Inside a Good Day — Sept. 5, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Overview📅
Fantasy Football🏈
Elite Bonding🤼‍♂️

Days that start with chainsaws and lighter fluid and end with four hours of really good professional wrestling are bound to be added to the “good” column for review when the scales are weighed at the end of a life. Yesterday was such a day for me.

In between those bookends there was a massage, Boy-The-Elder-made paella, a game of Skip-Bo with Wifey Poo and Boy The Younger, a fantasy football league draft, some work on a cool project in my home office/mancave that I’ll reveal soon and the soothing sounds of softly falling rain.

So yes, it was a good day.

The aforementioned fantasy football league draft comes as my first season as commissioner of a fantasy baseball league winds down. Over the winter, I gathered nine others and formed The Waffle House Fantasy Baseball League. It has proven to be one of the great joys of my life.

The league is a hodge-podge of people from different parts of my life. The Core Four and my perhaps-someday daughter-in-law. My Other Son, the 19-year-old child of my wife’s best friend. A few people I knew in high school. A great dude I know who lives in Florida and who I am convinced is in the CIA. A friend from my Ohio days.

I’ve tried to make this league fun. I put out a weekly comedic text update on the previous week’s matchup and the upcoming week’s fun. I bought a traveling trophy, except, in true me fashion, it’s a pro-wrestling-style championship belt, customized with the name of the league. And of course, there’s the looming punishment for the manager who finishes last — 24 straight hours in a Waffle House, though that time can be bought down … one hour for every waffle consumed.

Last place was earned in spectacular fashion by my Other Son. He’s prepared to face his punishment later this month, and we’ll be there to help him get through it. The playoffs begin this week. I am the No. 3 seed, and I face Wifey Poo in the first round. Tension abounds.

The football league has its own unique features. The winner each season will, of course, receive a traveling championship belt. The loser has to take a bucket and whatever he or she wants to use as drumsticks and head out to a public place with a sign that says “I have to keep drumming until I earn $100 for Shriners Hospitals.”

The draft was fun. I picked fourth and grabbed the Chargers’ Austin Ekeler. I haven’t played fantasy football in awhile, mostly because I suck at it. NFL action starts Thursday. We’ll see what happens!

There was a time in what I’m calling my Great Awakening that I realized I needed to do more to bond with BTY. Our boys are spaced seven years apart, and the truth is, whether anyone would actually admit it, it’s different when you become a dad at 28 compared to 35. Sure, I had the benefit of seeing what worked and didn’t work with BTE, but what worked for BTE didn’t necessarily work for BTY. And then there’s the fact that I’m just older and, yes, much more worn out by the struggles I’ve faced and stupid things I’ve done.

Rather than feel bad about opportunities missed, the newly awoken me sought possibilities, and in that search, I found All-Elite Wrestling. The upstart wrestling group that’s taking on the titan WWE is doing a great job of telling compelling stories and presenting a quality product. It’s become a weekly thing for BTY and I to watch and discuss. Yes, we love the action, but our true joy rests in trying to predict what way the storylines are going to go or, better still, what way the storylines should have gone, because we’re obviously better bookers than the guys who do it for a living.

Last night was a big pay-per-view, All-Out. It featured a ton of great action. Our house was filled with random Others last night … BTE is home from college for the weekend, my Other Son came over for the fantasy football draft and stayed, my maybe daughter-in-law was here, as was a friend of BTE’s from college. We all watched as CM Punk dethroned Jon Moxley to win the AEW world heavyweight championship (their belt is better than our fantasy baseball belt, I admit), before being confronted by a returning MJF.

Whether it’s the fantasy baseball league, football league or AEW … having a common language is important for bonding. I’ve seen that this year. Wifey Poo now talks intelligently about WHIP and OPS. BTY and I talk about juji gatame submission holds and tope suicida dives through the ropes to the outside. These things are good, and they were all part of a really good Sunday.

A Nuclear Missile is Coming! … Oh… Wait

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Inside a Good Day — Sept. 5, 2022

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