on to others so much as get things off my own chest. If no one ever reads what I post, I'll be just as happy. Okay, that isn't true since I'd be tickled pink to know about others reading along, but if no one is, I'll still be happy with what I write because a) it gives me a reference point for where my thoughts were at a particlar time and b) it allows me to vent about issues that are bugging me. Once I commit it to paper, I can hopefully leave it in the past.

 

So how does this apply to the message I'm trying to deliver today? I have no clue. I just know that I approached my computer today wanting to write something...anything.

 

So let's start with my hobby of choice for the last four plus years, shooting pool. Anyone who knows me has heard the story of the assembly of my Dad's pool table and the delivery of my own, but I think I'll expand on that now.

 

I'm in the process of selling my house. It should sell for a reasonable amount of money, but it's taking a bit of time to do so. One of the items I intend to purchase with the proceeds is a pool table. Everyone I work with knows this, so when Costco included a coupon for a pool table for $3300, my boss thought I might be interested. But I had already seen that coupon, and while the table is, indeed, quite beautiful, I just don't need that expensive a table. I had previously visited a local store and asked the owner what the difference was between his $1800 table and his $5000 table. His answer was that the intricacy of the wood carving determined the price, but the play on each table was identical. And while I don't care much about the look of the table, the $1800 one was just a bit plain for my tastes. I had settled on the $2000 table. I explained this to my boss.

 

She then remembered that a friend of her son's owned a store that sold pool tables. He called his friend only to find that his friend would be selling the store the following Monday (this was on a Wednesday). But his friend offered that if we would buy quickly, we'd get a really good deal. So after work, I decided to head directly there. On the way, I called Dad to see if he wanted to help me choose. Though it took unreasonably long for him to decide (and get permission), he finally decided he would join me. But the delay meant I was at the store for a half hour before he showed up.

 

While there, I chose a table. Manufactured by DLT Billiards, I picked out a cherry wood table with fringe pockets and an Arizona Cardinals cloth (it wouldn't be me without it). When the folks finally showed up, it turned out that my mother was a longtime acquaintance of the owner's mother (who also filled the role of sales staff). The bottom line of this encounter was that my dad picked out a table for himself as well. That's when the adventure started.

 

You see, Dad picked out a nice gold cloth for his table which the store did not have in stock. No problem, we were told, it could be sent overnight. So here it was, Wednesday, April 11th at about 5:30 PM, and Dad was being promised that he would have his install between 9 and 11 on Friday morning. But they had not done the math. It was too late to send out the cloth that day, so it couldn't arrive until Friday, and it certainly was unlikely to arrive before 9:00 AM. Dad waited patiently anyhow. At 10:55, the phone rang. The cloth was not yet in, but he would be called as soon as it came in.

 

The call came that evening while he was out. The cloth was in, and the installation would take place on Saturday. He should expect a call at 11:30 to schedule a time.

 

On Saturday at 1:00, Dad finally gave up waiting for the call and asked them when they were coming. They explained that they were just waiting for Dad to call them. Frustrated, Dad simply said he was ready and was told that they needed an hour to load up the truck, then they'd be out. The store is five miles from Dad's house, so they were expected shortly after 2:00.

 

At 2:45, I called. The other voice was surprised that we had not been called. After calling his installer, he informed me that the installer had been in Scottsdale (a half hour away) finishing up a job but was on his way to Dad's house.

 

At 3:45, I called again. Within minutes, I received a call back from the installer. He was just two miles west of us and on his way (Scottsdale is east of us).

 

At 4:00, the doorbell rang. As the team of three entered the home, they stopped and cautiously eyed Dad's old pool table, asking where the new one would go. Upon being told it was replacing the old one, they sheepishly asked who was breaking down the old one. We informed them that not only were they breaking it down, but the store's manager had promised their truck to deliver it to another location (my ex-wife's house). They were not happy but went to work.

 

At 5:30, two of them had to leave (one needed to get to her night job, the other needed to deliver her), so they took the disassembled table, loaded it in the truck and headed for points south and west. The remaining installer remained behind to continue the slow but wonderfully precise process of balancing the table.

 

At midnight, the table was done. We went to dinner and played a game when we returned, though a lack of tan colored chalk caused us to stop playing before too much blue chalk could get on the surface.

 

My table has been much slower in arriving. The table itself arrived the following Friday, and the company's owner set it up, but while his speed was incredible compared to Dad's table, it showed. I hired Dad's installer to come in the following week to complete the balancing.

