Hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Mine had its ups and downs. Among the highlights/lowlights:
- Had our traditional Thanksgiving dinner with the family. As I have explained in past years, "Traditional Thanksgiving dinner" for the Chen family doesn't mean turkey, yams, cornbread, and cranberry sauce. It means slices of raw meat, fish balls, squid, shrimp, bok choy, rice noodles, golden mushrooms and more, all cooked in a boiling pot in front of you and then dipped in a mixture of raw eggs and Chinese barbeque sauce. The almighty Hot Pot. I'm lovin it.
- Got to hang with 2 of my favorite people who moved away but were back in town for the weekend, Vic and P. It was only for a couple hours at Ontourage, not exactly my favorite place, but still a treat. Also good to see the rest of you guys who were out that night too, of course. I finally took some pictures too:
- Watched the Incredibles. Good movie, I recommend it. Stories about superheroes are just cool. I can admit it, after watching X-Men I went home and pretended that I had superpowers too. Also, it seems to me that these Pixar movies in general are a cut above the other animated movies coming out these days. Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and now the Incredibles are all much better movies than the other two I saw recently, Shrek 2 and Shark Tale.
- Played some football, in a field composed entirely of snow and mud. It was messy but fun.
- Fantasy football was definitely not fun. Brace yourselves for my long sob story. It was probably the most miserable week I have ever had in fantasy sports (and I have had my share of bad weeks).
Coming into the week I was tied for 4th place, a game out of being tied for first, and facing Dan's team (one of the first place teams) with only 5 weeks left. In other words, it was pretty much a must win if I wanted to have any shot of contending for this year's title. So during every spare moment I had this week, I was looking up stats and reading up on the matchups, agonizing over how the weekend would unfold. By the time games started on Thursday, I could probably tell you every last detail about every player on my team or Dan's team, all the info on every opposing team they were going against, and every player I considered picking up.
Well, I ended up losing a close one. My team did pretty well, but as has been the story for me all year in McNown league, the other team scored more than it should have, and handed me yet another heartbreaking loss. Maybe at the end of the season I will write a recap of this year's results, and break down the numbers to show the different ways that fantasy football was horrible to me in 2004.
In the end, I watched about 15 hours of football games between Thursday and Sunday, filled with plenty of back and forth moments between my team and Dan's that kept me hooked to the computer or TV up through the very last seconds of the Sunday night game. As I watched Jason Elam line up for a last minute field goal yesterday in bed, my count of the scoring had me trailing Dan by 2, which meant that I would have won our matchup if he made it. Of course, the field goal was blocked, giving me a -1 instead of +3 and making me very very sad.
As it turns out, I woke up this morning to find that Yahoo scoring had me losing by 5, which means I would have lost even if Elam made that field goal. In hindsight, I guess it's somewhat more comforting than losing by 1 or 2. But that didn't keep me from tossing and turning in my bed all night, torturing myself by thinking about all the little things that might have cost me the game (and the rest of the season along with it). Not just the blocked FG, but Aaron Brooks throwing an interception on the last play of his game (not even a Hail Mary, it was picked at the 20 yard line), Patrick Kerney getting a sack nullified by a teammate's penalty, NFL.com crediting one of Reuben Droughns's two fumbles to Jake Plummer, Lelie setting up a Droughns TD by falling down at the 2 yard line, and worst of all, Willis McGahee dropping 4 touchdowns on me.
FOUR TOUCHDOWNS BY WILLIS MCGAHEE.... so maddening. I hate him and the Bills and the Seahawks so much after this game. For years, the Bills have been the biggest pansies when it comes to taking chances, yet all of a sudden they're:
1. Onside kicking to start the second half despite being ahead by 2 TDs, and
2. Passing up on a reasonable field goal to go for it on 4th down, despite being up by 3 TDs in the fourth quarter (!!)
And the Seahawks, could this team possibly be more inconsistent and overrated? To think people were picking them to win the Superbowl in the preseason, and talking about it being Matt Hasselbeck's breakout year. They're all colossal wastes of space if you ask me. As I look back at the situation, if McGahee would have "only" scored 3 TDs instead of 4, I would have won this week. I better stop thinking about it before it drives me more insane.
By the way, Happy Bday to Dan if you read this. Seriously, fantasy football aside, I hope your birthday was a good one.
- It wasn't all bad in sports this weekend though. Saturday's Illini game was a real treat to watch, as we crushed Gonzaga in our first game against a ranked team this year. Obviously we're not gonna continue to shoot these ungodly percentages the whole year, but even so, this team looks pretty damn good right now.
Needless to say, this Wednesday's game coming up against Wake Forest is gonna be huge, much bigger than any game at Assembly Hall back when I was still in school. I was looking up ticket prices a couple weeks ago and they were ridiculous, like 188 each for C-level seats and 488 each on B-level.
I guess it makes sense though - honestly, as a sports fan around here these days, what is there to get excited about other than the Illini? A month into the NBA season, the Bulls are 1-9. Meanwhile, the Bears just signed Jeff George for some inexplicable reason. Neither team has been any good for years now, and don't figure to be good anytime soon either. Illini football just fired their coach after yet another horrible season. That program hasn't been good either, since the time we had, well, Jeff George. Ok, maybe not that long ago, but it's definitely been a while.
