Flaky ideas

Damn, it's cold ...

Luckily my nice, efficient one-year-old furnace hums along, heating the house, letting me watch the first big snowfall of the year while in relative comfort while sipping a Tim Horton's and watching NHL On The Fly -and listening to TSN's Gary Green butcher the English language.

Look at it snow! I really ought to build a rink in the back yard this year and invite my friends over for a skate.

Bad idea. You know one of them's gonna bring over a stick and a puck, then two, then before you know it they're playing their own version of the Winter Classic. Then one rising shot shatters the sliding plate glass windows in the back of the house. So long $1500 bucks.

At least the Bills are practicing outside this week. Good idea. They play in Denver where it's going to be cold. The Bills normally practice inside the Ralph Wilson Fieldhouse, which is really really big. Big enough to hold a blimp, or the $50 gazzilion bucks Bernie Madoff "made-off" with, or maybe even big enough to hold Sarah Palin's wardrobe.

And Trent Edwards is starting. Trent's a California guy - Stanford, etc ... (why the team in one of the two coldest climes in the NFL keeps acquiring QBs from California - Edwards, J.P. Losman, Rob Johnson - I have no idea, but I digress). Anyway, if he's going to play in Buffalo, his skin's gotta thicken when the thermometer dips below 30.

Trent doesn't do very well in the cold - see the Cleveland debacle for details - last year's Cleveland debacle, I mean - as opposed to THIS year's Cleveland debacle, which was the stupid coaches' fault.

It's snowing harder now and the Yankees are doing what they do every winter - spend unspeakable gobs of money on human beings with the extraordinary ability to play the game of baseball. This time it's pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.

Good and bad idea. Good because as every geek and seamhead know (get ready to barf on cue; three, two, one ... and ...) good pitching beats good hitting - and both Sabathia and Burnett are good pitchers. But bad because Burnett always seemed to spend half his time in Toronto on the DL.

And C.C. ? well, C.C.'s fat. Period. C.C. may as well stand for "Chowing Cheeseburgers." Can't wait to see how he holds up in the Bronx during August's Dog Days. Or how he manages returning to the American League after going 11-2 for the Brewers in the National League - you know, the league with one less really, really good hitter in the lineup. Or when there's a hundred-or-so media members waiting for him by his locker. Or after he goes 2-0 for the first time Opening Day.

It's really coming down now. Hope the Sabres can get their replacements up from Portland in time for tonight's game. Bad idea, but one they had no choice in. Rochester's ownership was (is) a joke but on days like this it makes you long for when a call-up was a Thruway drive away, assuming the Thruway is open in the first place. I'll be interested in seeing how promising defenseman Chris Butler fares on the NHL level.

That is, assuming the satellite dish doesn't go out ... oh no ...

Time to get a push broom and climb on the roof. I hate snow.