Christi is getting (more and more) famous

As I was slaving hard away at work yesterday, Christi got her passport renewed and caught the attention of the cameraman for the local paper. With all the new passport news, it was a top story and she had a huge picture on the front paper. The article can be seen here by acquiring the login/pass here. That is a nifty little site that mr. vankat showed me back in the day. For those not down with stealing from the man (even though it's free to sign up), I've taken the liberty of finding the picture for you, and it's here.

I know, I know, one little picture in the paper can't make her famous. But, being an author (or contributing author) just might. One of the people that Christi met at nationals for Junior Miss is writing a book and would like Christi to write a chapter for it. If it is ever published, we'll be sure to tell you so that you can go buy it and we can hopefully reap the $.002 royalty rights on each one sold.

43-16

Yeah, that was the score at halftime during the NU-KU game in Lincoln tonight. For those that pained themselves to watch it like I did know that the score was 12-6 KU four minutes into the half. The Husker's watched KU peel off a 26-0 run from there to make it 38-6 with 2:30 left. To put that into comparison, Wright scored 6 points in the first 2 minutes for Nebraska where the whole team scored 6 in 17+ minutes.

It was very tough to watch considering this is the first NU basketball game that we've been able to watch up here in the mountains. I love the 'skers to death, but I'm pretty sure that Barbaro put up more of a fight when he was euthanized earlier this morning. Come on people, it's an equestrian joke ... it's not that bad if you think about it.

Update: Two more things.
1) I hate when Alltel Nebraska hands out towels during big games. That's not us. We're not an SEC school. Don't do that every again. Try handing out headbands to the student section like you used to during KU games. At least we can use those after the game is over. Although mom did a nice job of displaying "Go Big Red" when the camera was shot on her in the 2^nd half. Way to go mom.

2) For those watching at home, there was a great quote at halftime. They showed a over shot of Devaney with the score on the screen and the announcer said, "Well, we would show you some first half highlights, but due to FCC decency standards, we'll just show you the score." It almost tops Corso's knock on Beau Davis, but not quite.

Winter X Games

Yes, I went to the X Games. The city of Aspen entertained me with more backside-720-indie-nosegrabs than you can shake a stick at. I went for the men's superpipe finals and it was absolutely amazing. I stood on the freezing snow for 2 hours to make sure to get a spot right on the pipe so I could snap some nice pictures. The wait and the pain-induced throbbing from my toes made up for it when I was able to see professionals spinning and doing tricks ten feet from my face.

I stayed for the first two rounds, and then I left a little earlier to beat the traffic and get warm. It was good timing on my part though, because on the way out, Shaun White was heading back up for his final run, so I got in his way like everyone else did and got a high five from a gold medal Olympian. In the words of the few thousand people surrounding me, it was "pretty sick dude."

Ahhh ... Vegas

Vegas was awesome. There's no other way to describe the city. Here's the best way that I can put it for people who've never been: It's just how you would imagine it ... with a couple hundred more lights.

We stayed at the MGM Grand (you can click the pic above for pictures) and it was amazing. The 2^nd largest hotel in the world proved to be all that people brag it up to be. After we got done screwing Elway over, we flew in on Saturday and went straight to the MGM. It took our bags a while to reach our room, but once they did, we were hungry so we ate at Emeril's restaurant in the hotel. If you're looking for some good food, and I mean anywhere, take a flight in just to eat here. You're don't become one of the top chefs in the world by serving average food. Let's just say it was amazing and we were both disappointed that we didn't go eat at his restaurant while we were in Atlanta.

We then took a cab ride up to the Sahara to see the Amazing Jonathon. We get there a shade early so what do we do? Yep, we went and lost money gambling. I blew $50 right away at the blackjack table while Christi banked in $13 playing the Monopoly slots. Once we had our fill, we went to the show and it was hilarious. Both of us absolutely loved his Comedy Central stand up, and the Vegas routine was even better. It was extremely raunchy, but amazing nonetheless.

Sunday was our day to just walk around the city. We stopped off at The Bodies Exhibition. This was something that I wanted to see while I was in Berlin in high school, but never got around to it. This was amazing. I'm still not sure how they are able to do some of the stuff they did. And if you're one of those "Big Bang" believers, take 30 minute walk through there and when you get to the exit, tell me the world is still an "accident." It really makes you think how thought provoking and long it took the good Lord to develop our bodies. A must see.

