One Out of Three Ain't Bad

I used to be pretty good at coming up with catchy titles for my posts, but lately I have been disappointed with my efforts.  A couple weeks ago, I had intended to title this post "Always a Bridesmaid," but then the unthinkable happened.  Just like the Cardinals and the Rays, I completed a miraculous comeback.

Been Caught Stealing, my National League only team, was in eighth place of ten for most of May.  In late June I was a season high 33 points out of first place.  With the help of Dan Uggla's 33 game hitting streak, I made a stead climb up the standings.  By late July I was in fifth place.  On September 5, I moved into medal contention, third place, 12 points out of first.   On the 19th, I was tied for second place and only one point out of first.  The next day, I moved into first place and stayed there for the rest of the season.  In September I raised my point total from 61 to 79, gaining points in nearly every category.  I did all of this with very little contribution from my first round draft choice Hanley Ramirez, who missed 70 games and played bad even when healthy.  That gives me some hope for my fantasy football teams.

Suicide Squeeze spent much of the season in third place, but had been in second for the past week.  On the last day of the season I lost 3.5 points and finished in third place.  The pitching dominance of Roy Halladay and Clayton Kershaw could not make up for my under performing outfield Carl Crawford, Jason Werth, and Andrew McCutchen.

Tinker2Evers2Chance, my head to head team, lost 6-3 in the championship game to the number one seed.

All three of my teams finished in the top three of their league.  It is amazing how good I am at this when I don't have to play against Joshua.

Is the NBA Still Locked Out?

Editor's note: I realize that you don't want to read another fantasy football post, but my other option today was a detailed description of my bodily functions from when I tried to die on Friday.  Trust me, you are better off getting fantasy football.

Once upon a time, I wrote about how the success of three of my fantasy football teams would rely heavily on the legs on Jamaal Charles.  Just twelve carries into the season, he tore his ACL, and ended his season.  Arian Foster, who plays for one of my other teams, had ten carries in the only game he has played so far this season.  His hamstring might be healthy enough to play some next week.  Michael Vick left his last two games with injuries.  My first round draft pick in all five leagues have been injured this season.

That last sentence is only marginally true.  I am in two leagues that keep players on your team from the previous season.  Foster and Adrian Peterson  were my two keepers in one of those leagues.  They were the ranked the top two players in fantasy football before the season started.  Peterson was actually my first choice to keep, though Foster's stats were much better than Peterson's last year.

Without those key players my teams have a combined record of 7-8.  The Neptune Pirates, 3-0 even without Foster, are my only hope for championship this year.  I am so ready for basketball season.

Take Me Out to the Movies

I learned a valuable lesson Tuesday night.  If you have free passes to a movie, get there early.  My friendly neighborhood librarian hooked me up with a free ticket to see Moneyball.  We made the mistake of both standing in the popcorn line.  When we got into the theater, there were not many seats left and none together.  Luckily we only had to sit one row apart and could pass the popcorn bucket from one row to the next.

Before the movie we were shown the eight minute trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I had heard of the book but knew nothing about it.  It surprised me that the movie was about solving a forty year old murder.  The word dragon should never appear in a title unless there is a dragon in the story.  Despite the misleading title, the movie looks like it could be good.

I don't watch movies in the theater very often, and even less often, in sold out theaters.  The audience laughed out loud more than I thought was appropriate.  That could have been because I have seen the commercials so many times, that I have memorized most of the lines that drew laughter.

I liked the movie.  It was so good that it even made Jonah Hill likable.  If I ever again become the type of person who reads books, I may read Moneyball.  Michael Lewis's other book turned movie, The Blind Side, was much better as a book than a movie.

