Why an animal abuser deserves more jail time than a guy who kills someone.
Today I had to turn off the local sports radio station because it pissed me off so much. The discussion went something like this:
Michael Vick abused some dogs and got sent to prison for two years.
JR Smith was recklessly driving and killed a guy and got sent to jail for 30 days.
Therefore, the criminal justice system says dogs > humans.
The “Big” Ultrasound
Tomorrow we have what I usually refer to as “the big ultrasound.” People call it a level 2 ultrasound or an anatomy scan. It’s a long, very detailed ultrasound where they, well, as you might have guessed, check the anatomy and make sure everything is where it should be and in good shape.
Naming a kid is fun!
So, it’s still really early (19 weeks today), but I’m pretty sure we’ve decided on a first name for the kid. It was surprisingly easy, and I think the name is totally awesome. If anybody cares, which I doubt, I’ll maybe let you know what it is after our big ultrasound on Friday (after which we should know that everything is okay with little Jose Mesa). We came up with quite a few good options, which I’ll share with you below. The list also includes possible middle names, which we haven’t decided on yet.
As you’ll probably notice, we have odd taste. I tend to like names that are unusual but not so weird the kid will get beaten up or made fun of every day. I prefer names that are not in the top, say, 500 names in the SSA database. B is pretty agreeable and has given me dibs on the first name because we’re giving the kid his last name (after much debate).
Kids are expensive.
You guys, I need to vent for a minute on the topic “How in the Hell Do People Afford Kids?”
Rockies At-Bat Music 2009
Well, better late than never, right?
This is the third year I’ve tried to keep track of the music used by Colorado Rockies players during games (you can read the 2007 post here and the 2008 post here). So, now it’s time for 2009, finally. It was much easier for me to make the list this year thanks to iPhones and the Shazam app (seriously, if you don’t have it, get it — it’s awesome).
The list is in alphabetical order again this year, and I won’t take anyone off who gets sent to the minors (sorry, Jason!) or put on the DL. I’ll update as I get more songs.
Weight (boring, but necessary)
I never talk about weight, mostly because I think it’s a boring subject, but also because I know it’s a difficult issue for many women and I’m always afraid of triggering bad feelings in others. (I guess this is the same sort of thing I have with complaining about anything — I never want to complain about something to anybody who is or might be in worse shape than I am. Like, I don’t want to complain about money to someone who has less than I do [if such person exists] and I don’t want to complain about my job to someone who doesn’t have a job or hates her job.)
The Big Issues
B and I get along really well and rarely argue, so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that we’ve had no trouble deciding on many of the “big” things that go along with having a kid. Here’s where we stand:
Hi!
I haven’t updated since February, which is incredibly lame. However, I do have news. I followed the advice lovingly provided by some of the commenters on my Asshole’s Guide to Insulting Women post, and now I’m 16 weeks pregnant!
So, although I didn’t have any morning sickness (I know!) I was incredibly lazy during the first trimester. Also, it seems that not drinking takes away some of my edge. I haven’t had much to say about sports lately, which I guess is crazy considering what’s been going on with the Nuggets (although let’s not talk about last night’s game or ever mention Jeff Van Gundy or NBA referees). I will be doing my annual Rockies music post soon (I have a list of songs saved on my iPhone — the Shazam app made identifying songs I didn’t know so easy).
Other than that, I guess I’ll be expanding the scope of what I write here to focus on more of the “and life” and less on the “sports.” I thought about starting another blog to talk about non-sports-related stuff, but I’m really lazy and don’t feel like setting up another domain. I don’t plan to become a straight-up mommyblogger or anything, but I have to admit pregnancy and kid-related stuff is on my mind most of the time these days. I feel like I’ve already run out of internet on the topics, too. There are tons of parenting blogs out there, but the ones I’ve found are written by privileged, whiny, entitled, over-dramatic freaks who make up shit to be angry about, and that drives me crazy. There are tons of pregnancy and parenting message boards, but most of those are filled with crazy and/or endless blinkie signatures and overzealous Christians. So maybe instead of taking what’s out there, I’ll go my own way and talk shit about, for example, $1,000 strollers and the fact that we can’t afford to send our kid to the daycare center that’s a block away from our house (but fancypants people who don’t live in the ‘hood bring their kids to this place, because they like the “diversity”).
Oh and by the way, it’s a boy. I hope he won’t grow up to be a Deadspin commenter. Just kidding!
The Amazing, um, Whatever!
So I was just hanging out, watching B make me dinner (I know!) and drinking a Mojo IPA (which is magically delicious). I’m missing Nuggets games and trying to give a crap about two teams from Texas playing each other, which isn’t working. That leaves plenty of room for my mind to wander. And here’s what happened.
I was thinking about the Amazing Race, which is one of my favorite TV shows of all time (my favorite TV show is the First 48, which I guess is kind of a stupid show to have as a favorite, but whatever — I also really liked that show about the bounty hunter from Sacramento who was the awesomest bounty hunter ever and wore a ring shaped like a horseshoe and I secretly want to be a bounty hunter one day but that’s another story). I watch way too much TV, although I will never admit this in person, apparently because I like to try to seem cooler than I am, which is lame.
I’ve also been thinking about dogs a lot lately. In an effort to make our puppy turn out normal and not like Coltrane who is totally awesome except if you try to take him anywhere in which case he is Satan-with-a-capital-S, we’ve been taking her to class. This came as a total surprise to us, but it turns out she’s smart. Really smart! Every week, we go to class and everybody compliments us on practicing so much with her and we didn’t really practice with her much at all. It’s like when you’re in law school and you didn’t actually read the case but you get called on and just blurt out something totally brilliant and everybody freaks out and secretly hates you. She’s so smart you can’t tell we totally suck and don’t really do much but sit on our asses all the time. This made me realize that, holy crap, if we actually did practice with her, well, eventually we’d be able to take over the universe. That’s kind of cool. So I’ve been practicing. I even signed us up for the level-2 class, where we learn some fancy dog stuff and start to get into agility. Although, to be honest, “stay” is really hard. She’s usually too excited to stay. She wants to lick your face and jump up and down and do normal, spazzy min pin stuff.
