Sep 12

Ok, this is starting to become a habit. It is Tuesday again instead of Monday. I was all ready to get this blog entry done yesterday, but the Broncos were playing Monday Night Football and after the game, I had to do real work. But, more of that later. Let’s start this off with my youngest daughter. She got her driver’s license yesterday. I think I was more worried about her getting it than I was about my other daughter. When my eldest daughter was preparing for her driver’s test, we let her drive much more often than we let my younger daughter. But, then we had two cars and gas was still high, but not as expensive as it has been this year. I don’t really know what happened, maybe the year just got away from me. But, we just didn’t have enough opportunity to let her drive. Over the last few months, however, we have been giving her a lot more chances. And, she was steadily getting better and better. Yesterday, when we went in for the test, I just had a bad feeling. Then, they finally called her name. I had brought a book to read while I was waiting, and I think I only managed to read two pages before the test was done. She was all happy, telling me that she passed. She said that she really just drove around the block. There was a school zone that they went through, but she said that she didn’t get over twenty miles an hour during any of the test so it didn’t matter. I wasted a bunch of worrying for nothing. Until we get another car, I don’t think she’s going to have as much opportunity as she would like to drive on her own. But, I can already see that I’m not going to be able to drive for quite some time unless I’m going to work.
The first Bronco game of the season was yesterday on Monday night. I was all amped for it. We were playing the Raiders, our main rivalry. The last time we played them, we lost 59-14. It was embarrassing. They beat us both games last year. It really sucked. I thought we were going to see some serious payback. I had to work, so I was only expecting to be able to see the first quarter. There is a radio at work where I would be able to listen to the rest of the game. It’s not ideal, but what was I gonna do. So, I started watching the pre-game, and the more I watched, the better I thought the Broncos were going to do. It took forever for the game to actually get started. It was on a weird channel that I never watch. I had everything ready to go. I had my feet up and the rest of the family in the other room. I was ready to go. It was supposed to start at 8:15, but it didn’t start until nearly 8:30. I was getting a little upset. For a minute I didn’t think I was going to get to see any of the game. Then, right as the kickoff was about to begin, the feed switched to the New England Patriots game. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I had the wrong channel. I quickly grabbed the remote and looked up the information on the channel I was on. It said it was the Bronco game. Frantically I looked for another channel that might be showing the game. I found ESPN. It said it was showing it. I flipped it over, and it was also the Patriots game. I was getting mad now. I flipped it back, and the Patriots were still on. Then, it suddenly switched to the correct game. I missed the kick off and we were lined up for the first play. We didn’t do very well on our first possession. We scored first with a field goal, but from where I sat, it looked like we blew a couple of opportunities. We lost the lead after that and never got it back. I did manage to watch the entire first quarter. Then, I had to go to work. I have never seen the streets of Denver so empty. I think I was the only person in town that wasn’t watching the game. The radio wasn’t the best way to listen to the game. The stadium was so loud that I couldn’t hear most of the commentary. Then, I had work stuff I had to do and missed the last quarter entirely. We ended up losing 23-20. Not the start I was looking for. I am defiantly not missing next week’s game.
To add insult to injury, the Rockies lost again today. We took two games from the Cubs over the weekend. I didn’t get to see either of them because they were day games and I had to work some overtime on Saturday. That meant that I slept through both games. We were doing pretty good today against Milwaukee. We put up a run in the fourth and we had a bunch of opportunities to get more runs. But, it just wasn’t to be. Prince Fielder homered in the sixth to tie us and then we took it into extra innings trying to pull out the win. We went eleven innings before they shut us down. We’re going to play them again tomorrow. It is just a two game series then we take on the Giants. We are officially 69-78. If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year, there is no way that we would be that many games under five hundred. We should be at least a dozen games over. We had a great team and started with a bang. I don’t know what happened this season. It just didn’t go our way. But, there is always next year. I’m sure we’ll have an entirely different pitching staff and some of the new guys they brought up look pretty good. We’ll see how it goes. We don’t have any chance to make the playoffs this year, but I’m still going to root for them.
Just thinking about the games is bringing me down. So, I’m going to put White Lion, Pink Floyd, and Guns and Roses into the playlist tonight for background music and I’m going to work on the River of Magic.
-Thom