Fantasy Football with Some Extra

I’d hoped to write a blog on my four-hour bus ride yesterday, but I became so nauseated that I could do nothing except try to sleep in a Frankenstein, with bolts in his neck, upright fashion. If there’s one lesson to be learned, it’s that the Peter Pan busline is not the Dartmouth Coach. I feel nauseous just thinking about it, so I’m going to move on.

Where was this bus going?

New York City, my friends! That’s right. I’m back with Nikitas (from a New York Minute) and we’re going to cause some trouble before we hit the big game on Monday.

[Nikitas, knowing that at one time, long ago, back in the archives of my blog, I used to play tennis and had a wee bit of an obsession for it, graciously offered to take me to the US Open Men’s Final game! I told him, though, that if Nadal wins in three quick sets to some no name* player, I’m taking a flying leap from the stands and tackling that wedgie-picking Spaniard until security drags me away.]

*the no-name player is taken care of because Djokovic finally pulled himself together at the end of his fifth set against Wawrinka (whom I might have been rooting for after seeing that performance**) and is going to the final. But the rest of my threat still applies.

**it should also be noted that every person I’ve rooted for in the Open has lost.

SPEAKING of losing—Guess what I did this week, on the day before Football season started?

I became commissioner of my own Fantasy Football League!

I’ve been wanting to play Fantasy since people started talking about it in July because, as I calculated last night, it’s been SEVEN years since I last played. That’s nearly the equivalent of high school and college years put together! That’s the unit of magnitude by which a dog is older than a person! That’s the age of a small human who can actually, like, read and write and talk and stuff. Where has the time gone??

I have to give a shout out to the members of my league for coming through for me at the last minute to participate in a no-stakes, no-intelligence-needed league. Our wager is beer and/or chocolate (and a Yahoo trophy!), and I signed up for the auto-draft since we’re scattered across the United States and it would have been difficult to orchestrate a time so that everyone was available for a live draft and it was fair.

Read = I don’t know enough about football anymore to have a successful live draft.

On the plus side, I received zero New England players. It’s as if the fantasy gods knew I wouldn’t want to root for anyone associated with Tom Brady. (“Booo! Hiss! Tom Brady walks on water and you should want to have his babies!” Yes, I get it. Thank you for your input.)

My league is comprised of two people I went to high school with, a girl I went to church with in college, a person I’ve never met but only exchanged emails with, my research assistant at New Mexico State University (also from my hometown), Alex the RI jet-skier extraordinaire, and a middle school science teacher in Worcester, Mass. whose idea it was for me to petition for a Fantasy Football League on Facebook and to whom I owe the credit!

“Facebook Friends United” lives!

Hooray!

Has the Extra Crisis Ended?

For those of you who don’t know, I have a bit of an obsession with Extra Strawberry Shortcake gum. In January of this year, the out-of-touch-with-the-consumer Extra Gum employees discontinued that flavor, which resulted in a feedback letter detailing the destruction of my life’s happiness at their hands. (You can read about the incident here.)

WELL.

Last night, after a multi-course meal at a supercool place called Macao (try the mushroom truffle croquettes! Amazing!), we stopped at a grocery store for ice cream (Macao took too long to take our dessert order) and guess what I found?

Ginger chews, for one (They made my Top Twelve of 2012 list. I’ve been ordering them online because I’ve never seen them in stores) annnnnnnnd

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE GUM.

I actually gasped and started speaking in lunatic squeals about “OH MY GOD STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE IT’S HERE IT’S HERE!” which freaked everyone (that is, Nikitas and the store manager) out. The store manager said, in somewhat broken English, that the box came in that morning, but there’s no way.

“They discontinued the flavor! I haven’t seen it in seven months!”

“It’s new.”

“It is NOT new. Did they bring it back?” (or has this box actually been sitting here for seven months? That concern, though it crossed my mind, did not bother me in the slightest.)

“They come out with new flavors. It’s a new flavor.”

“No, it’s NOT a new flavor. Are you sure it just came in?”

At this point, Nikitas started mouthing “she’s crazy” and the manager stopped answering my questions, but I’m wondering: did they bring Strawberry Shortcake back? Did enough consumers send the Extra staff hate mail to get them to reinstate the flavor?

In any event, I bought all the packs in the store and rejoiced!

Go forth and do likewise!

P.S. happy first football Sunday, everyone!

P.P.S. Look for me and Nik at the US Open on Monday. We’ll be holding a sign that says, “Put us on TV!”