Big sports day again.

I'm about to head off to The Cell for the Sox game. If it's on TV, you can always watch for me in left field behind the bullpen. That's where our seats are. I'll have my white Sox cap on, but I may be bundled up too much to notice it... :)

After the Sox game, I'll be heading to Illinois Bar & Grill with my buddies from the neighborhood to catch the Marquette-Kansas game. Go Golden Eagles! Hopefully it's a good day for sports. :)

Well, thankfully the White Sox won today. Unthankfully, my brother and I were not there. We arrived at 3:10 or so (for a 3pm game), knowing full well there'd be a rain delay going on since, well, it was raining pretty good. We stuck around for maybe an hour, until it got really bad. We surmised, based on the fact it wasn't letting up and past rain delays we've been at, that they weren't playing. So we decided to leave. We were soaked when we got back to our parents' house (we took the El) and then found out they'd started. Oh well...we've got 35 more games to go to this year, starting with tomorrow and Sunday. :)

I will say, the park, with its smaller-scale renovations, looks aesthetically nicer. It's the little things about it that make the difference. It's amazing what a little color will do to the comfort-level of a ballpark. What was cold and bland now looks all right. But then again, I never had a problem with Comiskey/U.S. Cellular Field (from here on out referred to by me as "Comiskey" or "The Cell") to begin with.

All this, by the way, after I stayed up until 5:30 am trying to vanquish the damn Indians in Civilization III. I finally wiped them from the face of the Earth and looked up, and it was 5am. Damn. :)

Man, our hockey team has improved big-time. We lost yesterday to the team that won the championship in the previous season, but we hung with them pretty much until the very end. That's two games we've played really well but just came up short in the end. You can totally see the improvement. I know there's a handful of people on the team that read this, so this is not meant to "offend," but I think the main reason for our improvement is the defense. We've finally started to just dump the puck ahead into the zone instead of stick-handling with it and let offensive players, such as myself and Kim, chase it down and set up an offense or take some shots on goal. I can see it on my end, because I'll typically set up on the point on defense, and yesterday I got a ton of passes to me (by both teams, actually) where I could just turn and fire.

I now have two goals in two games, but I keep forgetting how truly hard it is to score a goal in hockey and I get frustrated. I just have to remind myself on the floor that rarely am I going to score--hat tricks don't come every day, if at all. :) A telltale sign of how much better we've gotten is that I've taken probably 30-40 shots on goal in two games this season--compared to far fewer in the previous season. I'm really psyched about this now, because I think come playoff time, we'll be really rolling if we aren't by then.

The other great news: Only 4-5 hours until White Sox Weekend begins. Of course, as I cynically expected, I'm going to freeze my ass off at all three games. Stupid weather.

Also, I stayed home last night and played video games, saving me money but keeping me up until 2 a.m. That's better than the 5 a.m. bedtime I had on Monday, the first day I had Civ III.

I have a dilemma.

(a) try hard to stay home and not spend money?
(b) try hard to go out and not play video games all evening?

Discuss.

Last night's Simpsons made me wonder: Can TV producers pick and choose the reruns they show based on current events? Yesterday, the episode where the comet is going to hit Springfield was on--coincidentally less than a week after the meteorite hit the south suburbs. Was this changed? I mean, it's a good episode, but it made me curious...any TV execs out there want to chime in?

That thought also made me depressed that I'll never (until the DVD comes out) see the episode when Homer goes to New York to get his car, which is booted outside the World Trade Center. That was an excellent recent-season episode. And, I've heard this past Sunday's episode was hilarious, but I missed it and forgot to tape it. It figures. :)

Ahh, mindless work is always good, especially when it's so nice out I couldn't focus at work anyway (though my late, late video-game playing last night probably didn't help my focus either).

I'm currently labeling and stuffing envelopes to send our draft books to about 200 people across the league and world of NFL journalism.

Yay..."24" tonight and hockey tomorrow!

Oh man, my life as I know it is over.

I now have a PC (on loan, if you will) as well as a Mac, and having the PC allows me to have Civilization III, the game I've been wanting forever but couldn't have because my Mac wasn't good enough to run it. So I'm thrilled to death. Or something.

I'm going to go and play Civ III now.

Yeah, so I said a few hours ago that I was tired...but lo and behold, I'm still up. But I think I'll go to bed now, or else my sleeping patterns will get all screwed up, which is a bad thing.

I was looking around on the Internet this evening (after playing Civ II most of the night), and I saw a whole bunch of stuff that just made me want to get my own personal page up and running again...and put this blog on it and everything. Just to make my own little corner of the world once more, where you guys can come, read about current events, feelings, thoughts, etc. but also look into what I was and what has made me. I could put up the genealogy stuff I have and you could learn about my ancestry. Pictures of events (after I fixed my camera, of course), links, creations, etc. Just stuff I could put up on a continuous basis easily and not have to bounce from page to page. I've got pictures of my plants, I could have a plant update and take the same picture of the plants and you could watch them grow (exciting, I know) over time as well. I could take pictures of the furniture I'm building...the step-by-step process--whatever. I could just put all that up in one spot.

It's a shame all this motivation is now going to go to waste, since I'm heading to sleep. Ah well, maybe another day.

Went to a party last night with Barb and Pete at Hopper's house (Hopper you might remember from NU...if you don't, hey, no big deal). It was a good amount of fun, no doubt. I got home around 4am, though that would have been earlier if I hadn't stupidly (and very uncharacteristically for me) left my wallet at Hopper's house. I took it out of my back pocket because it's a very George Costanza-like wallet (fat as hell, and not from cash--from receipts and other crap), and I had to sit on a hardwood floor. When the wallet's back there and I'm sitting on a hard floor, my leg falls asleep. I would blame Barb and Pete, because I told them to remind me my wallet's there if I forgot and they weren't any help. ;) But it's wholly my fault anyway for taking it out. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

So I didn't get much sleep last night, and I'm at work now--as you can see, I'm working hard. I wish it were going to be nicer outside tomorrow, though 50 degrees and sometimes sunny isn't terrible.