Haaaapy Anniversary

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Today is the 5-year anniversary of my laser eye surgery. It was a lot of money ($1000/eye), but it was definitely worth it. I now have better than 20:20 vision, and have had zero side effects. I’ve heard of people who have problems seeing at night, or other things like that, but I’ve had no problems at all.

You’d think that my insurance company would be willing to pay for at least part of the surgery, since I will no longer be making $200/year claims for new glasses or contacts, but no such luck. Gail’s looked into it, as have my other almost-blind friends Faisal and Jeff, and none of them is a candidate for the surgery. Of course, all of them have far worse eyesight than I did (I was about -4 to -5 in each eye; Gail is -15 in one and -13 in the other). Faisal has talked about corneal replacement, though it’s kind of experimental now. Gail has also been told that this is an option for her, but not until she’s about 50 (though I don’t remember why).

The NLL has announced expansion (yet again) – Edmonton and Portland will have teams next year. The last time the NLL had two consecutive years with exactly the same teams was 1992 and 1993: the list of changes is here. I’m not sure how I feel about this – expansion is good, though I’m not sure that there’s enough NLL-caliber talent out there to fill up two more rosters. The constant changing of teams may also indicate instability in the league, which is the last thing potential investors would want. Then again, the league just got two more investors in the Edmonton and Portland ownership groups, so they’re obviously OK with it. The strange thing is that commissioner Jim Jennings has stated that the league was primarily interested in joint ownership with NHL teams, and then they grant franchises to two non-NHL-related owners. He did say that potential owners must not only pay the franchise fee ($3 million, I think $1.5 million), but must also have about $10 million in cash available, to avoid another Vancouver, so I guess even if the new owners aren’t involved in the NHL, they have buckets of money, so that’s a good thing.

The Wild Thornberrys Movie

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We rented The Wild Thornberrys Movie the other day for the kids, and watched it tonight. Pretty good movie – the kids liked it, and it was entertaining enough for us too. It’s obviously from the same people who do the Rugrats, which I don’t like, but the potty humour was minimal in this one (other than the wedgie dance, which was actually kind of funny). Interesting fact: the voice of Donnie Thornberry, the “jungle kid”, is done by Flea, bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Blockbuster has this new “no late fees” policy now – if your movie is late, they don’t charge late fees. However, if you keep the movie more than a week after the due date, they charge you the full price of the movie (minus the rental charge), so you’ve just bought it. So, on your rental receipt, for each movie, it says “keep it and pay just $x more”. For example, we rented National Treasure the other night (entertaining, if completely implausible), and the receipt said that for just $24 extra (or thereabouts, I can’t remember exactly), we could keep it. For the Thornberrys movie, the receipt said that we have to pay $3.00 more to keep the movie. Since it cost about $3.99 to rent it in the first place, it comes down to this: if we think we might ever rent this movie again, it’s cheaper just to keep it now and pay the $3. Sounds kind of like one of those fast food specials, where a burger and fries costs $5.50, but the burger-fries-drink combo costs $4.99, so it’s cheaper to get the drink and throw it away than not to get it at all.

Cool clock

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This is a really cool, um, calendar/clock, I suppose you’d call it.

Found it on Wil Wheaton’s blog, which I read every day. He’s an interesting guy, that Wil, and not just because he used to be on Star Trek: TNG, which is probably my all-time favourite TV show. He’s a techie (OK, a geek) like me, and actually created his whole web site (and blog) himself, unlike me. (I created my perrow.ca site and most of nllpool.com myself, but nllpool.com/blog is an installation of Movable Type, stelcoball.com is an installation of geeklog, and this blog obviously comes from blogspot.com.)

Rock head to the final

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For the 6th time in the past seven years, the Toronto Rock are heading to the NLL finals. The Rock beat Rochester 12-10 last night in the eastern division final. Pretty close game – the Knighthawks were leading 7-6 at halftime, but Whipper shut them down in the second half. John Grant was invisible in the second half, Shawn Williams got a couple, but Mike Accursi was shut down completely. The Rochester offense just didn’t get it done. Pat O’Toole played a really good game, but he was just the difference between a 12-10 loss and a 18-10 loss. Funny stat – O’Toole had 4 points (all assists), which is more than Manning, Doyle, or Williams. In fact, only John Grant had more than 4 points.

Right now I’m watching the Calgary/Arizona game, which Calgary is currently winning 9-7 in the 3rd. I figured at the beginning that the final would be Calgary in Toronto. Lewis Ratcliff just scored to make it 10-7, but 3 goals in lacrosse ain’t much, especially with over a quarter and a half left. Another one for Ratcliff, now 11-7.

Gail was away scrapbooking today, so it was just me and the boys until dinner. The weather sucked so we were stuck in the house all day, but I decided this morning that we wouldn’t just watch TV all day – in fact, the TV went off at 9:30, and didn’t go on again until after dinner. Not sure if this was a good move or not – neither one listened to anything I said all day. Ryan’s goal in life seems to be to annoy Nicholas as much as possible, then laugh at him when he’s upset, and Nicholas just doesn’t give a shit about anything, particularly me asking him not to do something. Now, he’s not even three yet, so that’s to be expected, but Ryan should know better — he sometimes strikes me as the kid who’s bullied at school, so he comes home and bullies his younger siblings. However, I’ve seen him at school when I volunteer there, and I know that if anything, he’s either the bully himself, or he hangs out with the bullies. It’s funny though — he’ll bug the crap out of Nicholas, laughing the whole time, then Nicholas will get tired of it and pound him, and Ryan will start to cry and come and tell me that Nicholas hit him “for no reason”. Our rule has always been “we don’t hit for any reason”, but you can hardly fault Nicholas for getting pissed off.

