Apple picking and fantasy football
Sep. 20th, 2016 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
Good news, the lemon meringue pie was a success taste wise, as well! Woohoo! Of course, it's best on the day it's baked... after that the crust starts to get soggy. Le sigh.
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You know what's not a success? The Seahawks. Especially versus the Rams. Gawd they were awful. Other than Rawls and the D, I sat every Seahawk I had in my FF lineups. I know all too well how much they suck against the Rams. I don't know what it is, why the Rams can be so terrible with every other team in the league (getting shut out by the depleted 9ers? Seriously?!), and yet always have the Seahawks' number. Always. This is like the fourth time in a row they've beaten Seattle while somehow losing to worse teams. Rams, you do you. As for the Hawks, well -- I wouldn't have felt good about this game regardless, given the history, but with Russell hobbled, there was just no way.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE NO REAL BACKUP QUARTERBACK AND YOU INSIST ON NOT PROTECTING THE QB YOU DO HAVE WITH A HORRIFIC OFFENSIVE LINE.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
=======
Okay, but you know what has been surprisingly successful so far? My fantasy football teams! BOTH of them have been doing really well. I'm sure that's all about to change, but for now I'm enjoying WINNING, for once. Last season, inevitably if I won with one team, I lost with the other. Or just lost both. ><
This season, I've won all my matchups thus far (so, 4), particularly surprising because in my ESPN league I'm usually projected as the underdog. But last week I got the highest score among all teams, and this week I got the 3rd highest. I'm really meh about my upcoming matchup, though. It's against the person I'm tied with in the division, so one of us is going to come out being the division leader and the other will... not. Unfortunately for me, they have a really strong team, including Antonio Brown. I hate going up against people who have Antonio Brown. -.- It's like you just sort of have to pray that they don't cream you too badly (or that he has an uncharacteristically bad game, like he did last week, but will that happen twice in a row?!). Also, he has Greg Olsen, who I have on my Yahoo team, so it's like, do I root for Olsen to do well or not?! Urg.
On my Yahoo team, I'm in first place in the standings so far, due to how well my team did this week. Totaled 151.96 points. My matchup was the "biggest blowout" of the week, lol. Second-highest score this week was 127.86, so I was comfortably ahead of everyone else. I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS IS HAPPENING. But I like it. Anyway, the only players on my team to score single digits was my D (Pats -- but they were close, with 9) and Allen Robinson, who laid an egg yet again. Like, you're supposed to be elite dude, stop sucking. I'm going to sit him this week in favor of Stefon Diggs, who has had two strong games (he was the highest scorer on my team this week, not that it counted)... and done me no good at all, since I had him benched both weeks. You know, of course, that this means Robinson is finally going to breakout and Diggs is going to whimper out of relevance. SIGH. FF is so maddening. (Also, I dropped Travis Benjamin to waivers last week because he had a bad first week outing and I needed the space for a backup QB. Someone else picked him up, and OF COURSE he immediately posts a great game. GRRR.)
Anyway, I'm also going up against a strong opponent in the Yahoo league. He has Cam Newton, Matt Forte, and Seattle D. -.- He also has Theo Riddick, who is on my ESPN team. The ideal scenario for me is if Seattle and Riddick do well, while everyone else on his team sucks. At least with Cam, I have the hope of countering his points with Greg Olsen. If Olsen is Cam's target for many passes and especially TDs, I can partly neutralize Cam's outrageous number of points. They're playing against a pretty great D, though, so we'll see.
=======
Instead of torturing myself by watching the Seahawks vs Rams game, I instead went apple picking!
adelagia and I went to Bellewood Acres in Lynden. We set out early in the morning, around 9:30. It was a 2+ hour drive. We might as well have gone to Vancouver! :)) (I've actually been in Lynden before, a number of years ago with jade_okelani. We went do to a pie odyssey, which ended up being fairly disappointing, but it was fun to do.)
A coworker of mine had gone to Bellewood the previous weekend and brought back a huge bag full of apples, and they were comically large. She made 5 quarts of apple pie filling from 6 apples! They were Honeycrisp, so naturally I had to know where she got them. The only trouble was that it was going to rain this weekend, 100% chance on Sat, but only a 70% chance on Sun. It rained all day Sat, and I wibbled toadelagia that maybe we shouldn't go, but she pointed out that we probably wouldn't have too many chances once Oct arrived, and anyway, we should try something new! Which was actually my argument to her on Friday or whenever it was. -.- Had my own words thrown back in my FACE.
