My Fantasy Football teams went 2-2 for the week, better than last week but still not as good as I'd like. I'm at 21-11 for the season (6-2, 6-2, 5-3, 4-4) and am not out of contention in any of my leagues. The 4-4 team is not quite in the playoffs, but another solid win or two will put it in the playoffs. Denver lost to Green Bay tonight, which makes me unhappy. With the NBA season staring up tomorrow, I hope the Houston Rockets can find it in themselves to win some games and make up for the Broncos poor season.

I finally managed to do some painting tonight, finishing up the base skin color on all of my Moria Goblins. It's slow going, but at least I'm making progress. I'm still working on army lists for some of the other factions. I like these little 500-point warbands, as they allow enough points to have some variety in force composition, but don't have so many models that it's prohibitive to collect more than a couple of factions.

We finally saw the Transformers movie. The dialogue was awful throughout, and the Transformers looked a bit too pointy for my tastes. I realize that they were going for a certain look, but I didn't really care for it.

I have finally killed my last Warmaul Ogre and collected my last Obsidian Warbead, netting me enough reputation with various World of Warcraft factions to purchase gear from their respective vendors. In the process of killing several thousand Ogres I have also netted enough gold to buy some other fancy stuff. If you're really interested in my progress to this point you can visit my player page on the WoW Armory site. I've been killing those Ogres for several months now, and with that finished I really am at a loss as far as what to do with my game time going forward. At one point I had a list made out of all the items I wanted to get and the various attachments I wanted to put on them, but it has disappeared into the pile of lists that fill every spare notebook and scratch pad in my house. For now I am grinding in the PvP instances, attempting to upgrade my boots into something a little more epic. I imagine I'll continue doing that until I find something else I really want. I will admit that the gear I'm chasing is not uber or anything, but I'm going for the most awesome gear available to someone who doesn't play WoW 40+ hours a week. And I'm going for stuff that I can get by playing solo, for the most part. It's really a compromise between wanting to have a character all decked out in Epics and wanting to have a life outside of WoW.

Long story short, I want to have some awesome gear for my online self, but I don't want to devote my entire life to it. And I recently achieved a goal I had set to get some of that gear and wanted to crow about it a little on my website.

I have to go to the dentist next week. I'm not really looking forward to that. We actually had checkups from the military dentist this past weekend, and I was surprised to hear him say that my teeth are in decent shape healthwise. They could use quite a bit of cosmetic help, though, and with my insurance coverage I may actually be able to get braces soon and get my grill sorted out.

It was not a very good week for me in Fantasy Football, as I went 1-3 to bring me to 19-9 for the season (6-1, 5-2, 5-2, 3-4). Those records are still good for one 1st-place team, two teams in 2nd place, and one team in 8th place in their respective leagues. I am worried about the one non-playoff team I've got. They are playing about like the Denver Broncos this year. I've got extremely good players at every position, but they're just not getting it done. Hopefully next week will be a little better for me.

Speaking of the Denver Broncos, they barely won this week. Jason Elam kicked a field goal at the last second to give them a win over Pittsburgh. All of Denver's wins have come on Elam field goals in the final seconds of the games. Without him on the team, Denver would be in Miami's position, having yet to win a game on the season. It's a sad time to be a Broncos fan.

In good news, I was able to keep up with my teams all weekend with my Blackberry. There were problems getting a connection in some areas, but for the most part I was able to use my phone's internet service for the duration of the weekend. So that was good. So far I don't have too many complaints about the phone.

I'm thinking about going to the Emerald City Comic Con again rather than attending a miniature gaming convention. Going around and meeting the artists is a lot of fun, especially when you can get them to do a sketch for you. I'll probably decide for good once a few more names get added to the guest list.

I really don't have anything to post about tonight. I just thought I should post something so maybe my readers would stick around. Of course, after reading this post everyone may be so bored that they never come back anyway.

