football

Update Post

/ Shane / 3 Comments

So I haven’t been posting much for the past week or so, but we’ve been really busy what with the holiday weekend and all.

So last week we had some friends from Philly (well Jersey really) visiting and staying at our place the whole week.  (Although I did mention our trip to Maggianos)  They have a daughter about Evie’s age, so it was nice for Evie to have someone to play with, or at least follow around and imitate.  It worked out pretty well for them to use our house as a base of operations and strike out from there all around Chicago.  We didn’t get to do all that much with them since we were working and all, but we did manage to go to the zoo with them.  Their daughter is really cute (maybe even a match for Evie, although exactly the opposite…dark hair and dark eyes) and smart as a whip.  Ever since they left all I can think about is, “Will Evie really be able to do all of that in 10 months??”

Then, last weekend we went on our semi-annual camping trip in Michigan.  It was the usual camping trip with Evie, which is to say, exhausting!  It is a lot of work running around after her in general, but it is like 10 times as much work when you are camping.  Especially this time because she wanted to be walking around (and into everyone’s campsite) from sun up to sun down and anything you wanted to do to get in the way of that was not appreciated!  So I didn’t have time to play any cards or any sort of games or anything.

We went on a hike and we saw two sets of deer bounding out of the woods onto the path in front of us.  It was really quite amazing considering we were singing childrens’ songs at the tops of our voices to keep Evie happy!  As a side note, I did have some outside confirmation that my family has a preternatural ability to spot deer at any time.  I always thought I had a knack for it, but compared to my dad, I’m pathetic.  Anyway, we also managed to make it to the beach one day.  You know, it’s funny, every time you go in Lake Michigan, or even swimming in general, you say, “Once you’re in the water it’s not so cold!”  But then the next time you’re like, “Oh yeah, well not this time because it is COOOOLD!”  And then you get in and say, “Once you’re in the water it’s not so cold!”  Plus everybody around you is repeating the same thing.  How many times does that have to happen before it really takes?  So we went to the lake and the water was super super cold but then we got in and were surprised to discover it wasn’t that bad.

Only tangentially related but, when I was little we always had 2% milk.  When I would go to someone else’s house and they had skim milk I just couldn’t stand it.  It just seemed like colored water to me.  (Of course now all we have is skim milk, but that’s not my fault).  Well, when we were camping, Chris (who was the main skim milk house that I went to when I was growing up) said that sometimes he just puts water in his cereal and it tastes exactly like skim milk.  Aside from sounding completely disgusting, I think this upholds my theory that skim milk really is just colored water.

In terms of an Evie Update, she has really been surprising me lately.  I think she is entering into a stage where she is just learning everything so fast and picking up things you don’t realize she is picking up.  This might be fatherly doting, so if you don’t want to hear it skip a bit, brother.

Three times today when we were going through a book she pointed at something I didn’t know she knew and said the word for it aloud:  house, apple and flower.  Sara told her to knock on the door and she went over and knocked on it just the way you would.  When has she ever knocked on a door?  Today she took Sara’s keys and went over to the door and tried to reach up to where the keys go.  Probably the funniest thing was I had her little horse and I was pretending that he was telling me secrets.  I would just put the horse up to my ear and whisper, “spsh spsh spsh” and she would laugh hysterically.  So I just kept doing it because she thought it was pretty funny.  Later I gave her the horse and she put it up to my ear and sort of “spsh spsh spsh”ed.  That really cracked me up, that she copied that part!  I didn’t even really realize I was doing that.  Now in retrospect I think she wasn’t laughing at the idea that a horse was telling me secrets like I originally thought; she apparently understood much better than I knew.  She was laughing at what an idiot I was making of myself sticking a horse in my ear and making funny noises!

Evie also has two new tricks.  The first is making herself so mad that she pukes.  That is a fun one, let me tell you.  The other one is farting in the bathtub, which she is not too young to think is funny.  She gets a little devilish grin on her face and heeeeaves up her stomach and really cuts one.  Then she looks at me and laughs.  She gets good resonance out of the tub.  Sometimes she tries to lift up her legs to see the bubbles.  This is now a multi-night occurrence.

