Monday – 23 January 2012
It’s another day in the valley as a new work week begins.

Trying to kick the last remnants of the cold-like-thing that the girls gave me, I took some NyQuil this morning around 2:00 AM. It’s not hard to understand why I decided to forego the 6:30 alarm…

… and the 7:00 alarm.

…and the 7:10 alarm.

I finally managed to drag myself out of bed at 7:50. Fortunately, I didn’t have to be into the office early, so it wasn’t a big deal. (And I was still in the office by just after 8:30.)

The weekend, on the whole, was good. I took the girls to their second train show on Friday. It was at Thanksgiving Point. I was a little disappointed by the show; maybe it’s just because they didn’t have much in O scale that I was interested in. Maybe it was that it felt like I’d seen everything that they had to offer before. Still, it was nice to be able to attend a train show and see that the hobby is doing well.

Saturday, I judged a ‘Clix tournament for Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection. We had a rather decent turn-out, which was a very pleasant surprise. (It also snowed Saturday, as well. That was not as pleasant a surprise.) We had a player drop out between the second and third rounds, so I wound up playing a bye round. I threw together a team that I thought would be fun:

  • Aquaman (hey… this one does more than just talk to fish),
  • The Question,
  • Superman Beyond and
  • x-23

…and went up against a team of Lord of the Rings ‘Clix. My team did well. I hadn’t used the Aquaman figure before, but after seeing how dangerous he can be, I think that he might just become one of my new “go-to” pieces. He works well with The Question and I think that he’d be similarly effective with the LE Harvey Dent from the Arkham Asylum set. Or Psycho-Pirate. Or even an Atlantis-themed team.

Yesterday, aside from watching football, was mostly a stay-at-home and hang out with the family kind of day.

Instant Replay: Football

Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots
20 – 23
The Ravens traveled to Foxborough, Mass. to take on the Patriots for the AFC Championship.

It was a rough game. Both teams got off to slow and rocky starts. Then the Pats put up a field goal. Eventually, the Ravens got an FG, too. And it was game on.

The teams traded blows through the rest of the game and it looked as though Baltimore might have put the final nail in their own coffin when QB Joe Flacco threw an interception late in the fourth quarter…

…but, the Patriots couldn’t capitalize on it.

With 27 seconds left in the game, WR Lee Evans dropped what would have been a game-winning pass in the end zone. And, finally K Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal that would have tied the game, sending it into overtime.

And, with that, the Ravens season came to a screeching halt. I was understandably disappointed at the game’s end. I tried to determine which was more disappointing: Evans’ drop or Cundiff’s shanked kick. I decided that it was the dropped pass, because Cundiff has missed many clutch kicks this season — this was just another one to add on to the tally.

Oh, well, at least there’s next season to look forward to. (Until the Ravens-Raiders game, that is. My marriage may come under siege over that game.) But, I’m still proud of the way the team played all season and I’m still proud to be a Ravens fan.

Stray Toasters