The Baron

How sweet is it to watch what Golden State is doing to Dallas. I am loving it, and was quite peturbed to find when I woke up at 6:30 this morning that I had fallen asleep and missed the end of the forth quarter, it definetly wasn't out of lack of entertainment, but pure exhaustion. Luckily for me there is ESPN.com and Sports Center to give me the details of what I missed.

On Saturday I heard my phone "buzz" telling me I was recieving a text message as I was watching Houston and McGrady get molly whopped by Utah in game four. Game three wasn't televised, thank goodness, because it was bad enough having to watch game four. The text message from Mark read, "My Spurs will walk into the finals... TMac stuck in 1st round hell forever." So I replied, "I hate you." I'm really hoping that McGrady can get motivated to take over back in Houston for game 5, because come crunch time McGrady wasn't showing up in game 4 and it was quite frustrating to watch.

Other than that, Heather has been sick the past couple days. We had an ice cream social that we helped organize this Saturday that had a fairly good turn out, and Hannah had a whole lot of fun eating ice cream and running around a huge field trying to keep up with all the other kids. I suppose she is starting to make some friends, because when I went to drop her off in nursery on Sunday a little girl saw her and said, "HANNAH!" and got out of her chair and ran over and held her hand and they ran off together and I broke out and went to class. there's no other big updates, as you can see my life is mostly consumed with the play-offs, and I spend most fo my free time in front of the television trying to enjoy all the games before I get sent into Sports Center remission as it turns into 24/7 highlights of fast balls, and double plays, which my by me saying I could care less about would be an understatement. Baseball may or may not be a fun sport to play as that is still up for debate, and watching it live may or may not be America's past time, but you can't get much worse than watching it on TV, and then to have it totally consume entire segments of highlights on Sports Center, well quite frankly thats a travesty, so it's a good thing their is such thing as the blockbuster pass because that my friends is when I go into a Sports Center hibernation and just about every night becomes a Blockbuster night....

A Royal Celebration

As many of you may know Hannah's birthday is coming up next month, and so to commemorate such a wonderful occasion we have decided to put on a "Royal Celebration" all decked out in the latest and greatest Disney Princess attire with matching plates and cups to boot. The invitations are being mailed out to a select group of individuals which were specially designed by Yours Truely (Your One Stop Shop for all your design needs.)

There will even be a little goody bag to take home so not only does Hannah get to recieve gifts, but everyone gets a little something as they leave. We are hoping and praying for a sun filled day, because our plan is to have the party outside, as our apartment is truly fit for a King, it is not equiped for the entire kingdom...

Wheather depending you may want to bring a swimsuit as our kingdom is equipped with a very enticing pool. Stay tuned for other updates, to stay abrupt on all the latest and greatest news.

Play-offs

I'm a bit late with my picks however I'm sure you still wont mind me giving them right?


Houston Vs. Utah
I am taking Houston over Utah, with the remarks that McGrady made in a recent interview with Scoop Jackson of ESPN, where he basically said that if they don't make it out of the first round this year, he is putting the blame on himself. I personally feel that if and when McGrady has determination behind him, he is virtually unstopable, I mean we've seen it with 12 seconds to go in San Antonio a few years ago, and we saw it in the second half of game 1 against Utah this weekend.

Denver Vs. San Antonio & Dallas Vs. Golden State
I have a feeling that Denver is going to upset the Spurs but it's going to take 7 games to do so.

I think Dallas will win the series with Golden State, but I see this one going 7 games as well. Especially if my man Baron Davis keeps playing like he did last night.

Phoenix Vs. Lakers
The MVP Steve Nash will lead his team to victory in a six game series to the AMAZING Kobe Bryant. I just don't think the Lakers have a good enough team to withstand all that Pheonix has, I mean last year it went to 7 games, but last year, Pheonix didn't have Amare Stadamire. Not to mention last year Kwame Brown was actually living up to his potential for the Lakers. Kobe Bryant is amazing so I think he will make it difficult but it wont be enough in the end.

In the east, it's a little bit more tricky, just because I really think it's anyones game, and just about every team has a legitamate chance at surviving, well accpet for Orlando, but here we go.

Miami over Chicago
Detroit over Orlando
New Jersey over Toronto
Washington over Cleveland (My boy Gilbert can play!)

Hover Box

I recently designed the update to our business website here at Practice Cafe. I recieved a bit of help in the beiginning stages from my good friend Bucky. After a few over the phone tutorials with Bucky I was then able to take off from there and handle the rest solo. I was also able to learn a few new tricks without Bucky's aid.

