We are close; darn close.  College football kicks off Saturday, September 1 when Oklahoma State visits Georgia (nothing else before that game matters).  Man I cannot wait!  I guess I need to get some predictions up pretty soon or the naysayers will doubt the powers of my prognostications.

Still not in the mood to write about Vick, and as a matter of course I have pretty much written off the Falcons this year.  Of course I will watch.  The bright side of this mess is that I hope to pick up season tickets next year when I suspect tons of current season ticket holders will bail.

Yesterday Blu-ray versions 300 and The Fifth Element (remastered version) arrived from Amazon.  I watch 300 last night.  I am not going to say that it was a movie, but it was a ton of fun; good, solid, action flick, based on semi historical facts.  Probably not great reference materials, but this is the type of movie that I will actually watch again in a few months and probably will listen to the commentary.

I did run into my first strange (or problematic) PS3 experience.  With about five minutes left in the movie, the move stuttered and paused for a few sections.  Then with less than two minutes to go, the movie pretty much stopped, and the screen turned black.  I took out the disk, restarted the PS3, put the disk back in the PS3, and went to the final chapter, watching without any problems.  I am not sure what caused the skips/hiccups/pauses, but this was a brand new disk (right from the case to the PS3), the system does not have much mileage, and the PS3 was not in use prior to watching 300.  Will have to keep a watch on this to see if it happens again.

In mid July the Braves were within striking distance of the Mets, at only 1.5 games back, but things have not worked out that great since picking up Teixeira.  It is not Teixeira’s fault; he has been fantastic for the Braves.  In 23 games, Mark has 27 H, 19 R, 19 HR, 30 RBI, good for a .303 AVG (1.103 OPS).  The Braves 7 games back on the Mets; they can kiss the NL East goodbye.  The Wild Card is 4 games out of their grasp; you would think they could make that up, but I do not see it happening.

Last night I cooked my wife a killer meal – rib eye (perfectly medium rare), grilled sweet potatoes, and some asparagus (also on the grill, in a cast-iron skillet with virgin olive oil, garlic pepper mix, and a dash of oregano).  Of course plenty of red wine (a nice California zinfandel – forget the label) to go with the meal.  Let’s just say that it worked out well for me.  Life is good!