After 6+ hours of trying to get the T-Mobile Wing to play music last night and a couple more hours of going at it again today I decided that Windows Mobile 6 and I just don't get along. It was a bit more frustrating and violent than all that, but the phone survived long enough for me to take it back to the store and exchange it. My old flip phone didn't make it through the day, though. It gave up the ghost as a sacrifice to my e-rage. It is far better to throw the free phone than the $300 one. I did some reading online and found that my problems with the Wing are not uncommon, and it seems to be mostly the fault of the Windows Mobile operating system. I really liked the touch screen and the stylus, but with none of the programs working correctly I couldn't live with the phone anymore. If I spend $300 on a phone I expect it to dance and sing when I tell it to.

So I took the phone back and exchanged it for a Blackberry Curve, which had generally good reviews. So far so good. I really wish it had a touch screen, as scrolling through web pages with the trackball gets a bit tedious. But I think there are buttons you can push to make it scrill a bit faster. The software disc actually worked when I put it into my computer so I didn't have to search some website for the software I needed, a step up from the Wing's software disc. My music files loaded up without any trouble and played when I wanted them to. The songs I loaded into my ringtones folder work as ringtones, and they can be used in my alarm clock mode. The rest of the utilities are fairly intuitive, moreso than those on the Windows O/S. The keypad is a bit small, but I have skinny fingers so that's not really an issue for me. All in all it seems to be a much better phone than the Wing. I really wish the Wing would have worked out, and I think that with a different operating system it would, but I can't handle the frustration of the Windows software. And since the Blackberry is $50 cheaper than the Wing I was able to get a Bluetooth headset for my wife's phone. That way she can crochet and talk to her family or listen to music at the same time.

On a gaming-related note, I bought a pair of Crystalhide Handwraps and a couple of Delicate Living Rubies for my World of Warcraft character. Hopefully I will finish upgrading my character to a sufficient level before the expansion comes out. There is no release date set for it yet, but I would like to have sweet epic gear in all of my gear slots sooner rather than later. Most of my gear isn't wxtremely awesome, but I'm working on acquiring all the stuff that is relatively attainable for a solo player. I still need to kill about 850 more Ogres to get my second epic dagger and an epic necklace. I've been plugging away at it 15 or 20 minutes at a time for the last several months.

I Forgot One

How I Feel About Electronics, and an Angry Hotel Guy

The specific convention my wife and I were looking at is ConQuest NW in Bellevue, Washington. Unfortunately, there is no real information on the website as to the schedule of events. There is also GameStorm 10, although by the looks of some online galleries I found, that convention centers mostly around boardgames and role-playing, not my main interests. We've also got Enfilade!, which is all historical miniature gaming and still has the 2007 web page up.

All of these fit the approximate time period and location I'm looking for, but I have reservations about the whole thing. I think a large part of it is my own social anxieties. I am socially awkward, especially in new situations. If I attend a gaming convention I will probably sign up to participate in a few games, and the combination of new rules, new figures, new people, and the crush of people moving around will probably be enough to reduce me to a quivering mass of nerves. And I really don't want to be the guy who the other players go home and post about on their blogs as ruining the game. You could argue that I would go to a convention to gain access to the vendors and flea market area. I have a relatively set number of projects and interests, and I somewhat doubt that after driving several hundred miles, paying for a hotel, paying for registration, and whatever else that I'll have any money left over to make any substantial purchases at a convention. It's almost worth it to stay in my little cave and use all the con money on a new army. Of course, that is negated by the fact that the wife wants to go on a vacation anyway, so we will be going whether I like it or not.

We could go to the Emerald City Comic Con again, as we've been twice so far and had fun both times (aside from the cool guy we met in line for a sketch who suddenly turned into a creepy stalker and made things uncomfortable for me, my wife, and my brother-in-law, then sent me several e-mails wanting to hang out some time even though we live hundreds of miles away from each other). Unfortunately, now that I've dropped out of comic book reading altogether it seems a waste to go to a convention all about comics. It's a lot of fun to get sketches from the artists, but I've already got a couple hundred dollars tied up in sketches that have sat in our closet ever since we got home from the last convention.

