Wanna Win Some Money?

Now you know the saying..."it takes money to make money." Well, this is no exception, but the amount of investment is so minimal. What if I told you that if you invested just $1.00 you could walk away with $450.00! It sounds too good to be true doesn't it? But it's not! It's for real, but only for a limited time!

That's right, for a limited time our soccer team is doing a fundraiser. We are selling tickets for the SuperBowl this Sunday. Not actual tickets for the game...this is even better! Each ticket has a score on it for the SuperBowl (for example: Pittsburgh 22 Seattle 19). If the score on your ticket is the actual score at the end of the game then you win $250! It's really that easy! There are also bonus prizes. If your score matches the score at the end of 1st or 3rd quarter you win $50. If it matches the halftime score you win $100.

So step right up and buy your ticket today...they are only $1 each! If you want one or five or twenty or however many, just leave me a comment and I'll collect from you later! It really makes the game a lot more fun to watch when you want the score to match your ticket! The proceeds are going to support our Tauro FC soccer team and hopefully there will be enough to buy a brick to help support the new soccer centre in Saskatoon!

Living Right

The other day my favourite Canadian poker player, Daniel Negreanu, won a big tournament in the World Series of Poker tournament circuit in Tunica, Mississippi which is great as he had had not won a major tournament in quite a while. The interesting part was what he wrote on his blog afterward. Here's an excerpt:

You know, it just wouldn't be right of me to leave out the following bit of information that I feel makes me not only a more focused player, but also a better person: I've been "livin' right." Every night I've been reading a few chapters of the Bible, getting to bed early, being productive, and staying positive. There is no way to measure how important all of that is, but personally, I know that without that, "routine" if you will, I'm simply not as good as I can be. Having a personal relationship with God is very important to me and I think I’ve been letting my “busy life” interfere with my priorities a little bit. First and foremost, I need to become a better husband, a better son, and a better friend to my friends. When I do that, everything else just has a way of falling into place, and no, I don’t think it’s a random coincidence!

I think it's great how Daniel writes that on his poker blog that thousands of people read all the time. He doesn't hide his faith at all. And I totally agree with him because I find the same thing in my own life. When I am regularly reading the Bible and praying I feel that things just seem to go better. Now don't hear me say that everything goes the way I want (I wish!), but I find that when my realtionship with God is good, I feel better, little things don't irritate me as much, and I'm just all around happier.

Does anyone else out there find this in their life?

Oh the Pain!

The 4th Annual Alumni Soccer Tournament has once again come and gone. I think this was one of the best Alumni tournaments we've had to date. We had over 25 Alumni come back to Bethany for this tournament and everyone had a blast. It was a double round robin set up and then the top 2 teams moved on to the final. This meant that the two teams in the final ended up playing 5 games of soccer (40 min games) within a 24 hour period. And yes, I was feeling it the next day.

We tried a couple new things this year. First we had a silent auction where we auctioned off some jerseys from Mexico. This went ok, but next year I think a live auction at the annual Brunch would bring in more money for Bethany. The second thing we had was a tournament MVP. Each team picked an MVP from their team and the other team after each game. The person with the most votes at the end won the prize which was also a soccer jersey from Mexico.

Oh yeah, the results. Well, my team did very well...but we didn't quite win. We lost in the final 6-4 to the younger Alumni team (called the Young Pups, we were the Geezers). The other team had some of the best soccer players Bethany had ever produced (even though our team also had excellent players, just a bit older) so we were very happy to even be contenders in the final. However, I really wanted to win that Bethany Cup and I am already set to go back next year and beat those guys!

Was anyone else watching the tournament this weekend? Any ideas on how to improve this tournament for next year?

Can you Keep a Secret?

I'm excited about this weekend because it's the Alumni Soccer Tournament weekend at Bethany College! I love this event...not only because I'm the tournament organizer but it's just a lot of fun to play against all the guys I used to coach as well as play with my old teammates from when I was there.

The thing is this is a competitive yet fun event. The winning team gets their name on the Bethany Cup and gets to drink the sweet nectar (sparkling apple juice) from the Bethany Cup too. So needless to say I want to win.

In order to do that I decided I was going to try and give myself an extra edge. No, I didn't stack my team or anything. Instead, I'm blood doping.

Now if you don't know what blood doping is it works like this. You start by taking blood out of your system. Then you let your body rest for a few days as the blood replenishes itself. Then you take the blood you took out of your body and have it put back in. Now your body has an abundance of blood in it and it will give you extra energy to be able to perform better athletically. So I've decided to do this...sort of.

You see, I have it pretty easy. My body is automatically taking the blood platelets out of my body so I don't even have to remove any blood from my body. It happens automatically. So because my blood platelet count got down to a low count again (11,000), then this past week on Thursday and today I went back into the hospital and they hooked me up again for some more IV gamma globulin. So I laid there in the hospital for about 2.5 hours each day and had blood products pumped back into my body. So now I'm hoping that I will have extra energy for this weekend and can help propel my team to VICTORY! Then I'm back in the hospital again on Monday for one final treatment which will hopefully continue to pump extra blood platelets into my body.

