Off to Florida, Yep, I leave the freezing temperatures of Toronto and arrive in sunny Florida tomorrow. Unfortunately, that means I'll miss Valentine's Day with Kelly. So we have reservations for a really good Spanish Tapas restaurant tonight. I also got Kelly the typical V-Day arrangement of roses (and a card from Barkley), but our gifts were easily trumped by what came in the mail yesterday. Kelly and I received our renewed Canadian work documents yesterday, which isn't really big news. What IS big news is that Kelly's work permit no longer prohibits her from finding a job in health care in Canada! That means -- after Kell comes down to visit me in Florida in March -- she can look for jobs in dental offices, if she'd like. Kelly's days of slinging cupcakes at the bakery in the Sobey's grocery store will be coming to an end soon enough. I booked flights for Kelly this morning, so she'll be coming to Florida from March 16-23. What's cool is her family is going to be coming down to visit again, too. So that's two years in a row. I guess as long as I'm covering a team that trains in Florida, it's going to be family tradition to spend time on the beach while I work the baseball diamonds. It's always fun to be able to see everyone in between Kell's and my busy schedules during the baseball season. I'm ready for the offseason to be over. Part of me isn't looking forward to six weeks away from home, which I don't mind saying Toronto as essentially become, but I am looking forward to getting back to working regularly. All the down time I've grown accustomed to is about to come to a screeching halt. Call me crazy, but I'm happy to be done with the down time. I probably won't be able to update this blog while I'm in Florida. As I've explained before, I don't have the program on my work laptop that I run this site with (and I can't install it because of work restrictions with my computer). BUT, I do have a blog on MLB.com: http://mlbastian.mlblogs.com. I'll be updating that one regularly -- though it's primarily baseball and baseball focussed. I'll probably put some pictures I take this spring on that site, too, though. So it isn't my personal blog, but you can keep up with what I'm doing there. That's all for now. Oh, I haven't mentioned the Bears or their loss in the Super Bowl. We had a fun Super Bowl party with some of our friends from our small bible study group. Our neighbor across the hall actually was having people over, too, and we both kept our doors open so we could walk back and forth. It was a great time. Unfortunately, the Bears lost. Ah well. Rex Grossman is young, the defense is good, and the Bears will be back in the Big Game soon enough. As Cubs' fans like to say, "Wait 'til next year!." All right, I'm outta here. Stay tuned for more... Posted at 11:59 a.m. Mission Accomplished, Some of you may know that I embarked on a personal mission this offseason. On October 4, I started a workout/nutrition program with the goal that I wanted to drop about 25 pounds before heading to Spring Training in February. Life as a baseball beat writer is exhausting during the season, and you can't help but eat out on the road, or indulge in the free pie that might be available in any given pressbox. Last year, being a rookie to the whole experience, I took advantage of just about every little luxury that came my way. Meaning, I ate out -- a LOT. I also nearly erased all the hard work I did leading up to my wedding in May 2005. During my last year of college, I ballooned up to 220 pounds (strange for a high school athlete who was pretty scrawny back in the day), but I got down to 180 before my wedding. Well, after Year 1 on a baseball beat, I packed on another 20-25 pounds and topped 200 once again. I don't want this to be a recurring event each year. So I set out this offseason to get myself back down to around the weight and shape I was in when I first entered college. That meant geting down to about 175. As of today, I weighed in at 169! Running three miles a day, six times a week, lifting weights a few times a week, and doing situps daily -- not to mention watching my portions, and even counting calories to a certain extent, at each meal -- helped me accomplish my goal. Take a look at the difference:
BEFORE: Here I am during the season (about 200 lbs) while on a road trip in New York.
