Football Games Have 11 Minutes of Action - WSJ.com

This Thing I'm Doing « AL'S BLOG
I don't have high hopes, but we shall see!

A short history of bottled beer « Zythophile
Nowells truly are a heroic people.

Tigers spend $14 million on short man - SweetSpot Blog - ESPN

Tigers find enough in the cushions for Valverde

I just don't get it. Even if the Tigers were really high on the guys they got from the Granderson trade, wouldn't the team be better off with a couple years of Polanco than a closer? After all, a closer isn't much help if you don't have a lead!

crazy...creative...it's a fine line
Paula's gung-ho into dessert-making, but never decorating. We've got to get her making cool toppings like this!

Circle the Cat
It took about 8 tries, but I caught that stupid cat.

We tried to explain the trade, and I think it took. So now Michael's favorite baseball player is "Yankee Curtis Granderson".
Sketchy article though - I'm not sure if there's any actual facts in it. But we'll see what happens next year. I do think his stats will improve, but a big part of that is likely going to be due to more protection in the lineup and a smaller ballpark as well.
Was Curtis Granderson a Victim of Bad Coaching? - Bless You Boys

Ernie Harwell taking full advantage of opportunity to say his goodbyes - ESPN

We just got back from Beulah. I took Michael skiing up at Crystal Mountain. Can't beat the prices for kids 8 & under. Free skiing and $10 for a rental. He only lasted 45 minutes, but the kid actually did a pretty good job. Kept his legs mostly together and stayed fairly straight. Next time I think we'll sign up for a lesson, but I just wanted to see if he could handle being out there.

We got a Christmas card from the Tigers today. On the bottom it's got the name of our season ticket account rep: Michael E. Ilitch. I thought that was weird, but didn't pay much attention to it. Until I called the Tigers yesterday to set up our tickets for next year. (We're staying in the same section but moving up to row 3 on the aisle). Mike Ilitch is our account representative, and the guy I talked to. I assume he's a grandson just getting started in the family business or something, but it was still pretty funny. So now I get to go around telling everyone that I talked to Mike Ilitch and he set up our seats for next season!

The Baseball Analysts: Connie Mack and Vin Scully

I do like bourbon best of all whiskeys. And who doesn't like bacon? But I'm a little concerned, since I've had smoked beer, and that's pretty bad.
How to baconify your bourbon | The Agitator

Yanks, Tigers, DBacks make 3-way deal - CBSSports.com

I'm torn. Seems like a good deal if one of the 3 non-Scherzers end up being good. But prospects fizzle so often that you're usually better off keeping good players if you can. After all, it's not like Cameron Maybin or Andrew Miller or Matt Joyce are doing that well. Of course, giving up Jair Jurrgens didn't work out. I guess we'll find out in 2011!

And here's a longer analysis

It's like twitter. Except we charge people to use it.

I don't get hit up for free tech stuff too often, and when I do, it's usually from people who I'm willing to help. It's a little worse on the web design part though - Every now and then we end up starting a website for someone who flakes out and decides that ignoring us and not paying anything would be a good idea.

TigerBlog » Blog Archive » Tigers Pass On Polanco
I sure hope the Tigers are right about this Sizemore guy, but 25 seems a little old for a rookie. If he was that good, you'd think they would have made room for him somehow.

I knocked out labels for most every new beer / wine we've got in the pipeline. They're fairly uninspired, although they do improve somewhat when I got to the beers. I'm tired of working on the computer though, so I'll finish the last 2 some other day.

Blackberry Mead
Blueberry Wine
Smilin' German Kolsch
Maple Kolsch
Dry Riesling
Sweet Riesling
Hop Monster

It's been forever since I updated my brewing status. We started making beer over 6 years ago, so lately we've been branching out a bit, going crazy. A few months ago it was a peanut butter beer. 1 jar of natural peanut butter added to 3 or 4 gallons of a dark beer. It actually turned out really well, although I wish we had put more peanut butter in. We've also started making wine. We started with mead, which is a honey wine, and it's ridiculously easy to make. The first 2 batches turned out pretty well, although the first one didn't have enough honey, so it's more like a dry white wine.

Then Michael & Emma started getting into the U-Pick blueberry orchards, so I ended up with about 20 lbs of blueberries. This was after Paula made 6 or 7 pies. We mixed that up with some sugar & have about 5 gallons of blueberry wine almost ready to bottle. Around the same time we made another batch of mead, but added a few lbs of blackberries to that one. It should be ready to bottle next month too.

Last month was harvest season, and I was able to borrow Paula's family wine press, so we picked up 150 lbs of Riesling grapes and spent an evening pressing those and getting about 12 gallons of Riesling wine.

And today we decided to get even crazier! I added 3 big oranges & 4 cinnamon sticks to 6 lbs of Mesquite & Clover honey for an Orange Cinnamon Mead. We'll put a few more oranges in once the primary fermentation is done. And Paula had some cherry concentrate floating around from the Cherry Festival, so I added that to 6 lbs of Buckwheat & Clover honey for a Cherry Buckwheat Mead. We also made beer today, and we're adding a quart of maple syrup a friend's family made to 4 gallons of beer. Hopefully we'll get a decent amount of maple flavor shining through.

I figured it's a good time to start making labels for all these new brews, so that's my project for the rest of the day.

My hubby turns the big THREE-TWO today! Yippee!

Everyone should know the chorus of course, but you may not have known the opening verse part. With no disrespect to my fellow UM brethren, I think this is the most fun song to sing at a football game! Maybe it's just because I don't get to sing it nearly as often.
Detroit Lions | Gridiron Heroes Lyrics

Book excerpt: Evaluating Baseball's Managers - Billy Martin

Sounds like an interesting book.