…a one-toothed man in a corn-on-the-cob eating contest.
Usually today would be full of talk about the previous night’s volleyball games, but as I mentioned earlier our session is now over. That means no more volleyball until ‘Off Each Other’ takes the court on January 3rd!
I’m lucky I found any time today to write here. I cannot wait for the weekend…
Once again I went two for three in this week’s fantasy football match ups. I scored the second highest point total in one of my leagues, and hung on to beat my opponent who had the third highest total. In this league I have finished the regular season in 3rd place and will be facing off with the 2nd place team this week in the first round of the playoffs. In the other league that gave me a victory this week, I have finished the regular season in 1st place. The playoffs for this league are also beginning, and I will be taking on my buddy weeba, who finished in 8th place. In the final league, the one that I am doing the worst in, I lost once again with one of the lowest point totals. I finished in 7th place out of 10 teams, and will have to play the 2nd place team this week in the first round of the playoffs. My complete overall record is now 27-15.
I had to work again last night and I also have been busy with NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music 2005. I have all of the songs selected and I hope to get the cover art done either tonight or tomorrow. That should give me enough time to spread it around to my friends on the net and to make a whole bunch of copies to hand out over the next couple of weeks. It should be another great mix!
We woke up on Thursday to about a foot of snow. We couldn’t let this stop us from making our trip, since we had booked a hotel on priceline and could not get a refund. We did wait until after rush hour and then started the drive. The hardest part was just getting out to Interstate 35, which would take us all the way to Oklahoma City. We eventually made it there around the middle of the afternoon, and quickly checked in to the hotel. From there we walked down to the memorial and walked around the outside. We got there just before sunset, and stuck around to see the lights come on throughout the various parts. We were too late to enter the inside museum, so that would have to wait until the next day.
From there we walked back over to the Bricktown area. We had dinner and drinks at Coach’s and then headed over to the Myriad Gardens to check out all of their Christmas light displays. After we were completely frozen we headed back into Bricktown and went to our second micro brewery of the night, Bricktown Brewery. The beers here were much better than at Coach’s, at least in our opinion. Not wanting the night to end there, we headed to one last bar, TapWerks and then called it a night.
We got up pretty early on Friday to go back to the memorial, this time to check out the inside museum. We had heard that you could walk through all of it in about an hour, but we found ourselves still on the first of two floors two hours after starting. There is so much to read and see inside that you could easily spend half of your day there. The entire memorial is very well done and truly an amazing thing to see. I’m not sure that my pictures of the outside will do it justice.
From there we made the hour or so drive down to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, the oldest refuge in the U.S. I found this place online before we left for Oklahoma, when searching for places to see buffalo in the wild. Sure enough we saw plenty of American bison (what is often called buffalo), sometimes they were only 10 feet or so from us. We also saw many longhorn cattle and a few rocky mountain elk. The bison and longhorns were not afraid of cars or people at all, but the elk were more like deer and would flee the instant they were spotted. Besides all of the wildlife, we also drove to the top of Mt. Scott, the third tallest mountain in Oklahoma. The scenery in the preserve is beautiful, I can only imagine what it would look like in some of the warmer months. We were both really glad that we made the drive down to the refuge.
After a few hours there we headed back to Oklahoma City and went to see the Blazers hockey team defeat the Fort Worth Brahmas pretty easily. It was one of those “we went to a fight and hockey game broke out” type of games, especially in the third period. It was nice to see a game this season, since I probably won’t see another one.
We then spent the rest of the night out at Bricktown. We tried to go to a place called Half-Time Sports Grill, but quickly left after a fight broke out. The hockey team must have made their way over to the same bar. :) We then made our way over to the Biting Sow, the only place to have live music seven days a week. It turned out to be a Blues Bar, but it was pretty entertaining for an hour or so. We finally ended up at City Walk, one of those megaplexes of bars where they try to offer something for everyone. After paying an $8 cover we made our way to the dueling piano bar, only to realize that no one else was there. It was nice being able to request every song we wanted to hear, but I think it cost us quite a chunk of change. I still haven’t found a place that compares to Crocodile Rocks down in Myrtle Beach.