After this we hotel hopped (not casino hopped) our way up the strip. We did play a little at Treasure Island where I showed Christi a roulette method I developed back at the good ol' days of Winnavegas. I did my "bet the 12's" and Christi bet on black and red and we ended up taking around $40 from the casino. For the night cap, we decided to see Le Reve. Holy crap people. Best. Show. Ever ... There might be no better form of entertainment in the world. I never thought an hour and a half of hearing no words spoken would be cool, but it most certainly was. The Wynn specifically designed a theatre just for this production. The whole thing is done over a circle of water and it's a story of a girl having multiple dreams. The promo video can be seen here. It was quite spectacular.

On Sunday, we ordered room service and then made our way to the Bellagio for "the best buffet in town." We really weren't too impressed, but figured we had to eat at a buffet sometime while we were there. We had a few more hours to kill before our flight and Christi was in the mood to go gamble some more. After losing $30 at the MGM after our checkout, I really didn't want to go in the hole anymore right before we came home. I listened to her and sat down with $40 at the roulette table again. I played my odds where I have a 83% chance to at least make money or make my bet back at the table. I won about 13 hands in a row and I suddenly turned the $40 into $170. The streak finally ended on one of my normal $30 hands and I was suddenly up $100 just because Christi had the itch to go back and play. After doing some careful calculations, between my roulette and blackjack and Christi's Monopoly, we were up a total of $33 for our trip. I know that doesn't sound like much, but we came away with money, and we were happy for it.

With an extra $100 in my pocket, we both decided to go back to Tiffany's and get Christi the necklace that she really wanted. I had no problem doing that at the time, but after we were done, she had already picked out her V-Day gift, so I have some expectations to live up to now.

At this point, you might be saying, "Hey, 3 days in Vegas and that's all you did?" Well, not to be cliché, but what happens there truly does stay there.

Update: I forgot to mention that I took some videos while we were there as well. We got a nice one from the Lion Habitat at the MGM and a water show from the Bellagio.

Elway and Vegas

There's nothing more "Denver" than John Elway himself. So what better way to start looking for a car than looking at places that Elway himself owns? Because when I think cars, yeah ... I think of John Elway. He does have a nice company going, and we really found a car that we liked, so the night before we headed off to Vegas, Christi and I went down and looked at swapping in Christi's old Honda Civic for a Jeep Liberty.

We got there at 7, test drove the car, and then discussed a selling price with our salesman, the manager, and the general manager (all at different times) until 8:50! It took forever. If I hear someone say, "come on, can't you help me out a bit, it's just 300 dollars more" one more time, I'm going to snap. They were very persistent on getting a few hundred dollars out of us, but in the end, we were more persistent. We got the exact price that we asked for.

The best part of the night was the fact that we bargained the Civic for a trade-in value of $2300. Many who are reading this have driven in the infamous Civic and know that is is not worth $2300. Christi kept the outside body of the car amazingly beautiful, but there were a lot of things wrong with it. Those things include, but are not limited to, the dome light case being broken, the trunk sagging down a few inches, the rattling sound each time the car gets turned off, and the fact that neither back door could open!

Needless to say, they went out and "inspected" the car and told us that it looked great. Let's just say we won't be going back there for any 70-point inspection in the future.

Sorry for ripping you off Elway. Maybe you could sell one of those super bowl rings to make up the difference.

The following day, we went to Vegas. That sounds boring compared to the car buying experience, but it was amazing. I'll put up another post when I get some time to upload some pictures.

Job, M&M's, and one month later

First off, I am part of the 95.5% of American's who are employed. I was lucky enough to have the option of choosing between two different job opportunities. One enticed me more than the other, and I will be the Senior Web Designer for Big Stone Publishing. The currently have two websites (here and here) that I will be managing. These web sites correlate to two beautiful looking magazines. This means that my job will be bringing this beauty to the web. Yes, I know, I'm working for another publishing company without a journalism degree. It's quite funny how those things work out.



