As I mentioned, things have been crazy for Mr. and Mrs. Conman. We moved into our first house a month ago today.  Moving is an unbelievable pain in the ass, even for people like me who don’t really have much. Packing and unpacking is a laborious process. Throw in spending money on all kinds of crap that needed to be done (refinishing the wood floors, painting, installing a railing for the staircase, some of these things which haven’t even been done yet), coupled with getting used to living farther out in the ‘burbs, and you have a recipe for a stressful time.  That said, having our own place is really great. I finally am living in a place with 2 floors, which I’ve always wanted to do, seeing as I grew up in a ranch house and my apartments have always consisted of one floor save for a couple places in college. We have a nice yard, and the neighborhood is quiet and peaceful, an upgrade over our last apartment which, although full of charm, was on a main road and surrounded closely by other houses. Plus, so far, there have been no mice, like in the apartment. We do have the noisiest group of muthafocking birds, however. Every morning at about 4AM, the party starts.  Every bird gets up at the same time and chat away while having their morning coffee. Very annoying.

We also have a little Congirl coming this summer. We had to register for baby stuff for the shower recently and it was like being dropped into a store on another planet. There was so much crap, much of which I had no idea what it was for or why we needed it, with all kinds of brand and pricing options for each item. It was pretty overwhelming at first, and the Mrs. and I somehow managed to get in a fight while we were there. As the Mrs. pointed out, everyone there but us seemed to be coping just fine. We rallied, though, and only 3 and a half short hours later, we had registered for about 75% of what we needed. It was exhausting, and the Mrs. went back a few days later with Nonni Conman to get the rest.

I am getting excited about the baby’s arrival, though. The Mrs. has gotten pretty big, and we’re noww in the midst of a 6 week, once every Tuesday night birthing class. The highlight so far was watching a video of this couple throughout the labor process. It starts at their house, when she first starts having contractions, and ends with seeing the little alien come out of her cooch at the end. Ali I can say is that they apparently selected the ugliest, fattest woman (and husband) they could find for this video. She looked a bit like an out of shape man. Yes, I couldn’t wait for the money shot, let me tell ya.  Nonetheless, it was pretty neat to see that little bugger come out of there- poof!- there’s a little person in the room.

I’m currently reading “Munson” by Mary Appel. It’s about Thurman Munson, the former catcher of the New York Yankees from 1969-1979. Munson was one of my first favorite players growing up. When my Dad took me to a September 1978 Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway (my first), in the famous series that came to be known as the Boston Massacre (I ‘ve blogged about this in the past), he took a number of photos of the players with his telephoto lens (think that scene from Austin Powers) . He had a great shot of Reggie, Nettles, and someone else that he blew up, along with one of Thurman batting (and Fisk catching). I wanted the Munson one, (and gave the other one to a friend) because he was my guy. I still have that picture.

Anyway, although the book is not written by a great baseball mind , Appel knew Munson very well from his days as the Yankees’ public relations department, and he provides intimate details about Thurman’s personal life, including growing up with an unbelievably insecure ahole of a father, as well as cool stories from his playing days. The chapters on his death in a plane crash on August 2, 1979, are moving and very detailed. We are basically taken into the cockpit of his personal plane right before he crashed, because he includes interviews with one of the two, yes two other guys who were in the plane with Munson but survived. They tried to drag him out of the burning plane, but couldn’t get him loose and were forced by the smoke and flames to leave him there. Thing is, Munson broke his neck, and gasped to them that he couldn’t move, so you wonder if he would have been paralyzed had he made it out there. I remember playing outside that late summer evening and coming inside the house and my father telling me that Thurman had died in a plane crash. I was 7 years old, and I think that was the first time I’d had to contemplate the concept of death. 

Munson was a complicated figure, as he was often gruff and grumpy, but was regarded as a great teammate, a tremendous family man, and a kind person behind the sometimes rough exterior. Here is a video from the postgame locker room after the Yankees won the 1977 World Series. he comes in at 2:08 of the video, and I think you get a sense of his personality here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ZRwwODYmA

He left behind 3 young daughters and a wife. On the day of his death, he was basically on top of the world- his career was winding down due to bad knees, and he probably would have become a first basemen or DH going forward, but he had made some very good investments, since he was quite the business man; he was making good coin, and had just bought himself $1.25 million jet that was allowing him to see his family more despite the demanding travel schedule of a major league ballplayer. He was 32. And then it was all gone in an instant. It makes me step back and try to enjoy my own life- I’m not on top of the world or anything, but I have a loving wife, a house, and a baby on the way. Times are good, and we all need to learn how to enjoy the good times.

