Short Lived Bliss...

...

That's about how long we were able to keep up our win streak for.

Cherrie and I met up with the Gator Club at Hooters for the Florida-Georgia game this Saturday, expecting to build on our dominance over the Bulldogs. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

Tim Tebow's bruised right shoulder proved to be very, very costly, as he was sacked 6 times. To put that in perspective, he had only been sacked 5 times all year prior to this last Saturday. Despite that, Tebow still threw for over 200 yards and for one touchdown and managed to crank out two rushing touchdowns as well.

The problem wasn't really our offense. We were still able to put up close to 400 yards of offense and 30 points. No, the problem was our defense, which actually seems to be playing worse as the year goes on. It really is. We've been giving up more yardage and more points to statistically less prolific offenses as the year has progressed! It really didn't help that Georgia never had to change their game plan to beat us - they just kept handing the ball off to previously unknown redshirt freshman Knowshon Moreno, who gashed us for 188 yards! Tackle, guys, tackle.

The only bright spot for my football weekend was Reggie Nelson, first round draft pick out of Florida last year, who Cherrie got a photo with before the NFL combine. Reggie had a stellar outing, finishing the day with 8 tackles, 1 pass defensed, and a victory sealing fourth-quarter interception. Only problem was, that was a victory over my Tampa Bay Bucs, who only needed a field goal to win! Oh well, you win some, you lose some...

Tebow For Heisman, Beyotches

In the absence of an actual Grant's Pad Poll, get over to Vote Heisman presented by Nissan and vote Tim Tebow for Heisman! This poll actually awards one real vote in the official Heisman selection to the winner, so yes, your vote matters! Now get over there and do it! Do it every day!

Sure Feels Good to Win Again!

It still sounds weird to say it, but it was more than a whole month between victories for the Florida Gators. Prior to the shootout against Kentucky on October 20th, our last win came against Ole' Miss on September 17th!

I expected the game to be an offensive showcase, and it didn't disappoint. The total offense put up by both teams was close to 1000 yards by the end of the game, with Kentucky QB Andre Woodson tossing for over 400 yards, five TDs, and no interceptions. Florida's Superman Tim Tebow would not be outdone, however, throwing for over 250 yards and four TDs with a 69% completion rate and adding 79 rushing yards and one rushing TD to lead the Gators to a 45-37 victory over the up and coming Wildcats, who have not beaten the Gators since the 1980s!

What did disappoint was the Gator's secondary, who was torched for multiple long passes and got no respect from Kentucky's coaches, who went for it on fourth-down-and-nine not once, but twice in the first quarter! And converted them! But hey, I don't blame them. If I could throw on our corners the way they were, I don't think I'd ever punt either. Fortunately, our defensive line did come to play, as the Gators finished the day with six sacks on Woodson, who was sacked exactly zero times last week against the vaunted LSU defense!

In true 2007 fashion, the victory now throws the SEC race all out of whack again, with Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Kentucky all tied for first place in the East, while Alabama and a very lucky LSU are tied for first place in the West. The rest of the country also had a crazy week, with upstart USF giving up its first loss of the season to Rutgers and dropping out of the top 10 again and 12th ranked California losing to the only team that has given the ailing Notre Dame a win this season, UCLA. Add to that the most ridiculous statistic I have ever read: Graham Harrell of Texas Tech threw for a season low of 397 yards (nearly 80 yards less than the previous season low) and lost 41-10 against Missouri! Most quarterbacks can only dream of throwing 400 yards, but this was his worst performance of the year! The NFL can only dream of such excitement in the season!

Speaking of the NFL, former UF running back Earnest Graham had a huge day for the Bucs on Sunday. Despite losing the game, Graham tied a franchise record with 13 receptions for 99 yards and also churned out 91 yards on 16 carries! Not bad considering he is Tampa Bay's fourth string running back and considering that Jeff Garcia has two solid receivers in Joey Galloway out wide and Ike Hilliard in the slot!

Cherrie is Officially a Gator!

Cherrie got her official Letter of Acceptance from the University of Florida this past Saturday! I should have written about this in my last post, but it got lost in the midst of the new car excitement. Also, we actually got electronic notification about her acceptance about a week ago and as such probably wore out the excitement of the news. The reason we haven't posted it yet is because we wanted to have the actual paper letter in hand as hard evidence! So anyway, today is the belated celebration post for Cherrie's Official Gatordom!

New Ride

I don't know how many of you know this, but apparently you can haggle for a Scion, despite Scion's alleged "Pure Pricing" no-haggle scheme.

So anyway, this is what happens when you go into a Scion dealership with no intention of buying that day but the dealer asks you to put out an offer and you offer a price of $2500 less than the original offer thinking that they will give up but they take it anyway plus they give you better than expected financing... so, what can a guy who just put the Scion tC on his wish list do? So Cherrie picked a color and bam, just like that, my old white '94 Corolla that has served me for over six years and 70,000 miles is now back on the driveway after just two weeks of living the high life in the garage...

Check out pics at the photo album, which will be updated as I take more photos!

This is Why I'm Hot

Don't have anything particularly interesting to say today, but I couldn't resist when I saw this...


As such, I figured I'd just write about random stuff today, and be done with my blogging obligation for the next few days!

Many of you might have been contacted by one Optimus Prime right around the middle of this week, who borrowed my phone in order to round up some human allies in his fight against the evil Megatron. In the event that you wanted to recruit more potential Autobot Allies in the effort against our traitorous Decepticon turncoat friends, head to http://optimus.transformersmovie.com/ to have the super cool semi truck robot give the potential recruit a call!

