Employees Must Wipe Hands on Pants

Okay, so here’s the oddest thing that’s happened to me in a while. A guy I know at work who has Blazers season tickets came up to me this afternoon and offered me his seats to tonight’s game.

Normally, I’d be ALL OVER this. Free Blazer tickets?! Are you kidding?

But here’s the problem. I worked a 9-hour day today, in part to pay for my new HDTV, as well as a few other bills I’ve had pilling up. I’m planning on working a 9-hour day tomorrow. I’m planning on going in on Saturday for 4 hours to help on email tickets. All this overtime is great for my wallet, not so good for my sleep schedule.

Going to a Blazers Game means getting home at 10:30pm or so, and having spent all my energy yelling and screaming and whooping it up at the game… Then dealing with traffic after the game, and a 20-30 minute drive home… Some kind of rushed dinner, and in bed around 11:30 or so. This just doesn’t work with getting up at 6:30am in order to be at work by 8am. I need my 8 hours, or I’m useless.

So I turned him down. Can you believe it? I turned down FREE Blazers tickets. I never would have believed it.

Oh well. The good part is at least I get to watch the game on the fancy new TV that I am working so hard to pay for. Besides, I’m going to the game on Sunday anyway. Oh well.

So, I watched the first “Marquee Event” since I got my HDTV. The Daytona 500.

Now, I am so NOT a NASCAR fan. I mean, sure, I’ve seen races, and I know some of the drivers, but this is like so totally NOT a sport I would ever watch given any other alternatives.

In HD, however, this broadcast was phenomenal. Gripping throughout. (It doesn’t hurt that the race was pretty exciting, too. I guess. If you’re into that kind of thing.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to be one to tell you that HDTV is a bigger improvement than the move from color to black-and-white television (yes, I am indeed just old enough to remember the days of Black and White TV). But it’s probably as big a jump as it was going from VHS to DVD. That’s pretty significant.

It is making me anxious to sign up for my new HDTV package.

We shall see how it compares to the other “Marquee Event” slated for today, the NBA All-Star game. Now, this is something I’m anxious to see (my boy, Brandon Roy is playing for the West!) but alas, I will not be getting in HD. Bummer.

Long time with no posts means I’ve been a busy boy at work, with no time for dilly-dally and posting on my Blog.

I’ve also been following my team, the Red-Hot Portland Trail Blazers, and, no joke, this team is one of the most amazing basketball teams I’ve seen in my 20+ years as a fan of the game.

In other news, I think it’s finally time to bite the bullet and get a new HDTV. Since the digital changeover happens next year, and I don’t want to have to get a stupid converter. My tax return should cover most of the cost, and I’ve got a coupon on a nice 42″ Vizio 1080p model. This is the one my friend Ryan got, and he brought down late last fall and hooked up to my home theater system for a few days.

This should carry me, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Maybe down the line I can think about a PS3 (For Blu-Ray functionality, mostly) or something. But one step at a time. My regular DVDs will look pretty awesome on this thing anyways.

So, those of you who follow baseball may have noticed a pitcher for the San Fransisco Giants whose name bears a striking resemblance to mine…

Lincecum is not a terribly common name in the United States, and it turns out we’re all descended from a single immigrant family (Thomas Linthicum 1640-1701) back in the 1650’s.

As a result, it’s a virtual certainty that Tim Lincecum is a distant cousin of mine, though I have not been able to determine how far removed. Given the spelling he uses, I would venture a guess that his branch of the family split off from mine sometime in the 1840’s or 1850’s (This is when my own branch’s spelling shifted around from Linthicum, to Lincicome/Lincecome to finally land on Lincicum.)

There are other Lincicum family relatives of note nationally (A Bernie Lincicome writes for a Denver area newspaper, and Brittany Lincicome is a player on the LPGA circuit) but Tim is certainly the most prominent family member nationally right now.

He’s a lights-out pitcher, too, and I have him on my Fantasy Baseball team.

The best part about it, of course, is that now people (who follow baseball anyway) are more likely to know how to pronounce my last name correctly.