Just Plain Chips

My favorite baseball player growing up, Kirby Puckett, died from a stroke yesterday. It is a sad day for Minnesota sports fans, and Twins fans in particular. We was a much loved figure for his entire career here. His image became a bit tarnished for a number of allegations of infidelity and abuse after his career was ended prematurely by glaucoma. But almost everyone remembers him fondly. Especially for one game in 1991.

I remember reading the sports section of the Star Tribune every morning before going to school. Checking Kirby’s box score. Recomputing his batting average and comparing it to some of the other players in the league to see where he stood. I collected baseball cards and coveted his most of all, I probably have 20 or 30 of just him.

My left elbow and forearm are killing me. I had a hockey game last night but I don’t think I got hit in the arm or anything. But I had played a bunch of Guitar Hero on Saturday and then again last night after hockey. Maybe hockey and Guitar Hero don’t mix. I certainly have been known to tense my muscles up while jamming. And this weekend I managed to pass a number of the more difficult songs on the “Hard” difficulty level.

Anyway. Hockey went much better last night than it did three weeks ago. I have been a little sick over the last couple weeks. But I was able to get lots of Dance Dance Revolution in. While DDR may not be the most strenuous workout, it keeps the body moving and it’s fun, so I don’t have a problem doing it almost every day. So being in a little better shape last night helped a lot. We won the game 8-3 and I was +2 on the night with an assist. Not too shabby.

On Saturday, Steve, Linzy, and I went to the Gophs vs. Ohio State game, thanks to Chey and her free tickets.

The Gophs were coming off of a bye week after a heartbreaking loss to the hated Badgers and this week were playing what should be a much mightier foe in Ohio State. The first ominous sign was that Ohio State had fans like this guy, Captain Ohio.

How can you compete against a team with freaks like that for fans. I think this guy was in his 50s or 60s. I would love to be travelling around the country watching the U play football games late into my life, but I don’t know if I’ll be dressing like that.

We got there early enough to see the pregame show. My favorite part is right before the team comes out. The band plays “Pageant Fanfare” and marches into place to form the block M. They then play the Minnesota Rouser and rotate and march down the field while in the M.

The game was fun even though the Gophers got beat 45-31. Aside from a few plays they stuck with the Buckeyes pretty well.

One the train ride back to the Mall of America I struck up a conversation with a cute young girl. She was dressed up as Miss Minnesota. The problem is that I don’t know if she was really Miss Minnesota or just dressed up for Halloween. There are factors that point either way that I may go into in another post, but I really don’t know. Oh well. It’s not every day I talk to a stranger out of the blue (I’m very shy), let alone a pretty girl (girls make me nervous) so that was an accomplishment.

That night I went to a party at my friend Gerard’s new apartment. It was a grand old time. There was just as much drinking as any normal party with this group of friends. But this time I decided to try something new and not drink too much. I ignored the slights to my manhood regarding my choices of drinks and quantity of quaffing and just drank as much as I felt I needed.

Pictures to follow.
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Alright, I’ve just got a few random things to get out of my mind.

A couple of nice things about watching the Vikings yesterday was that I was hanging out with a couple of friends while watching and they had the game in HD. Of course, being in HD just made all the suckitude that much more crisp and clear. Kind of like being able to watch someone vomit in smell-o-vision, there was just that extra bit to make it hurt a little more.

At one point Chris and I were discussing how nearly 100% of announcers are either idiots or are plain annoying or both. Not 10 minutes after that, the color guy for the Vikings game started talking about how poor the Vikings were playing and how they just didn’t even seem like the Vikings. They were the “Diet Vikings”. All of us had a hearly laugh at that. And we had to partially rescind our comment about all announcers being bad. Of course later in the game this same announcer coughed straight into his live microphone right as the game was coming back from a commercial. That was the second most entertaining moment of the game for a Vikings fan though.

So I went to lunch at Subway today and I went there at maybe 12:15 or 12:20 with the idea to get there after the initial rush. Mistake I got there 10 seconds before the height of the line length. Oh well. The most exciting moment of waiting in line was when my friend Allison from Texas walked in the front door. I was taken aback for a moment until I realized that Allison had not taken a supersonic flight up from Austin after emailing me this morning and that this was in fact a different girl who had similarities in her profile.

Anyway, that’s about it. Ciao.

It’s not a good sports weekend when the only good thing that happened was that your fantasy football team pulled out a miraculous win even when two of your running backs didn’t play.

The Gophs lost a heartbreaker. The Vikings got creamed by the Bears. Even the Gophers hockey team, ranked Number 1 in the country, lost and tied Alaska-Fairbanks. Sad. Sad. Sad.

