Monday rhymes with "Fun day"

Well, today is like most days therefore it's just another day with nothing really fun about it. But if you're like me you're having a better day than Raffie Furcal is....he sprained his wrist slipping or stumbling on a dugout railing. Good shortstop in his day, I remember this nose-picking episode from the 2008 NLCS wherein the Dodgers really didn't have much of a prayer against the Phillies.

Some things (like boogers) should be saved for the privacy of one's home. Or at the very least a stall.

How 'bout those Redskins? Becks looked like a real NFL QB against the "sort-of trying but Peyton is injured" Colts. Anyone else see that scar on the back of Manning's neck? I'd think twice before putting him on my fantasy football team.

'Skins looked competent rather than "Juggernaut-esque." My eldest had a "preview" marching band performance Friday night that always inspires dread....not for the performance as much as for the band director's long-windedness - hence I'm anxious to simply watch the kids play their music so I can also see most of the Redskin game. At about 6:20 Friday, I guess because storms were lurking in the evening skies, the band director cut herself short and just let the kids play. My kid's band sounded great, they'll have a good season in their ridiculous looking outfits.

Somehow, miraculously, I was home by the time Tim Hightower punched in the first TD of the game which was the only TD of the game. Not too shabby, really.

Still too early for any non-facetious predictions about the Redskins or any other team at this point. Injuries and assorted bulls@*& will affect the pointless exercise of predicting. In fact, I might boycott the idea of predicting at all simply because of the stupidity of the exercise: no one knows how it will all shake out and therein lies the fun of actually watching the games.

Duh!

Or, do I read a bunch of NFL prediction pieces simply to be able to point to how wrong "the experts" got it? Schadenfreude is an ugly, ugly thing.

Instead of reading junk sports pieces I've been reading actual books. On a lark (and because Borders is going out of business) I picked up the first of the "Song of Fire and Ice" books titled "Game of Thrones." It's a bit like "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" only it's exclusively for grown-ups (language, sex, and violence) - and it's pretty good stuff. And Stacey Schiff's "Cleopatra" which is historical-based "meta-history" .....there are very few primary sources from which to draw a larger view of the Egyptian queen (most of the Roman writers wrote their histories of her 100 years after her death) so Ms. Schiff infers many interesting notions from the record and her own imagination. A good read, almost a companion piece to "Game of Thrones." "

When you play the game of thrones you win or you die."

So, 2 and a half weeks and two books read (no, I'm not really bragging, merely reporting). And since the first book hooked me like a bloated fish I of course bought Book 2, and Book 3....I'm a consumer, it's what I do.

8 days till school starts, I'm nearly a liberated dude