Hook 'Em! Fiesta Bowl 2009

I've been saying it all day to my coworkers, especially to the lone Ohio State fan amongst us, that the Texas Longhorns let Ohio State score their last touchdown on purpose. Yep, I think the Texas defense let the OSU running back score untouched so that Colt McCoy and the offense would have enough time to go down the field and have a chance of scoring the winning touchdown.

Ohio State was driving towards a winning score with under 4 minutes to play down by two points. If I were OSU coach Jim Tressel, I would run off as much of the game clock as I could and go for the game winning kick with only seconds remaining. Well, that's what I was thinking he would do as OSU crept closer to the goal line. But then all of a sudden, there's a quick touchdown run up the left side of the offense!

I may have not been the only one to notice that the OSU running back went in for the touchdown almost untouched to make it 21-17, pending the 2 point conversion. The color commentator for Fox's broadcast said that the runner went in "easy, too easy."

Perhaps the UT coaching staff thought it would be best to let Ohio State score so as to leave ample time for McCoy and his offense to stage another 4th quarter comeback. Who knows...

Putting the X back in Christmas

I think the use of text messages has apparently brought back the use of "Xmas" in place of Christmas. I know I used it quite often when I wrote to loved ones over the holidays. I've never understood why this written form of Christmas was frowned upon, but it works for me because it does not diminish my love Christ Himself. Folks have said that using this alternative spelling literally "takes Christ out of Christmas" but that's only to voice their concern about the commercialization of Christmas. I can see that aspect of it and it's too bad that their more ignorant compatriots have hijacked this notions for their own gains.

I've seen the use of X in old Spanish documents to spell out a person's name, namely the Spanish equilvalent of Christopher, ie: Xtobal. If folks really pay attention and do their homework, they'll see that the origin of "Xmas" has Greek origins, especially with the Greek letter X, Chi, having stood for Christ for almost two milenia now.

Look it up and you'll find that "Xmas" has a fascinating story that does not come from some commercializing atheist, but from early Christians and how they honored the Son of God through symbols from an ancient language.

Feliz Día de los Reyes Magos

Today marks the official end of the Christmas season with January 6th being the day that the three wise men reached their destination of seeing the Christ child. This holiday wasn't celebrated with too much fanfare around my family except for maybe the 6th being the day when we would finally put our pino out of its misery. But it's a big deal in other countries, like Mexico and Spain.

Ten years ago I had the luck to do spend a semester abroad in Spain. I arrived just prior to the Día de los Reyes so I was able to partake in the Rosca, the traditional pastry that holds within it, a little plastic baby (Jesus). Whomever finds it is said to have an extra bit of luck the following year. My memory of el Día in Madrid is a little fuzzy as I arrived with a head cold, which if you've ever flown with a cold, is made worse by having spent several hours on a plane.

Feliz Día de los Reyes Magos a todos mis amistades que conocí Madrid, en el Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona y también a todos mis queridos amigos que me llevaron por la bella ciudad de Granada. ¡Os hechos de menos!

Blue Norther!-- 25 Years Later

While checking today's weather forecast from National Weather Service Fort Worth office, I came across a nice write-up about the coldest December on record for the Dallas/Fort Worth in 1983. The region went through a cold snap that brought temperatures upwards of 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than normal with the entire month's average temperature 4 degrees colder than any other December in the record books. Fortunately, I was not in the Metroplex at the time, but I do remember this event fairly well, even in South Texas.

I was in fifth grade at the time and it was the last Friday before Christmas break. There was talk of a big cold front coming that day so I looked out a north facing window and saw this line of anvil shaped clouds off in the distance. Needless to say, I went to school prepared with a jacket and recall that there were very few of us who brought jackets to school that day. Well, what do you expect with the mild temps that greeted us that morning.-- I would venture a guess that it was a very windy 60-something that morning. I might have felt overdressed when I got dropped off, but I was so happy that I had brought a jacket as the thermometer's bottom essentially dropped out even before lunchtime. We didn't get any frozen precipitation that time around, it doesn't happen all that often anyway, but I do remember how surprised and shocked my classmates were because of how cold it had gotten that day. It was a blustery cold rain. I was one of the lucky ones to have a jacket and I was happy that my family watched the weather report that morning!

