another misAdventure

"We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan."

Friday, December 09, 2005

I am Your Pigskin Pick!

Enough about snow, let's talk Fantasy Football!

As you will see, I ROCK! ...

I'm in two leagues: one I've been in for several years now, with my former boss Gary (now my favorite Saturn salesmanager Gary). That league has a live draft before the beginnning of the season and updates in e-mail. I won the whole thing last year and finished second the previous year. In that league the regular season is now over and ... I won my division and the overall best record at 9-4. I managed to sweep every game within my division, finishing 8-0 there. Against the other division, not so good: I went 1-4 in the five games against that division, and pretty much all those teams finshed 8-5 (four tied at that record, and with three teams from each division going to the playoffs they had to go to the division record tie-breaker).

So, that team has a bye this week as I wait to start the playoffs.

The other league I got into through D&D buddy Dick Gilbert. I'ts based off Yahoo, so everything is done through their website. The teams are drafted automatically based off a preference list you can tweak. I did very little tweaking, though, as I ran out of time to do much. So, I consider the makeup of that team to me mostly luck. With one game left in the regular season ... I win the regular season crown with an 11-1-1 record, clinching over the second place team that is now 9-4. It sure helps that the luck of the draw gave me Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, and the Colt defense. And with Edgerrin James on my other team, I've been enjoying the Colts season so far! (For my hometown rooting allegiences, I do have the Bears defense on my other team).

So, we'll see what happens in the playoffs. Fantasy playoffs get a bit wonky because the real-life teams start playing a bit differently, resting players, etc. This will be especially interesting to watch on that latter league, as the championship game would be the final week of the season, and there's a real good chance that the Colts will be resting guys, not going full out, etc. If I get that far, I may actually have to bench Peyton in favor of my backup QB (Jake Delhomme), though it's possible he'll be in the same situation.


Read more!

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Viola

Well, let's start the blogging catch-up with what I did last weekend. Namely, go back to Iowa for the funeral of my Aunt Viola Tjarks ...

To be very specific, Viola was the wife of my Dad's brother Arend, and was my last surviving aunt or uncle. It'd been a number of years since I last saw her ... at my Uncle Leon's funeral (works out that way all too often, I guess).

We'd usually see Arend and Viola at family gatherings -- especially New Year's Day when we'd have pretty much my Dad's whole family over. That was the pattern until I went to college at Iowa State. Arend and Viola lived in Ames, so I made a habit of visiting them every week or two. Thus I got to know them better than most of my the rest of my aunts or uncles. I'd go over and visit for a half hour or an hour, just to chat. Frequently, it was on new comics day, because I could take care of two things at once in that section of Ames, away from the college. After Ellen and I were married she and I would keep up the pattern of visiting Viola and Arend (and then just Viola, as Arend passed away that fall). As Ellen says, we were helped considerably in our food budget by Viola giving us vegetables from their garden that she'd canned.

And Viola was famous for her Kringla (that link looks pretty close to her recipe). So, it was cool that for the funeral lunch some of her great-grandkids made a number of trays of Kringla to serve. Very fitting.

I got a chance to visit with many of my cousins that I rarely see (yep, usually for funerals), including some of my first-cousins' kids (Viola's grandchildren) that are pretty much the same age as I am (and so I mostly hung with them at family gatherings). I hadn't seen them for 25 years since we lived in Ames and hung out at Viola's house.

Anyway, the funeral was on Friday morning (Dec 2), and since Ellen and I were most of the way there anyway we drove on to Missouri Valley and visited my mom and Ellen's family for the rest of the weekend. Nothing eventful -- I took care of some errands for my mom, and we harrassed our niece Rachel as she was serving/cooking at a pancake breakfast. We drove back on Sunday, listening to the Bears beat the Packers and ogling all the cars and truck that had driven off the road, presumably during the snowfall on Saturday. For our drive it was clear and the roads were dry, so no problems, but that Saturday must have been pretty bad driving.


Read more!

By popular demand

It's been busy, and while I've got lots of stuff I'd like to blog about, I haven't been in a blogging mood when I actually have a chance to blog. Thus, a vicious cycle ensues ...

But I've heard from Ellen, from my sister-in-law Beth, from Mike Leuzler, and from at least some of my kids that they're expecting more from me. So, I'll try to get back into the regular blogging cycle. I'll probably dump a bunch of things out here in the next few hours, given that I'm, as I said, stuck at work. At least stuck at work means stuck with a computer.


Read more!

Settled into work for a while - Snow story

Well, I guess I'll be here at work for a while. That's OK, I have a few things I could/should be putting a finish on so I can more onto a new assignment I have. But that's not why I'm staying put for a while ...

It's snowing here. Not terrible, but enough to screw up traffic badly. We're supposed to get 2-4 inches this afternoon and evening. It looks like we've gotten the 2 inches so far, in the last three hours. Again, not terrible.

However, it looks like everyone took a cue to leave work early and beat the weather. It looks that way because Warrenville Road (aka, my route home) is backed up as far as I can see in both directions. It's been that way since at least 4pm when I'd considered also getting out of here, but seeing the traffic changed my mind. I'd guess at this point I'll just stay put until 8pm, if not later.

Of course, with traffic not moving, it also means there's no snow plow that's going to be clearing that road soon.

At least all I have to do is walk to the end of this cross-aisle, to the peripheral hallway. The building is all glass, and I'm on the fourth floor, so once at the periphery I can see quite well what the traffic looks like. And ... it looks like I'll be here a while.


Read more!