So has your team made a move before the trade deadline? I have only been following the Sox, Mariners, and Cubs sporadically this season and am therefore not very familiar with their needs. I know the Sox have basically given up on 2007 by sending second baseman Tadahito Iguchi to the Phillies for a minor league pitching prospect. I don’t know much about Danny Richar, but he’ll be called up soon, so we will all be able to get a good look at him then.

The Cubs are in the thick of things in the NL Central (this has to be the biggest surprise of the season!), but I’m still not watching them very much. I lost interest in the Cubs after the 2003 season when they made it to the NLCS before getting eliminated by Florida. After that, Prior and Wood have been ghosts in the clubhouse, and since those were the only two guys I liked on the team, I found no reason to keep watching. At any rate, the Cubs didn’t make a major move.

The Mariners are also doing well and are currently just 3 games behind the Angels in the AL West. They have a three-game series against the Angels right now, so they can make up some more room in a hurry. Their lineup seems pretty steady these days and I hadn’t heard about them looking in a particular area, so it’s not really a surprise that they didn’t make a move either.

The biggest trades seem to be Mark Texeira going to Atlanta and Eric Gagne going to Boston. How did your teams do?

Have you heard about Thoof.com yet? Thoof is a cool new website that allows users to submit and view news articles, blog posts, videos, photos, and more from around the web. This may just sound like another aggregate site to you, but Thoof.com goes well beyond that.

At Thoof, you can get truly personalized news because every time you click on a story, you add a little bit to your user history. From there, Thoof.com employs a complicated algorithm to determine what kind of content you view most often, and on subsequent visits your favorite content will appear right at the top of the page so you don’t have to sift through hundreds of irrelevant articles to find what you want to read.

Joining Thoof.com is very simple. All you do is submit your email address, wait 2 seconds for a confirmation email to be sent to your account, click the link in the confirmation email, and add a password. That’s it! From there, you can begin reading and submitting content to build your user history.

There’s also a “ThoofRank” system that shows you how popular a particular article is among the community at large. I submitted a recent post that I wrote about Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling speaking out about steroid use in Major League Baseball. It was very easy to submit my post (a simple matter of copying and pasting the URL) and add the appropriate tags. After submitting, I saw my post ranking and got the HTML code so I could put my ThoofRank badge up on my blog as well.

Right now I have a ThoofRank of 2 percent. Although that’s pretty low, I’m not too worried about it…. After all, I just submitted my post a few minutes ago. Let’s see how much my ranking increases once people have had a chance to read my submission!

Anyway, I really like the whole Thoof.com concept and will definitely be going back on a daily basis to read my personalized news!

The X-Games will be taking place from August 2-7 this year in Los Angeles. I have really grown to like this event a lot, especially since they’ve added so many motocross-related events over the years. First there was just the freestyle competition. Then they added the Step-Up and Best Trick. I think two years ago, they added Supermoto, which attracted a lot of top MX riders to the event. And this year, they’ve added a “Moto X Racing” event, with Ricky Carmichael, James Stewart, Chad Reed, Ryan Dungey, Ryan Villopoto, and several other full-time pros expected to compete.

There have been a lot of great MX moments in X-Games history, but the best had to be just last year when freestyle king Travis Pastrana landed an amazing double backflip in the Best Trick comp. I’ve put a YouTube clip of the jump here so you can relive the moment (or see it for the first time if you’ve somehow managed to miss the buzz). Travis made it look easy, and I think a lot of casual fans don’t realize just how dangerous that type of jump is. A mistake could have landed TP in a wheelchair — or worse. (Check out the part when Travis hugs his mom and says “I’m sorry” to her.)

Anyway, Travis has said he won’t do the double backflip again (nothing to prove), so it’ll be interesting to see what he pulls out of his sleeve for Best Trick. And it’ll be awesome to see him racing against RC and Stewart again! The SX and MX series haven’t been the same since Travis left…..

My husband and I didn’t have anything planned for today, so I convinced him to help me give the house a thorough cleaning. Usually, we settle for taking care of the superficial stuff such as vacuuming, sweeping, and washing dishes. We hardly ever get down to the nitty gritty (so to speak) and do any deep cleaning, so we were well overdue for something like this.

With the two of us working, it took only about four hours to clean the house from top to bottom. We did everything: cleaned out the oven, microwave and refrigerator in the kitchen; scrubbed the bathtub, polished the bathroom faucets, and sprayed Tilex on the walls in the bathroom; and mopped every exposed floor surface we could find.

I love it when the house is this clean, but I know it won’t last long. I bet by this time next week it’ll feel like this day never happened!

