a guy and a bee
a collection of random thoughts and ideas from me, her, and sometimes us
Category Archives: random
thankful
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This time of the year everyone writes posts about what they are thankful for and I could do the same. I can tell you that I am thankful for my wife, family, friends, having a job, and all those great things. And I am thankful for those things, but lately I am just thankful when I fell and fractured my ribs two Sundays ago, I didn’t hit my head.
I was home alone and my wife had been out of town all week when, as we have been calling it, I went splat. Slipped went aerial and came down on my ribs on the side of the tub. So as of lately and as I continue to recover, I am thankful I didn’t hit my head as well as the fact that my dad drove me to the hospital.
It was “The Great Fall of 2011” and it wasn’t glorious but wasn’t the worst it could have been.
Hope everyone has a joyous holiday today and takes care. If you see me out, pass on the hug as my ribs are still pretty sore!
(The attached photo is what’s left of the bruise on my arm. My back didn’t bruise surprisingly.)
hocoblogs@@@
no, i wasn’t texting while driving
has anyone noticed that everyone is still texting while driving? la
st year, maryland took the first steps into the giving out fines for texting while driving, but it was a secondary offense so no one really cared. now this year, back in october, the new texting law went into affect and yet everyone is still texting while driving.
on a daily basis, i see lots of people texting while driving (myself included on occasion). the most interesting person i’ve notice that are texting while driving is the police. all levels of police, local, state, auxiliary, etc. and all the time. i guess no one, including law enforcement, still cares about the new texting while driving law in maryland.
per the baltimore sun politics blog on sept 30th:
Drivers who are ticketed can still choose to accept guilt and pay a $70 fine (plus one point on their license). If the texting leads to an accident, accepting guilt means an automatic $110 fine and three points.
Drivers who contest the tickets and lose in court will be guilty of a misdemeanor and have to pay the full $500.
guess everyone will just plead guilty and not care about the fine/point if they get caught? i’ll pass. not worth the point or the fine.
oh yeah, and don’t forget to watch out for new speed cameras in Howard County! locations are listed on the police website and it’s a $40 fine if caught.
hocoblogs@@@
old friends
It’s interesting living in the same community that you grew up in. Although I grew up in Ellicott City and now live in Columbia, we all visit the same places because it’s essentially one in the same in Howard County.
Lately, I’ve seen alot of the people I grew up with. I ran into an old high school friend at Bagel Bin two weeks ago when I was grabbing breakfast randomly on my day off. Then this past Saturday I saw another old friend at the Columbia Mall and we were reminiscing about when we came to the mall as kids and it was the cool thing to do. Now it sometimes seems more like a chore. Interesting how things have changed. She also has 3 kids so things have really changed from when we middle schoolers riding the bus to school.
My mom even went to a baby shower for an old friend of mine whose wife is having their first child next month. All of our close friends’ moms were there updating everyone on each others kids so in less than 2 weeks, I’ve gotten updates on half of the kids I grew up with. With that and my lifelong best friend living in DC, it is a small world.
Unfortunately our 10 year high school reunion got cancelled so I will just have to see all those other kids around town instead.
hocoblogs@@@
to do lists
Are you a “to do list” person? I am not really a big one myself but know lots of people who are. With the Droid, you have the built in to do list widget and I use it mostly for notes, although it has one thing to do on it. Blog more. That’s my to do list. I am not a person who needs a list to remember to fold the laundry and clean the house. Those are things that I would think that you do on a regular basis.
I don’t even make a list of things I need to do at work unless something is overly important. Maybe it’s too much rigor for me, I don’t know but I don’t feel like it fits for me.
What about you? I am going to work on mine and blog more (assuming I remember).
@@@Hocoblogs
My Year in Sports
21 Orioles Games
1 Shorebirds Game
1 Ironbirds Game
2 Baysox Games
2 Nationals Games
1 Nebraska Football Game
2 Ravens Games
2 Elon BBall Games (at MD and at Navy)
1 Baltimore Grand Prix
From starting about this time last year, it’s been a fun year of attending sporting events. As a big baseball fan, I’ve always enjoyed going to numerous games a year at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, but the variety increased this year. Last October, I attended my first professional football game. Sat on the 50 yard line about 30 rows from the field. Fantastic time and nothing like corporate seats. Shortly after that, we made our way to Nebraska to see my wife’s dad. There we had the opportunity to attend the Nebraska vs. Missouri game, a great rivalry and exciting game. It was their 306th or 309th consecutive sell out. I have a separate blog post on here all about our trip if you are interested.
As the fall turned into winter, Elon’s basketball team travelled for the season to play teams locally and we saw them at Maryland and Navy around the holidays. We had a great alumni attendance at both games and certainly gave Maryland a run for their money. (Should I mention we also went to 1 or 2 Elon football games? They play 1-AA in football in the SoCon.)
At the end of the year, I found out for my birthday, Bee got me/us a partial game season ticket plan for the Orioles. Section 15 if you want to see us out there next year! Between FanFest and the season starting, I laid low with getting some autographs and collectibles. As spring started, I made it to my first opening day, with my buddy Dan, since I was in high school. We had a blast and were ready for what we thought would be a great season. Between season tickets, random Friday or Saturday games, giveaway nights or alumni games, I made it to at least 21 games. In between, we went to the Shorebirds and Baysox games for bobblehead giveaways. I also finally made it out to the Ironbirds stadium after 10 years for a work night at the the game. Hadn’t been to a minor league game in years. I also finally made it to Nationals stadium, once to see the Orioles and once with Bee’s family when they were in town. Nice place but I still enjoy OPaCY! Even wrangled in a batting practice ball at a Orioles game and a foul ball at a Baysox game. The ball hawks weren’t around at the time. Haha.
