Guess what guess what guess what guess what??

It's now officially Christmas season. Want to know why? They've posted the information for Phoenix on the TubaChristmas website! I have literally been waiting all year for this. As many of you know, I finally got a tuba for Christmas last year, after having to rent one to play in Tucson's TC appearance last December. I've been waiting anxiously, checking the TC site every so often like a kid waiting to find out if he got in the same class as his friend in elementary school. And, ta-da! The Phoenix TubaChristmas is Saturday the 13th, at 6:00 pm at Town Lake.

"I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it! I know, I know, I know..." eh...

Anyway, it's been a pretty good friggin' week. When last you guys saw me, it was six nights ago, and I was bemoaning what I thought was the start to a crappy weekend.

Bzatt!

I mentioned in the post before last that opening day at Apache was the day after Thanksgiving. The season has 20 weeks, each week including Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, with the exception of opening weekend, which has a Friday instead of a Wednesday (to capitalize on the 4-day weekend). So, last season (last week of Nov. thru last week of March) we had 48 wins total and finished 8th in the standings out of 11 kennels. Not such a great showing, but then again, we were divided in force at the beginning of last season with me still in Tucson.

Anyhow, we'd set out to serve notice at Apache this year. In fact, our goal is to be top kennel in Wheeling, Phoenix, and Apache when Apache closes in the first week of April. (The seasons in Wheeling and Phoenix start in January 1. And, of course, we run Wichita, but it'd just be nice to have a good year there; top kennel isn't realistic there since there's a couple of kennels that run their absolute best dogs whereas Wichita is our 3rd string.) I had hoped for, say, three wins a day, for a total of 9. Well, we had 6 Friday alone. I figured, well, great, but I don't think we can keep up the pace all weekend. No, we couldn't; we just had 5 wins each on Saturday and Sunday. Better yet, there was only 10 races Sunday, so by percentage (there's usually 15), that would have been like winning 7 on a regular day. Anyway, that gave us 16 for the weekend. If you're counting on your abacus at home, that sets us on a pace to beat last season's win total -- before New Year's.

Damn!

And the best part is, the kennel isn't even at full strength yet. We qualified a few more from Phoenix on Sunday, and we're schooling 8 more Sunday to go with the 50 already active out there. (We don't actually kennel at the track out there; we're running it out of our Phoenix kennel.) As far as money goes, Apache only pays about 1/3 of what Phoenix pays (Wichita pays ½, while Wheeling pays about six times as much... the caliber of dogs we run at each track is directly related to the monies available), but we still had a really good weelk. And in the standings, the next closest kennel only had 5 wins, so we're eating more than our share of cake.

Today (Wednesday) eas the first day of the 2nd week, and though our win pace fell off slightly (3), we had enough dogs hit the paysheet (they pay for win, 2nd, and 3rd at Apache, unlike almost every other track in the country where they pay for 4th as well) so that our point total didn't dip at all.

Anyways, so as you might have noticed, I'm pretty excited. I'm going to bed, though. Hope everyone else had as good a weekend as I had. It sure didn't look like it was going to be much from the front end, but as Chris Berman says, "That's why they play the games."