Anyone who drinks bottled water has surely heard these claims before: most of the stuff is simply purified tap water. Now, according to this Reuters article, Aquafina might begin saying as much right there on its labels. Some people think this could deter people from buying the water, but I don’t. As it says down near the bottom of the article, I’m more interested in bottled water for the sake of convenience than purity and probably a lot of other people feel the same way.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if this has an adverse effect on Pepsi Co.’s bottom line. Probably not.

Sometimes I really get tired of living in the Midwest. The weather is terrible and the area doesn’t have much to offer in terms of nature. No mountains for skiing or snowboarding and no ocean for boating, fishing, and other water sports. I often dream of living on the coast, and since I’m not much of a California fan, I like to focus my attention eastward.

For instance, I was looking at some Wilmington NC real estate listings the other day and was impressed by what I saw. Not only are the properties amazing and actually affordable, but the scenery is stunning! I wouldn’t mind living there at all, even if it means I’d have to turn into a Panthers fan!

I’ve still got a bunch of Sopranos episodes on my DVR from the sixth and final season. I’ve been rewatching some of them in the last couple days, and since I already know the storylines, I’ve been able to focus on some of the more superficial details of the show.

For example, I can’t help wondering how Tony could always get decent-looking women to sleep with him. I mean, not only is he a dangerous guy, but he’s also grotesquely overweight and unattractive. Seriously, he should have been looking to score hoodia in that Vegas episode instead of peyote! I guess I can understand that some women like powerful guys, but Tony Soprano is just too much of a stretch. Gross!

I’m not a basketball fan, so I don’t really care about the current scandal involving referee Tim Donaghy. In case you haven’t heard, Donaghy is being investigated by the FBI on allegations that he bet on NBA games over the last two seasons, including those in which he officiated. I’m don’t know the details of that case, but I can’t believe the guy actually thought he’d be able to get away with something like that.

At any rate, I read a very interesting article on ESPN that’s related to the Donaghy scandal. It basically outlines the rules that each major pro sports league has in place to prohibit gambling by officials.

Check out those rules for NFL refs… that’s some pretty hardcore stuff! Those guys aren’t even allowed to go to Vegas or Atlantic City at any time during the calendar year. Plus, during the NFL season they’re not allowed to go into a gambling casino, horse racing track, or dog track. And, every official is graded on every single play of every game. Wow!! I guess they really want to make sure that the games are legit, huh?

It seems to me that more and more advertisers (particularly smaller ones) are moving away from targeted ads and just hitting everyone with the same generic pitches. What I mean is that I continually get phone calls, snail mail, and e-mail ads for products that I have zero interest in or use for. Don’t these companies do market research anymore before embarking on an advertising campaign?

I can understand getting e-mails for everything under the sun because it’s free to send those out. But with snail mail and phone calls, companies are spending money to contact me even though I’m not interested at all. What an inefficient approach!

One of my husband’s friends started taking flying lessons a few months ago. Like most beginners, he’s starting out behind the controls of a small plane that doesn’t even have a pressurized cabin. That sounds pretty scary to me! I would worry about passing out from lack of oxygen or something like that.

But I guess pilots in those types of planes have several different instruments, such as a portable pulse oximeter, pressure gauge, and of course an altimeter, to help them stay at a safe altitude.

Personally, I don’t care what kind of equipment is in that plane — I refuse to fly unless it’s a commercial jumbo jet with a fully pressurized cabin!

I’m not particularly a big fan of Curt Schilling. I’ve read numerous accounts of him being something of an egomaniac who’s always concerned about his image, and that kind of thing totally turns me off. But I have to admit that I absolutely love the way he speaks his mind about controversial issues, including steroid use.

I just read an ESPN article in which Schilling calls out Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, and Rafael Palmeiro regarding steroids. He basically said that when guys like Bonds and McGwire refuse to address the accusations, they’re tacitly admitting that they’re guilty. According to Schilling, if someone put steroid allegations about him in print, he would sue them for libel. So when big-time organizations like ESPN and other networks continually bring up these players and their alleged steroid use, it shows that the news agencies must have some pretty solid sources to back up their stories.

Schilling even goes on to say that Canseco, who admitted to steroid use in a tell-all book he published after his MLB career was over, should be forced to forfeit his 1988 AL MVP award (which, by the way, he won by unanimous vote). The award should then be given to the runner-up, Mike Greenwell.

Schilling also wants Palmeiro’s 2005 stats voided since Palmeiro tested positive for steroids that year. If that happened, Palmeiro would drop below the 3,000-hit plateau, a marker that many consider to be a golden ticket to the Hall of Fame.

