Jimmy Mancusi Dot Com

I have wanted to start up my own website for quite some time now, but life has always managed to get in the way. So the fact that this site is actually happening surprises me a bit.

To start things off I really have to thank the people that gave me the push that I needed to get this done. Specifically Barry and Ronnie. I have been working for them at RustyBrick for about a year and a half now, and they have both been great.

The last year of my life has been a whirlwind. I am sure I will get into more detail about it but a brief summary:

• I got a new job
• relocated
• purchased a house
• my wife Amanda and I had our first child, Emily

Well now almost 1 year later, I finally took Barry up on his offer to help with the site, and here it is.

So thank you guys for helping me get this up and running!

June is a busy month for birthdays in my family, so here are a few:

Happy Birthday Mom! (today)
Happy Birthday Uncle Tony (today)
Happy Birthday Cori (yesterday)
Happy Birthday to Amanda's Grandfather Fred (yesterday)

Hope you all had a great day, and hopefully I remembered to call you :)

Since father's day has just past, and my daughter Emily's 1st birthday is quickly approaching (June 26th), I thought I would summarize some of my fatherhood experiences from the first year.

There have been way to many amazing things that have happened this year to write about here, but I will try to hit on a few of the key points.

1.

That picture must seem like an eternity ego for Willie Randolph. If you haven't heard by now, the Mets fired Willie Randolph late Monday night after the Mets beat the Angels 9 to 6 in the first game of a west coast road trip.

Personally I think the Mets handled this entire thing horribly. It is a sad reality in sports that when a team isn't performing up to expectations the coach or manager takes the brunt of the blame. This is the reality because in most cases players make much more than coaches and there are obviously more of them. So in order to make some kind of change to hopefully spark your team, the coach is really the only easily changed position. I completely understand why the Mets fired Willie, even if I don't agree with it, but the way they did it is just despicable.

The Yankees are on fire right now. They have reeled off 7 in a row, and are now only 3 games out of the wild card. Ever since Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada rejoined the line up, the entire offense has picked things up and played much better, but another reason that can't be over looked has been solid starting pitching. The Yanks went on a stretch of 24 unanswered runs, and that doesn't happen unless your team is firing on all cylinders.

Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term became notable after the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.[2] [3]

My sister has recently picked up the hobby of knitting, which she is actually pretty good at, at least I think so. She has been hell bent on making my daughter Emily a sweater for a while now. She is currently on her 2nd version of the sweater, and based on the text message I got from her last night, I think version 3 is right around the corner.

Her problem doesn't lie in technique or anything like that, it seems to be just plain old bad luck. The first version of the sweater currently resides at my house, but has never been worn by my daughter. By the time the sweater was complete Emily was way too big for it, in fact she might have always been to big for it. So we joking said the sweater was for her stuffed monkey, who is affectionately nick named Nanners. Nanners has also yet to wear the sweater, but there is a much better chance that it will fit him.

OK, so perhaps version 1 wasn't bad luck and was a bit of misjudgment, but i swear version 2 is purely bad luck. We have seen the 2nd version of the sweater which my sister has been feverishly working on to complete by Emily's first birthday (June 26th), and it was looking great, and she made it numerous sizes to large purposely. Then having at least 75% of the sweater complete she realized she may not have enough yarn to complete it. Not being able to find the yarn in the store she ordered more online. Of course when she placed the order she ordered the exact same thing, but thats not what arrived. The label is the same but the yarn is a visibly different color. My sister was optimistic that she might be able to finish the sweater with the remaining yarn, or if she needed the other yarn that things would turn out fine and the sweater would be saved. Around 7 last night I got a text message saying "We're gonna need a bigger monkey" so I am guessing the sweater didn't come out the way she wanted it to.

No big deal for her, plenty of time to get a version 3 created by the time winter rolls around, but it's not so simple for me. Where am I going to find all these stuffed monkeys of various sizes!?

Both Amanda and I have been to a couple of Yankees games this year, but we hadn't been to one together until today. Before today's game, when I was in attendance the Yanks were 0-2, and when Amanda has been there they are 2-0, and sadly the record did not improve today. I am now 0-3 this year and really can't remember the last time I was at the stadium and they won. I am pretty sure they won at least 1 game I went to last year, but it's starting to get depressing, and my mother in law is threatening not to invite me to any more games.

Anyway, on to a recap of the game.

Dan Giese made his first start in the major after a long grind in the minor leagues. Giese is 31 years old and before his time this year with the Yankees only pitched in a 8 games with the San Fransico Giants in 2007. I wanted to find out more information about him so I headed over to baseball-reference.com, a fantastic site for baseball stats, and they don't even have an entry for him yet. The reason he finally got an opportunity to make a start on the big league stage is because of the recent injury to Chien-Ming Wang, and I am happy to say he took full advantage of it. Giese may have ended up with the lose, but it certainly wasn't his fault. Giese went 6 and 2/3 scoreless innings before running into trouble in the 7th. Giese had 2 outs when he committed a throwing error which extended the inning and eventually lead to a 2 run double which ended his day. He ended up being charged for 3 runs, none of them earned. I am pretty sure that I can speak for all Yankees fans when I say, sign me up for that any day of the week. Any time you can get 6 or more innings of quality pitching from your starter you are in great position to win, and that's all you can really ask for. I am very happy for Dan Giese, his work ethic and perseverance paid off and he got his chance on the big stage, and I was among the fans that gave him a standing ovation as he left the field.

This guy is a true American treasure. I happen to love his victory yell, and he really should have a Gatorade endorsement. "Not just for football, Gatorade is for the Turtle-man!"

I found this video via the Elliot in the morning radio show that I still listen to even though I have moved away from the DC area.

Enjoy!

*Note: This picture is my wife and new born daughter, my wife may look young but she is 25 in this picture.

I saw this article, Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High on Time.com this morning, and so many things jump out at me as absolutely crazy. This article is one of the reasons that fathers of daughters everywhere lose sleep.

Lets start at the top of the article and work our way down.

Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers.

I don't even know where to start with that quote. The media, and in this case some of these parents, always look for something to blame other than the parents of the children. Usually its video games, which I will get into in depth at some point, but I don't think there are any pregnant teens in GTA IV, so they are off the hook here. So they want to blame Knocked Up and Juno. Instead of looking in the mirror and saying did I teach my daughter about sex? Did I teach her about how much responsibility and work a child is? Have I provided a good example of how my child should act? They would rather say movies glamorous unwed mothers which is why a group of teens have decided to all have babies.

I saw an image over at http://www.photobasement.com and while the image it self is funny, the second comment is what put me over the edge.

Have a look for yourself....

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