All posts by Gidge

Did You Feel That Manning-Sized Disturbance In The Force?

By | September 9, 2011 | Football, NFL | Comments Off

As though a million voices cried out in fear and were suddenly silenced? It wasn’t the Death Star. No. It was worse.

It was this – breaking news on Indystar.com that Peyton Manning went in AGAIN last night for surgery.

My 63-year-old mother texted me. That’s right. She texted me.

“Manning had another surgery! It’s breaking news!”

Colts fans throughout the universe are praying and sacrificing goats but the fact of the matter is, just like when the Pacers were our drug of choice and Reggie Miller was injured – sometimes, SOMEONE ELSE HAS TO PLAY.

What is this going to mean? What about the revenue? What about the fans? Hard to say. But one thing is for sure. No Manning this week. And that’s bad news for Colts fans.

If you need me, I’ll be sacrificing this panda to the football gods. It’s a sad panda, so no worries.

So How Do You GET Super Bowl Tickets Anyway?

By | June 3, 2011 | Football, NFL | 1 Comment

Obviously one can just roll up to the stadium the day of “The Big Game” and pay some guy a ridiculous amount of cash for tickets. But there has to be a way, right? A PROCESS for obtaining Super Bowl Tickets through “THE SYSTEM”.

When I lived in Indianapolis, back when tickets were HARD to get to the Indy 500 there was a ritual to obtain them. You had to send in your application for tickets with a check for the amount that your tickets would cost, were you to get them. You could only get the application in the back of the Official Indy 500 Race Program. Which essentially was like some bizarre Hulman inspired paradox as you had to have tickets to attend the event you wanted to get tickets to attend in order to acquire this program.

So we figured there had to be some sort of way to apply to get tickets to THE BIG GAME.

There is.

The information is located rather randomly on the NFL’s FAQ Page. Oh yeah btw if you want tickets to the Super Bowl try this – it’s that casual.

So we decided, heck yes we’d like some Super Bowl tickets at face value. Thus we’ve entered the random drawing.

Wish us luck!

Peyton Manning Has Twins Or Something

By | April 17, 2011 | Football, NFL | 3 Comments

I got this nervous message from my mother the other day.

“Did you hear anything about Peyton Manning and Ashley having twins. There was a story that they did but then another story that they wanted everyone to respect their privacy. Do you think something could be wrong?”

My heart kind of fell, because as a mom of twins (as is Sarah), we both know really well that yeah – with twins it’s more likely than NOT that something is wrong. So I let Google be my adviser and started reading every news story I could find.

So here is what I KNOW. The Indianapolis Star CONFIRMS the births, via public record and that’s it. Babies were born.

After reading a lot it seems that even a lot of people in the sports community didn’t know that Peyton Manning was married. Maybe just being a Hoosier, that kind of info seemed common knowledge. I know they’ve always been really private people. But I also know that there is a symbiotic relationship between public figures and the public. We exist to love you, you exist to be loved.

So, sometimes, you gotta throw us a bone.

Now, the Mannings don’t OWE us anything about their personal life. That’s for certain. I do think thought that the frenzied joy of new babies in the Manning dynasty is something a lot of the Manning fans are going to celebrate far and wide. A NEW MANNING MALE HAS BEEN BORN. OMG GET HIM A FOOTBALL!

I’ve been wondering what the middle ground here is? How does the Manning family preserve their privacy yet give us what we all so desperately crave? I’ve created an artists rendering of what this might look like.


You could probably even swaddle newborn pigs in pink and blue blankets and hide the faces, we won’t notice. We’ll just be cooing over the idea of babies.

I have one important piece of information to share with these new twin parents. Just keep this in mind and hold it close to your heart. 45 minutes of sleep = a full night.

Ok I kid. Not about the sleep part that’s legit having twins makes you learn why sleep deprivation is torture.

But congratulations to Peyton and Ashley from one twin parent to new ones. It gets easier.

Someday.

Get Off the Phone, Soccer Parents

By | March 10, 2011 | Kids' Sports, Soccer | 5 Comments

The oldest boy is playing soccer. The kind of soccer where they actually have practices and games and as a parent you have to go.

He’s so excited he can’t see straight.

He’s also not very good at it. That’s fine. The boy isn’t all that athletic. Maybe he’ll grow into it. Maybe he won’t. But he’s having fun, and he thinks he’s good and loves it. To me, that’s what it’s all about at this stage in the game.

I will freely admit I had my cell phone out, texting a girlfriend while they were getting organized at the beginning of practice. I had a book, I had my great big old picnic-style blanket spread out, purse half dumped and was putzing around doing this and that. But as practice got going, I set down my phone and sat to watch the shenanigans.

Eight-year-old boys who don’t have a clue how to play soccer trying to practice playing soccer is sort of a hoot.  They’re uncoordinated, they don’t pay attention and I just find there to be something joyous and hilarious about them. They’re playing a game in its least competitive form, and it’s just fun.

So all this parental musing about the nature of sport aside, I notice a kid shoving another kid out on the field. Being a completely judgmental parent, I look around to see whose jerkwad kid this is.

And that’s when I noticed.

Everyone is on their phone except me.

Texting, surfing, talking. They’re doing anything except watching the field. So I sit and observe the parents. Thumbs are flying and smiles spread over their faces as they continue to communicate with their digital world that they’ve brought with them to the soccer field.

They are missing it. They are missing the sucky dribbling and passing. They are missing the boys’ total inability to weave in and out of cones. They are missing the corner shot that knocked a kid down.

They are missing their boys being 8 years old and trying to learn a sport. This moment won’t come back. As a matter of fact, it’s over.

I’m not a perfect parent. I text more than I should and hell if my phone would surf the web I’d be snagging content from it as well. But if I believe sports are important enough for my child to play, then they ought to be important enough for me to pay attention to while they learn.

Get off the phone. Jerks.

Hey Baby How YOU Doin’ ?

By | February 9, 2011 | Football, WTF? | 1 Comment

Better people than I will write about the game, about the commercials, about the greater meaning of last Sunday’s Super Bowl. I heard Big Ben blames the loss on “Sussudio” being played before the game, but couldn’t find that anywhere online to snark at him about.

I could understand it though. “Sussudio” would kill it for me, too.

No. My two cents regarding this past Super Bowl have nothing to do with any of that, nor with Xtina effing up our National Anthem. I even have to admit that I didn’t quite catch what she did wrong, but my mind went “Wait…..what did she just mess up?” and made my husband rewind.

Not even that was enough to move me to post though.

Maybe it’s my new High Def flat panel TV. Maybe it’s just heightened awareness due to all the beer I had consumed.

But did any of you catch the come hither glances Joe Buck was tossing Aikman? He’s totally checking out Aikman.

What’s up with that? And why does Aikman look so pleased about it?

Yes, I totally grabbed my camera and took a pic of the TV. I was that amused.

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