Now blood doping is not legal when it comes to professional sports. However, I don't think any doping agency is going to be testing any of the Alumni players this weekend, so I should be good. But just in case, let's keep this hush hush just between us!

So if anyone wants to see some great soccer action this weekend, come on out to Bethany College starting at 7:00pm tonight for a great weekend of soccer. Go Geezers Go!! (That's my team)

It was the Summer of '69

Actually it was more like the winter of '06, but yes, it was one of the best days of my life (ok, so it wasn't in the top 10, that is sort of filled with getting engaged, getting married, seeing U2, etc., but pretty close). Yep, last night I had a rocking good time at the Bryan Adams concert. My sister and her boyfriend bought Shiela and I tickets for Christmas and they were EXCELLENT seats. We were sitting on the floor level in the 5th row from the front exactly in the middle of the stage! They were some of the best tickets to a concert I had ever had! I was so close to Bryan that if I had reached out my hand I could have touched his shoe. Ok, actually I would have only touched the hair of these older ladies in front of me and probably would have been hauled away by security for sexual harrasment or something, but we were VERY close.

Honestly, it felt like Bryan was singing straight from the heart and he was rocking the place! He started off the concert singing "Room Service" which was 1 of only 2 songs he played that I didn't basically know all the words to. In the heat of the night at Credit Union Centre it was very obvious that everywhere Bryan goes, kids wanna rock and people were rocking last night. I also realized I'm getting old because during the opeing act of Daniel Powter I was wearing earplugs so I wouldn't hurt my ears, but I found that the concert was WAY more enjoyable without them and after a while I was rocking so hard I didn't care if I could ever hear again!

Some highlights of the concert were:
1) During a slower song Bryan told everyone to show their cell phones. People used to have lighters, but not anymore. I turned around and looked around the arena and there were a TON of glowing phones all over the place. It was pretty cool.

2) Bryan picked a girl from the audience to come up and sing "Baby, When You're Gone" with him. The first girl he picked went up there but when the song started she didn't know the words. So Bryan stopped the song, gave her a tambourine to play and then picked another girl from the audience. The new girl knew the words and sang it with Bryan. But tambourine girl didn't want to give up the spotlight. She tried singing into the other girls mike but Bryan then pulled the new girl closer to him so tambourine girl couldn't sing in it. Then the lead guitar player came over and kept tambourine girl company. That's when tambourine girl started getting a little crazy and was spanking herself with the tambourine, etc. She definately made a fool of herself.

3) The lead guitar player, who was amazing, had a little guitar solo showdown with Bryan which was pretty cool. I think the lead guitar player was better.

4) Did Bryan have to say the words? NO! I basically knew all the words to every song, and the best part was the music was so loud I could sing the lyrics as loud as I wanted and nobody could hear me over the real music. And I wasn't the only one. Bryan would often stop singing and it didn't matter because everyone in the entire arena was singing the lyrics for him. It was awesome!

The concert was going so well I told myself, "we can't stop this thing we started", but although it cut like a knife and Bryan said "Please forgive me", after about 2 hous and 15 minutes of playing including two encores, Bryan told all his fans that "Everything I do I do it for you" and left the stage for the final time. It felt like I was in "Heaven", but as the house lights came up I came back down to earth and will remember that I always want to be 18 til I die!

Home Sweet...Office?

It was a late night and I was in a deep, dreamy sleep. I was dreaming that I was playing in a no limit poker tournament and I had just flopped a Royal flush. The other guy bet, I raised, he reraised, and then I went all in. Needless to say he was knocked out when I won. Of course, like most dreams, this one was a little weird since I had about 10 cards in my hand so finding the right ones for the Royal Flush wasn't hard. Anyway....

As I'm happily dreaming my alarm clock goes off. I bolt out of bed thinking the smoke alarm is going off and the house is burning down, though I quickly realize it's just the alarm clock, shut if off, and fall back to bed. The next thing I know I wake up and it's 7:55am!!! I have to be at work by 8:00am!! I bolt out of bed, run across the hall to the next room, quickly sit down, look at my watch, and sigh with relief. I made it to work with 4 minutes and 50 seconds to spare!

That's right, I love working at home. You can sleep in til just before 8:00am and then walk over the office still in your housecoat. Actually, I'm working in the buff right now...just kidding! I have underwear on! You can set your own hours, listen to music while you work, update your blog (ok, I'm on a coffee break right now), talk to your wife whenever, eat lunch at home instead of packing a lunch, etc. Yep, working from home is great. I'm not sure what I'll do if I ever get an office job again.

If you would like to contact me at work, here is my contact info: same as before LOL!!

Does anyone else out there work from home?

