mcinerney

I am back from our annual guys trip to Las Vegas. We go every year to watch the college basketball tournament. It is a good central place for some friends of mine and I to meet every year. Every year I go to Las Vegas under the assumption that it cannot possibly as fun as the previous year. And every year I come home thinking, it was more fun this year than last. 2008 was no exception.

For the first time in my life I won money that is worth counting. I don’t be enough to really matter one way or the other, so most years I spend a little money and enjoy the games and the time with my friends. This year everything was going the right way. I couldn’t lose in blackjack, the dealer was paying more than I won in Let It Ride and I got 10 of 12 or 11 of 13 basketball bets correctly. That all adds up to good times.

I had played Let It Ride before, but not for very long. I felt like I was buying $50 bottles of Coors Light. This trip was a little different. I set an amount I was willing to lose and stuck it out until that was gone. Except….it never went. I got pretty lucky when I was dealt a full house. As I mentioned, I don’t bet much money, but this bet pays out 11 to 1 and a bonus of $200. It is especially nice when the dealer miscalculated and gave me an extra 33%. That is when you really know things are going your way. A friend of mine warned me that once you start playing Let It Ride and win once or twice, you will dream about it for days. He was not kidding. I have been having “Let It Ride” dreams for the past week. It’s addicting.

In our group of eight guys, I think seven of them flew home winners this year. I’m not foolish enough to think that means I’ll always win in Las Vegas. I know the numbers don’t lie. I have set myself up to lose for the next six trips out there. The good news is I don’t gamble too much so I can never lose too much money. It will always be fun to watch basketball and it will always be fun to hang out with my college friends.

I am not one to wish my life away, but as of today there are 355 more days until Vegas 2009.

We recently moved into a new house. Our old house was quite small and you wouldn’t think we could fit very much stuff in it. That proved not to be true. Luckily we hired movers. We did this for a number of different reasons. First, we sold our house without having a new place lined up. We stayed with at my parent’s house while we continued to search for a new house. This meant we needed to have our belongings stored for us. The bigger reason we hired movers is because I am done moving my own belongings. I can only scrape so many knuckles on doorways, pinch so many fingers between boxes, etc.

The movers worked well. When they arrived at our new house they handed me a list with an inventory of everything that was removed from our old house. I simply told them where to put the box or piece of furniture and checked it off the list. This was actually more stressful than it sounds (it was difficult to keep up with the speed at which movers worked). I’m not sure what we had to pay for this, but I can confidently say it was worth it. We did not have a single item broken or scratched in the move.

I don’t own many really nice / expensive pieces of furniture, but I did own a couple surprisingly heavy things. One was a wooden twin bed that has drawers in it. I remember carrying in my house with my brother-in-law. It was not fun. I also owned a surprisingly heavy desk. It was something I picked up ages ago from an old office building. The desk was huge and much heavier than you’d imagine. After moving it into my house with a friend I remember declaring that it would be sold with the house or movers would have to move it out. The movers moved it out. It barely fit through doorways and again, it probably weighs 1200 pounds. I didn’t want the desk anymore so I had the movers leave it on the curb.

My plan was to hope someone would take it. If that didn’t work, I’d call special pickup to come get it. Literally two minutes after the moving vans drove away, a pickup with lawn mowers on it stopped in front of my house. He unloaded his equipment and put the desk (he had help) in his truck and took it away. He came back for his lawn mowers.

Again, I’m not sure what the total cost was to have movers and to store our belongings (they charge by weight – seems odd, but true), but I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I am currently at the airport in Minneapolis. I personally think airports are great for people watching.

One thing I have noticed recently is that EVERYONE has some kind of “elite” status. What used to be a privledge is now the norm. There used to be a shorter line to get through security for these “elite” travelers….today I found it interesting that the “standard / basic traveler” line was SHORTER than the elite line.

When pre-boarding begins, 80% of all passengers fit in to some kind of elite group that qualifies them to run to the front of the line.

The best part is watching “that guy” try to get to the front claiming he is “super special class elite sky team gold member,” only to find out that everyone else in line is the same. It’s like trying to walk to the front of the line at a club in Las Vegas because someone in the lobby handed you a VIP card.