All this adds up to me being unsure if it's worth it to me to go to a convention of any sort. I would like to, but I don't know if I'll be able to overcome my social hangups enough to have an enjoyable time. I would prefer not to meet any more creepy people.

But the real issue here is my new phone. I can't get the Media Player to work. At first the player wouldn't recognize the songs I had on the memory card. Every time I wanted to listen to music, it would tell me there were no songs in the Library, so I'd have to go to the memory card and queue up the music folders manually. Even if I paused the music for a few seconds, the player would stop recognizing the music. Or it would stop and say there were too many programs running, even though there was nothing running aside from the media player. So I hooked it up to my computer and moved the music folder around to different folders, trying to find the right spot. Nothing. So I deleted the music from the memory card and now I'm trying to resync my playlist onto the phone. It's not working. It'll get about 40% through the list of songs and then freeze up. I hate hate hate working with problems on my electronics. I have to leave the room periodically to keep from throwing the phone through my monitor. There is just no reason that the songs shouldn't work. I was playing them fine yesterday. They played this morning. I may have to take this phone back and get something less technologically advanced, because at least my free phone from the last contract worked all the time.

Tonight I went through the various boxed armies that are available for the Lord of the Rings game and tallied up the points contained in each army. Pointswise, the Legion of the White Hand (Isengard Uruk-hai) and the Wardens of the Westgate (Dwarves) come in as the best value, at 718 and 703 points respectively. The Host of Cirith Ungol (Mordor Orcs) comes with 519 points of models, and the Defenders of Minas Tirith (generic Gondor list) is a lightweight at 430 points. I didn't figure up the points for the Rohan box, as I'm not interested in a Rohan army. I may end up figuring up the points for it anyway, in the interest of having a complete set of lists. I also saw a couple of additional boxed sets on the website that I may add up as well.

I'll probably spend tomorrow getting a haircut and working on some more history homework. It should be a real blast. I'm thinking that if I get all of my stuff done early in the week I'll have most of Friday to paint these Moria goblins. That's the plan, at least.

My wife and I are looking for a gaming convention to attend in the spring of next year. It can't be on the first weekend of a given month as I've got drill to go to and it needs to be somewhere in the Northwestern portion of the US. We'd prefer that it be somewhere near a large city, as my wife would like to have something besides gaming to keep her occupied. That leaves us with like 2 choices. Unfortunately, the websites for most of these little conventions don't have much information at all in the way of what games are played, what vendors will be attending, and stuff of that nature. But we're in the process of looking for something to attend in that time frame.

There were no Monday miracles, so I went 2-2 for the week in Fantasy Football, bringing me to 18-6 (6-0, 5-1, 4-2, 3-3) on the season. Once the bye weeks get over with I expect that my teams will do much better. I had a lot of key players out this week, and my two losses were by large margins. I suspect other players are feeling the pinch as well, as my two wins were fairly lopsided in my favor. I expect to make the playoffs in all of my leagues still, although my 3-3 team isn't looking too great. Hopefully next week my quarterbacks do better for me than Kurt Warner did this week.

Not much to talk about as far as the weekend is concerned. It was a disappointing week for me in Fantasy Football. Unless Brandon Jacobs really goes off tonight, I'll be 2-2 for the week. Adrian Peterson helped me destroy my opponent in the TMP Football League, but he killed two of my other teams by playing for the opposition. Kurt Warner helped me lose those two games as well, scoring -2 points for me before going off the field due to injury. I imagine Kurt Warner helped ruin a lot of Fantasy days, as he was touted as this week's hot pickup on pretty much every expert blog out there. I played him on three different teams, unfortunately. The team that didn't lose because of Warner had LaDainian Tomlinson and his 4-TD performance to balance out my poor QB performance.

