Root For The Ol’ Home Team

When it came to draft day for the EZEFFL back in August, a couple of the owners wouldn’t be available to be at the draft. Those that couldn’t make it, made arrangements for a substitute, who had their proxy to pick players. Some had elaborate matrices on who to pick for their stand-ins, while others instructed they use the pick the next best available player strategy.

One of the owners who couldn’t be there, got Donna to pick his team. They both have New Orleans in their roots, so his and her number 1 priority was the drafting of Drew Brees. Along with that, he had a couple of specific requests and a collection of pick the best available of this position in this round selections. As their luck would have it, Donna managed to make all his asked for picks. Because of this, she granted herself the unofficial title of Director of Player Development for the Swamp Rats SR team. So during the season, right after she asks me how my team is doing on Sundays she asks about them.

Fast forward to Tuesday morning of this week. After a mediocre 4-8-1 season I got hot in the playoffs and won three games in a row advancing the Purple Whales into the Championship Game. My opponent is the team with the league’s best regular season record at 10-3, the Swamp Rats SR.

When I asked Donna who would she be rooting for this coming Sunday when the Whales square off against the Rats in the Lenio Bowl for all the marbles, she replied, “I’ll let you know.”

Happy Holiday

Please accept – with no obligation, implied or implicit – my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable tradition of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your preference.

In addition, please enjoy a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2014.

Empty Christmas Wonderland

Christmas in Hopelands

Donna and I walked the 1-1/2 miles up to Hopeland Gardens to see the annual light display, but we didn’t go in. We couldn’t. Even though it was advertised as being open on the 24th, it wasn’t. I poked the camera through the fence and took the above photo of the lights that were on and the empty walkways surrounding them.

38,000 Flashing Lights

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eu3kKd9-vI

This is my first video uploaded to YouTube. Go watch it a hundred times OK? Next, I need to figure out how to add some cheesy Christmas music.

We left Hendersonville early this morning to avoid the really nasty line of storms marching their way east. For the first dozen miles or so it looked like we didn’t make it. But once we got down the hill in South Carolina the dense fog cleared and took the heavy rain with it. We drove through some light rain on and off for the middle third of the drive, but last third, while cloudy, was dry.

Just north of Greenwood the Emperor passed through the 38,000 mile mark.

A Christmas Wonderland

Christmas Lights

My brother Paul is down in Hendersonville, NC visiting with my sister and her husband for a week. Since we didn’t have any vacation left the only time we could visit was this weekend, so we drove up last night and spent the day with them. Unfortunately it has been kind of a messy rainy day, but it didn’t prevent us from our usual downtown Hendersonville shopping stroll.

After dark we drove a few miles up the road from the SMH to the same place we went the last time we were here, the Western NC Agriculture Center near the Asheville Airport. In September it was NC Mountain State Fair, but this time it was a Christmas Wonderland. Twenty bucks a carload for 20 minutes of driving around a giant circuit filled with pulsating lights while “synchronized” is piped into your car’s radio.

Would have been awesome in the Miata, but the Emperor was back in his Throne Room in Aiken and it was steadily raining with intermittent bursts of heavy stuff.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1282

The Turner Housesitting Service

When one of our engineers heads back up north to visit family this time of year he gets programmer Mark to look after his house. Mark checks the mail, waters the plants and feeds the household menagerie. Last year when Tom and family returned they found all the light bulbs in the dining room hanging fixture were pink. As a bonus he placed a pink princess nightlight in the master bedroom.

This year Mark decided to elevate the madness just a bit. The night before they returned he placed a 18″ x 24″ yard sign on the front lawn. On the inside he placed a life size poster of himself in the master bath. And if that wasn’t enough, he placed a couple of the ThinkGeek Annoy-a-trons set to cricket strategically in the kitchen and in the upstairs bonus room.

The yard sign got an mildly amusing chuckle, the poster elicited a scream from the wife and the crickets almost prompted a call to the local pest control guy.

I’m thinking between this year and next, Tom will make friends with a neighbor that he can convince to house sit for them in 2014.