Random Ramblings

I have a lot of things on my mind, so it's time for a brand new random ramblings. 

* At Sunday's Grammys, the Philadelphia Orchestra won the Best Orchestral Performance award defeating the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra among others. Mark your calendars for Sunday, April 24th when the Pittsburgh Penguins travel to Philadelphia to take on the Flyers. This is clearly a revenge game and bigger than hockey! If things aren't settled on the ice, look out for July 28-31 when the Pirates host the Phillies. I expect the entire city of Pittsburgh to rally around and support the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra against their foe across the state!

* My fantasy/rotisserie baseball league had its 32nd draft over the weekend. I wasn't in the league during the first year, but this is my 31st year in the league. It's amazing how much this league and the other people in the league have been a part of my life. And yes, I wrote about my two championships here and here and hope to write about another one in October.

 

* We're looking to go to Canada this summer, so I needed to renew my passport, and we had to get passports for the kids. Passports are really expensive! It's like the US government doesn't want you to leave! Since the kids' passports expire in 5 years, we are definitely going to go somewhere else internationally before then. I don't care where or when, but we need to get use out of these passports. Just for fun, here's a passport photo of me, probably around the time of when I started in the baseball league. What a shirt!

* Luigi had kindergarten orientation recently, and I have mixed reactions to this. While I can't believe that he's going to start kindergarten this fall, I am really looking forward to not paying for preschool anymore. The next day, I took The Moose and Pedro Tulo to the elementary school where they spent the day with the before and after-school staff during a teacher workday. Luigi was with me since I dropped off his brothers before taking him to preschool. He thought he was going to stay and continued to ask me where Pedro Tulo's former kindergarten teacher, who he met the day before, was. Unfortunately, he wasn't close to saying her name correctly, and I had no idea what he was talking about. A bit of a meltdown occurred as I got him back into the car and during the drive to preschool. He absolutely loves his preschool, but he's ready to go to school. And of course, he was completely fine when I dropped him off.

* If you couldn't get "Fancy Like" or the Cheers theme songs out of your head after hearing Applebee's commercials, I give you Robert Palmer's "Simply Irresistible" or "Simply Irresist-A-Bowls" 

Have a nice Opening Day!

Early NCAA Tournament Thoughts

* I’m 1 for 3 in my tournament picks thus far with Davidson losing to Maryland and Texas Tech falling to Boston College. Good start, Sean! At least I picked Louisville correctly.

* Stanford, thanks for showing up. For all the people (like me) that thought you did not deserve to be in the tournament over Drexel and Syracuse, you proved everyone right.

* Conversely, no one thinks Arkansas belongs in the tournament. Even though I agree, I think they will play with a chip on their shoulder and defeat USC in the first round tomorrow night.

* I saw that Metro had a system-wide delay this morning and reading about Arjewtino’s commute confirms my belief that I picked the perfect day to take off work.

* I am devastated. Applebee’s used the chorus from “It Takes Two” (one of the greatest songs EVER) in its commercial for Pick ‘N Pair where you can choose a sandwich and salad (or something like that). First, Panera has had “U Pick 2” for years. More importantly, that song should not be used in an Applebee’s commercial. I hope Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock are getting paid a lot of money.