Winter Doth Approach

This year's World Series was actually pretty enjoyable for me. But still nowhere near the WS's of yore. I did really enjoy seeing a couple teams play small-ball and do the fundamentals in order to win. And every games except for 1 was right down to the wire. But I really just didn't care all that much about who won. I'm thrilled to see the title come back to the NL where it belongs, but I had no real connection to the Phillies. Good or bad. And nothing for the Rays except the knowledge that it's good for baseball to see a small market team full of kids make it to the show. Each of the last 5 years or so I've had either a team I liked, a team I hated, or some other great sub-plot to draw me in. Something at stake. This one? Not so much. So while I did enjoy watching the games, I felt no compulsion to stay up late to see who won each game and now I have kind of an empty feeling inside. Couple this with the fact that Purdue's football team is getting beat pretty much every week and not being able to watch hardly any Bears games, and I'm hitting a lull. The teams that are doing well I can't see; the teams that aren't I can. It's not fair.

In happier news, last weekend I finally used a 2-year old birthday gift from Hayley and went up for my "Discovery Flight" in a Cessna. It was really cool. I show up at the airport and spend a few minutes talking to the pilot about my background in regards to flying, what I want to do, and how the day will go. Then we stroll out to the plane and hop in. It was surprisingly cramped. Turns out a Cessna 172 doesn't have much room in the cockpit. Who knew?! I then got to taxi pretty much all the way from the hanger to the runway. It's actually a bit tricky to do. You can't use the steering wheel to do anything. It's all done by the foot pedals and a bit hard to get the hang of. Then pretty much as soon as we were off the ground he turned the controls over to me again. He guided me out to a safe area where we wouldn't interfere with planes coming and going and just tooled around a bit. I was much less aggressive than I thought I'd be. We had quite a bit of turbulence to deal with and the plane was quite responsive. So all the jostling and bouncing around took away a bit of my eagerness to really play around. He then let me bring it almost all the way in before taking control just long enough to touch it down. All in all, pretty awesome. And now I'm thinking seriously about getting my license. Trouble is it'd cost about $10k over the span of a couple months to get it. That's a tough pill to swallow right now. Even so, I've already thought about the possibilities of renting a plane to fly to Chicago for trips instead of relying on the major carriers. Or when we have to go to Long Island, that's just a 45-minute flight instead of a 4+ hour drive! Nice.
And with that, time to drift off to bed.
PEACE!!

2008 Campaign

I think something good has happened this election season. As much as I hate the election process we have in this country, I wanted to point it out. After having to sit through 2 elections where the republicans were forced to dance around every issue to protect Bush, we finally seem to be getting into real national-level issues in the debates. Talk on how we’re going to handle the 2 non-wars we’re involved in. Foreign relations with our current enemies and countries liable to become enemies if they aren’t handled appropriately. Details on the 2 candidates proposed tax systems. Turning around our sputtering economy.
During both of Bush’s campaigns it appeared that they had to talk about random crap to try and get an edge. Bush couldn’t speak intelligently on the standard things like the economy and foreign relations, so they had to fight about stem cell research and the place of God in schools. Essentially, moral issues that only affect a small population. And while I feel that some of those things are issues that could be used to select a candidate, they most certainly should not be the key issues.
Everyone has their own personal reasons for voting a certain way. We all have key points that we want reflected in our President. But there comes a time when you have to ask yourself if your reasons are selfish. You have to look at all the things a candidate stands for and decide where you need to make your compromises, and hopefully those compromises are the selfish reasons. The republicans have been very effective at getting people to do the opposite. They really convince people that you need to vote based on personal, moral issues instead of what’s best for our country. Hell, they got people to elect a President that crippled our economy and indirectly caused thousands of people to be brutally killed in the name of some petty moral issues.
So fortunately this election has so far been mostly free of that crap. Joe the Plumber was hopefully nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan hot button McCain used to avoid going 0-3 in the debates. The talk of the candidates’ former associates has been touched on here and there, but has been over-shadowed by more legit issues.
Living in Massachusetts comes with some ups and downs during these elections. One of the more frustrating issues comes from this being a clear Democrat state. There is no way a Republican could ever take the state. Therefore, my vote doesn’t really count here. I can’t really influence who wins, just pad numbers one way or the other. That sucks. As empowering as voting can be, it’s taken away when you know you can’t make a real difference. However, the up side is that I don’t have to put the same level of thought into my vote as I would in a swing state. And this year appears to be one where some thought would be required. I’m 75% sure of who would be the better President, but both sides have some policies that I really don’t like.
Obama’s tax plan is starting to worry me more and more. It sounds awesome on paper. 95% of the population won’t see an increase in tax (35% of which aren’t paying any to begin with). I probably stand to make out a bit better under his plan. And yes, the rich make more so they could be asked to chip in more. But is that really right? Some of those people fought and struggled to get where they are and deserve what they now have. Why should we take away a greater percentage of what they earn? Was America really founded on the idea that we all share everything we make? Hells no!! The founding fathers were all rich white guys that horded their money and never dreamed of having to give 50% of every dollar back to government. Shit, they would have left Britain in control if they knew that’s where we’d be today.
And why should Joe the plumber have to chip in more when he’s only making a quarter of a million dollars a year?! I mean, how can he afford to eat on only $250k/yr?!!

