Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006 by Gene

Longest. Week. Ever.
All right, maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, the week of March 18th was longer. And the week after that, when I had to go back to work again, was pretty long too. But, and this is important, I could still smoke in both of those weeks.

There's always someone you forget
Keep this in mind: there's always someone you forget or neglect to give bad news to. I didn't get a chance to tell Stratos about dad's sudden demise until two weeks after the event, and then I felt terrible for having not found a way to tell him sooner.

Who's Stratos? The pizza guy. Honest. He owns the pizza place we'd been frequenting since 1978. Apparently dad went in there two or three times a week. I knew they knew one another, but I didn't really realize how friendly they were. Stratos was, of course, utterly devastated. "You could have called me," he said. I probably could have, but I didn't think he'd know me if he wasn't looking at me, and we just never found time to stop by.

Anyway. That was fun.

Don't you hate those guys who blog constantly about their brackets and their fantasy teams?
Fucking Oakland.

Okay, okay, here's the thing: ESPN.com has a free fantasy baseball contest thingie, where the challenge is to fill your team with the best performers on any given day, while staying below the given salary range. You're rewarded for hanging onto good players (their value might go up but not their cost to you unless you drop them) and also for picking well from day to day. With David Wells pitching for the Sox last night I went for the safest pitching staff I could find, which was Oakland, which got shelled. I went from being in the 94th percentile in the game to somewhere in the high 80's in one night. Should've picked the Mets.