The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Twins (Last Week: 0).  They went 5-1 this past Week, even though it doesn't matter, really.  They needed The Bastard Washington Senators v.2.0 to go on a losing streak, and they've righted their ship enough so that Minnesota wasn't going to get that other bye into the American League Division Series.  So the 3-Seed is theirs; the only remaining question going to the regular season finale this/Sunday afternoon is whether Texas, The Houston Asterisks or Jose Berrios and The Toronto Blue Jays will be the team they face for the American League Wild Card Series, a best-of-3 all at Target Field mid-Week.

I find it very sad that the unquestioned top team in this Week's Survey has both the longest-active and the longest-ever losing streak of consecutive playoff Games with 18.  Man, fuck this sports town.

Oh, their final Game of the regular season is in Denver vs. The Colorado Rockies.  Both a friend and a Minnesota-based person I follow on X/Twitter are in Denver, went to at least one Game, and posted at least one picture from their seat at Coors Field.  Been there for one contest; it was really hot (I had an upper-deck seat) and the view of the Rocky Mountains out in the outfield is great.

#-2: Gopher football (Last Week: -3).  After fucking trailing at Halftime, 17-14, the Gophs roared back to defeat the Louisiana (formerly Louisiana-Lafayette) Ragin' Cajuns for Homecoming yesterday/Saturday afternoon, 35-24.  But the damage to the atmosphere may have already been done after the previous collapse at Northwestern.  I didn't watch the Game all that much because my alma mater was playing at the same time, but I wonder how many empty seats there were, and how many were empty as a result of that unacceptable Loss to the Wildcats.  Meanwhile, Head Coach P. J. Fleck brought up the NIL arms race in one of his press conferences leading up the Game.  Lamenting how the U. needs to step up its game makes me believe he actually is greasing the skids on an exit.  There is such a thing as a seven-year itch.

Michigan comes to town Saturday night.  The Little Brown Jug will be contested for only the third time in the past seven seasons (it was contested annually between 1928 and 1998; college football has broken away from tradition for a while now).  Wait, wait, wait ... who am I fucking kidding?  Michigan is ranked second in the polls; that trophy isn't going to be contested.

#-3: Gopher soccer (Last Week: -2).  Scoreless Tie at Iowa Sunday, then were handled at Robbie by Wisconsin Thursday, 3-1.  The Badgers are a good outfit, so the talent and result difference between the border schools is stark.  This is Erin Chastain's third Year as Head Coach, and she hasn't taken her alma mater to NCAA Tournament yet, and she has yet to win a conference Match.  Maybe more scrutiny is in order?

Only one Match this screening Week, but it's a big one, and it happens this/Sunday afternoon: At Indiana, ranked 16th in one poll.

#-4: United FC (Last Week: -Infinity).  Blew another goddamn lead last/Saturday night, although this time they managed to tie San Jose at Allianz at 1.  This is the third straight motherfucking Match where they held a lead and then lost it.  After hearing they blew the lead and lost to both the Galaxy and St. Louis the previous screening Week, I wanted to compile how many leads they've given away this Year, and just tonight I was able to find the time to compile it: For 2023, throughout all competitions, the Looooooooons have blown 14 leads over twelve Matches.  (I have heard the statistic "'x" Points dropped from a winning position," and that's such a haughty, soccer-centric kind of stat that I wonder why in the hell can't we just say blown leads instead.  It's an American stat!)  Adrian Heath pulled Emanuel Reynoso late in the Second Half when MNUFC was leading but when I thought they still needed a Goal.  Heard Bebelo is playing hurt, but he was still pulling the Earthquakes into his orbit, and they equalized shortly thereafter.  I don't fucking get it.

The only reason I've lifted these underachievers above -Infinity -- well, besides calming down -- is that I looked at the standings after last/Saturday night's Draw.  If United FC were able to keep leads and win two of their last three Matches, not only would they be well into playoff position, right now they would be in fifth place in the Western Conference.  Sadly, because of their recent and season-long fuck-ups, they're in 11th.  They're only three Points behind ninth, but they have to hope teams ahead of them stumble, and they have only three Matches left in order for all that to happen.  Moreover, the XI visits LAFC Wednesday and host the Galaxy (which came back from 3-1 down in Carson, Calif. to defeat the Looooooooooooons 4-3 on September 20) Saturday night.  Their streak of reaching the postseason is in very serious jeopardy.

#-5: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -1).  Yes, I keep saying First-Year Mulligan, but while this team swept Michigan at Maturi Friday, they got swept Sunday at Nebraska and lost at home to Penn St. last/Saturday night in four Sets, and both the Cornhuskers and Nittany Lions are ranked.  A second weekend finish appears to be the goal, and I think that's very underwhelming.

Visit the Atlantic schools over the weekend.