AFTER: Here I am today, weighing in at just under 170. Don't worry, I'm not planning on dropping much more weight. I would cut it off at 165. Now, I'm focussing more on weight training and getting back into the physical shape that I used to be in. It's also been fun seeing a few of my abs starting to emerge from its formal layer of chubbiness. I gotta say, though, I wouldn't have been able to stay as motivated if it weren't for Kelly. She and I have gone to the gym religiously over the past four months and I'll miss that during the regular season. Kell has also done awesome with her weight-loss goal. But my New Years resolution IS to work out more during the season, to watch what I eat on the road. That means only eating out on the road -- and not going nuts -- taking advantage of fitness centers at hotels, and working out in the mornings when I'm back in Toronto. That's all for now. I just wanted to give an update on that, because I know many family and friends were rooting for me on my quest. It wasn't easy, but I feel so much better now than I did when I started. I've even been able to run a mile in about six and a half minutes. I haven't done that in years. OTHER TIDBITS: Kelly's birthday is coming up on February 19, but I'll be in Florida, unfortunately. So we're celebrating her birthday and Valentine's Day early this year. We also joined a young couples weekly Bible study through our church here in Toronto. We're actually hosting tonight. AND, I'm having some people over to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday! Go Bears! I leave for Florida in 12 days, and I can't wait. Stay tuned for more... Posted at 11:58 a.m. Mr. Fix It, We've lived in Toronto for almost a year now. Since we arrived, there have been a few projects that I've put on the backburner that needed to be completed -- two at the repeated requests of my very patient wife: 1. Once we got an entertainment center, which we did in May, I needed to hook up our surround sound; 2. Kelly asked that I set up our wireless internet; and 3. Kelly requested that we install a light above our kitchen table so our living room wasn't so dark all the time. Well, I made it my goal this offseason to complete these tasks. The offseason started on Oct. 4 for me and I only just started chipping away at these projects within the last week. After all, I leave for Florida in about three weeks and I'll have little time for home improvements once the season starts. So it took me about a year to get my butt in gear! First was the surround sound -- the most important project, as far as I was concerned. The problem was that our very nice teak entertainment center had (note the past tense) a solid back on it. I don't own a handy-dandy power drill either. I do, on the other hand, have a manual hand drill and a box cutter! So I drilled some strategically placed holes in the bottom of the back of the unit, then used the box cutter to slice out a nice rectangle. It took a while, but I made a pretty clean hole in the back of the entertainment center that easily allowed me to feed all the cables and wires through. Now my surround sound is bumping. The "bom! bom!" on Law and Order has never sounded so cool. It was funny, though, because I did this while Kelly was at work. I knew if she saw how I was going about cutting a hole in her nice entertainment center, she would've freaked and I wouldn't have been able to go ahead with it. Instead, she came home to a pile of sawdust in the living room and subsequently had a very minor panic attack. It was all good when she saw that the hole I made wasn't completely terrible -- only a little. Next up was the wireless internet. This project was pure laziness on my part. For a year now, we've had a wire running from behind our entertainment center, across our living room, and two one of the two laptops we have -- one on the kitchen table and the other usually on our coffee table. All I needed to do was walk my lazy behind over to Best Buy to buy the wireless router. So earlier this week, while I was out mailing a letter, I decided I'd head over and get the router. We tried to do this about two weeks ago, but Best Buy was all sold out. They had plenty in stock this time around and I got it all hooked up in all of 15 minutes onces I got home. I even set it up all secure like so no one else within range of our condo can steal our internet. The third project was one that required some more skil -- skills which I did not have before tonight. I needed to hang a light fixture above our kitchen table and that meant dealing with wiring and all that jazz. Don't worry, I was smart enough to cut the power to our condo before proceeding. This was also a project that I undertook with Kelly away at work. Lord knows she would've been freaking out as I tried to deduce which wires went to what (It would've helped having her around, though. It was getting dark and I was holding a flashlight in my mouth while trying to hook the thing up at the end). The instructions only informed me of white and black wires and the grounding wire. Of course, when I looked up in the ceiling, I had white, green, blue, black and orange wires staring back at me and laughing. So I figured a rite of passage in life for a young man like myself is to call his father and ask advice on wiring. So I called my dad and he patiently walked me through the whole process and told me to call him back after I got all the wires hooked up and tested a bulb. Let me tell you how great it was, on my first try, to be able to say, "Let there be light!" after flipping the switch. Who knew the blue wire was supposed to be hooked up with the black one. Good thing I called the ol' man. In all my worrying about the wiring, though, I didn't get the screws all set up right in order to actually hang the fixture. So I had it dangling by the wires while I tried to figure out a way to hang it without having to unhook the wires. Naturally, the white wires were NOT cooperating with me. They kept coming undone and Barkley was hiding under the table because I think he was afraid to be anywhere near me and wires and electricity. I eventually got the light hung nice and snug. Of course, I didn't have time to clean up in time for Kelly to come home. When she walked in the door, instead of saw dust, there was a nice pile of plaster on the ground and on the kitchen table. The wires were covered in plaster from when the construction dudes were working on the ceiling and all that. So little clumps kept falling while I worked. I was standing on the kitchen table for all of this, too -- and I STILL wasn't tall enough to comfortably work with the light. Bottom line: It got up and we now have more light in our home. Next up is our den. We still need to hang pictures in there and we're thinking of getting a new, bigger desk so Kelly can better work on all her craft projects in there. Right now, we have a tiny desk that is basically a table for throwing stuff one. There isn't room to put a computer, let alone work on a scrapbook. So that's next on my Mr. Fix It agenda. That's all for now. I know you all were VERY interested to hear all about my home improvement projects, but that's basically all that's going on right now. Kelly and I did join a small Bible study group that meets weekly. We found it through a church we've attended off and on here in Toronto and we've met some nice people through the group. It's nice to meet other young couples. Other than all that, there isn't much going on. I'm just getting prepared to make the trek down to Florida for Spring Training. I probably won't be able to blog much once I'm down there. So stay tuned for more... Posted at 10:39 p.m. Super Bowl Shuffle!
