Santa is Orthodox?

Well my secret Santa arrived and I was surprised to see the note of a Merry Orthodox Christmas. I was puzzled at first not knowing what the difference in Christmas celebrations would be from our Christian brothers and sisters to the east. And while I pondered this, I realized there is no difference say for the chanting and cool hats. These are beautiful things we should adopt, except for parties. Common nothing says a good time like Ancient Greek and awesome poofy hats! Anyway I digress. The secret Santa knows me quite well and understands the three great loves of my life: tobacco, expensive alcohol, horse betting, and women. Ok that’s four. But considering that at least one of the hose cannot be sent via package (unless it comes from the Ukraine with poked holes for breathing) he decided to send me these fine cigars which I will enjoy thoroughly. May god bless this orthodox Santa!! And may I enjoy these beautiful cancer sticks with class, grace, and in a velvet smoking jacket. Merry Christmas.

Santa is a sixers fan, I knew it!

Once again the secret Santa came through with an awesome gift. The Sixers sign will be a perfect addition to either my room or office. If it makes it's way to the office it can replace the Dario (Fultz, Embiid and Simmons are on it too) poster as the only thing on the wall. It think it will probably end up in my room as it is way to nice to risk leaving behind if a quick exit is needed. The eagles towel fills a major need on my golf bag as well. I can attach it and finally have something to dry may hands with during a round.

Going to test the luck of the sixers sign tonight as it gets TV room placement next to the sixers gnome as the sixers take on the jazz.

Thank you!

Alex is the big loser, Connor has an uphill battle

Alright so I should start with the most important part first. The big loser this year is Alex. Poor, Alex had a lineup that was a bit bipolar this year in that some weeks it was the best in the league in others it just couldn't perform adequately. The performance issue struck bad in the consolation tournament as he failed to break 80 in any of the last three weeks. Now he has earned the prized named after his best friend from CUA. Adding insult to injury this year a new punishment was agreed to be added to buying drinks for either AC or the draft. This year at the draft Alex will serve as the waiter for the rest of the members present, meaning anything during the draft another owner needs a drink they only have to tell Alex, and Alex will have to stop what he is doing and get the drink for that owner. He will not be able to make a pick while a drink order is outstanding. The only good news for Alex is that a person can only have as many drinks at one time as they can hold because we don't want to waste beer even if it means making Alex work. 

Now I want to highlight some of the turning points in Alex season that got him to this point.
Draft day round 1 selection drafts the falling Leveon Bell who said he would report by week 2. Spoiler alert he never showed up all season. Week 2. Alex was offered Jamal Williams and Josh Gordon for Bell and Greg Olsen with the option to reacquire Bell if he reports before week 10 for a 9th round pick and a 4th either week 11 or 12. Alex decided he was not interested in this deal and kept Bell for the whole season as he did nothing. Week 6 was the high water point for Alex as he scored 135 and was in first place in his division based on a deal he made with Mexican demons. The demons take their pound of flesh as half of his team hits the IR over the next few weeks. Instead of treating this players like a horse with a bad leg and sending them to the glue factory he would continue to roster them for several weeks. Over the next few weeks Connor would pass him for the division lead and his dinner snapchats would stop. Alex was clearing entering fantasy football depression. In the second week of the playoffs he lost to Roger Bacon, who had forgotten his password, and over the pass 4 weeks had no sizzle to the bacon. The defeat to Roger was the last straw as Alex essentially punted the final week of the season and letting Dan off the hook by starting 2 players who had been ruled out prior to kickoff and not picking up a replacement RB. Dan grabbed Jamal Williams who could have been Alex's if he accepted the trade earlier in the season. Williams had 23 points last week. Alex will have a lot of time to reflect on this season in shame for the stupid decisions he made. The season started off so promising, with no obvious bad picks like in years past but the day to day, well week to week roster management did him in.

Now in the first half of the championship I jumped out to a large lead over Connor 135-95. This 40 point lead should be enough but if the results from week 8 repeat themselves Connor would be the winner of the league and Alex's nightmare season would be complete. Connor has some options to weigh as one of his star RBs went down with a wrist injury and the Broncos shut him down for the season. The rest of his team though looks like they are ready to play for the final week to prove a few things. On the other side of the match-up my team is pretty much set unless they announce that a player is going to be out, in which case Lamar miller or Darren Sproles would likely fill the void. The other major aspect of the finals is that I will donate to charity $5 for every point I beat Connor by, at the current 40 point gap I would have to pay out $200 to the habit for humanity chapter of Dayton. Let's see how high I can take this donation, hopefully I can completely embarrass Connor again and get the donation up to over $300. 
It's been fun this year guys, see most of you in AC in a month and oh yeah, merry christmas and hope to see some more posts of gifts!

Today I received my very useful and thoughtful Secret Santa gift, a lovely bamboo cheeseboard. I’m already thinking of all the delicious varieties of God’s greatest gifts to this earth that will grace the face of my newest, and unsurprisingly not only, piece of cheese paraphernalia. Though I don’t believe my GP or cardiologist will be pleased, this cheeseboard will get much use as I slowly spend all my “hard earned” dollars at my local cheese shop. Yes, you read that right, in my elitist northeast town we have our own specialty cheese shop where one can easily drop hundreds of dollars at a time on cheese. God Bless America, and no place else! So Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all and to all your families!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/06/26/cheese-addiction/amp/

Secret Santa: Dan Edition

Another surprisingly thoughtful gift, I received the new Mumford and sons album. It is, however, on a fucking cassette, which is useless - except to hipsters, who drive boxy cars that they paid too much for from the late eighties and early nineties that still have tape decks. I, however, am a child of “upper middle class” parents and therefore inherited an early-aughts car which is from truly the worst era of automotive head units. Neither fully analog, nor competently digital it comes from the budding era of “infotainment” and is therefore infuriating. It has neither a tape deck nor a usb connection, it has only a CD player, a confusingly located aux port, and an old-style 32-pin Apple proprietary connection located in the glovebox that does not work with my iPod Classic. What, then, am I to do with this useless, nostalgia-fueled cash grab? Appreciate it, of course, because I am not an asshole who would disparage such a thoughtful gift that clearly came from the heart, truly did tug at my overly-nostalgic heartstrings,, and also came with a digital copy.

