I don’t think I posted anything all December. I
could easily check the dates on that, but I am currently at work and
therefore am not supposed to be going online, therefore, I will be
writing a post for my blog instead. Productive? I guess
so, in a way, but not really.
It is now January 2nd, 2013. I have
another 28 days to continue to write ‘2012’ on forms for the year before
recognizing my mistake, crossing it out, and correcting it, but I only
have another 5 days to write in ‘12’ for the
month with leniency. The days are going to be getting longer, the
weather should start to improve, and I have a lot of work to do. I have
high hopes for this year. I am really hoping to be better in oh so many
ways, many of which I will not be telling the
masses because I think that many of you have already read 8 such blogs
so far today and will read another 15 by the time you decide you are fed
up with Resolution Posting, 2012… uh, I mean 2013. So, let us take a
different train of thought for a ride.
Country music. I have never been one to like it,
but dang it all it is catchy. You hear a country song and it can stick
with you for years. I once heard a song probably titled ‘Letters from
Home’ while I was a teenager. I was in a car with
a former MP; an intimidating man standing nearly six and a half feet
tall, weighing 23 stone, and driving a very large pickup truck. He was a
very nice man, a friend of my dad’s, and also owned numerous guns. Oh,
and he listened to country. It was while driving
home from church with him that this song came on the radio, and 8 years
later I can still hum it in my head. So, when I was on my mission and
one of my Zone Leaders had a country CD, and it was one of the few
approved CDs that we had, so it was played very
often. Weeeeeeeell, it got stuck in my head. When I left the field on
mid October, my Zone Leader gave me the CD. Much to my chagrin, I
listened to it. Multiple times. And still listen to it. It’s addictive. I
know most of the words to many of the songs. “Ol’
Red,” “John Deere Green,” and “Dirt Road Anthem” play through my head
rather often now, though the tracks we listened to in the field most
were country adaptations of hymns and religious songs found in “Oh
Brother where art Thou?”. But still, bloody country
is all up in my head!
What I find to be a brighter note is that I am
somewhat expanding my reading horizons. My brother has a great deal of
time to read. He is stuck in a hospital hours upon hours a day and
doesn’t want anything to do with much of what goes
on around him if he doesn’t have to, so he does two main things with
his time; plays Words with Friends, and reads between turns on Words
with Friends. He has found a few new series of books and gave some of
them to me for Christmas. I am now reading a book
called “The Name of the Wind,” I think. I am only about 10 pages in, so
forgive me my ignorance as to what it is about or even if the title is
correct, but it comes very highly recommended by most of my family, so I
give it a go.
I have also taken up being an imposter; I have
posed as a dancer, a singer, and an athlete. In other words I have
played Disney Sing it, Glee Sing It, Just Dance 3, and also I am back to
playing Madden 08. I was okay at the Karaoke games,
but I was surprisingly good at Just Dance, but I had a flashback to
when I was at dinner with my Ward Mission Leader back in Lodi and his
kids had the demo version of the game. The only songs they had were
“California Girls” and “Dynomite” which played constantly
from the living room. Good times.
I also believe that Madden 08 is the best version
that I have played thus far, and I have played ‘99 through ’12. My
favorite thing to do is find the best players for the price at each
position (Shawn Merriman, Tommie Harris, Patrick Willis,
Frank Gore, Vernon Davis, Steve Smith, Jason Campbell, Kevin Schaffer,
Deon Hall, Reggie Nelson, Nick Mangold, just to name a few), trade for
them, and then proceed to see them hold out and demand massive
contracts, or wait until their contract ends and ask
for a ridiculous sum of money. It just isn’t worth it, though. It is
also strange to see marquee players sit in free agency because eams
can’t afford to pay them what they want. Marc Bulger (rated 94 or so in
that game) is on a one year, $4 million contract
to start the game. At the end of the first season, he becomes a free
agent. He typically goes for about 5 years, $70 million. Many teams just
can’t pay that, so he sits, waiting. Same thing with Julius Peppers.
His contract expires at the end of the first
season and we see him demand a substantial pay raise. If the teams
can’t afford him, there he sits. I have seen a free agent pool with 10
players ranked 90 or more. Most teams are lucky to have 6 guys rated
90+, so there is, theoretically, a playoff team made
up entirely of players that remain without a job. I think this is a
very cool feature. I find it more within bounds of how the business side
of football should behave. In the NFL that we see today, teams simply
cut players, or restructure contracts, or pay
front or back heavy deals to absorb a big hit to the cap now or push it
off to the future. The way the game is structured, you can’t do that,
so you end up not being able to acquire top tier talent because you made
a bad couple moves by signing less than dominant
players to huge deals, or those back heavy deals are now being played
out by players far past their prime, but they are still making 8, 10,
12, 15 million dollars because they had 14 sacks when they were 26, or
15 touchdown catches, then tore their ACL 4 times.
By playing within the structures of the game, I find I have to plan for
five seasons down the road as much as I have to plan for winning now.
It’s cool to me.
Well, I wrote far more on that subject than I
thought I would, and I believe this is as good a place as any to stop. I
had a fabulous time with family and friends last month, and look
forward to good times to come. Happy New Year, and may
the odds be ever in your favor… gosh, I’m a nerd.
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