The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Lynx (Last Week: 0).  In a possible WNBA Finals preview Saturday, the Lynx suffered their third Loss of the season at Las Vegas.  Head-to-head is the first (and, come to think of it, it should be the only) tie-breaker for the Commissioner's Cup, and since The Bastard Utah Starzzz beat Phoenix last/Wednesday night, they're going to face New York for the million-dollar payday.

That's why I can't rise the Lynx above negative number this Week.  But they did rout Portland at home on Monday and Los Angeles last/Wednesday night.  And, yes, they faced Vegas without Napheesa Collier and lost only by three.  And they came back to take the lead late in the Game, mostly courtesy of Olivia Miles, who has become the new sensation in the WNBA.  The Spectacle/The Show/O-Mi had no fear in driving on Aja Wilson ... and scoring.  She pretty much single-handedly brought Minnesota back into the Game.  And against L. A., she poured in 31 Points on 12-for-15 shooting.  Forget Rookie Of The Year; she's got that sewn up.  There is solid, incessant talk that she might be MVP.  She's making a case for it now.

So, even though they didn't make the Commissioner's Cup title Game, they're still on top of the league, and they're not even at full strength yet.  Maybe this team with a championship pedigree can come through and actually win the championship.  This screening Week they visit Golden State and then have a home-and-home with Washington.

#-2: Twins (Last Week: -1).  They're an afterthought in this market, but they didn't have a bad Week.  Sure, it started with an 11-0 shellacking to end their season at Detroit last Thursday afternoon.  But they won their weekend series here over St. Louis, with both Wins by a Run.  And they've already won their series at The Bastard Washington Senators v.2.0, doubling up Texas 4-2 Monday and then sextupling them 12-2 Tuesday night.  Byron Buxton remains (mostly) healthy, the bats are waking up, and the Bullpen ain't complete garbage.

I was wondering in last Week's WMNSS why the third Game of their current series skipped a Day and is being played this/afternoon.  I saw why last/Wednesday night.  Globe Life Field is in the vicinity of AT&T Stadium, the home of The Dallas Cowboys ... but is being renamed Dallas Stadium because of the World Cup.  And there was a Game there between England and Croatia.  (The English doubled up the Croats, 4-2.)  Two sporting events happening in the same area not only on the same Day but overlapping each other would be a traffic and security nightmare, so I'm guessing the two baseball teams asked for and were granted by Major League Baseball permission to push their getaway Game back a Day.  After that they travel to Arizona to play three at the Diamondbacks over the weekend, then they come home to host The Bastard Brooklyn Dodgers for a trio beginning on Monday.

Left Pinky Toe Twitch

So for the past, oh, week or so I have noticed that my left pinky toe, and maybe my left ring toe, has been twitching.  I notice this when I'm at home.  Wonder if all my sitting down at work has anything to do with it.

I also wonder if it's Parkinson's.  If I recall correctly, Michael J. Fox noticed an uncontrollable twitch in one of his fingers while he and his wife were being driven by limo to some awards ceremony.  The finger was shaking so violently, and Fox was so spooked, that they had the limo driver drive around the block in the hopes that it would stop twitching.  Don't know if it did, but I think it was the first time Fox felt something was very, very wrong.  He got the diagnosis some time after.

Yeah, let's hope it's not Parkinson's.

I decided that last/Monday night, I was going to spend my time after work going through my storage unit.  Glad I did; I am somewhat relieved I finally began to address my stuff.  Didn't make much of a dent; rearranged stuff from three or four bags that ripped, mostly.  But already, the pile in my first unit, which was over my head, is now only up to my neck.  Sure, that's because some of my stuff is in the secondary storage unit around the corner.  But I get a psychic lift from seeing that pile go down.  It gives me the push to get back there sooner and go through more of my stuff.

Speaking of which ... I brought a bag of my stuff home.  It's mostly papers, so at the very least I will read them.  But tentative as they may be, these are steps I finally am able to take.  Hopefully it's not too late.  Hopefully my parents won't be back for a long time. ...