#HousePride

JKR and the Internet Wizards are creating a new Harry Potter website called Pottermore.  I follow Pottermore on twitter to keep up with news about the site.  For four days last week, Pottermore requested that people hashtag their house pride.  Some people just stated in which house they belonged, and others quoted lines from the books about their house.  This was a great opportunity for tweeters to get creative and show off their punability.  Unfortunately there were so many lame tweets, that I gave up searching for the great ones, but I did find a few good ones.  One person said their house was Slytherincredible.  Another claimed their house was Ravenclawesome.  Being a Hufflepuff may make me a little biased, but the best tweets I saw were for #HufflepuffPride.  "We will badger you until we are in the lead."  "If Harry was in Hufflepuff, he would have found all the horcruxes in the first chapter."  And by far my favorite, "Every day I'm HUFFLIN."  Though you might not find it as funny if you don't know Party Rock Anthem.

Epic Fails

I was a little more than an hour away from Little Rock when the first fail of the weekend occurred. I changed lanes to pass a semi when the all too familiar sound of a flat tire distracted me from Gerard Doyle. I was hoping that the flat belonged to the trailer truck, but when the decibel level went up to eleven, I knew I had a problem. I was trapped in the left lane, a third of the way around the semi, and a car was closing in on me. I briefly considered passing before getting off the road, but i doubt that Betty or I would have lived through that. I turned on my blinker and hit the brakes hoping that the driver behind me had noticed my tire disintegrating. I made my way to the road's shoulder in safety.

The next fail was mine. I have only been writing here for eight months, but that should have been long enough for me to learn to photograph all of the interesting moments of my life. As a result of my incompetence as a journalist, there are no photos of what was left of my tire. Any thoughts of blogging that I may have had were driven from my mind by the fear of changing a tire on the edge of I40 with nothing between me and 70 mph traffic except the wake-up strip. After I changed the tire, my phone found a tire store just a few miles away at the next exit.

Side note: I think my phone needs a name. My first instinct is Giles or Wes, but my phone is not British. I can't think of any other name that represents the entirety of human knowledge. Oh well, that's a topic for another day.

My next epic fail was that I could not keep the invalid out of the kitchen. As usual, I got distracted by the Internet, but this time I had a good excuse. ESPN3 was showing Murray State's 39-0 win at MVSU. I was partially able to make up for my mistake by washing the dishes after every meal.

The most epic fail goes to the Dallas Cowboys for blowing a 14 point fourth quarter lead. It was so epic that the bards will write tales of the hubris that lead to their humiliating defeat and will sing them for all the world to hear. The ballads about this lose will spread to the ends of the earth, so that everyone will know that Tony Romo can't finish off an opponent. To put that another way, I will incessantly mock the dozens of Cowboy fans with whom I work and will continue to make jest until the Cowboys can win a meaningful game, which means forever.

My last fail of the weekend was on Monday when I drove past the Dairy Queens without stopping. I stopped for gas in Holland and had only been back in the car for an hour when I got to West Memphis. I didn't want to stop again so soon. By the time I got to Forrest City, I could smell home and was unwilling to make a ten minute stop, even for DQ.

For the greater part of the weekend there was at least one snuggler in my lap. That was worth going through any number of failures.

Charles in Charge

The fantasy football draft season ends tonight. As always, it was a stressful time. Even though I had some scheduling conflicts, I was able to attend all five of my drafts. That is one of the keys to success since auto-draft is the death to a team. I did not do much pre-draft research this year, so I likely missed some late round sleepers.

When a draft ends, I nearly always believe that my team is the best even without looking at anyone else's squad. New this year, Yahoo gives an award for best draft based on projected stats. I only won it in one of my four Yahoo leagues, so there must be a flaw in their math.  I try to diversify my teams, so that they are not all dependent on the same players. I ended up getting Jamaal Charles in three leagues. If he gets hurt, 60% of my teams will be out of contention.

Now that all the excitement of the draft is over, it is time for the long boring NFL season. My fantasy teams will keep me interested in the season for about four weeks. After that, I will be ready to move on to basketball.

ps. I bet you would have preferred a post about Scott Baio.