And finally, football season is finally upon us!  I’m only in one Fantasy league this year for the first time in a long time.  I think that will work out nicely though since I have less time then I’ve had in a long time.  I really get giddy with excitement when I think about the Packers on MNF!

Musings on Favre

/ Shane / 2 Comments

As a Packers’ fan and specifically a Brett Favre fan, many people have come to me for my reaction about all the things going on lately.  I don’t claim to represent every Packers’ fan, and in fact I assumed that most of them would disagree with me.  But the more I talk to them and the more informal polling I do, I find out that in fact many of them do agree with me.

Let me start by saying I think Brett Favre is absolutely qualified right now to be a starter on an NFL team.  Probably his best years are behind him, but that being said, he’s easily in the top 5 of current QBs.  Even if you only put him in the top 10, that is still better then about 2/3rds of the starting QBs.  So I was not a person that was saying he was washed up and needed to go, even before last season’s renaissance.  I am also very protective of his legacy and I sort of breathed a sigh of relief when he went out on top.

I honestly believe the Packers’ organization (or at least McCarthy) when they say that they didn’t want him to retire and that they flew down to his home after the season to try to convince him to come back and he said no.  I honestly believe that they made the best choice available to them at each juncture and tried to do the best thing they could not just for the franchise but for the fans and for Brett.  Brett says that they forced him to retire.  I don’t think that is true.  They may have forced him to make a decision, but not that decision.  And quite frankly, he’s the one who put the idea in thier heads in the first place with his talk of retiring at the end of every season for the last 4 years.  Every year the drama gets dragged out longer and longer and you just can’t wait until a week before the season starts to find out who your QB is going to be.  So yes, they forced him to make a decision one way or the other and he went with the other.

I don’t blame him for wanting to come back.  I think there are very few of us who can put ourselves in his shoes, but I’m sure everybody who retires misses it.  And they aren’t super famous with thousands of fans screaming for them every week.  I’m sure when you retire it is hard to imagine your life without something that you feel defines you as a person.  So I don’t blame him for that.  But I just can’t figure out why he can’t understand where the Packers are coming from.  They had to have a decision from him and then having that decision they made all the necessary arrangements to carry on without him.  He doesn’t seem to remember that he works for them, not the other way around.

When he announced that he was coming back, it seemed like a nightmare scenario.  There was no good way out of it for the Packers.  He set himself up so he couldn’t back down, which meant he was definitely going to play somewhere.  It would have been hard for them to welcome him back as the starter and throw away all of the preparations and plans and commitments they had made while he was away.  It would have been bad to pay him $12 million to sit the bench, although maybe they should have out of spite.  It would have set up a terrible situation for Aaron Rodgers (whom I like and think will do quite well) to be second guessed to the point that he would be unable to perform.  It would have been hard to trade Favre away because you couldn’t hope to get much for him considering the other team could only really count on one year out of him at the most, after which he may retire again.  So do you want to be the guy who traded away a superstar for a 4th rounder?  No, there really wasn’t any easy way out of the situation.

I think the Packers’ organization handled it about as well as it could possibly have been handled.  First off, they ran the risk of the fans being pissed that they traded away an icon, but they let it go on long enough and they were (at least on the surface) nice enough that all the fans are just fed up with Brett.  Second off, they got a 4th rounder that could hypothetically go all the way up to a 1st rounder based on the Jets going to the superbowl.  So it’s probably not going to be much but it’s something and it will be something even better if Favre ends up being good.  But really the main thing is that they traded him to a really sucky team!  They have practically guaranteed that Favre will look worse than Rodgers, which was really the danger of the whole situation.  Even on the Bucs (and certainly on the Vikings), Favre could have potentially shown up Rodgers.  The Packers have a really good team and especially really good receivers that will tend to make a QB look even better than he really is.  Also, everybody and his mother knows that Favre didn’t want to go to the Jets which means a) everybody knows the Packers forced him to go, meaning he lost that round and b) another thing stacked against his success since his teammates and the fans all know he didn’t want to go there.  And something tells me a New York media storm isn’t exactly like a Green Bay media storm, so he’ll have that to deal with.  So maybe the Packers did find a way to salvage the situation after all.  And to top it all off, you’ve subtly sent the message to Rodgers that you have so much confidence in him you sent BRETT FAVRE packing.  That’s got to feel pretty good.

