The Smurf Turf

I'm a happy man. The weather has been beautiful, my wife The Lovely Steph Leann is beautiful, I'm sitting in my comfy leather chair and on the screen is college football. Troy wasn't on the television--and if they were I didn't find them--and its okay I didn't see them, because apparently they got blasted by Bowling Green 31-14... I came in from an informal Bible study meeting with Jillip at Valleydale Church (an sbc fellowship) and turned on the tv to see the latter part of South Carolina and NC State, which was won by the Gamecocks, alma mater of DeNick.

Now? Its Boise State and Oregon, and currently, the Broncos lead 10-0 on the Smurf Turf.

THE GO GATORS SCARY RANKING
That scares the be-williez out of me too. Do you know how many teams ranked #1 at the beginning of the season went wire-to-wire and won the title? Four. USC most recently did it in 2004.

The Go Gators were ranked #1 by the widest margin in history, with something like 48,000 votes, while Texas, #2, got what, 0.0005 or something? And that frightens me. This means that there is a good chance the Go Gators will get knocked off. My guess is the October 10th game versus LSU, at LSU, would be the most likely candidate. Hopefully, if they lose, that would the game so they'd have time to rebound and get back to the BCS Championship Game on January 7th.

They are bringing back, like, EVERYONE pretty much, so if they do repeat, it won't be a shock. However, its almost a "too good to be true".

Here's essentially why it scares me... remember the Georgia Bulldogs? They were a heavily hyped #1 in August of 2008. And they finished 13th at 10-3.

This Saturday, they are favored by 73... thats SEVENTY THREE over Charleston Southern. I would feel bad for Chuck South except for the fact they are getting something like $450K for the game, so bring it on.

THINGS I BELIEVE ABOUT TIM TEBOW
First, if Florida beats Ole Miss in 2008, instead of being stunned 31-30, then the Go Gators run the table all the way up to the SEC Championship game, where they get beaten by Alabama by 6. It was that loss to the Rebels that let the Go Gators know, "Hey, Tebow... you aren't invincible." And they go on to win the championship.

Next, if Tim Tebow goes to Alabama, Mike Shula stays the coach for another year or two. They finished 6-6 in 2006, after Tebow goes to Florida (and helps Chris Leak lead the team to the national title). If Tebow comes to Bama, I think the Tide finishes 8-4, maybe 9-3... they still lose the big games, but perhaps beat Arkansas, Mississippi State and possibly Tennessee.



That would be enough to keep Shula employed by the University of Alabama. Nick Saban, unhappy, still leaves Miami Dolphins and goes elsewhere... Notre Dame? Who knows?... but the Tide get someone else, perhaps not as good as Saban, and with Tebow, they continually win 9, 10, maybe 11 games per year--but no national title. Just my theory.

And finally, something someone else believes about Tim Tebow... my buddy Ryan Sherman said it best, spoken like a diehard Tide fan... "You know, I think Tim Tebow is a great guy. Man, you can't hate him, he's a solid guy, a solid Christ Follower, and I think its awesome he wants to do mission work with his life after football. But, you know, I hope in the first game he breaks his leg. Then he can get to mission work faster."

TROY BEING TROY
Ah, the faithful sounds of the T-R (whoop whoop) O-J (whoop whoop) AAAAAA EEENNNN EEESSSS (wooooo!) Trojans football. And tonight, they get blasted by Bowling Green. And next week, they play the Go Gators. People ask me who I root for, and I say, "Troy", mostly because I know there is more of a chance of He Who Must Not Be Re-Elected saying, "I want to give you all some tax cuts" than the Trojans beating the Gators.

MY FANTASY
So, I'm in a Fantasy Football League for the first time. Matta Latta invited me, and I joined up with The Official Clouds in My Coffee Ombudsman Brad Latta, Mikey, Scotty Latta, Drewski Morris and a few others, and we had our draft this past Sunday night.