As for the M&M's, with that idol show taking the time spot of my beloved House, I was "forced" to watch that for a little bit, and we saw an ad for becomeanmm.com. With Christi getting anxious to see what it was, and with me getting anxious for a chance back away from the show, we decided to see what all of the fuss was about. After selective creation and molding we finally came up with an M&M for her and one for me.

Today also marks the one month anniversary of me living in the mountains. A lot has happened in the past 31 days. I was able to celebrate a family Christmas with everyone, Christi and I did our regular relax and sit around New Year's routine, I found a job (for those that decided to read over the title and skip to this paragraph), I made it down to Aspen ... twice (where we're going later this month to watch the X-Games), and I've found another die hard Husker fan.

Christi and I are off to Vegas from Saturday - Monday, so there might not be any more posts until then. Even when we do get back, I guess all of those commercials say what happens down there, stays down there .... but don't worry, I need to add a new '2007' section to the pics page.

Fun for the day

Break it like Beckham

David Beckham is coming to America to try to boost the moral of soccer fans here. After hearing the news, I was looking through some pictures of him and came across the one above. Check out his left foot and then look at the angle and weight his body is putting on that foot. It's remarkable his ankle didn't snap in two.

Looking into his records further, I did find out that he once broke a bone in his left foot on a shot just the same as above.

In other news I finally won the football pool at Seward Motor Freight, job searching is going great (hopefully I'll post some good news next week on that, or I'll end up like this guy), and I'm pissed off at Google for their "new and improved" Blogger. It's great and all, except for the fact that their backlinks don't validate to W3C standards (see bottom of all of my pages) any more. I emailed them about this problem that many people are having, but apparently Google is more worried about their Google Vision and their apparent quest to take over the online world. I still love 'em and all, just a little disappointed they don't take the advice of the little guy.

Need some help with Vegas, baby!

Christi thought we should take a little break before all of the mayhem of the wedding creeps up on us, so she got us some plane tickets to Vegas for a Christmas present. The only bad part about it is that neither of us have ever been there. Well, to be correct, Christi went on a dance tour while in high school, but they never got to experience Vegas or gamble, so I don't count that as a real time that she's gone.

With that, if anyone has any experience to the sin city, we'd love to hear any suggestions on things to do since there is no way we'll get close to experiencing it all.

Boise keeps me a believer

Everyone who knows me, knows that I have a strange thing for Boise State football. That's why I was extremely disappointed that the Huskers didn't win the Big XII to set up the showdown I've always wanted to see.

What Boise did do, though, is pull out one of the best bowl victories that I've ever seen. This got me to thinking about some of the greatest bowl games ever played, so here are my top 5:

Bowl Game #5: 1995 Fiesta Bowl
Nebraska 64 - Florida 28
This may be a biased pick, but I'm forever in love with this bowl for 2 reasons. 1) I was lucky enough to be there and 2) no one gave the greatest college football team of all time a shot to win it days before the game. People kept talking about this "Fun 'N Gun" offense that Spurrier brought to the desert. It just so happens that Nebraska came out and punished the Gators behind the performance of Phillips, Green, and one of the greatest plays ever. If there wasn't a quick whistle to bring back Christian Peter's touchdown and Osborne's humbleness of kneeling the ball on the Florida 10 at the end of the game, the Husker's could've scored around 80.

Bowl Game #4: 2001 GMAC Bowl
Marshall 64 - East Carolina 61 (2 OT)
Byron Leftwich showed the Heisman voters something to think about weeks before he didn't get invited with the finalists in New York. Trailing 38-8 at the half, I remember the T.V. announcers saying that Marshall should pull Leftwich out of the game to get some younger players bowl experience since the game was already over. Leftwich led, at the time, the largest bowl comeback victory. He drove 80 yards in the waining minute of the game to tie the score at 51 before both teams headed for OT. After both teams scored a rushing TD in the first OT, Marshall held the Pirates to a field goal in the 2^nd OT. Leftwich then threw his 70^th pass of the game for a touchdown giving him 4 throwing TD's, a rushing TD and 576 passing yards in one of the greatest bowl comeback victories of all time.