One of these tricks came when my creative director Joel, decided he wanted some of the items in our sample section to blow up a bit larger, I found a helpful tutorial here So from their I was able to apply it to our website, and I think it worked out quite nicely.

the best part about the solution is that it is all done completely with CSS, which means it is really just one image, which helps on the loading time, & the time in which to create the effect. Also the action is basically creating a container that is floating over the top of everything else which was perfect since the way the site is designed I only have a specific amount of space to work in.

QUIPSOLOGY

"Tracy McGrady
The lost MVP candidate this season. Lemme know if any of these tidbits interest you:

A. The Rockets were 50-21 when he played this season and 2-8 without him.

B. When Yao went down for 32 games with a fractured kneecap, T-Mac carried the team to a 20-12 record and boosted his stats to a 29-6-6 for that stretch.

C. Other than Yao, his best teammates were Shane Battier, Luther Head, Rafer Alston, Chuck Hayes, Juwan Howard, Dikembe Mutombo and Yugoslavian gunner Turdo Sandowicz.

D. On a personal note, I don't trust basketball stats beyond a certain level because they can't interpret somebody's general impact on a game. Tim Duncan averages a 20-10 every night with two blocks ... does that measure everything he does for the Spurs? Of course not. Along those same lines, T-Mac and his cousin finished this season with almost identical numbers (a 25-5-6 for T-Mac, a 25-6-5 for V.C.), but unless you watched the games, you wouldn't know that Vince happens to be a streaky offensive player, a moody teammate and a defensive liability, and T-Mac happens to be a great teammate and superb all-around player who only goes for his numbers when absolutely necessary (like when he recently bumped his numbers to push Houston into the fourth seed).

If you asked 100 NBA players who they'd rather play with between Kobe, Vince, Arenas and T-Mac ... T-Mac would win the vote in a landslide. You win with Tracy McGrady. Wasn't always the case, but it's the case now. He's a true superstar. Now he needs to prove this in the playoffs. Please."

see Page Two for the complete story.

Hand In Hand

Depending on wheather I usually take Hannah outside to play on the little playground outside every day when I get home from work. She will usually head straight to the slide, and go down the slide a few times and then she kinda just wonders around a bit, yelling at other kids, and jabbering.

The last couple of times she has gotten on this kick where she will run over to me and grab my hand, my leg, my shirt, and proceed to push, pull, or attempt to drag me to where she wants to go, which is walking around the complex. So we will proceed to walk hand in hand around the complex as she jibbers and jabbers to me the whole entire time. If I stop she will get behind me and start to push me to keep going, it's pretty comical.

The problem is she has carried this to the house as well, so when I am sitting on the couch she will come over to me and grab me by my head, arm, leg, shirt, or whatever she can get ahold of and continue to strain, grunt and groan until I get up, where she will then pull me or push me into the kitchen so she can get ahold of something she shouldn't have, so then I ahve to tell her no, and she begins to throw herself on the floor, kicking and screaming!

So we just ignore her, I go sit back down, and after a few minutes she will stop, and everything returns to normal (well as normal as life gets with an almost 2 year old.)

What is wrong with this picture?

Some how the Number 1 story on CNN.com is that, "Larry Birkhead is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby," does anyone else see a problem with that?

With a war going on, and everything else going on in the world, the top story is who is the freakin Father of Anna Nichol Smith’s daughter?????

Transformers

I saw the new trailer for Transformers this weekend while actually talking about the movie (new and original cartoon) with my two brothers Matt, and Ethan. I can't wait for this movie to hit theaters, especially since it is starring "Shia LaBeouf" I really enjoy his movies, and the characters he has played.
Every preview I watch for this movie I get more and more excited. It's not one of those movies like Spawn that I got super excited cause I used to collect the comic books, and then you go see the movie, and the costumes and special effects are so horrible that it is a complete let down. You see with this movie, Michael Mann has gone all out to use some top notch special effects, and the action that he is known for.

As a kid I remember watching the cartoon all the time, and then we would go play with our transformers toys even more. Even as I got older and the cartoon was no longer on TV, I would randomly rent some old episodes from the local movie store just to refresh myself of some of those good old childhood memories. I can't say I'm a fanatic, but I am definetly a fan.
Here's a link to the site that I found the two trailers on for your viewing pleasure.

enjoy.