25 January 1998: The Great Prognosticator

Sunday, 25 January 1998:

The Great Prognosticator

Gee, groundhog day's still a week away and already I'm upstaging the little tyke.

I refer, of course, to my NFL Playoff picks, in which I was nearly the only person in the nation (outside of Colorado) to pick the Denver Broncos to win the Super Bowl. In fact, of the 11 games we had to pick results for before the playoff schedule even began, I got ten of them. And this by a guy who watched maybe half of one NFL game all regular season.

Yes, I did sit down and watch the Super Bowl today. As with last year, when I watched it because of the presence of the New England Patriots, I pulled out my old issues of Baseball Weekly and clipped articles to save. Out of over a year's worth of issues (from early 1996 to early 1997) I saved maybe one issue's worth of paper. I've got a nice stack of good articles from the last five years, without having to save all those issues.

It was a good game, as football games go. I guess the last five or six (or more) games have not been close, but this one was a squeaker all the way. And best of all, it ended as a football game should end: Not with one team desperately trying to beat the clock by making a final drive to tie (or win) the game, but with one team (the Packers, in this case) playing from behind, making their final drive, with all the time in the world to get to the end zone, and the defense just stops them from getting there.

Real sports don't have clocks; winning and losing should be decided on whether you can score your runs, or your opponent can stop you, not because you run out of time.

Yesterday I went shopping, hitting Frugal Muse Books, a great used book store which is having a big sale this week (they're reducing inventory, so it might last longer than that). I picked up a cheap copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations from about five years ago, plus the Special Edition of the Star Wars trilogy on tape. I ran some other errands, too, mainly buying bread at Clasen's Bakery in Middleton; yummmm!

And then I had to go into work to finish that last-minute project. It took me five hours, but I knuckled under and got it done, and did I think a little better job than I'd thought possible at this late date. It's not pretty, but it should get the job done.

I spent a lot of time on the computer today, catching up on my e-mail (of which I had a lot), and organizing my hard disk to do a backup, which I did tonight. I'm going to try to do weekly backups, and I think I'm going to keep one set on my office at work (perhaps I'll get a lockable box of some sort) and one set at home, and switch them each week. If I can get into a rhythm, so to speak, then I don't think it will be a big deal. Mostly I just back everything up on Zip disks.

I also cleaned up the apartment, and boxed up some stuff to put in my storage locker, thus freeing up some shelf space on my bookcases (much-needed, naturally). All-in-all this has to be considered a successful weekend.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)