RE-elect John Cornyn for US Senate

This is not an endorsement for Mr. Cornyn, but being that he is running for RE-election to the United States Senate, I just find it odd that there is no mention of him being the incumbent or anything to that effect in his campaign's television ads. His campaign ads are full of rolling, Texas landscapes and how "Washington" is not working. What I find disheartening in all this is that he has been a part of that "Washington" which he refers to for the past 6 years and says that "It" needs to be fixed, yet he never mentions any of this. So what part of Cornyn + Washington + 6 years is he afraid of? Is he afraid that he will get lumped in with the rest of the GOP who have been blamed for the current economic downturn? I do not know, but he's been a decent senator from what I have seen these past 6 years.

All I know is that his campaign is pretty slick to run these ads without the mention of his previous six years of office as Texas' junior senator. He and his campaign must think that his constituents do not know what is going on. They must assume that because he does not say he is running for RE-election, that this is his first go at the United States Senate. Of course none of what I am saying will keep him from being RE-elected, but I just want to offer my kudos to his campaign staff for pulling a fast one on us.

Getting Bad Helmet

I wonder if folks are noticing that players in the NFL are losing their heads, so to speak, on a regular basis. What I mean is that players are getting their helmets knocked off with the slightest of hits. It's been something that seems to happen at least once a game. And I think it's getting done on purpose. Lemme esplain...

The NFL has a rule that keeps players from purposefully taking off their helmets on the field of play during or in between plays. If someone takes off their helmet, it's an automatic 15 yard unsportsmanlike penalty. The League has this rule in place to keep the players from getting self promoting notoriety in a game that it has deemed as being team-first, with the individual being somewhere further down the line. I get the concept. There isn't a particular player who is the "face" of the league like you can see in the NBA. That's why elaborate on-field, post touchdown celebrations are frowned upon. See Chad Johnson's and Terrell Owens' penalty inducing celebrations.

So in light of this hinderance, I think players are doing is making their helmets fit loosely on their heads so that way their helmets will fly off "accidently" with the slightest breeze, err... tackle to gain some sort of face time. Normally I would say that this is done to circumvent the rules, but it may backfire because I've seen two players over this past NFL weekend get injured because their loose fitting helmets come off too easily and they end up eating turf. Let's hope guys see what's going on and try their best to keep their hats on because it's in their best interest to be as safe as possible in such a violent game.

As T.O.'s World Turns

The Dallas Cowboys lost a somewhat crucial game to division rival Washington Redskins, yet it is what was said afterward by its star wide receiver that's gained greater notice. Terrell Owens made it clear to the team that he wasn't thrown to enough in the game which in turn made the Cowboys lose.

Well, if he had said that after last week's game, where he only two passes, he'd have a legitimate gripe, but the thing is that they won. T.O. caught seven passes, had maybe two running plays, and was thrown to on several more occasions. An analyst on one of the Sunday football shows said he was directly involved in 20 of the 61 total plays ran by Dallas, which roughly equates to one-third of the team's play calling being for Terrell Owens.

I'm obviously disappointed in the game's outcome but I am more disappointed in T.O.'s words after the game, especially having seen some of the best teammate driven plays in last week's win over Green Bay. In one play, Owens popped a block for rookie running back Felix Jones and then escorted him to the end zone for a long rushing touchdown. The second play shows not only his speed but his grit. QB Tony Romo had just thrown another interception deep in Packers' territory, perhaps 15-20 yards in front of Owens. Yet as the interceptor ran back for an apparent score, here come T.O. veritably out of nowhere to help bring him down, perhaps saving a touchdown.

Two great plays showing hustle and teamwork. So maybe the reason why T.O. was miffed was because the Cowboys' loss tainted the upcoming release of his new exercise book which was slated to take two days later.

Rangers vs Yankees- Texas' highwater mark

The Texas Rangers finished a four game series with the New York Yankees last night with a 3-0 loss, to split the series 2-2. About a month ago the Rangers beat the Yankees by winning two out of three games in New York. The Yankees were in a mini slump at the time and have played much better since then. So when the Yanks came to Arlington to play a four game series, I took the series to be a precursor of how far along the Rangers have played so far and what to expect the rest of the way. If they played New York well I thought they'd have a shot at making the playoffs via the Wild Card.

