UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

Ugh…I’m stuffed.

(As you might expect, there’s more on that later.)

Quick-hitters:

- I can’t remember the last time I’ve stepped foot in a CVS.

I’m surprised I haven’t gotten a “Where are you?” email :P.

(Either that, or a “Good riddance!” email.)

- Speaking of shopping, I stepped foot in a Ross earlier today…and stepped out with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!  Then again, it helped that none of the three shirts I tried on fit very well.  I didn’t even think that was humanly possible!

My sisters, on the other hand, did some nice damage to their purses.

Wait a sec…no trips to CVS in three weeks?  No purchases at Ross?  Am I the same person that has been blogging here for the past year and change???

- So earlier today, I made what might have been the easiest forty bucks ever.

The older of my two sisters (Nancy) had a $40 debit card, for which I was going to give her cash—I planned on using it to buy a $40 Amazon.com gift certificate, since I buy so much stuff from Amazon anyway.  When she got here, she handed me the gift card, and then we got to talking about her wanting either a new cell phone plan, a new phone itself, or discounted service.  I suggested that she get in contact with AT&T’s retentions department.

After being on hold for five minutes or so, she whined about not wanting to talk to customer service (apparently she keeps up with my battles with Sprint :P).  She begged me to speak with CS, to which I politely declined.  She then yelled, “I’ll give you that [debit] card if you deal with them!”

One minute on hold followed by fifteen minutes with a VERY knowledgeable rep later, I pocketed the debit card.  In fact, the experience with that rep might cause me to (at the very least) consider a switch back to AT&T.

Yeah, I’m THAT sick of Sprint.

- Over the Fourth of July weekend—I think that’s when it happened—cousin David casually mentioned something about Outback Steakhouse.  I forget the context of the conversation, but I think it had something to do with the best “mainstream” steakhouse out there.

Well, fast forward to last weekend, when Nancy offered to take me out to dinner.  For what occasion, I had no idea!  Anyway, that conversation with cousin David stuck in my head, and because I knew that not making a quick decision would have resulted in a week’s worth of deliberations over which restaurant to eat at (right, Krunk?), I quickly chose Outback Steakhouse.

We got to the nearest Outback at around 7pm, and were seated about ten minutes later (by a very attractive blonde, for the record).  I “settled” on the 16 oz. Prime Rib dinner, and was surprised to see Coke Zero among the drink options!  Nancy had ribs and chicken; my mom had the grilled salmon (the “l” is silent, dammit!); and my other sister (who likes to remain anonymous :P) ordered the steak, scallops, and shrimp dinner.

There is a good chance that my standards of food have gone down dramatically, but I thought the food was, overall, quite good.  It could have been a lot worse, I suppose.  I sampled every dish—and by “sampled” I mean everyone tossed a portion of their food onto my plate—and thought the ribs were quite tasty, the chicken was meh, the salmon (SAM-on, dammit!!!) was very juicy, and the bit of scallop I had was perfect.  My sister’s sirloin steak, though, was not close to medium-rare; it looked almost medium-well!

As for the Prime Rib…it was excellent!  It was so good, I had a hard time handing out portions to everyone else at the table (I’m stingy when it comes to good food.  Is that a crime?).  I could have used some horseradish sauce, though.

Actually, I could have really used an antacid.  Or at least some Beano.

Tags: at&t, cell phone, chicken, csr, customer service, cvs, debit card, easy money, outback steakhouse, prime rib, ribs, ross, salmon, scallops, shrimp, sprint, steak by Peter
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Quick-hitters:

- So I’ve been battling some terrible allergies lately. burning red eyes, sniffles, and sneezing and wheezing have cost me several hours of sleep per night.

I’ve been popping Claritin like breath mints and dropping eye drops in my eyes like mad.

- Quick thought about the rumors that Gilbert Arenas is close to a six year, $120+ million deal with the Washington Wizards: my first thought was that this was WAY too much money for a shoot-first, recently oft-injured guard. Personally, I don’t think the Arenas/Butler/Jamison core will ever win a title.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the contract wasn’t terribly unreasonable, despite the $20 million average annual salary. Arenas is by and large the most recognizable player on the Wizards, and clearly he sells tickets. More importantly, though, if the Wiz let Arenas walk, who are they going to replace him with? Baron Davis?

(More on Davis later.)

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,350, not counting a few hundred in rebates that I have yet to file

- So I logged on to my Sprint.com account yesterday, to check to see if they finally applied the 10% monthly discount to my account that I’ve been owed since January.

