Kull's World

Manny being Manny

Great quote from the red hot Manny Ramirez the other day:

"After all this is over, all I want is for my kids to go to college and to be their best friend," Ramírez said. "That's all I want. I don't care about home runs or whatever."

I hear ya Manny!

It's a Jeep Thing!

Quick video clip of Ben enjoying one of his first rides of the year in his Power Wheels Jeep.  He doesn't quite understand the concept of steering to AVOID objects just yet.  As you can see at the end of this clip, he was going for a pile of toys.  He might need a lesson in Driver's Ed from his Grampy, our new fence will appreciate it!

Friday Morning Weigh In #11: More of the same!

Oh yeah, the weigh in thing.  Not much to report, 206.5.  I've been the same weight give or take a couple of pounds since Easter.  And I don't see much changing.  Time to fire up the excuse machine!

1)  Family commitments:  Knock on wood, the last week or so has been good but the 3 weeks prior Caleb was sick a lot and had to go to the doctor or the chiropractor on the regular.  These things put a major fork in the road on the way to the gym.
2)  Spring Time & Yard Work:  I love nothing more this time of year than to get home from work and putter around the yard a bit.  Not even get into a major project, just run the rake across some grass that has some snow mold, or weed a little area of a flower bed, etc.  The weather is getting warmer and I just want to be outside around the yard.
3)  Spring Time & Beer Cravings:  I have never been a "get home from work and crack a beer" kind of guy, but if I ever am, it is in the Spring and Summer.  I love cracking open a beer after (or during) the aforementioned yard puttering.  With a couple beers, comes a few hundred calories that I wasn't taking in during the peak of my weight loss.
4)  Major League Baseball Season:  With this comes tickets to Fenway, and again the beer thing.  And while most of the time I don't drink too much at Fenway, since you know I have a mortgage to pay and seven dollar beers add up quick, but that doesn't stop me from having one or two.  The beer is one thing, the food temptations another.  Grabbing a slice of pizza on the way in is just too convenient, thankfully I am not a huge sausage guy...I'll eat one, but rarely crave it.

Okay, four is enough.  Excuses are like...well you know what they say.  I don't think I will win the contest, but I still hope to get down to 200 or less by "swimsuit season".

A few years ago, this wouldn't excite me....

 

But now  I am beyond fired up about the latest home improvement project at our house.  Of course being in the business, I got a deal on the boiler and the water heater, as well as installation.  I am very grateful for that hookup, which has enabled us to jump into other projects earlier than originally anticipated.

It is nice to know that probably as long as we'll be living in the house, that the heating situation will be taken care of and now we can get rid of the 50 year old dinosaur of a boiler that came with the place!

Stay tuned for more!

Happy Birthday Caleb!

 

Caleb got to ring in his first birthday over the weekend at Grampy's Lakehouse in the Burg.  It was a small gathering with aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.

The big party will be the combo deal with Ben at the end of the month at our house in H2O-Town, but I thought that Caleb deserved his own day before he starts sharing a party with his brother for the next 18 years or so.

Anyway, here he is enjoying his birthday serenade!

Many more pics on my Flickr page.

Friday Morning Weigh In #10: Brought to you by the word PLATEAU

207 LBS
(Previous  weigh ins: 224 - 219 - 217.5 - 214 - 213 - 210 - 208 - 207 - 208 - 207LBS)

I have settled in nicely on this plateau that is 207 lbs, or maybe my scale is just stuck on that digital number and I have really ballooned back to 215?  No, I confirmed on my work scale a couple days ago.  But anyway, nice view from up here, I got a comfy seat and all is well.

Three weeks to go in the contest, some kid that works in the shop has lost 35 lbs by eating less then 1000 calories a day, a far cry from the 3000 cal diet he was accustomed to.  Ouch.  So, I am looking at this like a $50 motivation to get to my personal goal, which is under 2 bills by the "summer season", which I can still do.  But it's a hard time of the year to lose, baseball games and beer, more ice cream cravings with the warm weather, grilling season upon us...gotta focus.  But at least if I know I am not in the running for the cash prize, I can somewhat enjoy myself in Vegas in the food department!

Cheat your way to the top!

The Murph & Sully Effect

Going to Red Sox games at Fenway Park is not as enjoyable as it used to be.  There, I said it.

I love the Red Sox and have loved them since 1983.  My first detailed memory is the day Yaz retired and did laps around the park slapping high fives with the fans.  I cried.  I cried in 1986 when they lost to the Mets.  Of course I had no clue about 1918 or any of that stuff, I was just a 12 year old kid upset his team lost in the World Series.  I have followed the Sox for a long time and always enjoyed going to games at Fenway.  I can clearly remember my first time walking up the ramp in left field when the Sox played the Orioles in 1984.  John Tudor was pitching for the Sox and just as we walked in, Gary Roenike put one into the net above the Green Monster.  Okay, so my love of the Sox and Fenway is established right?

