Update Schmorgasbord

Wow, lots to catch up on since the last time I really posted, Thursday morning, when the crazy neighbor pissed me off. In no particular order, here goes…

The 45 SNG Challenge is all over. Last night was the last night for registrations and it closed with a race to the finish. The final tally says that 1st place was Johnny Mac with 36 points, 2nd place was yours truly with 33 points, 3rd place was Gilain with 32 points, and 4th place was Tripjax with 27 points.

For my own story, I managed to tie up Johnny Mac with my second to last attempt. We both had one more left to play and I waited until he played his last one on Saturday night. He finished 5th for 4 points in that one. I played mine first thing on Sunday morning knowing that I needed a 5th place or better for at least a tie for first. I managed to get to the final table short stacked and tried to wait it out. When we got down to 7 left, I was the short stack, along with another guy. I felt like I had to win at least one hand to get to 5th. I was dealt AQ suited and pushed but was called by one of the larger stacks with pocket 4s. I lost the race when I failed to improve and I was out in 7th for 1 point.

That one point would be huge for me though. As I was drafting my Blogger Fantasy football team, Tripjax shot me an IM from somewhere on vacation. He had been wandering around looking for a wifi connection to finish his final 3 games in an attempt to get into the money. To make a long story short, he finished one of them in 4th place which gave him 27 points, 1 ahead of Jordan, and into 3rd place in the challenge. After I confirmed that, he was all set. I let Jordan know, on girly chat, that he was still in 4th, when he told me Gilain was playing his last one also. Gilain was really the only person that could catch any of the money spots it seemed and Jordan put a bounty on him as he played, lol. I think that may have inspired Gilain even more as he wound up finishing 3rd in his also, pushed Jordan out to the bubble, and pushed Tripjax to 4th place. If Gilain had outlasted one more person, he would have tied me for 2nd place. I would up finishing 1 point ahead of him.

All in all, it was a great challenge. There were 20 players this time, but all 4 cashing spots scored more points than the winner from the first challenge. Actually Trip scored the same amount. I hope everyone enjoyed it and congrats to Johnny Mac for going wire to wire on this thing and taking it down. Well played, sir.

As I mentioned, the Blogger Fantasy Football draft was last night. I ended up drawing the 2nd overall pick, which is a blessing and a curse. I was able to grab Larry Johnson, as Shaun Alexander went first, but didn’t get to pick again until 23rd. I think I got Marvin Harrison with that pick. I am pretty happy with my team, but I will recap it in more depth later, after I look at the other teams more closely. With a 12 team league, the teams can get somewhat thin, so hopefully I escaped ok. With LJ, Harrison, Gates, and McNabb leading the way, we’ll see. Donovan doesn’t really have much of a receiving corp to throw to. I did get Joe Horn somewhat late in the draft. I know he was a bust last year, but I am hoping that Drew Brees can get going in NO and get him back on track. I can’t recall who my 3rd WR is off the top of my head (I am on the train). I think it might have been Nate Burleson, who has moved to Seattle. I like picking WRs that have good QBs, and who are also the 2nd WR. Less double teams and such. We’ll see if that works out for me.

I did have my interview on Thursday afternoon and it went well. I won’t talk too much about the particulars yet, as I am trying to work them out now. My old boss called me on Friday morning and told me they all liked me and he just had to talk to HR today, since the person was out the end of last week. We are talking about cash and other details, but I am leaning to taking it. It is a great opportunity, but seems to be a huge mess of a situation. I think that is both bad and good. I will have a lot to do and learn, which is good, but I would be inheriting a team in shambles, which will obviously be difficult. Another part of my decision is when I will start. He is being very flexible with that and has said that my coaching is no problem. Although that may be the case, being in a new situation, I will need to focus on it, and wouldn’t feel right leaving early every day to get to practice. He has even offered to let me wait to start until the end of October, when football is all over and I may have to take him up on that. I love helping with the team, and I actually feel like they need me to help at this point. If he will let me do that, and still be able to guarantee my bonus won’t be prorated, which seems what he is saying, I may have to do it like that. Once I talk to him and HR today or tomorrow, I will know better how I am going to do this. I am currently making my list of things that I need to get in writing in my offer so I don’t forget anything. It seems like such a chore, but I think making this change could bring me to the next level in my career, as long as I do a good job. More to come as soon as I know more.

