Overall, I predict the Broncos will continue their low orbit in fourth place in the AFC West. The three other teams have been getting stronger, with San Diego at its zenith (or possibly just past it), Kansas City a rising star with last year’s AFC West victory, and Oakland now able to overcome its Al Davis-led gravitational collapse. So my general prediction for the AFC West is 1. Kansas City, 2. San Diego, 3. Oakland, 4. Denver. Pretty much the same as last year, the larger question being whether KC or SD is No. 1.

Caveat: These predictions are solely based on Kyle Orton as our starting QB. If we put Tebow in, I predict the International Astronomical Union will downgrade Denver to dwarf planet, like Pluto, and S&P will downgrade it to Arena League. And the thing about Tebow isn’t that he’s not a nice guy (he is) or that he doesn’t work hard (he does) or that I’m ashamed of his pro-life views (I’m ambivalent, but leave them out of the NFL, please); it’s that nearly all the great quarterbacks sat back awhile and watched from the sidelines as better QBs led. Very, very few recent rookie/first-year QBs have done well: Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco being two that come to mind. But there are many more busts or mehs: JaMarcus Russell, for one (a supernova if there ever were); Brady Quinn (also a Bronco; frak!), Matt Leinart, Brodie Croyle, Tarvaris Jackson, Matthew Stafford. Sure, most of those guys were on low-caliber teams — but what is Denver right now? I love my Broncos but all systems are not a go.

Furthermore, it doesn’t help that Denver finished 31 out of 32 teams last year, and hired the coach of the 32nd team. (There’s a Challenger metaphor that would be inappropriate here.) Sure, Fox’s old team, Carolina, was looking to scuttle and start anew and didn’t want to start with an outgoing coach. But a 2-14 record? Come on. I haven’t kept abreast of Fox’s current contract but by Apollo it better be full of incentives. The guy’s overall record is 78-74-0. Not exactly Super Bowl caliber, even if he has been to one  (Panthers lost to Pats ’03 season/’04 SB). I know head coach pickings were slim last year, but I would almost’ve preferred another year with McDaniels. Almost.

So. With all that said, and looking at Denver’s draft class, I’m hoping we at least pull an 8-8 record this year.

Preseason

@Dallas
Buffalo
Seattle
@Arizona

My prediction: 2-2, who knows  (or cares) which two. Could be any of ‘em. That’s a weak/middling schedule and preseason means nothing, except we hope to see Denver get off the ground.

Regular Season

Oakland  (wrong — loss)
Cincinnati (wrong — win)
@Tennessee (wrong — loss)
@Green Bay (loss — correct)
San Diego (loss — correct)
Bye
@Miami (win — correct)
Detroit (wrong — loss)
@Oakland (win — correct)
@Kansas City (wrong — win)
New York Jets
@San Diego
@Minnesota
Chicago
New England
@Buffalo
Kansas City 

Bolded are my rather hopeful predictions. Honestly, though, even getting to 8-8 is going to be tough.

The regular season has some interesting points: That stretch in the middle starting in Miami is a killer. Denver plays five out of seven games on the road — ouch. They’ll be coming off a bye, but that’s still pretty grueling. And one of the teams they’ll be playing at home, the Jets, is nothing to laugh at, unless we’re talking about Rex Ryan’s foot fetish. So while I predict they’ll start out well on the road, I can’t see them holding up. And then coming home to face Chicago and New England? Ugh — and moreso because Jay Cutler, who left Denver thanks to the the planetary alignment of former Bronco coach Josh McDaniels and both men’s egos, will surely be arriving in Denver with a bit of a chip on his shoulder (and, depending on the season, what could be a bittersweet welcome from fans like me who miss his rocket arm dearly). The football gods are not shining on Denver these days.

Fortunately, the season ends with Buffalo and Kansas City, two potential wins if Buffalo is its usual self and KC has already wrapped the AFC No. 1 spot. So it could be at least mildly uplifting, if not, well, liftoff.

So here’s my prayer to the Mile-High heavens: Denver, just don’t embarrass me. No blowout losses (especially at home) and no shut-out losses. When you lose, at least keep the game exciting.

In the name of the Rockies, cold beer, and John Elway, amen.

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Oh, sorry, should I have put a TMI warning there? Well, you read this regularly — you should really know by now.

But that’s what the number means. It drives Matt crazy, that numbering system. If we’re talking about how far along I am, he has to pause to do mathematical gymnastics to figure out how old the baby actually is. To him, that precision is Important; I just want to flick his forehead. I’m not the one who made this system; it’s Science. (Normally I’m the one who rolls my eyes when that authority is flung in my face, but it is kind of sweet vengeance to be able to do it to him. Also, when your pregnant wife yells at you and bursts into tears during what shall henceforth be referred to as The Noodle Incident, that’s Science, too.)