My team, Manilow's Revenge, is QB'd by Tom Brady, so my season rests on his knees. I've also got DeAngelo Williams at RB, Brandon Marshall as a WR and Jason Elam as my kicker. And... I drafted Mike Vick as a backup QB. Yes, yes, he's not available until Week 3, but still, I think when McNabb goes down (and he will), Vick will come out and be great again. He's got nothing to lose.

How can I like Vick? I don't, necessarily. I thought when we with the Falcons, he was kind of a pud, but he was an amazing athlete. And no, I don't condone what he did. His dog fighting was horrific, and the things he did with those dogs is horrific... but he served his time. Whether I feel it was punishment enough (which I do) isn't the point... the point is, not only did he do his jail time, he's been crucified and hated in the public, and his career is very close to being as ruined as his reputation.

Besides... Plaxico Burress is spending what, a year or more in jail for shooting himself in the leg, something stupid he did to himself... but Donte Stallworth gets drunk, kills someone while driving and only gets 24 days? Don't tell me Vick didn't serve long enough.

RELAXATION, CORONA STYLE
I don't drink. But if I did, I'd want to drink Corona, but only if I'm sitting on a beach, next to The Lovely Steph Leann, in a lounge deck chair on a beach with a cool breeze blowing, small table between us with two long neck bottles filled with cool refreshment, topped with two perfectly sliced pieces of lime.

They make drinking seem nicer than Bud Light, Miller Lite, that German green bottled beer I can't spell and Pabst Blue Ribbon ever do.


This would be typical of The Lovely Steph Leann and I... if we were drinkers

Though Samuel Adams looks like a cool beer to drink. It looks like a beer that me, as a cultured intellectual would drink.

But I don't drink.

d$'s PREDICTIONS
The current AP Top 10 is as follows: 1) The Go Gators... 2) Texas... 3) Oklahoma... 4) USC... 5) Alabama... 6) Ohio State... 7) Virginia Tech... 8) Ole Miss... 9) Oklahoma State... 10) Penn State

Here's how yours truly, d$, predict the season will play out. The final AP top ten will be:
1) Texas (I predict they win the national title)
2) Penn State (I predict Texas blasts Penn State something like 54-10 in the BCS title game)
3) Florida
4) USC
5) Ohio State
6) Boise State
7) TCU
8) Alabama
9) Oklahoma
10) Georgia

Mark it down. Bet on it. I can see the future. Look at this post on January 8th and you'll see for yourself.

THE SMURF TURF (and colleen's song) REIGNS
I've been blogging all along during the game, chatting with The Lovely Steph Leann about who wants to go with us to The Happiest Place on Earth (can you believe we're actually having a little trouble filling that spot?), and doing some random surfing on the interweb.

Tomorrow night, we hang out with Croyle and his wife Britlicious, and new friends Phil & Colleen. Went into Valleydale Church (an sbc fellowship) Middle School Ministry...

...okay, so "middle school" is the new norm? what was wrong with "junior high"? nothing! junior high ministry works just as well, perhaps better than middle school ministry. whoever changed that is probably responsible for dropping "junior college" from most junior colleges and turning them into "community college". you don't call junior varsity teams "middle varsity" or "community varsity", do you? not yet, anyway.

...and Colleen sang a song that she wrote. It was amazing. With apologies to Factor 7, I've only got one song written and sung by a friend that has anywhere over 2 plays on my iPod, and that's Joel Blount's song "Sunday Afternoon", which currently is in my Top 100 songs (11 plays). If I had Colleen's song, and I don't even know the title, on my iPod, it would rival it, easily. It was that good.

Finally... Go Gators.

Goodbye, Dear, Old, Undependable, Unreliable, Unfaithful Friend

I bought a car in 2000. Nine years later, I gave it away.

I wrote some general reference notes about my sad, sordid vehicular history, which includes three accidents, more than one (or two) tickets, an arrest (a tale that must finally be told... one day) and a whole lot of breakdowns.