Sprint, in their never ending pursuit to amaze the holy hell out of me, once again did not automatically offer me the discount.  I called Customer Service again, got a nice (English speaking!) rep, who put me on hold for about five minutes after I explained what had happened.  When the rep came back on the line, she manually credited my account $3 and “promised” that the credit would show up automatically.

I think I’ve heard that one before.  I will now accept futures bets on the following proposition:

Will Sprint automatically apply the 10% discount to my account on next month’s statement?

Yes +180

No -200

- So as my loyal readers (all none of them) know, Ross has been a source of pain and suffering to my wallet.

I now have another victim of my addiction to Ross:  the other inhabitants of my closet and dresser.  Every time I do my laundry, I shoot for my new clothes first, and what happens is that I become almost reluctant to wear any of my old clothes.  Sometimes I almost feel like doing laundry again after I go through all the new clothing.

There’s clearly one solution to this entire mess:  buy more clothes from Ross

- Finally, in a pretty significant shocker, former Warriors G Baron Davis has verbally agreed to a five year deal with the Los Angeles Clippers worth $65 million, according to sources.  Most people thought that Davis was crazy to opt-out of the final year of his deal with the Warriors, which would have paid him $17.8 million.

(Personally, I thought he was crazy too, but I figured he thought he was going to get a long-term deal from Golden State.  Never did I think that he would land in LA, if the rumors are true.)

So what does this mean for the other inhabitants of Staples Center?  For one thing, if this doesn’t convince Elton Brand (who opted out of the final year of his own deal) to return, nothing will.  Secondly, this all but spells the end of Corey Maggette’s stay as a Clipper; I thought he wasn’t a great fit with the team anyway.  Most importantly, a healthy Davis (not a safe assumption by any stretch) and a healthy Brand, with Mobley/Eric Gordon at SG, Al Thornton at SF, and Chris Kaman at C, is probably good enough to contend for a bottom-four playoff spot.

(Actually, even more importantly, it shows that Clips’ owner and noted tightwad Donald Sterling really is serious about fielding a competitive team.)

Will the signing of Davis work out?  If he stays healthy, I don’t see why not.  Will the Clippers knock the Lakers off the top spot in LA in the next few years?  No chance, as long as Kobe doesn’t erupt again.

Tags: 10% discount, allergies, baron davis, claritin, gilbert arenas, los angeles clippers, new clothes, red eye, ross, sprint, visine, washington wizards by Peter
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(Note: This was supposed to be posted last night. As usual, I misremembered.)

Happy Mother’s Day!

I’ll hold off continuing my story from last night as I recap Mother’s Day weekend.

Quick-hitters:

- Don’t you hate it when you need a critical piece of data or an application to do something, and the site hosting said file just happens to be down?

That happened to me TWICE this past weekend. I’ll recap what happened in a later blog entry.

- More stupid commercials that have caught my eye lately:

• The DQ commercial where the little girl gets a boy to buy her a sundae: “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”
• ALL the McDonald’s commercials advertising their new Chicken sandwiches, especially the one with the guy screaming words to ever-changing backgrounds. I might have had a seizure after watching the commercial once.

- Super quick thoughts on the latest in the NBA playoffs:

1) You don’t understand how tempted I am to complain about the horrible officiating in Game Four. You don’t know just how badly I wanted to throw something through my TV after every ticky-tack call went against LA. I spent several minutes explaining that “it’s hard to beat the Jazz when you’re playing 8-on-5.”

It took a while, but the rational side of me realized how the Lakers blew a golden opportunity to end the series, for all intents and purposes. Naturally, the Kobe injury hurt their chances badly, but so did horrible FT shooting (14-25?), terrible 3pt shooting (9-26), little help from role players (APBs are out for V-Rad and Farmar), and just awful shot selection in the fourth quarter and OT. I saw glimpses of 1998 Kobe, jacking up those terrible shots in OT.

And yeah, the bad officiating didn’t help either :P.

I fully expect the Lakers to play well in Game Five, and take a 3-2 lead back to Utah, where I expect the refs the Jazz to force a Game Seven. Anyone wanna put money on that?

2) As much as I dislike LeBron James, that insane dunk he threw down on Boston late in Game Four of Boston-Cleveland was SICK.

- Mother’s Day weekend unofficially started on Friday, when my sister (the one that doesn’t have karmic powers) swung by, and we headed out for some Korean BBQ.  Note to self:  stop ordering the beef brisket; beef brisket is OK in pho, but not particularly good with Korean BBQ.

