Like repeatedly banging your head against a dead horse

-I'm not sure why I continue to play Madden '09 online. My record is somewhere around 40-80, meaning that I've spent 100+ hours playing a game that I only win one out of three times. This is by far worse that the only other year I played over a hundred games online, 2006. With the fantastically entertaining Gears of War II and the RPG adventure for fetish Fable fans, Fable II, it's amazing that I'm still playing Madden. The reason for my continued Madden playing is two-fold: It's still football season and every win is extremely sweet due to scarcity.

-The same sentiment could apply to fantasy sports, and in particular, fantasy football. I have three teams and I finished 8 out of 8, 11 out of 12 and 5 out of 12. My records, respectively, were 4-8-1, 4-9, and 8-5-1. This is just bad. Considering how much time I spent tweaking with these teams and my studious attitude towards professional football, these records are tremendously saddening. It's difficult to put so much time into something, only to fail miserably.

-Sarah has been sick all weekend plus Friday, so naturally this is not just a case of the sniffles. It's odd to think of a pregnant woman being sick, actually. It seems like insult to injury. I hope that didn't come off the wrong way, it's just that she's going through so much with the whole entity-growing-in-her-body-like-a-parasite thing. I do feel bad for her a lot of the time - I'm predictable glad that I'm not a woman. I'm not concerned with being a loving-nuturer. I'll leave that to the Christians...

-Speaking of which, my recent slide from agnosticism to quasi-atheism is leaving me feeling somewhat nihilistic. However, the extreme relativism and skepticism that has me leaning this way is mostly ethereal and intellectual, so in practice I'm still more of an agnostic than anything. It's similar to the way I view determinism, yet live like I have free will. I've been reading too much Bertrand Russell.

-I'd really like to get back into basketball, but it's difficult when I never get any Lakers games on TV. Look, I got Directv's baseball and football deluxe packages, so I just can't bring myself to get NBA league pass. If anyone wants to buy it for me though, I'm down.

-With two more weeks until break, my stress level has decreased significantly. I know what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it. This is probably the reason why it's a good idea to plan more than one-week in advance. Next semester, I swear, I'll do it.

-On a similar note, I'm starting to wonder if I should really teach AP English next year. I'm not sure that I grade enough essays. For example, this semester, I've only graded three essays for each student (which still works out to 400+ graded essays) and this makes me feel guilty. I'm slothful. Perhaps I should just teach those classes for kids who are having a tough time passing the high school exit exams. I'm quite sure that I would've passed that test by the time I was a 5th grader. You'd be surprised how little the average High School student knows.