I grew up hearing all the tales of the historic '85 Bears team. How dominant the defense was, how huge William "The Refrigerator" Perry was, how they stormed through the playoffs and disposed of the Patriots with ease in Super Bowl XX. I've heard all of it. I even heard "The Super Bowl Shuffle" many, many times because my sister had it on cassette tape. My parents even bought me a Chicago Bears winter jacket when i was a kid and I wore it religiously. Honestly, though, I couldn't tell you one thing about the '85 Bears from my personal memory bank. It's all knowledge based on other peoples' accounts. Can I name most of the front seven from that team? Probably. Do I remember seeing The Fridge, Mike Singletary and the others play? Not at all. So Chicago has it's '85 Bears, but for guys from my generation, we now have the 2006 Monsters of the Midway. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not comparing this year's Bears squad with the 1985 version. That's practically blasphemy in Chicago. All I'm saying is that for the first time, I have a Bears team that I'm excited about. Two years ago, I would annoy the copy editors on the sports desk at the Lansing State Journal every Sunday by singing the Super Bowl Shuffle and wearing my Brian Urlacher jersey. Last year, I thought for sure the Bears were going to the Super Bowl. This year, I've been talking them up since the preseason. So, finally...FINALLY. The Bears have made a Super Bowl that I'll be able to remember. To top it off, they're playing the Colts, who I love watching. Colts quarterback Peyton Manning is my favorite player in the league to watch right now. So I'll enjoy seeing how he tries to pick apart the Bears defense. This is the most I've ever looked forward to a Super Bowl. Usually, I watch the game, pick a team to root for, and look forward to the commercials. Now that I'm in Canada, the commercials all won't be aired, so thank the Lord the Bears are giving me something else to look forward to! Before this year, the only Super Bowls I got excited for were the ones with the Broncos in 1997-98. My family lived in Colorado, I lived there for a while, and my dad lives out there now, so I also grew up with some family love for the Broncos. John Elway was also my favorite player to watch as a kid. The Denver-Green Bay Super Bowl is my personal favorite up to this point (it helped that the Packers are the Bears' nemesis). For me, the play where Elway dove for the first down and got battered and spun around in mid air is one of the best Super Bowl plays I've seen. Realistically, I'm not sure how the Bears will fair against the Colts. Manning could slice up Chicago's secondary, but the Bears also have the ability to shut down a team's running game. If the Colts can't establish the run, that'll make passing that much more difficult. The Bears combo of Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson could also do well against the Colts' run defense. So far, Rex Grossman hasn't looked too bad in the playoffs, either. My gut -- keep in mind that I grew up a Cubs fan, too -- tells me to get prepared for a Colts' victory. Manning could be on the verge of solidifying his legacy with a Super Bowl victory. This is a tough one for me to predict -- made even more diffcicult by my extreme bias. So, keeping in mind that I HAVE that bias, my pick is: Bears 27, Colts 24. (My gut says Colts 31, Bears 21). Stupid gut. It should be a great game and one that I'm really looking forward to. I'm thinking of inviting some friends over to be there to celebrate with me after the big win, or tell me "Everything will be all right" after a crushing loss. I'm hoping for the first scenario. I want a Bears Super Bowl win that I remember and can tell my kids about. Frankly, us Chicagoans want something other than the '85 Bears to celebrate. Posted at 1:22 p.m. Christmas and More, Well, I promised that I'd get some pics up here from our time back in Chicago for the holidays. So I'll keep this as brief as I can. We went home for Christmas a few days before Christmas Eve and we ended up staying in the Chicago area until around Jan. 3 or so. It was nice to see family and great to just kick back and relas without worrying too much about work.
