Todd's Blog.

Long time since an update...  Spring has sprung and I've been keeping busy getting the campground up and running for the season.  They just closed the main bridge that connects the campground to the rest of the world, so we have a long detour to go around just to go to town.  What's worse is that the bridge is supposed to be closed all summer for the most part, so our customers are going to have a hard time finding us this summer.  Ah well.  it needed to be done as it was falling apart

Currently in Phoenix AZ for the 2008 Fiesta Bowl.

I'll be running the yellow line and down and distance arrows for the FOX telecast. This is my last football game for the season and I'm looking forward to having things slow down a little bit.

Happy New Year everyone.

i'm living it up in this huge suite at the Hyatt Regency in Denver. My original room wasn't ready when I checked in and they gave me this huge room. It's about the size of 3 normal rooms. It has a kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom and office up on the 26th floor looking at the mountains. I feel like a high-roller baby, too bad it is only for 2 nights. no complaints from me.

take a look at this clever prank. Using a clear piece of glass and a duplicate bathroom with twin girls doing her makup as the "mirror", you can really mess with people's heads.

after a nice 1 hour sleep, I'm in the airport heading to Denver. Thanks for the energy Dr. Pepper. The doctor is always on call.

I'm currently sitting in an ESPN truck in Knoxville, TN. I've been filling in on the Saturday night ESPN College football show filling in for a co-worker who just had a baby. I gotta say, college games are much more entertaining that NFL games. They have much more energy than the NFL games that I am used to. The college kids really get amped up for the games. Tomorrow morning it is off to Denver, CO for my regular Monday Night Football gig.

I've been in San Francisco since Thursday. I'm setting things up for the first pre-season game for Monday Night Football on ESPN.

Things are going well, it was a pretty painless setup.

Lots of people in the city it seems. I'm not sure if I'm just not used to the city anymore, or there are in fact a lot of people in the city for some reason.

I get to head back to MI tomorow night after the game, just before heading out again next weekend to Indianapolis.

I'm back in michigan for the summer. The weather has been weird. When I pulled in about a week ago there was about 8 inches of snow on the ground. Today it was 73 degrees. Tomorrow it will be 80 degrees. We're busy getting the campground ready for the season. Many sticks and branches to pick up from the winter. The river really did some damage this spring and uprooted some trees and washed out the road.

In some other news, I put my house in California up for sale. It sold the first day it went on the market. Very unexpected. i never thought it would sell so fast. I was taken a'back. The market is so soft these days, but I seemed to luck out. (sorry scott and jen, I won't have a place for you to crash next fall afterall...)

I've gotta get back to CA in a few weeks and pack up the remainder of my stuff and get a moving company to move my furniture back to MI.

Anyhow that's the update.

I must be getting older.

The latest craze around here is for kids to have speakers mounted OUTSIDE their cars. As they pull into the gas station or super market parking lot there is BOOMING music, I mean LOUD music like a huge PA system. The car's windows are up so it's not the inside speakers, this music is clear as day from some serious loudspeakers mounted under the hood or something.

I just don't understand it.

So I got mugged last night!

I was walking to the train station from work when a guy that was walking towards me hit and smashed me in the side of the head (ear) with a 40oz beer bottle.

Then 3 of his buddies tackled me to the ground, took my computer bag, cell phone and worst of all, I lost my eyeglasses in the shuffle! When he hit me with the bottle, my wallet must have fallen out of my coat pocket because when they told me to give them my wallet, I tried, and couldn't find it. They told me to give me everything or they were going to kill me. Oh fun! I seriously I thought I was a gonner for a few seconds.

After they had all my stuff, they walked away in the other direction, I was still dazed and taken aback and started back for the station to get some help.

So I walked back to the office and called the cops. Filed the reports and all that, had an ambulance come to give me a once over. My ear hurts and it feels plugged like I've been swimming or something, but other than a swolen side of the face I'm good.

The cops took me to the scene and we looked in the bushes for my wallet and glasses. I was feeling around like a blind man hoping to find my glasses. No luck. Who knows if they got the wallet. I'll go look in the bushes in the daylight and see if I can find it.

Anyways, back to the station for some more police paperwork, then asked some friends for some money to get home on the train.

Drove home from the train station with no glasses. I just followed all the blurry taillights.

This morning I had to get some money out of the bank with no photo ID, and manage to get to the mall and get some new specs. Mission accomplished. I'm good as new, even better with new prescription sunglasses.