To me this series would show me how good or bad Texas really is. They won the first two games of the series with bats-a-blazing, but New York's pitching extinguished the Rangers' hot scoring to hold them to 2 runs in two games with the 4th game being a shut-out. So what they showed me is that they can beat a good team if the opponents' pitching is mediocre and they can hold their own against an equally offensive minded team when faced with a top shelf pitcher. For example in game 4, the Rangers' starting pitcher gave up 2 runs in 7 innings. Not bad for a pitching staff that's not known for keeping opponents from scoring.

With all this said, I think Texas has an outside chance of making the playoffs this year. After the Yankees' series, they're heading out east to play Baltimore in a 3 game set and then Boston for 3 more before they host the East leading Tampa Bay Rays (still want to call them DevilRays) for the first 3 games of a 9 game homestand. Even if they don't come back from out East 3 out of 6 this time around, they will have laid the groundwork for next season. This team has shown that it can come back from 5 or 6 runs deficits to win games, and for all these young guys to experience these comebacks shows what they have the skills to be successful.

Daily Pendejadas- The High Five

It never ceases to amaze how such a beautiful and majestic feat of engineering and architecture has its shortcomings, but Dallas' High Five interchange between I-635 and Highway 75 is a prime example of this.

The westbound flyover off 75 to 635 West goes from a wide open and free flowing northbound NorthCentral-75 to a surprisingly and annoying glorified cattle shoot. It is a piss poor design, if you ask me. I don't understand how it's convenient to merge four lanes of exiting traffic into two lanes all within a few hundred feet. Even in the lightest side of traffic, like it happened to me the other, you can find yourself getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper gridlock without trying because not only are the northbound lanes of exiting traffic trying to get onto westbound LBJ, there's another set of two lanes exiting from southbound 75 trying to go West as well!

It really ticks me off. Why was that design settled in such a way? Who signed off on it? Who left their common sense at home the day the those two flyovers were settled on?

Texas Rangers Shine in NYC

The Texas Rangers' representatives to the All-Star Game events showed some grit and some big pop. The grit came from the bat of Michael Young as he drove in the game winning run on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 15th inning. I am sorry to say that I didn't stay up to see that take place as I went to bed right after the American League couldn't win the game in the 13th inning.

The pop came from Josh Hamilton's bat with 28 home runs in the first round of the Home Run Derby Monday night. Though he didn't win the derby as he spent most of his energy racking up that gawdy tally of dingers in first round, Hamilton won over a mostly New York Yankee crowd with his bombardment of big flies that reached the reaches of the right field uppermost deck on a consistent basis. He three longest shots were more than 500 feet, with a couple of them clanging off the wall past the bleachers in right field.

In final round against Minnesota's Justin Morneau, the usually partisan Yankee crowd did their best to cheer Hamilton onto a derby win. Hamilton's story to reach the All-Star game, much less the homerun derby is one of perseverance and faith. A few year back Hamilton was under the influence of a drug-infested lifestyle, while addicted to the likes of meth and crack. Yet, here he is, wowing a baseball savvy crowd.

Needless to say that I'm so very proud to have these guys on my baseball team. I look forward to an exciting rest of the season, and do I dare say it, an exciting run of winning baseball in the years to come with the Texas Rangers.

Cool b-day gift- BEER!

I got some really cool gifts for my birthday the other day. One of them was a tattoo that I've been wanting to get since I got my first one in 1999 and one of my favorite movies on dvd, The Right Stuff. I'll probably talk about the significance of my tattoo at a latter time, but I wanted to get to my cool set of gifts.

The gift consisted of beer, but not your garden variety of domestic brews, but 5 different German-made beers. Four of them are hefeweizens, or wheat beers, which is my favorite type of beer. When I lived in San Antonio there's a place I used to visit exclusively for their wheat beers. Ever since then, I've come across alot of really good hefeweizens, including Paulaner, Franzikaner, and one of my all-time faves, Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat. But after trying one of my gift beers, I may have to fork out a nice chunk of change to enjoy these premiums weissbiers on a regular basis.