I also had a Fantasy NBA draft this weekend, and I think it went pretty well. The team projects out to be even better than the last team I drafted so I should be able to be pretty competitive this year, barring catastrophic injuries to key players. Since I've had approximately the same pick in every draft, I'm heavily invested in a couple of players. Two of my rosters are almost 50% similar.

I've been trying to concentrate on homework this weekend, as I have two drill weekends within a three week period, starting this weekend. What I really want to do is paint miniatures and write army lists, but it keeps getting put off for more important things. Hopefully I'll find some time during the holidays to play with my miniatures.

The new internet phone is getting better. I got a memory card for it last night, so now I've got some mp3 files on it and most of my contacts have their own ringtones. The little scheduling utility is cool, but I never do anything, so I have to make up tasks and appointments so I can have important reminders flash up on the screen from time to time, accompanied by beeps and buzzes. It also automatically notifies me when I have a new e-mail and I can read my e-mail from the phone.

I got my internet phone today. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I haven't figured out how to post to my blog from it as of yet, but I'm getting closer. I wish I could just log onto Blogger from the actual website, but the links on the log-in screen don't work. The Yahoo! Mobile Fantasy Sports interface is a bit clunky. I'm still deciding whether having internet access on my phone is worth it. I'm working my way through the PDA features on the phone. I think those will become more useful as I get them sorted out.

All of my Moria Goblins are primed, and I began painting some of them. My eyes gave out pretty rapidly, though, and I had to quit for the night. I picked up a Goblin War Drum, a Shaman and some Goblin Captains today, so I only need 7 Goblin Prowlers to finish out a 500-point Moria force. The Plastic Moria goblins are pretty bad sculpts. It's incredibly difficult to tell where the transitions are between skin and armor. There are some big flat spots that could go either way. Still, it shouldn't be too hard to get these 40 figures painted to a wargaming quality. Then I'll focus on building up some sort of opposition for them.

I find myself leaning away from cavalry-heavy armies, and this seems to be true across all gaming systems. Even in armies with cavalry options I prefer to stay away from them and concentrate on war machines and infantry. I'm not sure what the implications of that are, but there it is.

Tonight I cleaned up a bunch of Moria goblins and attached them to their bases. I didn't feel like going outside, so I decided not to hose them down with primer tonight. Perhaps tomorrow I will start putting paint on figures again. Or I will get an early start on my homework so the weekend isn't filled with schoolwork. Not sure yet what the plan is. I did a test fit of the Cave Troll pieces. They don't fit well at all. I'll probably have to do quite a bit of work to get it looking somewhat right. I haven't started on the Fellowship figures. For the most part they are one-piece miniatures, so I'll just have to clear out the mold lines and glue them to their bases. There are a couple of arms I'll have to attach as well, but no major work. The sculpts in the Mines of Moria set aren't that great, but I don't mind all that much. I'll just be excited to be painting something again. It's like therapy or something. At the very least it probably costs as much as therapy.

I found the charger for my mp3 player, so I've been listening to some music. After hearing a song from the British band Supergrass I went and visited their website. Specifically, I visited their online merchandise store. They are still selling a couple of shirts that I've wanted to buy since approximately 1998. With the exchange rate being what it is, I just can't bring myself to buy them. Back in the day they would have cost me $30 each. Now it's closer to $36 apiece. Someday I will have my McVicar and Carlos shirts. Someday. I like t-shirts.

Last night I took a Fantasy Basketball magazine and projected out the stats for every team in one of my Fantasy Basketball leagues to see what my chances of wining are. When I figured up the points, I was ahead by one point. I guess you could say my draft went well. Of course, all that will change as soon as the first week of the season comes around and all the projections go out the window. I feel pretty good about my chances, though. At least I know my team will be competitive.

And now I need to go to bed.

I Hate to Wait

Our cell phone contract is about to expire, so we've been looking at different phones and service providers. I am about to take the mobile internet plunge. For my birthday I will be getting a touchscreen phone (with a stylus!) that slides out to reveal a keyboard and unlimited internet service on said phone. We'll end up paying about the same for the new plan as we were paying for the old service, but we'll have the additional features added on. The main perk of this is that I won't have to be without my beloved world wide web during drill weekends. But I have to wait until 11 November for the new service to kick in. I don't want to wait that long. I want my internet superphone now.

