The wildest offseason in Twin's history - part 1

11/21 - Torii Hunter signs with the Los Angeles Angels for 5 years, $90 million.

11/28 - Minnesota acquired Delmon Young, Brendan Harris and Jason Pridie from Tampa Bay on

Wednesday in exchange for Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett and Eduardo Morlan.

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My take:

*The Hunter deal is off the charts.  I will miss the guy but his salary next year ($18.5 million) would have been the fourth highest salary in baseball behind Giambi, ARod and Jeter.  I hope the best for him in LA but he was grossly overpaid.

*I don't love or hate the Young trade at this point.  However, I'm just happy Bill Smith did something and I think this is obviously just the first piece to a bigger offseason puzzle for the team so it's hard to draw any conclusions right now. 

Terry Ryan was too cautious, I like Smith's mentality more already (from what I can tell at this point at least). 

All that being said, the more I look at things the more I think this is a trade our franchise will be glad we made five years from now.  Young's numbers at 22 are similars to Torii's at 26.
My only big complaint is that Young is defensively an average corner OF.  If he was a CF, I'd be much more excited. 

I suppose I also hope he's grown up a bit as he claims.

Harris and Bartlett are a wash to me.  Hopefully we acquire a SS so Harris can play 2B.  He's more valuable there.

Not the kind of news you ever want to hear

Mess informed me last night that this is the Dan Andretta that we graduated with.  He was living in Maine, married and had two kids under the age of three.

I think he is only the second one our class has lost now (Mike B.).  While it doesn't make this news any less sad, I must say we've been pretty fortunate with that.

Heroes come in all sizes

This article is in regards to a story that aired last week on channel 11 called "Nick's Choice" about a first grade student Gina's team had a few years ago.  It's pretty amazing story and is now getting national attention.  If you get a chance, please take a couple of minutes to check out the video.

R.I.P. Little Buddy

We just got bad news that Scooter, Sarah and Chris' dog, ended up getting out to the main drag near them this morning .  He runs around in the yard all the time but he rarely goes all the way to the street.

It was foggy and a car hit him.  He didn't make it.  The good news is that it appears as if it was quick and he didn't experience much pain.

Casey's lost his cohort in crime.

He was a good dog, a little hyper but a good dog.  We are going to miss him.

Bambi's a what?

I'm so far behind again that I am just going to stick to some observations I've had the last week, again from more of a high level perspective.


Bambi's a what?

I just found out this week that Bambi (the Walt Disney version) is a boy.  I was floored.  I've always been a Disney fan so it's not like I'm one of those "guys" who shouldn't have known this.
The things you learn later in life.

Grandma K

For whatever reason, maybe because it's approaching the holiday season, I've really been missing my grandma lately.  I'm assuming that Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be awfully hard for many of us this year.

On the up and up

Both girls lungs have been deemed healthy and neither need to use the nebulizer at the moment.  However, it's ready and waiting for the next attack on either of them.  If it happens to Natalie again, it's pretty much been determined that she will be put on some sort of preventative medication for the winter.
The girls recieved their flu shots yesterday as well.  We are all vaccinated now.

MJ's rash

Macie's rash is still pretty bad and we are now onto the next stages of diagnosis because she has had a fairly severe case for a couple of weeks now.  I will be setting up a dermatologist appointment this week for December and Gina will be taking her in for some bloodwork at Children's tonight so that she can be tested for a wide array of food allergies.

The following allergies will be tested for:

Eggs (white/yolk), fish (cod), cow's milk, two types of mold, dust mites, wheat, cockroach, soybean, peanut, cat and dog dander, apple, banana, carrot, cheese, grape, orange, pea, pear, tomato and cacao (chocolate).
My money is on tomato (as it's the only thing that's new for sure in the last couple of weeks) and I pray it's not a peanut allergy.

Say it ain't so

Sickness finally struck the last healthy member of the house.  Gina's been fighting something the last week.  Nothing too serious, but she's been bedridden from headaches (regular/sinus) and tiredness a couple of nights from it.  Hopefully the worst has past.

Curse you GE!

If it's not one thing, it's another.  Monday night, Gina and I noticed a small puddle of water in ther corner of the new bedroom downstairs.  It turns out the metal portion of the cold water connector between the washer and the faucet has corroded to the point that it was slowly dripping water from the small hole to the floor in the laundry room. 

The washer and dryer appear to be a perfect match for one another it seems.

The good news is that we pushed the carpeting date back to this upcoming Saturday instead of last weekend.  Had we stuck to the original plan, it would have been a nightmarish first couple of days of carpet for us.

Mono be gone

Without a blood test even being needed, I've been deemed monoless.  All and all, outside of a miserable 14 day stretch I got off pretty easy.

Guitar Hero III

I'm still enjoying the game when I get a chance to play. I am onto medium now and I did record a 100% completion percentage on the easy version of Slow Ride which was fun (and stressful) to do.

I unfortunately need to send the guitar back though, for exchange, as it has a rattling issue. I should be without it for about a month.

Money be gone

My buddy Matt at work has spent $4,000 in the last week on a 50" Sony LCD HDTV, a 8GB iPod Nano and brand new Dell computer.  Not a bad week's haul, especially considering he's pretty stingy.  But, they have been saving for the TV for about four years and their last computer was purchased around the Y2K days so it was time. 