#-6: Vikings (Re-Entry!).  The season's over.  I was ready to declare the ViQueens' season over after getting upset at home to fucking Tampa Bay, but after fucking up at home and losing to The Los Angeles Chargers, they're 0-3, and very few squads rebound from such a hole to make the playoffs.

Karma, in a sense, is coming back to bite these guys in the asses.  After being undefeated in one-score Games, they're now winless in the three contests they've played so far.  That's a vicious regression to the mean.  More disturbing, however (even moreso than the continuing deficiencies on Defense), is the continuing lack of focus when it comes to fundamentals and when it counts.  Alexander Mattison had a ball ripped from his hands.  The Chargers earned First Downs through Vikes Penalties.  And the most egregious example of not being able to perform in clutch moments was the last drive, where, after getting a First Down and driving for the go-ahead Touchdown, Kirk Cousins decided he needed to wait to hear Head Coach Kevin O'Connell radio in a play.  He couldn't hear, however, because the U. S. Bank Stadium crowd was too loud after that First Down.  Cousins may or may not have heard the play, Cousins threw to T. J. Hockenson, and Hockenson allowed it to bobble across his hands into the arms of an awaiting Chargers defender.  O'Connell had a Time Out, but he said he would rather have the Offense run a play to keep the Chargers off-balance.  Well, the ones off-balance on that Interception were his team.

And now they're going down to Carolina, with an amped-up Adam Thielen poised to show his old (and childhood) club that he still has something left in the tank and Bryce Young ready to have his first big performance against a Minnesota team because all Rookies and unknowns have big performances against Minnesota teams.  They are likely going to be 0-4 with a home tilt versus Kansas City (and possibly Taylor Swift?) looming.  This season and franchise is circling the drain.

The Final Days Of Summer

If I said that summer was done -- uh, whoops.

I saw my alma mater just survive their Game which started at 11 a.m.  I know that the first Game of the pandemic 2020 season (which was in early November) kicked off at 11 a.m. too.  I don't know if my alma mater has ever played that early in the day besides those times.  Anyway, my friend and I were going to his car so that he can drive me to my car, which was a little farther away.  He was outside for Halftime, and when he came back he remarked that he got really hot while on his walk.  I knew it was going to be hot and humid, but once I went outside too -- my goodness, is it hot!  I had long pants on, but I don't think it would have mattered if I broke out my shorts -- I am sweating.  And apparently it's going to be this hot and humid until Tuesday, after which there will be a storm that will send temperatures plummeting at least 15 degrees and dry out the humidity.  Can't wait till then.  I just have to endure till then, too.

Where Major League Baseball Teams Taken From Their Original Cities Will Play For The Final Series (Or Close To It) If I Were Scheduler

(I edited this around 1 a.m. October 1 because I had to re-do the schedule for The Baltimore Orioles because the previous schedule didn't work.)

So I have this ... uh, OCD thing where I want to see teams, regardless of sport, end their regular seasons in the cities where they're originally born.  I'm a Pisces and this idea is a full circle kind of thing.

Between 1981 and 2004, Major League Baseball's regular season was set up by, get this, a married couple, Henry and Holly Stephenson.  Ever since, it looks as though MLB hired a company called The Sports Scheduling Group that, I guess, makes money by generating schedules on computer.  But to think that just two people was able to determine the schedule for all the teams in America's Favorite Pastime.  It can't have become more complex since 2005, right?  Sure, there are more teams, but there is still 162 Games.  If a married couple can sit down and figure out a schedule of 2,430 Games over the course of six Months without screwing up, I can indulge in my relocation-hating fantasy of mapping out which teams play where for the final three-to-six Games of a fictional regular season.

So, with that in mind, if I had my way, a regular season would end with these particular series:

• Atlanta Braves at Milwaukee Brewers
• Atlanta Braves at Boston Red Sox (so this is a franchise that has been stolen away twice; the Braves originated in Boston, so Atlanta finishes its regular season playing in Milwaukee and then playing in Boston -- oh, and there is a huge to-do regarding the Milwaukee Brewers; see below)
• New York Yankees at Baltimore Orioles
• Baltimore Orioles at St. Louis Cardinals
• Baltimore Orioles at Milwaukee Brewers
• Milwaukee Brewers at Seattle Mariners (now this is getting really complicated; there is a team that has been stolen away twice, and the city the Baltimore Orioles were born in has both had a second team stolen from them and itself stolen a team.  What to do?  Christ almighty, I think I've got it; Baltimore plays in Milwaukee the third-to-last series of the regular season; plays in St. Louis in the second-to-last series of the regular season; and in the last series of the regular season, Baltimore hosts the Yankees.  Meanwhile, the final three series of the regular season for the Milwaukee Brewers will be home to Baltimore, home to Atlanta, then at Seattle.  Done!)
• Minnesota Twins at Washington Nationals
• Texas Rangers at Washington Nationals (this time Washington, D. C. would be hosting two teams that were stolen from the Federal District; since the original franchise became The Minnesota Twins, the Nationals host the Rangers in the next-to-last series and host the Twins in the last)
• Oakland Athletics at Kansas City Royals
• Oakland Athletics at Philadelphia Phillies (another two-time city-jumper in Oakland [who will soon be Las Vegas].  Because the Athletics originated in Philadelphia, Oakland will play in Kansas City before finishing up in Philadelphia)

