The WGOM

Cooking with Gas, er, Charcoal

September 2nd, 2007 by SBG

I'm sorry that I've been neglecting the WGOM, but this moving business can be time consuming and everything. First some stuff on the convention and some other stuff.

I want to get the SBG Convention figured out within the next couple of days. I would like to order $20 seats ahead of time. I have three vouchers left for the $20 seats and I would have, as a door prize, a pair of free tickets for the game. So, you'd have to buy a ticket, but if you win, you would be reimbursed. I also bought a copy of the 1965 World Series SI with Zoilo Versalles on the cover. I want to read it, but I also want to give it away as a door prize. So, there are the three door prizes. If anyone else wants to contribute a door prize, feel free to do so.

If you are absolutely in, send me an e-mail at stickandballguy at hotmail dot com. I would like a firm commitment and a promise to pay me for tickets (and I'll send you my address so that you can pay me ahead of time, which I would certainly appreciate). I'll order the tickets on Friday. A list of renegers will be posted at the WGOM. You don't want to be on that list.

Below the jump, I've got some details about the move and a few Twins thoughts.

We got moved in on Monday and I had a bunch of work at the office that needed to be done, so I spent most of the next two days there. We soon realized (like right away) that our air conditioner wasn't working. Turns out that we need to buy a brand new air conditioning unit, something that will cost us north of $2000. The sellers never disclosed the problem and they moved to Texas. Plus there's a problem with the furnace that our inspector did not catch. Ah, the joys of home ownership. I'll be in a cranky mood for a while dealing with the people I need to work with to get these problems solved to my satisfaction. Meanwhile, we've been sweating a whole helluva lot and the forecast calls for more sweating, as the temperatures will reach 90 next week. Fans can be your friend.

The neighbors (most of them) seem to be rather friendly (and big). The guy across the street, as I believe I mentioned before, brought me a six-pack of beer last Friday. The people to the East of us gave us a bottle of wine. Very thoughtful. Anyway, the guy across the street is a big dude. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not small. This guy is a lot bigger than me. Turns out he played offensive tackle in college for the hated UND Sioux. He's a super friendly guy and probably didn't know until it was too late that life and football are a lot better in Fargo. Anyway, his next door neighbor is another big dude. Yep, defensive lineman at Kansas. And his next door neighbor (and brother-in-law, by the way) was a middle linebacker at Utah. He played for Jim Fassel there and they all got onto the field when the Giants played the Vikings courtesy of the head coach of the New York Giants.

My UND buddy loaned me some tree cutting tools on Saturday. I've got a lot of yard work to do to get the place in shape -- that is commensurate with the rest of the neighborhood. I did a lot of cleaning out of overgrown crap on Saturday, but the yard has some weeds and well, I can't do everything in one day. Sunday morning, I noticed as I was making breakfast that my neighbor to the West was out spraying a few weeds. I realized after a while that he was spraying weeds on my yard, which is an indication that he's not too pleased with the state of the yard. I hope he killed a few weeds, but I get the feeling that he was motivated less by neighborliness and more by a hope that the weeds didn't spread into his yard. I'll be hanging out, I believe, with the people to the North and East of our place.

On the advice of our trusted citizen brianS, I went out and got myself a Weber One-Touch Gold grill. I also bought a lighting chimney. One crumpled up piece of newspaper under that sucker and in 10 minutes I have some seriously hot coals with no lighter fluid. I haven't had a chance to sample the great recipes that Banjo has written about in his widely acclaimed On the Grill™ feature. I was going to grill a couple of steaks on Saturday, but when I got to the butcher shop, that thing in my pocket was a cell phone and not a wallet, so I made a few hamburgers when I went home shamefacedly. Tonight I grilled up a pork tenderloin that was pretty good. Ah, the flavors! I look forward to it all.

I've been without Internet access at home for almost a week (Monday till today), so I've missed out on the WGOM. All the work around here caused me to miss a string of games, but I caught the last couple innings of Baker's near perfect game. In the long disappointing season, Baker's performance was certainly a highlight.

I was listening to Patrick Reusse and Top Jimmy on the radio this morning and the subject of blogs came up. They both were quick to point out that they don't read blogs -- no siree, they're above that. Then, Brad Lane made the comment that the "blogs" were still "drinking the Kool-Aid" before the Cleveland series and saying that the Twins had a chance, but by Wednesday they had completely changed course. Ol' Patrick and Top Jimmy laughed. Silly bloggers. Of course, this here is no blog, it is an online magazine (and the World's Greatest, at that), and here we proclaimed the Twins dead on July 25. Pat and Jimmy aren't reading LENIII and Joe C., but you can bet they've made the obvious distinction between lowly blogs and the WGOM.

This entry was posted by SBG on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Personal. It is one of 2465 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.