Eight Things I Think I Think

• Ready For Zero – I think I want to thank Ready for Zero for hosting a good San Francisco area meet-up this past week. The company has some free tools to help users help themselves get out of debt. If you carry debt, it can’t hurt to take a look at what they have to offer.
• Dog Show at the Cow Palace – I think I probably shouldn’t have gone to a dog show at a local arena called the Cow Palace this past week. My wife went last year and due to many giveaways from vendors ended up with great value for her admission dollar. With the two of us going this time, the total cost was $36 ($12 for each ticket and another $12 for parking). From a financial perspective it wasn’t a win as there were fewer giveaways this year. As for the dog show itself, it wasn’t every entertaining with no announcer of the dogs and programs costing another $7. The highlight was seeing a couple dozen Golden Retrievers getting groomed. I’m secure enough in my masculinity to say that it would be hard to find anything cuter. (By the way, in case you were wondering the Cow Palace is the furthest thing from a palace, and there wasn’t a cow to be seen.)
• Jayne Cobb Hat Arrives – I think that I’m proud to wear my Jayne Cobb hat in public. I wrote a post a little while back about Kimberly Palmer’s Planners. In it, I mentioned how I’m not really an Etsy fan, but that this Jayne Cobb hat had me interested. The creator of the hat offered to send me one for free, which I jumped on. For those who don’t know, the hat is from an episode of the short-lived Firefly television series. The big burley mercenary character got it mailed to him from his mother in a bit of comic relief. The hat itself matches absolutely nothing else that I own, but it is surprisingly warm. The downside is that in northern California it hasn’t been that cold.

Football Thoughts

• Super Bowl Tickets – I think you won’t see me at a Super Bowl in my lifetime. More than a few people asked me if I’d be going to the Super Bowl to watch my hometown team, the Patriots. Even though I embody the term “superfan”, the thought never crossed my mind. The Super Bowl seems to have a ton of festivities and I think I’d just want to avoid all that and concentrate on the game. If I won free tickets, I’d surely go, but I doubt I’d pay more than a couple of hundred dollars for the whole experience.
• Gronkowski’s Ankle – I think I’m not sure where Gronkowski’s ankle injury ranks in the last 10 years of Boston postseason sports history. Is it up there with the Brady’s in 2001 when he was knocked out of the championship game and some questioned whether he’d play in the Super Bowl or if the Patriots would go with Drew Bledsoe? Is up there with Schilling’s blood sock performance in 2004 (the sock is in the Hall of Fame)? It has to be somewhere in between right? I’ve heard just about every angle of this Super Bowl coverage, and no one has put it in that perspective.
• Indianapolis Colts 1 – I think this might be the quote of the week. Someone told me that Indianapolis Colts’ coach Jim Caldwell said, “if you are prepared there’s no reason to sweat” before the Super Bowl on February 7th, 2010. For those who might not follow sports, Jim Caldwell got fired a couple of weeks ago, after his team had the worst record in football, which was attributed to the failure to prepare for an injury to the team’s star player Peyton Manning.
• Indianapolis Colts 2 – I think everyone agrees that the 2nd best quarterback I can remember (sorry Montana, I didn’t follow you as much) has played his last game in Indianapolis. Some say that Manning might never play again. If true, it will be a big loss for the NFL. The show will go on, but I think the biggest rivalry over the last 10 years, the Patriots-Colts will not be the same.
• Super Bowl Thoughts – I think that for all the coverage the Super Bowl is getting there are a lot of topics left uncovered. For example, there has been a lot of talk about how bad the Patriots defense was this year. A lot of that is deserved due to Patriots giving up a lot of yards. However, no one seems to mention that the Giants gave up a lot more points than the Patriots did. They also don’t mention that the Giants were 27th of 32 teams in giving up yards (while the Patriots were 31 of 32 teams). Despite how “bad” these defenses are made out to be by analysts they each shut out each other’s “great” offense in the first half of the first meeting.

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