Road Trip

Like Lindsay Lohan Coming Out Of Rehab

Today’s strip of the Soxaholic centers around a couple FRS fans chatting on the phone about how now that the Sox are starting a nice home stand after a rocky road trip they should have an easier time catching Tampa and making the playoffs. In the second to the last panel one says to the other, “We’re kidding ourselves aren’t we?” The punchline in the last panel is this post’s title, “Like Lindsay Lohan coming out of rehab.”

The way they have been playing lately I haven’t been kidding myself. Often when you are watching a baseball game you can pick the winner, sometimes it is really obvious, like one team having an eight run lead, while in close games the winner can be foretold by the intangibles, line drives just squeaking by fielders or bloops landing just out of reach, etc. This can be extrapolated to whole seasons as well, and in this Red Sox season they just can’t catch a break (as long as you don’t count Jacoby Ellsbury’s ribs.) According to the math wizards over at the Baseball Prospectus, as of today, the FRS only have a 26.98664% of making the playoffs.

Today at work I verbally threatened to stop listening to them to a couple people, but I guess I’m too much of a fan to jump off the bandwagon because here I am in front of the PC listening to the WEEI broadcast. And right now I’m glad I did because they are beating the Angels 6-0 in the sixth.

Also I might have totally missed a rarity in the baseball world. If you have ever been to a minor league baseball game, invariably the PA guy will play the sound of breaking glass when a player fouls a ball out of the stadium towards the parking lot, so the crowd will think the ball broke a car window. Well tonight, Red Sox outfielder, Darnell McDonald hit a home run over the Green Monster in left field and actually did break a window in a car parked on Lansdowne Street. Quick thinking announcer Joe Castiglione, after making the home run call said, “I guess he is going to have to call 1-800-GIANT,” giving radio broadcast sponsor Giant Glass, who’s slogan is, “Who you gonna call when your windshields busted?” an extra, but very appropriate plug.

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Zombieland

This is the explanation for those of you with puzzled looks on your face over the post titles this past week.

Last Monday the FRS had a day game, so in the evening, while Donna surfed her usual cooking, home or reality shows on TV, I decided to watch a movie from my Netflix queue. This movie was there because several of my co workers had seen it and were talking it up as something I just had to see, so to appease them I added it. Now I don’t watch a lot of monster movies to begin with and zombie ones are even at the bottom of that pile, but once I got watching it though, I was hooked. And it turns out it is more of a road trip slash geeky guy wins heart of attractive female romance flick than a zombie movie. Plus nobody told me it was a comedy!

The narrator of the movie is a college student that credits his survival of the zombie apocalypse to the strict adherence of a set of rules, which is where the last 7 titles came from. Not all the rules are actually in the movie, some came from trailers and other promotional items, and the list is not complete. I guess that is why they are going to make a sequel. So we can know what Rule #5 is and #10 and so on.

01. "Cardio"
02. "Double tap"
03. "Beware of bathrooms"
04. "Wear seatbelts"
06. "Cast iron skillet"
07. "Travel light"
08. "Get a kickass partner"
12. "Bounty paper towels"
15. "Bowling Ball"
17. "(Don't) be a hero"
18. "Limber up"
21. "Avoid strip clubs"
22. "When in doubt, know your way out"
29. "The buddy system"
31. "Check the back seat"
32. "Enjoy the little things"
33. "Swiss army knife"

On a side note, I thought that the lead actor/narrator, AKA Columbus, looked familiar and it turns out I had just seen him in another movie a couple of weeks prior. The title of that movie was called Adventureland. I wonder if every movie he will be in will have somethingland in the title? And Little Miss Sunshine is growing up nicely.

As long as you don’t have a weak stomach, sorry Donna, I recommend you see Zombieland. At least once.

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Bad News Bear

We visited my sister and her husband in Hendersonville, NC yesterday afternoon and today. This morning Donna and I did a little geocaching around the Blue Ridge Community College campus. It was nice modern campus that obviously placed more emphasis on academics than on athletics comparing the buildings that house classrooms and the baseball field.

There was a cache called Bad News Bears here.

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Mr. Jetson? Your Car Is Ready.

They finally started opening on Saturdays, so we took a little trip. Did a little caching along the way too.

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106,000 Patrons

Once a year Donna and become golf fans, we watch the Master’s on TV. I guess because we have been there in person…

On our way home from Georgetown this morning we made two quick caching stops to pick up the last DeLorme pages we needed for the eastern part of the state. And just outside the town of Eutawville (YOO • tah • vil) the Emperor passed the 106,00 mile mark.

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Spellcheck Anyone?

Sign on the wall outside a Breakers, a convenience store, near Marion, SC.

Four for four on Friday. Thirteen for 14 with one change of heart on Saturday and we can cross off 4 more counties and four more DeLorme pages.

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Page 20

Burned up almost a full tank of gas and drove around 300 miles just to find an ammo can hidden near the Museum of Western York County. We found 7 others today, but the Museum was the real objective, you see, it is located on Page 20 of the DeLorme atlas of South Carolina.

Tonight after entering all the data and running the macro that produces the image on the Challenge Page appears broke. It showed we only had 3 pages completed, a far cry from the actual 34 we have done. I updated GSAK the other day and when it did it gave a warning about backing up your database because it was going to be making big changes. Those changes must have hosed something in the macro.

Because we drove all that way just to fill the square, I manually photoshopped the image and hacked the HTML to make it look like it should. Only then did I think that maybe I should check the forums to see if the macro had been updated, it had. At least I’ll be ready for the next square.

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