Season 2012 first half of the first half review (that's a quarter for those of you who can afford the change)

In an effort to provide you with even more inanely unnecessary fantasy football coverage, I am now providing my in-season game reports in quarterly fashion- that means twice as many articles for you to ignore!

Wait a second, who am I kidding?  You live for this stuff.

Week 1- I was expecting the Knights here (a Lions homer that I trounced twice last year), but with last minute division realignment I was left with a match-up against War Machine, a traditional thorn in my proverbial side.  At the end of the day, though, I apparently didn't need to spend $600 on that therapy session as the Snow Flurries ended up winning a 146-83 laugher.  I wonder if I can get a refund on all that Xanax...
What went right- 8 of 9 guys went for double digits- 3 in the 20s.  Wow.  Talk about overkill.  I mean, that escalated quickly, that really got out of hand fast.  Let me assure you that my team is not about embarrassing the opposition, and I made sure that I went over to the War Machine sideline and said I was really sorry and explained to him that this really isn't what we're about.

Then we shook hands.  Then we yelled.

Oh well.  I'm not here to make friends.  Actually that's not true.  Besides, things are so good right now that I don't even care that Dwayne Bowe only had 5 points.  Do you remember how I pretty much lamented the drafting of Gore, Ridley, Jones, and...well, everyone?  I sure don't.  This is my team.  These are my guys.  Don't you come all up in here, pissing all over our cornflakes unless you're bladder somehow secretes sweet, sweet buttermilk.  We're the Snow Flurries, and we're awesome!
What went wrong- Nothing.  I played my best guys and they had the most points.  The end.
Bonehead play- Again, nothing.  This week was pretty much the definition of fantasy perfection.  The Snow Flurries are well on their way to another season that raises the expectations just enough to thoroughly crush all hope in the playoffs.

Week 2- If week 1 was the triumphant sequel to my 2011 overture (think "Godfather II"), then week 2 was "Weekend at Bernie's 2".  And just like that, my season has started going downhill faster than an porta-potty on wheels.  Matched up against Center League newcomer Fergette, the Snow Flurries welcoming party forgets to bring a dish to pass in a 153-86 loss. 
What went right- Bowe redeems himself with a 23 point outing, and Tom Brady (barely) has 17.  My attempts to motivate Frank Gore by trashing him out-of-hand are clearly working as he has a second straight strong outing. And, um... not all of Fergettes dudes go for double digits.
What went wrong- Start with the injuries- Aaron Hernandez went out in the first quarter of his game, Matt Forte in the third.  At least Forte got hurt in Week 2 instead of late in the season like last year, so I'll have more time to find a replacement/kick myself for not securing Michael Bush as a handcuff.  Also, I mentioned that not all of Fergette's players went for double digits- merely 7 of 9.  On top of that, Victor Cruz, Reggie Bush, CJ Spiller simply went off, scoring 85 points by themselves.  Let that simmer for a minute- three players on the opposing team scored one point less than my entire team was able to muster. 
Bonehead play-Well, since I didn't have Cruz, Bush, or Spiller to sit on my bench...I'd have to say leaving Ingram riding the pine against the Carolina Panthers, who seem to have one of the worst run defenses in the history of bad run defenses.  Of course, this information really wouldn't have helped me this week- I was run out of the gym.  Still, it goes to show how little I'm really paying attention.  When has that ever come back to bite me though?

Try the very next week.

Week 3- One play.  One.  Stinking. Play.  That's it.  That's all that separated sweet, sweet victory over two-time champion Disco and a division leading 2-1 record with defeat and a 1-2 start .  One play that I didn't make, and now I'm sitting here wallowing in the misery of a 92-84 defeat.  Ah, ineptitude.  My old friend.  I really missed you.
What went right- Robbie Gould had 13 points.  My kicker.  13 points.  And really, that's about the best thing I can say for my team this week. 
What went wrong- They say confession is good for the soul, and while I'll get more in depth in the 'Bonehead Moves' part of the show, right here I'll just come out and say it: I sat Andre Brown and his 25 points.  Yeah, that really doesn't feel any better.  What really killed me though was Peyton Manning's 26 points.   Especially since he was busy sucking the first 2.5 quarters (I even saw a couple of his throws in the third quarter and it reminded me of...well, me).  I've now been beaten in successive weeks by Reggie Bush and post-neck operation Peyton.  I just don't know what else can possibly go wrong. 
Bonehead move- Long story short, I jumped off the Ryan Williams bandwagon about as quickly as I jumped on it.  He was averaging a little over a yard per carry and had two fumbles in two games.  Not exactly the stuff of legend- unless you're talking the legend of The Incompetent Duckling.  So I dropped him and picked up Brown after a nice little 7 point outing in the stead of the injured Ahmad Bradshaw.  Similar thing happened last year on the Giants with some dude named Victor Cruz.  Seemed to work out pretty well for him- and for me.

