Another week has gone by and my hockey team has lost yet another game.  This week we faced off against a team with numerous players that I used to play with.  It was sad to lose this game, realizing that I could have potentially been on a winning team.  My team is still looking for our first win and only have a handful of games left.

I will spend the rest of this weekend up in Grand Forks, North Dakota with Kim, who is doing business there.  We will be attending a couple of North Dakota hockey games this weekend.  The Fighting Souix play at the Ralph Engelstad Arena, which is considered to be one of the finest hockey facilities in the world.  I’m pumped to see some great college hockey action in this wonderful arena.  The first night we have seats in the student section.  I hope we can blend in a little.  This will mark my 42nd state visited.

After another week in the quest to run 100 miles between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I’m sad to report that I’ve fallen a bit behind.  I finished the first week with 25.2 miles, but have only added 18.25 miles over this past week.  That takes my total to 43.45 miles, which is a bit off of the half way mark.  Today is day 15 of the 30 day challenge, so I was really hoping to be halfway through the miles.  Unfortunately the weather outside has been very frightful, with temperatures not above freezing for days, and below zero most nights.  My dad has joined in the quest, and is less than three miles ahead.  I hope that we all can find some time to get out there and add some good miles this weekend.

Not much has happened this week, besides working on our plans for the big Sugar Bowl weekend in New Orléans.  As I mentioned, I finally bought flights on Monday (which I found out actually dropped in price since, grrrr).  I spent my free time yesterday working on a hotel, and thanks to my brother we now have a reservation at the Hampton Inn downtown.  We also got tickets for the game through a family friend, so pretty much all of our travel arrangements are complete.  I was finally able to breathe a little today.  I can’t believe that I will only have seven states left to visit at the end of the year.  I hope I can knock out the rest next year.

Another not so good weekend in fantasy football with only one win.  I lost in one of my money leagues and that one is now over for me.  I finished in 8th of 12 teams.  I also lost in the other money league, but I am still in the playoffs this week.  I’m in the 5th spot and will play Kim’s dad who is in 4th.  I beat him by less than two points during the season, so this could be a great game.  Therefore my win came in the non-money league, where I remain in 4th place.  There are no playoffs so this one is still going strong.

I also remain in 1st place in both nfl pick’em games and in 5th for the college pick’em.  I am still alive in the survivor game with my pick of Chicago over St. Louis.  I’m thinking of sticking with that theme and picking Tennessee over St. Louis.  And finally I fell to 4th place in the salary cap game by .03 points.  This is still anyone’s game!

This post is late today because I spent all of my free time looking for flights to New Orleans. If you missed the insanely exciting University of Cincinnati football win over Pitt this weekend, the Bearcats are now heading to play in the Sugar Bowl on New Years Day against Florida. I have never been to Louisiana before, so this was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Last night, Kim and I headed up to the Ogden Theatre to see Grace Potter along with Brett Dennen.  I thought that Grace Potter was going to headline, but she actually ended up playing before Dennen.  I’m glad we got there when we did, as we walked in just before she took the stage.  Her set was definitely the highlight of the night for me.  I’ve seen her a couple times before, both times at festivals, and I must say that I’m even more impressed with her now than I ever was after last night’s near 1.5 hour set.  Her backing band, The Nocturnals, are all great musicians and really put down the perfect sound for Grace’s powerful vocals to take center stage.

We saw Brett Dennen for the very first time at the same venue about two years ago.  Since then I’ve seen him play a few other times.  Each time I enjoy it, but I wouldn’t say that I’m ever really amazed.  I really like his studio releases, but for whatever reason I just can’t get into the live performances.  So when they didn’t start playing until around 11, we only stuck around for a few songs and then called it a night.  I hope we didn’t miss anything too amazing, but it’s been a long week.

One thing that I wish I would have remembered was that you should get to the Ogden early enough to secure some of the many stools up in the large balcony.  If you arrive too late you could be forced to watch the show from a spot with very bad sight lines of the stage.  Maybe I will actually remember this the next time we go.