My intrepid fantasy football team though, they are the source of my sporting joy. I didn’t really like my team right from the start of the season and I didn’t think I’d be doing very well. But somehow we pulled out four straight wins to start the season. I lost last week but this week something odd happened. I had three running backs that were listed as “probable” to start. Then, on Sunday morning, right before games started, I read that one of them had been downgraded to “questionable”. So I benched him and put in the two “probable” guys. What do you think happened? My questionable guy ripped off almost 100 yards and two touchdowns versus the Vikings and my two probable guys didn’t get a single carry. Perfect. But somehow, in the face of extreme adversity, the rest of the team pulled together and scored enough for the win. It brought a tear to this jaded fan’s eye.

Okay, not really, but it was a surprise. I would have traded it for a Gopher win though. Rrrr.

If you’re curious enough, it’s easy to find information about The Little Brown Jug, the oldest trophy in American college football.

The Univeristy of Minnesota football team had a 16 game losing streak over the last 19 years to the University of Michigan. The Gophers hadn’t won since an upset of then #2 Michigan at Michigan Stadium on the 15th of November in 1986. 1986! I was 10 years old and did not follow college football.

This weekend, the Gophers finally got that 800 pound wolverine off of their back with a big win over Michigan, again at Michigan Stadium, this last Saturday. It was a frustrating but exciting game to watch. The Gophers were always in it, but never seemed to be able to overcome and get ahead. They had tons of huge stops on 3rd down and a few big sacks.

Near the end of the game the clock malfunctioned and no one knew how much time was left. The referee had to keep time on the field. It was very frustrating to watch, and even the TV guys didn’t know the time except for a few occasions when the time must have been relayed up to the booth from the field. Minnesota got the ball with just under 3 minutes left after stopping Michigan. They ran a few plays, even got a first down, but were mainly just going for overtime. Michigan even called a few timeouts in expectation of getting the ball back and trying for one last score. But then, on 3rd and 9 from their own 26 yard line, super backup Gary Russell sprang an outside run for 61 yards to set up a chance for a game winning field goal. The Gophers ran a few plays to the middle of the field and finally called timeout with 5 or 6 seconds remaining. The freshman kicker, Justin Giannini, came on and made the 30 yard field goal for the win. A fantastic finish.

Here’s a picture of some of the Gopher’s planting the U’s flag at the center of the field after the game. I bet the Michy fans didn’t like that.

And, for an extra boost of fun for any Minnesota Golden Gopher fan, the Wisconsin Badgers had been upset 51-48 by the Northwestern Wildcats a little earlier in the day. Hooray!

Okay, so the game sucked but the trip was fun. Here are a few pictures from the weekend (click on the thumbs to get a closer look).

This is looking from the upper deck on the North end towards the South end of the stadium before game time.

Here is a view of the visitor’s section where most of the Gopher fans were seated. Not too many compared to the announced crowd of 106,000+.

Here’s the West side of the stadium during the game. So full of people.

The game was on ABC, so we had the Good Year Blimp overhead.

Here was something cool that the student section did. The Lions had just punted and pinned the Gophs on the 2 yard line (if you look at the scoreboard, they are now on the 4 after gaining 2 on 1st down) with their backs to the band and the student section. The student section went nuts and every one of them put up the signal for a safety. I thought it was sweet.

Alright, I’ll try to run through some things quick here.

Last weekend was quite a weekend for Minnesota football fans. The Gophers pulled out a huge win against #11 Purdue in two overtimes to go 4-0. The Vikings finally played like a pro football team and won their first game of the year against the homeless New Orleans Saints. And as an added bonus the Green Bay Packers lost by one point to Tampa Bay to go 0-3.

My trip up to St. Cloud went very well. It was very informative and very enlighting to see and hear what we saw and heard. It was definitely a sales trip, and a very effective one for the sales team that put it on. But the major part of the trip was meeting with other cabinet shop owners that had bought the same equipment previously. And all of them were honestly excited about the machines they had bought and all of them said that they don’t know how they survived before.

Anyway, one fun part of the trip was the food. The first evening we were there we had a meeting in the Golliday Inn we stayed in. Before the presentation part of the evening we had dinner served to us and it was surprisingly good. I had a stuffed chicken breast. I don’t know exactly what the stuffing was but it was super tasty along with the chicken. And they had garlic mashed potatoes and vegetables. It definitely helped put me in a good mood for the long presentation.