So after deftly swiping Brown off of the waiver wire right before he plays against the not-very-good Panthers D- I sit him.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe I missed the part where he was playing the Panthers.  Perhaps I was a little too enraptured by the idea of Jonathan Dwyer (whom I saw have, like, a 70ish yard run this one time).  It could have been the early season Thursday night game threw me off.  Whatever the case- I sat 25 points and started -2 points, even though I knew that Brown was going to be getting most of the carries for the Giants and Dwyer was going to be sharing carries with Isaac Redman.  I tried to beat the system, and the system destroyed me.

What really, REALLY sucks is that I can't even draw solace from my concubine league because my mom (my mom!  I freaking lost to my mom!!!) had Ray Rice and Joe Flacco, which basically doubled her point output Sunday night and turn a sure win into a definite loss.  Oh, and Ryan Williams?  He only had 9 points- 9 points which in place of the negadeuce that Dwyer dropped would have won me the game as well.  The lesson here, as always- trust a Cardinal before you trust a Steeler and your mom is better at fantasy football than you. 



After leading the league in scoring last season and getting off to that same type of start, we're falling apart.  Well, maybe 'falling apart' is too strong.  Really I'm one bad play away from being 2-1.  I can't panic when I'm one bad play away from being 2-1.  I had somebody offer a trade to take Julio Jones away from me- he offered a couple solid players, but right now is not the time for solid.  Now is the time to remember who we are, circle the wagons and remind my team that at full strength, we blew everybody else away in week 1.  And also, time to go back to the pharmacy and see if I can get some of that Xanax back. 

I feel pretty good about my team (other than Jonathan Dwyer, who I jettisoned faster than Harry Dunne on Turbo Lax I'll spare you the hyperlink.  My draft, other than the injuries and poor performances, has panned out rather nicely, led by Frank Gore who has drastically exceeded expectations (to be fair, he could have pulled a Billy Cole and still been slightly better than I was anticipating).  All I know is that it's a long season and nobody ever won a championship after the first three weeks.  Well, except for the Miami Heat.  And we all know how that turned out.

PIC: http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/images/photos/001/404/276/129390268_crop_650x440.jpg?1318892311

I came, I saw, I want to go home and rethink my life

If there was one thing that this summer taught me (in very violent, non-subtle shots to the junk), it's that there's a lot I have to do to be a better person.  Before I get too deep into the shredding of my soul, allow me to say that this isn't going to be another one of those posts where I slam my fists on the ground as I curse the sky because of my ill-begotten misfortune.  That's tomorrows post.

No, this is a post that (I hope) is one of hope.  Or, rather, the part of the show where I gently pick up the pieces of whatever remains, limp back to square one, and HEY!  WHO USED UP ALL THE GLUE????

There have been many things about me (behavior-wise) that have needed to change for...well, for a long time.  And not just your every-January-1st-type of changes.  I'm talking changes that last.  Change that is actually change.  So naturally, I've made some "New Years" resolutions.  But these aren't your grandparents New Years resolutions- these are like, New Years resolutions on HGH.  Resolutions that are chock full of vitamins, nutrients, testosterone, and electrolytes.  Electrolytes!  In short, resolutions with resolve.

My thought is this- New Years resolutions don't often take because, in addition to being driven primarily by a singular calendar date (and the post-holiday guilt), there's often (in my experience, anyways) no real light at the end of the tunnel.  What I mean is that you set your resolutions and unless you're meticulously organized (like I'm not), you probably just throw out some goals with good intentions and then a few months later, with no finish line in sight...you give up.  You start eating like an elephant again.  You light up one more time.  You realize that you can't possibly sustain waking up at 5 a.m. to go to the gym forever. 

That's why I'm doing it a little different.  That's why I'm borrowing from the idea of the fiscal year (or as I'm calling it- Physcal year.  Clever, no?), which is more flexible and arbitrary (in my case, September 1st to August 31st).  Plus, the real draw of the Physcal year set-up is the idea of quarters (three-month increments of analysis).  Oh sure, you can take a calendar year and make it into quarters as well.  But I find that fiscal years seem better suited for that. 