All in all, it could have been much worse, but still that's screwed up.

So last week I began fixing up my house. My first project was to fix this crack that was going across my ceiling in the living room. There's this tiny little crack that goes all the way across the room, due to the house settling. So I got a ladder spackled the crack and then had to re-texture the ceiling to match the rest of it. Bought the spray texture, sprayed it, made a mess all over my furniture, it was great. I then had to paint. I figured I'd just paint the whole ceiling to make it match. i didn't think about the fact that my ceiling spans to adjacent rooms and isn't blocked by walls. Then I realized that I had to paint the walls to, since the new paint didn't exactly match the old paint. So I painted the ceiling and the walls of the next room... Well I ended up painting the walls and the ceilings all through the house.

So it's been a week and this morning I notice that the same damn crack has returned. So this whole project was for nothing. Ah well at least I have fresh paint. I think I have to do more than put a little spackle on the crack to get rid of it, another project for another day..... *laugh*

Starting to fix up my house getting it ready to sell this spring. I'm painting it inside and out and redoing the flooring. I started painting over the weekend, plastic tarps hanging all around, looks like a warzone.

Yesterday I came down with some bug and I've been out of commission, stuck in a paint fumey house.

*ug*

some sort of power surge or something must have gone through my house. Over the past 2 days I've had to replace 7 light bulbs. 2 lights (2 bulbs each) in my hallways, 1 in my bedroom, 1 in my kitchen and 1 in my kitchen. Bizarre.

Welp, I get to go to Hawaii and the 2007 Hula Bowl.

I couldn't pass up on a chance to go to Hawaii could I ?

sitting at the Philadelphia Airport waiting to go home. I'm amused by this guy on his cell phone pacing back and forth barking orders to whoever is on the other end.

"You guys always screw this up...."

"Just Do It"

"I want it colorful"

"Make it say, "I miss you....love Jack"

"Don't screw this up...."

I guess he was buying some flowers for someone.

probably more funny in person if you heard his tone.

I made it back to the Bay Area this afternoon. I left Fort Smith Arkansas Wednesday morning around 10am and made it to Amarillo Texas on the first day of the drive. I had to stop because there was quite the blizzard happening. My awning on my RV was tore off in a gust of wind...it helped that I was going 60mph at the time as well. I was planning on just staying in my RV overnight on my trek, but the cold weather froze the water supply line, so I had to get a motel room. On Day 2, I made my way through the snow and got as far as Barstow CA.

If anyone ever ships FedEx Ground, be sure to really put some padding in your boxes. I passed 6 different FedEx ground semi-trucks that were turned over in the median of the Interstate 40 along the way. It was insane. Every couple of miles there was another Fed Ex truck with all of its contents spewed over the highway. In total I think I counted 17 turned over semi-trucks on Day 2. They all must have tried to drive in the storm or something the night before.

Day 3 I drove from Barstow CA home. I must not be used to the commotion of the city yet, because it seems much busier around here than it ever did before. I never saw so much traffic in my neighborhood as I did today. Perhaps my summers up in the boonies are catching up with me.

Kept running into these Bill Murray stencils all around Jacksonville,

FL this weekend. Anyone know what's up with that? Is he from

there?? I did pass a CaddyShack restaurant on my way down to Orlando

for a visit with Jen and Scott..

Rainy day in Seattle.

Had dinner with my bud Paul and his little 2 year old daughter Lainey downtown. Very nice to see them.

On the flight this week the flight attendant was trying to make room in the overhead and moved my backpack. In the process she dropped it on the floor. It wouldn't have been a big deal, except when I pulled my laptop out of the case this morning I noticed that the corner was crushed and dented pretty bad. I wonder if Northwest Airlines might consider repairing it? I didn't make a report at the time the bag dropped because I didn't think to check out my computer. What a downer. I just bought the thing a couple weeks back in Dallas because I was tired of the beat up old one I was clunking away on.

Tomorrow is the MNF game, then I'm back on a plane to go back to Detroit.

zoom.

I'm starting to make my way back to California for the winter in a week. I'm RVing it across country stopping in Ft Smith Arkansas to visit my Dad and Step Mom in between football games. I should make it back to the Bay Area around the 1st of December.

Sitting here watching U2 and GreenDay rehearse their halftime show for tomorrows Monday Night Football game. Pretty cool. They are putting on quite the concert.

Oh fun