This is what I got:
Weihenstephaner: Hefeweissbier, Dunkelweizen, Kristallbier, Original
Schneider: Weisse

I haven't had a chance to drink all of them as of yet, but after having the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, I am so looking forward to the rest of them!

Perpertuating Perpetrators

I don't like to get involved in local politics, but with what happened during a Dallas County commissioners meeting last Tuesday, I have to say something. First off, I've respected Commissioner John Wiley Price in some way since I've lived here in Dallas, but after what transpired, I may have to take back some of my respect.

During the aforementioned meeting, fellow commissioner Kenneth Mayfield called Dallas County's central collections office a "black hole" because of the propensity of the office to lose traffic ticket payments and other paperwork. Well, Mr. Price took the low road and equated this statement as a racist diatribe. I don't know Mr. Mayfield so I can't say that he would be one to say a racist remark, but what Mr. Price said does indeed have a racist inclination. I say his rebuttal is somewhat racist because he thought it as much. It's that making a mountain of a molehill type of thing. Any nonracist thinking person would not have thought Mr. Mayfield's comment as racist and would have probably laughed with him considering the office's misplacing tendencies. Now, if Mr. Mayfield had said that the central collections office is a black hole like a "specific, predominantly Black neighborhood of Dallas," then I'd say he deserves all the flack he's catching right now.

What Mr. Price's statement also shows is his ignorance. If you ask anyone, Black, White, Hispanic, or whatever, if the statement made initially by Mr. Mayfield had any racist connotation, most if not all would say it is not a racist statement. A black hole, if anyone would be asked, would say something along the lines of cosmological term for the remains of a collapsed star where nothing can escape, matter and even light. What Mr. Price is doing is perpetuating the race card where none exists. In his mind, the only thing that can escape a black hole is a supposed racist remark.

Too late to dream? Inspired by The Last Lecture

Having been inspired by Randy Pauch's The Last Lecture, I've reflected on some things and came up with a list of things/dreams that I've always wanted to do and see. I call them Mis Diez Cosas, my ten things. I've done and seen a few of these from the list, so there are some that still need doing, but I may not be able to do them all.


Mis Diez Cosas

Snow
Mountains
Get a Corvette
Be an astronomer
Go to Argentina
Go to Spain, Barcelona
Snag a redhead
Chase tornadoes
Participate in Los San Fermines in Pamplona
Do the pilgrimage Road of Santiago de Compostela


As I kid there were two things that I wished to see: mountains and snow. I saw my first mountain range at age 9 and did not see any again until after I turned 22. The funny thing was that in each instance they were the same mountains of northern México. Mountains would be on my horizons when I visited Monterrey and Saltillo once a year during my university years and then again for my short stay in Spain in 1999; which is where I saw my first snow, albeit on the ground, in my first few days there. Although my first snow fall occurred in Dallas, the most memorable snowfall was on my 31st Christmas: a white Christmas in South Texas.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted a corvette and probably will never have one. At least I drove my uncle’s a couple times when I was in high school. There’s something about that car. Ask my dad. He’s always wanted one too and he’ll tell you that when I was a kid, I could spot one coming down the road before he noticed it too. I inherited my dad’s eagle eyes for sure.

My first science fair project was about stars and constellations. Astronomy was been a hobby of mine from early on; I was in 2nd grade for that Stars project. I got my first telescope around that time too: I remember waking up in the middle of night Christmas morning and seeing the telescope sitting in our living room right next to the Christmas tree. You can imagine my giddiness. We didn’t have much money those days, but “Santa” had enough to get me my first telescope. Though math and I never got along for me to do the astronomy thing professionally, but I aim to get one of those 12” Schmidt-Cassegrains to peruse the heavens with my daughter.

I did a report on Argentina when I was in the 4th grade and have always wanted to visit ever since. It was not until I got older that I wanted to go to Spain. We had a foreign exchange student from Barcelona spend my senior year at our high school, where we became pretty good friends, since then had wanted to visit Spain. A little later the 1992 Olympics reignited my wanting to visit and see Antoni Gaudí’s La Sagrada Familia in person. I was lucky and blessed to spend a short three-month semester in Madrid, where I took a few weekend trips throughout the Spanish countryside. The first chance I got I went to Barcelona where I spent a really quick day and a half there. I spent most of my 36 hours or so visiting and staring at La Sagrada Familia. Oh yeah, I stayed with my foreign exchange student friend and her family.

