A 'lil HooHaa

Unless you’ve been living in a hole here on HooHaa, you know I’m leaving for Montreal on Wednesday.

The weather looks OK, pending where the hell you look. But the Canadian weather places make it look decent. Only a chance of rain on Friday, so hopefully that holds (or changes to no rain) and we’ll have a good weekend up there. All I need is to get rained on. That would suck.

This vacation of mine couldn’t come at a better time.

Just seems like things haven’t been awesome on this end. Or that I just need to get the hell out of dodge and hopefully get recharged. I’ve found myself to be getting annoyed a lot more easily lately. Whether it be work, softball shit, or anything else, I just get annoyed. And the blood pressure goes up. Not good stuff.

So I venture off to a place north of the border and hope it can get me back to being less annoyed. I have six days off from work, with Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday spent in Canada. We head back sometime Sunday and I’m off Monday to just veg. Then back to the grind, but I’ll be covering baseball most of the week I come back. Which is fine.

Eventually we’ll be shifting into fall sports again and I’ll be roaming the sidelines for football season.

Seems like the cycle has once again gone full circle.

But until then, all I’m thinking about is the trip to Montreal. And how much fun and relaxation I’m going to have up there. No worries or cares in the world. And nobody to worry about, that’s for sure.

Oh, and the car kicks ass. I’m glad I went with the lease and the VW. It’s absolutley the bomb. It’s so fun to drive it. For those that understand driving stick, I had it up around 80, in third gear. And I was only at about 4,500-4,700. Crazy. If I don’t watch it, I’ll get a ticket. I’ve been smarter the second week I’ve owned it and actually know how to drive it so I’m not in jeopardy of a ticket.

Anyway, just some ramblings. I’m bringing the laptop with me and might do some early morning updates here or at least try and upload some photos while up in Montreal.

Two more days. That saying will be enough to get me through the night. Wednesday, at this time, I’m hoping to be approaching the border.

I know I shouldn’t look ahead. Especially not to next weekend, but how can I help it?

The one weekend a year I look forward to more than the rest is our annual trek above the border and into Montreal. It’s like visiting Europe in North America and it’s as fun as it comes.

So I started looking at the long-term forecasts weeks ago. One of the sites I’ve always checked (it’s a link in my sig) is the weather network. I believe its based in Canada. Anyway, there’s a 14-day trend on the forecast. And, like every other forecast, it’s changed every day.

But with things getting closer, I’m hoping things start to show sun.

Today, it shows good weather the whole time we’re up there. Yesterday, it showed rain for the Friday and Saturday.

The weather channel still shows rain Fri-Sat in Montreal. So one is right, one is wrong. Shocker. Hopefully the nice day is the winner.

I only ask for good weather for a few weekends a year.

– Montreal trip
– States
– Nationals
– County golf tournament
– Maybe one other…

So hell, even if it’s five weekends a year, that 47 others that can find a way to be nasty, if so needed. Not that I’d want it to be that way, but I would like it on the ones I really need.

I know you can’t change or create the weather. But here’s hoping Mother Nature is in a fine mood next weekend and will give us four days of great weather in Montreal.

What an absolutley shitty day Tuesday turned out to be.

Here’s the rundown.

Go to work, it’s all good. Go to softball game, take 5-3 lead into 6th. Lightning. And more. Ump won’t pull us off the field. The other team scored a ton. Still batting when the ump finally calls it. So now there’s a big hub-bub of what’s going on, who wins, what happens, etc.

That’s not even close to the worst part of the day.

As I’m heading back to work from the game, and it’s pourning now mind you, I notice the area where the office is located is pretty dark. All I can think is ‘great, another power outage.’

Sure enough.

Those of you who work/worked in newspapers will understand the next part of this.

I get to the office, power out. Who knows when it will be back on. This is like 9:15. Our deadline is 11:35.

Power back on? A little after 1 a.m. Last page sent at around 3 a.m. Yeah, screw that lightning. And give me some overtime.

