Craig's Blog of Destiny

Dateline – WASHINGTON (the state) – With the end of the NFL regular season, the Greyhavens Fantasy Football League finished its playoffs and got their first season in the books.   There were lots of ups and downs, but league officials consider their inaugural season a big success.

In the first playoff week, the Championship Bracket saw number one seed Wurstens6 take on the fourth seeded The Burning Legion.   In a squeaker, Wurstens6 managed to advance to the Championship game, beating The Burning Legion by less than five points.   In a battle of the second and third seeds Dunedain advanced over the Snowmen.   In the Consolation Bracket, in what may have been their best week of the season, the eighth seeded Bulldogs upended the fifth seeded The Hand of David team and Safety Blitz barely managed to get by the Bruisers.

In the Championship week, The Dunedain managed to outscore the mighty Wurstens6 to finish in the top spot, while the Snowmen outplayed The Burning Legion for a third place finish.   The Bulldogs continued their strong play to win the fifth place game and The Hand of David won their finale to finish in the seventh spot.

There were lots of exciting times throughout the season, from the opening stresses about “how’d I end up with that player” and the “what can I do to get this guy” – to the midseason “oh no, my best starters all have a bye this week” and all the consternation about which players to start – to the final weeks frustrations over the best players sitting out of meaningless games.   Everyone that watched felt bad for The Hand of David team in the week they were playing the Wurstens6. At first it looked like they had just barely lost to the Wurstens6, then a scoring change put The Hand of David on top and everyone congratulated them on beating the Wurstens6, only to have the scoring change corrected to put them back to a loss.

The Wurstens6 proved to be the team to beat, scoring 1593.96 points in the regular season, a full 161 points more than the next closest team.   Oddly enough, the next four scoring ranked teams were within ten points of each other, the Dunedain at 1432, The Hand of David only five points back at 1427, the Snowmen at 1423 and the Burning Legion only about one point back at 1422.

Some other interesting scoring notes: The closest game played was in Week 11 between the Bulldogs and the Bruisers, when the Bruisers beat the Bulldogs by only 1.14 points.   The highest team score for a week came in Week 6, when the Dunedain scored 146.18 points.   Somewhat uncharacteristically, the Wurstens6 had the lowest team scoring week when they posted only 32.10 points in Week 4.    The highest total weekly score (the two teams combined) came in Week 2 when the Wurstens6 and the Safe-T-Blitz scored a combined total of 243.40 points.   The lowest combined score was in Week 4, when the Wurstens6 and the Bruisers combined for only 94.16 points. The biggest blowout came in Week 14 when those same two teams, Wurstens6 and the Bruisers played and the Wurstens6 won by almost 79 points.

For the record, here are the standings at the end of the regular season:

Grand Old Division

Dundedain 9-6

Snowmen 8-7

Bruisers 7-8

Bulldogs 5-10

Junior Circuit

Wurstens6 10-5

The Burning Legion 8-7

The Hand of David 7-8

Safe-T-Blitz 6-9

League officials are all looking forward to an expanded season next year!

My new favorite advertisement is from the radio:

Sassy – Trouble on Rock Hill

“……still under the rock……”

You can see and hear all the Pet Shelter spots HERE

This week’s church sign comes to us from Colorado, via Jamie.  We very much appreciate her sending this one on to us:

That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

It’s time for the annual Christmas Greeting Dance!  Make sure you turn your sound up because this year we’ve added vocals!  Click below to enjoy!

Craig, Kristin, Sam and J’Neil Christmas Greetings Dance

She say’s she can’t play the guitar at all, but I really love the way she plays the cello!

For this post I think it’s important to review our history with Pastor Fred.  It all started way back in August of 2008 with the infamous “Give us Flesh to Eat” sign.   I still don’t quite have that reconciled in my head, and apparently some of his congregation also had trouble with it, but of course they came around in the end, as we saw with a follow-up sign on the “Pastor Fred” post.  The next time we checked in with Pastor Fred he deviated some from the food theme, and addressed “Divine Rock.” Fortunately, he got back to the food theme pretty quickly.  Although it wasn’t clear that he ate the donkey, he did leave me with that as a possibility when he mentioned having been “Saved by…” the donkey.  Then Virginia Davidson locked us back into the importance of sustenence with the “Eat this Book” lecture.  Pastor Fred then went on a trip, and made sure to eat to be prepared. They may have crossed the line a little when they got into product endorsements on the Pepsi sign. After that, we got worried that they may have gone away as the sign was blank for well over two months.  Then, Pastor Fred returned, and almost to directly address my initial reaction assured us that there was nothing mysterious about his disappearance.

Which brings us to the latest from Pastor Fred:

I couldn’t agree more, Pastor Fred.  Whether it’s all that food you’ve been working on over there, your recent journey, your guest lecturers, or simply my enjoyment of your signs over all these months, it has indeed been very good.  (But to be honest, I still worry a little over that “flesh to eat” sign….)

Some folks are offering a pet service specifically to those Christians that believe they’re going to be called directly to heaven in the event of Rapture.  For a small fee (around $110.00) the service promises believing Christians that if the Rapture happens, their pets (that have been left behind) will be taken care of.  Ok, good idea, but here’s the smart part:  the guarantee specifically stipulates that an atheist, a certified atheist, will be the one to take care of your pet.  One group actually promises their atheist don’t convert:  “Every month or every week the members of this group will have to click on [a] Web site and verify that they have been blaspheming, and they still have not accepted Jesus.”  

That’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

A couple of weeks ago I was able to ride the Kitsap Color Classic, a bike ride around the northeastern side of the Washington peninsula.  It was great!  Since Sam had driven his truck over to see his girlfriend, he as able to take me and my bike down to the ferry in Edmonds, from there I ferried over to Kingston to start the ride.
There were several routes to choose from, the route I took me from Kingston north to Hansville then around to the west and south back to Kingston.  Apparently I choose the “hilly” route, which I certainly would not have done had I know it before hand.  At one rest stop I was amid a group of riders when one asked “so how’s that bike on the hills?”  I got quite a laugh with my “it sucks” response.

Riding my recumbent up hills is indeed a challenge, and because I was on the “hilly” course I had a somewhat slow ride.  That along with the fact that I kept stopping to take in the views. I wish the pictures could do justice to some of the views we had, but they don’t.   I have one here looking across the sound back towards Edmonds and Everett.  In thebackground you can see Mt Baker, which looked much better then than it does in the picture.  There’s another looking west inland into the peninsula which had a great view of the mountains.  However, my favorite scenes were the ones where the road wound through trees.   I really enjoyed riding through all the trees.  Unfortunately, most were evergreens, and the few deciduous trees there were hadn’t yet turned colors, so the Kitsap Color Classic’s primary color was green, but it was all still lovely.

I was very excited today to see that Pastor Fred is back!  And though he declines to elaborate, there was apparently nothing mysterious about his absence.