Dr. Dog's House

I like sports. I think that’s pretty obvious. Last month, I was upset because I didn’t get to see much of the Winter Olympics–only the coverage on NBC. I watch the Red Wings hockey games regularly, and the Stanley Cup playoffs will be my main focus starting in mid-April–whether or not the Wings qualify. (It’s starting to look better.)

But a couple months ago, about the time I passed that “60″ sign along the road, I decided that the time has come for me to get off the field and let somebody else play the games.

I am referring to fantasy sports. I organized a fantasy baseball league in 1989, and the league will be playing in its four different decade this year. I had a team in the league for most of that time, and after a few years’ hiatus, I got back into it in 2009.

This year, I’m getting back out.

Also, I was in a fantasy football league for the last five or six years. It was fun most of the time. But I have told the league organizer that I won’t be back in the fall of 2010. I’ve had enough.

There are reasons. One reason is that it gets very frustrating at times. I would do OK–I usually finished closer to first place than last place–but I couldn’t do well enough to contend for first place. No matter what I’d do, no matter how hard I studied the talent or the different strategies I would try, I would only get so close but no closer. All those hours of research … they never really came to much.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not mourning the lost time. All of us use our spare time in different ways, and who’s to say that it’s time wasted? If it makes you happy or gives you a pleasant evening, what’s the difference between researching baseball players and, say, raptly watching the latest episode of “Lost” or engineering the intricacies of making a quilt or spending time at the local pub or battling three other friends in a no-holds-barred game of bridge … or World of Warcraft? Nothing wrong with any of it.

So it’s not that. But on the other hand … I’ve got a lot of other interests, too. I like to study other topics on the internet. I like to read, fiction and non-fiction. I enjoy movies. I enjoy writing–either to friends or just for my own amusement. I enjoy music. I love photography.

I still like pro sports. But I guess I don’t like them as much. Baseball, my first love, remains incapable of providing a level financial playing field for its teams. Basketball and football are mainly for physical freaks. Auto racing … meh!

I’ll remain an avid hockey fan (It’s the age of specialization, after all), but I plan to take everything else more casually (which may be a challenge when the World Cup takes place in South Africa this summer; I’ll be quite interested in that). I’ll still watch the baseball playoffs, and every Sunday next fall, I’ll make sure to see the Green Bay Packers’ game.

Beyond that, though, I think it’s time for me to let go of TV sports. I have never been an avid fan–I don’t spend money on team jerseys or memorabilia. I’ve got other things to spend my money on. For that matter, I’ve got other things to spend my time on, too.

I’m not that dumb. I know the world isn’t going to stop without me. The economy won’t crash again without me. The sports leagues will get along without my financial aid–they’ve done so all these years, after all. They can go their way. I will go mine.

****
The big news up here has been the weather. Extremely mild for us for mid-March. We have had highs in the low 60s for the last few days. This afternoon, we got to about 67F (19C). That’s warmer than normal. By about 30 degrees.

In a normal March, we usually still have a lot of snow hanging around. Not here. Not now. It’s all melted–except where it had been plowed into piles. The office golf nuts are getting that look in their eyes. The sun has felt pretty good.

It won’t last much longer. A cold front moves down from Canada in another day or two. By Monday, our highs will be back to normal–right around freezing. But it sure was nice while it lasted. I just consider it a down-payment for summer.

To follow up my last post, our snowboarder left town for Vancouver and the Olympics on Monday night.

He was escorted by the local fire trucks halfway across the county. There was a switchover from the West Side departments to the East Side departments at the precise place where their coverage area begins. The East Side departments escorted him south to the state line, where Wisconsin officials took over for a 15-mile segment where U.S. 2 crosses into Wisconsin before crossing back into Michigan–where, of course, Michigan officials again took over.

Even with (despite?) all the official escorts, he managed to get out of town all right. By the way, I promised a picture from the school assembly last week, and here he is …

Wish him well. Nick is a nice kid. His snowboardcross event takes place on Monday, Feb. 15.

Maybe he should have packed some snow in his suitcase: The reports from Vancouver is that they are transporting snow to the snowboard course by truck and even helicopter because mild temperatures have melted a lot of it away. I even heard they are burying some dry ice under the new snow to keep it from melting too quickly. The Olympics, of course, start this weekend.

I just checked Vancouver’s weather forecast. It says highs in the 50s and lows in the 40s … with rain. If it gets a little warmer, the Olympians could go out and enjoy Wreck Beach.

Then again, there hasn’t been that much snow around here lately, either. We have snow, don’t get me wrong, but the layer of fluffy white insulation hasn’t increased very much for over a month. On New Year’s Day, we got 2 inches. Since then, no more than 1 1/2 inches on any day. December was a good month for snow around here. January, not so much. The snow is still here. We had some temperatures that reached into the 40s in January (as high as 44), but it was still cloudy on those days, so the snow layer mainly just compacted.

Over where N lives, they have a lot more than we do …

This week, I dared to hope we would get some warmer weather that could prompt some serious melting, now that the sun is getting a little higher in the sky. No way. Not this week. Highs in the 20s all week, with lows close to zero. It’s February, you know, and most of us are getting a little weary of winter.

We live right along the highway passing through town. One day in mid January, I unexpectedly found that the end of the front sidewalk, where it meets the highway–an area I had shoveled out just the day before–was plugged tight with freshly plowed snow.

Believe me, it was densely packed and hard to shovel. I muttered as I grabbed the shovel again and re-opened the end of the sidewalk–by hand, of course. Fortunately, I have a big aluminum shovel, which handles the heavy work well.

After midnight that night, I heard a racket outside; after a few minutes I got up to investigate. Here is what I saw…

The state highway department had just cut into all the snow it plowed up alongside the highway the night before, arranging it into “windrows” on the roadway itself. I was now watching the third step–the big windrow of snow was being blown into a large dump truck, which rolled with in tandem with the snow blower.

An empty dump truck followed–when the first truck was full, it moved off and the next truck took its place. Very slowly, the blower and dump trucks made their way up the highway, removing the snow that had been plowed up along the highway the night before.

And suddenly, visibility at intersections was greatly improved, and pedestrians didn’t have to walk on the side of the road any more. The snow gets so deep and heavy that few homeowners shovel the walks that run parallel to the highway–they just clear paths to the highway for the mailman and any delivery trucks that don’t use the alley behind the house.

Of course … some critters have this winter thing all figured out …