Redheads are a big weakness for me. I had a redheaded roommate in college and she was really cool. I’ve had redheaded friends: so close, yet so far. Gut wretching. I think Mary Ann from the next town over corrupted me forever.

I’ve always wanted to chase tornadoes. Perhaps they are as equally dangerous as chasing redheads I’m sure. I almost went to chase the Jarrell tornado of 1997 with an old friend who used to do it in college. Considering what we were hearing, we smartly opted to stay in San Antonio and wait for the storm to arrive.

The running of the bulls in Pamplona has always intrigued me. I already have it mapped it out in my head: I’m going to hang on for dear life at the very beginning of the run, wait for all the bulls to be a few blocks away and then I’ll take my time getting to the Plaza de Toros at the end. Perhaps I’ll spend one of my birthdays at Los San Fermines.

I got a tattoo of the cross of Santiago a couple months after I returned from Spain. It serves as a constant reminder to one day do the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella across the northern expanse of Spain. A grad school classmate and her husband did it the summer between our two years of our masters of history program. I was so jealous. Maybe I’ll do it one of these years after I’ve hooked up a redheaded Argentine astronomer, bought a corvette, run away from the bulls and chased a few tornadoes.

Please despair!

A few weeks back I saw a TV story about this company making spoofs of those infamous motivational posters and quotes. These demotivational snippets rock. Here are a couple of examples from Despair.com:

Adversity- That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
Attitude- Attitudes are contagious. Mine might kill you.
Change- When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most trivial of things can become deadly projectiles.

And a personal favorite:
Despair- It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

Do yourself a favor and check out the website. And if you'd like to buy me a t-shirt, get me either the "i > u" or the "How can I extract myself politely from this conversation?"

Texas Tornadoes- the real ones, not the music group

One of our local news station meteorologists mentioned that both Dallas and Tarrant counties made the top ten list of number of tornado reports in Texas since 1950, #7 and #9 respectively. Considering that both counties lie in the well known zone of the United States called Tornado Alley, it is surprising that five out of the top ten counties are situated along the Texas gulf coast.

Being that I'm from the Gulf Coast, I find this quite interesting. At first I thought it could be the number of tornadoes that a land-falling hurricane/tropical storm produces as it comes ashore, but the high number of gulf coast tornadoes could just come from the amount of storms produced in a given time period. Think about it, East Texas, namely the southeast corner of the state is the wettest part of the start. But consider the amount of tornadoes happening this year all across the country, I've noticed a spike in reported tornadoes in the Corpus Christi area as well.

The Insurance Council of Texas conducted a survey of tornado reports provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This survey confirmed that Harris County, Houston's home county, led all of Texas' counties with 210, almost doubling the second highest count.


Top 10 Texas counties with reported tornadoes from 1950-2007

County----------Location-------Major City-----------#
1. Harris............Gulf Coast.............Houston...............212
2. Hale..............Panhandle ...........Plainview..............116
3. Galveston.....Gulf Coast............Galveston................108
4. Jefferson.......Gulf Coast............Beaumont...............99
5. Nueces .........Gulf Coast.........Corpus Christi............93
6. Lubbock.......Panhandle............Lubbock.................83
7. Dallas..........North Texas...........Dallas....................82
8. Lamb............Panhandle...........Littlefield................82
9. Tarrant........North Texas.........Ft. Worth.................80
10. Johnson.....North Texas..........Cleburne..................79

Click here for an interactive map from ICT.
Sources: http://www.insurancecouncil.org/news/2008/6192008x.pdf
http://web2.airmail.net/danb1/tornado.htm

New Poem

I wrote this a while back and thought I'd share it.

The -line
-----------
You weren’t my first choice,
and probably not my last either.
Yet here you are.

I would’ve never thought you my type:
you tend to be moody and only come
around when it suits you,
rarely acquiescing to me.

But don’t get me wrong,
I’m glad when you decide to play,
although it’s usually when I’m busy
doing other things.

