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Hopefully tomorrow’s opening kickoff of the 2008-2009 Premiership season will be as entertaining as my virtual game in Fifa ‘08 on the Xbox 360 this evening - final score was Sunderland 4 - Liverpool 1 Somehow, I think it’s still being slightly optimistic to expect a similar result tomorrow!

I’m going to try watching the match via foxsoccer.com which holds the broadcasts rights over here in the US - our pitiful satellite can’t pick up the actual Fox Soccer Channel, but I’m going to try streaming it online. The first three Sunderland games of the season are being broadcast, and the lads at safc.com have also just fired up the podcast again after doing nothing last season Providing the internet doesn’t disappear in the morning, will almost be as good as being at the Stadium of Light with dad having a pint at half time…

Okay, maybe not. But I will have the new strip on that my parents brought over a couple of weeks ago!

I know Fernando Alonso often complains he’s quoted out of context, but on the issue of the racism shown towards Lewis Hamilton during testing in Spain he responded with (BBC Sport):

“It was an isolated incident and the FIA or anyone saying that the Spanish fans are racists is laughable.

“Last year, they called me a dog in a few races. Niki Lauda said those things about me, and no-one came to me to show me their support.”

Think someone needs to explain to him the different between ‘racism’ and ‘criticism’. He was probably called a dog due to the fact he had some terrible races. Sure, he looks a bit rough, but I doubt anyone was insinuating he’s actually a dog. Christijan Albers and Sakon Yamamoto were regularly called worse, again, because they were driving badly. For someone paid millions of dollars per race, you’d think he’d be able to take a bit of criticism and maybe learn from it - I mean, it’s not like Lauda has ever done anything in Formula 1 so might know what he’s talking about, is it…?

Still, here’s hoping Renault make a balls of a car like last season

The locals should be starting to drill proper jigging holes downriver in the next couple of weeks, and chatting with Jason yesterday he’s looking forward to getting his snowmobile back from Bethel to go hunting too, so I figured I should get all legal and purchase a hunting & fishing licence:

Never had a hunting licence before Not sure whether I’ll get to use it, but at least riding out with people hunting covers me in case the jobs worths arrive in the middle of no-where to check up on us (highly unlikely after the last time they turned up in Tunt a few years ago…). Was only $48 for the combined hunting & fishing licence for 2008 since I’m now officially an Alaskan resident, and could go king or silver salmon fishing around Kenai next summer too if I got a chance!

On the final day of the regular season, I ended up winning the fantasy football league! I was a bit concerned when we lost power as I couldn’t make changes to my team even I’d wanted to and figured some of my guys would be rested, but in the end I only missed out with Roethlisberger not playing and still had 20 points more than anyone else in the league. Picked up the 25 points I needed to catch up with Coleen and have won by 20.23 points which isn’t bad for only making two team changes through the season and being about 200 points behind the leader and at the bottom of the table after four weeks Also won a Rotohog cap after being in the top 5 of week 9’s biggest mover contest.

But, we’ve got a quiet New Year’s Eve coming up. Our neighbor Georgette did make a bunch of Chinese food for us, but we don’t have much else planned. Hope no-one gets too drunk tonight (I can think of a few likely suspects..) - I know we won’t

After helping Mark replace all the light bulbs and strip lights at home with new energy-efficient bulbs, he showed me how to change the throttle cable on my snowmobile. Wasn’t that hard, but I was glad Mark was there to adjust the carbs as it was revving way too high after we first attached the cables. But, after it they were adjusted, he commented that “it feels just like it’s got a new throttle cable on”… I got some coolant from the gas station and refilled + bled the system, so just hopefully it stays cold this evening with a bit more snow and I’ll try taking it out tomorrow.

I also got my prize from Rotohog today for my fantasy football team - it was a pretty cool cap, though is a weird shape so doesn’t fit too well! But, better than nothing, and I’m now nicely sat in 2nd place in our league with another 21 points from tonight’s game to come. Am ranked about 37th overall after the weekend, and hope to climb higher once they recalculate the points tomorrow

After 8 weeks of nothing to get excited about with my fantasy football team, everything seemed to fall into place last weekend. I never paid much attention to trading players as I had the mentality from fantasy soccer in England where you only have two or three trading windows. I didn’t realise people over here were trading players every week to score maximum points against weak opposition and to avoid players being out on bye weeks.

Regardless, my points score last weekend ranked 37th in the entire RotoHog league and I was ranked 5th biggest overall mover. Not too shabby. This afternoon I then got an e-mail asking me to confirm my postal address to receive a prize for being ranked in the weekly 25 biggest movers! Think it’s only going to be a t-shirt, but better than nothing

One bag of Mia’s dog food arrived today thankfully, and she didn’t seem too bothered with switching back to dried dog food as opposed to the variety of our food she’s been getting recently. More importantly (depending on whether you’re Mia or not!), Guitar Hero III for the Xbox 360 also arrived in the mail today I played Guitar Hero II to death, and the latest version is pretty much just a gradual improvement, but mainly it’s the completely new track list that’s important. The boss battles throughout the set lists as part of the encores are a bit weird, especially the final gig (not going to spoil it for anyone!), and they doesn’t really fit into the game as it’s not like it’s telling much of a story. It is a little more involved that Guitar Hero II, but to be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention to the cut scenes cartoons, just waiting for the next set list to load! The first couple of gigs are fairly slow in getting started, but then the tracks pick up nicely and some awesome solos in there.