At any rate — or rather, at the Scientific rate of thirty-eight weeks, twenty-one hours and some minutes — we’re pretty much ready to go. The carseat is in the car (trunk, actually), the baby’s room is relatively set up, the birth plan is filled out, the goes-to-hospital pile intact; most important, we have diapers and blankets and family with cell phones next to beds on standby, so, yeah, I think we’re ready.

[This is where all you Established Parents are welcome to snort with laughter at our naivete; go on. You know you want to.]

Except…the snow and my doctor’s vacation plans are putting a mild kink in my plans: I had originally intended to begin exercising and the consumption of spicy foods in the hopes of ejecting the 38-week-old parasite (“36,” Matt would say after a calculating pause), but since my doctor has the audacity to go, like, on vacation, I find myself taking it easy instead. Probably because it’s hard to work up the energy to exercise or cook spicy food WHEN I HAVEN’T BLOODY SLEPT IN A WEEK.

Oh, have I mentioned the Insomnia?

Internets, this last week was hell. No longer do I think sleep deprivation is an ethically acceptable form of torture or coercion; the fact is, it sucks and it makes you want to give up on everything you could possibly care about. Add that sense of utter desolation to a patient whose doctor won’t give her sleeping medication and you end up with a raging, inconsolable, unbalanced lunatic who realizes, through her hazy perception of reality, that hurrying the baby’s arrival will only prolong the insomnia.

So I apologize for any unnecessary moodiness or snappishness to those who may have encountered me this past week; I apologize to Lucy for the lack of walks, my in-laws for the unclean house they’re soon to arrive at, my sister for my lethargic phone conversations, and Matt for The Noodle Incident. It’s not any one of you; no, I blame Science.

My ire was not terribly aroused by this purchase because he’d saved up for it, is selling his iPod and just sold his old iPhone to pay for the new thing. So fine, get the new phone, see if I care, as long as my bank account doesn’t change.

Life could have been just fine, oh yes it could’ve, if he’d just outlined the cost, how he was paying for it, and never said another word. BUT COULD HE DO THAT? OH NO. Here’s what happened instead, night after night.

So I’m pregnant, right?

(“Oh  my god, yes, we get it. Shut up already about being pregnant.”)

Well, fine, but that state of being plays a prominent role in my going to sleep before @misteranthropic and getting up well after he’s left for work. Because I don’t actually sleep during that time: I fall asleep, sure, for a few, blissful hours. Then at about one in the morning, I wake up and begin to worry: what if the house isn’t warm enough in the winter? What if I give birth at home? If my water breaks in bed, do we have to get a new mattress? What if the baby has five heads and two fingers? What if we never, ever, agree on a girl’s name and it’s a girl — will we just live in the hospital until one of us offs the other and signs the damn birth certificate? And then at about six, when I’ve exhausted all my worries, I fall asleep again. It’s ridiculous, and it makes me extra grouchy.

So when it’s 10:15 and I’ve just drifted off to sleep, only to be awakened by a sharp jab to the shoulder, I’m not all cheery.

“What?”

“Oh, were you sleeping?”

“YES.”

“Oh. Never mind.”

“WHAT.”

“Oh, well, look–” And he’s handing me his old iPhone. I can make out the UPS logo, but I have to put on my glasses to read anything on THAT GODDAMN TINY SCREEN. Then I see that he’s pleased, because his new phone has now been shipped from Anchorage, Alaska, to Trenton, New Jersey. Whoopdeefuckingdo.

The first night, I glared for only a second because the look of pure, boyish glee was — gag alert — heart-melting. It was so cute, I may have kissed him.

The second night, when the phone moved from New Jersey to Kuala Lampur or wherever, I rolled over without a word.

The third night, when the phone moved from Kuala Lampur to Jodhuppurstonfordinghamopolis, I sat up when he nudged me and said, “Oh, really? Wow, honey, that’s great” and then threw the damn thing across the room.

The fourth night, I slept like a baby.

Okay. So the phone finally arrives, and what does this dignified, white-collar worker do? He quits work early that day to go get it, and it’s like he’s found a new mistress: one with smaller pixel-pores who he can carry in his pocket and croon lullabies to at night when they fucking sleep together.

Yeah. Italics AND all caps.