Well, wouldn't you know it, Sunday was a perfect day to pick apples. The sun came out, and it was warmish, with a nice breeze. We got to Bellewood around 11:30. Because it was Sunday their cafe was closed, but they were doing some sort of buffet-style thing where you pick an entree and what not, and pay for that. So it wasn't really a buffet, it was just prepared hot food. I got their pulled pork sandwich whileadelagia got their portobello mushroom sandwich. It came with cole slaw on top and a choice of side; I got the salad. It all tasted okay, but did not sit well with me later. I'll leave it at that.
After we ate lunch, we went to do the U-Pick. You tell them what kind of apple you're interested in, of the ones that are ready for picking (they had 3-4 varieties available when we went), and they charge you for however much those apples cost. It's supposedly a 10lb bag, but they don't weigh it when you come back, so really you're just expected to pile as many apples as you can into it. What was a little lame was that they also don't have any enforcement with regard to what apples you pay for and what apples you end up picking. The Honeycrisps were the most at $18.50/bag, but I could have told them I wanted one of the cheaper apples and just picked the Honeycrisps anyway. NO ONE is actually monitoring you, and they give the same brown paper bag to everyone. So it's an honor system, only it's easily gamed, and the proprietors don't actually seem to care. People were eating apples as they walked the orchard, people were carrying apples way far beyond what they could fit into their bag, etc.
It was soon apparent why things were so lax. THERE WERE SO MANY APPLES OMG.
The trees were a lot smaller than I'd been expecting. I always thought apple trees were huge, and that you'd need to get on ladders to get to the apples. Instead, these all looked like baby trees, no bigger than a very tall man, and there were LOADS of apples hanging off every branch. I had no idea they grew in clusters, like grapes! I'm sure the trees are bred to be fruit heavy, but it was incredible how small they were and how many apples each tree produced. Holy cow!
The apples, while not as huge as the ones my coworker had gotten, were still plenty large. I've been fruit picking before, and usually there's a lot of less-than-ideal fruit that people have ignored or bruised, that you don't want. But pretty much every apple was PERFECT. They were all just hanging there, beautiful and unmarred, just waiting for someone to take them. It was so lovely. I ended up with 26 apples (all Honeycrisp except for one, a Bellewood Prince that I wanted to try). I'll probably make an apple pie, but mostly they'll just be eaten as they are. Apples, luckily, keep for months.
After putting all the apples into the trunk, we bumped into D., my boss's boss, which was kind of hilarious. We were both there because of K., and he was with his family. After some niceties we both went on our way.
adelagia and I went to the distillery, where we sampled house-made vodka, gin, brandy, and other stuff that tasted awful. I don't know how people can enjoy the taste of liquor on its own. I ended up buying a jug of vodka distilled from Honeycrisp apples, more for the novelty of it than because I could actually taste any apple. Hopefully it will make some nice mixed drinks. Next we went and sampled some varieties of apple, as well as their sparkling apple cider and apple cider vinegar. We both bought a bottle of that. Next up, the art gallery! There was some art by local artists displayed, and I really liked this one of a mountain with wildflowers, but it was like $2200 and I am not the sort of person who spends that kind of money on art. There was a cute painting of a couple of pigs for $300, and while I would have at least considered that one, I also don't think there's any place in my house where it would actually fit. Finally, we went and ate some apple cider donuts, which capped off a lovely afternoon.
They also grow pumpkins!
