The First Bi-Annual Bristol Nascar Jellybean Challenge

While shopping for snacks to take to the Food City 500, my friend Chris and I decided to get some assorted Jelly Belly jellybeans.  I don’t eat many jellybeans and I generally don’t like them, but Jelly Bellys are good.  The different flavors actually taste like they’re supposed to, instead of all tasting the same like cheapo brands of jellybeans do.

Food City sells their Jelly Bellys by the pound (yes, we appropriately bought our snacks for the Food City 500 at Food City).  Apparently we went overboard in judging how many jellybeans to put in the bag, as it wound up costing $10.

I thought of an idea to use the jellybeans in a sort of Fantasy Nascar contest.  Chris and I would each pick two jellybeans out of the bag, and we’d pick cars that were the same color as the jellybeans.  Whoever picked the highest finishing car would win the contest.  The winner would have a choice of prizes – they would either get all of the remaining jellybeans, or they could force the loser to eat all of the remaining jellybeans before we got back to Kingsport.

I picked the first jellybean, and it was solid red.  I chose Tony Stewart as my driver, as his Office Depot car is mostly red.  Chris selected next and got a yellow bean.  He chose Clint Bowyer, not realizing that Bowyer’s paint scheme was only about 30% yellow.  The second bean I picked was yellow, and I picked Jeff Burton, who is driving the Caterpillar car this season.  Chris got a red bean with his second pick, and he made the surprising pick of Juan Montoya!

Just after the green flag flew is when the controversy began.  Chris noticed that the primary color of Bowyer’s car wasn’t yellow, and he tried to change his pick to Mark Martin.  I contended that you can’t change your pick after the race starts, while Chris said that wasn’t specified beforehand.

You can probably guess what happened.  Burton finished one spot ahead of Montoya, so I think I won.  But Martin finished ahead of both of them, and Chris says he won because he changed his pick to Martin.

Although the First Bi-Annual Bristol Nascar Jellybean Challenge ended in controversy, there were no hard feelings.  I intended to give the remaining jellybeans to Chris’ daughters, but I forgot and took them home.  So, I ate some of them, but I’m going to take the rest of them and give them to Chris.

What Have I Been Up To?

As usual, not much has changed in my life since my last post.  However, I thought I’d post a quick update on what I’ve been up to lately.

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that I have an overwhelming urge to buy some kind of new tech gadget.   That happens from time to time.  I’ve looked at the IPod Touch, new monitors, the Amazon Kindle, Blackberries, and Touch Screen PCs, to name a few.  So far, I’ve come to the conclusion that these items are very cool, but I don’t need them.  For the sake of my wallet, I hope my willpower holds out.

When it comes to gaming, I’ve recently completed both Fallout 3 and Fable 2 on the XBOX 360.  I’ve also been playing WWE vs. Smackdown 2009, and I finally got around to starting Mass Effect (I didn’t have a 360 when it came out).  I was disappointed that MLB 09: The Show, which is getting excellent reviews, is a PS3 exclusive.  Meanwhile, Major League Baseball 2K9, which is available for the XBOX 360, is getting horrible reviews.

I haven’t seen many movies lately, but I did watch Lady in the Water for the first time, and liked it.  I’ve also been spending a lot of time the past few days starting to catch up on TV shows I’ve gotten behind on.  As in, several seasons behind.

If you live in Kingsport and like japanese food, I’d recommend you try Tomoko, which recently opened in the old Wendy’s building in front of K-Mart.  I’ve also become a fan of Chili’s recently (even though they fired their best waitress).  Their Buffalo Chicken Fajitas are outstanding.  Of course, China Wok remians my favorite Chinese buffet, and I eat at Chik-Fil-A often as well.

I’ll try to post some detailed reviews soon of the games, movies, and restaurants I mentioned in this post.  Hopefully, my series where I rank the episodes of each season of the Andy Griffith Show will make its much-anticipated (?) return as well.