And in other good news, McLaren gave Alonso the boot and he’s likely to drive Red Bull at the back of the grid next season! Sorry, it was a “mutual parting of the ways” with Alonso “agreeing an early release from his contract”. Yup, definately reads like he was politely asked to naff off. What a shame

I got signed up to the Rotohog fantasy football league over the weekend as a few people from school are doing it, and figured it would be fun after the exploits of Wooden Spoon FC in the Greencroft fantasy football league back in England. The blokes over here don’t kick the ball though, dunno what that’s all about… Kat’s been very excited the last couple of weeks since pre-season started as there’s been one or two matches on TV But after negotiating the draft 2nd time round after the first attempt was caught up in network problems on the server end, my team lines up like this at the moment:

• QB - Chad Pennington (NYJ)
• QB - Ben Roethlisberger (Pit)
• RB - Willie Parker (Pit)
• RB - Maurice Jones-Drew (Jac)
• WR - Terry Glenn (Dal)
• WR - Reggie Brown (Phi)
• WR - Marques Colston (NO)
• TE - Jeremy Shockey (NYG)
• K - Josh Brown (Sea)
• DEF - Buffalo Bills

Was kinda hard as your team budget and player pricing made it very difficult to find a well balanced team. You had $300 for your team of 10, and someone such as LaDainian Tomlinson was $93! I think Jason went for Tomlinson and Payton Manning at QB, then a bunch of $5-$10 players as that was well over half his budget gone! So long as neither gets injured, will rack up a decent amount of points I guess, but I figured I’d spread the wealth a little. You also get to buy three additional players after the two week draft window is over, but have to wait and see how that works and whether I can pick up any other decent players.

I’m heading off to Anchorage later on this afternoon to drop a form into the social security office tomorrow morning. Really looking forward to it It wouldn’t be too bad if Anchorage wasn’t so expensive for a hotel room or daily rental car as I might have stayed a day or two rather than arriving at 9.30p.m, sleeping overnight in the airport, and flying back out again a little before 12 noon the following day. More concerned about hanging around for the flight from Tunt to Bethel than the Alaska Air flight though!

The guys working on the water treatment center finally got the go-ahead to turn everything on this weekend and have started flushing out the system at school. Those hold thousands of gallons of water so it will take a while before all the tanks and pipes are flushed out, but is amazing how quickly it’s made a difference at home. Greg had borrowed Nick’s water pump and the two of us drained the bottom of our water tanks at home, cleaned them out, pressure-washed the insides, flushed + drained again, and finally ended up with a tank you could see all the way to bottom of when full of water That was a pretty sight! Still won’t be drinkable for a while until we’ve ran a few tanks through it (even then, I still don’t know if I’d drink it right from the tap!), but is nice to turn the taps on and have crystal clear water flowing through.

Was also nice to see Derby lose today and give Sunderland automatic promotion back to the Premiership - Keano’s certainly turned things around pretty quick, and so long as Quinn and the rest of the board can stump up a good chunk of money right away in the summer to bring in players, hopefully it won’t be so much of an embarrassment next season! Hopefully having a big name manager + personality like Roy Keane in charge will help bring in some more big name players, just a shame I won’t get a chance to watch them!

I was originally going to head over to Nick’s tonight with the Xbox 360, but just as I was ready to leave noticed the Formula 1 second practice sessions was starting on TV. I’d checked online and it wasn’t scheduled until 11p.m, but forgot that would be 11p.m eastern time so 7p.m up here! But, Nick + Jason are coming round here tomorrow night instead as Kat’s going to do some studying at Marie’s house.

Anyways, watching F1 on Speed TV was weird as it was three British commentators to one US guy with one of the British commentators sounding a lot like Pete Ayliss, the golf commentator. Very bizarre listening to that kinda slow, laid-back accent, but on car racing! The US guy was talking about the new Honda F1 car and how they’d paid an advertising firm $200,000 a month for over a year to help them find sponsors, yet in the end they went for a livery showing their eco-friendliness which is cool, but are also giving people the opportunity to have their name on the car itself.

Sure enough, on the Honda F1 website you can go and make a pledge as to how you’re going to help reduce environmental damage, make a donation of at least £1, and have your name appear on the race car. It’s only the size of a pixel so you’d need one hell of a microscope to see it, but is pretty cool - the picture above shows where my name will appear on Jenson Button’s car! You can see the full-sized pledge here. Not to be outdone, we made a pledge for Kat and figured I’d get my dad in on the action since we used to head down to Silverstone for the British grand prix for years

All for a good cause and sounds pretty cool to have your name on an F1 car - if you want to do the same, here’s the Honda F1 My Earth Dream page. The car is meant to be able to hold up to 2 million names, so get in quick!