Renaissance Man

Easily the biggest compliment anyone could pay me would be to call me a Renaissance Man. I love the idea of being a "jack of all trades" and it really is something I've tried to embrace in my life. Whether or not chopping kindling in the backyard with a hatchet qualifies as being a "Renaissance Man" I'm not exactly sure, but I do know this. We live in a time when the average person can't really do anything for themselves.

Sure most of us can program a DVR or find out what Paris Hilton did last weekend by doing a Google search, but there aren't many of us that can fix a screen door anymore. Let me be clear, I love technology...I mean I'm writing a blog aren't I? It's just that, like most things, I believe in balance. Hence the Renaissance Man thing.

The definition of a Renaissance Man is somebody with limitless capacities to learn, and that's exactly what I strive for in my everyday life. Not only do I want to be able to link my blog to my facebook page, I want to be able to chop some wood and build a fire for my wife as well.

Enter Sandman

Just because the Padres season is over doesn't mean Channel 4 shuts down operations. In fact it's quite the opposite...especially this year. For the past 4 years our "off season" has been consumed by a nightly 30 minute SportsCenter style show aimed at the local San Diego sports scene.

This year we upped the ante with a second show and moved the times around a bit. Now instead of one show at 10, we have an early show at 6:30 and a late show at 11 pm. The long term benefit of the move is that now we don't have to compete against the "Dancing with the Stars" of the world or any of the other network prime time juggernauts.

The short term effect is that now by the time I get home my wife is usually already in bed trying to get some sleep so she can wake up and be at her job by 8:30 in the morning. That's the only bummer about the "off season", because of our different schedules the wifey and I don't get as much hang time as we would like during the week. Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of people have it way worse then this and I'm certainly not trying to compete with anybody on this...I'm just saying given the choice, I would choose to be home earlier.

That's all.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

I realize that I blog about food a lot here. But guess what, I eat every single day...a couple of times, so there you have it.

Tonight I ate at the Neighborhood downtown. For those that live in San Diego but haven't been to the Neighborhood yet...go. If you clicked on the link above then you probably figured out that they specialize in hamburgers, but they also have a ton of really great micro brews. But that's not all, they also have a speakeasy in the back. The burgers and the beer I know about first hand, the speakeasy is more of a mystery. All that I know is that getting in takes some work.

First off, you have to know the right person to even have a chance...I haven't met that person. Secondly, even if you know that person you're timing has to be right because they only let a handful of people in at any giving time. Finally, to gain entry you have to take an oath swearing that you will not reveal the true purpose of the speakeasy. Okay I made that last part up...but the rest of it is true. I know because my wife Megan has been there before...apparently she runs in a slightly more impressive circle then I.

Maybe that's what everybody means when they say I've out kicked my coverage when it comes to her?

A Great Run

There is no way around it, today's loss for the Padres was tough to take. Obviously the loss ended their season but it also ended a great run for a team that was picked by just about everybody (myself included) to finish at or near the bottom of the National League West. As it turns out they were in it until the final day of the season and that's something to be proud of.

Don't get me wrong, it might take a few days or maybe even a few months to put it all in perspective, but once you do it will be impossible not to smile. I don't care if you're a Padre fan or not, the 2010 Friars were underdogs from the start and they made it exciting until the end. That's America's story. The team with the second lowest payroll in the majors quite literally shocked the baseball world for 6 months, and unfortunately just ran out of gas at the end.

It was a fun season to be a Padre fan with a lot more ups then downs...but if I'm being honest it's hard not to play the "what if" game right now. The one thing I do know however is that it was a great run.

Thanks guys.

Tryouts

So much for being able to fall back on an indoor soccer career. On Saturday the 10-time major indoor soccer league champion San Diego Sockers held an open tryout, and I went out for the team...kind of.

As you well know I am a soccer player, in fact I play indoor soccer once week. So when the General Manager of the Sockers asked me to come out and do a story on the tryouts, I thought the best way to do that was to tryout. What a stupid decision that was.

Apparently nobody told the coach that I was out there as a member of the media to give his team some publicity. Either that or they did tell and he didn't care because he worked my ass off...and then he cut me.

Guess I better find the number for that truck driving school in Florida now.

Long Day

Anybody who has ever flown from coast to coast understands that travel-day is going to be a long day. It's not a novel realization and I know I'm not the first person to experience it...but it's my blog and this is what my day was like.

I was up at 6:30 AM local time, standing in the rain by 7 as I waited 20 minutes to finally hail a cab. There are more then 13,000 taxis in NYC and when it rains, they are seemingly all full. Know what else was full, the roadways. I know it's a common complaint in Southern California to bitch about how bad everybody is at driving in the rain...and it's true, the rain slows down the traffic in San Diego. I guess I had just always assumed that wouldn't be the case in a place used to foul weather. A place like say, New York City.

Wrong.

The 40 minute ride to JFK turned into a 2 hour and 7 minute ride past accidents and flooded streets, meaning I was roughly about 30 minutes late for my flight. "Luckily" for me my flight was delayed more then 3 and half hours. Yippee!

Thanks to headwinds that flight took roughly 6 and half hours, getting me to San Diego a little before 4 PM local time. Cab home, watch the "Britney Spears Glee" on my DVR, then head into work for the 7:10 start of the Padres - Giants game. Finish work at 11, head over to the Waterfront bar to pick up Megan and eventually get home and into bed by 1 AM. With the time change that adds up to a 21 and half hour day.

Like I said it was a long one.

"Life as we Know It"

One of the all-time great gigs in TV is getting to work the junket circuit. For those that don't know what a "junket" it is, my computer dictionary defines it two ways.

1.) a dish of sweetened and flavored curds of milk, often served with fruit.

2.) an extravagant trip or celebration, in particular one enjoyed by a government official at public expense.

For our purposes here the second definition is a little more accurate when it comes to describing my junket experience. Somehow, someway I ended up on a list a few years ago...and not the bad kind of list either. This list gets me invited to 2 or 3 sports movie junkets a year, and let me tell you it is a racket.

All the movie studios bake in marketing costs to the budget of their films. Part of that budget goes to flying people like me to New York City, putting us up in a fancy hotel, letting us see the movie and then giving us access to the stars of that movie. In return, we talk about it on TV.

Like I said, it's a racket.

The movie that I will be talking about next week is "Life as we Know It" starring Katherine Heigel and Josh Duhmal. It's actually a pretty good romantic comedy...it has nothing to do with sports...but it'll make a date night enjoyable.