Given all the crap that’s gone on over the past 7 years, I hope Lemieux and the Penguins find a city that’s willing to give them what they need. There are a ton of news articles floating around about Mario’s announcement this morning (see this one from ABC News for a brief synopsis), but essentially, after 7 years of negotiating only with the city of Pittsburgh, the Penguins owners group will look to other cities.

Pittsburgh, and the state of Pennsylvania in general, is stupid for not awarding the slots license to the Isle of Capri. They essentially turned down hundreds of millions in private money to fund a public arena (which I’m sure would bear their name, but in the age of “Heinz Field” and “PNC Park,” something tells me this city like corporate sponsorships). Plan B supposed includes some private money but also requires a lot of taxpayer’s money, something the city is short on anyway.

So the state awards the gaming license (which doesn’t include card games, so in my opinion is worthless anyway) to someone so they can build a casino on the North Shore. This stands to anger the Pirates (although who really cares) and the Steelers, since it’s going to add congestion to an already busy area.

Personally, I hope they move to Vegas… But maybe that’s because that’s where I want to live.

But it’s the siren song of cleanliness. I’m not a “neat freak,” and the events of the past few weeks have left little time or motivation for cleaning, laundry, and the like. Being the strange individual I am, I have a tendency to get into “moods” where I will clean… a lot.

Sunday was one of those times. Dana and I cleaned two out of three bedrooms (the office is another day’s work), all three bathrooms, the kitchen and the great room. And we’re not talking picked up some toys and clothes and such. We’re talking dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed floors, etc. I think I started at 9:30 in the morning and finished up somewhere around 4 (with about an hour or hour and a half break for lunch and a little rest).

Now, no one will actually be visiting us over the holidays, but it’s nice to be in a clean house for the holidays. And with 10 days off of work starting Friday at noon, it’ll be nice to veg in a clean home.

It was a tough weekend for us here. Deuce’s great-grandfather passed away on Friday evening. It’s always tough to lose a loved one, and to try to put any sort of perspective on what he meant to our family would be an exercise in futility. We lost a very important, trusted, and caring member, and it’s a very difficult situation for everyone involved. We are very fortunate in that our extended families were there to support us through this difficult time. So if any of them are reading this, thank you very much, you’ve made a tremendously difficult situation bearable.

Apparently, there is a defined level of “winning karma” within the realm of Pittsburgh professional sports. Apparently, two teams can’t be winning at the same time, or that karma level would exceed some predefined limit, and all hell would break loose. Why do I say this?

Well, take last night as a prime example. The Penguin game started at 7:30, the Steeler game at 8:00. The Pens had the lead through the two and a half periods of play, which was right about 9:00 pm, the same time the Steelers emerged from the locker room with a 10-0 lead, not insurmountable by any means.

However, the Steelers dominated the game from front to back, so it was obvious the Penguins could not do the same. They gave up two quick goals (NY was shorthanded for one and on the power play on the other) and ended up losing in a shootout. Well, at least they got a point, I guess. I am a big fan of the Penguins, trying to catch as many games as I can on television and I’m planning to head to a game or two at the arena this year. I just hope we can exceed that karma level a bit… It would be nice to have two teams winning at the same time.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we took Deuce to The Picture People to get pictures taken for our holiday cards. Being that our small family revolves around him, he is the only one in the picture. However, he had stayed over Grandma and Grandpa A’s the night before. We’re not sure how much he slept, but he was very tired and subsequently very cranky.

It was like pulling teeth trying to get him to sit still, let alone smile and look at camera. I have to give a ton of credit to the photographer, as she showed a great deal of patience. After it was over, Dana and I could only hope that we had one decent picture that we could use for the cards.

When Dana went back later that day, she found that he actually did take two good pictures. The one is pretty much his first head shot, but it makes him look about three years older. The other was a more traditional picture with a big North Pole sign. We picked up a few prints and order the cards.

Yesterday we finally received the cards, and they look really good. Dana put them in envelopes and put the return address labels on them, and I’m going to do a mail merge on our addresses and print out some labels so we can get them out this week.