Playoff Beards, Wedding Madness & Links

There are four things I truly love in this world:
-My Family
-Lumina Resort
-Hot chicks in yoga pants
-The Rocky Series (1-4 with a mini honorable mention for number 6...5 was a disaster)

For this reason, in addition to some general morning laziness, I've decided to grow a beard as I'm charging through the home stretch of training (started the last 10 weeks for those counting). The way I look at it, was that in Rocky IV, as our short roided hero was preparing for the biggest challenge of his life, he went into the Russian tundra, grew a beard and trained like a mad man. Also, guys in the NHL look pretty bad ass with their playoff beards (except you Sidney Crosby...that was just terrible). Quick Rocky side-note; there really wasn't another training montage would word, 1 and 2 he was basically mentally challenged, 3 would include running shirtless with dudes in the water, 5 never happened, and 6 he was old and had varicose veins (on that note, it is understated how ridiculous the premise for Rocky Balboa is. A 60 year old former champ is supposed to compete with an undefeated champion in his prime? Unless there was a weight-class difference and the current champ was on the same drugs as the "amblance guy" that fight wouldn't last longer than 2 minutes). So, even though I've never had more mixed reviews over a change in appearance, the beard is staying around for a few weeks (unless my company comes up with a facial hair policy...gotta keep gettin' that check).

For the past couple weeks I've kept on an aggressive by quality training schedule. That will be a challenge to keep for a few weeks though, as I have three weddings to attend over the next five weekends. Sept. 17-Atlanta, GA, Oct. 1-Pottsville, PA, Oct. 9-Seattle, WA. Thankfully running is the least expensive form of exercise out there, because it doesn't take a great detective to figure out where the rest of my money is going to be going. Here's hoping to some good hotel fitness centers, and some self moderation on the open bar.

In honor of holiday week hump day (not nearly as dirty as it sounds), here's some links:
-The language is fairly NSFW, but this is hilarious. A former NFL player, Ethan Albright, was awfully upset about his player ranking in Madden 2007
-"I totally know how we can get the White House back...let's have a ton of big group arguments where we destroy one another's political foundation!"
-From the Better Late Than Never files -Good news: Football is back. Bad news: The Bills stink again
-He's an acquired taste, but Dave Dameshek cracks me up
-Fun twist on fantasy football
-Huh? What? How? Why? Huh?
Check in with everyone tomorrow!
Matt
twitter.com/mstendardi