a99kitten's Musings

What a stressful football weekend. My Gators won – yay! Keeping their perfect season alive and kicking. As Tebow keeps breaking moire records. I ordered my Tebow jersey last week – will be here this coming week – yay!

I won Survivor – chose MIN against DET. Should not have been a stressful pick at all. Although the first half was not so breezy. Won I survived. That’s what counts. But my last surviving opponent chose ARI and SEA looked like they were going to walk all over ARI at home…and then they started playing like SEA again :( So we both survived to pick next week – and we are getting down to the not so easy pickins’!!

In my weekly picks – I HAD chosen KC and GB to win when I made my picks on Tuesday night! But then I got stressed out since both OAK and KC suck but OAK is at home so went with the home team. Meh… And I bought the hype of DAL doing so well and coming back and blah blah. Should have known better. A Niners fan shouldn’t chose DAL…so lost weekly picks this week by 1 game when my original picks would have won easily. I also told my husband I wanted CIN over PIT today but took CIN. Again – dumb. Stupid. Idgit. Oh well.

In Fantasy – my 2 “star” wide receivers got me a combined score of 11 points. W.T.F? Hines Ward and Marques Colston = 11 points total. Thanks guys. I *almost* put in Cotchery or Bowe over Ward but then thought I’d be the idiot. No…would have been smarter.

Sidney Rice got me 80 points with 201 receiving yards. Amazing. Frackin’ amazing. And my BYE week pick-up of Ladell Betts looked dismal starting the day as he reportedly was still battling a sprained ankle…great…and then he got me 50 points! YAY! That’s more than any of my “star” RBs have gotten me all season. Nice.

My PIT defense got me 10 points. Not the 35ish they were projected. I swear if Polamalu isn’t playing (injured and out in 1st Q) the PIT D SUCKS!!!! Ugh.

Before the Sunday Night battle royale (IND vs NE), I made “The Waverly Inn Truffled Mac and Cheese”. Quite excited. Very simple recipe:

Ingredients:
1 lb. elbow macaroni
1 tbsp. salt
5 tbsp. unsalted butter
6 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1.5 tbsp. Dijon mustard
5 cups milk
8 oz. Monterey Jack cheese – shredded (2 cups)
8 oz. sharp cheddar cheese – shredded (2 cups)
1 tsp. table salt
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
White-Truffle oil to taste

1. Bring 4 quarts water to boil in Dutch over over high heat. Add macaroni and 1 tbsp. salt; cook until pasta is tender. Drain pasta and set aside in colander. Add a drop of olive oil to prevent sticking.

2. In the now-empty Dutch oven, heat butter over medium-high heat until foaming. Add flour and mustard and whisk well to combine. Continue whisking until mixture becomes fragrant and deepens in color, about 1 minute. Gradually whisk in milk; bring mixture to boil, whisking constantly (mixture must reach full boil to fully thicken). reduce heat to medium and simmer, whisking occasionally, until thickened to consistency of heavy cream, about 5 minutes.

Off heat, whisk in cheeses and 1 tsp. salt until fully melted. Add pasta and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is heated through.

3. Top with bread crumbs and broil until crumbs are deep golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Drizzle truffle oil to taste. Cool about 5 minutes, then serve.

I made this with come cheeseburgers. YUM!! This was quite a tasty meal. And the mac & cheese was quite simple compared to some others.

Going into tonight’s game ahead by 30 points. I have my star TE – Dallas Clark. My opponent has Joseph Addai though. Stress….

I am watching tonight’s game wearing my Peyton Manning jersey :) GO CLARK! GO COLTS!

After trying the mac & cheese, I feel it is not as good as the others I have tried (all from my mac&cheese cookbook). Kinda bland. It’s mac & cheese. I’ll still eat it. It’s better than most food. But not OMGI”LLDIEYUM if you know what I mean :)

Well, I lost my fantasy week. Very sad about this. Especially since I lost to a guy who was trying to snake a trade in with another team manager which I felt was completely bogus. The league vetoed this trade but when someone comes to me to justify something that I feel is ridiculous. Well, I tell them so. Sucks that I lost to him. If Brees and Colston would have just been more productive for me I would have won – damn it! So now I will be 6-3…not sure where that will land me league-wise. At least Hines Ward got me 2 TDs tonight for more points cushion.

I did win our weekly picks pool! For the 3rd time this season!!! This is a record!! Very happy about this :) I just found my cash from my last win in another purse yesterday :) I am keeping it aside for my shoe/bag fund! I think for the time invested – I am doing VERY well in the weekly pools compared to my fantasy team.

And I survived our weekly Survivor too. With a Seattle pick. Holy hell I was stressing into the 4th quarter of that game! Just 2 players survive – both girls :) The only 2 girls who played Survi. Hehehe…But now the picks will just keep getting more stressful! I’ve used most “sure thing” teams. While realizing no team is a sure thing…I’ve used most of them except for Indy. But really…Any Given Sunday…

And my Gators won! Yay!!! Of course I read more gator-hater articles and crap. But meh…And my Bucs won!!! They are sad this season but yay for them winning against Green Bay!! Was a great game! Oh! and I did order my Peyton Manning jersey! To go with my Joe Montana, Ocho Cinco and Alex Smith jerseys :)

I really do love football….

Week 2 of the NFL, and my fantasy season, was VERY stressful!!! I actually thought I lost for sure as of last night. Watching Brandon Jacobs get stuffed by the DAL defense was painful. I was playing someone with TEN’s Chris Johnson who got him 111 points! WTH????

Drew Brees was awesome as usual. Got me double what Yahoo projected. But my #1 rated defense? SUCK IT! Apparently Troy Polamalu is the #1 rated defense. And with him sidelined with an injury, they suck. 5 points I got from them….

All of my WRs and RBs got less than projected. I put in Jamal Lewis who was highly rated this week. Guess what? A good player on a suck team still doesn’t do much…I should have left Hightower in.

So my Fantasy Week 2 was riding on my tight end in MNF, Dallas Clark getting 50+ points. True, my opponent didn’t have any players in the IND/MIA game but still…over 50 points from a tight end? Right…so I basically gave up.

And then Peyton Manning to Dallas Clark for an 80 point TD pass!!! 30 points in the first drive of the game for me!!! All of a sudden – I was alive! Dallas ended up getting me 65.75 points. My highest point getter of the week was Brees at 65.85 points. Ho-le-mo-lee!

This is my 4th year with Dallas Clark as my TE.  He was injured most of (was it?) last year but I do always draft him. I never get a TE in time for Gonzalez or Gates but after those 2 – Dallas is the man. Total WR/TE.

So yay! I won my week 2!! With my opponent getting 111 points from 1 player!! That’s insane. And some Irish luck shined on me :) And boy – that was some stress. But ended up getting some good total points on the week after all. So for all of my previous complaining about tight ends being a worthless roster spot – I owe my week to mine :)

I of course love my Fantasy QB. Brees gave me a lot of points last year and is having a stellar year so far. Love him and drafted him as my 2nd pick. But I will always love Peyton.  He was my QB a couple of years ago and I think he is the best QB in the NFL right now (and my favorite QB of all time is Montana.) But besides that, he seems like a great guy. And really  – who cannot love him on SNL :)

OR

These make me cry from laughing every time I watch them :) And frankly, he was better than most actors/entertainers that I have seen appear on the show. I think as a highly competitive athlete, he made sure he knew his lines and was professional. And damn funny :)