Well, I did The Quad, and once I did, I went home and immediately went to bed, around 11:30.  Got up to pee once at a quarter to 4, but conked back off and promptly had a nightmare about something I can't remember now.  Was pretty much up for good at a quarter to 7, or maybe 7.  All in all, very recuperating, and the reason why I am blog posting this morning ... and why I need to leave now.

Doin' The Quad! And On A Full Stomach!!!

Soccer days don't get much fuller than this -- a quadrupleheader of World Cup Group Stage Matches, each evenly spread out with approximately an hour inbetween.  Games at noon, 3, 6 and 9.  And I am going to be at one place for all four of them.

I am going to try and eat and drink through the day.  But my last meal was last night's birria tacos with ramen.  It didn't look like much, but I had to take the rest of the ramen home with me to eat after about an hour.  I had to relieve myself, and post haste.  I don't know why I got so full: I had only a elote going out to the Mexican craft brewery to watch Brazil and Morocco tie, and like I said in my last blog post, I ate waffles in the morning.  It couldn't have been the beer, or the mango michelada, could it?

Anyway, thing is I feel, well, full.  And I didn't plan on it.  This place has five ethnic-themed hot dogs, and I want to try at least four of them.  The way I'm feeling now, I might not make it.  And that surprises and, to be honest, disappoints me.

Addendum To: Addendum To: Planning World Cup Viewing Where

And now the un-synching on Telemundo is back.  The video is about a second behind the audio.  And it's not just during the Game; it's happening during the commercials, too.  Is Telemundo aware of this?

It's annoying to hear the thump of a player kicking the ball before you see that ball being kicked.  It's so annoying that, since I'm seeing this for a second broadcast, I have to believe this is something Telemundo cannot fix and therefore I have to hold this against the network.  And if watching Telemundo for World Cup Matches is no longer a priority for me, that creates the possibility that I could, or should, just listen to Games while going through my storage unit.  Another consideration that might alter what I do this week.

Addendum To: Planning World Cup Viewing Where

And complicating all my World Up watch-planning is something I thought of, and just did, this/Saturday morning: The food I have at home.  After I watched the U. S. take it to Paraguay, I'm all in on the World Cup.  Hell, I might take off work to watch Matches.  (I already have one planned for two weeks from now, but I might just take more days off.)  I want to go out every day.  But I shouldn't, because I have milk that's about to go bad, bread that's been in the fridge for two weeks, deli meat that I've barely made a dent on, and frozen waffles and french toast that I should get around to eating.

But dammit, I don't feel like staying home on the weekends and eating them all.  I really, really prefer going out Saturday and Sunday and watching soccer.  Guess that food can wait till the workweek ... but right now I really, really prefer heading out after work to watch soccer at a pub or restaurant, too.  Man, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I was so tuckered out after the USMNT Game that I promptly fell into bed.  Probably conked off around 11 p.m.  Woke up a quarter after 8, totally refreshed.  The one thing I am going to do today is go to this Mexican craft brewery and watch Brazil-Morocco there.  My secondary plan is going to this Mexican place close to me and see if I can watch at least part of Haiti-Scotland there.  They have a TV on, and for some stupid reason it's on a Fox local channel (not Fox News, not the Fox station here in town, but "Fox Local" -- it shows news stories that come from a random series of local telecasts, or at least that's what it appears to be).  I kind of want to know if they take TV requests, and if not, this will be the first World Cup Match I won't be able to follow, either on TV or through the radio.