The bulgogi was quite good, and they offered Jumuluck (sp?) (unmarinated sirloin).  Good stuff, but some of the sirloin pieces were pretty fatty.  Also, for some reason, the waitress would, every now and then, meander towards our table and start flipping the meat around on the grill.  I was tempted to ask her to stop.

(I have a system in place when I go to a Korean BBQ restaurant :P).

After dinner, we swung by Ross; it was already 9:15, so we knew we only had a few minutes to shop, which (we hoped) would minimize the amount of wallet-damage we would do.

(Tangent:  Ross is quickly shooting up the list of evil stores, along with Trader Joe’s, Target, and Costco.  I’ve been to Ross four times in the past few weeks, and even though I’ve been returning some of the stuff I purchased, I still end up buying something else and paying the difference out of pocket.

(Sub-tangent:  Sooner or later, I’ll have to organize all my Lists :P))

I spent five minutes going through the Men’s Activewear section, and grabbed a two-piece sweatsuit marked down to $15 from $50 and a $70 Nike Fit Dry long-sleeve collared shirt marked down to $15.  The sweatsuit was woefully small, which got me thinking that the suit might have been a women’s suit, misplaced and mislabeled.  The Nike shirt, unfortunately, fit perfectly, and now I’m stuck with 2 very nice shirts (remember this?).  Oh what to do…

On Saturday, the family gathered to go to Olive Garden to celebrate an early Mother’s Day.  We arrived at the restaurant at 1pm, and there was a huge wait.  This is what happens when you don’t make a reservation on a big holiday weekend, and only figure out where to go eat two hours before leaving the house.

We found out that Olive Garden was still doing their soup and salad lunch special, and I was contemplating between that and the “Tour of Italy”:  lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, and a chicken parmigiana.  Somehow, I managed to finish the entire plate, and it didn’t dawn upon me that I did so when someone (I forget who) asked me how I managed to polish off the plate.  I felt it immediately afterwards, though :P.

My dad roasted a chicken for dinner in his Ronco Rotisserie (yep, we actually have one!), and the rest of the night was spent playing poker with my two sisters.  All I have to say about our poker game is this:  who calls two raises, including an all-in, with seven-five of hearts?????????

Grrrrrrr…

Sunday was spent on my covert ops mission, so I’ll save that for when I get to that point in my story.  I will mention this:  we got even more tasty food on Sunday!  My mom and aunt prepared spring rolls (not the fried type, but more like this).  I could eat this stuff every day for the rest of my life if I had to.

Until next time!

Tags: jazz, korean bbq, lakers, lebron, mother's day, olive garden, ross, stupid commercials by Peter
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Quick-hitters:

- Cavs v. Celtics thoughts: I missed the game completely (more on that later), but I was astonished to find that “King” James only went 2-for-18. As soon as I heard that, I assumed that he had to have been fouled several times w/o getting calls.

Apparently that was not the case. “King” James will have to wait another game to earn his moniker.

- I picked myself up a Linksys WRT54GS from Staples for ~ $5 after some FAR items and a $20/100 coupon. Now I gotta decide whether or not I want to hack and flash it with some third party firmware, or just use the stock firmware.

One key deciding point: this router is for use at my parents’ place, not here. I’ll probably just leave it as-is :P.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1450. I got a ton of rebates in the past week or so—about $300 worth of Symantec Rebate debit cards alone!

I know have over $400 in unspent Amazon.com gift certificates.

(Every time I receive a Symantec Rebate debit card, I immediately convert it to an Amazon.com GC, which I add to my Amazon.com buyer account.)

- Sprint’s customer service is awesome. Don’t believe me? Read on!

Back in January, I extended my contract in exchange for a 10% discount on service. The Sprint rep I spoke to told me that I would see the 10% discount on my account effective within the next two statements.

In April, the 10% still didn’t show up, so I called Sprint, and the rep I spoke to assured me that the 10% would show up on the next statement.

Fast forward to yesterday, and the 10% was still nowhere to be found. I called Sprint again, and here is our conversation (paraphrased):

Me: My 10% discount still hasn’t shown up on my account!

CS: Ok…well…it’s there, and I can’t do anything about it. It will probably show up next month.

Me: Probably? And what if it doesn’t show up next month?

CS: (laughs) Then you can call back and yell at me.

I love Sprint.

- So I swung by Ross today with my sister to return a shirt I bought over the weekend.

That’s when I found a really nice golf polo (Adidas ClimaCool something or another) for $20, marked down from $70. I couldn’t resist, though I’d say it’s 50-50 that I return the shirt sometime in the next week or so.

