Golfin' in December!

Played 18 holes with 7 of my closest buddies today! This is not normal for December here in Salt Lake. We're going to play tomorrow too. When the weather is like this you have to take advantage as it may snow and you won't see green grass for another 3 months.

It was fun to get out and chase the white spheroid but man talk about rusty. It is amazing that your game can get so bad after taking 3 weeks off. Normally a good putter, I putted terribly. I knocked balls into hazards, chipped bad etc.

The highlight was having 2 birdies in a row. First birdie was on a short par 4. I teed off with a 3i and knocked a gap wedge to about 15 feet and made the putt. The next birdie was on a par 3, about 178 yards. Knocked my tee shot long and left and had an impossible chip down a steep slope. There was almost no way to keep this ball on the green. I jokingly turned to my buddy and told him "this is an easy shot." Then I proceeded to knock the chip in the hole!

The rest of the round was a disaster and I lost money to nearly every one of the 7 other guys. I'd better play better tomorrow to get some of my dough back.

One other unfortunate thing is that my stupid tennis elbow still hurts a little. I hoped the winter would let it heal completely but apparently not.

Golf For Dummies DVD by Gary McCord

Here's my first DVD review! FIrst of all I must say I love Gary McCord. Some people can't stand him as an announcer but I happen to love his humor. Since I have a great Netflix account I rented the DVD.

Gary kept his strange humor under control for the most part in this instructional golf dvd. The dvd is maily geared for beginners (or dummies I suppose) but there's plenty of good avice and drills for both beginners and golf veterans. I don't know what the retail is on this but it's worth a look.

Stars: 3 of 5

Caller #7

I'm a Utah native but NOT mormon. I went to the University of Utah and I've attended all their basketball and football games since I was probably 4 or 5 years old.

So this year has been awesome with the football team going 11-0 under coach Urban Meyer. Bye bye coach, have fun at Flordia.

So my beloved Utes are the first team EVER to bust the BCS fiasco. They're playing in the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, AZ. I'm quite poor right now so I couldn't pony up the $900/person for a plane ticket, game ticket & hotel room.

I called the local radio station today and managed to be "caller #7." Two times per day for two weeks this station has a contest and the 7th caller's name gets put into a hat. One week from tomorrow (or today since it's 12:25am) they will draw one name out of the 20. That person will win a trip for 2 to the Fiesta Bowl including airfare, hotel and game tickets.

Please please please let them draw my name next Friday!

Golf in the near future!?

It's December and snowy here. But the snow is melting here in the "valley." The temp is supposed to be 53 tomorrow. (3 cheers for global warming!) The phone calls started rolling in tonight: GOLF SATURDAY 10:00am. Group of 8. It will be nice to play but it won't be nice to suck (having not played for about 3 weeks).

I get it

I'm beginning to figure out why blogs are the hot thing right now. I understand them now.

First thing I can figure is that people like to see their own writing "published" somehow. I admit I like it too.

2nd, it's like getting a sneak read into other people's journals. Some blogs are absolute stupid crap. Some are very interesting.

Here are a couple of interesting ones:

A Cop's blog
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About
Pro Sound & Musicians
The Grand Staircase

BTW it is quite irritating that I can't SEE the link button. I have to use HTML tags to do it.

I believe in UFO's

I have a Netflix account. I've found many fun movies to rent. This week it is two movies on UFO's. There are tons of phony videos and pictures out there but some look pretty convincing. Just the sheer mathematics of the universe dictates high odds of life "out there."

I've never seen a UFO in person. I've never seen an alien lifeform. But I still believe they exist.

That is funny because I've never seen God and...

The hottest web site I frequently visit

The Ultimate Hot Sauce location provides thousands of Hot Sauce Brands - Mohotta Mobetta, The World Headquarters of Hot Sauce.
And my favorite hot sauce is Arizona Gunslinger. Wait a minute, where the hell is my Arizona Gunslinger t-shirt??!! I have one somewhere dammit.