The final day with The Sable... I would guess that many memories of me held by friends involve this red car

The 1999 Mercury Sable Pezochit lasted a lot longer than I ever thought it would, as I took it from 41K to 138K in the time I had it. I actually had this car longer than the Olds, the Buick, the other, cooler Olds and the Blazer put together...

Quite simply, I was driving a 1988 Chevy Blazer in 2000. It was a great vehicle, I was paying for a little at a time--the payments were reasonable, the truck was comfortable, it has character, lots of room and a few fun quirks, like when you plugged in a CD player into the lighter, the radio stopped working, leaving only the tape player. Or was it, the tape player stopped working, leaving only the radio? Who knows.

My issue with the Blazer was that the tires were bald (I remember sliding across a lane as I turned onto Lakeshore Parkway from the Parisian building) and the steering column moved. Literally, I could move the steering wheel up and down, and the entire column moved with it. Oh, and there was once when the truck wouldn't turn off. I drove it to the mechanic, and when they asked me where the keys were, I laughed and handed them over. Then he asked me, "Why is it still running, if I am holding the keys?" I smiled and replied, "And thats why I'm here."

I got a call from the dealership where I purchased the Blazer, telling me that if I wanted to upgrade in car, I could go see this guy named Carl at Jim Burke, and they would get me into something better. What should I have done? Said, "Yeah, no thanks. I'm going to pay off my truck, get it fixed somehow and be done with it." Granted, it would have cost me, I dunno, probably $1500 to get four tires and a steering column that stayed in place... but it was better than the alternative. Which is what I went with.

"Sure!" I said, thinking about upgrading in car. I'm thinking a Dodge Avenger, or a Honda Accord, or maybe not just a Chevy Blazer... but a Chevy TRAIL Blazer. Yee-ah boy! And somehow, I got roped and wrangled into a 1999 Mercury Sable. A family car. A four door. I can handle it, though, because it means less insurance money, right?

Yeah, I guess... but the payments were just too much. Of course, when you do the math with my salary at the time, it actually worked out. I wasn't on a budget though, so when you did the math with my salary, plus my eating out, plus my social life, plus my four credit card bills, plus my rent, plus my other things I'm having to pay for, there was nooooo way it was going to work. So what did I do? I signed the contract, bought the car.

It was about $13,000-ish, maybe a little more, a little less.

Random trivia... my first passengers? Jenn Then Pritchett Now Glenn, and Emily Etheridge, a mutual friend of mine and Amy Valdmanis (I love Valdmanis!).

It drove fine for a while. I made payments for a while. Of course, I was so broke, I couldn't afford to pay the much higher tag fees, so I had the "Jim Burke Auto" tag on my car for the first, I dunno, 7 months or so... which got me in trouble bigtime with Johnny Law. Once again... another story, another day.

But over the course of time, things began to wear down on the car... you know, after a few months. After a year. After another few months. Starters, alternators, fuel pumps, water pumps, headlights, batteries, brakes, brakepads, rotors, motor mounts, sparkplugs, oil leaks, pipes, cords, impounds, tow trucks, speeding tickets... before The Lovely Steph Leann, during our friendship stage, during our off and on and off stage, during our dating-then-seriously-dating stage, during our engagement stage, during the married stage... I feel like there was a breakdown for every stage of our relationship (thats the car, not our relationship).

I actually haven't had a working heater for over three years. It just crapped out. I always figured that Alabama winters aren't really too harsh, so I would survive, and I have, though not having heat in my defrost is pretty miserable when its cold. I would use cassette tape plastic covers to scrape ice, before I got an actual ice scraper, but it would still leave a thick layer of fog on the windshield that was impossible to get off. Many times I pulled off into a stray parking lot to wipe fog and frost off of the windshield.

It was also annoying that the driver side door lock didn't work. I had to go to the passenger side to unlock the car, which was worse when it was a cold January rain, because not only was I wet, when I got in, I had no heat, so I remained cold. Not good times.