Hockey Night in Saskatoon

It only took about 3 years but I finally made it back out. That's right, I went out and played some shinny yesterday. Every year I tell my friends we should go out and play some shinny, but we never do. Well, this year I dug deep into our storage closet and pulled out my skates along with an old hockey stick. Unfortunately it was a right handed stick and I shoot left handed, so I really have no idea where the stick came from. But it worked out well because Shiela shoots right so she used it. We both even took our skates and had them sharpened (I boght Shiela new skates for Christmas)!

As 8 of us trekked across the park to the local outdoor community rink I was excited. I was the only one wearing a helmet (you know, the whole ITP thing, even though because I'm not a great skater I prefer to wear a helmet when I play even if it looks "uncool"). Of course I was the last one to get my skates tied up but I finally made it onto the ice. As I hobbled along I started to get the groove back and was able to skate around "at a reasonable speed". That was until I came skating into the middle and completely wiped out (the ice was pretty rough). But it worked out well since I slid into the pile of sticks on the ice and just started throwing them to different sides to make up the teams.

After about 3 minutes of skating my lungs were on fire, but I eventually got my second wind and was able to keep going. The only bad part of the night was when I tried to pull a hocky move on my wife. I was skating towards her with the puck and as I pushed the puck past her on my left I lifted my stick quickly over her head to get the puck on the other side. Unfortunately I haven't practiced that move much (I've just seen it on TV and figured I could do it too) and my stick whacked my wife in the back of the head. Needless to say that was the end of that play and I didn't score on that. However, I did manage to score a goal a little later on and celebrated it a lot by riding my stick down the ice and shooting my glove out of the air! I definately want to play again very soon!

Bigger, Better, Brighter

Last night I had my first look at the new soccer centre building here in Saskatoon...and it is NICE! The large field in the middle looks amazing and I can't wait to play on it. Now there is actually very little finished in the new building. Only the main field is done and everything else is one big construction site, but here are my thoughts on different aspects of the building.

Lighting: Excellent
When I walked into the building I felt like I was walking onto an outdoor field it was so bright. It could be that everything else was a construction site so the lights shining off the bright green turf made it feel very bright, but overall I loved the lighting. However, there is no lighting outside in the parking lot yet or on the way into the building, so don't hurt yourself walking in the dark.

Outdoor Field: Excellent
This field is LARGE! It is very wide and it really feels like you are playing outdoors. The games I was watching were the youth 8 vs 8 games where they play on just half the field width wise, but it honestly felt like I was watching an outdoor game. The 8 vs 8 game is not going to be like an indoor game at all. It is completely like outdoor with throw ins, corner kicks, offsides, etc. It was great to watch and will really give us a better edge in National competitions because we can play outdoor soccer year round now.

Seating: Average
Right now there is no seating because it is not finished, but I could see where the bleachers were going to go and I wasn't impressed. I feel that it will be very similar to the old soccer centre style seating. It's ok, but when you have some really big games happening there is not near enough room to watch. I hope it turns out ok but I'm not too optimistic.

Lounge: Not Sure
The lounge is not completed yet so it is hard to judge, but one thing I noticed right away was that the lounge is not centralized like it was in the old soccer centre. In the old centre you could watch all the fields from inside the lounge. But this new one has the loung on the far side of the building. So it's great if you want to watch the north end of the large outdoor field, but I think for everything else you will need to leave the lounge if you want to watch.

Parking: Average
It could just be that not all the parking was finished yet, but last night I was there and the parking lot was already basically full. That is trouble because last night there were only 2 games happening at a time and they were not using the 2 old style indoor fields at all. I hope there will be enough parking, but I 'm skeptical. Also, they installed a few dividers to help with the parking, but in my opinion they are way too large and take up some valuable parking space.

Overall Look: Excellent
I think this is going to be one of the nicesest soccer centres in Canada. Having a large outdoor field indoors is amazing and makes the building feel huge. It's going to be amazing to play on.

Be sure to go check it out for yourself very soon. The Tauro FC Men have an exhibition game there on Jan 25 at 9:30pm so be sure to come out and watch (bring a lawn chair as there may not be a lot of seats)

It's Going To Be a Great Year

Goodbye 2005 and hello 2006! That's right, I'm excited about this new year! I feel that it's a time for new beginnings and a chance to forget about everything that didn't go well in the last year. Now, I don't usually go about writing down new years resolutions. I sort of make them, in my mind only, because that way if I don't fulfill them nobody knows. But this year I've decided to share a few of them:

1) Score more goals in soccer
2) Play more shinny
3) Make a lot of money

All three of these should be pretty easy to do. I'm not much of a goal scorer in soccer so as long as I score the odd goal here and there I should be able to beat my last years result. As for playing shinny, I haven't even played once in the last 3 years so if I manage to get out even once this goal will be accomplished (even though I want to play at least 3 - 4 times this winter if not more). Make a lot of money...this is pretty basic. Everyone who knows me knows that I claim I will one day be rich. That is still my plan and I feel that this is going to be my breakout year! Besides that, since I've been unemployed for the last 4 months making more money than last year shouldn't be that hard! I do have a few other resolutions, but I'll keep those to myself.

Well, there you have it. Did any of you make any resolutions?