Anyway, when I got to the checkout line—single line, but multiple registers—I noticed three people in line, followed by a little gap, followed by a shopping cart full of stuff. I looked at the cart, wondered if it actually belonged to somebody, and before I could make up my mind, the owner of the cart came up to it—she had been looking through a rack of clothes near the line—nudged it forward, and gave me a death stare, as if to say “Yes, this is my cart, and yes, I’m in line, a$$hole.”

So I stood behind the lady’s cart, and she went back to her shopping. The line moved some more, and I just stood behind her cart, like an idiot. A guy was behind me, wondering what the hell the idiot in front of him (me) was doing just standing there, and the gap between the cart and the person in front widened. I seriously contemplated just shoving the cart out of the way, but the woman came back, nudged her cart forward again, and walked off.

I told myself, “If I’m the next person in line, and the woman doesn’t return, I’m cutting in line no matter what.” Unfortunately, the woman came back right when one of the cashiers shouted “next in line!”

One other bit of shopping cart ridiculousness: later, when another cashier called for the next person in line, two older ladies went to the register. One of the cashiers asked the trailing lady, “Were you in line?” The lady responded, “Of course! I was with this woman (pointing to her friend) all the time!”

That’s fine and dandy…HAD THE TWO WOMEN COMBINED THEIR PURCHASES AS A SINGLE TRANSACTION! But nope, the second woman waited for her friend to finish checking out, and then started emptying her cart in front of the register, expecting the cashier to start checking her out! And yes, the cashier reluctantly started scanning the second woman’s stuff.

Oh how I hate stupid people.

- Fifteen dollar ($50 retail) box seats. Chicken nachos, Dodger Dogs, and peanuts. Not-so-obnoxious fans (and if they were obnoxious, it was in a funny way). Blake DeWitt hitting his second career HR in inside-the-park fashion. A couple of B-level celebrity sightings (twice!). What could have ruined tonight’s Mets-Dodgers game?

Answer: the possible existence of an even more powerful, faster-acting Ung-hex!

The Dodgers were up, 5-4, in the bottom of the ninth inning, with two outs: a long fly out to center by Moises Alou, and a hard ground out by Carlos Delgado on a great play by 1B James Loney. The crowd stood up, and my sister and I joined them. That’s when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, my sister putting her backpack on. I immediately told her, “Take that off!” She didn’t listen.

Single by Angel Pagan.

I told her again to take off the backpack. Instead, she handed me my sweater.

Single by Brian Schneider.

I grabbed her backpack, and slammed it on her empty seat. I tossed my sweater on the seat as well.

Strike three, looking, to Luis Castillo.

As we celebrated, I told my sister, “You lucked out. If I hadn’t removed your backpack, we would have lost!” She denied the existence of her own Ung-hex, but who could deny it after what happened above? Never has my Ung-hex worked THAT quickly, and THAT effectively.

The seats themselves were pretty decent—aisle 44, next to the right field foul pole, and row T, just underneath the overhang of the Loge section—and thank goodness that there were no really obnoxious fans near us. The concession stands were a heck of a lot nicer than in other sections, and there was a much larger variety of restaurants. Also, the bathrooms were really nice! Instead of a trough, there were actually urinals :P. Also, while there were paper towel dispensers, the bathrooms also had Dyson Airblades! Awesome!

The game was excellent, although it was clear that Dodgers’ pitcher Hideki Kuroda was going to have a rough game. Thank goodness for the play of one Blake DeWitt (who?): 3-4, 4 RBI (2-run single with the bases loaded, and what proved to be a game-winning inside-the-park home run that had the home crowd demanding a curtain call with a “We want Blake!” chant.

(Who needs Andy LaRoche? Nomar who? BLAKE DE-WITT! BLAKE DE-WITT!!!)

As for the celebrity sightings, it was nothing much to write home about. Once we found our seats, we immediately got up and visited the concession stands. A few seconds into our walk, and I noticed three men walking the opposite way. I caught a glance of one of them, and thought he looked familiar. My sister immediately chased me down, and exclaimed some gibberish that I don’t quite recall.

(She LOVES the show.)

Turns out that Detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) and CSI Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) were the two celebs she spotted. On the way out of the stadium, we spotted them near the Field level exit (I was 99.999% positive that that was them, and my sister confirmed it, muttering “OMG OMG that’s them!”). I quickly told her that I would walk past them, and then bend over and tie my shoelaces, to give her an opportunity to go bother them.

She chickened out. By the time she gathered herself to do something, they walked away.

(If this is how we act in front of B-level celebs, what would have happened if we saw Gary Sinise?)

