I’ve got mixed emotions about this weekends NFL games. On one side I’m pretty disappointed with the Bengals performance along with their loss to a previously un-winning team. Sure there were some iffy calls made but in the end the Bengals simply need to score more points that they did to win games.

On the other hand I am very happy with my fantasy football performance. Just like last week, I won both games and am now in first place in both leagues. In one league, I took first place away from my brother who just lost his second game in a row. And in the other league, I am tied for first with five other people. Yes, we have a six way tie. Taking into account the tie-breaker, I sit in second place with the second highest total points scored. It looks like all of my injuries have worked themselves out and finally my teams can begin total domination!

I traveled to Cincinnati once more this past weekend. Lately Kim and I have been flying into Indianapolis and renting a car from there. This makes it so much cheaper, especially when you get a rental car for $9 a day on priceline! The drive from Indianapolis to Cincinnati is around an hour and a half, so it could be much worse.

Our flights this weekend were on Southwest, which I had not flown in over a year (thankfully rapid rewards credits are now valid for two years). During my hiatus I forgot how funny some of the flight attendants for Southwest are. The line that really got me (and many others on board) laughing came during the safety briefing, when one of the flight attendants informed us that the plane had a smoking section out over the wing.

Southwest has a blog where more of these jokes are discussed, along with many other entries from various employees of the airline. For the most part, it’s a pretty good read.

I went to my first show since the Gorge last night, that’s over a month between shows! I guess it’s been a slow month around these parts, or I’ve been busy with other things. The performers of the night were Marc Broussard, Sara Bareilles, and Tanner Walle, but in the opposite order.

I hadn’t seen Tanner in a long time, so it was good to see him play even if we missed the beginning of his set. He opened the show quite nicely and is leaving on Sunday for his first real tour. Hopefully the road treats him well, I think it will. Sara Bareilles was next and I knew absolutely nothing about her. By the end of the first song I was amazed. She plays keys and had a guy accompanying her on guitar and backup vocals. Her voice is excellent and the music wasn’t shabby either. Think Norah Jones or Tori Amos. We bought a sample CD of hers for five bucks, so maybe I’ll get a song of the moment up here next week.

Broussard took the stage last with a couple friends of his that I’ve seen play with him numerous times before, Calvin Turner and Chad Gilmore. The last time I saw Marc was over a year ago, but little has changed. There are numerous new songs, but the show is just as rocking as I remember. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as good of a show without a lead guitar player, but I hardly noticed as the sound was very full. I taped most of the night, so be on the lookout for that early next week!

Everywhere I go today is cold! I woke this morning and couldn’t get out of bed. The temperature in the room was 57 degrees! I attempted to turn on the heat yesterday for the first time and it started off working just fine. Then I heard a ton of noise coming from the basement a half hour or so later. Then a few minutes after that it completely stopped working. Good thing the furnace is under warranty still, it will be looked at tomorrow morning. At least this gives me the perfect opportunity to try out the fireplace. Perhaps I should sleep next to it tonight.

The temperature outside is a cool 46 right now, and I’m sure it was in the 30s when I left the house this morning. The first heat that I felt this morning (besides a shower) was when my car finally heated up. I knew at that point I would be warm from that point on until leaving work later today. Well I was wrong. The office is freezing today. They must have the air conditioner on still or something. I haven’t even taken off my jacket yet today. This is crazy and it’s only the beginning on October! Don’t get me wrong, I like the cold more than the summer heat, but I expect the inside to be warm.

I added my pictures from the American Royal to the site last night. I wish we would have taken more time to take pictures while entering the event, but we were already very late. We decided not to attempt riding the shuttles buses this year after the events of last year. Instead we opted to call a cab to take us down to the party. Well the wait for the cab was way over what the dispatcher told us. They said we would have a cab to our door in five minutes, in actuality it took about an hour and a half! So when we finally got down the Royal the last thing I wanted to do was take pictures. Hopefully Phil has some pictures to add at some point…

Yahoo! took forever to post the results for this weeks fantasy football games, but they are finally online. My teams won both games this week, bringing my records up to 4-1 (tied for 1st place with my brother) and 2-3 (tied for 2nd with four others). My defenses (Carolina and Jacksonville) came up big for both teams, with both of them scoring more points than any player on either team. I hope I can continue on with this winning streak.

