My Fantasy Football teams played very poorly this week, but I was able to at least split my games at 2-2 to bring my season record to 26-14 (8-2, 7-3, 6-4, 5-5). I should have lost all four games for the week, but my opponents forgot to set their lineups and ended up using players who were on a bye week against me. They were embarrassing victories, but at least I won a couple of games. I won one of them 61-58 and the other 66.55-60.05. Not a great week for me, and it looks like my players are getting ready for their playoff slump already. The good news is that 3 of my four teams are still clinging to playoff spots and the 5-5 team is still only one slot out of playoff contention. The other good news is that the Denver Broncos were able to win a game this week and they actually looked all right doing it. Jason Elam didn't have to kick a last-second field goal to save them this time.

In Fantasy Basketball I'm doing fairly well, but with most of my focus on football at the moment I have neglected my teams a fair bit. I should still do well, though, and I am happy that the Houston Rockets are at least momentarily living up to my expectations. They beat the San Antionio Spurs recently and for now look like championship contenders. That's something that hasn't happened for a long time.

I haven't done any painting recently as I spent most of the weekend with my wife. I also rediscovered an old hobby of mine. My brother-in-law asked me if I knew anything about Magic: the Gathering, as he works with troubled youth and they play the game quite a bit in their free time. I've been in and out of Trading Card Games since the mid-90s so I have a general idea about the game, but I'm not extremely familiar with the mechanics and which sets are current at the moment. We picked up a couple of themed decks and some boosters and played a couple of games today. When I was younger I was never really able to comprehend all of the rules and the way things work in the game, but we were able to get most of it worked out in our two games. Tonight I had a Green/Black deck with a lot of nasty creatures. His Blue/Red deck was able to keep my cards off the table, but he couldn't draw any strong spells or creatures to knock me out so we went through a lot of turns of me playing a big creature, him returning it to my hand, and so on and so forth. I was eventually able to knock him out, but if he had had more offensive power he would've taken me out much earlier in the game. I don't think either of us is ready to be hardcore or anything, but as a casual game it's pretty fun. Now I just need to get in and build my World of Warcraft Hunter deck.