Until next time!

Tags: blake dewitt, box seats, carmine giovinazzo, cavs, celtics, checkout, csi new york, customer service, Dodger Stadium, dodgers, eddie cahill, firmware, inside-the-park home run, mets, rebates, ross, shopping cart, sprint, wrt54gs by Peter
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Long post today, so let’s get right to it.

- I decided that it was time to update my wardrobe (read: buy new clothes). On Saturday, armed with a pair of coupons—30% off at Foot Locker and 20% off at Macy’s—my sister and I went to Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks.

After a quick browse through Macy’s, our first stop was Foot Locker. After about five minutes of browsing, and thirty seconds of trying out one pair of shoes, I decided on the Nike Air Max Tailwind 2008. I just loved how the shoes looked, and the fact that they were comfortable as hell was all the convincing I needed. I wasn’t really looking for a pair of running shoes; I really wanted just a pair of cross-trainers or something similar.

The re-visit to Macy’s was fruitless, so on Sunday, we swung by Ross. Normally, Ross has quite a few sections for me to browse through, so much so that I get sick and tired of looking after several racks’ worth of clothes, and just give up. The Ross I visited, however, had only one small section of athletic shirts, so I was able to finish shopping in a few minutes. I scored a couple Reebok PlayDry shirts, as well as a really ugly (but really nice!) T for $4.

We had to go on a food run, so we went to 99 Ranch, Costco, and JONS Supermarket for a ton of food. I had a hankering for some salsa—it might have been influenced by Cinco de Mayo—so I mixed up a quick tomato salsa (chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, chopped cilantro, chopped roasted Jalapeño peppers, fresh lime juice, and Pico de Gallo seasoning).

While at Costco, I couldn’t resist one of their take-n-bake pizzas; I forget what it’s called, but it has fresh tomato, basil, and globs of mozzarella cheese on it. That was seriously the best take-n-bake pizza I’ve ever had.

Sunday night, I decided to bake some chicken coated with seasoned flour (AP flour, kosher salt, and some Mrs. Dash). After 50 minutes in a 400 degree oven, the chicken came out super-juicy, although the skin was a bit bland. I should probably have coated the chicken in egg first, before applying the flour, but I was lazy :P.

I also bought some frozen Buffalo Wings from Costco; that will probably be my dinner, along with the leftover pizza. Damn…now I’m super hungry again.

- So after watching the MVP do what MVPs do, I gotta say that the Lakers are in serious trouble despite pulling out a Game 1 victory. Certainly the rest helped, coupled with the fact that the Jazz played two tough playoff games in 48 hours, but clearly there was some rust to knock off as well.

At least, Laker fans better hope it was rust, and not a thorough domination by the Jazz on the offensive glass. Twenty-five offensive rebounds??? Plus-seventeen in total rebounds? Was that Memhet Okur or a in-his-prime Dennis Rodman crashing the glass? With Games 3 and 4—and the Jazz’s 37-4 home record—looming, the Lakers better shore up the defensive glass, or the series could easily end in six games.

It’s a good thing that the Lakers have the MVP, who apparently owns an annual pass to the free throw line. I’m actually surprised that Kobe missed two freebies! Anyway, the Lakers better hope for better rebounding, better shot selection, and more solid defense on Utah’s two stars. I have a feeling that Deron Williams will not shoot 5-for-18 in Game 2, and Boozer likely will not commit seven turnovers again.

Something tells me that Utah will pull out Game 2, win Game 3 handily, and lose Game 4 in a nailbiter. If all that happens, I don’t expect a home team to lose again, and the Lakers will win the series in seven games. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Jazz win in six.

One other NBA thought: the hard foul that Hawks’ F Marvin Williams committed on Celtics’ G Rajon Rondo was an extremely harsh foul, and it did warrant a Flagrant-2. However, I did not think Williams intended on injuring Rondo at all. What Williams did was extremely dangerous, but Jeff Van Gundy hit it right on the head: 1) it looked like Williams tried to grab Rondo, but Rondo was already airborne, and an attempted grab ended up being a near-clothesline; and 2) if Williams really had a play on the ball—one criterion required to deem a foul a flagrant-1 at worst—why didn’t he attempt to go for a block instead? Was the play dirty? Yeah. Was it with intent to injure? I don’t believe so.

Until next time!

Tags: baked chicken, clothes, costco, flagrant foul, foot locker, jazz, kobe bryant, lakers, macys, marvin williams, mvp, nike air max tailwind 2008, pizza, rajon rondo, rebounds, ross, salsa by Peter
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