 

But that has not resulted in my cloth showing up. I'm a patient person, and had I known the delay involved, I may have made a different choice, but an initial estimate of 7-10 days became two weeks, then three weeks and now it's just up in the air. Assuming that the order went in right away, it has now been on order for three weeks with no delivery date set. A quick check at www.nflshop.com reveals that this is to be expected. Had I ordered from them, a 6-8 week delivery is promised. Oh, well, better to get it right.

 

More on that when the cloth arrives.

 

You know, when I started this post (yesterday), I had intended to cover multiple topics. But as long-winded as I became, I think I'll stop this one here.

 

Until later...

Apparently, I've spent an extended period without having anything to say in this space. Have I remained similarly silent in the real world? Heck, no! Side note: I wonder if the MSN censors will allow me to use the word "heck".

 

Back to real life.

 

So I play pool in a pool league every Thursday night. It started as a planned evening away from working a second job and morphed into an obsession. And there I was, on Thursday, March 1st, shooting when a teammate of mine told me that he had been asked by a player on another team if he wanted to enter the Jack and Jill tournament being held in Las Vegas in April. He had to politely decline, but I seized the opportunity. What's so special about signing up for an open tournament, you may ask?

 

Fast forward to Saturday, March 3rd. Dad and I have both qualified for the regional singles tournament that determines who will represent our area at the Singles Championships in Las Vegas (not coincidentally at the same time as the Jack and Jill tournament). Both of us survived our Saturday rounds, and in his final Saturday match, Dad played a regular from the east side of town. While the two of them played, I carried on a conversation with his friend (girlfriend?). I mentioned how lucky I was to be in the tournament but how, even if I failed, I would be playing in the Jack and Jill tournament anyhow.

 

Then I got the rest of the story.

 

It seems that my partner, Beverly, had notified Jorge that she no longer had a playing partner on 3/1, so Jorge went looking for a replacement team. He found one and told them that if Beverly could not find a partner by that evening, the spot would be theirs. Beverly found me, and the hopes of another team were summarily dashed. I felt so bad that, well, I felt bad, but I'm still going to Vegas.

Actually, life has been so busy, I've just been neglecting this stuff.

 

First there was the trip to Las Vegas for the Surfaces convention at the Venetian. Convention? Actually, I went there for the parties. My excuse was to learn some software we installed last year, but as Drew, the company trainer who saw me there pointed out, I could teach that class. But with so much to be there for, we arrived on Tuesday to stay until Friday.

 

On Wednesday, Mannington put on quite the shindig for many of their best customers (one of them being our company). They brought in Jeff Foxworthy who told jokes that, for the most part, I had already heard before, but I loved them anyway. The most entertaining thing of the evening was the themed food. On the main course tables, some of the food was onion rings, corn fritters, sliders and mini corndogs. Then came the dessert. On one tray they had beautifully arranged petit fours and other very impressive treats for our enjoyment. Then came the redneck tray with beautifully arranged Ding Dongs, Twinkies, Snow Balls and Hostess Pies. What a spread!

 

Thursday brought the Longust party at Margaritaville, where I had my annual alcoholic drink (or two...or three). Those, combined with foods that are horrible for someone on Jenny Craig, combined to make me feel really guilty about the night, but let's face it, Las Vegas is not where you go to worry about propriety.

 

This was followed by the three week moving process from Phoenix to Surprise. I swear that I'll eventually have photos of the house up here, but it seems like it's always too dark when I leave the house and too dark when I return.

 

And for this weekend, my excuse will be a pool tournament that will take all my time for a Vegas qualifier. But first a visit to the Peoria Sports Complex for a Spring Training game. Go Mariners!

Okay, so I've decided that having the same old photos, day after day, has become boring. This, of course, is the page I start on whenever I first connect to the Internet, and while I love that photo of Katie and Chad at Disneyland, I've decided to diversify. And while I intend to take a photo daily for inclusion here, that one from Christmas is an important entry because it's the only photo I've taken of Ava which has come out well (I also took one with Eric and Ava, but apparently, I can't hold still enough).

 

Meanwhile, the weight continues to fall. In the most recent weigh-in, I'm down to 387. That's actually hard for me to fathom. I remember a time when I found out that I had hit 350 pounds and was appalled that I had let myself go so much. Now I'm more than 10% higher than that, and I celebrate the loss. Oh, well. The updated chart is attached.

Mainly because I spent a week with absolutely no progress, but I'm back on track. My cumulative loss is at 16 pounds now.

 

And what a two weeks it was. I was so sure that the first of the weeks would be phenomenal because I spent three days eating virtually nothing. I called it the Burglary Diet because after my home was burglarized, I lost my apetite. No such luck. Not eating much for three days meant zero change in my weight. I wonder why that is?

