Tough choice

If I've been asked once, I've been asked a thousand times recently...

"If the White Sox play the Cardinals in the World Series, who would you cheer for?"

Before I answer, let me provide some background info for my friends from outside the US. The folks for whom baseball is that "American thing."

Yes, the White Sox are a Chicago team, the hometown heroes (for this season, anyway). But here's the thing about the White Sox: their fans are cretins. Drunken, violent, rude blemishes on the baseball fandom scene. White Sox fans don't attend Sox games and when they do, they scream obscenities at the Sox and beat up parents in front of their children. Okay, we're not even going to MENTION the whole run-on-the-field-and-beat-up-elderly-coaches thing.

'Nuff said.

The Cardinals? Well, let me give you the proper full name of the team from St. Louis? They are the Rat-Bastard St. Louis Cardinals.

I used to attend the Cubs-Cardinals series in St. Louis every year, but stopped after a weekend a few years ago due to the inhospitable nature of the surroundings.

The Busch Stadium announcer gave the St. Louis lineup and I waited for the Cubs lineup to be announced. His voice dripping with condescension, the announcer said "And now, for the Chi-ca-go Cuuuubs."

Later in the game, the flashy electronic scoreboard featured the shell game except with Cardinals hats (three hats, one ball hidden under a hat, the hats fly around and fans guess which hat the ball is hidden under). Fine. Mindless fun for the attention-span deficient in the crowd.

Next on the scoreboard was the Cubs version, Cardinals' style. Three Cub hats and one ball. Except where the hats flew wildly in the Cardinals' shell game, the Cub hats drifted in a humiliatingly (?) slooooow motion with arrows pointing to the correct hat as if to imply that the Cubs were incompetent and simple-minded.

I'm all for rivalries among fans. That's where it should be, between the fans of respective teams. The organizations should stay out of it. Because, as the saying goes, "sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug."

Back to the original question, "who would I cheer for if the White Sox and the Cardinals meet in the World Series?"

My answer? The Chicago Bears! (yep, I'll be a football fan.)

Back to bed, let's start this day over

I just received the second of two calls from the same phone company asking for a guy who hasn't worked in our US office in almost 3 years! No big deal if it's a "cold" sales call, but this was regarding a trouble ticket on a T1 line (tech stuff, which we deal with, in a separate division of our company).

Not wanting to get one of our clients disconnected from us, I took the information. It gets increasingly stranger. The trouble ticket was opened by a guy (from an East Coast company, possibly a client) who gave a callback number. When the phone company rep tried to call him back, the rep was told they never heard of him!?!?

The East Coast guy gave my former colleague's name (RL) and our current phone number as the "on-site" contact person. RL has never worked at our current location, so that phone number never belonged to him.

(Are you starting to hear the Twilight Zone music??)

On a completely separate stage in our bizarre circus, another colleague just cancelled on a group dinner for Friday. It seems his wife's cousin was driving to work yesterday morning in a small town in Illinois and pulled over because he wasn't feeling well.

He was found dead of a heart attack. HE WAS 39!

Going (away) for broke

I'm one of those people who tries to pay off her credit card every month. Annoying, isn't it? I get frequent flier miles from one credit card, so it's fun to see the miles pile up (and plan yet another trip to use them!).

A few days ago, I had a bit of a scare when I opened my Visa bill. AARRGGHH!! Twenty-seven hundred dollars?!?!?! OMG! Where the hell did THAT come from?

Okay, tickets for Cubs games, sure I can see that. I wish I could say that that was money well spent except that the rat-bastard St. Louis Cardinals and the "other" Chicago team are still playing! Yeesh!

But I digress..

Oh, now I see it. Plane tickets! And, what's this? Asiarooms.com? Hmmn..oh, that's where I made my hotel reservations for my three-city Australia trip. (I leave soon!!!)

Some people have a talent for music or for painting, I have a talent for shopping, online shopping. No, not eBay (not much anyway). I shop for travel deals. I guess it's no coincidence that I didn't travel much pre-Internet. Without these websites, I don't think I could afford to go anywhere and boy! would that make The Writer a freakishly dull person!

Travelzoo.com, Kayak.com, Globester.com - - you name it, I've been there. And yes, I also utilize print mags, mostly Budget Travel.

Aside from the coronary caused by the Visa bill, the travel planning is just how I'd like it to be. By the time I leave for my trip, I will have all of my flights and three of my four hotels already paid for!! Of course, I usually plan this trip several months in advance, so my credit cards don't melt, but I was quite slothlike this year.

Get the bills paid, get the packing done, hold the mail service, pre-pay mortgage, etc. etc. It's hurry up and wait.

Is it time to leave yet??

Thought for the day

I must admit that I saw this on a the blog of a young fellow in India. I guess location doesn't matter because we are all the same, no matter our area code or the color of our skin.

"To be popular, live your life so that a blind person would like you."

So much of acceptance is tied to appearance. It's unfair, but true. They say that attractive people make more money in their lifetimes. Geez! Who needs a master's degree when all a person really needs is a nose job?