My 10,000th Tweet

About three years ago I composed my 1,000th tweet and felt like it was an epic fail. It seemed to me like I needed my 1,000th tweet to be more profound.


I tried to be a little more careful as I found myself approaching another milestone in tweet #10,000.


I still don't think I nailed it, but I think 
"I get tired of Belichick referring to "all three phases of the game." I want football to have a fourth phase. #Patriots"


is slightly more profound than
"I like those lyrics better."


The thing that struck me the most about tweet #10,000 was that it took me slightly less than three years to get from 1,000 to 10,000. I had predicted it would take five years.


At that pace, I'll be posting my 100,000th tweet in about 29 years. Stay tuned.

NFL Championship Game Predictions

Wow. I'm 8-0 in the playoffs so far. I even, on a whim, picked the Colts to upset the Broncos and it worked out. I need to correctly pick three more games to go a perfect 11-0 in the playoffs.


Here's where it all falls apart:


Packers 23, Seahawks 17 -- Everybody seems to think Green Bay has zero chance to win this game, and there are some legit reasons for that: Aaron Rodgers is hurt, the game is in Seattle, and the Seahawks thumped Green Bay pretty good  when they met back on Opening Night. For some reason I feel good about the Packers' chances, though. It would add to Rodgers' legacy if he were to pull off the upset on a bad leg (and, to be honest, to me he didn't look like he was in serious discomfort during Green Bay's win last week over Dallas). And what the hell, I bucked the trend in the Colts-Broncos game and it worked. Why not?


Patriots 23, Colts 21 -- Everybody seems to think Indianapolis has zero chance to win this game, and for my sake I hope everybody is right.




LAST WEEK -- 4-0
SEASON TO DATE -- 183-81 (175-81 regular season; 8-0 playoffs)

Goals 2015

If you've read my blog you know I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions. I don't like the concept of waiting until the beginning of a new year to try to better yourself. You can just as easily set self-improvement goals on April 17 or Sept. 20 as you can on Jan. 1 (or Jan. 11, as I glance at the calendar).


That said, I'm a little motivated right now and I feel like now would be a good time to set some goals for myself. So, here goes:


SAVE MORE MONEY: This was a goal for last year, too. I'm being purposely vague because I don't like to get too specific about finances. I will say this: the target dollar value I've selected is a pretty ambitious goal.
Sometimes they say being too ambitious is unrealistic and sets yourself up for failure, but I'm looking at it this way -- if I save half as much money, I've done myself a lot of good. So, I'll do my best and I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't achieve it.


LOSE 7-10 POUNDS: In the past year I've lost a good 25-30 pounds and I feel a lot better about myself. I have more energy and that's helped me not just physically but emotionally as well.
When I started this health kick, I had a goal weight in mind, which was what I weighed a few years ago when I felt like I was in the best shape of my life. I am currently (depending on the time of day I weigh myself and how good I've been) about 7-10 pounds away from that goal weight. Now, my goal weight is an educated guess. It's possible I may only be able to lose 5 more pounds without starving myself. Time will tell.


FINISH MY NOVEL: This is the one goal I set every year, and the one goal I have the most problem with. It's always a time commitment issue -- I have a full-time job and a part-time job, an active social life, and unfortunately a need for occasional sleep. Sometimes these are legitimate reasons; other times I uses these as excuses because I fear that nobody will ever want to read my novel and I'll fail.
Back in September, a friend of mine gave me a really good suggestion as to how to force myself to continue to work on my novel (and of course, after this suggestion two of my associates at work spent the next month taking vacation time and it made it very hard to implement this idea). I'll keep working on it, because in a lot of ways this is my most important goal. Sometimes the best goals are the scariest ones, and the ones you're most afraid of failing at, but that doesn't mean you can't confront your fears and strive to achieve them. I would like to get my novel to the point where I can at least have some trusted people read it start to finish and give me helpful feedback.


So there it is. We'll see what happens. I'll be back at the end of December to let you know how I did.

NFL Divisional Weekend Predictions

I went 4-0 last weekend. Can I keep the undefeated streak going?


We'll see:


Patriots 20, Ravens 3 -- I hate picking Patriots games, because my heart is always in it. But here we are. Anyway, everyone across America seems convinced Baltimore's gonna win. When that happens between two fairly evenly matched teams, it's often a jinx. For my hearts sake, hopefully it is.


Seahawks 13, Panthers 10 -- I think this will be a closer game that everyone else does: they've played each of the past two seasons and Seattle has had to come from behind late to win both. But Seahawks probably do have too much talent to lose this.


Packers 20, Cowboys 10 -- Tony Romo can't have two clutch playoff performances in a row, right?


Colts 33, Broncos 14 -- There's always seems to be an upset in the divisional round and in the other three games I picked the home game. Aw what the fuck, why not....






LAST WEEK -- 4-0

SEASON TO DATE -- 179-81

NFL Wilcdcard Weekend Predictions

It's playoff time. It's a good thing because I'm tired of picking 16 games every week. Now I only have to pick four.


Here goes:


Panthers 19, Cardinals 12 -- The only thing worse than having a playoff game between a team with a losing record and a team that's playing it's 17th-string quarterback: having Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden announce it.


Ravens 27, Steelers 21 -- Pittsburgh: lost to the Jets, Buccaneers and Saints. Baltimore: went a mediocre 6-6 against the AFC. It's too bad playoff games can't end in a tie.


Colts 31, Bengals 24 -- Cincinnati: Lost 27-0 to Colts earlier this year. Indianapolis: lost 42-7 to Cowboys, who are about as soft as the Bengals. It's too bad both teams can't lose a playoff game.


Cowboys 39, Lions 31 -- Detroit: Matthew Stafford is 0-15 on the road against teams with winning records. Dallas: 8-0 on the road in 2014, 4-4 at home. Pretty much I can see myself going 0-4 in these games.




LAST WEEK -- 14-2


SEASON TO DATE -- 175-81