The Long, Long Weekend

Yes, I'm playing catch-up after the fact. You'll see why in a moment.

This past Saturday was the Big Day - our 2005 fantasy baseball draft. I'd been preparing for it for quite a while, and it consumed most of my free time the week before the draft. Hence, no entries. Plus, as the commissioner of the league, I was doing a lot of the logistical coordination for the draft, including going to the house of the member who was hosting it - who hadn't hosted a draft before - to make sure the venue looked good, we could get the network connection working, etc. It was a fair bit of work, all concerned.

I went over to his house a little after 10, and other folks trickled in over the next hour. Alas, Subrata was a bit late, so we were slow to get started as he had the master draft sheets which we had to tape up on the wall. On top of that, two or three members were slow to get on-line for the draft, and we ended up starting 30 minutes behind schedule, at about 11:30 am.

From there, things were fairly smoothly, and several people seemed pleased that we were done in 10 hours - our longest draft yet, but we made some rules changes in the off-season which resulted in more players being picked. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and had a variety of munchies, which all went pretty well. I got a little too caffeinated up, with four Diet Pepsis during the day. I shoulda switched to plain water. But we finally collapsed in a heap and were ready for a new season.

I got home about 10 pm, having helped with the tear-down and moving the furniture back. Not bad, all-in-all. You can follow the link above to see who I ended up drafting.

The draft was bookended with some good stuff and some bad stuff.

The good stuff was a pre-wedding dinner for Subrata and his fiancee Susan, at Buca di Beppo, on Friday night. Good food and good company. Only three weeks until their big day.

The bad stuff was that either the massive food on Friday and the more food on Saturday didn't sit well, or else I ate something not quite right on Saturday, because I woke up early Sunday morning with an upset tummy, and spent the day with the symptoms of mild food poisoning. It wasn't nearly as bad as last time, but it was bad enough that I didn't want to move around, and spent part of the afternoon taking a nap. And certainly it torpedoed my plans to, say, buy and plant flowers for my garden. Bummer.

I did get to watch the Red Sox/Yankees opener for baseball season, which would have been better if the Yankees hadn't just crushed the World Champion Red Sox like so much dried catnip. Oh, well. I'm not very optimistic about the Sox' chances this year, but since we ("we"?) won it all last year it doesn't really matter. I'm still enjoying the 2004 victory.

I felt better today and went to work. I got some Jamba Juice for breakfast, and discovered the yummy pre-made sandwiches at the Apple cafeteria. Mmm. Them's good eating! Still a little wobbly, though.

It was a bittersweet weekend. But as much as I enjoyed the draft, I'm glad to be past it, so I can turn my attention to other things. It's been taking up too much of my time.