I'm definitely happy for them (and hope to take advantage of the TV here and there in the future).

Bank Officer (a promotion of sorts)

As of this past Monday, I am now a Bank Officer at my unnamed employer.  While my promotion this week has no financial ramifications, it is significant in that having a title in this line of work is recognized across the entire banking industry. 

I'll be honest, however, that I was not aware of this significance until just a few days ago.  Titles matter more to some then others and I've never been one to really worry about that kind of thing.  Recognition comes regardless of said title if you do work worthy of it.

Just in case you're curious, the next title change after Bank Officer is Assistant Vice President. 
However, that usually takes around 20 years of being in influential positions to get so it's not likely to happen anytime soon.

The happy wheezer and the no-no girl

OK, OK, I know I'm missing a 'h' in wheezer but saying it as Weezer instead is better.

 

Here's a recap of the last week...

Rick/Jo/Sarah/Hailey

On Sunday, Gina's parents came over for dinner (as well as Sarah and Hailey) so they could see all the girls before they left on 10/31 for Australia for three weeks.  Nothing significant happened other then a couple of good pictures.  Yes, that is a roast in Macie's mouth (if possible, refraining from any questions about it is preferred...j/k).

Downstairs

The downstairs is to the point where we will be painting the rooms this weekend.  The six month project (to date) is within a month or so of completion.  With the help of my parents (who have been significant in the completion of the project), our goal is to be done by the X-mas party on 12/15.  At that time, I will share pictures from start to finish and talk more about our undertaking in a blog entry.

The happy wheezer

Our story, in the grand scheme of things, is not that significent.  We even personally know of situations much more difficult then ours.  However, our sickness saga (sans Gina) just never seems to end.  This past week, Gina and I both took unplanned days off to stay home with the girls.  Monday night, Natalie had a 102 degree fever and on Tuesday we learned that she has pneumonia like symptoms again.  She was put on anitbotics and sent home with a nebulizer.  She will also eventually be put on singulair for the winter. 

The doctor said that while this doesn't mean anything yet, what Nattie has experienced the last six weeks are the types of trends they see in kids that develop asthma, so he'd prefer to be more agressive in the treatment.  It's strange because Nattie has been so fun lately and she is eating better then ever.  When Gina told the doctor this he said that they call kids like Nattie happy wheezers. 

Now she just needs a Weezer shirt...

 

Halloween

 

On to happier news...my parents and Molly were over for Halloween to partake in the festivities this year.  With the recent revelations with Nattie, we decided to keep the trick-or-treating to a minimum.  However, they were both adorable and all the neighbors still got to see them.  Nattie was a lion (thanks to Molly) and Macie was a pumpkin.  We tried to get Nattie to say "trick or treat, rrrrrroooaarr!" but she would only do it for us.  We did not end up getting a lot of pictures, but the ones we got will be added to our main website in the upcoming days.  Here is a teaser picture, however, of the family.

 

BoSox and ARod

 

As already stated in my previous post, the boys came through again this year.  Sunday night was pretty cool in my opinion, no matter what anyone says about it being a boring series.  It stressed me out plenty considering the Rockies were within one run in the seventh inning or later during games two, three and four.  I would have preferred each of the games ending before midnight however.

On a side note, I was disappointed that ARod opted out if his Yankees contract (for a handful of reasons).  It was so dang easy to cheer against him as a Yankee.  As long as he doesn't end up with the Red Sox next year I'll be fine with it though.

For some enjoyable ARod bashing, check out this article.

Guitar Hero III

The game showed up on Monday.  I've probably spent a total of two hours playing it this week so far. 

I'm definitely enjoying myself.  But, I just can't envision ever getting good enough to handle the hard or expert levels.  I've been told it will come, but we'll have to see.  The highlight to date was missing just one of the approximately 400 notes on the easy setting of Paint It Black.

The no-no girl

Ourside of a nasty cough and a rash that comes and goes on her face (we think at least in part from her drool), things are going alright with Macie when she's not upset that we aren't holding her.  She's going through "that stage" right now.

Macie is doing something pretty funny.  If you shake your head at her (especially while she's eating), she will do it back at you.  It's like she's saying no-no-no-no-no.  Usually, she can be entertained with it for minutes on end.

Nattie's displeasure

When Natalie gets frustrated these days, she sighs (usually with determination).  Seriously?  She's only two.  I thought we were exempt from stuff like this still.  While it's a habit of hers we can hopefully break, it's hilarious (especially when it's not directed at you).

Our tempermental dryer

It's frustrating when an 18 month old dryer doesn't work, let me tell you.  It's been working on and off now for a couple of months.  We can generally get it going within 24 hours but last week it went out for a handful of days.  We had enough and as much as it pained us to do, we called Sears to take a look at it this week.  It was $65 just for them to walk in our front door!  Fortunately though, the dryer was working when the service man showed up so he was able to offer us a one year warranty on it for an additional $58.99.  As frustrated as we are with the dryer, Sears and GE (Gina is ready to wage war), the issue appears to be the control panel ($343 to fix with installation) so biting the bullet and purchasing the warranty is the significantly cheaper option of the two whether our pride is bruised in the process or not.