MIAMI HEAT WIN NBA FINALS!

THE MIAMI HEAT ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS!

They came back from being 2 gameS down and WON 4 GAMES IN A ROW TO WIN!

I am so happy and my face hurts from smiling and I'm so tired and relived and exited and happy....

I can hardly believe it. When they came back to Miami after losing the first two games in Dallas I have to admit I was worried. I certainly did not give up but boy, I was worried.

But they did it! They won! The Miami Heat are WORLD CHAMPIONS!

Miami Heat ONE GAME AWAY From Championship!

I don't know how much more of this we can take; late nights with exciting games lasting until well after midnight, games not being decided until the last second of the clock ticks away. All I can say is:

I LOVE IT!

The Miami Heat, after falling down badly in the first two games of the NBA Finals, have just won the middle three games of the series. Apparently only one other team has done that.

In game 3, they looked good during the first half, then started melting down in the 3rd quarter. It was close the rest of the way until the last seconds when Dirk missed one of two free throws, and D-Wade made his two. In game 4 the Heat won by 24 points and looked as good as they ever have.

Last night, game 5, well, it was another late-night nail-biter. With the heat up by 1 point and 1.9 seconds left, Wade is at the line and hits the first free throw. Then one of the Mavericks calls for a time-out, right in the middle of Dwyane shooting. If they had waited until after the second shot they would have taken the ball out at half-court. but because one of their players called for the time out before the second shot, once Wade makes it, they have to take it out right under the basket, 45 feet away from half-court. If you know basketball, you know what a huge boo-boo on their part that was. You could have lit a cigar off the foreheads Coach Johnson and that owner guy Mark Cuban they were so hot.

Anyway, this means they go back to Dallas for game 6.

And the championship is so close Wade said "they can smell it."

So can we!

Whoa. What a lousy birthday present. What's happening? I know it can't be that Dallas is that much better than the Heat. I know they aren't. But Miami isn't looking too good right now.

We went out and had dinner at The original Steakhouse (we call it Schnellenberger's, for Coach Howard Schnellenberger, a famous Florida football coach who owns it) It's a great place to eat and in the bar area there are 12 big screen TVs all around the walls. It's fun to watch the Marlins games, or in this case, the Heat. The server was real good about it, we sat there for nearly 4 hours and he never gave us a problem. We left at the half and watched the rest of the game at home.

But jeez.

I know Dallas did what they're supposed to do, take care of business at home. So I'm hoping the Heat do the same when they get back here. The Heat just aren't looking like they have been.

But they have three games in Miami. If they had won just one game in Dallas, who knows, they might have been celebrating a championship on Biscayne Blvd.

But that's still a long way off and I don't really care where they celebrate.

I still believe.

"déjà view"

I read about a phenomenon "déjà view" which silly as it is (the feeling you keep seeing the same episode of a TV show over and over) it struck a chord with me.

I have often thought about situations that have caused me to believe that there must be some great cosmic conspiracy out there built just to annoy me. This is one of those situations, with a slight difference.

It started many years ago. It was late at night, I was watching TV alone and I had just finished watching a video tape of some movie. When I shut the VCR off the TV channel behind it was playing an X-Files episode. It was something about a woman who said she was a genie. As I watched for a few minutes I realized it was one I didn't recognize. I mean I didn't recognize it at all, and I would have sworn I had seen every single episode.

As the realization hit me that here was an episode I had never ever seen, I got excited, then upset. Excited because, well, here was a "fresh" episode of The X-Files! But upset because I had missed most of it. I threw a blank tape into the VCR and taped it, but later on I couldn't get myself to watch it, since it was incomplete.

I looked it up and learned the episode name was "JE SOUHAITE" from season 7. I tried to find it in any of the local station's schedules, the Sci-Fi channel, everywhere I could to see if I could find when it might be rerun again. I got nowhere.

I forgot about it. Some time much later, it must have been two or three years, it happened again. It was late at night, I had just finished watching a movie, I turned off the VCR and was flipping around the dial for a few moments, and there it was. That same X-Files episode, and at practically the same point in the story I had seen before, which meant that it was already almost over.

And I had missed it again.

I turned it off. I didn't want to ruin it for myself when I someday actually got to watch it in full.

It happened one more time some time later but not in quite the same way. Again it was late at night, and picked out a tape from a pile on the shelf. When I threw it into the VCR and hit play I expected to see one thing, but damn if it wasn't that tape that had the episode from years earlier that I had taped but never watched. And of course because it was a tape, it was queued to the beginning of the tape at that exact same scene, that same teasing bit about a girl who says she's a genie. Damn her.

I have since acquired the first 8 seasons of The X-Files on DVD. (if season 9 ever is priced at $5 I might splurge) Even thought I now have a complete and pristine copy of this episode, in Dolby, widescreen, etc. etc., I now find that I cannot get myself to watch that one final episode. I have this feeling that once I do, The X-Files will really and truly finally be 'over.'

Of course, if I watch it and it is a sub-par episode I will have felt cheated somehow.