Enter Dave Ramsey and FPU, ushering in a new era of fiscal resposibility for d$, with The Lovely Steph Leann playing more than a small part, and we started to saving, knowing that a car purchase was immenent. At what point does a car break down so much that you just have to say "pssshaw!" and do something else?

It broke down on the way home from Starbucks one afternoon... driving down Hwy 280, mid afternoon traffic... I felt it go... I knew it was going... you know how you just know. You know how you can just tell when you're on borrowed time when it comes to your car? Something isn't quite right... I spotted a National Tire & Battery, so I was hoping to make it there. I got into a turn lane, to turn onto the service road and drive on up to NTB. At least get out of this 4pm traffic... and it died, right there as I was about to turn left to the service road.

A Starbucks co-worker called me... "Hey dude, I just drove by and saw you... you need help?" I replied, "No, I just called Triple A. They are on their way. Until then, I will just sit here and blcok traffic", which is exactly what I did. A few minutes later, I get a call from my buddy Croyle, who said that Britlicious, his wife, had just called him... apparently she had also just passed by and had seen me--bear in mind this is one of the busiest roads in all of Alabama, so it wasn't as if anyone could easily pull of and assist... besides, what could they do? Well, Croyle came.

At a green arrow, we pushed the car, not realizing the slight incline that existed there, right as we came off of 280. We got it off the highway, though, thanks to a motorist that was in a nearby parking lot jumping out and giving us that final "umph". The tow truck came, got it jumped off, and I tried to get it down the road... and it died in the turning lane to actually turn into NTB. The tow truck gave me another quick jump, and I finally got it into the shop.

And Croyle? Just a testament to the good guy he his--he just said, "Dude, just drop me off, and borrow my piece of crap car. I'll drive Britlicious' car tomorrow." So I did.

Anyway, long story short (too late!), this past fall Toni Rocki Honda joined us at The Cabana, taking The Sable's spot in the garage, and putting The Sable outside on the curb. Since September.

A month or two back, I was driving it around as Toni Rocki Honda was in for a tune up, it completely shut down on me in the middle of turning left off of Valleydale Road onto Highway 31, a major intersection, one where you just don't want to freeze up. And yes, it was time to call someone.

The final straw came in the power of the Homeowners Association as they sent a "You'd better listen to this" kind of letter, saying "Hey, get that car out off our lovely Beaumont streets!". The Lovely Steph Leann finally turned to me and said, "We gotta call someone and get this car gone."

I did some research on the net, asked for some suggestions on Facebook, and finally, I called The Foundry. And a week or so ago, before I left for The Happiest Place in the Mall, they came by.



The Foundry is a ministry organization in the area that works with the homeless, the addicted and other people who just need help in certain areas. They take car donations, get them fixed, and those being ministered to use the cars to get them to their jobs, as they recover from what they've been dealing with.



It was weird letting go. I mean, yeah, its a car... but it had been with me for 9 years. Heck, I dated The Lovely Steph Leann in that car. And Leslie Cordell. That's a good batting average.



I had cleaned out the car already, as many of you might have seen my Facebook photoalbum, "Things I Found In My Car"... I took it to a nearby car wash, got it cleaned up, and as I vacuumed, I found a rubber chicken, over four bucks in change, a dry erase marker, four small stuffed animals, a keyboard, a mouse, a mini General Lee car, a coat hanger, a big thing of bubble wrap, two notebooks, an ESPN: The Magazine issue from 2005, three bags of coffee, a coat hanger, a whole buncha cassette tapes... and even more. And if you think I'm making any of this up for comedic effect, you'd be wrong.



They loaded up The Sable onto a flatbed, and just like that, the car was gone. And what's terrible slash funny about the whole thing is that the list price was $13,000. Because I had so much trouble with payments, and finance fees, and late payments and so on and so on, the price we ended up paying by the time it was all said and done? Around $22,000.

And we just gave it away. Yeah, we get a tax deduction... but not much. So hopefully it will help out whoever gets it, provided its working and the transmission had been fixed.

Thus ends a long vehicular chapter in the life of d$. Hopefully, my Honda auto be better.