Lastly, the football situation is great. I love coaching and love working with the kids. We had our first scrimmage on Saturday, and going in, us coaches weren’t too confident. We had made a last minute change to the offense last week, and we weren’t sure how well the kids would grasp it. For those in the know (I was clueless on this 2 weeks ago, so don’t take this as me being technical or anything), we were trying to use some advanced (for this age anyway) blocking schemes where we were pulling the guard to block outside and leaving it up to the other lineman to fill those gaps by downblocking and x-blocking. Basically, we finally gave up on it when we were having trouble covering the gaps being left by the guard against our own 2nd team defense.

On Thursday night, the last practice before the scrimmage, we told the lineman they were straight up blocking on all the plays, and we had to change the wording of the plays so they didn’t get confused. They did unbelievable on Saturday. We killed the other team and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves until yesterday. After the initial luster wore off, I think we all realized that the other team was pretty bad, lol. I was talking to my son as we were in the car doing some errands. He played great and made about 3 tackles behind the line of scrimmage for losses. I asked him if he was using the 4 point stance that the coaches had taught him to fire through the line quicker. He said he was sometimes, but mostly he was just going right through the line. He said their offensive line splits were huge so once they lines up, he would just shift a foot one way or another and could basically walk through the hole untouched. Then last night, the head coach called me for my feedback and said that he had watch the game film and saw some of those same things. Although we played well, we agreed that the kids probably weren’t really tested at all. The other team couldn’t move the ball at all, and we were moving it in nice chunks. All in all, we looked good, the kids were fast and hitting hard so we can’t take everything away from them. It is just hard to get too excited about a scrimmage against a bad team.

As for my son in particular, I was very proud of the way he played. On offense, he was clearing big holes. We had one play where we had a 2nd and 2 and tried to call the play on “ready”, which is the first thing out of the QB’s mouth. He was the only kid on the line that went when he should have and the coach pointed it out to everyone, so he was happy. On defense, he was killing it. The thing with him is focus, which is the same thing with all the kids at this age. I was all over him in the pregame warmups about being a big part of the game, and paying attention on every play. He did great.

As an aside to the game (yes, of course I have an aside). The field we played at was in a big complex with 2 full fields and one half field. After our game, we stayed to watch a little bit of the younger team, which has my son's best friend on it. He is one year younger and is the QB of that team. Anyway, we are sitting there watching when my 3 year old says to mom that he has to go poopie. She turns and looks at me and says, "I can't do it". Ok, I thought, no big deal, I will take him. Umm, where is the bathroom? "You have to go in the port-o-potty". Ah, no wonder she couldn't do it. Man, those things are nasty. I bring him in and wipe off as much grime as I could muster, then nested the seat with about 4 layers of tissue paper thin toilet paper. I told him not to touch anything as I lifted him onto the pot and held onto him. I swear it was about 120 degrees in this damn thing, and the stench was unbearable. After watching him grunt and get vein popping red from pushing, he finally finished. I swear, he almost fell in twice. There is no questions, he would have been lost forever if he did. When my oldest was about the same age, I took him to a fair that he had to use the port-o-potty. It was fall was he had a vest on but it was kinda warm so I had the vest over my shoulder. I stood over him as he peed, and in my haste in standing over him, making sure he didn't touch his junk against the infected seat and bowl, I bent over just enough so the vest went right down into the shit hole. In my panic, what do I do? I pull it out of course and put it in a plastic bag for mom to wash when we get home. What the hell was I thinking. If that happened now, bye bye clothing. I swear, if he fell in, I am not even sure I would have fished him out.

I think that is all for this early Monday morning. I may try to sneak out of practice a few minutes early tonight so I can get to the bar league. The only reason is because it is the monthly championship and I am qualified because I scored points in the last one. I haven’t played on Monday nights since, but I need to try and win another one of these monthly tourneys to get back into the running to get to the state tourney. I will able to start going on Monday nights again once the season starts, since we won’t be practicing on Monday nights. I would like to score some points, if I can’t win it, so that I will at least qualify for next month’s monthly tourney again.

Have a happy Monday. By the way, this is my 200th post. How could that be?