I have to say that I agree with Schilling on all points. If people were making untrue accusations about me, you’d better believe I’d be screaming about my innocence. I mean, look at the position that Bonds is in, with chasing the all-time home run record and all. Why would anyone want that shadow of doubt constantly hovering above them. You’d think he’d want to put the rumors to bed as soon as possible so that his achievement would be considered legit. The fact that he hasn’t done that makes me think he can’t claim to be innocent.

I doubt baseball will take any action and retroactively apply penalties to Palmeiro and Canseco, but I wish the commissioner would do that. Send a message now and clean up baseball’s image for the future.

If you’ve ever thought about buying into a franchise, then you probably know how overwhelming the whole process is. First you have to decide which industry you want to get in on, and then you have to apply for acceptance. If your application is approved, you then have to come up with the money to get started and go through a training program before you can begin operations. With all of these hoops to jump through, it could be a long, long time before you start seeing any profits.

I think an easier way to get started as a franchisee would be to sign up with a company like Multivend and place their vendstar machines in ideal locations. Vending machines can provide up to an 80% profit margin, and you won’t have to mortgage your house in order to buy a couple of machines.

If you’ve always wanted to make good money while being your own boss, then you should check out franchise opportunities that involve Vendstar 3000 vending machines.

I just read this AP article about how the city of New Haven, CT has decided to offer ID cards to illegal immigrants so they can take advantage of community services. I usually don’t get riled up about social and political issues, but this one really bothers me. How does this policy make sense to anyone?? New Haven officials are basically saying, “Yeah, we know you’re in this country illegally, but who cares about that. We just want to make sure you can open a bank account and get health care while you’re here.”

WTF???

What kind of message does this send to future immigrants who were contemplating using official channels to come here? I know if I were in their shoes, I’d say to hell with waiting several years and spending thousands of dollars to do this legally. Let’s just sneak in, take up residence in New Haven, get an ID card, and start living a normal life.

I guess I simply don’t understand why some people are falling all over themselves to make sure illegals get this kind of special treatment. Name another country that has this much of a lax attitude regarding illegal aliens. No one else takes this crap as lightly as we do in the U.S.

Sheesh.

My husband surprised me with a Dyson vacuum cleaner about a year ago. We have a Beagle who sheds like crazy all year round, so daily vacuuming is a must in our house. Our old vacuum cleaner was on the cheap side and didn’t do a good job of cleaning up all the dog hair. In addition, I had to purchase so many extra filters and bags that vacuuming became quite expensive.

Because we were spending so much money on vacuum supplies, my husband decided to check out Dyson vacuum cleaners instead. He’d heard several good things about Dyson vacuums: they’re the most powerful residential units on the market, they never lose suction power, they don’t require extra bags or filters, and they expel less dust, bacteria, and mold than other brands. My husband ended up buying one, but spent more than $600 on the unit.

As much as I love my Dyson vacuum cleaner, I wish I had heard about 1awsomevac.com before we made our purchase. 1awsomevac.com is a website that specializes in selling Dyson vacs at huge discounts. I looked through the site and saw that they have the model I purchased. I was shocked to see that 1awsomevac.com is selling that exact same product for over $150 less than what we paid! That’s a significant amount of money for us, so I’m definitely upset that we didn’t find this site a year ago.

Anyway, 1awsomevac.com carries a wide range of Dyson vacuum cleaners, so you can choose the model that best suits your purposes. All of the vacuums are priced lower than anywhere else and shipping is completely free, which is an added benefit.

You better believe that when it comes time to replace my Dyson vacuum cleaner, I’m heading straight to 1awsomevac.com first!

It’s been hard to get excited about the baseball season this year since the White Sox and Cubs have been doing so poorly. Yes, the Cubs are definitely ratcheting things up for the stretch run and are only 3 games back in the NL Central, but I would feel like far too much of a fair-weather fan if I suddenly started rooting for them now.

That’s why I’m counting down the days until the Bears have their first practice of training camp. They’ll get started on July 27 downstate in Bourbonnais (the Olivet Nazarene University campus) and it will be great to have FOOTBALL back on the radar at that time!!!

The Bears, of course, made it all the way to the Super Bowl last February despite the naysayers who thought they got lucky in too many of their 13 wins in 2006. Sure, Chicago came up short against the Colts, but that’s not really an indication of how good/bad they were during the season.

Anyway, most of the key components to the 2006 team will be returning this year, and the Bears have some good rookies coming in as well. I’m interested to see how Greg Olsen does at TE… he should really give the offense some more options, and that’s always needed with Rex Grossman at the helm!

Go Bears!!!