Intro

Hey. It's been a long-time coming, but this it. The initial posting for the Ralph's Place blog. What is Ralph's place? Good quesiton. Well, it's my basement. I'm looking at it right now, because I'm sitting in it listening to the Penn State/Florida State Orange Bowl game. Yes, that's right, listening, because I haven't yet hooked up the cable down here.

Ralph's Place is my sports bar, version one. I like to tell people it's very rustic. Rustic is a good thing if you think of a hunting camp or something. It's pretty barren, but the bar is well stocked. I hope to have some pictures posted sometime soon. But for now things basically look like this: A nice paneled bar that was here when we moved in about seven years ago, but has never been cleaned off and used. There's a sense of barreness about that too, however, as someone has removed the top.

The floor is half pulled up tile and cement with left over glue on it. I'm sitting in an old rocker that I assembled when I got married about 10 years ago and has been demoted out of living room dinner. There is also an old pink chair - retired from my in laws, an office chair I retrieved along with my dad and brother from a dumpster when I was like 12, a foosball table, - middle of the road, not too cheap not too extavigent, but good for some games, an old coffee table with ABPA baseball currently set up on it, four mismatched bar stools, a cheapo stereo from Wal-Mart on an old TV stand- which is currently playing the Penn State game. Nice paneling on one side with a dogs playing golf picture and crappy paneling on the other with an Irish writers poster and some assorted Bills memorabilia. There is also some autographed pictures and baseballs and beanie babies and a Bills' flag and other stuff radomly scattered around. It's kind of cold, becuase I've accidently set the Polaris on low - and well, it's a basement.

But, we opened it up finally on New Year's Eve and things went well. We had one person do 25 shots and several others do more than 10. And we're all over 35 years old I think. It was a good mix of family, friends and neighbors.

My goal is to track things from this bar. To draw you into my basement for discussions on sports, politics and life in general. I will try and post more later tonight. But his is just an intro and I need to examine my profile and such and figure some more things out about this blog.

Cheers.

Ralphie