We made the drive back to Kansas City on Saturday and spent the rest of the night watching movies. We watched Cinderella Man first, which we both enjoyed a bunch, and then Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which was okay. I fell asleep towards the end of the second, but I was pretty exhausted from all of the driving. Kim said that she had already seen the movie before, but couldn’t remember it, if that tells you anything about it.
Yesterday we did some more Christmas shopping and we now have just about everything done. We then went over to Doni & Phil’s so that the girls could make cookie baskets for their agents, while Phil and I watched the Chiefs blow it in the end. We later ate some Stroud’s, which ended the weekend well. Well I shouldn’t say it completely ended the weekend, since I did have a hockey game at 9PM last night. We won the game, even though one of our better players was playing for the other team. I scored the game winner! :)
My pictures from Oklahoma are up on the site. I’ll be adding some captions to them as the day goes on, but you can view them now if you’d like. I also updated my visited states map to include the 30th state, Oklahoma.
Once again I’ve been waiting for Johnson County Parks to update the standings to reflect last nights matches. They must be having a snow day today. We faced off against one of the worst teams in the league last night, supposedly. I think they were one of the better teams we have played, especially the two guys who absolutely killed the ball. They lost the first game because only one player was on time, and they almost had to forfeit the entire match. Instead, we ended up playing four people from their team. We played pretty well overall, had some bad serves, and still could only split the remaining two games with them. They must have had an attendance problem all session.
That was the final match for this session, and our final record was 11-13, almost 500. We should be in at least 6th place overall, if not better. I guess we’ll know where we stand once they update their site.
It is currently nine degrees outside, and I am watching a “winter storm” out my window. The snow started falling very lightly as I was leaving for work. The intensity has gone up considerably since then, and we are actually under a winter storm warning. I’d say there is already a couple of inches on the ground and the weathermen are calling for five to seven inches by tomorrow morning. This should make for an interesting road trip tomorrow.
As I mentioned earlier we are driving down to Oklahoma City tomorrow for a couple nights. I think we’ll be pretty busy while there, and I’m not sure that I’ll get around to updating this while I’m there, so have a nice weekend and try to stay warm.
I’m back to winning the majority of my fantasy football games. I edged out my brother in one game, to win by two points. In another game I crushed my buddy Will who must have forgotten to set his lineup. I couldn’t win all three though, and lost the third one because of some lousy quarterbacks. Bledsoe (who I played) racked up a whopping 1 point, and Favre (who was on the bench) pulled in -2 points. I was screwed regardless of who I played. I now sit at 25-14, not too bad.
Last night we hung out with Dominique and Bianca again. We didn’t get to do anything too exciting though since I had to login to work for a couple of hours. We had to get something in with them, since we’ll only be in KC for a total of three days this week.
I’ve added some pictures from the Chiefs game over the weekend. We forgot to bring our camera to the game, but many of my co-workers had theirs. I stole all of the good ones and put them up here for you all to enjoy!
I had a busy and short day of work on Friday. The company closed 4:30 so that everyone could make it out to the holiday party by 7. Everyone started off at the Buddha Bar on “Martini Corner” for drinks and appetizers. They also gave away some gifts using a raffle format. I won one of the better prizes of the night, $100 cash! Once our private party ended at 9, many of us headed across the street to the Velvet Dog, which I spent most of my winnings buying everyone’s drinks. It was a great night out with my co-workers!
I was a little slow to get up on Saturday, but by early afternoon I was ready to get some lunch. We had a slight problem though, our car was still at Martini Corner. So we caught the bus and then walked a few blocks to the car. From there we headed out on our day full of shopping. I think it’s pretty safe to say that we finished over 75% of our shopping in one day, mostly at two or three different stores. Once we were both exhausted, we headed over to Cupini’s to pick up dinner. We watched a couple of movies and ate some great food that we finally got a chance to try. I think we will definitely be heading back there sometime soon!