11-10 now with a minute left in the third. I think the Rock will have an easier time beating Arizona than facing Calgary again (not that Arizona will be a cakewalk either), so GO STING!

Ryan does his civic duty

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We received something in the mail the other day saying that someone nearby has lost their cat. It described the cat, said it was a “beloved family pet”, there is a reward offered, and all that. Ryan read this, and asked if we could go to the park tonight, “not to play, but maybe the kitty is hiding there and we could go look for her.”

We couldn’t go cat-searching because Ryan had Beavers tonight, where they helped to clean up the park next to the Beaver hall. On the way home, he saw more garbage on the road, and wanted to stop to pick it up.

He’s such a great kid.

Eastern final set

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The NLL Eastern division final is now set – Toronto hosts Rochester at the ACC on Friday, after Rochester held on to beat Buffalo 19-14 on Saturday night. The game was a lot closer than the final score indicates, sort of — Rochester dominated for a while (it was 10-3 at one point), then let Buffalo catch up, getting as close as down by one (12-11). Then Rochester got 4 goals in under 2 minutes and put the game away. Former Bandit Mike Accursi was on fire, scoring 7 goals and adding an assist, while John Grant scored 4 and assisted on 4 others, and Shawn Williams got 3 and 2. Steenhuis scored 5 for Buffalo.

Rochester dominated the face-offs, and Steve Toll was back to his old self on transition – even the speedy Mark Steenhuis couldn’t quite catch up to him. Pat O’Toole wasn’t outstanding in net, but was better than Chugger, though it wasn’t all his fault either. Buffalo swapped between him and Derek General a couple of times, but General was no better, and Buffalo fans weren’t happy with his lack of hustle in getting to the bench on delayed penalties and such.

So Rochester will play Toronto on Friday, which is probably better for the Rock, in that Rochester has only won twice in Toronto – once in a meaningless game last year, and then there was the blowout earlier this year, but we don’t like to talk about that one.

Predictions:
Toronto 17 Rochester 12
Calgary 15 Arizona 13

Toronto 18 Calgary 11

Graeme on the radio

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I made my major market radio debut this afternoon on the FAN 590 during Prime Time with Bob McCown. Bob was talking about Monday Night Football moving from ABC (where it’s been for 30 35 years) to ESPN. He mentioned that ABC has been losing money over the years, but it was worth it to them because it allowed them to advertise other ABC shows during football. He also mentioned that back in the 70’s when there were only a handful of stations to watch, having people fall asleep while the football game was on was good for ABC, in that when they turned the TV back on the next day, it was already on ABC. Anyway, they decided that it was no longer worth it to them, and ESPN decided it was. Bob said that ESPN figures that they have plateau’ed in terms of subscribers, so changing their programming is the only way to get more subscribers. This is where I come in.

I was driving home from work at the time, so I called in on my cell and was very surprised when the phone actually started ringing (I’ve called in a couple of times before, but always got busy signals). They took my name, then put me on hold for about 10 minutes, then suddenly I heard Bob say “Graeme in Kitchener, go”. I asked him how many people does he think watch Monday Night Football with any regularity that don’t already have ESPN, and consequently, how many new subscribers do they figure this will get them? I figure that anyone who watches Monday Night Football often enough that they’re willing to start paying for it, when they didn’t have to before, then they’re probably enough of a football fan that they’ve already got ESPN. Not only did he say it was an interesting question, but he said he agreed with me.

Anyway, it was my first time ever on the radio, so that was very cool.

Oceans Twelve

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We rented Oceans Twelve last night. Not bad, not as good as the first one (well, the second first one, never seen the 1960 one). The bit about Julia Roberts acting as Tess acting as Julia Roberts was really clever, and Bruce Willis’ cameo was more than just a cameo. The story was kind of confusing, but the rest of the movie was good enough to make up for that. The cast was really good – George Clooney and Brad Pitt work well together, and Matt Damon was funny in that one minute he was the confident con man, and the next he was the nervous insecure kid trying to learn from Rusty. Elliot Gould was sufficiently slimy, and Julia had some scenes where she actually looked like a real person, not the beautiful rich woman like in the first one.

I really like Brad Pitt as an actor. He and Tom Cruise are two actors who seemingly became famous because of their looks, and then surprised everyone by actually being able to act. Tom isn’t as good as Brad, but he’s been very good in some of his last few roles (Collateral, The Last Samurai).

Soccer hooligans…again

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I saw some footage of a soccer match in (I think) Spain Italy the other day, where a player mouthed off to a ref and got a yellow card. The fans were not pleased with this, and proceeded to throw bottles and other stuff, including lit flares onto the field. One of the goaltenders was even hit in the back with a flare, but he was OK. This just blows my mind. Who the fuck brings flares to a soccer game? And it’s not like there was just one or two – it looked like at least 20 flares rained down on the field. The game was, obviously, cancelled.

Here’s an idea – fingerprint and take photos of everyone as they enter the stadium, then install hundreds of high-quality (and indestructible) cameras throughout the stadium, so that they can identify the idiots who do this and arrest them. OK, that may be cost-prohibitive, but they have to do something!