Big caveats: I don't know what to do with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants.  They were both stolen from the good people of New York City.  But Major League Baseball is beautifully distinct because it's not really the city that the historic New York-based teams hails from but the borough.  The Dodgers, for example, were born The Brooklyn Dodgers.  The San Francisco Giants were taken from Manhattan.  Meanwhile, the Yankees play in The Bronx while the Mets play in Queens.  Yeah, you can take the Dodgers and Giants back to New York.  But there is no deciding factor as to which California baseball team should play which New York City baseball team (whether it be the Yankees or the Mets) and when.  So, I've decided that they don't "come home to where they were born" because, to be technical, there is no current MLB ballclub in the borough they were taken away from.

Baseball is such an old sport that I thought there would be a hell of a lot more relocations than the ones I listed above.  But I guess that's it.

Finally Gave Up At Work

Maybe it was the forms that came in Wednesday night that did me in.  There have been a lot of changes going on with the company, and that has rejiggered when I can expect the work to come in from the lab.  Wednesday night, for some odd reason, new work came in at the end of the workday.  Now, it wasn't really the end of my workday, since I once again was saddled with so much stuff to do.  But that new stuff was the final straw.  I couldn't get to that stuff if I wanted to leave at a not-insane hour.  In fact, I was told that new work wasn't going to come in that late into the afternoon.

So, partly to vent and partly to cover my ass, I forwarded the new work to both my supervisor and my boss.  I basically said to them, "What the hell is this?  I can't do this shit this late in the day, are you kidding me?"  And I don't know if they agreed with me, or even thought through my argument.  The cynic in me believes that both of them just noted when I sent that e-mail, which was an hour after I should have left for the day.  And that goes back to my boss' incessant haranguing (though not recently, to be fair) about me racking up overtime in The Fourth Department.

That may have been behind my supervisor telling me when I got in to work yesterday/Thursday morning that she was going to look over my shoulder and ask me questions about how I lay out my day.  This was the "meddling" I feared and hated when my boss started asking me questions about why am I racking up so much OT.  But this week has been a damn bear, with all this work coming in at all part of the day, plus these calls I have to field and work from previous days that had also piled up.  All these changes (which may be the result of the volume of work coming into the building but also may stem from personnel shortage issues) have made this week more of a torture chamber to fight through than any week before.  I did my self-imposed maximum of ten hours Monday and Wednesday.  And the ripple effects of needing to stay late to get work done on Monday, which meant that I had to come back on Tuesday to clean up that stuff, which pushes me tackling the new stuff to later on Tuesday and maybe even Wednesday ... you get what I mean ... all of that made me afraid that this is The New Normal.  And I am such a prideful, or pig-headed, man that I continued to say, "That's fine!  I can do it all by myself -- so long as you leave me alone and pay me for all the work I have to do!"

Till now.  The surge in workload has become a pain in the ass.  And the shifting down of an hour meant that, if I have to stay my self-imposed maximum of ten hours, I need to stay till 7:30.  I did that Monday and I missed the First Half of Monday Night Football.  I did that yesterday/Wednesday, went to Taco Bell to grab dinner, and was lucky to come home in time to see all of the season premiere of The Amazing Race.  I'm not exercising after work as I did, and could do, if I were working The Main Department (which, truth be told, I haven't worked in weeks, if not months).  And I'm tired as hell.  Is this The New Normal?  As much as I need the damn money, I don't know if I can take OT, at least this much OT, anymore.  And besides, my boss's bosses are telling him to tell me to stop staying late.  I hate dictates from on high, but it looks as though they've finally decided to put an end to accruing this much overtime and fattening up my paychecks.

My supervisor remains an angel in my times of strife.  I fully believe she empathizes with me and understands the stress and anxiety of The Fourth Department, especially when you're getting hit from all directions at once.  But she has gotten orders from my boss to get me out of work in eight hours, so, after asking me questions about what I do when and verifying that I'm not slacking off or anything, she's going to step in and do the new work for me early in the afternoon.  If I weren't so frazzled as I am, I would consider this a threat to my ego.  Frankly, though, right now I feel kind of relieved.  The workload of new forms yesterday/Thursday was in no way ridiculous.  I could have handled it all by myself.  But like the other days all week, I had old stuff to resolve and a bunch of phone calls I needed to handle.  I wasn't going to get to the new stuff until well into the afternoon.  It was so bad yesterday that, truthfully, I don't think I could have gotten to all the new forms by ten hours.  But thankfully, my supervisor did the bulk of it.

