Excitement.

Trying to burst through a large dose of apathy and tiredness that is prevailing over me today is a massive buzz of excitement. At times near overwhelming excitement. I found myself gently punching my desk for a while today and wondered what I was doing. Then I realised I'd been thinking about the upcoming footy action and my body was releasing some nervous energy via the punches.

As I sit here staring at the clock and slowly watching that minute hand revolve around the clock face I am getting closer and closer to the first Lions match @ the Gabbatoir for 2008. It's such a massive buzz. Friday night footy, what's better than that? I don't think I've ever been to a Friday night game @ the Gabba! I read today the last Friday night match we hosted was back in 2001 against Hawthorn and, sorry Benny, we thrashed them by 80 points.

Tonight though it's the Pies and their feral fans. It's going to be a huuuuuge crowd and against the Pies it's always very loud and exciting. The Gabba is normally a very sedate, almost boring, atmosphere. But tonight promises to be completely different. During last year's match vs the Pies I would have sworn we were in Melbourne watching them play given how loud their supporters were.

Given recent form tonight's match is predicted to be a cracker. Reasonably evenly matched at the moment and it could go right down to the wire. Which would hype up an already hyped up Brisbane AFL fan base. Soooo looking forward to it...

And tomorrow could be even bigger for me. First Aussie Rules match of the year!! Sure I got named in the 3rds and am slightly disappointed by that but it's going to be a night game after the Seniors and Reserves match. Last time we played a game like that I played out of my skin.

There's just something cool about night footy and especially if there is some sort of crowd around to watch. There is a big social night at the club tomorrow night too so most of the boys will hang around after their matches I would think.

As I said earlier... I'm a buzzing ball of excitement!! If I could just shrug off this feeling of tiredness then I'd be surprised if I could physically sit still.

A request for Chronos.

Please use your divine powers over the forces of time to slow it the hell down for a while will ya?!?!? It is the end of bloody March already which means 3 months, or about 1/4, of 2008 is already gone!

Did I just have a really long sleep in and miss a month or two?

While it's true it seems like forever since Footy was last on and I've been hanging out impatiently for it can anyone actually believe just how fast this year has gone by?

I was in Gympie on the weekend for Easter and I could vividly remember Christmas Day seated around the table outside having Christmas lunch. It was then that I had to pinch myself and say... "Mick that was 3 bloody months ago!!", it seemed like just yesterday.

I looked at my blog to see when I last posted feeling like I did it last night and sure enough it was almost a week ago. These bloody weeks are all just running together and things are out of control.

Lately I feel like I'm a pinball being flipped around the playfield randomly knocking activities off my To Do list like targets, before gravity sucks me back down to the flippers to get spun off again in another direction.

Seriously I'm spinning from one event to another with no apparent control on the time in between. I usually find it hard to get things done around the house at the best of times but lately I'm basically doing nothing. Things aren't getting organised, shopping isn't getting done, housework certainly isn't getting done and I'm just reacting to being told something is happening in the next few days I should have planned for already.

Case in point we're having an 80s night down at the footy club on Saturday night after the first round of our season and I'm yet to do anything about a costume. I know what Bee & I are going as I just don't have anything sorted for mine.

And while it's contradictory to my bitching about time going too fast, could Thursday night hurry the hell up and get here? Keenly waiting for team selections on Thursday night and for the season proper to start on Saturday. Bring it on!!

Dreamteamia

Hi. My name is Michael and I'm DreamTeamic. I suffer from the exhilirating highs and agonising lows of being passionately involved in AFL Dream Team.

As I type this I am undergoing stress and concern over the state of my Dream Team for 2008. There is a mere few hours to go before the week 1 lockout takes place and thereafter I will no longer have the chance to make unlimited changes to my team.

What is compounding this issue is the fact that the lockout is on a Thursday night and there are games on Monday thanks to the Easter long weekend. This means that as of last night I only had access to the team lineups for tonight's matches. By this afternoon sometime the AFL should publish the list of squads for the remainder of the weekend matches.

But will this be for all remaining matches or just the weekend ones? Will it be published in time before I have to leave for footy training to allow me to have a quick look before the lockout? Will the squads named include a bunch of 7 man interchange benches meaning I will have to gamble anyway?

All these, and many more, thoughts are currently racing through my head. I'm excited sure but I'm also concerned. If I end up players short due to them not getting picked I may have to use precious trades to fix this up. Hopefully the rookies I've picked will be picked by their real life coaches otherwise I'll be down on cash compared to my opponents who had more luck.

