Thanksgiving wrap-up

We went up to Memphis on Wednesday and stayed through Sunday, and it was great to have an extended visit with the family. My niece Kate is now a little over two years old so it's fun to see her communicating more clearly...at least more clearly to me. My nephew Logan is almost two months old and I can't believe how much he has grown since the last time I saw him, which wasn't that long ago! Thanksgiving day was great. I fried a turkey since most of my family had never had it that way, plus Mom roasted one so there was plenty of bird to go around all day and all weekend for leftovers. Beth and I went to the Memphis Grizzlies-Houston Rockets game on Friday night--Dad bought a ten game pack of tickets and this is the first time we've gotten to go. Now, the following will make me sound like a bitter, old man but the NBA certainly wasn't like this when I was a kid. For me, the most jarring thing was the music that they blast during every single play. I knew that it would be a "show," rather than a game, but the tunes while playing caught me off-guard. Granted, I'm used to the Boston Garden in the '80s, with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and company, where nothing but the finest basketball team in history was needed to keep the crowd's attention. And I'm all for blasting music--I even got into it a few times when they played good stuff. But it was the presence of the pre-loaded 24 second snippets that they played every single time that really threw me off. But the FedEx Forum is a great arena and the experience was definitely fun. On Saturday, Casey and I headed down to a casino in Tunica for a few hours. I had never been there before but it was about what I expected. I played $3-$6 limit Hold 'Em for a couple of hours and although I didn't catch any cards and lost a little bit of money I was amazed at how bad the players were. At a table full of ten people, there were maybe three that seemed like they knew what they were doing, and the rest were just awful--calling down to the river with second or third pair, no kicker, etc. The twenty five cent-fifty cent games on Full Tilt have much better players, no joke. Anyway, I can't wait to go back with a nice roll and sit in for an extended session, because I have faith that I could destroy that game. The Pats game on Sunday was pretty bad, but they are so banged up that I really can't even be disappointed...we just don't have a healthy enough team this year. Case in point, we have six defensive backs alone out for the season. Six. I can't complain, or at least I won't, given how much success we've had the last few years. We should still win the division, so we'll see how things go, but I'm certainly not expecting an automatic Super Bowl win like I have the last couple of years.