Recently I saw a story where some guy who worked at the airport in Miami beat up  a coworker because he was being berated by coworkers for having a small package, as detected on the new full body scan equipment they use in airports these days.  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1274380/Airport-security-guard-beats-colleague-manhood-jokes-walking-high-tech-body-scanner.html)

Anyway, that got me to doing some googling on this topic.  I don’t know about how revealing the scans might be, but my research revealed a much more serious problem. Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkjA1_6IxjQ&feature=related

The moral of the story: don’t eat Mexican at the airport and remember to sport wood when you’re going through the scanner.

Switching gears, I’d never seen this Michael Jordan dunk before. It’s from when he was playing an exhibition game in Italy in 1986. It’s at 2:18 of the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPc_JeJYDMQ

And yeah, I’m still pissed off about the Bruins blowing that 3-0 lead. In 2004, I went to Game 4 of the Yankees-Red Sox ALCS at Fenway. The Yanks were up 3-0, but they lost Game 4. I then went to Yankee Stadium for Game 7 and watched the Sox complete the miracle comeback and beat my Yankees, the first time in baseball history a team had rallied from being down 0-3 to win a 7 game series.

This year, I went to Game 5 of the Bruins-Flyers series. The Bruins were up 3-0 after the first 3 games, and then were up 3-1 heading into Game 5.  Theylost Game 5. I then went to Game 7 and, yup, watched the Flyers beat my Bruins, becoming only the 3rd team in NHL history, and the 4th in the history of MLB, the NBA, and the NHL, to come back from being down 0-3.

I was there for 2 of those 4 times in history, on the losing side each time.  Pretty remarkable. This one hurt more in the sense that the Bruins appeared to have it in the bag, since they were up 3-0 in the first period. The place was going crazy- there was no way they’d lose. Ugh.  Still, the Yankee loss hurt more, even though the game was basically over by the second inning, since it was to the arch rival Red Sox, and I had to hear about it from all my Sox buddies.

This is BC’s 4th National title (1949, 2001, 2008, 2010), and it was nice to pay back my buddies in Wisconsin, since the Badgers beat BC in the title game in 2006. BC coach Jerry York is unbelievable. Since 1998, he’s led BC to 9 Frozen Fours, 7 title games, and 3 National Championships. 

Now I have to make important decisions as to which BC National Championship gear to buy and how much I can spend without feeling guilty. Here are a couple of clips from the Frozen Four.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OFxTYx5cQA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CyYyiC0HRo

I know this is a bit dated as well (forgive me, I’ve had the flu this week), but I love it. Believe me, Chan Ho, I know what it’s like to want to share your bathroom stories with everyone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrdW9Wa8Puc

I know the Magazine of Death video I linked before wasn’t working, so here’s another link to it for those that missed it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrJ6EpfKnMw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVSzjn3Etp8

This has been a Conman Bathroom Breaking News Report. We now return you to your regularly scheduled workday.

UPDATE: Make it 4 times, each more painful than the last. I still have a long way to go to break my friend from college’s record set during a summer internship. I believe his record was 11 in a single workday. The last few trips were met with cheers from coworkers . . . This is the same friend who woke up one morning during that same internship wearing his work clothes from the previous day. All he could see in front of him was the dashboard in his car. He knew he’d been out drinking the night before, but wasn’t sure where he was. He slowly raised the seat to find, much to his relief, that he was in the parking lot outside work. He then went to work wearing the same clothes. I believe this might have been the same day he set the crapping record, but I’m not totally sure .

On a whim, after we traced the cereal clues, I checked in the fridge to see how the small amount of ice cream was doing. About a week earlier I had eaten half a small container of Ben & Jerry’s and then duct taped the top and hid it in the back of the fridge.  Well, the ice cream container was in its hiding spot, but the duct tape had been ripped off and there was no ice cream left. I have no idea when the ice cream was consumed.

The scary part of all this is that we’re going to be moving into a house where the bedrooms are on the second floor and the kitchen on the first floor. I’m nervous I might fall down the stairs on my next cereal/ice cream midnight jaunt . . .

Perhaps sensing that we wouldn’t be around much longer, a mouse has been hanging out in our kitchen at night. I’ve caught him out of the corner of my eye scurrying around in the hallway, but when I jump up from the couch and chase him down, he’s long gone. The Mrs. figured out where he might be entering and exiting from, underneath the kitchen cabinets, so she’s duct taped all the areas she can find. Unfortunately, she may have blocked up all his holes, because I haven’t seen him since. I suspect he’s back to hanging out upstairs, because our neighbor told us she already killed at least one mouse last week, and because we occasionally hear her and her daughter yelling upstairs, presumably when the mouse starts running around up there.  This is unfortunate only in the sense that I recently bought a bunch of traps and have been hoping to kill the sumbitch myself. To be continued . . .

http://vodpod.com/watch/2931053-vikings-fan-reacts-to-favre-int