Buuuuuuuuuuut... as much fun as it was, and despite my haul of apples (my trunk smelled amazing!), I don't know that I'd do it again unless it was with a bunch of people who wanted to do all the crap they had -- corn maze, corn cannons, etc. Otherwise it's a hell of a ways to travel just for apples. Even if $18.50 is a very good price for a bunch of Honeycrisps, once you factor in time and gas, it's like, well I could have gotten these at Fred Meyer if I'd really wanted to. >.>
Afterward, we went to Noodle Boat for dinner, and I really liked the "Sunny Fried Trout"adelagia recommended. Only thing that I did not enjoy was that they had julienned pieces of ginger in the mango salad on top, and that was horrible. I am not a fan of chunks of ginger... ginger-flavored things are fine and even good (I love a ginger-heavy chicken soup, for instance), and VERY THIN ginger shavings in something like a salad would be okay, but anything thicker than that and it's awful to me. /shudder
=======
You know what's not a success? The Seahawks. Especially versus the Rams. Gawd they were awful. Other than Rawls and the D, I sat every Seahawk I had in my FF lineups. I know all too well how much they suck against the Rams. I don't know what it is, why the Rams can be so terrible with every other team in the league (getting shut out by the depleted 9ers? Seriously?!), and yet always have the Seahawks' number. Always. This is like the fourth time in a row they've beaten Seattle while somehow losing to worse teams. Rams, you do you. As for the Hawks, well -- I wouldn't have felt good about this game regardless, given the history, but with Russell hobbled, there was just no way.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE NO REAL BACKUP QUARTERBACK AND YOU INSIST ON NOT PROTECTING THE QB YOU DO HAVE WITH A HORRIFIC OFFENSIVE LINE.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
=======
Okay, but you know what has been surprisingly successful so far? My fantasy football teams! BOTH of them have been doing really well. I'm sure that's all about to change, but for now I'm enjoying WINNING, for once. Last season, inevitably if I won with one team, I lost with the other. Or just lost both. ><
This season, I've won all my matchups thus far (so, 4), particularly surprising because in my ESPN league I'm usually projected as the underdog. But last week I got the highest score among all teams, and this week I got the 3rd highest. I'm really meh about my upcoming matchup, though. It's against the person I'm tied with in the division, so one of us is going to come out being the division leader and the other will... not. Unfortunately for me, they have a really strong team, including Antonio Brown. I hate going up against people who have Antonio Brown. -.- It's like you just sort of have to pray that they don't cream you too badly (or that he has an uncharacteristically bad game, like he did last week, but will that happen twice in a row?!). Also, he has Greg Olsen, who I have on my Yahoo team, so it's like, do I root for Olsen to do well or not?! Urg.
On my Yahoo team, I'm in first place in the standings so far, due to how well my team did this week. Totaled 151.96 points. My matchup was the "biggest blowout" of the week, lol. Second-highest score this week was 127.86, so I was comfortably ahead of everyone else. I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS IS HAPPENING. But I like it. Anyway, the only players on my team to score single digits was my D (Pats -- but they were close, with 9) and Allen Robinson, who laid an egg yet again. Like, you're supposed to be elite dude, stop sucking. I'm going to sit him this week in favor of Stefon Diggs, who has had two strong games (he was the highest scorer on my team this week, not that it counted)... and done me no good at all, since I had him benched both weeks. You know, of course, that this means Robinson is finally going to breakout and Diggs is going to whimper out of relevance. SIGH. FF is so maddening. (Also, I dropped Travis Benjamin to waivers last week because he had a bad first week outing and I needed the space for a backup QB. Someone else picked him up, and OF COURSE he immediately posts a great game. GRRR.)
Anyway, I'm also going up against a strong opponent in the Yahoo league. He has Cam Newton, Matt Forte, and Seattle D. -.- He also has Theo Riddick, who is on my ESPN team. The ideal scenario for me is if Seattle and Riddick do well, while everyone else on his team sucks. At least with Cam, I have the hope of countering his points with Greg Olsen. If Olsen is Cam's target for many passes and especially TDs, I can partly neutralize Cam's outrageous number of points. They're playing against a pretty great D, though, so we'll see.
=======
Instead of torturing myself by watching the Seahawks vs Rams game, I instead went apple picking!