The decline of American society

I hate reality TV. The bachelor, fear factor, wife swap or whatever is all trash. I think this kind of garbage is a precursor to the complete disintigration of American society. Why are people so fascinated with watching someone else eat bowls of live maggots? Why are people so fascinated with watching some stupid loser woman cry over being booted off the bachelor?

Why? I suppose the same reason I'm so fascinated with the Big Break II. I suppose I imagine myself in the competition. I imagine that I could beat these competitors. Maybe that's what women do when they watch the bachelor. They imagine that they are more beautiful and "qualified" to marry some prettyboy schmuck they met two days ago.

So I admit I do like ONE reality TV show. When you get into the show you realize it is more about the personalities and how they interact than the cheesy competitions.

Tonight Bart got knocked off the show. I would have figured he would be the winner. He had the best swing and seemed to have a good golf brain. But after Kip hit one great shot on the final hole, he made birdy to knock Bart out. Earlier in the show Don D started crying badly when he realized he would be in the finals. This was genuine and certainly means a ton to him.

Kip & Don duke it out next week for the championship. I'm going to pick Kip now. He was starting to play well and he is much more calm and collected. Though Don has game, he lives and dies on every shot. I think that is a recipe for a meltdown. As a matter of fact I should consider this for my game.

Am I a loser for spending this much time writing about a TV show? (Don't bother answering if you think so). There's not much else golf related to write about now since there's snow on the ground and it's windy as hell.

I should move to Phoenix

Many people would be jealous of me living in Salt Lake. We have the best skiing and snowboarding in the world. We're the home of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Most tourists say if they lived here they'd ski everyday. I'm a skier and a snowboarder and I've gone skiing a grand total of 1 time in the last two years. That time I broke my ski on the first run. So I've skied 1 run in two years.

Yes I do like to ski. But it is not as easy as heading out the the golf course. You wear long johns, ski pants, shirt, sweater, turtleneck, parka, gloves, hats and oh those boots are tough. Did I mention it can be COLD! Even as close as I am to the resorts I still have to leave an hour before I want to start skiing to give myself enough time to drive up the canyon, beat the traffic and get a good parking spot. When you get there it is very expensive. The cheapest place here is around 50 bucks for an all day ticket. The more expensive places can get close to $100. If you want lunch jack that up another 20 bucks (for a hotdog and a coke).

So now that Winter is here I stare out my window and look at the frozen ground. The high here yesterday was 1 degree below freezing. For a golf addict this sucks. Starting around November until springtime we can't really golf here. At this point I sit here and wonder what the hell I'm doing here.

Golf is hard. It is really hard. The pattern here in Salt Lake is I start golfing when the snow melts. I spend the whole summer working on my game and improving. By the fall my game is getting pretty solid. Then Winter comes and I don't get to play for a few months. All that practice and work on improving the game goes out the door and I start all over again in the spring. It takes months to work out all the cobwebs in the spring.

So now I wonder......should I move to Phoenix?

You can only understand if you golf

I've got a pal who lives about 2300 miles from me. He's my best friend and he's a big time blogger. His blog has had 6,000,000 hits this year! So he talked me into playing around with blogs. This is my first real blog so here goes!

I'm a golf freak. I play 4-5 times per week. I'm self employed and I pretty much prioritize my work schedule around my golf rounds. I should be more serious about my business life but I swear I have a major addiction. It could be worse I guess. I could have an alcohol addiction or drug addiction. It's just golf so it is no harm, except it can be expensive.

I get so mad sometimes I swear I'll never play again. As soon as one of my golf buddies calls up I'm out the door. I've got a core group of about 8 guys who are all very good golfers. Most are 5 handicaps or less. We even have a couple of scratch players. We always bet and have many team games. It is a lot of fun and I can usually come out ok with my bets if I play well. I can pay for my round and make a buck or two with a decent round.

Well ok that is my basic first post. I'm going to try to set up this blog and make it look cool now.