With that being said, I did nine hours.  It's not ten, like it was Monday or Wednesday, but it ain't eight, which I presume is my boss' goal.  There was a trickle of new stuff that came in late in the afternoon, after my supervisor left, and I believe I had to do them, so I have a ready-made excuse for staying over.  Combine that with all the other correspondence I needed to tie up and the usual end-of-day work to make sure there were no loose ends, and it was 6:30.  I don't know if my boss is going to be OK with that.  What I do know is that the old me would have gone ballistic that somebody was budding in to my territory, but right now, as I type this, I realize that I surrendered and volunteered for more help.  And I am not worrying about my pride or my manhood or even my wallet that I'll do it again.

Addendum To: And This Is Why I Hate Calling People At Work

So I got back to the woman I talked to about those mysterious pills that came in with the pee.  Frankly, this woman is psychotic.  She was incredibly passive-aggressive when I just wanted to know what she wanted me to do with those pills, became very accusatory because she believed our lab broke some urine bottles she shipped to us several weeks ago, and came off as so narcissistic that I don't think she listened to a word I said and instead just was waiting for a moment she could begin spewing out what was stewing in her head.  And she was incredibly, absurdly thin-skinned, too.  Get this -- I was just listening to her talk and talk and talk when my co-workers, who were behind me, started chuckling.  And this bitch goes, "Are you laughing?"

"That is my co-worker," I said, incredulously and sternly.  I have never accused someone of laughing at me while I was on a business call.  I wouldn't say it even if I thought the person I was speaking to was.  How borderline fucking paranoid do you have to be to think someone at work is laughing at you??  And I thought I was crazy, holy shit. ...

She wanted a photo of these tablets ("Those aren't really tablets, but capsules, but anyway ..." she actually said that -- my God, she is insufferable and out of her mind) and I was only too happy to e-mail it to her because I was praying to Buddha that would be the last goddamn time I would ever, ever have to speak to her.  And that was my last phone call with her ... but she was going back and forth with me through e-mail.  Luckily, her tone got less combative once she realized that the testing was underway for the pee she presumably intended to send.  That doesn't excuse her tone, of course; she didn't have to fly off the handle over some cold tablets.  Turns out they were thrown in to the bag by mistake by someone who thought the bag those tablets were in was empty.

Unfortunately, I have spoken to human beings a lot.  I was verbally abused too many fucking times by assholes when I was an usher, and that was because those assholes thought I was beneath them.  As I have gotten older, however, I have realized that fuckers who scream at customer service people do so because they feel like they're not in control, and they feel demeaning people is their only way in which to get that control.  That, shall we say, power imbalance is in my favor at my job.  These people who call need test results, and my company provides them.  That means those people are waiting on us, and on me.  I will always try to help.  But if they refuse to be cooperative, I remind myself that we got the answers, and I will lord those test results over the pricks who call in and want to be nasty with me.

So, I will say that those interactions I described above are way worse than this bullshit she pulled.  In fact, believe it or not, I have to admit that in dealing with her nuttiness, I saw a little bit of ... myself.  Hey, I'm no angel.  In order to get what I want, I will become passive-aggressive and defensive and yelly as she was.  I'm not proud of that behavior (necessarily), it's just that I have had temper tantrums like that many times before, and I know that I won't change because that's how I act when I am pissed -- just like she was.

---

Her last e-mail to me was that explanation of how those liquid gel caps got in that bag.  It was a mistake, and there was no intention of testing them or anything like that.  The thing is, I never asked her how those tablets got in there.  I don't care.  And so I wonder what her point was in fleshing out the story.  Did she think I wanted to know?  Or is this another demonstration of her narcissism, that she just assumed I had to know how Nancy Drew solved The Case Of The Stowaway Capsules.

Should I have responded to that e-mail?  There may be, unfortunately, a time where I'll have to contact her again, so maybe, just to keep the peace, I should acknowledge what she discovered.  But ... well, it was another ten-hour day at work (the problem of her took up almost an hour of my time) and I needed to pick up lottery tickets for my parents and sister and I wanted to go home ... and, frankly, I needed to send her a message that if I ever fucking heard her psycho voice again, it would be too soon.  So I left without replying to her.  And, yeah, I think I won't reply to her.  I got what I wanted from her.

And This Is Why I Hate Calling People At Work

Overall, my interactions with people when I need to get on the phone at work have been good and professional.  I get what I want, and I usually don't get any shit.  But then bullshit like what happened yesterday/Tuesday happens, and I'm like, "Ugh."