I considered prepping my Moria Goblin miniatures for painting tonight, but instead I worked on my backlog of English class homework. I'm going to try getting my History homework done tomorrow so I can spend Thursday and Friday playing with miniatures, but we'll see how it goes. I also need to write up some army lists and purchase plans for some Lord of the Rings armies. I may have to paint some sort of one-off figure again to get me going on a painting kick again. There's a barbarian dude on my desk that may be a good candidate. My attention span is such that I can't even agree on what I want to do from day to day. And even if I do decide on something, by the time I get started I'm so distracted that I've forgotten waht I set out to do in the first place.

Gaming

My little brother was over for the weekend. I hope he enjoyed himself, as I was exceptionally dull for the duration of his visit. We'll have to have him over on one of the upcoming holiday weeks when we're both out of school and I've got time off from work. I've been extremely slow about painting anything, so I still don't have enough figures for opposing forces in any game. He is really interested in miniatures, but his limited budget makes for some difficulty. I've been trying to think of a way to help him build an army of his own for some game or other.

He really likes the Warhammer Dark Elves, which happen to be one of the most expensive armies around, due to all of the metal figures in the range. There are also rumors of a new army book being on the horizon very soon. I don't really like the Dark Elf fluff, but the models mounted on big lizards are cool enough. Really, any Warhammer army is cost-prohibitive for any kid who doesn't get free piles of money from his parents. He'll probably have to wait until he's out on his own with a job for any Warhammer armies. Even the Warhammer Skirmish rules require a bit much spending for his budget, especially when you throw in paints and other hobby supplies.

I was doing some math for the GW Lord of the Rings game last night and with the relatively low cost of basic troops ($25 for 25 figures, less with a discount) in several armies, you can put together a decent-sized force for under $100 easily. I'm thinking that might be the way to go for my brother. If we played 500-point games he wouldn't have too much trouble fielding a force, and there are several different armies to choose from. As an example, the Dwarf army box can be had at Hobbytown for $75 and it contains over 700 points. For painting on a budget, there are plenty of cheap acrylics at Wal-Mart. It's an idea.

For myself, I wrote up a list of Lord of the Rings armies I would like to build. I think there were six armies on the list. I'd probably build them out to the 500-point limit, and from there just add on whatever else I felt like painting. The Alliance system is pretty free, so you can combine armies together for bigger forces. It's pretty exciting stuff and the miniatures look good.

In Fantasy Football it looks like I'll go 3-1 for the week. That's not too bad. I'll be at 16-4 (5-0, 4-1, 4-1, 3-2) for the year. Tonight's game won't have any real impact on my games this week, unless Patrick Crayton scores -2 points.

I need to paint some minis this week.

Yay!

Holy cow! I finally finished my short story for my fiction writing class. Talk about a pain in the hindquarters. Now I've got just under four hours to sleep before I have to get up and go to work again. I'm not really looking forward to that. It's almost to the point where I don't know if I should even go to sleep as I want to be sure I'll wake up to my alarm. With anything under five hours it's pretty hit or miss for me in that department. I hate being late for work. It's embarrassing. At least my story is written.

Not much else to post about tonight. With Fantasy Baseball over with, and Fantasy Basketball not started yet, I don't have much to write about in the Fantasy Sports realm. Next week I'm going to try to paint some miniatures. I think it will be relaxing.

I suppose I'd better go get some sleep. Saturdays are long days even when I get seven hours of rest.

After reading this post on the Grimsby Wargaming blog I got to thinking about my own projects and interest levels.

Warhammer Fantasy Skaven - I've got a complete 2250-point Skaven army finished, but have stalled out on increasing it to a full 3000 points. I think I'd be more motivated if I actually purchased the miniatures that comprise the rest of my list.