So what is worse? Watching the episode, risking the possibility that it wasn't worth all the bother, and also having The X-files all really be 'over', once and for all? Or staying in my own little reality where The X-files hasn't really 'ended' and just imagining the episodes' greatness?

Or have I already put way too much thought into this?

That is all for today. Our lines are open for your comments.

Sports Update

Okay sports fans, the Marlins have lost 3 of their last 4 games, and the Heat didn't win the first game of the Finals, but that's okay, I'm not worried. It was a heartbreaking game, it wasn't a blow out. In fact, the Heat were ahead for most of it, right up to the half. Then the rest of the game was back-and-forth, right up to the last minute when one of those Dallas player hit two lucky 3s in a row.

Tomorrow is game 2 and I think they will make the right adjustments and come out on top.

In other news a tropical depression formed down by Cuba, the first of the season. It should stay to our west but we may get some rain for the next three or four days. Which means we won't be doing any swimming this weekend, dammit. At least the pool is still good. I ain't letting that sucker get away from me again.

Hmmm

So there's this couple in PIERRE, S.D. They beat the 1-in-146 million odds by buying the one winning ticket in the South Dakota Powerball Lottery. They came forward to claim it on Tuesday (the winning numbers were picked on May 18) That one ticket was worth $117 million.

Or $117,000,000.00 if you like to read all the zeros.

That is a hell of a lot of money.

I read further that if they choose to take 29 monthly payments, they actually get $116.8 million, or about $493,000.00 each month for 29 months.

But who wants to wait? I sure wouldn't. A lot could happen in 29 months. The country could go bankrupt. After all, Bush is still the president, he's still got lots of time to run the country further into the ground.

You could get hit by a bus, especially if you don't look both ways.

Or aliens could land and kill all the postal delivery people (an ironic switcheroo) and then who would deliver that monthly check?

They agreed. They took it in a lump sum.

But that doesn't mean they get all $117 million. If they take the lump sum they get less than half, they get $51.6 million. Maybe there is some fine print on the back of each ticket that says for being greedy you only get a portion of what you win?

And after the Internal Revenue Service gets their piece, this couple who "won" $117,000,000.00 will walk away with $38,688,566.00

But isn't that sort of false advertising? Don't get me wrong, $38,688,566.00 is still a HUGE chunk of money and I would (maybe) sleep with George Bush (either one) if given that much money (well, probably not)

But isn't that like buying 10 gallons of gas but only getting 4 gallons in your tank?

I say give them the entire $117 million.

And then ask them if they'd like to adopt me.

SPORTS UPDATE

Well slap me silly, I cannot believe I have not mentioned the Florida Marlins, or even the Miami Heat lately. The Marlins are playing pretty decent ball the last few weeks (except of course they just lost their last two games to the Giants) but they had won 9 out of 13 games and are starting to look...well, better than they did before.

And the Heat! THE FINALS BABY!!

The Heat are making their very first trip to the NBA Finals, the World Series of Basketball! The first game is tomorrow and I have a very good feeling about this series, like the feeling I had about the Marlins when they won the World Series back in 2003. Not that I'm psychic or anything but I just feel good about their chances.

Dwayne Wade will be over the flu (it didn't slow him down too much last Friday night) and Shaq will be....Shaq. The Shaq-Daddy. The Masta' of the Big Slamma' Jamma'

It should be a fun ride.

Ahhhhhh.....

Success!

The pool is back to normal! It took two days and $800 worth of new water but I refilled it, re-chemicalized it and we went in it today! It was SO nice!

Until we heard the thunder.

It's supposed to rain the rest of the weekend. I better get more stuff in there, I do NOT want to have to repeat my battle with alge again. I would seriously have to shoot the pool if that happens ever again.

I Will Not Quit

Instead of running rampant and ripping the pool down with my teeth, clearer heads prevailed. I decided to drain the pool instead.

What a pain THAT was.

I just couldn't get a handle on it, and it had now gotten so full of alge that you couldn't see down 6 inches. The Loc Ness monster could have been hiding in there and I wouldn't have been able to see it. The pool had beaten me. I had no choice but to drain it and start over with new fresh water.

I used a garden hose as a siphon. Of course, as I sucked on the one end of the hose I was hoping I wouldn't get a mouth full of slag water and algee, because I would have just had to puke it all right back into the pool and make it just that much worse. But luckily I didn't and the water started to drain.

Slowly.

24 hours later the pool was only half drained, and the alge had begun to stick to the sides of the pool as the water went down, leaving trails of green scum that I didn't realize until later had hardened in the sun. Another day later and most of the water was gone except for about 4 inches of green pea soup at the bottom. So I climbed in with my little scrubbie sponge that I use to wash the love-bugs off the front of the cars and started scraping away.

May I say what fun that was?

I spent two night scubbing and hosing, scubbing and hosing, then scooping that water out with a bucket, but I finally got almost every bad drop out. I won! No more slimy green alge, and thankfully no Loc Ness monster hiding in the goop. By then my arms were so sore, the back of my legs were stiff and the rest of me ached.

Now I could use a hot tub, not a pool.