For those of you who take a note of the little lists I have in the Grant's Pad sidebar, you might have noticed that I've updated my Wish List again, primarily to accomodate for the fact that I have acquired another item on the list - the Phantom Hourglass - as I blogged in the last post. You might also have noticed that I've added a few items - a 50 inch Samsung Plasma TV and a Scion tC! Now that I'm moved in, the wall looks pretty bare with my 32" CRT. The 50" plasma that I've identified has been on sale at Amazon and looks really, really seductive to me right now.

Some of you may know that Cherrie and I have shared one car - my '94 Toyota Corolla which I have driven since 2000, ever since we've been together. It hasn't been too bad - we usually travel together anyway, but sometimes it is rather inconvenient when one of us doesn't have a car readily available. So, we've been looking to get a new car for almost a year now, and the inner immature child in me has his eyes on the Scion tC. For the price, it's hard to find a car with similar features. I had actually been considering the manual transmission, and even did a "crash course" on driving stick with Alex, but Pablo, the same guy who told me that "Real Men Drive Stick" and taught me to drive stick way back in 2000 convinced me that I would get tired of it after the novelty wears off. So, we're going to go test drive an automatic this weekend, see how we like it!

Back-to-Back Losses Suck

The formerly number 9 Gators fell in the last 90 seconds of the game to Number 1 LSU this past Saturday. It was a loss that I somewhat expected, unlike our loss to Auburn last week. However, Florida played a much better game against LSU than against Auburn - in fact, we led LSU by 10 points for most of the game, until a series of miscues caused the momentum to turn LSU's way. Les Miles had to go for it on fourth down five times in order to win, but he had the guys to make the call and he converted all five, with the last conversion resulting in the go-ahead touchdown...

We haven't had back-to-back losses since 2004, when the Gators lost to Mississippi State, resulting in the firing of Ron Zook (who, by the way, led Illinois to win over number 5 ranked Wisconsin this past Saturday, vaulting the Illini into the top 25 for the first time since 2001) and the loss to Georgia in the aftermath of the firing. Now, we have to wait two weeks before we have a chance to end our losing streak. We can still feasibly be in contention for the SEC title, but we have to depend on a loss by Tennessee. Hopefully, the ol' ball coach Steve Spurrier can take it to his old punching bag!

I went to class again this past weekend. Going to class just one weekend a month is pretty cool, but man, that one weekend is brutal. I get so tired on the ride back home (I haven't driven to class yet because that would leave Cherrie car-less at home), and just crash when I get back. I forced myself to get up to watch the heartbreaking loss to LSU, then went to bed at around 1 AM to try to get some sleep before having to wake up at 6 in the morning for class on Sunday, but there were some crickets chirping their tails off outside the window, driving me crazy until well after 2. It's a darn good thing we get free coffee and snacks during class!

Last post, I mentioned that I would try to get my first Launch Day game. Today, I am proud to announce that I was successful in securing the Legend of Zelda: the Phantom Hourglass at Toys 'R Us on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007, the official US Launch Day of the game! I haven't played it much yet, however - I want to go ahead and finish Pokemon Pearl Version before I dive into Zelda, partly so I can focus entirely on one game and also so I can artificially extend the playtime of the game! It looks darn cool though, and if you happen to get it, let me know so we can play multiplayer!

Finally Moved In

So, if you've been following closely, you might know that I've been a homeowner since about the middle of August. Since then, we've mowed the lawn, painted the walls, installed ceiling fans, installed blinds, stained furniture, moved the vast majority of the apartment to the new house, sealed the tile, assembled office furniture, mopped the floor... it was only a matter of time before the day that we would actually move in and begin to actually live in the house came.

That day was Friday, September 28. That day, we moved the rest of our things from the apartment (primarily the airbed that we've been sleeping on since we moved our stuff from the apartment on September 15), had internet and cable installed, and stayed in our new master bedroom for the first time! Head to the photo album to see some of the pictures we took on our last day at the apartment that we've lived in for almost two and a half years.

Having a new house is fun and all, but we have been neurotically protective of it, making sure not to scuff the counters, scratch off paint on the walls, or leave water spots in the shower! To help protect the house, we went out and bought a bunch of organizers and rugs to keep from making messes and scratching up or dirtying up floors. To avoid using the big oven, we went out and bought a very nice toaster oven as well. And I had thought the heavy spending part was over!

On to football news, in what the media has dubbed "Insanity Saturday", the number 4 ranked Florida Gators were upset 20-17 by unranked Auburn on a last second field goal twice - Coach Meyer called a time out at the last second before the kicker kicked the first one to try to ice him - ending our 11 game win streak and Urban's undefeated record in Gainesville. Interestingly, despite we only dropped to 9th place in the AP poll, since "Insanity Saturday" also featured losses by number 3 Oklahoma to unranked Colorado, a loss by number 5 West Virginia to the new hot thing South Florida, number 7 Texas fell to unranked Northwestern, and all sorts of other craziness. As such, a win at Number 1 LSU this weekend would put us right back in the race! It's a big if, I know...

Last, but not least, today is the official launch day of the Legend of Zelda: the Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS, and we are heading over to Toys 'R Us right after work to get it! It will be my first official launch day purchase (assuming it's not sold out by the time I get there - crosses fingers!) Why Toys 'R Us? Why not Circuit City or Best Buy or any of the usual joints? Because at Toys 'R Us, you get the official player's guide for free ($20 value) when you buy it with the game! Ain't nothin' wrong with that!