Bowl Game #3: 1984 Orange Bowl
Miami 31 - Nebraska 30
It really pains me to put a losing Husker game up here, but this game has been cited as the "greatest bowl game ever." Well, that was announced before we get to the final two on my list. Even though I can only comment on this game through the numerous times I've watched it on ESPN Classic, this game had everything. After spotting Miami 17 points in the first quarter, Nebraska responded by scoring on a fumblerooski play and adding another touchdown to cut the lead to 3 at half. Trailing 31-17 in the 4^th, Nebraska begins to be known for their style to wear a team down throughout a game. Nebraska cut the lead to 7 before converting a 4^th & 18 running (drum role please ...) an option to the right with :50 left on the clock. No coach in the history of college football has or will ever run an option for more than 15 yards with a national championship on the line. As we all know, the game ends with Osborne's incredible decision to win the national championship outright by going for two and having the pass knocked down.

Bowl Game #2: 2007 Fiesta Bowl
Boise State 43 - Oklahoma 42 (OT)
This is the game mentioned at the top of this blog. For those that weren't able to watch the game live, I urge you to DVR or Tivo this when it's played as an instant classic. Boise comes into the game as a massive underdog where people (other than me) gave them little to no chance at winning. They sprung out to an impressive 14-0 lead and improved that to 28-10 late in the 3^rd quarter. Oklahoma responds by scoring a touchdown, scoring a field goal, and then scoring one more touchdown with 1:26 left on the clock. It took three tries (due to penalties) for them to finally make their two point conversion. Just as Oklahoma has done the impossible and tries to take momentum of the game, you can just feel that everyone is pulling for Boise to make one final drive and score as time expires to pull of the improbable upset. On the very next play Boise has, Zabransky throws an interception that Oklahoma returns for a touchdown nearly deflating any chance for a win. Zabransky and the Broncos become determined and drive down to the 50 yard line to face a 4^th and 18 (where have I heard that distance before???). They call a hook and ladder that they score on with :07 remaining to force overtime. After Oklahoma scores first, Boise answers right back with a score of their own but decides not to kick the extra point. They wanted to end the game right there and then. Zabransky pulls off the most amazing statue of liberty plays that I've seen since McNabb was at Syracuse. He hands the ball off to Johnson behind his back for the final score of the game. Quite amazing. Maybe this isn't better in the traditional sense than the '84 Orange Bowl, but this was much more exciting to watch.

This might have been the best 2 points I've ever received in my bowl pool history as well.

I'm sure Dan Hawkins is kicking himself in Boulder tonight after watching the game.

Bowl Game #1: 2006 Rose Bowl
Texas 41 - USC 38
There may be no greater game than this with no greater individual performance. Vince Young single handedly took over the game for his 2^nd straight Rose Bowl victory. Once again the underdog came through to shine in the end. This game featured powerhouse USC that was, at the time, regarded as one of the best football teams of all time. Well, it's tough to say that you're the greatest with a loss on the final record. Back to the game: Texas took a remarkable 16-10 lead into halftime to shock most of the people watching. After a Dwayne Jarrett touchdown with under 7 minutes remaining in the 4^th many thought USC would march on to a record 3^rd consecutive national championship. Vince drove the Longhorns for a score with 4 minutes left on the clock and then the defense held USC on the biggest play of the game, a 4^th and 2 in Texas territory. If USC picks up the 1^st, they can run out the clock and win the game. Instead, Texas stuffs Lendale White, who even the cheerleaders knew was going to get the carry up the middle, and sets up one final drive for Vince. With a 4^th and 5 looming with under :30 left on the clock, Vince scrambles into the right corner of the end zone just as he did to beat Michigan. It's going to take quite a performance in a national championship game to ever top that.

Horrible way to kick off the new year

It's really not too much fun to wake up at 9 in the morning and watch Nebraska hand Auburn 14 points in a 17-14 loss in the Cotton Bowl. It's not how I pictured spending my first waking hours of 2007, but it's alright. It's just college football, and there are plenty of things to be excited about for next year like Sam Keller. He alone will change the football program in just one year.

Later tonight, I'm going to be crossing my fingers that Oklahoma gets Pac-10 officials in the Fiesta Bowl. It'd be great irony to cap off their season.

As for 2007, I'm hoping that it will be as good as 2006. Christi and I were talking last night and we both graduated and moved to a different state in 2006, so we'll look forward to the wedding this year and any more exciting changes that will come our way.

I hope everyone has a great new year.

The Clique

Ben VanKat
Troy Bell
Chris VanKat

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