In high school football news, did you know that there is a team in Barrow, Alaska? Neither did I, until today. Barrow is 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle and is the northernmost settlement in the United States and one of the northernmost towns in the world. Read the story and watch a video of the team on ESPN.com, and be sure to go back tomorrow for part 2: The Whalers shock the world…and themselves.

Well we survived the race, barely. Obviously we were out fairly late on Friday night because of the American Royal. I think we finally made it home around midnight and our wake-up call was at 6AM. Six hours of sleep is often enough to get by, but not after a night of partying. Saturday morning started off on the chilly side despite the warnings issued a couple of days earlier for a hot marathon with temperatures in the nineties.

The race itself actually could have been much worse. The course was mostly flat and the weather was perfect. I actually didn’t feel nearly as bad as I thought I was going to and in the end we finished just over twenty six minutes. That’s a little quicker than eight and a half minute miles. Not a bad pace for us, but no where near last year’s time of 23:29. Oh well, I’m now on my break from running so hopefully my body will make a full recovery soon.

We also filled the weekend with a couple of other sports activities. Later on Saturday afternoon (after a couple hour nap) we met up with our little brother and sister and went bowling. I don’t think either of them had ever bowled before, but all of us seemed to have a pretty good time. I know that I did, especially since I bowled really well, at least really well for myself. I had back to back games of 131 and 130. Typically I’m happy to break 100.

Yesterday we went golfing with one of my coworkers. He had never played before, just a couple of visits to the driving range. Likewise I hadn’t played in a long time, so it was an interesting start. Kim has really improved her golf game with lots of practice through work. In the end I had a pretty good round and only took one mulligan. My coworker also played really well for his first time, much better than I did on my first attempt. We’ll have to try to get out again before it gets too cold.

And finally last night I had my fourth hockey game of the session. Starting with this session they are doing something new, games between two different leagues. Once or twice a session each team will travel to the other rink to play a team they don’t usually play. Last night was one of those weeks for our team. We didn’t travel to a different rink, but our opponent came over from Kansas for a game. It was a high scoring affair, but my team hung on for the 11-9 win! We are still undefeated for the session since we don’t count the shootout loss.

There’s lots going on in Kansas City this weekend. At the top of my list is the American Royal BBQ, which is where I will be for most of tonight. Once again, Phil and many other friends of ours are in the competition and are having a big party tonight. If you’ve never been to the Royal before I highly recommend checking it out, especially tonight. Many of the teams in the competition cook up lots of food for visitors to eat and many of the teams also have a bunch of tasty beverages as well. See you there!

We’ve been running outside quasi-regularly since my earlier posting about a month ago announcing our training for an upcoming 5K. Well the race is this weekend and I cannot wait for it to be over. The combination of the running and the return of hockey has created a ton of pain in my back. It definitely seems to get worse each time we go out for a run. Some might blame it on the hockey, but I can’t quit that since I’ve already paid for all of the games. However, I can quit running and that’s what I plan to do, for at least one week, after this race. It will be a much deserved break.

For a much more inspiring blog please visit Liz McAuley‘s who will be running in a marathon for the first time on Saturday.

For once I feel like a repair man! Last night we did something that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, clean out the exhaust hose from the clothes dryer. Shortly after moving we realized that the hose was not connected to the back of the dryer after the humidity in the basement increased with the use of the dryer. So we reconnected the hose only to find out that the dryer would now take forever to dry the clothes. And to top it off, there was now a distinct burning smell coming from the dryer. I concluded that the exhaust hose itself was clogged with lint so we immediately disconnected it again resulting in humidity and lint thrown throughout the basement.

That was until last night. Since the hose was already disconnected from the back of the dryer all I needed to do was disconnect it from the pipe to the outside of the house. Then we took the flexible hose outside for a thorough cleaning. We used one of those dusters with a telescoping handle to remove piles of lint from the hose. I think we filled an entire grocery bag with lint! Once we had it clean enough we hooked it back up to the pipe and to the back of the dryer. We haven’t turned the dryer on yet, but hopefully Kim will do that tonight while I’m playing tennis. I hope we fixed the problem.