The next day while driving between two cabinet shops we stopped at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called the Ole Creamery. The lunch special was the buffet. But it was unlike any buffet I had ever been at. The first thing on the buffet was a salad bar–that’s normal. And there were some lunch meats, which was different but expected. They also had potato salad, baked beans, and I think a couple other things. But then, the piece de resistance, they had hamburgers and corn dogs! Unlimited hamburgers and/or corn dogs? That’s pretty much as good as it gets. In total I had a salad, two helpings of baked beans, a corn dog, and two hamburgers. Mmmm. Oh and for after dinner, they had an ice cream machine. So I had two bowls of ice cream with caramel, butterscotch, and crushed Heath bars. They were so tasty.

Okay, that wraps up all the food related stuff.

I am flying out to State College, Pennsylvania tomorrow night and meeting my friend Eric. He is originally from Pennsylvania and I met him out in Bozeman. He is a big Penn State football fan and I am a huge Gophers football fan. Last year he and I drove from Bozeman to Minneapolis to see the Gophers play the Lions at the Metrodome. So this year we’re flying out and meeting in Pennsylvania to watch the game there. I am really excited about it. Beaver Stadium seats over 107,000 people. I can hardly imagine seeing a game with that many people.

Well, I’m headed to the Gophers game this afternoon. They play the Colorado State Rams today at the Metrodome. Chey got me a few tickets from her work and I invited Chris and Paul to come along with me as they are both alumni and football fans. The outcome should be a win for the U and a fun afternoon for everyone involved.

Enjoy your Saturday.

The college football season started last night. And the Gophs started their season with a bang. A 41-10 victory over the mighty University of Tulsa. But don’t let the score fool you too much. There was never really any doubt who was going to win, but the Gophs didn’t manhandle the Golden Hurricane as much as they probably should have. Laurence Maroney, on the first play from scrimmage of the game, ran 67 yards for a touchdown. Then at the end of the 1st quarter he rattled off another long run for a TD. But after that nothing too exciting happened. The defense played well, except in the 3rd quarter when Tulsa looked like another Big Ten team.

Overall, fans will be happy with a win, but one would hope that the team will be able to take some things away from this game and get better. Maybe it’s good that they didn’t play perfectly. If that had happened maybe they would have been overly confident. I know that Coach Mason wasn’t happy with the whole game and he’ll be letting the team have it in practice this week. He was ranting and raving on a number of occasions over on the sideline.

One and oh, baby!
(Go Bowling Green!)

I finally got my first few holes of gold in today. Chris and I went to Hyland Greens in Bloomington on a beautiful sunny day that only got into the upper 80s while we still played. Hyland is a par 3 course with 18 holes, a short 9 and a long 9 and is only $10 for 9 holes. For some reason the course was empty today, we couldn’t believe it. We played the long 9 and I must say I shot about the best golf of my life.

I know people that are worse golfers than me, but I have always been very erratic and I have no strong parts of my game. Today everything was a little more consistant than normal and every part of my game was a little stronger than normal. I started off the first two holes with great tee shots and had chances for par but missed them and ended up with bogeys. I am always happy with bogeys. I ended up bogeying the first 5 holes in a row! It was unprecedented. Almost every hole was the same, a close approach from the tee, a chip shot way too good for who was shooting it, and then a two putt for the bogey. I was very excited.

But then, something happened on the 6th and 7th holes. The old Brenden came back. I shanked my tee shot on the 6th, then shanked my second shot. And then everything went as the rest of the day had gone: nice approach, nice chip, two putts for a 6. Nearly the same thing happened on the 7th hole. I hit my tee shot out of bounds. Way out of bounds. Over the fence and into the street! If I had shot it two seconds later it would have hit a very new looking SUV. Luckily it didn’t but only bounced off of the road about 30 feet in the air and into the yard across the street. Yikes. I took my drop and the rest of the hole went okay and I ended up with a respectable (for me) 5.

The last two holes were back to my great day. On the 8th both Chris and I hit tee shots just to the left of the green into a bunker. His was a little short of mine. He chipped out very nicely to within about 6 feet of the pin. Seeing this must have inspired me as I stepped up and chipped out to about 8 inches! I’m pretty sure it was the best sand shot of my life. I had a short, but nerve racking putt for par. Which I made, which made me very happy. The last hole went something like the first 5 holes. Approach, chip, two putts for a 4.

Chris of course did better than me. I think he’s better at me at pretty much any athletic activity that we both participate in. It’s quite uncanny. But I was very happy with my round. It was a beautiful day, I got some sun, I got to see Chris. What a day!

Here’s how the score card looked:

Hyland Greens Long 9

Par was 3 for each hole for a total par of 27.

This is a continuation of the story started here.

Alright, after the fun ride into town Tim and I met Cari in the hotel and we all just kind of hung out at the hotel for a while before our first game. We finally left for the rink and we were about the first ones there from our team. We signed in and were handed our jerseys. Tim asked if they happened to have number 9 since that’s what he had worn before. They got him his 9 and I asked “While you’re at it, do you have number 7?”, so I got my number as well. Cari considered getting number 8 to make us a consecutive trio, but she stuck with number 6.