So there you have it: we’re having a new baby, and my husband has found a new, sleek, shiny, non-bloated wife. My only consolation is that my order of Greek Nescafé Frappé mix has left Greece and arrived in Jacksonville, FL, with an estimated delivery date of July 6.

Otherwise, everything was normal: cell counts and all manner of blood tests; the uterus position and size; the fetal heartbeat; the decreasing nausea and increasing energy levels; and my, ahem, symptoms. In fact, the only thing slightly out of whack was the position of my bellybutton. Who knew you could have a bellybutton lower than normal? Between that and my eye doctor telling me I have, quote, huge nerve bundles in my eyes, unquote, I’m beginning to develop a body dysmorphic complex, or whatever that is. As if the growing belly and hereditary double-chin aren’t already doing that to me.

Anyway, Fetus, when you’re old enough to read, know that at 16 weeks, we were, to quote the Farming Game, right on time and farming like a pro.

Internets, I have a hankering to discover the world. Sooner rather than later, preferably. So my plan is as follows:

1. Sell our house, preferably for about $10k more than we paid for it (ha, ha?) in order to break even, what with fences, hardwood floor redoing, landscaping, and other miscellany we’ve done to it, plus closing costs. I don’t know if this is even possible, but judging by what other houses are going for on our street and in our part of town, it seems plausible.

2. Loan Lucy to my parents. We’d miss her terribly, but she might not be the best traveling companion.

3. Give Trollop back to the devil, from whence she came, and Orwell to my parents or any other nice home where he’d be welcome to hide under a bed all day. Every day. For all his life.

4. Sell or store our junk, including our car and pickup.

5. Renew our passports and get vaccinations.

6. Once steps 1 through 5 were secured, we’d quit our jobs. This would be painful, as we both have jobs we enjoy, and income is always a bonus, but it’s the last thing tying us down, and a necessary step.

Aside from our mortgage, which we would no longer have, we don’t have any long-term debt obligations. We could leave our 401ks dormant, withdraw from savings and put the cash from our house sale in the highest-interest-yielding account possible. Then we’d kiss our mothers goodbye and go see the world.

But.
Just “seeing the world” isn’t a good enough reason for me. It’s fine for others, but I’m not content being a tourist-consumer — I hate that feeling. (That also explains why we never get gifts for people when we travel. Just see the claptrap of a tourist shop makes me shiver.) I envision being more of a tourist-worker, even if it’s not for pay, because I want to not just see new places, but see who lives there and how they work. Specifically, I would love to do agri- or eco-tourism. And when I’m done, I can come home, live in a tiny house on a river with a big garden and composting toilet, and officially apply for hippie status. I may even grow out my leg hair which, come to think of it, could be Matt’s biggest reservation with the plan. (Easily solvable problem: I’ll let him grow out his beard.)

But in my current state, I am not a bona fide hippie or environmentalist. I fell off the biology bandwagon in college (curse you, chemistry, my nemesis!) and have regretted not working with hands and plants and animals ever since. (People are just so fucking complex, you see.) Fortunately, there are organizations willing to take and train people like me, which is good since I’d like my husband to go along with this perfectly logical, well-thought-out scheme. Organizations include:

• WWOOF.org, the Worldwide Organization of Organic Farmers where we go live and work on farms for short stints in exchange for room and board. Imagine getting to learn how to build and live in sustainable shelters and grow organic products for free or at a very low cost. Plus you can do this all over the world!
• the7interchange.com arranges eco and social volunteer projects around the world. Some range from several days to a year (maybe more); some require you to know local languages, and some don’t; some are exotic, some are in the U.S.; for some you need specialized experience that we wouldn’t qualify for, but for others you just need hands and a brain and a willingness to learn.
• Then there’s voluntourism.org, another site that coordinates volunteering in short, vacation-length stays. This organization seems a little more lengthy in its application process and I’m not sure it would work very well for traveling from one destination to another, but it might.

And I’m sure there are others.

Voluntouring would be the catalyst for moving from point to point; we could take side routes on the way, work cash jobs here and there if we could find them, and take a few days to see around the areas we’d be working. But voluntouring would make the trip all the more meaningful. We might not have fabulous trinkets when we get back, but I bet we’d have great stories and ideas.

What if…
There’s always the insurance question. Sure, we’d no longer be paying auto, home, or other normal insurance policies, but what if something happened in the course of our travels? Emergency appendectomy, lost tooth, etc.? There are companies who cover that type of occurance. I’m sure it’s slightly more expensive, but one quote I got from World Nomads was six months of insurance for $260 per person. It doesn’t cover everything, of course, but it can provide emergency help — which is all you really anticipate.

