Holy crap, the NFL rookie contract situation is out of control. Sam Bradford, this year’s top draft pick, just inked a six-year, $78-million deal with the St. Louis Rams. The QB out of Oklahoma will receive $50 million in guaranteed money — which means he’ll bank at least that much even if he sucks, gets injured, etc.

I can’t believe the size of these contracts. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning won’t even make as much as Bradford this year. Don’t the owners see how these massive, UNEARNED contracts alienate fans? We know that we’re the ones who ultimately end up paying these contracts in the form of higher ticket, concession, and merchandise prices.

The next time the owners rework the CBA, they need to address rookie contracts. There needs to be a cap in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening anymore. Last year Stafford got $41 million in guaranteed money, this year Bradford gets $50 million. See a trend? What’s next year’s top pick going to get?? This is fucking insane.

Brookfield Zoo euthanized Leah the Bald Eagle today due to complications from respiratory issues. Leah had been at the zoo for more than three decades after having been found in Minnesota with an eye injury.

Bummer… it’s always sad to hear about animals dying in captivity like this. I’m not sure what the typical lifespan of a Bald Eagle is, but it sounds like Leah lived a fairly long time.

I thinking about perhaps homeschooling my son next year instead of sending him to second grade at the public school. He’s behind in a couple of content areas (particularly reading and writing), and I want to take care of that before he lags even more. I think the best way to do this is to keep him at home where I can give him individual attention on a daily basis. This is actually something I’ve been considering for a while, but have been afraid to pursue. Now that I’ve had several grad courses in Education, particularly in how to teach reading, I feel a lot more confident about my abilities to homeschool.

There are other things to consider, though. I really do think the social aspect of public school is something positive, so I’m worried about removing Alex from daily contact with his friends. I have thought about after school tutoring sessions instead, but he’s so busy with sports and playing outside that I don’t want to overwhelm him. After all, he’s just 7!

I don’t know… I keep going back and forth on this. I guess the only thing I can say at this point is “we’ll see”.

My son Alex has been begging us for a guitar and lessons ever the beginning of the year. This all started because of Guitar Hero 3 on Xbox, which he began playing during last summer vacation, and eventually became hooked on. Alex actually does pretty well on the game — not on Expert Level (or whatever the highest is), but he’s not bad for a 7-year-old. Even though we’re all for music lessons of any kind, we wanted to wait a bit to make sure the guitar thing wasn’t just a temporary phase. It’s been a full year now, so I think we can move forward.

I saw this Eagletone Electric Guitar over at Buy.com when I was browsing this morning, and think it would be a good introductory piece for Alex. It will give him a taste of what playing the guitar is like, without us having to shell out big bucks right from the start. In fact, this Eagletone guitar is on sale for just $65. That price includes free shipping, make this by far the BEST deal I’ve found on a brand-new electric guitar.

I might as well go ahead and order this guitar. I doubt I’m going to find similar quality for a lower price, so I better catch this one while the deal is still available. And now I should probably look into soundproofing the basement, too!!!

I didn’t think I’d be able to see Inception this weekend, but a couple people had to cancel on a lunch I was planning to attend, so that freed up my schedule a bit. I caught a matinee showing this afternoon and was blown away by the film!! Usually I am wary about movies that don’t adhere to traditional timelines and structures, and especially those that ask viewers to discern between dreams and reality, but Inception was surprisingly understandable (at least on the surface). Of course as soon as I got home and started reading all the online debates about the meaning of certain scenes, I began to doubt my original interpretation of events…! Nevertheless, this is a great movie and I highly recommend it!

I am usually not a fan of Angelina Jolie’s films, but I have to admit that Salt looks pretty damn good! I definitely want to see it in theaters. I’m not sure when that will happen, though. I still have to see Inception, too, which I thought I was gonna do this weekend — until my plans fell through. Oh, well, maybe I’ll just have to make a double feature out of these two!

Like most families, we love taking photos of not only vacations and special events, but also of daily life. The problem is that we seldom get everyone in the photos because there always needs to be at least one person behind the lens. Sometimes when we’re out and about, we can ask a passerby to snap a group shot — but, and call me cynical if you must, I always worry that the person is simply going to run off with our camera!

A good solution to this problem would be to get something like this Sunpak PicturesPlus Tripod. This particular tripod extends to 59 inches (that’s almost 5 feet) and collapses to 22 inches. It also weighs only 3 pounds, making it extremely portable as far as tripods go. Furthermore, you can mount almost any model of digital camera or digital SLR camera on it, which of course is of primary importance. After all, what would be the use of getting a tripod if I can’t even put my camera on it?

The Sunpak PicturesPlus Tripod usually retails for a whopping $59.99, which I would never pay. But since it’s currently on sale at Buy.com for a far more reasonable $14.99, I’m definitely interested in taking a second look here. This really does seem to be a bargain that’s too good to pass up!