It was late in the day.  After spending the first half of my day catching up on all the crap I had to leave from work Monday, I finally got through the new work when I saw an e-mail that had been sitting there for a few hours.  A supervisor in the lab wanted me to call a collection site because they received a bag of ... well, I shouldn't say too much, I'll just say that in that bag there were unusual but non-illicit things that the sender might or might not want to be tested.  It wasn't the ten-hour slog that Monday was, but seeing that e-mail was one final frustration I didn't want to deal with as I was winding down my day, but I did have some time and it had been sitting around, so I called.

This was near the end of the workday.  That is the only logical reason I can think of for how the person who picked up reacted to this situation and how I described it.  I laid out what's going on ... well, actually I just retold what was on the e-mail to me.  Anyway, she interrupted me and said, "Stop!  Stop!  Stop!"  The hell?  Don't tell me to stop, woman.  I swear I wasn't yelling at her.  I didn't even raise my voice to her.  But apparently it was the end of the day, and she had to pick up her kids or buy her daily crack from her dealer or something, because she was rudely overwhelmed with me telling her we got a box of crap from her company.  My fucking God, it isn't a big deal, and yet she was screaming at me like it was the end of the world.  Or the end of hers, I don't know.

Anyway, she needed some time away from me and from work and this situation, so she asked if I could call her tomorrow, which of course I could, go get in that meditation session.  In the meantime she demanded pictures of the stuff that came in.  I e-mailed the lab to see if I could get those sent to me before I called her, for which I (smartly or stupidly) arranged to set a time to call back.  Talking to her for as little as possible seems to be the wise way to go, lest she go off on me even after getting a full night's sleep.  Man, all I fucking needed to know from her was what she wants us to do with a fucking bag.  She needs to calm the fuck down, shit. ...

Addendum To: More Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes At Work (Which Is A Change Back To What It Was)

Uh, yeah, yesterday/Monday was a disaster at work with the new time.  Well, first of all, work was a shitshow period, regardless of me starting work an hour later.  I know I have said many times before that the previous day was The Worst Day Of Work In The Fourth Department, but oh my God, yesterday was The Worst Day Of Work In The Fourth Department.  There was so much goddamn work, more probably than any other day I've been back there.  Add that I had a few involved phone calls and I started off slowly because I had to figure out how my supervisor left things for me from Thursday and Friday, and I was so behind that I left a ton of work for myself for today/Tuesday after I reached ten hours, more than any other day I have worked in The Fourth Department.  A bunch of answers came in for me, but I didn't have time to get to them.  That is a major, and somewhat upsetting, first.

Given the overwhelming pile of crap I didn't finish, in one sense it doesn't matter if I start work at 9 instead of 8.  But when it became super obvious that I was once again going to put in extra hours, I got depressed that my new schedule meant that I could be staying as late as 7:30 if it gets that bad.  Autumn's coming on like a freight train right now.  As I was finishing up my ten hours by walking to the break room, I looked outside and it was dark out.  It was 7:15, for crissake.  The State Fair was three weeks ago and the sun didn't set that early then.  Also, 7:30 is such an odd time for your workday to end.  I am not looking forward to getting out of work on a regular basis at that time.

For that reason, I am seriously thinking about asking my boss if I could come in an hour earlier on Mondays.  Like I said in my previous blog post, on Mondays the work waiting for me was delivered to the inbox over the weekend.  It may not matter when I get to them if the e-mails are just sitting there, but if I can at least work Mondays on a schedule so that I don't feel like I'm working second shift by the time I'm done, I want to do it.  The downshifting of my schedule by an hour is to accommodate the new schedule by the lab.  But the work during the rest of the workweek is coming through later each day.  Monday's work mostly comes on Saturday, so there really isn't a need to adjust my workday on that day.  And again, I still probably will be pulling ten hours, but as I feel right now, it's better to get out at 6:30 on at least one day of the workweek and not 7:30.

With that in mind, hope to summon up the courage to present my argument to my boss this week.

More Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes At Work (Which Is A Change Back To What It Was)

Weirdest thing at work on Wednesday.  My boss, who I insist is still a good boss because he's a good listener but still has the ability to be brusque when he decides to be, came storming in and going up to me while working (thank goodness he did when he caught me actually working and not looking at the Internet) and said that he is changing the hours in The Fourth Department back an hour starting immediately.  The lab, from which The Fourth Department gets its work, is going through such a chronic state of staffing shortages (not just long-term but also through people calling in sick every day, apparently) that the people who do show up are pulling double duty, and so it appears as if the work that involves me will be set aside till later in the day, thus necessitating (maybe) me shifting my, uh, shift down an hour.

I was blindsided by the suddenness of the move.  I'm glad the move wasn't immediate for me because I was off Thursday and Friday.  But blog posting about this right now actually is one of the reasons why I should be happy that The Fourth Department is going back to its original hours: I can stay up.  I have mentioned many times here (I think) that waking up at 7 rather than 6 makes a world of difference.  So, how about sleeping in yet another hour?  That makes going to bed around my usual time of 2:30 or 3 in the morning that much more palatable.  And besides, more often than not I am staying at work till 5:30 anyway; the "new" hours won't make that much of a difference for me.