I hate it when crap like that happens. Needless to say, I wasn’t the happiest camper in the world. Especially getting home at 3:30 a.m. Ugh.

And of course, Tuesday all started with almost losing HooHaa.com. Something I have owned since like 1998 and plan on owning for a long, long time!

Aug. 3 can’t come quick enough for me.

Holy smokes did we have a close call today. A little too close for my liking. And thankfully, it ended with no problems.

I got up this morning and went on the computer. Went to HooHaa and I get a godaddy page. All it says is my domain expired and I better renew if I want to keep it. Right next to it, the page showed something about “Want to purchase HooHaa.com? Go here!” Or some crap like that.

Well, as you can imagine, I freaked.

So I go to the website, trying to renew my domain. I can’t remember my customer number. I also can’t have it e-mailed to me, because the e-mail they have on file doesn’t work anymore. So now I’m really freaking. I mean, hell, I’m thinking I have like 10 minutes to renew or lose and there are like 50 people there looking to swoop in and get the domain (don’t laugh, maybe not 50, but I’ve had several people offer to buy the domain from me).

So I run to my laptop, which of course takes like 5 minutes to turn on, and get into my emails. I can’t find the info. So I call them and the first number tells me that their mailbox is full. Goodie, I’m thinking, I’m gonna lose this domain because they can’t answer their phones.

Then I call billing and get someone, who is quite helpful, even though I must have sounded annoyed and anxious. Anyway, within 5-10 minutes, he had me all up to date, renewed for two years (so we won’t have to worry about this until 2007), and a promise my site would be up within 24 hours. For me, it was 30 minutes and hopefully for the rest of you, it will be quicker than 24 hours, too.

Anyway, thankfully things are back to normal, kind of. Now I can go get some things done today!

Well, got back from the New York State 10-Man B State Tournament for modified-pitch softball on Sunday.

Unfortunately, it was without any hardware.

We went 2-2 and had to play all our games Saturday. And this is where I’ll go into a slight rant and if you’re not into softball, you might be like “What the hell?”

The tournament was 27 teams, which is the biggest I’ve ever seen for this tournament. And I’ve been going for probably 12 years. I love the fact the tournament has grown because it shows softball is doing well. At the same time, it hasn’t grown with true “B” teams, rather “A” teams finding ways to slip through and drop down to have a better chance at winning. This will all make sense later.

We open the tournament with an ass-whipping. We get up 11-0 on this team, our pitcher had a no-hitter going through four innings, and we were all set to end this in five with the run-rule. Instead, one of our players mentions the no-no, it ends with two outs in the fifth, they score three and we move on. We ended up winning like 12-3 or some crap like that.

Then we have to play right away. In the winners bracket. Unreal. AND we have to travel to another field, which is BS. We get there and who do I see? This A pitcher I know. And his team isn’t B by any means. We get lambasted, they hit a shitload of homers off us and we’re knocked in the losers bracket. We basically had no chance after the second inning or so.

We then have to play right away _ again. At the same field at least. It’s against a team we have played a bunch before up at this tournament. And we haven’t ever lost to them.

You know, when you play sports, there are teams you just can’t seem to lose to? They are that way to us.

It didn’t look good, however. We’re down 5-1, they are owning us and then one inning went crazy. We scored seven, took the lead and rolled from there. I think the final was 13-5 or something along those lines.

But, turnabout is fair play, I guess. See, we also have those teams we can’t ever seem to beat at this tournament. And next up was them. We led, 6-5, entering the seventh. Got tight, gave up two, didn’t score in the bottom, and lost, 7-6, and got eliminated from the tournament.

All in all, I guess it’s OK. We’ve had some good strides at the tournament the last year. And we haven’t played great the whole season, but here we played pretty decent. I would have liked to have placed a lot higher, but you can’t do anything about it.

The only thing that sucks is we had a deep team there this year. We had a total of 17 who went up and everyone got at least one at-bat and got into most games, which was pretty sweet.

For those that actually know us, the team shot will likely be up in the gallery soon under my random shots.

Next up is to finish the regular season, move into playoffs, and plan for nationals.