In a nutshell, then, I've basically just tried a poor attempt to trick my mind into making some lifestyle changes and justified it by saying that I'll be evaluating my progress in three month increments.  Sounds reasonableish.  But what sort of changes are we talking about here?

First off, I should just throw this out there- I'm a big dude.  Big, as in, I weight too much.  I'm probably packing a good 80-100 pounds more than my frame was built for.  But this isn't about that.  That is, my lifestyle change is not about losing weight.  It's about just what I said it is- a lifestyle change. However, if I can do this- grab ahold of the vision, put in the effort, and make myself move forward, then the weight loss will happen.  I'll feel better about myself- not just how I look, but how I feel.  

This whole train of thought has a few different genesisess (um, what's the plural on that?).  Obviously the whole 'I hate feeling/looking fat' thing.  There's my buddy Jeff, who implemented a similar deal in his own life and has lost over 50 lbs.  Then there's my wife, who took a healthy-living class on-line this summer, which got me thinking about my own health and mortality and stuff.  Top it off with a summer of basically holding the couch down and falling short of everything I tried to achieve, and presto!  The seeds for the revolution are planted.

And so, out of those seeds was born this possibly-convoluted-perhaps-too-ambitious "plan" (if you can call it that) to recreate Jason Parks.  Basically I came up with some areas that I would like to see change in.  Then I decided to whittle the list down to just a few things (at least in the beginning; the others I'm pushing off until I can demonstrate some sustained success).  Here is the first three things I want to take control of in my life:

1. Walk 1 mile per day/4 times per week.  Any time I attempt to exert myself physically, it's blatantly obvious that I'm in terrible shape.  Now I'd love to be running- wait a second...let me rephrase that- I want to get to a place where I'd love to be running, but I've tried to start up with that before and just got discouraged.  So my thought is that walking can have many similar positive results (and even more positive in some ways) without the exertion level.  After all, I can build up to the whole 'running' thing, but doing something is much, much better than doing nothing.
2. Seconds 2X per week.  More than the exercise, the biggest reason I'm overweight is that I lack simple impulse control when it comes to food.  I'm a grown man.  I generally know what my body wants.  If my body is tired, I take a nap.  If my body needs to eliminate waste, I do it.  Like a boss.  If my body is about to burst because of all the food I've been shoving down my piehole, I shove more food down my piehole.  Which, oops, is not what you're supposed to do.  The frustrating thing is that I know I'm not doing it because I'm hungry- I'm doing it because that food is so doggone good!  So while eventually I want to be able to limit myself to just what my body tells me it wants, in the beginning I am going to allow myself some room to get used to the idea of cutting myself off.
3. 40 minutes per day on the Internet.   Admittedly this will be the hardest one to implement.  Ever since I got my first lap-top with WiFi, me and my computer have been attached at the...well, lap.  And admittedly, it hasn't all been bad.  I've read some things, wrote some things, watched some things, and listened to some things.  But lately (and by 'lately', I mean 'a lot this summer') I found myself cycling through the same mind-numbing routine of the same 4 or 5 websites, not really staying long at any of them, basically just refreshing them to see that nothing new had been posted in the last five seconds.  Clearly, I have an unhealthy attachment to my computer, and a need to get back to "uploading" more quality information into my brain so that I can put out more quality blogs.  Which, really, is what it's all about for me.

Bringing it back to the fiscality of this project, I plan to keep weekly data on how I'm doing with my goals, and then, at the end of each 'quarter' provide an assessment, see how I'm doing, and make any necessary adjustments.  If I am able to make all of my goals in a quarter, a special treat will be provided- whether it be a movie, book, video game, Heroclix figure, going out to a favorite restaurant (particulars to be worked out).

Some things I'd like to look at adding to the list more long term are:
Soda pop 2X per week (and eventually cutting it out)
Pushups/Situps 3X per week (with the longer term goal of getting a gym membership and really working on this bod)
Desert 2X per week (which isn't a bad number...maybe down to once a week)
Read one book per month (at least)


One of the other reasons I have found New Years resolutions to fall short is the lack of perspective.  When you change something to treat a symptom (i.e., weight loss) and the weight isn't getting lost very quickly, discouragement can set in and despair can take over.  So rather than sprint to where I'd like to be as a person, I'm approaching this as a marathon.  I want to cultivate a self-sustaining healthy lifestyle, where I can do these things without thinking about them, much like I can drift through my days now without putting much (if any) thought into the destruction I am wreaking upon myself.  It'll be a long, hard journey- but hey, that's life.  And I've been a death-stick dealer for too long.  It's time to start living.