However, coming in later will, by necessity, mean that I will leave later.  And since the work appears to be back to its "plus" workload, I will be staying after eight hours most days.  If I keep myself to just spending an extra two hours at work (meaning ten hours total), I will get out of work at 7:30.  That's pretty damn late, and if there is a movie or a United FC Match I want to go to, I either am SOL or I just have to decide to leave work for another day, or for my supervisor to do if I am not working in The Fourth Department the next day.  I may need to be careful what I wish for.

For now, and maybe even for only this week, I will do 9-5:30.  But I might propose something else.  Monday is the busiest day because I am dealing with work that has been backed up since Saturday.  Regardless if I come in at 9 or 8, nearly all of the work will be waiting for me on Mondays.  I don't think I will be wanting for work if I stay at 8-4:30 throughout the week, to be frank, but I can show my boss all the e-mails and forms that piled up on me over the weekend that cause me to stay very late on Mondays.  I may confuse myself if I suggest a schedule of 8-4:30 on Mondays and 9-5:30 the rest of the week, but the workflow from here on out might be conducive to it.

---

So I said that The Fourth Department is going back to its original hours.  I thought I blog posted about this before when I started working in The Fourth Department almost exactly two years ago, but when the person I replaced left, he was working 9-5:30.  And if I didn't write about it then, my boss told me around that time that he was shifting the hours up an hour, to 8-4:30.  And I remember not liking that change, and I think I told my boss that I didn't like that change.  Well, look at me, not liking change again even though it's changing back to 9-5:30!

It's clear that I doth protest too much.  Well, I think at the time the change was decided, and in fact whenever I am told that anything is going to change, I'm going to complain about it.  I'm a creature of habit, and I want my expectations to be reinforced unless it's obvious a change for the better needs to be made.  For The Fourth Department, all I knew two years ago was the hours were 9-5:30, and the shift up appeared to be arbitrary.  I thought it was going to be a drag getting up and going in to work an hour earlier than I had anticipated.  But honestly, I haven't thought about my bitching for the last two years, so it looks as though I adjusted just fine.

And so, just like with that, it appears likely that I will adjust to the new/old hours just fine after an initial eruption of surliness.  I foresee conflicts because the lateness I also anticipate will seriously eat into a good chunk of the evening, and there are many fun things I know I will want to do that start at 7 or 7:30.  (Why that didn't worry me when I thought my hours were going to be 9-5:30 I don't know, even though it's possible I didn't know I would be staying late most days in The Fourth Department when I started working that position.)  Maybe I can ask my boss if I can come in one day an hour early; I've done that before.  And maybe he'll be OK with Mondays 8-4:30.  Anyways, it's another change that I will eventually get used to, to the point where, if the hours change again, I'll go, "Why do we have to change?  I hate change!"

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#0: Twins (Last Week: -1).  Congratulations to the Twins, who clinched the American League Central Division and a playoff spot for the first time since 2020 on Friday by besting the visiting Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Angels Of Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Angels Of ... completing a 4-2 Week.  I have to admit they're playing pretty well in the Second Half of the season.  The Starting Pitching has been good all Year, even solid.  Best of all, the Lineup is producing.  The youngsters that have finally been called up seem to be "getting it," and the luck of Rookies and young players hitting and driving in Runs is a hallmark of postseason baseball success.  Now, let's see if the Twinks can finally break that stupid-as-fuck postseason losing streak, let alone win a fucking series.

Can you believe there are only eight Days of regular season baseball left?  They finish with the Angels this/Sunday afternoon, host The Bastard Philadelphia-By-Way-of Kansas City Athletics for a three-Game series beginning Tuesday, then finish the season at Denver, of all places, and facing The Colorado Rockies for three starting on Friday.  I believe that if the Twin Cities has an American sister city, it's Denver.  I expect there to be a lot of Twins fans in attendance.

#-1: Gopher volleyball (Last Week: -2).  It may be surprising considering that the Big Ten is, I think, The Best Volleyball Conference, but Iowa has never been a power for as long as I have tracked the sport.  I don't remember the last time they've been in the tournament, if they have at all.  But on Thursday in Iowa City, the Hawkeyes took the Gophs to the edge before the U. prevailed in five Sets.  This is indeed a transition Year for the program.; I just hope Head Coach Keegan Cook knows what he's doing.

Big, busy Week ahead.  They're at second-ranked Nebraska tonight/Sunday night, then are home for back-to-back contests with Michigan Friday and #15 Penn St. Saturday.

#-2: Gopher soccer (Last Week: -5).  Lost at home to Michigan St., 3-1.  Er.  They've started out 0-2 in B1G play.  At Iowa this/Sunday afternoon, hosting Wisconsin Thursday.