Me? I just occassionslly fly and don’t fit into any kind of special group. Would it matter anymore? I made it through security quicker than the elite passengers today and boarded the plane with everyone else.

Maybe someday I will carry the gold ALL ACCESS, free coffee, aisle only member card. Until then, there is cheap entertainment at the airport for me watching other people.

I realize it is so very Minnesotan to talk about the weather, but I am going to anyway. I woke up this morning and my car had been outside all night. I got ready for work and headed outside. OUCH! It was REALLY cold. My car said it was 0 degrees.

It snowed over the weekend and that made the roads a little interesting. The roads were manageable and luckily I wasn’t one of the five or six cars I saw in the ditch on the way home from Owatonna on Saturday.

The snow is one thing. The cold is something else. Growing up I was far too cool to wear a hat or heavy jacket. Did the cold really not bother me? Maybe I just grew up to become a wimp. I used to think there was no difference between 20 degrees and 0 degrees. That is simply not the case. 20 degrees difference is 20 degrees. The difference between 80 degrees and 60 degrees is the same difference in 20 and 0. In other words, 20 is manageable and 0 is not.

It is amazing what we get used to over time. At one time power locks / windows were an “option” when buying a car. Do they still make windows that need to manually lowered and raised? Another thing I have relied on is heated seats and a heated steering wheel. My last car had a heated steering wheel and that became a necessity when I bought this car a few years ago. If I were 12, I would probably roll the windows down. Today, when I walked outside and felt the cold, I quickly started my car and let it warm up for 10 minutes before driving to work (turning the seats and steering wheel heat on as well).

I have lived in Minnesota my whole life. I think it is harder for me to deal with the cold now than it was in elementary school. It starts to warm up in April, right? That’s only four months (and counting) away.

We had our Fantasy Basketball draft and I am bruised and beaten. I hated my team before I even made a pick. Usually we have 11 teams in our league. This year we have nine. I had the eighth pick. I could see what was going to happen and I felt helpless. LeBron, KG, Kobe….Carmello, Agent 0, Dirk…. I was hoping, praying, begging for the team in front of me to let Dwight Howard slide. It didn’t happen. For those who know me, I probably don’t have to continue. You know what happened. I was stuck. Every year I battle between taking players I enjoy and players that I think will help me win the fantasy league. Here I was at pick # 8, not a player on my roster and I knew I was going to hate my team. All eyes in the room were on me. It was like driving on ice and needing to stop. You start to slide, you know you are going to hit the other car and there is nothing you can do about it. Then the words that I will forever regret came out of my mouth….

”I will take Tim Duncan.”

Honestly, I don’t even remember saying it. It’s all a blur now. My options at that time were Dwayne Wade (hurt), Vince Carter (I’ve done the Vince Carter experiment and it was terrible), Chris Bosh (nursing a knee), Boozer (always an injury waiting to happen), Yao Ming (injury prone), McGrady (injury prone), AI (I thought he may drop off because of playing in Denver with Carmelo Anthony), Paul Pierce (question mark with KG and Ray Allen in town), Al Jefferson (new team, carrying the load, etc.), and Amare Stoudemire (coming off a pretty good year). Knowing the next team got two picks, I assumed Stoudemire would be available given the previous year’s stats. He was an I took him. We are two weeks into the season and he is having a terrible year. I went on to take other players all having terrible years (see Luol Deng).

Anyway, the draft is over, we are two weeks into our season and I am 0-2. My team is terrible. Looking back, if all it took for Tim Duncan to become very average was for me to draft him on my fantasy team, I would have done this eight years ago. I would have done my part to help the T-Wolves advance in the playoffs. Maybe it is a good thing I draft Timmy. He’s terrible and I love every minute of it.

Fantasy sports is always fun to play. It makes me care how Damien Wilkins played on a given night. Without fantasy sports, that wouldn’t happen. I do wish my team was better, but what can I expect? The words “I will take Tim Duncan” allegedly came out of my mouth.