The team was quite an interesting collection of guys. There were a few from Detroit and a few from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the UP). After a little getting to know each other banter (but not all that much) we headed out to the ice. I was a little nervous about getting out there. Some of the guys on our team were pretty good and had played much higher levels of hockey throughout their youths–not to mention they were much closer to their youths than I am. But once we got out there, I was back on defense, I felt pretty comfortable. No one out there was so good that I felt I didn’t belong on the same ice.

The first game was a really close one. We won 3-2. I was +2 with a couple of shots. I didn’t allow a goal while I was on the ice, which is my main goal as a defenseman, so I was pretty happy with my performance.

I wish I could write more but that’s all I have in me for tonight. I tell you–something comes up every night. I wanted to go on a run and write some tonight but I had to go through a bunch of my stuff to pick out things to go to Matt and Jenny’s garage sale this weekend. Oh well, until later. Hopefully I’ll get to write tomorrow. Brian is coming into town. We were going to see Kasabian at the Fine Line but it’s been frickin’ cancelled! I’m not too happy about that.

Just a quick note before I turn in for the night. I had a great weekend playing hockey and seeing a couple of old friends. I had four games this weekend and my body almost didn’t make it. My back is a mess of knots. I had tons of fun though. The competition was much higher than I’m used to but I kept pace really well and even had a couple of goals. The defensemen I burned today on my way to a goal supposedly played for the Vancouver Canucks of the NHL. So that was fun.

Anyway, a great time was had by all, but I need my rest, I’m hurting bad.

So last Friday was a good day.

When I woke up on Saturday I was excited for the weekend and to watch the Gophers on TV again. They had let the game escape from their grasp against Michigan the week before but they would come back and run the table starting today.

As Steve and I have discussed many times before, the lower your expectations are about certain things, the more likely you will either be happily surprised or at least not too disappointed. I didn’t realize that I was setting myself up for a fall.

The first discouraging thing of the morning was the broadcast crew for the game, it was Andre Ware and some other dude who I don’t remember. They had done the game against Northwestern a couple weeks earlier and I didn’t really like them. The next discouraging thing was a stat that they put on the screen that I hadn’t heard before. The previous 11 times that the Gophers had played (and lost to) the Wolverines of Michigan they lost the next game, no matter who it was or where they played. Hmmm, that’s not good. But hey, now is a good of time as any to break that streak.

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When last we heard I was sore from hockey and heading towards a tailgate party before the MSU Bobcat’s football game. Well, it didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it.

First I was running late from hockey and trying to take a quick shower. Then I got a phone call (a wonderful birthday wish from my parents), then some people we were meeing to go to the game with weren’t ready. Rrrr, it all added up to not even making the kickoff or first touchdown of the game, let alone the tailgating before hand. Oh well.

The game itself was mostly fun, as are most football games in an outdoor stadium. Though we actually missed the best plays of the game while heading to the game. The defence made an interception and then the offense turned the opportunity into a touchdown. That’s pretty much the only thing that went right the whole game for the Bobcats. They missed at least 2 short field goals and really couldn’t get anything done. I was pretty happy that I don’t have anything invested (emotionally) in this team, it could be a long season. Since we missed the tailgating Steph and I had to pony up for some overpriced, not-that-good concessions food. Even my old standby, the big soft pretzel, wasn’t that good, it wasn’t all that soft!

I said that the game was mostly fun. It would have gone a long way towards “completely fun” had the weather cooperated or had I actually brought appropriate clothing. Before too long the sun started dissappearing behind gigantic clouds and the wind started to pick up. It had been a beautiful morning so I had stupidly only prepared for a beautiful day: I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and open toed sandals. When the rain started falling in the 4th quarter, Steph and I decided we had had enough of watching a football team we really didn’t care about and headed for home.

Ouch. Hockey is fun but losing 10 to 3 hurts. Especially when you’re out of shape and sucking wind the whole time. Especially when you have a stiff knee and sore groin from basketball the morning before. But I did get an assist. A puck was drawn back to the point (I’m a defenceman) on a face off in our offensive zone. A defender was coming to cover me so I had to get a shot off quick. I turned and fired a pretty hard shot in the direction of the net. It was way off target and heading for a teammate. He wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way or to get his stick on it. All he had time to do was turn his body a little bit as the puck hit him in the hip. His turn deflected the puck right into the open net! I was pretty excited.

Now I am going to a tailgate party before heading to the Bobcat football game, my first one. The party day has begun.