Sunday we had to throw on many layers of clothes and head out to Arrowhead to tailgate for the Chiefs game. We had a group of 25 people from work all heading out to the game. We partied in the lots for a couple of hours, and had a catered brunch as part of our package. The game was a good one, despite the freezing temperatures. We had to leave a little early so that I could make it to my hockey game, which we finally won. As a note for those of you coming out to KC for the Bengals and Chiefs game, it is going to be hideously cold. I’ve added these items to my list of potential items to take to the game:
Sorry for the late post today, but I’m still recovering from last night…
First we hung out with Dominique and Bianca for a couple of hours. We had a nice spaghetti dinner and then we did some Christmas stuff. Dominique and I put up the tree, along with the lights and ornaments. The girls worked on some candy kits that Kim picked up. Everything turned out really well. Now I just need some presents under that tree.
From there we picked up Kim’s friend, BJ, from the Marriott downtown and headed toward the plaza. We met up with a group of our friends out at the Granfalloon. What started off as a nice little gathering turned into a very late night out. Somehow the majority of us were still out drinking after midnight. I’m not sure what got into us, but I’m sure that we are all regretting it today.
Last night was another night full of good beers. We started off at a Hy-Vee liquor store, where they were sampling some beers from the O’Fallon Brewery from just outside of St. Louis. A guy from the brewery was at the store with three of their beers. We first tried their Wheat. It’s much different than Boulevard’s most popular wheat beer, but still very good. Next we had their Smoked Porter, which was truly the most interesting beer I’ve had. It really does have a smoky flavor to it. The little taste that I had of it wasn’t enough, so I took home a six pack of this one. Finally we tried their Cherry Chocolate, a dark wheat that really does taste like cherry and chocolate. It’s their seasonal right now, so Kim decided to pick up six of these. This store is going to carry O’Fallon beers from now on, so I’m sure we’ll be back to pick up some more, along with others from their wide selection.
From there we once again went over to Charlie Hoopers for import night. If you remember from my past trips, I would pick one country and stick with that for my theme of the night. Well last night I didn’t really do this. Although I did start the night with a few American micro-brews (they are on sale as well). We had a good sized group this time, although it wasn’t all work people. Doni, Phil, Todd, and Chris Martin all made it out to the bar as well. It was nice to get out to the bar again!
Once again, we lost two out of the three volleyball games last night. The surprising thing was that we won the first game. It was the best game that we have played yet, but a few crappy calls from the ref ruined the second game. Once we started worrying about him and his calls, our play went downhill fast. If we can just ignore him and let him do whatever it is he does, then maybe we could actually win a few more games. We now stand at 9-12, still in 6th place overall. Our last match is next week against the second worst team in the league, hopefully we can win the majority of the games. Maybe we can even overtake the 5th spot held currently by The Banchees.
There is talk of continuing to play volleyball in the next session. I’m not too sure about it, but I said that I would play just as long as we changed our team name. Instead of Dig This I would like to be known as Off Each Other. That way at least when we lose the other team has to say, “We just beat Off Each Other.” Note: This is stolen directly from another guys blog. When I read this yesterday, I about spit water all over my keyboard.
We are working on plans to visit Oklahoma City in the next couple of weeks. Our original plan of a ski trip before the end of the year just isn’t working out. I still had a couple of vacation days to use up though. Since neither of us has been to Oklahoma before, and it is fairly close to us, we are thinking this is place to go. I’m not sure there is a ton of stuff to do, but I’m sure that we can fill up at least a couple of days. Feel free to leave any suggestions here…
Another busy day here at work, at least so far. And another crappy day in the land of fantasy football. I went 1-2 this week, and my only victory was once again against a guy who forgot to set his lineup. What really hurt me this time around were my quarterbacks.
In one league, I’ve played Bulger almost every week. This week I knew he was going to be sitting out because of injury. My other options were Brad Johnson, who was coming off of a couple bad weeks, and David Carr, who also had a bad week prior. I took the advice of some fantasy “experts” and picked up St. Louis backup Jamie Martin. I also let these guys convince me to play Martin over the other two options. So what does Martin do? He gets injured in the first quarter, skips out on the rest of the game, and earns me zero points. Thanks.
I don’t have as good of an excuse in my other league. I should have played Bledsoe instead of Favre, and then I would have won. My overall record is now 23-13. Hopefully I have a better week…
I put some pictures up for this past holiday weekend. Kim took all of them, and I tried to make them all look good, but some of them are hopeless. Don’t blame the messenger, blame the photographer. :)
edpaffjr.com