First off, Kelly's family's dog, Sammy, and Barkley have gotten quite used to having each other around whenever we go home. Uncle Sam even walked over to maKe sure Barkley was OK when he started having a seizure over the holidays. There were many occasions when we caught the two snuggled up together on the couch or recliner. (OK, I'll admit that I put Sam's leg on Barkley for this photo)
One thing I had the chance to do this Christmas was go shooting with Kelly's younger brother, Kyle, and some others. This is a picture of me looking tough with one of the guns. Obviously, I toyed around with the picture some. We drove out to a shooting range in Indiana and shot handguns, rifles and shotguns. I was better with the latter than with the others.
Here's Kyle reloading his one of his shotguns. I had the most fun when we were shooting the clay pigeons. I hadn't shot a gun in more than 10 years and that was just a quick one-time event with my dad and someone he knew out in Arizona. I did have BB gun rifles when I was a kid and I'd target shoot with those, though. For my first time ever shooting clays, I didn't do too bad. There were six of us all together and I took fourth in a friendly shooting competition -- scored 8 out of 10 or 11. I don't remember what it was out of, but I do know I only lost to Kyle by one point. What was funny was Kyle took me out to the shotgun range to show me how to use the gun and all of that. He threw up four clays in a row and I missed horribly on all four shots. So I said, "Hold on one second. Let me try something." I'm right-handed, but I remembered that I always shot better from the left side with my BB guns when i was younger. So I moved the shotgun to my other shoulder and I hit the next two clays he threw without any problem. The guys said they think I'm left-eye dominant. Kinda funny.
Here's Kyle target shooting with his new handgun.
This was just a cool photo I took of the shotguns sitting on the rack.
We had to stay a few more days than we had planned in order to get a ride back to Toronto, since we didn't rent a car this time. It turned out to be a blessing, though, because it allowed for us to see my brother and his family before we went home. Karl, his wife Sara, and baby Luke were stranded in Colorado due to the heavy snow storms. We were able to exchange presents with them after they arrived after New Years, though. Here's Karl and I sporting our matching MLB.com shirts -- what a couple of nerds, huh.
Here is Auntie Kelly holding Luke. He wasn't sure what to think of us at first, but he warmed up to us after a little while.
One of Luke's presents was a book about counting that used different things related to the NFL to help you along. He flipped right to page 8, where 8 cheerleaders helped him get aquainted with the number. It's a boy!
Uncle Jordan also had fun messing with Luke's hair. We spent Christmas Eve at my sister Lynn's house, where Kelly made a big dinner. My other sister, Melissa, and her family came over, too. We had a lot of fun seeing each other and giving out presents and all that good stuff. Christmas day was spent with Kelly's family at her house. For New Years, we hung out with Kyle and his fiancee, Stephanie, watching the Bears get beat down by the Packers. That about sums up the 2006 holidays for us. Kelly bought me a new digital camera since I like to pretend I'm a photorapher every now and then. It'll be fun taking it around with me to some places I haven't been this year. So that's all for now. I'll be posting more soon... Posted at 12:48 p.m. Ready for Spring, I'm just going to throw a quick post on here so I can get the first blog of 2007 going. Kelly and I have been back in Toronto for more than a week now, but I've been having some computer issues, so updating the blog hasn't been easy. But here I am, back at it for a third year! I started this blog in June 2005, so technically I haven't reached even two years yet. As far as I'm concerned, though, having posts in '05, '06 and now '07 means I'm back at for a third year. Who's getting technical? I'm itching to get back to Florida for Spring Training. My flight leaves on Valentine's Day and Kell's birthday is a few days after that, so that kind of stinks. But I'm ready to get back to a "regular" work schedule. I put it in quotes because spending six weeks in Florida covering baseball every day isn't exactly what most people consider regular. The offseason is so unpredictable, though. I'll look forward to waking up and knowing what my work schedule looks like on any given day. That's all for right now. I'll post some pics from our visit in Chicago for the holidays pretty soon. Stay tuned for more... Posted at 11:55 a.m.
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