With this past weekends hockey tournament wins out of the way, it’s back to our normal losing ways on my regular team.  We had a late game last night, and despite the other team only have seven total skaters, we still managed to lose.  I’m guessing that the snow and cold temperatures, in addition to the 10:30 start time, kept some of their players away.  On the bright side, the game did go all the way to an overtime shootout before the loss.  Our opponents held a 3-1 lead late into the third, but we were able to tie it up before the end of the game.  I had an assist on one of those two goals.  Unfortunately none of our first three shooters in the shootout were able to score, and the other teams last shooter put one in to end the game.  Without a win after six games, my team remains solidly in last place.

One of Kim’s coworkers circulated an email encouraging people to sign a pledge to run 100 miles between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I first thought that it would be impossible for me, but after Kim put her name on the spreadsheet I felt like I had to do it as well.  So far I have to admit that it is going pretty well so far.  We started off by running the four mile Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving with nearly 10,000 others.  It was a bit crowded and unorganized at the start, but we still ended up running under nine minute miles with a finish time of 35:31.

Since then I have managed over twenty more miles of running and walking.  With one week down (I don’t plan to get any miles today) I have completed 25.2 miles.  That’s just over a quarter of the way to the goal of 100 miles!  Over 100 others have put their name on the tracking spreadsheet and only a couple dozen others are ahead of my progress.  That makes me feel pretty good, though this is definitely the most I’ve run in a long time.  It’s probably too late for any others to join in the fun, though feel free to do so if you can remember your distances over the last week, dad.  My goal is to finish it before Christmas Eve, so I’m not stuck with big runs on the last two days.

The University of Cincinnati is just one win away from their first undefeated football season in recent history.  I checked the record books and the last time they had zero loses was in 1918.  The team remains in the fifth place of  all major polls as they head into Pittsburgh this Friday to take on now fifteen ranked Pitt.  Pitt was as high as eighth in some polls until their loss to West Virginia over the weekend.  If the Bearcat football success isn’t enough, the basketball team is now ranked in the top 25 teams in the country after a few big wins early in the season.  It’s a great time to be a Bearcat!

Now it’s time for my weekly fantasy football update.  I had a bad week with just one win.  I now sit in seventh place in one of my money leagues, with just one week to go before the playoffs.  I need to be in the top six to continue so I really need a win this week.  In my other money league, I upset to the top ranked team in the league and should now have reserved my spot in the playoffs!  In the non-money league I fell to fourth place after a loss.  For the pro pick’em leagues I am in first place in both, while I’m in fifth in the college version.  I am in third place in the salary cap game.  And finally I am still alive in the survivor game with my pick of Cincinnati over Cleveland.  I’m leaning towards Chicago over St. Louis for this week.

Something happened over the weekend that I haven’t experience in a long time, I was on a winning hockey team!  My team for weekly adult league hasn’t won a game yet this session, and we’ve played six games now.  One of the guys I’ve played with for a while now asked me to join his team over the weekend for the 2009 Gobbler Classic tournament.  We were scheduled to play one game on Friday evening and two on Saturday.  I must admit that I haven’t played that much hockey in a long time, probably since high school.  I may have played in tournament while living in Kansas City, but even that would have been at least three years ago.

The tournament started off great.  My team was able to score four quick goals in our first game, and we were able to hang onto a 5-2 victory.  Our second game was on Saturday afternoon, and though we held the lead for much for much of the game, it was close toward the end.  We ended up pulling out another win.  Though I don’t recall the exact score, I think we won by two goals.  Our third game was on Saturday at ten o’clock.  This game was against the best opponents we faced, and in the end we lost the game 2-1.  The other team’s roster was filled with many younger players, and anyone could tell the non-stop hockey action had taken its toll on our older team.

With that said we still had enough points to make it to the championship game on Sunday.  Again we were going up against the team that had just beaten us the night before.  Right from the start you could tell this was going to be a different game, even though it remained scoreless for some time.  Eventually we started scoring goals, and it didn’t end until we were up 4-0.  Our opponents managed to get a couple of goals by the end of the game, but it was clear that our team was rested and had come to win!  We were awarded our championship long-sleeved t-shirts after the game, and had a couple of beers in the parking lot afterward.  It was a nice weekend for lots of hockey.