So this involves a lot of eating out, as you can tell.  And yet I also had a plan to, if I woke up early enough, eat either the frozen waffles or french toast sticks whose boxes I've already opened up.  I just ate the waffles (and chased it down with milk).  I'm not hungry anymore, but because I'm up and because the first WC Game of the day, Qatar-Switzerland, is not until 2, I think I'll go shopping and eat lunch.  I need creamer, but I thought about getting ground meat for spaghetti I might make next week.  But if I'm going out at least thrice next week, what's the point?  And sure, why eat lunch when I'm already not hungry after breakfast?  Good question, but I think I'll still have soup and a sandwich.  Or, I might take the sandwich home and eat it later.  That might be the food I'll have next week ... well, beyond the food I already have at home.

Planning World Cup Viewing Where

I have gotten obsessed with arranging my free time around the World Cup the five weeks it's going on.  I shouldn't, considering that this World Cup is being (mainly) hosted by a fascist country.  Also, it's become even more obvious that FIFA is a corrupt organization that continues to get away with suckering communities into giving them money in exchange for the right to host the biggest sporting event on the planet this side of the Olympics.  No wonder, then, that the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, gave Trump a made-up-on-the-spot "peace prize" just to kiss his ass, one grifter publicly proclaiming his love to another grifter.  The business side of this soccer festival should make one's stomach turn.  However, since I am plotting how I will watch as much of it as I can proves I have overlooked this evil sausage-making and, in turn, makes me complicit.

Well, my complicit ass is still going to watch, and figure out the best way to watch while balancing things such as my checkbook, the health of my car, going to my storage unit to go through my stuff (which is really chapping my ass right now the more I think about it), and just going home and relaxing.  A part of me truly relishes how to put the pieces together, but a part of me knows this can easily overwhelm me, and another part of me knows I'm capable of just saying "fuck it" and I'll completely forget all of this.

Regardless, right now I'm planning ... but only for next week.  I am trying to do the following:

• Have one day where I go work, then directly go home.  I will watch all the Games from home and eat in, and thus I will not spend any money;
• I will go out and watch at least one soccer Match at a bar or establishment boasting about televising the World Cup;
• I will go out and watch at least one soccer Match at a Mexican or Latin American restaurant that has a TV and may or may not be televising the World Cup;
• I will go from work to my storage unit, where I will spend at least the majority of one soccer Game listening to it on Sirius XM while going through my stuff.  I will not spend any money and instead go straight home after the Match is over;
• Oh, and I promised ******a that I would see her at the strip club one night.

My original guiding principle on which weekdays I'd do each of the above depended on whether I could watch the Match on FOX/Channel 9.  If it wasn't on there, I figured that wasn't a day I should just go home; either I would watch at a pub or restaurant that had Fox Sports 1, or listen to it on satellite radio at my storage unit.  But then I remembered that Telemundo is over the air and is airing every single Match on free TV, albeit in Spanish.  Soccer is universal, so watching any Game from home was back on the table.

But then I saw last/Friday night's South Korea-Czechia Match, and for some dumb reason the audio and video were out of synch.  I'm hoping it's a one-time glitch, because if it's not, I won't watch Telemundo anymore ... which might actually make planning easier because it removes the possibility that I could watch any Game at home.  Fix this, Telemundo.

Another consideration I, um, considered is the quality of the sides playing.  I want to see competitive Matches, and once the final roundelay of Games comes around, the stakes are going to influence which ones I watch and thus where.  But the field for the World Cup has expanded from 36 to 48.  That means a lot of new teams -- and a bunch of teams that are not good and should get easily dispatched in the Games they play.  Also, there is a fifth round of Knockout Stage Matches now, which means 32 teams will advance out of the Group Stage.  Allowing 2/3 of the field into the "playoffs" makes the "regular season" Group Stage Games somewhat less important, even if the final Group Stage Games will determine who comes in last in each Group and thus is automatically eliminated.