 

I live in an aging neighborhood. The homes around me were built in the 1955-1960 period. Hallcraft, my builder, put up sturdy but rather plain homes on nicely sized lots. Unfortunately for me, I was so disappointed with my home's size, I decided to add a room on the back patio. The door there, unlike the original equipment in the house, is a sliding glass door. The glass in the door was no match for a criminal's use of a large rock (stolen from my yard). They clearly wanted to steal any guns or jewelry I owned, but frankly I don't own any. So they took an old computer, an old camcorder, a DVD player meant for use with a pair of goggles that they didn't steal, a DVD recorder and my pool cue. In other words, most of what I lost was my sense of well being.

 

But did it mean I lost any weight? Nope. Here's to another week of trying.

So the weight continues to slowly come off. The cumulative total since starting to track it is 12 pounds, so it's a start. Sadly, I've been unable to track my own trends in recent months solely because they just don't make consumer scales that can handle my size, but another 16 pounds, and Fry's has one that's rated up to 380. It'll be nice to be back in normal range. An updated chart accompanies this entry.

So here we are in 2007. It's a year fresh with promise, and for me, a promise to get a stupid weight problem under control.

 

I know, I know. Everyone gets that "New Year's Resolution" thing in gear in January but forget it by the end of the first week. But that's not me. In my case, I decided in late November to do something, and something I did.

 

There was a wonderful sequence of Bloom County strips way back when in which Opus wanted to lose weight, so he goes to Milo to ask advice. Milo suggests "how about eat less and exercise." Opus responds that he is a typical American, and he wants a diet where he can remain lazy and still lose weight. Milo suggests liposuction. I wasn't that lazy, but I was pretty lazy. I signed up for eDiets Express which puts together meals for consumption and sends them via Fedex Home delivery on a weekly basis. The food costs $140 per week but shipping brings the total to $170 per week.

 

Two problems: 1) The plan does not account for starting weight. So someone starting at 430 pounds (like me) gets the same meals as someone starting at 160 pounds with the hope of dropping to 140. 2) The shipment has to be sent somewhere. If I send it to my home, it will arrive at some point in the day and just sit in front of my house until I get home (on the day they happened to pick, my arrival time is after midnight). So my next idea was to have them ship to my office. The problem was that since they use Fedex Home (they do not offer any other choice), delivery can happen as late as 8:00 PM, but my office closes up tight at 5:00 PM. In the second week, they did not attempt to deliver until nearly 6:00 PM. I have reverted to Jenny Craig.

 

So here I am, a big month into the process, and below is my progress so far (notably, I did not wait until the new year, and I've kept up so far). Here's hoping for further success.

There are those occasions in my life when making entries here will not happen, not because I forget or don't care, but because I'm just not in a mood to share. Just such a period has recently concluded for me.

 

To be sure, there were plenty of days that made me quite happy. Not the least of which was learning that someone had actually read the words that I added to this page. It's always nice to be heard. Thanks, Peyton. I've had opportunity to reconnect with my daughter and to see my younger granddaughter on more than one occasion, and that can never be a bad thing.

 

But the depressing reality was that with money tight and my daughter working regularly, my life had boiled down to working, shooting pool, watching TV shows and going to football games. In order, the work was feeling tedius, though that has improved lately. The pool was without success. Watching TV is never that fulfilling. And the football team was proving itself to be the most dreadful professional team in existence.

 

I even tried filling some of that time by attending Phoenix Coyotes games only to find that they are as dreadful as the Arizona Cardinals. Finally, I have light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Erica has moved away, but I had grown accustomed to seeing her and the girls less, so while I would certainly like more time to spend with them, this is not much of an adjustment. In the pool department, a period of frustration has finally been capped with a success. I've qualified for the regional singles qualifier for the national tournament. Since the regional match will probably take place in San Diego, it offers the double advantage of creating an opportunity to spend time with the daughter and granddaughters. And the Cardinals and Coyotes have finally remembered how to win. As to the TV thing, I'm going to try to get through tonight with only one hour of watching (how do they save the cheerleader?).

 

Here's to improving life!

How interesting that I would choose to add an entry with this title as the first entry since "Life is Good" went in. Sadly, like many fans, I allow the performance of my football team to influence the moods I display. And since my football team is displaying new and inventive ways of looking terrible, I've been falling into a deep funk.

 

This is despite the fact that good things have been happening lately (not in the football world, but everywhere else). My daughter (the older one) and I are getting along well. We had dinner the other night, and I picked up the older granddaughter. As we waited for the other two to arrive, I happened to mention that Erica was my daughter. This caught Mackenzie's ear, and she asked me to clarify. Was I Erica's daddy? I verified it, and when Erica arrived, Mackenzie was full of wonder. "I didn't know he was your daddy." Isn't it wonderful to observe that point in a child's life where they make a discovery. It was a fantastic moment (at least for me).

