But it's just a sweet, sweet fantasy baby...

It's the end of week four of the 2008 football season and we've secured our first win in our fantasy league, The Battle of Gotham City.

Yay!

I'm not gonna lie... I don't like losing - who does, really?

But I'm certainly still on a learning curve with this whole fantasy thing. I enjoy playing - especially because we're in a league with old friends form high school. So even though it can get a little heated and competitive sometimes, in the end it's all love.

And money.

Annnnnd of course, bragging rights.

So I'm learning.

This week I learned that I could drop players from the roster and pick up free agents! I know - it's ridiculous how obvious it seems, and even more ridiculous that I didn't know that. To be quite honest, last time we played fantasy (two seasons ago) we ended up with a kickass team and placed second in the league.

Didn't need too much adjustment to that team. So I didn't bother learning what to do in case of injury. Or suspension.

But as I mentioned in a previous post, the luck of the draw (or rather, the draft) wasn't working for us this time, and we found ourselves in a sorry situation with our players.

Brady. Plax. TO. Shockey. Doesn't seem too bad on paper, but the reality of the season proves that real games aren't won or lost on a single player, and generally, neither are fantasy match-ups. So when you factor in Brady's ACL injury, or Plax's attitude... TO's slippery fingers or Shockey's hernia... you realise that we've got some work to do!

And thanks to Isaac's advice, I continue to learn and hopefully build our team for the remainder of the season.

And for the record, Favre - originally our backup QB - had a career high game this week, throwing six (6? who does that?) touchdowns against the Cardinals. Wow! If he can keep that up for the rest of the season it'll be smooth sailing from here on in...

Realistically speaking though, we probably have a couple more adjustments to make to the team and I'm looking forward to an exciting and chair-gripping football season.. especially if my Falcs (God help them) can develop a winning streak ;)

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!

25.

Quarter Century.

Dos Cinco, even. (If you're a relative of Chad Ocho Cinco)

Whatever you want to call it, I seem to be one of few in my entourage who are excited about, and looking forward to turning 25.

Being that my birthday is so late in the year, many of my friends have already been there, done that. Some had small outings or get-togethers. But many have passed unnoticed, like any other day of the year.

Now maybe it's because I've always been a big celebrator of birthdays, or maybe it's because I feel like it's the beginning of the rest of my life... but whatever it is, I say 25 BRING IT ON! I've been looking forward to this one since I turned 24, and although I'm no longer able to do the seven day long celebration that I intended, I'm still planning to go three days strong for the big 2-5.

25 signifies the beginning of something new - finishing school, moving out for good, starting a new career and embarking on "real" adulthood. I don't know about you, but all of that is pretty damn exciting to me!

Some people call it getting old, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm just getting started!

Let me take you down, I really wanna take you down...

All sexual references aside, this should be Bernard Pollard's theme song for the season.

I'm not a Pats fan. Anyone who knows me should know this about me.

Tom Brady, however, was supposed to be my knight in shining armour for this fantasy season. It felt good to have him, especially after an unforeseen mishap on draft day that left me on autodraft while my league-mates live drafted. It wasn't pretty folks.

But Tom Brady is. Very pretty.

He's also very injured.
Very torn ACL.
Very needs surgery.
Very out for the season.

But mon dieu, the man is pretty.

And thank God Favre is my backup... it's a pretty good deal as far as backup QBs go, and I'm thankful for that.

I decided to blog this a couple of days after the fact because I've calmed down quite a bit since Sunday afternoon. My initial reaction was: Brady's a bitch, hurry up and get back on the field... 3 points? Following this was any combination of: Effing Brady!; seriously?; you have to be kidding me!; He did this to spite me!

And the list goes on.

And then I heard talk of "ACL". Anyone who has ever played, or even watched a sport in their life knows that when talk of an ACL injury looms in the air, it's never a good thing.

First the depression set in: Man, this was supposed to be the good good.

Next, the reality: Okay, so for next week we'll have to switch in Favre... too bad he was on the bench this week just racking up the points that I can't use.

Finally, the human element: Shit. Tom Brady has a season ending ACL injury. That's actually sad, because he's a great athlete and this may have a lasting effect on his career.

It took me a couple of days, but I finally made it back around.

While many celebrate the accomplishment of Pollard's big take down, I mourn my fantasy team leader, and a damn sexy personification of athleticism!

If there's a camera up in here, throw that right on up to YouTube...

Clearly, these days it's all about being tech-savvy.

For me, it started with AOL messenger back in the day (remember that?) From there it's been a spiral (up, down or however you like it) into ICQ, MSN, Hi5, Facebook, YouTube and the list goes on...

Whatever your social network of choice, it's inevitable. Resistance is futile my friends.

Granted, not everyone will engage in everything. I've never taken to the concept of Second Life, and I was never a huge fan of Hi5. Hell, I created two myspace pages, but neither were for my own use.

I've been hearing about twitter for a few months now. Some classmates and I wrote an article on social and new media, and I first came across Twitter when I interviewed new media guru David Weinberger. He mentioned it in passing, and for the first time in my cyber life, I was at a loss: I actually had no idea what he was talking about. I made a mental note to myself to "google" (this qualifies as a valid verb in my books) it.

Fast forward a few months, and while I did make good on my mental note, I still hadn't pursued becoming a "tweet" (someone who Twitters) any further. Until today.

My dad sent me a text message (he does it fairly often... who would have thought?) asking me to call him. I find this ironic. Annnnnd... we're back. What he wanted was to find out how to do something on twitter. That sparked something in me - my dad was on twitter and I wasn't. In addition, I had to sign up for an account in order to find out what he wanted, so I went for it.

Username: lbholder

I updated my status, and played around with it a bit: reading the "about us", and checking out the official Twitter blog. By far, my favourite feature of this hidden gem is the option to text. That's right kiddos - you can text (with no extra charges) your status updates right to your page... how cool is that?

Facebook needs to jump on that one.

In closing, twitter will, at least momentarily, be my new muse. I hope it has the balls to keep me entertained!