I won!

This was supposed to have been published 10/21/15 but didn't go through. 

I can breathe a sigh of relief – I won week 6 in our company football pool.  The irony is that I almost won last weeks, but changed my Monday night pick at the last minute.  If I hadn’t, I would have had the most points and instead it came down to the tie breaker (closest combined score for Monday night’s game) and I lost.  And then this week, I changed my Monday night pick at the last minute, but this time it worked!  It came down to the tiebreaker again and I was only off by 4 points.  I triple checked it this morning when I found out and still didn’t believe it until I received the official email congratulating me.  Now I’m on a high and envisioning getting back into the game and not only winning next week and being the first person to win two weeks back to back, but also sailing ahead in total score for the season and taking home the big pot of money at the end of the season.  Wishful thinking but one can dream.  Of course, I’m now torn.  I had done some statistical research this summer and developed a new technique.  But by week three I wasn’t doing so well so went back to my old method – picking based on location.  I pick the places I lived first, then where close relatives live (Ohio, Dallas, Phoenix, DC, Florida) and then it’s a mix of places I’ve visited, where we have offices, and in some cases what radio shows I like.  For example I’ll pick Minnesota over Tennessee, neither place I’ve really visited, but I like Prairie Home Companion which is based in Minneapolis. 

 

In other news, I’m reminded after my trip overseas that Boston is a tourist destination too.  I sometimes forget and take the place for granted.  One morning I was coming up from the subway and there was a gaggle of German tourists.  One group stopped me for directions and at the end I wished them a good day in German.  I don’t know if I got it quite right or if they were just surprised to hear German from an American – they gave me a strange look.

 

And I’m seeing more touristy stuff, like bike rentals.  There were all these bikes locked up on the bridge, which I’d never seen, and clearly was part of some tour guide thing.  And this is after noticing a few new additions to the bottom of the channel – don’t they seem like pretty decent bikes that got dumped?  Makes you wonder the back story.

 

And of course, we have the world famous corn maze in New England.  I went this weekend with Cece and the god-children.  The maze was amazing.  We were in it for almost three hours and in the end had to take the short cuts to get out, so technically didn’t finish the maze.  They have these viewing stations you stumble upon periodically, but you can’t really see the way out since the corn starts to blend together.  And the maze is huge - you can barely see the edge. Beautiful fall day and I always am reminding myself, although beautiful in my neck of the woods, it’s good to go out to suburbia where it’s full on autumn in the country – with the rolling hills and vibrant colored trees.

And Friday, a coworker who loves apples, had visited Scott farm in VT and picked me up a great selection of apples all labeled in brown bags. It's like a healthy version of a box of chocolates. Not sure what you'll get with each bite.