Once the season wound down, we got to the much anticipated Grand Prix. I made my way down to practice and had a good time. Lots going on and lots of energy. Neat experience but couldn’t go the rest of the weekend since we were going to the beach for the holiday.
And as we end up in October again, I got to go to another Ravens game for the weekend. Another corporate section and hospitality tent event. What a way to tailgate! This time it was Bee’s first professional football game and we won to boot. Talk about a loud, rowdy environment at M&T Bank these days.
I’m not really a fan of professional basketball and only a semi casual fan of hockey so who knows if I attend something like that soon but we shall see what the next year of sports brings. I know it will include lots of Orioles games though!
Length of Ballgames
I don’t know about you guys, but a 4 plus hour game is out of control. And the game went into extra innings around, if not after, the 4 hour mark. The major league umpires have let this thing get out of control and although there aren’t any official timing rules, they need to do something.
Having seen Garcia pitch against the Orioles last week, you know that he took 10-15 seconds between pitches at least. Throws a pitch, gets the ball back, circles the mound, composes himself and then gets the next sign. What a load of junk. I am sure Beckett did the same thing and don’t get me started on Papelbon, who probably took a leisurely trip around the stadium before he came in.
The fact that the umpires continue to let these players and especially these two teams to continuously do this is a real shame.
Things like this are reasons why people are leaving the game, especially kids, and going to other sports. A soccer match is over in 90 minutes, maybe 2 hours without an extra half or period. Same with hockey, non stop action.
It’s time for MLB to start limiting time between innings with pitches, time between pitches, and paying more attention to time spent on visits to the mound. In a game that had a final score of 3-2, there is no way the game should have taken 4 hours and 15 minutes. The Orioles had an hour and 15 minute rain delay and then played a 6-2 game (and they won!) that only lasted just over 2 hours IN THE RAIN for half of the game.
Get it together, MLB!
Living In The Danger Zone
Well it hasn’t just been a song in Top Gun in our house lately. Since the flood, we have been living in 2 to 3 rooms of our house and one of them is half torn up.
The kitchen is missing half the lament (sp?) floor and part of the sub floor. Our stove rocks since one of the legs isn’t on the the main floor but instead its on the old vinyl. Our fridge, which caused the problem to begin with, is in front of our sink and dishwasher. We can’t really move it anywhere because part of the floor is the sub floor.
My movie room/man room has been emptied and all my stuff is in our spare bedroom and office. We can still do laundry, surprisingly. That room is a mess too, but functional for laundry.
Our contractor is coming tomorrow to hopefully fix all the drywall. So at almost two weeks in we are beginning to see some progress. No new floors until the contractor is done though so our kitchen will br rocking until then, pun intended.
And did I mention my wife’s dad and family are in town from Nebraska?!
Ps… I’m sorry to all those that don’t have a dishwasher and after 4 days we got the water back on!
finally some photos
well, i finally got around to downloading the photos and looking threw them. there are a couple from a trip to salisbury to see the shorebirds on july 1st and a great shot of the fireworks at the orioles game last week.
perdue stadium
the fireworks is probably one of my favorite fireworks photos to date and i took some nice ones on the 4th of july as well! maybe i will post them later.
for those who haven’t been to a minor league stadium, and this was my first trip in a long 
time, it is generally a great experience. lots of fan interaction and lots going on at the game. the stadiums are smaller and don’t necessarily have the most comfortable seats, but are still enjoyable.
the other picture on the right is of the delmarva shorebirds first baseman, mike flacco (brother of joe flacco, raven’s QB if you didn’t know). he has been hitting clean up for the shorebirds this season and seems to be making strides on improving his game.
home ownership woes
so last night, almost exactly 2 years after the house flooded for the first time, it happened again. same
plastic pipe broke but in a different spot. the pipe carries the water to the fridge for ice and water dispensing on the door. since the pipe cracked and it’s a compression hose so that when you want water from the fridge, you get it, it keeps running until there is the right amount of pressure on it. it probably ran for 7 or 8 hours at the most and wasn’t as bad as the first time it broke. serv pro is here working on the demolition to get the water out and has set up fans and dehumidifiers to dry the place out.
this is not the type of thing you want to experience once, let alone twice in two years. hopefully state farm won’t drop me! the picture above is from the kitchen where they have pulled up the lament flooring. the water ran downstairs and messed up my man room and the laundry room. hopefully none of the electronics will be messed up either! i think all my dvds have survived thus far.
there are good things about being a home owner, but this is a serious woe! 
MRI
So the other morning, I went and had an MRI. Nothing major, mostly for exploratory reasons. Everyone has seen an MRI machine on TV before so I knew what to expect. Ultimately it is what I would expect space travel to be like.
You get slid into a tube that isn’t much bigger than you body and they start the machine. At first, I was wondering if I was in Star Wars or outer space with all the wild noises, but after the internet radio kicked on, it wasn’t bad. A little Jimmy Buffett to sooth the soul.
I can understand why anyone with spaces issues would flip out, but I was really calm. Really the hardest part was trying to lay still for 45 minutes. Not to sound rude, but the tube was only a little bigger than me, especially after they strap a cage over your face and put a mirror over your face so you can see your feet/end of the tube, so is there a special MRI machine for obese people? Was thinking about that after I left.
Anyway, just thoughts that were on the mind.
hey there
a guy and a bee 