Great Ribs, Great Day!

Well the BBQ contest has come and gone, and I had a great albeit tiring day.

Camping out the night before was fun, and the bands were good. Morning came early.......

Team Pig Stop did well, people enjoyed our chicken wings, they had fun playin ladder golf, and they loved our ribs. The judges seemd to like them as well. We scored well enough to get Honorable Mention for Ribs (5th place). Not bad for the first competition, with 21 teams in total.

Funny how the things you compete in change as you get older. For me it is now Luge and BBQ.

Brookline is having a BBQ contest on Sunday, and I am entered. I will be doing ribs and wings.

I have grilled and smoked for a few years now, as well as tailgated at Patriots games, and this is my first competition. There are 20 or so entered and I hope to do well. I think I will hold my own. I am sure I will have fun. I will camp out the night before so I can get an early start on the smoking.

My new Luge sled should be shipping soon. It is a Latvian model, with a custom paint job. I hope to have it in time to take to Lake Placid on August 18. I am going to the Wheels and Start clinic at the Olympic training center. We are doing a track walk as well. This should all help me in my times next year. It will be nice to be off a training sled, and on my own sled, which I can get to learn. I am hoping to compete in the Empire State games and the Nationals for the 2006-7 season.

I had my physical yesterday

I had my physical yesterday. Passed. I still have to get blookd work done, and I am not worried about that, as I have had that done twice this year already for insurance purposes.

I mailed my application for USA Luge today. I am excited to luge again, as I was addicted the first time I crossed the finish at the Lake Placid track. I am heading to Lake Placid in August for summer training, including start training at the US Olympic Training Center. Should be great.

I miss all the hiking and climbing I did, and I am sure as the boys get older I will be able to get them more involved with the activities I love. I hope they enjoy them as well, and if not, I hope they can find things they are passionate about.

Two Things

1) My Cable company, Charter, dropped the NFL Network mid-December with no warning. I have written to the VP of programming:

I have been a Charter subscriber for over five years.

In December of 2005, with no warning, the NFL Network was no longer being carried on Charter. After 3 days of waiting, thinking perhaps there had been some sort of issue with the feed; I called and was told that the NFL Network had told Charter to stop carrying the channels. I then cancelled my Sports Tier, since the only reason I had it was for the NFL Network. Frankly, the content on the Sports tier is substandard, and not worth the price. I would suspect that this is why the number of subscribers to this tier had been so low and probably lower at this point.

The NFL season will soon be upon us again, and this year the NFL Network will begin broadcasting games. I intend to watch those games on my new HDTV, and I hope that I can continue my relationship with Charter. If I have to, I will move to FIOS (soon to be available in my neighborhood) or DISH, or DirecTV. My preference is to stay with Charter for TV, and Internet. I guess that is really a decision left in Charters hands.

Please let me purchase the NFL Network again.

I received a very condescending e-mail back saying they understand my passion for the NFL, and I may find it hard to believe that others do not share that same passion, and do not want to pay for the NFL Network. Charter says they will only put NFL Network on the Sports Tier, and NFL Network does not want that.

I am thinking of writing back that there are any number of channels that they are forcing me to pay for in order to get the few channels I actually do want. (MTV comes to mind as does Lifetime and Oxygen). On my Charter 'Big Value' they carry NESN, which carries all of the Boston Red Sox games. While I love the Red Sox, I am quite sure that not all others love the Red Sox, and do not want to pay for NESN, yet they have to.

2) Cole - The kid is very physical. Not in a bad way. Its not like he is fighting with his brother, he is just physical in the sense that he is always jaming his body into tight spaces, running, dancing a jig, or just contoring his body to reach his objective. While Jordan will sit back and think about a problem, Cole just attacks it head on, yet he is very logical in the attack. If he tries something, and it does not work, he tries something else. It is fascinating to watch.

The transition to the beds is going ok. I did find the boys out of bed and playing during nap time. I guess that is to be expected. It is funny how kids know when they are caught doing something wrong, even at such a young age. Jordan got some bug eyes when he came out of his bedroom and saw us standing there. He turned around and ran back to his bed.

Yesterday morning when we looked in on him, Jordan had gotten himself under the covers, and moved his pillow to the proper location, and looked like he had been sleeping in a bed his entire life. When I had left him he was uncoverd (it was hot) and his pillow was at the end of the bed so he would have a 'clue' as to the end of the bed.

Last night he picked up the dogs empty dog dish, then went to the closet to find the food. He is so perceptive and just picks up on things himself. He saw the empty dog bowl and decided to fill it.

Cole seems to be getting over his hesitation in getting into water, and his new favorite saying is Pool in, pool in. I cannot wait until he can communicate more fully, as I can tell he has so much to say and just does not know how.

It's funny, my old adventures involved mountains, music, etc. and my current adventure involves raising 2 year olds, and both are satisfying.

My boys moved from a crib to a bed today

It has been over two years since Cole and Jordan were born. Today they moved to a bed for the first time. It seems like we were just picking out the cribs, and today I was taking them apart. The time and effor that went into picking just the right cribs seems almost wasted. Big Boy Beds. How strange. It does not seem like any time has passed, yet clearly it has. Big Boy Beds, quite a milestone for little boys.