Date Day 2010/Fantasy Football

I would like to thank the good people at Target for providing a never ending fount of capitalist blessings to my family. It's really quite a treasure trove of a place. I mean, walking around Target with your head on a swivel, dodging moms pushing a cart with a baby strapped in while trying to manage a three year old who is pulling items off the display rack, is a real thrill for me. I find nothing more thrilling about my American citizenship than being able to walk into a bastion of free market competition like Target, so that I can purchase a whole bunch of stuff that I kind of want but probably don't need.

I don't know how many people have been in a Target and Babies R Us on the same day regularly of late. However, I'd like to note that the children in Babies R US seem almost infinitely more well-adjusted and cute. Is this a socioeconomic thing going on or just dumb luck? I'm not really privy to differences in the two stores pricing structures. Perhaps it's the sheer volume of crap available in Target that gets the kids overexcited, diagnosed with ADD and put on heavy doses of ritalin. I'm not really sure. However, if you're a parent, I recommend taking the kids to Babies R Us and then letting them sit in the car with the window rolled down to a proper level while you peruse the amazing dollar deals at the front of Target.

S and I embarked on our last big date day before the arrival of our little bundle of joy. Firstly, we woke up late. S took a shower while I lay in bed waiting for the room to warm up in a cocoon of blankets that I've taken to bringing to bed after she commandeered virtually everything else on the bed including like six pillows in an attempt to maintain some modicum of comfort in these latter stages of pregnancy. As it turns out, our room didn't warm up.

Thus, we headed downstairs together to make breakfast! For those of you who haven't made breakfast in a while, it is not easy. Thus, we decided that for date day we'd rather just have some cereal. Edit: I wound up eating some bacon in the microwave. Date day was off to a rousing start. It was at this point, in what was truly going to be an epic date day that S decided that we'd be attending church. To be honest, nothing says date day like some qt down at the old DC CRC. I think that's a gang name or something.

Anyhow, we continued date day by going to church and singing some hymns and praying some prayers and stuff. Then we went out into the vestibule or whatever, or causeway? or whatever, and had some nice snacks made by someone else. Nothing says date day like eating food prepared by someone else. Eating a couple of crackers and a piece of celery on a thimble sized paper plate made date day go from amazing to whatever is better than amazing.

We then went back into church and sat through an hour and a half congregational meeting where a number of people were highly displeased. This displeased us because it was our date day and here we were sitting amongst a big group of angry people. Even though the energy in the room was a bit exciting in a visceral way, I felt that taking to the streets and firing a trash can through someone's window would probably dampen date day for S.

We went home to try and reinvigorate date day. Unfortunately, in the midst of preparing to head off to Sugar Loaf mountain I realized that I had made a mistake in pulling Hines Ward out of my starting lineup for fantasy football. If you've never made a late switch to an underperforming player, (Chris Ivory) than you probably can't understand the kind of mental anguish that I was in, which is to say, a lot. After about the fifth time that I mentioned how good Hines was doing S asked me why I made the switch in the first place, which, as you can imagine, sent me into another wave of remorse over all the poor fantasy football decisions I'd made in the past. Making a mistake like this is akin to switching Baking Powder for Baking Soda in baking.

All of the remorse over my terrible decision made me want to take a nap. In the meantime, S was celebrating date day by writing thank you notes to people for our baby shower gifts. After a couple of hours of me randomly checking on seven games at a time to see whether Kenny Britt was still available S and I took date day to the next level. We went for a walk to take care of our friend's cat. Going for a walk with your pregnant wife is sort of the epitome of date day. It having been decided at this point that a romantic trip to Sugar Loaf was nothing when compared with a date day trip to buy diapers and a stainless steel trash can.

Anyhow, on the way over to the house, the sun was shining, and all was well in the world. Except that S was wearing those silly shoes that girls wear nowadays that aren't really shoes at all, but like little ballerina shoes that don't give the feet any support at all and that really look like they should be accompanied by a tutu. Not Desmond. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.

Date day really blasted off when I attempted to take a nap on our friend's couch while S tried to coax the kitty out of the bathroom where it was rubbing its head against the toilet, apparently deciding that cold porcelain was more appealing than either of us. On our way home we cut up Sheridan to eighth and admired a few single family homes, high quality gardening, and solid fences.

At home, I went down into the basement to spend more qt with Jay Cutler, (four interceptions? I mean, I could have started Ryan Fitzpatrick, how do you do this to me Jay?) and remorse. After a while S, who was probably engaged in some sort of productive activity this whole time like creating an excel spreadsheet of our future monthly expenses while baking vegan corn muffins from scratch, lured me back upstairs for a trip to Target.

Our trip to Target gave us some new insight into how great date day 2010 could really be as I argued with her about wanting to take a trip to Italy next summer. Apparently S thinks a savings account is for saving money while I thin it's just some disposable income for trips to Europe. As it turns out, these two separate views of finances don't exactly jive perfectly. I think we finally settled on traveling overland by wagon train to cut costs.

And, as we entered our second Target, the first Target didn't have the trash can we were looking for, and let me tell you, nothing gets me more excited than driving fifteen miles out into the burbs looking for a trash can, only to discover that we need to drive even further out to another Target for that stupid piece of metal that I could have had for thirteen more bucks at our local Ace. Our ratio of purchases to time spent was sitting at about 1 item purchased for every hour spent shopping, at which point in time we entered Marshalls.

As it turns out I love Marshalls because it has all sorts of cheap crap that I don't quite need, but on a good day, could probably talk myself into buying. Purchasing makes date day feel special, but we left without anything. Curiously unfulfilled. Finally, at our second Target we expressed ourselves a little bit economically.

M: This trash can is going to change our lives. I think this is finally the purchase that is going to make us happy.

S: Move it along.

In line, we briefly discussed our enjoyment of mint M & M's before taking date day to Babies R Us. At this point I blacked out, and date day really became a blur until I came home to find out that Anquan Boldin had had a really solid second half and that I might actually win despite my poor decision making involving the benching of Hines Ward. Suddenly, date day 2010 didn't seem like such a waste after all. S and I curled up and watched a little bit of Michael Moore's fair and balanced movie on Capitalism before I headed upstairs to spend some qt on the computer checking to see if Randy Moss was going to get me one more touchdown while S read a baby book until she fell asleep. Yes, date day 2010 had been a success! I'm up forty four points in fantasy!