Trade deadline

Wednesday was trade deadline day in the National Hockey League. While hockey isn't the biggest sport anymore, trade deadline day in Detroit is pretty funny because fans have become accustomed to a big move. Especially pre-lockout and salary cap, the Red Wings would poach top players other teams couldn't afford. While at first I loved it, I soon realized the Wings had basically become the Yankees of hockey and I understood why fans of other teams hated them. Last year, the Wings tried to prepare fans that they wouldn't be able to make deadline moves under the new cap, then went out and ruined it by trading for Todd Bertuzzi, a move that didn't work out very well. Thankfully, the Predators' trade for Peter Forsberg and the Thrashers' trade for Keith Tkachuk were about 100 times as stupid. This year, many teams who saw how detrimental the Forsberg trade was to the Predators (and how beneficial it was to the Flyers) and were more careful. The Red Wings were among these. Big names like Marian Hossa were thrown around, but the Wings never realistically had the pieces to go after Hossa without breaking up the team that had the best record in the NHL. After having 37 defensemen befallen to injury, the Wings went out and got a very reputable defenseman for not a lot, a move applauded by hockey experts. Inevitably, local sports columnist writes column immediately questioning why the Wings didn't do more. Funny thing is, this columnist did the same thing at the baseball trading deadline last year. (And for the record, the Red Sox won the World Series despite Eric Gagne, not because of him.) It's as if there's a canned column waiting on trade deadline day saying "Home team obviously doesn't do enough." The fan reaction on the radio is even funnier. Somehow, tons of fans have inside access that lead them to know about possible trades that the GM either doesn't know about, or apparently isn't smart enough to take. Then the annual hating on the GM starts. And the panic as they analyze the moves made by other contenders. It all makes for quite good theater. Unfortunately, trade deadline moves haven't proven to be all that successful. In an article last year, a Baseball America writer ranked some of the most notable moves, most turning out to be horrible moves. Jeff Bagwell and John Smoltz, both part of trades late in the season before they became stars. Imagine what Bagwell would have done for the Red Sox or Smoltz for the Tigers (I cry about this one late at night, luckily Doyle Alexander basically was the whole reason the Tigers won the AL East in 1987.) In Detroit, we were on the end of one of the most successful deadline deals, as Rasheed Wallace put the Pistons over the hump on their way to an NBA championship. And the 1994 Rangers were in a similar position as the Wings when they shook up their roster, adding Stephane Matteau among others. But for the most part, trades made at the deadline haven't made that big of a difference. More often, it's been the small move that addressed a weakness without breaking up what was working well to put a team in contention in the first place.

But inevitably, the proliferation of moves at the deadline has created millions of would-be GMs who just can't figure out why their favorite team won't make that obvious move to trade Uwe Blab, Tom Beer, Curtis Pride and three second round picks for Michael Jordan, Alex Rodriguez and Mother Teresa. So for all you GMs out there, here's a simple diagram you can put up in your office to remind you what to do on trade deadline day. Do it for the sake of humankind.

Note: I only talk that much about hockey because it is the most recent example. Sadly, hockey has become fairly irrelevant for me.

Manhood falling

In a few weeks, my wife is hosting a Tastefully Simple party. From what I understand, this consists of her friends coming over and sampling a bunch of food, then deciding which to buy. Since I love sampling food, I'm excited about this party. Today, my wife showed me the menu, which included tempting taco cheese balls, absolutely chocolate pound cake and bountiful beer bread. (I'd link to their other products if they actually had them on their site.) When writing her an e-mail back to say which foods excited me the most, I almost mistakenly wrote bountiful beef bread, which I admitted to her I would also have been excited about. So if you're reading Tastefully Simple, I'm giving you that one for free. Go forth and create beef bread. In the meantime, I'm going to be way too excited about this party than any man should be.

After a few days off from posting because a crazy week, I'm looking forward to posting this weekend about sports trading deadlines. I need access to my work computer (not during the work day) so I can make some great supporting charts and graphs. (Thank God for Office2007 and SmartArt.) It's going to be great fun for all. Well, maybe just me.

On a lighter note...

After the below post, I figured I'd add something a little lighter for the day as well. First is a story from the UK, where apparently a man died after eating too much cake. The story was intriguing for several reasons. First, I'll admit I'd never heard of fairy cakes, and I ran a search wondering what amazing concoction they might be. Apparently, it's what they call cupcakes in Europe. So basically, this man died eating cupcakes. That's one way to go. Fiery chariot is still the best one I've heard of though.