#-3: Gopher football (Last Week: -3).  I can't fuckin' believe it.  I went to the bar where I usually see my alma mater's Games and saw that the gridiron Goofers were leading at Northwestern by 14.  That tracks; the U. ain't no title squad, but they're playing a group who lost its Head Coach because his players way back when were hazing.

We had a torrential (but needed) downpour from the evening through the overnight.  I was expecting at least the diehards to come out, but only one guy did, he's not a regular but he lives very close to the bar, and he left at around halftime.  He's a solid dude, and he was the one who told me to look back at the television set behind me because the Wildcats somehow fuckin' tied the Game up on Minnesota.  I was wrapped up in the contest I was watching, but he spun his head back toward the other TV seconds before I did, and we both caught the Pass to a wide-open Northwestern player for the Game-winning score in Overtime, 37-34.

This, I hear, is Year 7 of the P. J. Fleck Era.  He seems to average about one dumb Loss a season.  And as the Era lengthens, Golden Gopher football fans keep track of the really egregious defeats.  There was one Year they lost to Purdue.  There was one Year they lost to Bowling Green, and that appears to be the consensus Worst Loss Of The P. J. Fleck Era.  This is the passion of the mob talking, and I see the vitriol on social media, but this chokejob to Northwestern seems certain to replace the Loss to The Falcons as Fleck's worst ever.

Also, I find it ... interesting that while a new Head Coach can significantly elevate a college football program, and while he can consistently deliver the same level of success Year after Year (and I believe Fleck is doing that), the conspicuous Losses pile up, and at some point there is a breaking point where the fanbase just can't take it anymore.  Before Fleck, the most success Gopher football has had in recent memory was under Glen Mason.  He lasted about ten Years, but he was known for stepping on the occasional rake, too.  He was the HC for that Gophers team that blew, I believe, the biggest lead in Bowl Game history.  (I think it was the Insight Bowl, but it's a Bowl, so it doesn't really fuckin' matter.)  And while he was miles better than any HC going back to Lou Holtz, that collapse was enough for boosters to order Mason to be fired.  And he was -- around the holiday season, which is not ideal, but I think Mason was going to get paid if he were still coach by, like, that Christmas or something.

I wonder if boosters and the fans are getting fed up with Fleck like this.  He can't seem to beat Iowa, but he has had success against a Wisconsin team that's fallen on black days.  He's gotten them into Bowl after Bowl after Bowl, and he's won a few of them, as well.  Also, the landscape of college football has changed since Mason was let go.  Money for Head Coaches and the attendant staff is ridiculous and will get even more ludicrous, free agency (aka The Transfer Portal) now overheats every off-season, the B1G is furtively bringing in more schools in order to get more money from Fox, CBS and NBC, and the big specter of The Final Realignment, aka The Super League of only the best brand names in top-flight college football, is in the back of the mind of every athletic director and school president, hoping that their Head Coach -- or the one they hire to replace the one they have -- will be the one to win enough to somehow raise The Brand to the point where they're one of the Haves once College Football Rapture comes.  (To wit: Deion Sanders at Colorado.  I'm convinced he can win with the Buffaloes, and that will help Colorado build cachet and gain entry into this hypothetical yet inevitable Super League ... so long as he stays in Boulder.)  In sports it's better the devil you don't know.  The familiarity of seeing Fleck stumble against an overmatched opponent season after season may accrue enough contempt to finally convince the money power behind the scenes to shitcan Fleck and take a chance on another guy.  This Loss last/Saturday night may be the first, or the final, impetus toward that move.

That ballclub is back home Saturday to face Louisiana.  I wonder what the mood of the crowd will be.

Oh, and by the way, I do not throw the U. football team down as a #-Infinity despite the epic pooch-screwing because I don't have a season ticket to the U. football team.  That's different than ... uh, see below:

#-Infinity (tie): Lynx and United FC (Last Week, respectively: -7 and -4).  You know, they surprised me by upsetting the Sun in Connecticut in Game 2 of their series last Sunday, 82-75.  They needed to cut down on their Turnovers, and they did, committing only seven of them after turning the ball over 19 times in Game 1.  The Sun also cooled down from behind the arc; they went 16-of-30 in Game 1, but only 7-of-20 in Game 2.  Finally, someone else besides Napheesa Collier had to get hot, and that was Kayla McBride, who actually outscored Collier, 28-26, while shooting 6-for-11 from deep.  This was exactly what they needed to do to win.

Unfortunately, they couldn't pull off the upset and lost in the deciding Game 3 Wednesday at Target Center, 90-75.  While Collier poured in 31, the Sun locked everyone else down; McBride only got ten and shot 2-of-7 from 3.  Glad I decided not to go to Target Center and instead went to see the watch party for Minnesota United ... whoops.