All in all I'm pretty stressed. Thankfully my team has been very stable for a long time and even as of last night when I was pouring over information I couldn't see any need to change anything. The worry is that all falls apart when (if?) I see the teams before footy training tonight... 4:30 can't come fast enough so I can get out of here and get home to see them hopefully.

All the best to you and your Dream Team for 2008. From now on don't expect that sentiment from me as it gets competitive very quickly :)

To blog or not to blog.

Someone very recently said to me "don't forget to blog!" and, surprisingly, I saw through that to the sledge buried within. I checked the date on my last blog and the person in question might have a point... it's been two weeks!! Where did the time go?!?!

Now normally the stubborn part of me would rail against the suggestion from someone else for me to do something and I would stubbornly refuse. But this time I admit my lapse in effort and apologise to all.

Without making too many excuses my last two weeks have been hell. Most of you know that I'm a public servant. This means it is envisaged, based largely upon some form of reality, that I have a cruisy, relaxed job. The last couple of weeks have done their best to put pay to this theory.

To highlight this, this is the hours I have worked (minus lunch breaks) for the last week and a bit...

Mon 10 Mar: 07:45-18:15 (10 hours)

Tue 11 Mar: 07:45-19:30 (11 hours 15 mins)

Wed 12 Mar: 07:45-17:00 (8 hours 45 mins)

Thu 13 Mar: 07:45-16:30 (8 hours 15 mins)

Fri 14 Mar: 07:45-17:45 (9 hours 30 mins)

Mon 17 Mar: 07:45-17:30 (9 hours 15 mins)

Tue 18 Mar: 07:45-17:15 (9 hours)

Now for some of us our there these hours are completely normal and perhaps even less than normal so please hold back your "stop your whinging comments" (I'm looking at you Cam! :p).

I normally get into work @ 0900ish after sleeping in until like 07:30am. So immediately every single one of those days has me at work before I normally even get out of bed. I normally leave right on 17:00 and leave at 16:30 on Tues and Thurs for training... yes I had to miss training one night, not happy Jan.

So, for me, these are ridiculous hours. For a public servant expected to work 36.25 hours per week, I worked a 47 hour week last week. That's a handy increase in my flex time balance admittedly but still not something I'm used to.

So while not making excuses for not blogging I'm making excuses. The worst part was I didn't compensate for these longer hours with dramatically earlier bed times or less activity. I still squeezed in almost everything I normally do during the week anyway. Minus that footy training session that is... although I did still attend the Footy Committee Meeting that night and didn't get home from the meeting until nearly 23:00.

So all in all I've been very busy. Thankfully today I got in at about my normal time and I don't envisage getting in early, or hopefully leaving late, for the rest of this week... even though there is only one more day after today. Looking forward to a few days off more than normal too!

I've got a few topics I'd like to blog about but they can wait for another day. To the person who reminded me to blog... here you go... a blog entry... happy now? :)

Drained.

Feeling pretty empty and drained today. Tough run last night at training. Was very good though. Ran it out reasonably well and considering I'd been split off into a group of mainly more senior players felt I did ok. It was obvious I wasn't quite there but didn't disgrace myself I don't think.

As a result of pushing myself constantly throughout the entire night I'm left today with an overwhelming sense of tiredness and emptiness. Which is a good thing as it means I did push myself as much as I thought I did. And that's the lesson I have learnt through last year and this year so far... it's not necessarily about making sure you do everything 100% fully and correctly when measured against everyone else. It's all about ensuring that you are constantly pushing yourself and getting the most that you can get out of it for your, and therefore ultimately the team's, benefit.

Everyone is at a different stage in their fitness regime for the year, some are just starting out, some are already well ahead of you and it's pointless to judge yourself too harshly against other people's performances but get what you can out of it to make yourself better. Sure I recognise that measuring yourself against others is a necessary part of figuring out where you fit in under the pecking order of the club but all I'm suggesting is not to attack yourself for where you stand but put your head down, work your butt off and try to improve it.

Hopefully with my efforts last year and how fit I feel right now I've managed to improve my standing in the pecking order to the point where I can be considered for Reserve grade selection regularly this year. I've seen a few signs that this might be the case but I'm not yet convinced so I will continue to do everything I can to ensure that I give myself every chance. Ultimately that is all I can do and nights like last night where it was, hopefully, obvious to others how hard I was pushing myself paints you in a favorable light when things get considered.