Warhammer Fantasy Orcs and Goblins - I've got 2 Orcs partially painted. I'm not too happy with the way the skin turned out, and don't have a lot of motivation to paint them at the moment. I've probably got a thousand points or so of miniatures, and still want to finish the army to at least 2000 points.

Warhammer 40K - With school and other projects taking precedence at the moment, I stalled out on planning my Chapter of Space Marines. I would still like to do the project, but I'm in a holding pattern until I have a bit more time to work on it. At the very least I'd like to get together a couple thousand points so I can play games. I figure a full Chapter will take many years to build up. I've also soured a bit on the Space Marines due to the primer incident, in which several figures came out crusted with primer.

Pirates - I've painted most of what I have, and will probably add at least one of the Foundry Horde deals to my collection someday. I purchased 40 Old Glory pirates recently, but the sculpts looked so terrible that I put them in a drawer. I don't think I'll be painting them. I also need to build a tavern and maybe a pirate ship. And I need to add a few more civilians, town guard, tavern employees, etc.

Old West - I want to purchase one of the Foundry Horde deals for Old West as well. I think there is a manufacturer of cardstock buildings that I could purchase, and an Old West town gaming mat from Hotz Mats. I've also got a list of minis from other manufacturers that I could mix in for some variety.

Gladiators - Again, I'd like to pick up the Foundry Horde deal for these. I could make do with a sand-colored mat, but it would be neat to build a little Coliseum and maybe paint up some lions and bears for the gladiators to fight.

Hordes of the Things - I'm thinking about dragging the wife to the Tactical Solutions convention in Spokane, Washington next year. We couldn't go this year due to cost and the fact that I'll be at drill that weekend. Rumor has it that they play Hordes of the Things at the con, and I think it would be nice to paint up a Viking/Barbarian army.

Superheroes - I've got a list of superhero miniatures that I want to start purchasing and painting. I like painting supers, as you can go a little crazy with the colors and designs. For terrain I can use all my old Heroclix maps.

World War Two - I've been putting this project off for quite a while, as it's hard to justify all the stuff I want to buy. Also, the research is intimidating as it's the only "real" historical period I'm interested in. Technically Pirates, Old West, and Gladiators count as historical, but for them I'm going for the Hollywood feel. For World War Two I'd feel a need to go for something fairly accurate. Perhaps not down to actual unit markings, but forces that represent a typical unit from whichever army I'm painting.

Lord of the Rings - I've got the rulebook and the army list book. I still need a few of the other sourcebooks. The starter set came with a couple hundred points of Moria goblins and a Cave Troll, as well as several hundred points of Good heroes from the Fellowship. Ideally I could fill out my favorite forces with two or three of the boxed army deals and a couple blister packs here and there.

Reaper Warlord - I like the miniatures, but they lost me with the rule changes and the army pack nightmare. I may still fill out my forces, but just as generic fantasy units for use with other game systems.

Other - I've flirted briefly with dreams of the AWI (American War of Independence) and the ACW (American Civil War) in 6mm scale, but don't have any real plans for the projects. I would love to do some sort of ginat stompy robot game in the Mechwarrior or CAV vein, but don't really have any current plans for that, either. Pulp adventure games and Victorian Science Fiction look like a lot of fun, but I think you really need to have a good gaming group to get the full amount of enjoyment from them. And last but not least, there are tons of miniatures that I like, but don't fall into any real category. I've got a list of them in my notebook, and I'm sure I'll pick some of them up over time. I'd like to add more historicals to my list, but I'd need to get into the history books a little more and find something that strikes me as interesting.

It's a lot easier to think about writing a story for class than it is to actually write a story for class.

Well, Chad Johnson scored 5 points instead of 8 and I went 3-1 for the week in Fantasy Football, bringing my record to 13-3 (4-0, 1st of 10 teams; 4-0, 2nd of 10; 3-1, 3rd of 14; and 2-2, 3rd of 10) for the season so far. It sure seems like a lot of players are getting injured this year, and between injuries and bye weeks it's hard to set up a competitive lineup. At least it keeps the games exciting.