Look, I'm trying not to be too hard on these players.  They have talent, that's obvious.  But it's also obvious that for right now the WNBA is going to be ruled by two superteams (if not one; I would've liked the Lynx's chances against New York, but Las Vegas seems invincible) for the next several Years, and there's a bumper crop of college prospects the next two seasons, only some of which will be compelled to stay in college for the NIL money.  But because they were not bad enough to miss out on the playoffs, they're in the dreaded middle.  It looks as though Minnesota will pick seventh in the WNBA Draft, and even though I need to research this a lot more, this could very well be a six-player Draft.  So they'll miss out on a true franchise player and have another Year stuck in mediocrity.

Meanwhile, I should talk more about the Looooooooooooooooons, but if I ruminate more about not one but two blown leads leading to two Losses (blowing a two-Goal lead and losing at the Galaxy Wednesday, then losing a 1-0 lead and losing to St. Louis at home in the driving rain last/Saturday night), and then remember I have a season ticket to this clown show, I might drive my head into the wall.  If I have time next Week, I want to go back and tally up how many Games they've blown a lead, how many leads they've blown (I swear they've lost leads twice in at least two Matches), and how many Points they've dropped from winning positions, and I will just assume that no other MLS club is even close to those three fucking ridiculous categories.

In the meantime I'll just throw these guys in as a #-Infinity just to show them how mad I am.  This bullshit is completely unacceptable.  They are giving away a playoff spot they were once in, and if they somehow make the postseason, screening Weeks like this prove that they don't deserve it.  I am such a goddamn fool for giving these fuck-ups money.  And I get to see them next Saturday in a home tilt vs. San Jose.  Maybe I'll get to see them blow yet another lead -- yippee!!!!!!!

Saving Money On Porn? Hopefully

I hope I haven't blog posted about this yet, but I don't have much else to talk about, at least for now.

I have been hardcore on OnlyFans ever since I listened to the devils of my worse nature and turned over my credit card.  After spiraling into a porn binge some days, where I was just racking up the charges, I tried to bargain with myself into treating them like rewards for being good.  The things I had rewarded myself for "being good," however, were really low, and I mean pathetically low, bars to reach, stuff like, "Haven't paid for porn in a week," or, "Had a tough day at work."  I'll be honest, there's a chance I might revert to that again some day in the future.

Nevertheless the charges were piling up, taking a big chunk of my paycheck every pay period.  I enjoyed it -- well, I enjoyed all the pictures and videos that showed the woman to whom I charged my credit card actually got naked.  But it's a hell of an expensive hobby, especially for a person who bought as frequently as I do.  That's what happens when you assign a credit card to the website from which you can buy as much porn as your penis desires with a tap on the screen.

If that's the case, then the best thing to happen to me is that my credit card expired.  Upon seeing that, I saw a surefire way to break, or at least limit, my (and I hate saying this, but it's probably correct) addiction.  I would need to go out of my way to update my card -- if "going out of my way" consisted of getting out of bed, fetching my wallet, taking out my new credit card, inputting its information, getting off the bed again, and putting the wallet back in my pants.  As much as I crave porn (and, again, I might fall back into it again at some point), what I don't like is moving once I'm in bed.  And those steps, to me, at least right now, is enough of a barrier for me to not put in new credit card information.

So, once my old credit card lapsed, which was around early August, I just ... haven't replaced it.  I haven't bought any photos or videos since.  I had several subscriptions, and I allowed all of those to expire.  I will admit that there are several babes on OF who offer free trial subscriptions, and I have accepted a few of those.  But I have so far been able to resist temptation.

Is this being reflected in my wallet?  I hope so.  But not only have I not inputted info for the the new credit card on OnlyFans, I have gone out of my way not to use that card, period.  That is an OCD thing.  I don't want to use a new card because it's in a "perfect" state, and I don't feel the need to change anything if I'm, for lack of a better word, OK going about my day without using it.  I have activated it, and I used it one day, for buying a ticket to a movie online.  (Ah, might as well; it's a Visa, and there are still places that take Visa but not American Express, though I think the number is dwindling.)  But I think that was early last month, and I have not used it since, and I'm proud of myself for that.  I'm racking up the charges on my other credit card, and that's reason enough to begin using this new one.  But I want to at least wait one full credit card cycle before going back to using it again.  I think I still have my Visa statements mailed to me, and I want to go one whole month without them sending a statement because there is no statement for Visa to mail.  Maybe I'll wait till Halloween, or even Thanksgiving, if I can help it.

In the meantime, since I am not allowing myself to buy porn on OF, I haven't been on OF a whole lot.  I drop in on occasion to see if any of the women on the free accounts flash their boobs or record themselves getting penetrated.  But not being able to easily pay for porn has curtailed my visits.  I think that's a good thing, and I think my wallet as well as my psyche will begin to heal -- at least for a bit, at least until I feed my porn addiction again.