adelagia and I went to Bellewood Acres in Lynden. We set out early in the morning, around 9:30. It was a 2+ hour drive. We might as well have gone to Vancouver! :)) (I've actually been in Lynden before, a number of years ago with jade_okelani. We went do to a pie odyssey, which ended up being fairly disappointing, but it was fun to do.)A coworker of mine had gone to Bellewood the previous weekend and brought back a huge bag full of apples, and they were comically large. She made 5 quarts of apple pie filling from 6 apples! They were Honeycrisp, so naturally I had to know where she got them. The only trouble was that it was going to rain this weekend, 100% chance on Sat, but only a 70% chance on Sun. It rained all day Sat, and I wibbled to
adelagia that maybe we shouldn't go, but she pointed out that we probably wouldn't have too many chances once Oct arrived, and anyway, we should try something new! Which was actually my argument to her on Friday or whenever it was. -.- Had my own words thrown back in my FACE.Well, wouldn't you know it, Sunday was a perfect day to pick apples. The sun came out, and it was warmish, with a nice breeze. We got to Bellewood around 11:30. Because it was Sunday their cafe was closed, but they were doing some sort of buffet-style thing where you pick an entree and what not, and pay for that. So it wasn't really a buffet, it was just prepared hot food. I got their pulled pork sandwich while
adelagia got their portobello mushroom sandwich. It came with cole slaw on top and a choice of side; I got the salad. It all tasted okay, but did not sit well with me later. I'll leave it at that.After we ate lunch, we went to do the U-Pick. You tell them what kind of apple you're interested in, of the ones that are ready for picking (they had 3-4 varieties available when we went), and they charge you for however much those apples cost. It's supposedly a 10lb bag, but they don't weigh it when you come back, so really you're just expected to pile as many apples as you can into it. What was a little lame was that they also don't have any enforcement with regard to what apples you pay for and what apples you end up picking. The Honeycrisps were the most at $18.50/bag, but I could have told them I wanted one of the cheaper apples and just picked the Honeycrisps anyway. NO ONE is actually monitoring you, and they give the same brown paper bag to everyone. So it's an honor system, only it's easily gamed, and the proprietors don't actually seem to care. People were eating apples as they walked the orchard, people were carrying apples way far beyond what they could fit into their bag, etc.
It was soon apparent why things were so lax. THERE WERE SO MANY APPLES OMG.
The trees were a lot smaller than I'd been expecting. I always thought apple trees were huge, and that you'd need to get on ladders to get to the apples. Instead, these all looked like baby trees, no bigger than a very tall man, and there were LOADS of apples hanging off every branch. I had no idea they grew in clusters, like grapes! I'm sure the trees are bred to be fruit heavy, but it was incredible how small they were and how many apples each tree produced. Holy cow!
The apples, while not as huge as the ones my coworker had gotten, were still plenty large. I've been fruit picking before, and usually there's a lot of less-than-ideal fruit that people have ignored or bruised, that you don't want. But pretty much every apple was PERFECT. They were all just hanging there, beautiful and unmarred, just waiting for someone to take them. It was so lovely. I ended up with 26 apples (all Honeycrisp except for one, a Bellewood Prince that I wanted to try). I'll probably make an apple pie, but mostly they'll just be eaten as they are. Apples, luckily, keep for months.
After putting all the apples into the trunk, we bumped into D., my boss's boss, which was kind of hilarious. We were both there because of K., and he was with his family. After some niceties we both went on our way.
adelagia and I went to the distillery, where we sampled house-made vodka, gin, brandy, and other stuff that tasted awful. I don't know how people can enjoy the taste of liquor on its own. I ended up buying a jug of vodka distilled from Honeycrisp apples, more for the novelty of it than because I could actually taste any apple. Hopefully it will make some nice mixed drinks. Next we went and sampled some varieties of apple, as well as their sparkling apple cider and apple cider vinegar. We both bought a bottle of that. Next up, the art gallery! There was some art by local artists displayed, and I really liked this one of a mountain with wildflowers, but it was like $2200 and I am not the sort of person who spends that kind of money on art. There was a cute painting of a couple of pigs for $300, and while I would have at least considered that one, I also don't think there's any place in my house where it would actually fit. Finally, we went and ate some apple cider donuts, which capped off a lovely afternoon.They also grow pumpkins!
Buuuuuuuuuuut... as much fun as it was, and despite my haul of apples (my trunk smelled amazing!), I don't know that I'd do it again unless it was with a bunch of people who wanted to do all the crap they had -- corn maze, corn cannons, etc. Otherwise it's a hell of a ways to travel just for apples. Even if $18.50 is a very good price for a bunch of Honeycrisps, once you factor in time and gas, it's like, well I could have gotten these at Fred Meyer if I'd really wanted to. >.>
Afterward, we went to Noodle Boat for dinner, and I really liked the "Sunny Fried Trout"
adelagia recommended. Only thing that I did not enjoy was that they had julienned pieces of ginger in the mango salad on top, and that was horrible. I am not a fan of chunks of ginger... ginger-flavored things are fine and even good (I love a ginger-heavy chicken soup, for instance), and VERY THIN ginger shavings in something like a salad would be okay, but anything thicker than that and it's awful to me. /shudder
no subject
Date: 2016-09-20 10:05 pm (UTC)VIKINGS.
That is all.