Day 98/365 - Make-Believe Champion

This is the view I have from my desk at work. There are no windows in my office, so I make do with an enlargement of a photo of mine that I like and the sad vestiges of geeky loser glory -- in this case, fantasy sports championship banners and pennants.

Each year my brother, a few of my nephews, and I compete against each other in fantasy baseball, football, and basketball leagues on ESPN.com. It costs about 25 bucks and if you win your league, they send you a championship banner. Or at least they used to, anyhow. Now you just get a cheap, crappy pennant. The banners were much cooler.

So far I've won fantasy baseball twice (2001 & 2008), basketball once (2008), and football once (2005). We were playing in a free fantasy football league the year I won so I didn't get a banner for that one. Bummer. Since I don't have a banner for it, my brother argues that one doesn't count. Of course, he'd take just the opposite position if he had won that year.

He's won baseball three years in a row (and then boasted about his 'dynasty' to no end) and football once. Neither of us did that well in football this year, although he did make the playoffs at least. So far we're both struggling in this year's fantasy basketball season as well, but there's still time to turn it around. Hopefully.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Twice on Sunday Bonus Photo - Beauty Mark Triptych

This week's extra photo from my archives is actually three different treatments of the same photo. This mural of Marilyn Monroe is high on the side of a building in the Woodley Park section of DC. The graffiti isn't an offical part of the mural, but it does seem to go well with it. It is on the top edge of the wall of an adjoining building and is about 30 feet or so from the mural itself. For the top photo, I used the sepia effect in Picasa, for the middle one I used the glow effect in Picasa and for the bottom one I used the negative effect in an old version of Microsoft Photo Editor.

(Taken with my Nikon D80)