And even then, having been turned off
by your indifference,
I really don’t care for whatever
warmth you care to share.

Most of the time you lay
around waiting for bedtime.
I hope you’d change your ways,
as your fickleness hurts more than me.

Other times I’d like to be with my friends
but there’s a “you versus them” thing
that doesn’t allow that to happen.
I’m a revolving door of over used excuses.

There could’ve been another
if I’d been more patient and vocal-
and believe me,
I could’ve had another.

I’ve left the door open for you to walk out,
and I know you’ve thought about it,
yet you haven’t,
regardless of how bad I’ve treated you.

Nevertheless, I’ve chosen to stay with you,
mess and all, no matter
how wrong you may be for me on many levels.
Sure we can work this out, but only if I want it.

Who knows how long you’ll stay-
perhaps when I’ve gotten tired of your antics
or tired of looking the other way for so long.

You weren’t my first choice and
I wasn’t asked if it was okay to keep you around.
Yet here you are:

The subject of someone’s pity.
Someone’s pet.
The one who usually doesn’t wait up for me-

The fe- line:
our cat.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
f j de g y l
10 III 2008

Negro Leaguers Finally Drafted

Thirty former Negro Leaguers were drafted in a pre-draft ceremony in tribute to those players who were never allowed to play in Major League Baseball. Many former players of the Negro Leagues can thank Hall of Famer Dave Winfield for coming up with this idea. In an article written by Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports, Winfield, who is vice president of the San Diego Padres, recalls a time when Satchel Paige once called him to say that he enjoyed the manner in which he played and hoped to meet him in person, but Paige, one of the Negro League's best players, died just weeks after the phone call.

Kudos to Mr. Winfield and Major League Baseball for arriving at such a touching tribute for all those players who were more than talented to play in the Major Leagues, yet were deemed unworthy to play.

Best Guitar Solos

Here's something that's been sitting in my mind's blog files for a while now and having just read a somewhat similar article in Yahoo!'s List of the Day, I thought I'd put in my two-cents about this. Yahoo! had an blurb listing their greatest 25 guitar riffs of all time. It was pretty good actually, but I have a different take on the guitar thing.

These are solos that not only consist of memorable guitar runs but may also provoke one to play the ever popular air guitar. Here are my favorite guitar solos in rock music, in no particular order:

Hotel California, The Eagles
Don Henley and crew create one Rock music's enduring songs. If I'm not mistaken, the guitar solo is played by more than one person. The acoustic version on the Hell Freezes Over video of this particular song rocks even without the help of electric guitars.

Will We Rock You, Queen
Talk about rocking hard, it's the quintessential rock anthem. I love how the guitar solo slowly crescendos almost from nothing and then hammers onto the scene with the force of a tornado through a trailer park. If you want to get technical, you can get a two-fer with this song, if you include We are the Champions as both are usually played back to back. More bang for your musical buck.

Rock Around the Clock, Bill Halley and His Comets
Maybe this is how rock and roll guitar solos started. That's some mighty fine guitar work here! It's an all-time great.

Like a Stone, Audioslave
We'll see if this becomes a classic but goosebumps usually accompany me when I listen to this one, especially at the solo.

Pride and Joy, Stevie Ray Vaughan
What's a guitar list without one of the gods of the guitar. Check this one out and you'll know what I mean.

What Would You Say, Dave Matthews Band
It's more than just a guitar solo-- the sax leads off and then concludes with a goosebump inducing harmonica riff.

When It's Love, Van Halen
The video for this song has a funny moment especially at the guitar solo. Eddie Van Halen plays the first chord, pauses, scratches his head and then proceeds with the rest of the solo.

Dust in the Wind, Kansas
Though not a guitar solo per se, but the string solo is quite memorable and accompanies great acoustic guitar work throughout the song.

If I come up with a few more, I'll be sure to add them to my list.

Vacation from Reality

I just got back from a somewhat lengthy family vacation. It was great to see my parents, my nieces and nephews and visit with my friends in San Antonio on our return swing back to Dallas. I only wished that my folks had internet access so that way I could've posted something whenever it came to mind and not all at once and after the fact which I'm about to do here.