The more I think about it, the more I've decided that I want to dedicate my attention to matchups that feature good XI's or countries that appear to be evenly matched.  If there's a Game that doesn't satisfy either condition, I am beginning to think it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to only tune in to it in the middle of the Match, or even, for example, bail on the Game and leave an establishment early.  It is hard to eat out at a restaurant for two hours so you can watch a whole Game.  And speaking of whole Games ... I realized that when I get out of work each day will dictate whether I go home, my unit, or out to watch.  Do I want to go out to catch the back end of a lopsided Match between two nations that have no chance of winning the World Cup?  Maybe, actually, and I'll save the days I go directly home for when I am able to watch a good Game on paper in its entirety.

You can see how I am weighing a lot of things, right?  Yeah, maybe I'm overthinking this.  But I don't want to spend money I can't afford, I want to start eating the food at home that I've bought, I don't want to tax my car, and I do want to start cleaning up my stuff.  So, considering all of that ... I still don't know.  Guess the only really important thing to me is I just want to watch some soccer.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#0: Lynx (Last Week: -1).  The Lynx are in the thick of Commissioner's Cup play, and they're kicking ass, going 3-0 this Week and remaining undefeated for this in-season tournament.  I was at the first Game of the screening Week, home last Thursday to Golden State.  They started off great, but then from the middle of the Second Quarter on, the Valkyries asserted control, and Minnesota was a click or two behind.  Finally, in the Fourth, they put shots together, they stacked stops, and was very, very lucky Cecilia Zandalasini's Three-Point shot at the gun was an airball.  (Courtney Williams could've iced it, but she missed her second Three Throw to keep the lead at three.  Tsk-tsk.)

Like Anthony Edwards, I am starting to believe I was wrong about Olivia Miles.  I remember throwing my glasses on the table on the table I was sitting at in the bar, listening to the WNBA Draft and hearing that the Lynx took Miles.  I thought she didn't have the will to defend nor the jump shot to round out her game in a way that, say, Ricky Rubio really couldn't.  Well, Miles went offensive HAM on this bitch, setting a WNBA record for most Threes made by a Rookie in a Game with eight.  Also, I wasn't quite aware at how preternatural her court vision is.  And finally, she has the poise of a veteran.  In the possession that led to Court splitting her pair, there was a Lay-Up drive that missed.  Miles eventually gathered the ball and, instead of hoisting up quickly, pulled the ball out and forced Golden State to foul.  I totally forgot the game situation, namely that there was about ten Seconds left and Minnesota was up by one.  Miles did not forget.  Fucking genius.

They finish Comissioner's Cup pool play this Week.  They host Portland Monday and visit Los Angeles on Wednesday.  But the real big test, if not THE test, comes Saturday night when they visit Las Vegas.  For my money, right now (and take that with more than a grain of salt), Saturday's matchup will be the WNBA Finals.

#-1: Twins (Last Week: -2).  A 2-4 Week.  There isn't much worth to say other than the Bullpen fuckin' sucks.  Yeah, that's all I want to say about this execrable bunch.  Well, I should say that they finish up their series in Detroit this/Thursday afternoon, then quickly host St. Louis for three over the weekend, then travel to play The Bastard Washington Senators v.2.0 for three-Game set on Monday, Tuesday and ... Thursday???

Too Many Oranges

Yesterday/Tuesday evening, helped by the fact that I got out of work early (I had to stop by the local grocery store to get a chicken breast on sale, but even with that I got home earlier than I usually do these days), I ate the final part of the last of five oranges I bought two weeks ago.  I've read on the Internet that you don't want to eat oranges that have been in the fridge for that long, but they tasted like oranges (even though the taste was a tad off) and hey, I haven't gotten sick after eating any of them, including the one yesterday/Tuesday evening.

I bought these at the discount grocery store, so I got, or felt I got, a bargain.  Also, I bought five of them because I wanted to make sure I had enough orange juice to make all the cocktails I wanted to make.  Well, I made one mimosa and one monkey gland, and still I have to eat, oh, three of the five oranges like they were, you know, oranges.  I shouldn't complain; they're a great source of vitamin C, of course.  But I way overestimated the number of oranges I needed for cocktails.  Need to cut back next time.