Secret Santa

I was pleasantly surprised with how nice my Secret Santa gift was. This was a great idea.

Funny story: since my parents are moving this weekend (took possession of their new house yesterday), my mother is shipping all of her Amazon shopping to my apartment. Expecting a secret santa gift from one of you jabronis, every time I've gotten a package for the last week that I didn't order myself, I've had to call her to see if it's safe to open. Once I saw the Barstool logo, I assumed it wasn't something she purchased. So there you go - classic Ryan story without a punch line.

It's championship time

Congrats to Connor for making the championship. He was able to hold off Brendan who team suffered injury after injury. Drew disappointed for Brendan as the Saints offense could not get much going and when they did he throw a pick on 2 point conversion play. Whoops. It also looked for a few minuted that Lutz might kick his way into the championship but that was not that the case.

The other match up was Steve verse myself. Steve roster of misfit running backs was not able to overcome the one guy he cut for a backup TE earlier this season. Yes Steve, cut Chris Carson so he could pick up an injury replacement for another player, thank you Steve.

Now the two week championship between Connor and myself begins.

I am trying to be more positive and had thought of a different ways to take this post but realized that is more for the end of the season after this week. But on that note I really want to wish you luck Connor, you have a solid team and this should be a good match up between the top two seeds.

There is only one thing that I want to point out about Connor's and it is how surprising that Cook is playing this well. Jared cook is the only guy in Oakland who seems to have any success. I would never have seen that one coming, especially since all the talk coming into the season was how the guy is only ever average. Top 5 this year.

Also I think I might start a new blog for the public consumption writing about all the movies I go see. I think it will be fun and I don't expect anyone to ever read it.


On the loser bracket Dan and Alex face off. The loser is the "proud" Raffle winner. Dan went from being a favorite to make the playoffs to being the favorite to winning the Raffle. Good luck guys, as you try to make your season a wasted year instead of a terrible year.

Good luck everyone that is still playing.

Rich has a bad bad week

Alright so I wasn't going to do a recap mainly because I need laser focus with my matchup this week against Steve.

Now Steve had a good week last week scoring over 115 points but did not break the 120 point mark. Now over 115 points is normally good for the win except not against Rich who coming into the week was averaging over 120 points per week. He set the league scoring record by 4 points a game in the regular season. He had scored over 130 more times than he scored under 100 this season well Rich scored a league low 65 points. There is a saying lucky at cards unlucky at love well, to be honest I have no idea what Rich is lucky at because it is not fantasy football and it's not love or cards. I think that Rich shows that fantasy football is a fickle mistress.

So that means I take on Steve this week, which means 5 of the 7 championships face off against each other. While on the other side of the bracket 4 of the 7 runner up finishes face off against each other. Connor and Brendan have both appeared and lost in the championship twice and lost. Full disclosure I am rooting for Brendan to win the championship this year, like I was last year. No one in the league deserves it more than Brendan and it is a shame that Ryan denied him that chance two years ago.

Let's go Brendan!

Playoff time

Good season everyone, it was a pleasure and when I started the season 0-2 and than 1-2-1 I never thought I would be in the position to be the number 1 seed this year. While I still think Rich is the team to beat it is nice personally that I am the first team to have the top regular season record two seasons in a row. Thank you Brendan for blowing in the last week for the 2nd season in a row. Also in the fun part of things there was a 3 way tie for one of the divisions at 5-8. Congrats Steve for winning that mess. 

On a more positive note for the 3rd year in a row Roger finished with the worst record in the regular season. Happy Birthday Roger, hopefully you don't change anything for next year's team. 

I think next year I am going to outsource this a bit more because to be honest it not as fun for me to write, possible because making fun of you all really just loops over the prior topics and I just don't have the motivation to be creative into creating interesting intros that I feel like no one ever reads. Well only half of you read.

Now for this week.

I have a bye so I am going to go to Kansas City to enjoy some BBQ and catch a Chiefs game at Arrowhead.

Connor also has a bye, I don't think he is traveling this weekend I could be wrong 

Brendan, who was so close to getting a bye takes on Chris who team is either going to do super well go packers or super bad also go packers. who knows how that coaching change is going to go. Brendan seems to be getting a bit healthier than he was last week so that could be a scarier team to face.

Steve and Rich play again this week. Steve looking for a big week from Barkley and Allen. Lucky for him the chargers take on the Bengals who don't play defense anymore. This could be trouble for Richie and the team that should roll, oh wait, I forgot he lost his second best player last week, oh well. 

The other important topic is Atlantic City. Plan is to stay at the new Hard Rock Casino, well because Brendan loves Hard Rock. So I want to know how many people are going to show up. Plan is Jan 26th  the weekend in between the conferance championship game and the superbowl. Anyone who watns can stay at my place on friday for another fun night of board games! Please let me know if i need to book 2 or 3 rooms . 

Thanks guys