I will always make a spot for the discovery of old athletes. Today's entry was sent by a co-worker and finds Cedric Ceballos as a DJ in Arizona. This brought on inevitable jokes about him doing the show with a blindfold on. "It's blindfold Tuesday on your old school station, Mega 104.3!" I also found on Cedric's personal site that his "journal" is rather interesting. He types in all caps and usually begins with "HEY WORLD!" and ends with some crazy long acronym, "HYBDLYBHY." (i sincerely hope this isn't something obvious, I googled it and there were two pages, both with references to Ceballos.) I was reading them all imaging Cedric Ceballos yelling at me and it was quite fun. My favorite entry had to be this one though, "HEY WORLD, WOULD YOU LIKE THE CHANCE TO WIN A DODGE SRT-10 TRUCK? WELL KEEP CHECKING BACK BECAUSE I WILL BE GIVING ONE AWAY THIS YEAR.... HYBDLYBHY." This year, that's pretty definitive there, Ced. And why a retired NBA player would be giving away a truck randomly on his Web site confuses me. But Cedric Ceballos yelling at me about a free truck while wearing a blindfold does not confuse me at all. In fact, nothing is confusing about that. In the meantime, let's all keep checking in so we can win the truck!

Shame on who?

So judging by my last post, you know who I support for President. So I'll admit this post is not going to be the most objective one. There have been a few times in this race where I've been extremely disappointed. Today it reached a new level. After a photo of Senator Obama in a tunic and turban during a trip to Kenya was released, the Clinton campaign denied it had distributed the photo, but instead of condemning the tactic and whoever did release it, one staffer decided this would be the opportune time to pontificate about how the press is too easy on Obama. Furthermore, spokeswoman Maggie Williams stooped to a new level, trying to blame the Obama campaign for calling it a divisive photo. Senator Clinton then took the chance in a Texas interview to say it was an attempt to change the subject from health care. Rather than denounce it, Senator Clinton would rather use it for her own agenda. Yet, just a few days earlier she was on national TV declaring, "Shame on you, Barack Obama." She called his positioning of her stance on NAFTA, "tactics that are right out of Karl Rove's playbook, this is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged." Yet when it comes to this issue, Senator Clinton seems to think its more about diverting the attention from health care. She seems to think that a tactic like talking about issue differences is worse than someone trying to use fear to bring down Obama. The same fear-tactics used by the current administration and condemned in every speech from a Democrat. Yet, her campaign's hands aren't clean. I don't know for sure if they did this or not. But their reaction enough is despicable. So who should be shaming who? The answer is pretty clear.

A day with Tony and Barack

Normally Sunday afternoons are spent lounging on the couch and preparing for another week of work. Today was different, we decided to go see Barack Obama speak in Toledo. We were so determined to get in that we arrived 3.5 hours early, still worrying we might not. We sat for quite some time, played games on our phones, talked and listened to some absolutely awesome gospel music performed by local groups. The anticipation grew as the moment grew closer and when Barack arrived, I thought the roof was going to blow off the place. A few things I noticed today. The crowd was incredibly diverse, old and young, all different races. You could tell that everyone there was genuinely excited to be there. I remember attending a Bob Dole rally in high school because our school band was invited to play. There was certainly energy (as there are with most rallies at a presidential candidate level), but nowhere near like it was for Obama today. He's a great speaker and it's a moment I don't know if I'll ever forget. We got a stump speech with a lot of content familiar from other speeches he's given, but even then, it was a memorable event. Hopefully there will be many more campaign stops in the future and perhaps the chance to see him speak again.

After the event, we tried to go to Uncle John's Pancake House, an interesting joint we saw on the way to the Obama event. A friend looked up information on his Blackberry while we waited and we found out that the place has a 60 foot boat hanging from the ceiling. They also have an all-you-can-eat pancake Wednesday. Sadly, they randomly decided to close at 6 p.m. today. So we decided to head to a Toledo tradition, Tony Packo's (the original one.) Although the fact that we skipped lunch to make it to the rally as quickly as possible after church and were very hungry, Tony did not disappoint. Some chicken chili nachos as an appetizer followed by two Tony dogs and a side of mac and cheese later, I was stuffed. The hot dogs were very unique, more like polish or smoked sausage cut in half. A friend had a more traditional Hungarian meal with stuffed cabbage, hamburg (yes, hamburg, not hamburger, a Hungarian meatloaf type dish) and paprikas dumplings. The samples I had of his food were very good as well. Since it was getting late and our poor dog needed to be let out, we didn't stay to check out the many signed buns (yes, celebrities sign hot dog buns, which are then air sealed and displayed.) In the brief time we spent looking at them, I saw names like Geraldine Ferraro, Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu (assuming it's the elder), Walter Mondale and many other names political geeks like me find interesting. For a minute I wondered how so many politicians had come through Tony Packo's. Then I remembered where I had just come from, a political rally and realized that Ohio and it's blue collar workers have been long coveted by politicians. It makes sense that while stopping through Toledo, they would hit up this landmark. I'm glad we decided to do the same while we were there. Too bad they didn't ask us to sign any buns.