Traveling
Traveling is sure to be the most expensive part of the deal, especially since it can cost a thousand bucks from one continent to the next, per person. But here, too, there are options. Courier.org allows you to fly as a passenger on courier planes (oops, wrote “pigeons” there for a second…my head got really happy with that visual) for slightly cheaper than you might a commercial plane, and I hear there’s no fee for checking baggage (not that we’d need to; I suspect this would be a backpack-type trip). You can also book multi-destination tickets for cheaper than buying them one hop at a time. For example, flying from Portland to Honolulu to  New Zealand, and to Sydney on a multi-destination ticket costs $1,000; flying straight to Sydney costs the same amount. Schedule your flights roughly two to three weeks apart, and you’re gold. If you want to leave early, you can just go on standby on the next available flight.

It won’t be cheap, but I estimate that we can do the bulk of our traveling for just a few thousand dollars each. Food and lodging when we’re not with a host will also be expensive, but hostels are cheap and relatively plentiful for our intended destinations, so I think we’ll be able to afford it. A few good books (and used bookstores wherever we go), and we’ll be able to wile away the hours in airports waiting standby.

Voíla!

Places to go
Because he is a nice person, and he may have felt terrible for having such a great time without me over a three-day, Valentine’s weekend, Matt has been accommodating my current, ultra-planning mood. He even went so far as to list his preferred worldwide destinations, with the caveat that we end up in Europe and take as long as we like (and as long as we still have money) to see every square foot of Germany. He even volunteered to learn German.

The language barrier is a huge issue, though. Unfortunately, neither of us speaks more than a little Spanish, so we thought it would be best if we confined our tourist-worker destinations to places where we would speak the same language as our host family or group. Thus, I researched countries that speak or primarily speak English, cross-referenced them with countries the U.S. State Department doesn’t recommend U.S. citizens traveling to (nothing would put a damper on this trip like being, say, kidnapped) as well as the countries where visa restrictions are problematic, had Matt rank his favorites, and came up with a map that shows just the places we may tour as workers:

It goes something like this: a couple places in the Caribbean, Suriname, Guyana, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Israel, Madagascar, the Seychelles, Israel, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, then Europe.

I realize that some of this is heavily anglo-centric (New Zealand, Australia, Ireland), but again — this is the map of where we might travel and work. It does not include the places we would stop at on our way. Personally, I want to see more of China, Japan, Argentina, and Brazil, not to mention Malta, Turkey, and India, which I hope we’d be able to do along the way, or on trips that aren’t too far out of the way.

We can’t see all of it, but I bet we could see a pretty huge chunk.

In the end, if we do this, I can’t imagine we’ll be worse off for having seen so much of the world. We’ll have learned skills, customs, and lifestyles different from our own; we’ll have met people and made friends along the way. Sure, we’ll be a lot poorer at the end — but so what? So we work a few more years. And anyway, life isn’t guaranteed to go on that long, is it, so why not do it now, while we can?

1. For starters, I was roused from my grading one afternoon by the rhythmic plinking coming from the guest bedroom, whereupon I discovered that the leak we thought we had fixed over the summer was not only not fixed, but had worsened. So much so that we shall have to replace drywall, which I’m looking forward to with fervor normally reserved for dentists and having my toenails yanked out. I stopped the immediate leak with a bucket in the attic (and discovered another, albeit much smaller leak) and, two trips to the roof and a couple caulk cans later, we now have no leaks.

2.1 and 2.2. The second that was going to be on this list was the toilet handle snapping off, but a quick trip to ACE Hardware for a $10 handle (not the stupid plastic one the house-flippers bought; I am never buying a flipped house again) and ten minutes with a crescent wrench and all is well there. So the second thing is the triangle of death that appeared on our Prius last week. The short story (the long story includes lots of instances of the word “fuck”) is that we’re looking at possibly having to replace the HV battery. Which is the big battery, the one that isn’t available at your local auto parts store. Eek. Needless to say, being able to fix your own roof and toilet is a lot more gratifying than looking at replacing a hybrid battery.

3. But I must say, the third bad thing is not so much something that happened to me (in fact, it is a couple years old) as it is something that has happened to our poor world. Internets, while I have been trying hard to refrain from further prostrating myself before the godlessness of politics (except Focus on the Family, which is very godly in its politicking), I CANNOT RESIST COMMENT ON CONSERVAPEDIA.