Cut to 2008 and my first game of the year last night.  Let me just say this, if I was from out of town, either a Tigers fan or just a baseball fan taking in a game at a classic ballpark in a historical city, I would have left with the worst impression of Sox fans and the city of Boston.  And two guys caused it.  In my circle, we refer to the typical drunk "that guy" at Fenway as Murph or Sully.  It's a generalization but whatever.  I've had a ten game ticket package since 2004, the same four seats in Section 42.  Since that time, it has been clear to us that the seats directly behind us are scalped for every game.  The majority of time we get yahoos up there.  But last night's twosome, the king of the yahoos.  They roll in about the 3rd inning, glassy eyed, double fisted with beers, already slurring their words.  They approach their seats in the middle of an inning, during the action.  Yet for the rest of the game, any time someone else does that in their row or the rows directly in front of them, they'd curse at the people for doing such a rude thing.  A minute or two after their entrance, I hear "ahh man, the vodka spilled all down my sock".  Apparently the flask they were so proud to sneak in wasn't going to give them much more then a stinky foot.  Damn.  A few minutes later, one asks the other "are you gonna puke?"  The rest of the game, I wasn't sure if I should lean forward and try to take the vomit towards the small of my back, or lean back and hope the force of the puke would ricochet off my shoulders back at the guy.  I would estimate that 1 out of every 5 words these kids (by the way, I am guessing early 20's and doubtful on college degrees) was an F bomb, and that might be a conservative estimate.  At one point one was bragging about all the F-bombs he was dropping at a game last year, "I don't give a F if it's a family F'in ballpark, F your family, I'm at the F'n Sox game and I'm gonna F'n talk shit."  Nice.  Reminiscing about how they've ragged on opposing team's outfielders was popular too "remember that time, you were F'n yellin at Ichiro dude?"  "F yeah dude, F Ichiro, he's not even that good dude, he like doesn't F'n carry his F'n team!"  HUH?

After a few innings of this, my three friends and I were pretty much speechless.  We literally didn't speak, just watched the game, clapped, and shook our heads at these yahoos.  Every inning that passed, every beer they consumed, they got dumber, slurred more, and got louder.  Each round they came back with they complained about the price of the beer.  One of them thought he was cool when he started lobbing gummi bears at the nice female Tigers fan a few rows in front of us.  When she looked back and asked if it was me all I could think was "umm...I am not eleven, I don't eat gummi bears at Fenway".  She asked the idiots, they denied it of course.  If she didn't have a Tigers visor on, I am sure she would received their "hey baby" as she walked up the aisle.  Puh-lease, good chance neither of these kids has ever had sex he didn't have to pay for.  Fortunately for us, they left after beer was shut off in the 7th inning, and despite the Sox losing 7-2, we were able to enjoy the last couple innings.

I could go on and on about their behavior.  But the sad fact is these guys are not unique.  The park is filled with these yahoos now.  They act like they are the biggest Sox fans in the world, yet when the opponent scores 4 runs in an inning, ten minutes later they're asking "wait...when did it get to 4-2?"  I just don't get it, they obviously scalped the tickets, so at a minimum, they paid double face value, about $52.  They consumed about 6-8 beers each during the game , that's another $50-$60 each...at least.  Total time spent actually watching the game and enjoying the baseball?  I'm guessing at most an inning and a half.  They spent more time just ridiculing other people in the section, since obviously they were perfect and the consummate fans.  But why not take that $100 each and go to the local pub where the drafts are like 2-3 bucks?  Why wouldn't they do that?  Because going to Fenway is the cool thing to do, and despite how they acted and how much of the game they actually took in, they'll still go to their $12 an hour jobs the next day and brag about how they were at the game.  They'll even call their buddies during the game and tell them to look for them on TV....21 rows behind the visitors' bullpen.  Yeah, that's a common screen shot.

It's a sad state of affairs.  People complained when more and more women started going to Sox games sporting their pink hats.  But hell, at least a fair share of them are easy to look at and stay quiet.  They probably can't name a player other than Jacoby or Tek, but they don't yell obscenities at every single action the other team takes.  The bandwagon is so full of jackholes.  Man, this weekend will be even worse, since all the Murph and Sully's really bring their A game when the Pinstripers are in town.

I'm proud to be a Sox fan and I still love going to Fenway Park to see them play.  But I am considering bringing ear plugs the next time I go.  Or I need to try and pull some strings and upgrade my tickets to another section.  People try to live up to this ridiculous image of a bleacher creature.  Just enjoy the game.   Man, someone once warned me what winning would do to a fan base.

Where's Caleb?

Where's Caleb?
 

It is about time.  We can now post videos on FLICKR!!!  Woo hoo, this is great news.  Very simple uploading process too.

Look for many, many vids from Kull's World in the future!

I love this video clip, of course Caleb was WAY MORE EXCITED and GIGGLY before we made the move for the camera, as always.  But this one is still fun, and Ben takes it a little too far at the end, but he usually does.

Thanks to Jeff for the heads up on the new Flickr feature!

The Best Show on Televison will live on!!!

Go Dillon Panthers!

This is the best TV related news I have heard in a long, long time...and thankfully we are loyal DirecTV subscribers.  I wonder how the story will go now though.  Riggins and Smash are both graduating and are two main characters.  Hmm...I still can't wait.  As long as the Coach's Cougar wife is still on the scene, it's all good!

Thanks to Jeff for the tip.  Would that be a "hat tip"?  I still don't know some of the blogging lingo!