I had to do homework tonight, which will probably be the theme for this week. I have a short story due in our fiction class by Thursday or Friday, as well as my reading and quizzes for History class.

I haven't had much time to look through my GW Lord of the Rings books yet. Foundry just sent out the e-mail announcing their Christmas sale. The part that interests me is the 20% discount on certain of their Hordes collections, as well as free shipping. The free shipping is sort of a moot point when ordering Hordes, as you get free shipping anyway, even when the Hordes are not on discount, but the 20% discount is nothing to frown at. The collections that interest me are the Cutthroats Rampaging Mob (Yarrrr!), the School of Gladiators (Ancient Arena Combat!), the Old West Characters (Main Street at High Noon!), and to a lesser degree the Viking Legendary Warriors Horde (Pillage!). Of course even at a discount they are still expensive, but I had a great time painting the few Foundry Pirates I've got, and getting a couple of these Horde deals would pretty much set me up with plenty of figures to play all those periods. Still not sure if I'll pull out the wallet and pony up for any of them, but it's sure fun to think about.

A Couple of New Takes on Thriller

First, we have the inmates of a prison in the Philippines. There are several videos featuring these inmates, but this is the best one.

And here we have Indian Thriller!

And this one isn't Thriller, but it's got some awesome dance moves.

There's plenty to post about tonight, so I guess I'll get right into it. First off, I just had another large piece of the apple pie my wife baked. She bakes a mean pie, using my mother's recipe, so I don't even have to get used to a new taste. It's the same pie I've always eaten.

It's been an interesting week in Fantasy Sports for me. I'll start with baseball as this was the last week for Fantasy Baseball. My teams placed second in both of my rotisserie leagues, which was no real surprise. The first-place teams have been well out of reach all year, and the other teams in the leagues haven't really challenged me in the standings for a good month or so. Probably sometime in mid-August a few teams in both leagues actually passed me up and I fell to 3rd or 4th place in those leagues, but I recovered the points and held on to finish out the season. So that's two silver trophies for me.

In the TMP Fantasy Baseball League my team, the Baloney Bullfrogs, was in the championship round playing against the Monday Knights. After the first couple of days things were not looking good for me. My team went into a slump just as his team peaked, and I was losing 2-7-1. Throughout the rest of the round I was able to make roster moves and work my way to finish the week tied at 5-5, but the Monday Knights won the tiebreaker statistic (ERA) and I will only get the 2nd-place trophy for the TMP League. The Monday Knights manager will get the gold trophy and the pile of miniatures thateveryone sent in as a prize.

It was a similar story in my other head-to-head League. This time I was in the 3rd-place game. I started off pretty strong, leading much of the way. But the other team caught up to me and today he tied me. Of course when the final scores came out his ERA was lower than mine, so again I lost a tied game via the tiebreaker rules. The other team gets a bronze trophy and I go home in 4th place.

Overall it wasn't a bad year for Fantasy Baseball. I'd like to have some more gold trophies in my collection, but three 2nd-place finishes and one 4th-place finish isn't really that bad. The Monday Knights had better watch out because I'll be gunning for them next year.

Another bad week for the Denver Broncos, and it's shaping up to be a good week for me in Fantasy Football. I should win my game in the TMP Fantasy Football League unless Tom Brady really goes off and outscores Stephen Gostkowski by 34 points tomorrow night. Two of my other teams should have easy wins, and the last team will win if Chad Johnson scores 8 points against New England. I really like my chances to go 4-0 this week.

And since this is supposedly a blog mostly about miniatures I will post something miniatures-related. I was trying to decide whether to buy into the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings miniatures game, but I wasn't sure about what to do. My wife went and bought me the Mines of Moria starter set and the Legions of Middle-Earth supplement book, so now I've got a start on the game. If I could just get back into a painting rhythm I'd be doing pretty good.