I mean, THANK THE GOOD BLOGS that there is a site where REAL AMERICANS can bring their biased opinions knowledge together and WAVE FLAGS OF TRUTH at the unwashed masses. And THANK THE GOOD BLOGS that sockpuppetry is dealt with expediently, that there are conservapedia commandments for the proper dissemenination of disinformation, that the “senseless changing of American to British spellings may result in blocking,” but mostly that there is finally an answer to the godless, anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-right-winged bias of Wikipedia.

– But see, I wrote that entire paragraph mocking Conservapedia because when I first read it, I was sure it was a joke: sure that no one would really use the American flag in the logo like that (and such a bad font! was this made in MS Word?), sure that the “sockpuppetry” was a joke, sure that the “conservapedia commandments” were mocking the Bible, sure that the feminism article was written as satire — so sure that I joked about it on Facebook, whereupon proper fact-checkers assured me that no, it’s real, even if some of its articles have been somewhat vandalized (or “scandalized!”) by hippie-lefty-pinko-commies, those godless bastards.

Look, if conservatives want to have their own wiki, that’s fine, but let’s be honest — it looks like they’re taking their toys and going home because they can’t play in the big Wikipedia league. Yeah, no, I’m sure they have a good grip on reality. /sarcasm

And while her brain will never be in the Doggie Hall of Fame, last night did mark the first time she asked, via pawing at the door, to be let out to use the turf facilities, and it was the fourth night in a row she slept mostly through the night, and the fifth night that I haven’t had to do doggie laundry in the middle of the night, if you know what I mean. So, I call that success.

Slightly less successful — depending on your perspective, and this is mine — is that if you leave the zippers on the collapsible crate near the bottom, she can work them apart and get out, thus provoking a frantic search for (1) her, and (2) any wayward fluids that may have been — inadvertently, I am sure — discharged during the outing. However, her brain cells haven’t quite mustered the stamina to account for the zippers being up in the high corner, so I think we’re safe. For a couple days, anyway.

For now, she’s sleeping in her crate (voluntarily, I might add), surrounded by her favorite toys: Faux Squirrel, Squeaky Sheep, and Mr. Bone. I don’t want to wake her with the flash, so no photo of that, but here’s what she looked like a couple days ago in the grass:

So I guess we’ll keep her. I mean, we’re kind of stuck with her now, so we might as well.

In the end — well, in the beginning, too, seeing as how it was nearly love at first sight — we decided on a female with dark brindle coloring who made a wrinkly puddle in our arms and seemed pretty content to just be held the whole time. We chose her over one of her sisters, who was much more vocal in her demands for attention, so we hope we’re getting a pretty mellow dog. There is no guarantee.

After meeting and putting down a payment on her, we commenced on the Great Puppy Name Debate which has now turned into the Great Puppy Name Stalemate of the year; each of us has a list of names we love and won’t budge on. Neither list overlaps even slightly.

One of the troubles is, we were truly considering names like “Brunhilde” and “Hildegarde” and “Murgatroyd” for a female bulldog — they’ll seem so fitting when she’s older. But our puppy was so laid back that these names now almost sound like an insult to her sweet demeanor. So there went the names we’d agreed on, and now we’re down to wrangling and tense silences as we veto each other’s suggestions. Things are getting quite terse, in fact.

So we could be in for a long haul, Internets. In the meantime, behold:

1. 1 bottle champagne (cheap)
2. 1 frozen pizza
3. angel hair pasta
4. chili oil (for pasta salad)
5. cucumber
6. feta (feta = ridiculously expensive in the U.S.)
7. 1 loaf bread
8. 1 pt. fat-free cottage cheese
9. 1 qt. egg whites (for recovering from impending carb binge

but internets, i’m distressed: I FORGOT TO BUY CHOCOLATE.

Because, dear readers, today we leave for Greece.

In other news, tomorrow is MY LAST TUESDAY IN PULLCOW and Thursday is MY LAST THURSDAY IN PULLCOW and holy tomatoes, people: THREE MORE DAYS AND I’M DONE WITH GRADUATE SCHOOL. Sure, I have to write a paper and grade a set of papers and enter grades after that, but no more commuting.

A rough estimate of the miles I’ve put on the poor Prius is 23,000 in the last two years, just commuting; a rough estimate of the gas money on said commute is around $2,000. Still, I made just enough money to pay the mortgage and my travel expenses every month. So while I wasn’t saving, I wasn’t taking us into debt, either.

And now…now I’ve got to find a job.

I fear I shall have to visit at least four nurseries and Home Depot today in order to do some price comparison. Aw, shucks.

Also, can I just complain for a minute about how ridiculous it is to pay an application fee ($25) and a permit fee (which isn’t listed) to put up a fence? Effing gov’t.