I’ve needed a hobby for a long time. I don’t really have any hobbies. Maybe going to the gym counts as a hobby, but that’s kind of lame — it’s something I do because I do it, but not because it’s, like, amazing fun. It does take up a lot of my free time, though. But even if you count that as a sort-of hobby, I kind of still need something else. Something really fun.
If you combine my need for a hobby with my smarty-pants dog, it becomes obvious that we should probably get into dog agility. I’m going to check out a meet in a couple months and start figuring out how to do dog agility stuff. Do I have to get ugly shoes? I don’t know. I hope not.
It seems like I’m going off on a total tangent here and I am, but there’s a point I’ll reach, eventually. And that is: What if there was a show like the Amazing Race, but with dogs? Wouldn’t that be the shit? Like, you travel around with your dog and you and your dog both have to complete tasks to get your next clue. Maybe your dog has to get a treat out of a ferret toy or run an agility course or, I don’t know, wear brandy around her neck and rescue someone who was buried by an avalanche in the Swiss Alps or whatever. Of course this is a good idea for me, because I love the Amazing Race but am too wussy to do all the shit they make you do. I couldn’t eat cow brains or drink a gigantic glass of milk after taking 1,000 trains in a foreign country. And I have a really smart little dog who can, like, carry my dead weight and win us a bunch of cash. It could be called The Amazing Dog or something stupid, but I think it would be really cool. It would be a bonus if you could participate without having to fly, because I’m like John Madden in that respect, which would make me a terrible contestant for the actual Amazing Race. But maybe in the dog version, you could just drive around the country in a Subaru. I could do that.
That would be cool. And I bet more people would watch that than some of the shit that’s on TV.
Here’s some music for you.
I just hand picked, for your enjoyment, the top 29 (I tried for 25 but had too many) songs you should be listening to right now.
The first two aren’t really songs, so I’m not including them in the list, but I’m telling you about them because they’re the shit. The bonus items and several of the songs have “bad” language, so beware if that sort of thing bothers you.
*Bonus #1: Feed the Animals by Girl Talk (get it here — pay what you wish or free). This is the greatest musical accomplishment of the last decade. I’m not kidding. Really. Trust me. Go download it now.
*Bonus #2: B’s latest mashup mix (get it here — free).
The rest of the awesomeness is after the jump.
If you like him so much, why don’t you marry him?
Congratulations to Luke Harangody and ESPN on their recent engagement! It looks like the wedding plans are going well, and I like the green Lacoste towels on your registry!
ETA: I just received word that my boyfriend Jon Garland signed a one-year deal with the Diamondbacks. I do not approve of him hanging out with such a team (stay away from Eric Byrnes!), but at least this will bring him to Denver.
Winter X Games = lame reality programming
I’m really disappointed in the Winter X Games, which sucks because I love the Winter X Games.
Last night’s snowboard big air featured four athletes, three from Norway (holla!) and one from the U.S. Two Norwegians went head-to-head and one Norwegian went head-to-head against the American in an elimination round.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I thought the Norwegian, Mikkel Bang, performed WAY better than the American, Travis Rice. However, because the results were determined only by audience text messages, Rice advanced, with 92% of the audience voting in his favor.
In the gold medal round, Rice went up against Norway’s Torstein Horgmo (best name ever, by the way), who won gold last year. Horgmo bobbled his first landing but nailed the second, which the announcers referred to as a “textbook” switch backside 1260. Rice did a double back rodeo 10 and landed his first and dragged his hand on the second landing. Although Rice’s jump was exciting to watch (flips are fun!), my non-expert opinion had Horgmo winning the gold. Audience members voted in Rice’s favor, 78% to 22%.
I’m not going to whine because the guy I thought should win (Horgmo) didn’t win or that the guy I thought should advance to the gold medal round (Bang) didn’t advance. The problem is that it’s really clear what happened in each round — the audience, consisting of mostly Americans watching an event that occurred in the U.S., voted for the American. There is no way in hell, for example, that in any universe, Rice outperformed Bang 92% to 8%.
That’s just weak, and frankly, it makes us look kind of stupid. No disrespect to Travis Rice, but nobody should win a gold medal in the X Games just because he’s American.
Normally in big air, judges, who know the sport and know how to objectively judge jumps, give points for several factors, including difficulty, amplitude, style, and landing. If I recall correctly, last year’s big air competition was decided by judges and audience text participation. Personally, I’d rather have only judges determine the winner, but a determination by judges and the audience makes much more sense than allowing the audience only — a bunch of people who may or may not know jack about judging snowboarding — decide who wins the competition.
I really hope the X Games powers that be change this next year. I don’t see the point of watching what amounts to reality-show bullshit. It’s not like the X Games are the Olympics or anything, but the athletes who work very hard to prepare and put on a good show deserve to have their efforts taken seriously and be judged by people who know what they’re doing.
Birdman is awesome!
This isn’t the best quality video, but here’s Chris Andersen hitting a shot from half court as time expired in the third quarter last night. I love this guy!
Broncos Fire Shanahan
It’s all over the internet already, but in case you haven’t heard, the Denver Broncos fired coach Mike Shanahan today (here’s the Denver Post story).
My response? WOOHOO!!! Maybe I can learn to like the Broncos again!
Here are some dogs for you.
How cute are my dogs, seriously? Please excuse the iPhone photo quality and appreciate the awesomeness of these two, who are pals.