 

With moments like that to reflect upon, you'd think that I'd be happier today, but that's just how much the football game depressed me. Oh well, by Thursday, I'll be full of hope again and will expect the team to finish the season with a 10-6 mark. Such are the false hopes of the rabid football fan.

The Cardinals play in 48 hours, and I'm as pumped as I was for opening day. The new season for our pool league started last night, and we led off with a win. Money is not quite as tight right now as it was only a few weeks ago. Overall, life is good.

 

That said, on Thursday, I'll be visiting the worst hotel on the Las Vegas strip, the Riviera, for another pool tournament. This is the Southwest Challenge 9-Ball tournament, and we have a team that I feel really good about. As usual, I am the weak link for the team being a 4, but with my Dad also as a 4 and Michelle as a 3, I like our chances. More importantly, it is yet another excuse for a vacation.

 

Life is good!

So here we are heading into Week 2 of the NFL season, and I can't be more psyched!

 

The summer session of my pool league ended last night with a win (such as it is). We placed third in a league with four teams in 9-Ball. In 8-Ball, well, at the end of the session, we finished in a tie for 6th place in a league of 10. The fall session needs to be better.

 

The Diamondbacks faltered at the end of the season, so they won't play into October (except for the season ender on 10/1). The Suns don't play for another month and a half, and the Coyotes are only starting preseason.

 

That leaves football, and for the first time in a long time, the Cardinals look good. I know I shouldn't stake my happiness on the local football team, but I just get giddy when I think about them winning their next game. Go Cards!

Okay, before I even say anything about the movie, a little bit about the moviewatching experience. My daughter and I went to the Harkins theater at 32nd Street and Bell Road to catch the 9:15 showing on 9/3. A little over an hour into the movie (to those of you who have seen it, it's the scene where the father has unloaded the trunk), something set off a fire alarm in the building. We all walked out until we were told there was no emergency and waited for things to get restarted. After about ten minutes came the announcement that the projectors would not restart and we would have to return later.

 

Katie and I agreed that it was a cute movie so far, and that we wanted to see the remainder, but what I didn't learn until the next evening is that the payoff is well worth the viewing.

 

An already dysfunctional family suffers more setbacks than is reasonable on their way to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in which their daughter is entered. You've seen previews. Just go see this movie. To reveal anything would do the film an injustice.

Earlier this week, Donald Rumsfeld addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention with warnings that people who, like me, think the war in Iraq is a debacle that should be ended sooner rather than later, are a danger to our society much in the vein of Neville Chamberlain prior to World War II. In a tour de force opinion piece, Mr. Olbermann, on his show, Countdown, made me cheer in a room that contained only me and my television. To read the text of his statement (or view the video), go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12131617/#060830b.

The tournament was held last week at the Riviera Hotel (I highly recommend staying there every time you go to Vegas...and are given absolutely no other options).

 

First the discussion of the tournament itself. We won our first two rounds, but in the third round, when we should have beaten our opponent handily by the fourth match, inexplicably, our better 5-Rated player lost to a 2-Rated player. Once that had occurred, our 4-Rated captain had to beat a 6-Rated player which he tried valiently to do but came up short. Two rounds later, I was the goat as I fell 2-0 to a 3-Rated player who was clearly worse than me. In both games, I had a clear opportunity to win and just blew the shots. As a result, the match came down to a contest between a 5 and a 7. And their 7 was as good an 8-Ball player as we saw in the tournament. So we finished in 129th place, earning $1,000 for our effort.

 

While there, I entered three mini-mania tournaments. The first two allowed players with ratings of 4-6. Each time I started against a 6 and lost big. In the third, only 4-Rated players were allowed, and I finished in 2nd place. Overall, I paid $60 in entry fees and won $80 for my 2nd Place finish.

 

In terms of table gambling, I lost a dollar. That's a victory in itself to me. The first time I sat down (Riviera), I won $14. The second time, I won $15 (Binions). The third time, I lost $25 (Vegas Club). And the fourth and final time, I lost $5 (Sam's Town). But thanks to a $20 bet I placed on the Cardinals to beat the Bears (it paid off $38.20), I ended the week ahead by $17.20. And now that I know that Sam's Town sells meals for reasonable prices, I'll never be subject to the overcharging they do at the Riviera again.