Courtesy on the Road

Growing up we made plenty of roadtrips throughout Texas and most of time we took the roads less traveled or the smaller, two-lane highways. On these "back roads" there was alot of the letting of people pass, either ourselves or the person ahead of us. And when that occurred, whomever was the passer, up went our hands to show the passee that the move over to the road's shoulder was much appreciated. It happened every time. It happened in each instance. It was highway courtesy at its finest. But somewhere between the years of those memorable family trips and the present, folks are hardly ever showing their appreciative hand gesture. Although having thought about it a little more, the "thank you" wave have been in dwindling over the past several years, but on our way down to South Texas, I did not see a single "thank you" wave when we moved over to the shoulder to let folks pass us by! I'm happy to say that I waved thank you whenever someone moved over for me.

NBA Playoffs- The Champs are Defeated

The good thing about the San Antonio Spurs losing to the Los Angeles Lakers was that I only saw two complete games from beginning to end: that 20-point blown lead in game 1 and their game 3 win. Being that we were busy visiting family, we caught only fleeting glimpses of most of the series, which was a good thing because I hated to see the Spurs lose to LA. But I will give the Lakers this much, they were the better team, top to bottom, and they deserve to make it to the Finals after making those personnel moves to finally get over the Spurs hump. The Spurs looked like the old team they really are and only beat the New Orleans Hornets because of pure pride. I still haven't made up my mind who to cheer for in the finals. I could cheer for the Lakers because they beat the Spurs and to prove that Kobe doesn't need Shaquille O'Neal to win a championship. On the other hand, I would like to see Boston win so their "big 3" could finally win a championship. Either way, I expect this series to at least go 7 games unless the Celtics cannot win a road game in Los Angeles.

Putting the Guilt in the Trip

On our return trip back to town we visited our friends in San Antonio and I got my share of guilt thrown at me from a couple of my friends for living so far away. First off, one of my friends gave me her subtle shade of guilt like she usually does whenever she sends me an email. This usually consists of telling me that there's a few houses up for sale in the neighborhood where she and her husband live. Of course this feeds directly to my wife's line of thinking. Anyway, it gets worse.

We went over to visit my daughter's godparents. Mind you, each one of them has a Ph.D. in their field of expertise, so they're alot more driven than me. [On a side note, my compadre may ask me to draw him his maps for his upcoming book on the Spanish-French borderlands in what is now eastern Texas and western Louisiana.] During our visit, my daughter's godmother point blank asked me why we're still in Dallas. Having been caught off guard by the question, I didn't come up with any convincing reason. But having thought about it a bit, I figured it was because of my job. I really like my job and I doubt that I'd find a similar type job in San Antonio with the experience and degree that I have at this point like the one I have now. It's complicated really. It's all grey area. Perhaps it could be for a similar reason why I moved to SA in the first place.

NBA Playoffs- Spurs vs Hornets

The San Antonio Spurs dispatched the New Orleans Hornets in a rare game 7 win for the Spurs. Now the Spurs face MVP Kobe Bryant and his Los Angeles Lakers team. It should be an entertaining series. Let's see what the Spurs have left in their tank.

I read Johnny Ludden's article about Greg Popovich and the Spurs and a couple things stood out in my mind. The first thing that caught my eye was that he noticed that both Chris Paul and David West did not stop to shake their opponents’ hands after the game. I can understand the Detroit Pistons doing that to the Michael Jordan led Chicago Bulls after they finally lost to them in a tough, hard fought series in 1991, but the Pistons were the "Bad Boys" of the NBA in the late 1980s and briefly into the 1990s, so that sort of gamesmanship was standard for them. But the Hornets doing that to the Spurs? Gees, that just sounds like they let their youth and inexperience show them the way. Sure, they'll get their chance in the not too distant future to claim their championship, but leaving the court the way they did, Hornets showed that they never really respected the Spurs, and maybe that's why they lost the series.

Ludden also pointed out NBA commissioner David Stern's apparent dislike of Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs. It's sad that he would rather see his most storied franchises meet in the NBA Finals in the Lakers and Celtics, and their television revenues, than a franchise that epitomizes teamwork from top to bottom. It is unfortunate that Stern's more worried about his bottom line.