Pre-Weekend Report

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

Getting ready for another split personality weekend.  Saturday: busy with lots of plans, Sunday: relaxed no plans.  Happy with my training progress, and being honest about the weight.  Looking forward to actually teaching James to play a new game this weekend.  Of course football is on tap, but not sure how much time it will get 100% of my attention, if any.

Family

Soccer Saturday, only 2 games with Daniel getting a bye, and a big gap of time between.  Which works out well because I can then plan to use the time in between to do some shopping and then cleaning in preparation for hosting a party for Connie.  Which will end up filling out the rest of the day.

Sunday on the other hand is still totally empty of any commitments.  So, other than watching some football off and on I should be able to get in some painting, and possible even take some time to teach James to play Warzone.

Training

Had my relaxed workout today.  After 2 weeks of this new program I am pleased with it.  It feels like I am actually accomplishing something, and making some kind of progress towards a goal, instead of just seeing how long and far I can run, without any kind of direction. 

Deciding to accept where I am weight wise, and stop stressing about not breaking through the current plateau.  I have been hovering in the 177 to 179 range for a good couple of months now.  And I have to be honest, I don't have the motivation to do the constant day to day, meal to meal calorie counting I would need to do to really push below that number.  The reality is I have made huge progress from a year ago, and I am happy to be under 180 by my 44th birthday.  So I will keep up the running, because I have come to really enjoy that, plus it is actually interesting and challenging to try building up what I can do.  Now I can hope that once I start really increasing what I can do there's a good chance that weight does come down, but I can't beat myself up if it doesn't.

Miniatures

Trying to maintain the painting momentum, but really need to spring for those glasses ASAP, because if I try painting in the evening, when my eyes are already tired, I wear out real quick.  But it's fun to do that painting. 

So the figures I am focusing on are for the game Warzone.  This was one of my favorite Table Top miniature games.  I began playing it when it first came out, and remained one of the few reliable torch bearers for the game as it gradually died in popularity.  One of the problems with it was that it went through 3 rules sets, and there were real problems with each.  The first was a terribly unbalanced game, it was probably the most fun to play, but if you picked certain armies you could very easily make yourself a nearly unbeatable force.  The second set of rules was more balanced, but then it suffered from the Games Workshop army book syndrome.  Each new army was tougher than the previous ones.  And this was made even worse by the parent company going belly up before all of the books were produced.  A secondary publisher came out with a third rules set, which was really a work of love by a couple of fans of the game.  I was not a fan of the people who wrote that set at the time it came out.  So I was not unbiased in my analysis of the rules. 

But, after spending some time tinkering with the first set and really seeing again how unbalanced they were I realized that it might not be the best thing to teach James those rules.  So I decided to pull out that copy of Ultimate Warzone again and look at it with a less biased eye.  And to be honest it is a more comprehensive, and simpler overall rules set.  And the different army lists are all self contained and balanced.  I will look at it more closely and use this set to teach James, and assuming I don't run into any major problems this will be the set I use moving forward.

Football

So I guess I should do a quick analysis of the upcoming games for my proclaimed teams, here it goes:

Colorado Buffaloes

It's their first home game.  But they are following up against a deceptively solid team in Hawaii, and following a serious beat down last week.  I'm gonna have to say this is the game that really tells us where the team is at, and more importantly do they really want to keep playing for Coach Hawkins.  If they come out flat, or sloppy, and lose this one Hawkins needs to pick up his phone and call his realtor, cause that would be the end for him.  Do I know what will happen? No, I have no idea, this is one of the most frustrating parts of the Hawkins era, just when you think you know what sort of team will show up, they do the exact opposite.

Ole Miss Rebels

First SEC game, we will have a clearer picture of where this team stands.  It's been a crazy season already, and who knows where they really stand.  I don't blame the coach here as much as they clearly lost more to graduation than people thought.  They should, on paper, beat Vanderbilt, but that doesn't mean much this year.

Denver Broncos

Bounce back game?  I think so, they were close to winning the first game, on the road, against a team that didn't make any mistakes.  So, if they can be the team that plays mistake free football, and combine that with the home field, I think they should win handily. 

St. Louis Rams

Road game, but in Oakland they are playing a team they can beat, it's not like they are on the road against the Saints.  NO guarantee obviously, this team was 1-15 last year for a reason, but the potential is definitely there for a road win.