Weekend Thoughts for 3/14/2010

The city is in full-fledged St. Patrick's Day celebration mode, as the first sets of activities were yesterday. They were not kidding when they said that they celebrate St. Patrick's day like nobody else.

Some thoughts from this weekend:

• We went downtown on Saturday night with some of Brynn's co-workers, and the downtown was about as busy as I would have expected for a Saturday night. The part I was not expecting was how decked out in green everyone already was.
• We decided to walk around early Sunday afternoon downtown, and did our first exploring of River St. As you might expect, this is the road that is directly adjacent to the Savannah River. Lots of little shops and restaurants, with a feel similar to the one given off by Old Sacramento. In nearly every store front: St. Patrick's Day garb.
• Many of the fountains in the downtown area, including the large one in Forsyth Park, have already been dyed green in anticipation of Wednesday.
• The actual parade through downtown Savannah will start at 10 AM on Wednesday. As a result of this, many downtown businesses that will not profit from being open that day will be closed or on reduced hours (as is the case with Regions Bank, who will be open from 9 AM to 10 AM that day.)
• For the most part, the weather here has been pretty sunny this week. The humidity is slowly starting to pick up, and I can feel it when I walk out of the house if it's higher than I expected. A lot of it reminds me of the weather in Hawaii, but not quite as warm necessarily.
• I attended an orientation meeting with the Savannah chapter of the Red Cross so that I could start doing some volunteer work here. They need volunteers a lot more than my previous chapter in Murray did(not that Murray doesn't). I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but the Savannah chapter is responsible for an area from the Florida border south to the South Carolina border in the north east, and part of the way across the state back towards Atlanta. This area includes over 1.1 million residents. So it sounds like they're going to have a lot of good work for me to do.
• I am also waiting to hear back from Accountemps about some short-term accounting work here as well. The city of Savannah has almost 300,000 people, so they are in need of some accounting temps as well. Wish me luck on that one.
• As you probably read last week, I've started writing for a fantasy sports blog called FakeTeams. If fantasy baseball is something that interests you, check it out, as we're gearing up for the start of the season with our positional rankings.

Weekend Thoughts for 2/20/2010

I had written this rather long post about the Olympics, and how unhappy in general I am with the coverage that they're getting. Apparently I was pretty angry when I wrote it, because it reads like I was. Needless to say, I decided not to post it. But I will include a few of my thoughts with my weekend thoughts today.

The Olympics

• Bob Costas annoys me. It just doesn't seem like he's a good fit for the coverage. 
• NBC, take note: Sporting events generally do not need drama added to them. So please stop trying to create it in some of these events. 
• Curling is surprisingly entertaining. Since I now understand some of the strategy and rules a little better, it actually looks like a pretty difficult sport to play.
• Short-track speed skating looks like the most dangerous and also most entertaining sport that is in the Olympics. 
• The U.S. and Canada are quite a bit better at women's hockey than everyone else. A LOT better.
• I'm not thrilled with the tape delay on things that could be live. Apparently there's not a lot of people who are. Especially the people in Seattle who could go to an event in Vancouver, and potentially be home in time to watch it on television.
• Cris Collinsworth should stick to reporting on football. Or not do that. Either would be fine with me.

Murray State

• We went to the Bracketbuster game today for Murray State. For those that aren't familiar, essentially ESPN takes a whole bunch of the better mid-level Divison 1 college basketball teams, and pits them against each other. A majority of these teams will not play in the March tournament, but in many cases it can give some really good games. 
• The game was televised on ESPNU, and as a result had an 11 AM start time, which was unusually early for a Saturday. 
• The arena wasn't sold out, but it was easily the biggest crowd of the season. The place was electric, and it was a very unique feeling.
• Murray State won their game, and extended their winning streak to 17 so far. They are going to be the favorite to win their conference's automatic bid into the March tourney.

We leave Murray on Monday, and have enjoyed parts of our time here. The weather today decided to show us what it could be like, with 66 degree weather most of the day. Stupid winter.

On another note, I've mentioned before that I have been writing another blog about baseball to help fill my time. The blog is doing well, as I've been getting between 20 and 30 visitors a day. Something good has come of this as well. I will also be writing for a fantasy baseball blog called FakeTeams. It's a member of the SportsBlog Nation, which is a group of blogs that follows nearly all major teams and leagues, both professional and college. It's not a paid job, but they are pretty well-read, and the exposure will definitely be a good thing for the blog as well. I'm looking forward to it, and we're both really excited about it. It should help to fill some more of my time too :)