A Scattered Brain

We are almost to the end of the summer season of bowling.  Only two more weeks left and next week is the last competitive week.  This week I was in a bit of a funky mood and I’m still not quite sure why.  I bowled better than my average in all three games and I’m happy with that.

Game 2 started out awesome.  Started with 5 strikes and then the wheels came off.  I couldn’t get any breaks on the left lane after that and left 3 straight wicked splits.  That killed the chance to get 200 but that happens.

I want to congratulate two of my teammates.  They both got their personal bests for this league in game 3.  Erin bowled over 130 for the first time and Ty bowled a team-best of 217!

Here are this weeks scores:

The average is still mid 160’s which is a little lower than my goal of 170 and with only one more week, I don’t think that goal will be achieved.

UPDATE: I almost forgot, we are still looking for a team name for next season.  If you have any clever (keep it clean) ideas, pass them along for consideration.  We also plan to buy shirts.  If we aren’t going to win, we’re going to look snazzy losing!

I hope you all have a good rest of the week.  It’s almost Friday!

Hey all, just got sent this nice link that shows some interesting facts surrounding your birthday.  I don’t buy into all that life path stuff, but still some cool parts:

Birthday Calculator

Check it out. Here are some of my highlights:

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2443300.5.
The golden number for 1977 is 2.
The epact number for 1977 is 10.
The year 1977 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/18/1977 and ending 2/6/1978.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Snake.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Elk; your plant is Mullein.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Mesore, the fourth month of the season of Shomu (Harvest).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 20 Sivan 5737.

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 23 February 1977.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 29 May 1977.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 5 June 1977.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Tuesday, 13 September 1977.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Sunday, 3 April 1977.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 22 February 1977.

As of 8/8/2006 11:32:24 AM EDT
You are 29 years old.
You are 350 months old.
You are 1,522 weeks old.
You are 10,655 days old.
You are 255,731 hours old.
You are 15,343,892 minutes old.
You are 920,633,544 seconds old.

Sweeeeeet.  Almost, 1,000,000,000 seconds old 🙂

Happy Monday!

My wife and I went to Arizona this weekend on a fairly impromptu visit to the Grand Canyon.  We drove out to Flagstaff on Friday and were able to eat at the best restaurant ever created (for those who know me, I don’t even have to tell you where that was; for others, it was Chick-Fil-A).  The drive was actually pretty nice and it appears that we just missed a passing rain storm so that’s good.

On Saturday, we took the Grand Canyon Railway from Williams to the canyon.  The ride is about 2 1/2 hours long and the train doesn’t go too fast, but it was a nice ride.  The canyon itself was magnificent.  If you’ve never seen it, you have to go sometime.

Once we arrived we walked about 2 miles around the south rim and each time we stopped, we continued to be in awe of what we were seeing.  At one point, Kylah and I talked about how we’re glad we waited until we were adults to see this as it may be difficult for children to really respect what they were seeing.  About 15 minutes later, at one of the overlooks, we heard a kid, probably around 12 or 13, say, “This is such a freaking waste of time.”  I feel bad for his parents who undoubtedly were going partly for his benefit, but also understand that when I was that age, probably would have felt some of the same sentiment.

After a few hours, we took the train back to Williams.  The experience was similar to one you find at theme parks like Disney.  On the train to the Grand Canyon, people are talking, restless and excited.  On the way back, nearly silence on the train… until… the train robbers came!  With only about 30 minutes left on th etrain ride, we were boarded by a gang of robbers who took all of our money and valuables.  I’m just glad we made it out alive!  Ok, so the train robbery was staged as part of the train ride, but still was a fun touch to end the day.

Of course, after we got back to Flagstaff, where did we go to eat???  The place doesn’t, need mentioning (Chick-Fil-A) so I’ll move on.

Sunday, we drove back and were able to eat at another favorite of ours that we don’t get here in Vegas; Cracker Barrell… mmmmmm best breakfast ever!

If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend seeing the Grand Canyon for yourself.  Pictures just don’t do it justice.  Have a great week, all!

Good evening all,

Well, tonight was just an average night… a little below actually but really not much to say.  I just need more practice to gradually get better and more consistent.  So without further ado, here are this week’s scores:

I hope you all have a terrific week.  Take care!

Greetings all,

Ok, I finally paid off my Saturn, and while I love the car and feel I have the last manual transmission in the United States, I’m jonesing for a new car.  I don’t need a new car, and I certainly don’t mind what I’m driving, except I love the little information gauges you can get in luxury cars.  I’m talking about really cool things like MPG, Average MPG, Miles left in tank, Gallons left, Extra trip odometers, etc.  I had all of this in my rental car (Mercury Grand Marquis, baby blue, perfect for retirement area Florida) and loved it even for just the two days I had the car.

So, this made me start looking for cars with this kind of information.  I’ve given up the idea of a navigation system… I hardly drive anywhere new so I really don’t need one.  I don’t need a new radio/CD player as mine is just fine and I don’t care for the XM or Sirius which tends to come with the navigation features anyway.  However, the Driver Information Center (GM’s term for these nifty features) is available on a Chevrolet Impala.  Hmm… a nice, new, fairly affordable Impala sounds really nice and the new design is pretty sleek as well.  Sounding better.

But, do I really want to chain myself down with another car payment just to get these nifty features and lose the manual transmission?  Hmm… there has to be a better way; someone somewhere has to make an after-market gauge that can keep track of these things.  During my lunch break, I decided to search for such an item expecting to find a whole bunch of them.  Alas, I only found one, and it’s not cheap at $170, but for a computer geek who likes to know weird things about driving statistics, this fits the bill.