So, to summarize, I wish it had never happened but I put most of the blame on Brett.  I think the Packers never wanted to upset him but really tried to make the best possible decisions at the time.  I think Brett has put them in a tough spot time and time again and yet they have never bad mouthed him.  Although I understand why he wants to come back and I empathize with him, I think he has lost a lot of respect and gained very little.

That is all.

Happy Birthday!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Happy Birthday Sara!

Not too many plans for her birthday. We were going to try to go out to eat, but now as it gets closer we are too nervous about Evie crying and stuff I think. So I don’t know what we’ll do.

I haven’t had much of a chance to post in here lately…we’ve been pretty exhausted. We’re still getting used to things and not sleeping as much as we are accustomed to! Nothing new to report really…he days sort of run together!

What happened since the last update? Sara’s mom stayed with us for a week and helped a lot with the cleaning, laundry, meals and dishes. She also found time to do a lot more sewing! What’s left you say? A window seat for the baby’s room, sewing the edges of tons of flanel squares for wipes, re-sewing by hand one of the curtains, and making several throw pillows.

Two Sundays ago I went to the Cubs game for a friend’s bachelor party. Well, I should say I *tried* to go. We saw 3 innings and then stayed in the rain for 2 hours before the game was canceled. There’s $80 down the drain! One friend collected up all the ticket stubs and is going to try to sell the rain checks together, so maybe we will recoup some of that. It wasn’t all bad though, it was fun hanging out with everybody and being inside Wrigley Field for the first time.

Last weekend my mom came. I was worried she would try to steal Evie when she left! 🙂 She obviously enjoyed her time with the baby and also helped with meals and dishes and helped me clean the condo from top to bottom (including bathrooms!). She also made a cake for Sara’s birthday that was delicious. I hope she has a chance to come more often but she is always so busy.

Okay, so let me clear out some items I’ve been saving up.

First off, the British military actually had to send out a press release denying that they released man eating badgers in Iraq!
UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”

Second, this is a little old. Read this article about a bank scare in the computer game Second Life. It is a very strange/scary article because if you ignore the picture it sounds like it could be happening in the real world. But it is a video game!! I don’t know, I just found it odd.

Finally, this is pretty funny. It is 2007 football standings predicted in the form of assigning a Star Wars character to each team. For example, Cleveland is likened to Jawas because “They are small, brown, and constantly trading for junk.”

Guess who’s back….back again (and again and again)

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Well, it’s official, Brett Favre is back for another season with the Packers! A lot of people will not understand, but here in Packerland (and by here in Packerland I mean here deep in enemy territory)(I guess I mean Packerland here in my head) we are very exited about this.

I don’t know any other way to explain it than 10 postseason appearances, six division titles, three NFC Championship games, two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl win.

You can say whatever you want about the decline of his playing ability, but he’s still easily better than 1/2 of the QBs starting in this league. So do you go with someone you know for sure is at *least* in the top half of QBs and at best one of the greatest of all time, or do you go with some backup who has never gotten a chance to play?

As far as the Super Bowl this weekend, gooooo Colts! I’d love to see Tony Dungy and the city of Indianapolis get a title, but more importantly I don’t think I can handle living here next year if the Bears win. On the other hand, I would enjoy living here next year if the Bears lose! 😉

Hmm

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Okay, this must be my cat in another life!  She doesn’t look that fat, but it’s only because she doesn’t have an unlimited food suply!  I can totally imagine her doing that!

In keeping with the animal theme, doesn’t this just totally creep you out???  Dogs should not walk!!

Aaaanyway, not much going on here.  Didn’t really do much for my birthday, just went out to eat.  Going to my mom’s for her birthday next weekend.  Sara’s parents are coming first week of Feb. and her sister is coming a different weekend in Feb.  Going to lunch with Dabuki tomorrow…havent seen her in awhile.  There is tons of stuff to do around here, but we just haven’t been able to get things done lately it seems like.

Great football games last weekend and this weekend!  That Colts/Ravens game was just fantastic.

Does drinking by yourself mean you are an alcoholic?  Even if it’s during the playoffs??