Between the Sheets

When my family gets together, the boys challenge each other to feats of skill that test our bravery and intelligence.  It involves calculating odds and predicting one another's actions.  Only the most daring, and at times luckiest of us, may claim victory.  We all take turns winning and losing, except for Joshua who only wins.  We keep score with money.  People call this contest poker.  We play with a $.50 bet limit, so it takes a while to win or lose any money.

Some times we will take a break from poker to do some gambling.  Gambling is betting on something that is completely out of your control.  As opposed to poker which is a skill game.  This weekend we played a game called between the sheets or tweener.  Two cards are dealt face up.

The player then chooses to bet if the next card will be between those two cards.  If he likes his odds, he will bet as much as he wants, up to the amount in the pot.

When the third card is between the two cards, the bettor takes the amount that he bet out of the pot.

When the card is outside of the other two, the bettor pays what he bet.

If the card is the same as the one of the others, he has to pay double his bet.

If the bettor does not like the spread, he can decline to bet and play moves on to the next bettor.  Being able to count cards does help in this game.  But it is mostly just luck of the draw.  Hopefully some day, I will remember that I have bad luck.  On six bets in a row Saturday, I had to double my bet.  Thankfully they were mostly small bets, but one of them was $6 after the double.  For the weekend I finished down $7.47, most of that was while playing tweener.

I should have learned my lesson the first time that I ever played it.  On my first Sandlin fishing trip, I lost $12 for the week, but $20 of that was on two bets of tweener.  I doubled a $5 bet, then tried to win that $10 back on the next bet.  This is why I rarely bet on anything that is out of my control.

Birthdaypalooza

I have been suffering from writer's block all week.  It may be because I am too intimidated to follow up my brilliant posts from last week.  I set the bar so high that it will be impossible to remain at that level of comedic genius.  My block may have come from my knowing that I should be cleaning my house instead of trying to write.  I subconsciencely  have sabotaged my writing because of my house cleaning procrastination.  Now that I am ready for my weekend guest, I hope that I am able to turn some thoughts into words.

A few years ago I heard a sports talk radio host refer to his age by an athlete's name instead of by the number of years.  I think he was turning Magic (32) or Larry (33).  I thought that this was a great idea and have used this same method at times.  Unfortunately Angel Guzman spent all of my 37th year on the disabled list.  I was looking forward to turn 38 until Big Z went crazy two weeks before my birthday.  Though Zambrano is no longer playing for the Cubs, he still plays for my playstation Cubs.  On the day I turned 38, it was his turn to pitch.  He gave up a couple of runs, but drove in four.  Even though he is lost to Chicago, he still retains his sanity on the ps3.

I finished rewatching Angel on Monday.  It was, as always, even better than I remembered.  Since the news is on vacation this week, I have not had any tv to watch, so I started watching some shows on netflix.

I have mixed feelings about Family Guy.  I love Stewie and Brian but hate Peter.  I will likely watch some more of this because in every episode so far there has been at least one laugh out loud moment.  

So far I am very disappointed by The League.  I should love a show about fantasy football, but through two episodes I do not like any of the characters.  I will watch a couple more before making a decision.  This show may be like Entourage, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, funny shows but unlikable characters.  If that is the case, I will not watch much longer.

Even though I am not an online gamer, I really like The Guild.  Nerddom and complete lack of social skills are  my areas of expertise, so I relate well to this show.  Mostly I watch it because of three time Whedonite Felicia Day.

The college football season started last night with a Bluegrass double header.  Murray State lost 21-9 at Louisville.  The Racers really struggled at times and only kept the game that close because of Cardinal mistakes.  I think we will be ok against OVC competition.  In Nashville, for some unknown reason, Kentucky beat Western Kentucky 14-3.  Being a fan of both schools, I never could figure out which team I was pulling for in the game.

I thought that I would have more to write today since I am over half way through birthday week.  But Beebe is calling my name, so I will sign off and head to the northeast.