catching up

Okay, it's been a long while since my last post. So a quick brain dump.

Mortgage Crisis
Egads, this one annoys me. The whole mortgage crisis seems overplayed. Maybe its cause I live in WNY where prices barely rose during the housing boom and are barely dipping now. Or maybe it is cause we live below our means. I dunno. But the media is all about people "losing their homes" because of the mortgage crisis. Say what? If the value of your house goes down doesn't make your mortgage payments go up. If anything, it may make your property taxes go down. Sure, it sucks if you're trying to sell a home, but unless you bought during the boom and are already trying to sell then you're not really losing out. Prices are still nearly universally up over 5, 10, or more years. There are some people who foolishly bought their homes thinking they could then get an home equity loan and now they can't. That does suck, but if you need a loan to make payments on a loan then you already had problems. Anyways.

Tour de France
I don't know what it is about le Tour, but I really like watching it. It is disgusting that there are so damn many dopers among the pros, but other than that, I enjoy it. I'm cheering for Christian Vandevelde and the Schleck brothers. Vandevelde is an American riding for an American team and he seems like a cool guy, so I like him. The Schleck brothers' performance on stage 15 was just awesome... seeing Andy hang in there and sacrifice for his brother like that was impressive. And it worked, Frank took the lead. Its gonna be a good final week. Mark Cavendish has been fun to watch as well... turning on the speed like that after five hours on a bike... wow.

Versus' coverage has been okay... I generally record the live morning broadcast on TiVo, but sometimes I'll catch the evening broadcast. I think Paul and Phil are better commentators than Craig and Bob. Craig is okay, but too... polished. I miss Bob's colorful descriptions of live on le Tour, especially when he talks about slang and stuff.

Maybe not so long between posts, eh. We'll see.