Place Boot Here

After being sick most of the week, Carolyn suggested she was well enough again to get together and watch the Oscars on Sunday night. We both figured that by that point, despite having lingering congestion, she probably wasn't contagious any more. So we got together and watched the awards. Of course, I had only seen the two mainstream, big budget movies up for awards in The Bourne Ultimatum and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. Michael Clayton and No Country for Old Men have been on the agenda for a while, but being both to cheap to go to the movies, and more comfortable at home, I haven't had much of a window to see them yet.

And then 6:00am Monday came waking up like a wall had just hit me, and my nose dripping like a faucet. A few more hours of sleep seemed to clear things up, and for most of the day I felt just fine. But by the evening, my nose was running again at full drip, and my head in general begin to feel like a fish tank full of mucous. Three days, and plenty of OJ and Contac C later, the nose has dried up, and I'm just left feeling like I'm walking around under 20 feet of water. Just sitting up at the computer without feeling dizzy is a welcome accomplishment at this point.

Despite the sun getting higher and higher in the sky, its still something like -20 out today, so lazing around the house doesn't seem like the worst fate in the world for one more day.

Spring Training

I wish I could get invited to take part in a spring training camp. Not with the hopes of making the team, or even for the chance to toss a ball with the pros, but simply to get the hell out of this cold weather.

Cleaning the car off at 3 in the morning when taking Carolyn home has lost all of its novelty. As have the snow covered streets that seem to have been neglected by plows for at least the last 3 snowfalls, and one rainfall that served to polish the layers into a hard, rutted, suspension destroying mess. Save a couple dollars in taxes by not having the plow go down the street, cost hundreds later in having to prematurely replace shocks and struts. But at least we have RIM Park to show for our tax dollars.

I suppose there are sillier ways to restructure taxes.

And at least no-one around here is paying elected officials to analyze performance enhancement in baseball in as long and drawn out a public sham as possible. I would be shocked to see anything more than stern warnings and a tap on the wrist come of it all. But then, GW needs a sport to come back to when he's done fucking the rest of his country in a year. Better to have his attention on anything but politics I say. So, welcome spring training! Time to go get some home opener tickets.

And I'm still looking for you fantasy baseballers. Info is in the previous post.

Pro Bore

The NFL's version of the all star game is the most useless one in all of pro sports. I understand that in football with the players playing through injury as they do, playing an exhibition game mid-season is more of a penalty than anything, but why bother even playing the Pro Bowl? Does anyone actually care? Why not just make it like John Madden's Horse Trailer, give the players the distinction they deserve, whether they are injured and unable to play or not.

Its not that the other pro sports offer a substantially better all-star 'game', though they at least do offer better showcases in the home run derby or the slam dunk competition. And baseball even took the step, after that awful tied game in Milwaukee, to make the actual game mean something, giving home field advantage to the winning league in the World Series.

Hockey did its best, with mixed results, to make its talent exhibition better this year. I actually didn't see a second of the breakaway competition, but even the game itself tends to be filled with some dazzling plays.

The Pro Bowl misses the boat on all these things, and comes across like an afterthought the week after the Superbowl; something to placate the Sunday football hangover for some, for others, ruining chances to see the local pro basketball team play an actual meaningful game.

EDIT: Also, in the sports vein, I've set up a Fantasy Baseball league for this season. If you can commit to actually managing your team til the end of the season, feel free to join.

ID: 41506
Pass: void
Draft: Live draft; March 22, 12:00pm EST

Enough

10-15 cm of wet, heavy snow last night, another 10-15 forecast tonight, this shit can stop any time. I'll take a -15 degree weather with not a cloud in the sky to this any day. Of course, the positive side of zero for an extended period of time would gain an even better reception. And if the city could stop plowing 4 foot deep snowbanks up onto the sidewalk that would be great. Between the way the Chinese elm on the corner has to be trimmed back for hydro, leaving half a tree leaning towards the house for the day it falls, and the snowbanks plowed up on the sidewalk every winter, it would be fantastic if the city just claimed their three feet of property space and re-routed the sidewalk.

Anyways, enough of the bitterness. With some help from Steve, I've got another batch of homebrew on the go; this time the Coopers Home Brew Lager. The 'Real Ale' overall didn't disappoint, but I am not one of those people who can settle on one beer to call their own until their death. Or even until liver problems cause me to ease up. As I had hoped from the start, the $22 and time spent to make roughly 3 cases of homebrew turned out to be a great option in the face of spending $30 a case from the store. It was good enough even that Steve decided to go in for a quarter of the latest batch. Three quarters of three cases in three weeks time for me should be more than enough anyways.

The Economics of Disease

I came across this article on the CBC website this morning in which a study claims that healthy people are more of a financial burden than obese people or smokers.

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000 US, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000 US, and for smokers, about $326,000 US.

Now, on beginning to read the article, I was willing to believe that because of the longer life expectancy of 'healthy' people, the cost incurred by them could be greater in the long run. However when I saw that the difference in the average life expectancy was only 7 years, and further saw a $50 000 difference in overall cost I became skeptical.

Since the study only covered costs from age 20 on, I subtracted that 20 from the average life expectancies, and divided the average cost of care for each group into those expectancies. This works out to a seemingly even more absurd result, that healthy people have a health care cost of $6520 per year for the years between 20 and death; an average higher than that for the obese and smokers at $6180 and $5720 respectively. I haven't gone and dug out the actual study itself, but something would seem to be amiss here. The only explanation I see is that healthy people in Holland are apparently a bunch of hypochondriacs. But clearly I am missing something...

Nachos and Chili

Chili is followed closely by pizza as the most popular superbowl serving. Ironic given the prime sport interest of most in Mexico and Italy, a game actually played predominantly with...feet!

No comment there on the watered down, over smoothed, flavourless, North American beer that will be consumed in even greater volumes than chili. My homebrew doesn't fit the flavourless, over smoothed, or North American characters, but high volume consumption is a given.

Pats, 35; Giants, 31; me....who can predict?

Update: 9/11 still has its carry-over in the sports world as well. God bless America in the middle of baseball games still, and every year since, a depiction of the Declaration as part of the Superbowl leadup. One has to wonder how many of the viewers out there actually pay attention to, or think about the words contained within, particularly in the beer and food atmosphere described above. Showing it under that setting likely has more tendency to incite blind patriotism, rather than critical thought and well considered patriotism.

Anyways, the Patriots of New England are about to take the field, enough rambling.

Crocodile Rock

After getting to sleep at 4:30 this morning, I dragged my ass out of bed again at 9:30 to hop on Ticketmaster in time for the 'onsale' of tickets to the Elton John show in town next month. Somehow, despite being a fan since she was 15, my mom has never gone to a show, and wanted to be sure to get in on this one. At 9:58 on my computer time (tickets were officially on sale at 10) I had access to buy tickets, and by then already could only buy a single ticket, not even a pair. I had thought about grabbing a block of 4, or two pair, and selling the ones my mom wasn't going to use on eBay, but when I could only get 1, I decided not to push my luck.

The show sold out within half an hour (the Aud isn't exactly a huge venue), and after that, there were already tickets for sale on eBay at 3 for $1800 for the cheapest seats in the place. I don't know what the market is like for single tickets, but I should have gone back for some more singles. I'm sure I could have gotten at least $300 more than I paid.

I'm sure I fared better though than people who were lined up outside the Aud last night already in hopes of getting tickets. 16 hours in the wind and cold and forecast 25 cm of snow, to maybe have the line move fast enough to get your tickets in the first half hour, or sit half naked at your computer, grab your tickets and be done with it. That's what you get for not having even a little faith in technology.