Trainwrecks

Good morning everyone.  I've been a little scatter-brained over the past few days in regards to trying to keep my focus on one thing.  I only lead in with that tidbit to let you know that this post won't be about one specific topic, but I will hit on a few things as this week comes to a close.  I haven't had a shift at work since late Monday night (EARLY Tuesday morning), and that has been a blessing in helping me to get over the cold that I've had for the past couple of weeks.  When I first told my dad about the cold that started hitting me on Thanksgiving night, he informed me that he had just gotten over something that had lasted for ten days.  It's now almost a full two weeks later for me, and I would venture a guess that I am at about 95% now.  During the past few days I have actually gotten more accomplished in straightening up my apartment than I have since I moved in during the middle of August.  If you are one of the newer followers of the blog (which has been viewed over 1,100 times now by the way), then you may not have read my early entry which detailed the brutally disappointing and frustrating job search that I endured this summer.  To make a long story short, after two months of driving all over the state in a fruitless search, I didn't feel like doing much 'tidying up' in my new apartment.  What I am basically saying is that if there was something that I did not need to function on a day-to-day basis, then I did not make an effort to unpack it.  I have actually moved some of that stuff around over the last few days, and I set up some shelves in preparation for unpacking.  One thing that I have failed to do this week is my normal 'blog' entry for my fantasy football league.  In any league that I have been a member of with friends during the past few years, I have done a weekly recap of our games.  This is the 3rd year of the 'Sunday Funday League', and after I am finished with this post I will be doing that one.  I wanted to mention that league because it is really interesting how evenly matched the teams are in our 12-team league this year.  Our top six teams make the playoffs, which is pretty standard in most leagues with a dozen teams.  Our league finished the regular season with two 9-4 teams, three 8-5 teams, and two 7-6 teams (one of the 7-6 teams was eliminated by a total points tiebreaker).  I finished in 5th place during the regular season, so I will be playing in a playoff game this week (which is nice since it is the first time that I've made the playoffs in this league that I founded three years ago)...  What strikes me as funny is that when I looked at my first-round matchup, I thought, "I don't want to play her in the first-round."  Then I looked at the other teams who made the playoffs, and I really don't want to play ANY OF THEM.  Our league is just that evenly matched this year.  About a half-hour ago I took my first peek at an NBA schedule for the upcoming season, specifically that of the San Antonio Spurs.  One thing that I will tell you about this season right now is that it will be a test of endurance.  Each team is going to be playing 66 games in 4 months, which basically breaks down to playing one game every other day.  It is actually a little worse than that, because they are squeezing those games into 120 days (66 is half of 132).  To make matters worse, there is about a six-day break (at least for the Spurs) during the week of the All-Star Game.  In a nutshell, they are going to be playing A LOT of basketball in four months.  The Spurs are one of the teams with TWO sets of back-to-back-to-back games on their schedule.  I also noticed that the Spurs finish the regular season with 8 games in 11 days, and will face the Lakers twice during that stretch.  Injuries are going to play a HUGE factor in the season as it goes along.  When someone gets hurt, they will miss twice as many games as normal for that injury because the schedule is so condensed.  For the sake of these players, I hope that they stayed in shape during the off-season.  A commentator made the point today on t.v. that teams are going to need a deep rotation to be successful, and I agree with him.  If you try playing just seven players over the course of this packed schedule, it is going to end up in a trainwreck.  This season is going to be extremely interesting to follow.  I am really looking forward to a week from today when I will be posting my comprehensive predictions for all 35 of this season's college bowl games on December 15th.  I will be posting those picks with my predicted scores for the games, and in that way you will be able to see who I pick to win, to cover, and if I think that the game will go over or under (total points).  I have decided that from here on out, I will make 10 NFL picks every Friday (like I would when wasting 2 bucks on a parlay ticket in Vegas).  Since there are no more regular college games to pick, this won't involve much more work for me.  I hope that you have a great day, and I will see you tomorrow with this week's NFL picks.