Ahh, that familiar sting of defeat

I had a venting write-up of games 1 and 2 of the Cubs NLDS all ready to go, but I never posted it and now it's pretty much a moo point. (no that's not a typo, figure it out if you want.) The Cubs completely fell apart and were swept by the Dodgers. And not in competitive fashion. They got beat like a red-headed step child riding a rented mule. They got Rodney King beat. They got...you get the picture.
Right now it's more shock for me. I'm mostly through my newly formed traditional bottle of champagne, which is taking the sting out of things tonight. After feeling like I jinxed the Cubs in 2003 by buying a bottle of champagne mid-playoffs, I decided that I'll now buy a bottle at the start of every season, then consume said bottle after the final out is recorded. If we win, it's a celebratory bottle. If not, I get what I have right now. Something tasty and bubbly to let the healing begin. And this is no sparkling white wine. I only want the best no matter how the season goes down.
Quite frankly, the Cubs got beat in every facet of the game. They allowed their starting pitching to lose game 1, their defense to lose game 2, and their (lack of) timely hitting to lose game 3. It's almost poetic in it's futility. And in some ways, the non-competitiveness of the games made them easier to take. It's not like game 6 of the 2003 NLCS where we were cruising along 5-outs away from our first World Series appearance since 1945 and then collapsed. No no, we were never really in the first 2 games. We were winning for a couple innings in game 1, but that was quickly fixed and the Dodgers never looked back. The last lead we had was the going into the top of the 5th in game 1. That's it. Last time. Not even close in game 2, and while we were close on the scoreboard in game 3, you could tell that it wasn't close on the field. We wasted every opportunity given to us. Any brief flicker of hope was extinguished by our futility. The Dodgers didn't beat us; we beat ourselves. In spectacular fashion.
I can't believe we actually hit 100 years. And I really thought this would be the year we did it. I allowed myself to believe again. All year long I thought that this would be it. And now I have to admit I'm not sure that we'll ever win it all again. I really hurts enough that I'm doubting things that much. It's even hard to blame it on the curse this time. There wasn't 1 or 2 moments that you can look back on and say that the curse got us. Maybe the curse was especially strong this year and forced the entire system to fail. I don't know.
And as far as I can tell, this whole October baseball thing is very over-rated. It's been nothing but pain for me in my life. Swept in the 1st round this year and last year. The painful and well-documented collapse in 2003. The beating from Atlanta in 1998. Luckily I don't remember 1984 and 1989, or this would be even worse! I guess it comes down the great debate: Is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all? And while I can't answer that right now, I should be able to give a good answer in about 56 weeks. I mean, we've got most of our starting rotation returning, some great young hitters coming up through the system, and lots of great young arms that gained experience this year. Next year, baby. Next year is going to be the one. I can feel it already.