 

Now for that negative review of the Riviera. When I tried to cash my sports book ticket at 11:35PM, they told me the system was down for its daily 1.5 hour audit. When I suggested that going down every day was unreasonable, the person at the cashier's window acted like I had no grasp on reality. I verified their system with the people at Sam's Town who reported that when they had an older computer system, they had to go down, too. The Riviera pool closes every night at 7:00PM. Don't even think about swimming in the evening. Want to use the safe in your room? That'll be $3.23 per day extra. Want to go to the exercise room? That's $12 per day. How about the buffet? It's among the most expensive on the strip. It isn't among the best, though. So with four adult males in the room, we wanted a rollaway bed (one would sleep on the floor). The Riviera said no, we already had two double beds (no they were two full size which isn't big enough for two adult males).

 

I'll be staying there again next month because the tournament requires it, but I won't like it.

I tried to watch a couple of movies over the weekend, and, well, suffered for it. Neither was a recent release, so if you're trying to decide whether or not to watch "World Trade Center," I won't have anything here to help you.

 

The first one I tried to watch was "More American Graffiti." Granted, I did not expect it to equal the original, but I expected more out of this film. It was offensive, grating, nothing of what I wanted in a movie. After attempting to like it for 30 minutes, I gave up.

 

Next came "A Fistful of Dollars." Curiously, many people enjoy this film. I found the basic plot so stupid, I just couldn't be expected to continue watching. Sure, it was fun watching him tell gunslingers to apologize to his horse, but the rest of what I saw was so insipid, I wondered why it had been made in the first place. Oh, well. I didn't lose too much time watching it.

The new stadium is finally ready to go. My schedule has been rearranged, and all is ready for a day of enjoying football. I've already picked out which shirt I'll wear. It'll be my long sleeve t-shirt (because it'll be so cold in there). It would be nice to see a uniformed Matt Leinart there, but I know that's rather unlikely.

 

Football season is here again. 21 weeks of Christmas!

I have a most commonly used profanity.

 

When I'm driving and realize that I've done something that is less than ideal, the word will come out of my mouth without thinking. The issue came up last Saturday night.

 

For the record, I did not make an error while driving, but another driver made a very dangerous maneuver in front of me. I was driving toward a movie theater (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby) with my daughter and her sister. When approaching this neighborhood from the west, there is a street that runs north and south that functions as a side street with a straight line access to the theater. Along the way, other side streets feed into this street, but those side streets must stop at a stop sign while the street I chose has no stop sign. As I approached the intersection, a driver decided he had waited long enough, and regardless of oncoming traffic, he was entering. I had to swerve slightly and hit my brakes. Instinctively, my mouth started to form my favorite profanity.

 

My daughter, from the back seat, cautioned me not to utter the word she knew was on the tip of my tongue. I held my...well...tongue. Then I thought that I would explain myself to her sister. Accordingly, I told her exactly which word I wasn't saying (to the horror of my daughter). Suddenly, I thought of the quandry I was putting her in. I had created a goofy story for her to tell, but in situations where parenting responsibilities are split between a divorced couple, often one parent, or both, will burden their children with a duty to keep secrets. To be sure, while my daughter and her sister have the same mother, her sister's parents are still very much the happily married couple, so those dynamics could be quite foreign to her. Yes, all of these thoughts went through my head in the ten seconds that followed my utterance.

 

As I've always explained to my daughter, if I don't want her to tell something to someone, I don't tell her. I decided to share that philosophy with her sister so she knew that she was never bound to secrecy.

 

Now if only the movie had not caused me to cringe with earning its PG-13 rating.

 

A side note about this entry: I'm a bit frustrated to learn that MSN has chosen to enforce rules about allowed language which forced me to alter the entry's title. While I'm a big believer in civility, I abhor censorship. Shame on MSN.

Tonight is pool night. If you read any of the blogs I've had elsewhere, you know that our team lost some players this session when their team from another night joined our league. They are friendly people, and I like them a lot, but I sure want to beat them. Tonight we meet in 8-Ball. As usual, both of our teams will field three 4s against each other with their remaining two facing a 4 and a 6 from our team. Go Road Runners!

Yet another thoroughly uncategorized entry on the old blog.

 

The other day, while browsing a web site, I came across a site selling t-shirts. One caught my eye. It simply read, "YOUR RETARDED." I just had to laugh. I'll have to tell someone so they can get it for me for my birthday.

 

Only ten more days until the new Cardinals Stadium hosts its first preseason game. I'm told that people who know people will be able to attend a scrimmage there on Saturday, but I don't know people, so I'll just have to wait a week. Besides, they're having local qualifying rounds for the singles tournaments this Saturday, and I intend to be there.

 

Time marches on. I'm so glad I've made it to August. Now for the excitement to start.