State Of The State

We got back into Portugal this morning, and I’m fighting some jet-lag after not sleeping on the plane. Caved for a three-hour nap this afternoon, thinking I’ll be able to go to sleep at midnight, but we’ll see. It’s always a risk when you don’t power all the way through.

I’ve realized over the years I prefer watching sports on Western European Time (WET)… hold on, that’s Heather, walking Oscar, texting me that the pope’s motorcade is passing by our balcony…

That’s the pope’s white car, and Oscar getting up close. You can make out the white robe in the front passenger seat below in the picture from the balcony.

Sometimes life is just bizarre. (We’re not Catholic, but Oscar might be, as we’ve never discussed his religious beliefs one way or the other.) I’ll chalk it up as a good omen, just like the double rainbow we saw during our last evening in Boulder. (You can’t see the double that well in the full picture, but I caught in a smaller one.)

In any event, I prefer WET for sports viewing for a couple reasons. On Sundays, you have all day (until 6 pm) before the NFL games start, and I can watch (and write up) the three night games — Sunday, Monday and Thursday — after watching the 40-minute edited versions the following morning. That saves me eight hours per week (10.5 minus the two it takes me to watch the condensed versions) that people who watch in real time squander, and allows me to have a life on Sundays rather than wasting beautful day after beautiful day, as I was forced to do when I lived in LA.

Moreover, baseball doesn’t start until midnight most nights, so in the days when I set my own lineups, I had plenty of time to see who was playing and didn’t have to squeeze it in during dinner (or the middle of the day.) But as I’ve mentioned before, outsourcing my moves was unquestionably the right move, and the games could start at 4 am for all I care now.

The late starts here also mean I go to sleep before knowing what happened in the games and wake up to a Christmas morning of unchecked boxscores every day. And what I found in my stocking this morning was good:

(We were actually tied for first, but I didn’t get the screen shot because I was in the immigration line, and now we’re one point out after the early games today.) We’re in good shape after a monster night from our pitchers (four wins, 25Ks.)

The other teams are treading water, middle of the pack. I hope at least one of them catches fire the last two months — there’s still plenty of time to make a move.

. . .

My NFL teams are getting some positive buzz early. Jameson Williams, Elijah Moore, Michael Thomas, Devon Achane, Aaron Rodgers, Zay Flowers, Anthony Richardson and especially Bijan Robinson seem to be doing well in camp. And I feel like I dodged a bullet, passing on Cooper Kupp at pick 9 for Robinson in my first draft. Saquon Barkley who I took is in, Jonathan Taylor, on whom I passed, is out, and Calvin Ridley seems to have shaken off his minor toe injury from yesterday’s practice.

The only real negative so far is Kenneth Walker, who is week to week with a groin injury. That wouldn’t be a huge deal except he’s my top RB in BCL2.