It’s called the ScanGauge II and it has everything I mentioned above and even more than that.  This thing totally looks like the way to go.  ($170 is a lot cheaper than $27,000)  I’ll have to think about it and then find a place where I would actually put the thing that would work in my car.  Another nifty feature, supposedly coming out soon is the ability to upload the data to a computer.  That would probably just about send the wife packing, huh honey?

I’ll let you know if I get it and if I do, how it works out.  Have a great day!

We finally had a winning night!  For the first time, we one all three games as a team and thereby also winning the bonus point for most pins.  My games were a bit below my average, but that’s ok.  My primary goal for this week was to have fun and not worry too much about my scores or even my technique.  That was accomplished, I had a blast tonight, which why else bowl unless you’re going to have fun?

My more serious goals were to slow down as I tend to rush most of the time.  This will be an ongoing struggle as I rush in most things I do in life, not just bowling.  I’m also looking for that elusive clean game and with tonights scores, that just wasn’t going to happen.

So, you can see I was fairly consistent tonight, even if below my average.  If I can finish this season (5 more weeks) with a 160 average, that’s pretty good for being out of the game for nearly seven years, so I won’t complain.

I won’t be able to bowl next week as I have to go to Florida on business.  The rules won’t allow me to make up my games alone, we’d have to request as a team to pre-bowl or post-bowl and that’s just too strict a rule, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

I will be back late Friday morning and am looking forward to J and Danielle’s upcoming visit.  I’m sure we’ll have a great time and it’s been way too long for the girls to have had to wait to see each other.

Have a great night, all, and I’ll see you later.

So, I figured I should write about something other than bowling for once… don’t worry all of my avid fans, that blog entry will be coming on Wednesday or Thursday after league.

But what to talk about?  My life is quite inconsequintial.  I get up at 4:30 AM, come to work at 5:00 AM, eat lunch around 9:00 AM, come back to work, leave around 2:00 PM.  This happens every Monday through Friday, week in and week out, month after month.  And I enjoy what I do most days, but it’s always the same.

If I were less risk adverse or had a really good idea, I’d love to start my own business some day.  Of course, for now, I’m not willing to give up the steady paycheck for an unknown result.  The ideal would be to be able to retire now and enjoy life, but unless I win the Megabucks slot, that isn’t going to happen (I’d have to play Megabucks to even have a chance at it).

I think we are all meant for so much more than this rat race that we are all stuck in.  To paraphrase from Office Space, people aren’t meant to live like that, it’s just not natural

So, until I find that really awesome idea, have the courage to carry it through, or somehow enjoy a windfall of buckets of money, I’ll continue to do my job, try to do it well, and keep going.

Have a great day all and work hard, but not too hard.

Greetings all and welcome back to my weekly bowling feature.

This week I went in with three goals:

1. 1 clean game (no open frames)
2. 540 series (180 average for week)
3. No games below 160

I reached none of them. The only two consoloations I can take from this week are my scores weren’t all over the place (152, 160, 171) with an increase each game. I believe this is primarily due to an effort to slow down as the games progressed. I find myself rushing my shots and being excited at the first part of the night.

Also, I was really working hard to stay balanced on my shots as opposed to falling off to the right each time. I think I did better with that part, although without videotape it’s hard to know for sure. My average stayed at 165 for the league.

So, I guess the jury is back. That really good week two weeks ago was a fluke not a sign of things to come, yet. A summer league is generally a short tune up for the longer winter league, so this is a good time to work on improvement.

Here are this weeks full results:

I hope you all have a terrific week! Take care.

Apparently, last week was a fluke, as this week my scores and inconsistency came back to normal.  I couldn’t consistently hit my targets at all an my release was all over the place.

Spare shooting was the most disappointing aspect of the night.  I missed 4 single pin spares in the second game alone… completely unacceptable.  Except for a stretch in the first game where I got 5 strikes in a row, I couldn’t read the lanes or make any adjustments at all properly.  My focus just wasn’t there.  I rushed all of my shots and didn’t visualize any shot before stepping onto the lane and then wondered why I was all over the place.

Here are this week’s scores:

I’m hoping that next week will get back on track.  When I practice next I have a lot of things to work on, but I think it all stems from slowing down and concentrating on the moment.

On a completely different note, I’ve paid off my car!!!  Now we only have the house mortgage and one car payment.  It’s a great feeling to be driving something that is completely ours.

Have a great week and I hope all of you had a great 4th of July!

Greetings,

So, even though my wife gave me a hard time about my bowling blog, I’m still going to do it, especially after a night like tonight.

It was by far my best league night in my entire life!  I bowled a 596 series (198.67 average) over three games, but even more important is my low game was a 192 which means that all three games were fairly consistent.  The ball felt great all night and I was close to hitting my targets every ball.  As the lane conditions changed, I was quicker than usual in making small but good adjustments.  My ball reaction and rotation were also consistent for the first time.  I don’t know what I did differently if anything, but things just really clicked tonight.

My spare shooting was nearly dead on.  I only had 6 open frames total (evenly spaced at 2 per game).  I did miss a couple of single pins in the first game but the rest of them were tough spares to convert.

So, without further ado, here are this weeks numbers:

The only possible downside is that I jacked my average up by 8 pins meaning I have to maintain or at least not drop off too much in order to stay above my new average.

Now, I’m off to Colorado for a few days before the 4th of July holiday.  I hope you all have a great 4th and I’ll catch you all next week.  Except for, of course, Kylah, I’ll see you tomorrow and the next day and the next day!