A looking forward Saturday

It was one of those weeks. I didn't make it home before 7 p.m. one night out of the week and that night, we immediately left for a dinner with friends (at this great little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place ironically called Little Mexico.) Today feels like the first time I have actually been able to contemplate anything more than work and the Tigers. That easily brings me to the first thing I'm looking forward to on this Saturday, spring training.

In 27 days, we take our annual trip to spring training. This is the 4th year we've made the trip down to Lakeland. Even before the Tigers were good, it was an absolutely great trip. Watching spring training baseball is so relaxing and the low-key nature of our trips is perfect to get away from the busy lives back in Michigan. I'm spending more time than ever looking into restaurants we can eat at while down there. I continue to be inspired by one of my favorite shows Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, to find the best local restaurants. One of the great ones we found last year was Mario's. We had read stories how former Tigers General Manager Jim Campbell would dine there nightly during spring training with other members of the Tigers. Last year, when we went, we sat near Tigers backup catcher Vance Wilson and some members of the training staff. This year, I'm hoping we find even more. In the meantime, I daily check out photos from the spring training complex, HueyTaxi has my favorites. Our grandparents head down there in time for the first game next week. We'll be joining them along with my wife's parents for the final week of spring training. I'm counting down the days.

The second thing I look forward to is the NFL Draft. This weekend is the NFL combine and my wife is grateful we no longer get the NFL Network. Two years ago, I literally sat around watching intently as offensive lineman ran the 40-yard dash. My grandpa always has an NFL draft party with detailed information about each player. Since the Lions are horrible and will inevitably mess up their pick, I've taken a bigger picture view the past few years to watch players from the state of Michigan and intriguing stories from other players. I was particularly interested in the story of Michael Oher, the subject of Michael Lewis' The Blind Side: The Evolution of a Game. In a smart move, Oher decided to go back to Ole Miss for another season. So I'm on the lookout for other interesting stories from players seeking to get into the NFL. And inevitably, they can be found.

Lastly, I look forward to seeing the sun during the day and being able to run outside again. The recumbent bike in the basement and treadmill at the gym are no match for a run outside. Saturdays are a nice preview since I actually get to see the sun and a decently warm day like today provides hope for spring. When I start focusing in on Spring Training and the NFL draft, I know it's the home stretch for the bitterly cold days of February.

Welcome and background

Oh blogging. Seems these days everyone is blogging and after several failed attempts to commit myself to the blogosphere, I'm giving it a go again. I've been inspired by my good friend and college roomate, who has a hilarious blog here. If I can come up with content 1/10th as entertaining as his blog, I'll be very happy. There's no real concrete objective of this blog, it will be a view into my weird take on life and cover a range of topics including food, sports, politics, pop culture, religion, exercise and who knows what else.

So why call it addicted to pudding? Well, I am addicted to pudding. I fault it on my recent wisdom teeth removal. I had been enjoying the occasional cup of pudding from the restaurant in the building I work in, but when I was forced into eating only soft foods, pudding became the thing I looked most forward to every day. Now, even when I can eat solid foods just fine, I still look forward to that little cup of Jello pudding every day. Up until 2007, I used to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. After realizing that wasn't a very productive lifestyle and continually being appalled at how fat I was getting (this time in my life is commonly referred to as "when I liked cake too much,") I recommitted myself to fitness and healthier eating. I dropped around 55 pounds that year and have kept it off. So now that little cup of pudding takes care of the sweet tooth I once fed whenever possible. It should be noted that I am also addicted to pancakes. Before you say I must be addicted to foods beginning with P, I must note I do not care for prunes, peaches or prawns. I do, however, enjoy pork chops, pasta, potatos and pizza. (in moderation of course.) I was once addicted to "pop" or soda as it seems anyone outside of Michigan calls it. I've been pop-free for around a year now and it's been a great decision.

For my friends I don't get to see all that often, I hope this will serve as some type of regular update on what's been happening in my life. For those who don't know me and happen upon this blog, it's ok that you are scared. I'm a bit different than the other kids and I'm totally fine with that. Enjoy!