The Road to 40 Day 144/365: When Plans Bear Fruit

It’s goalkeeper training day today, but it’s not the only football game that consumed my day today.

Imon roped me into a fantasy football league last season. It’s American football, which I don’t really get to watch. I relied on data I read and stuff he shared with me.

I unexpectedly went all the way to the finals and won it. As a result, I need to be part of the second season, which is now in its third week. This time around, I’m in two leagues with mostly the same players, but the second league features some experimental scoring.

My main team is struggling to get points with underperforming players, but I got back to .500 after a win this week.

My other team has been mostly dominant, but absorbed my first loss this week.

We last saw each other maybe three years ago. Since then, they have moved houses twice while we went to Vietnam and back already. The kids have grown so much that I hardly recognize his eldest.

It was tough to catch up about everything in under an hour, so we made the most out of our time. He got a call from work, so I knew I couldn’t take much more of his time. We talked about maybe meeting up some time in the future, so the kids and the moms could also catch up with each other.

I wanted to go for a walk, but I remembered it would be best to prepare the galbijjim before I picked up Vino. So I rode the train to the butcher shop where a different friend of mine worked.

I needed short ribs, and when I asked, they only had one that had a lot of marbling on it. I figured it should work, but it was quite expensive. If I would add this to my hypothetical restaurant, I won’t be able to sell it.

When I got home, I started preparing the dish. It was not the first time I did this. I tried it once before, but I missed a couple of ingredients. I still couldn’t find jujube or chestnuts in the supermarket, so I settled for what I could find.

I left these so that it would be easier to work on later when I got back home after picking up Vino.

As Vino and I were on our way home, I realized the basketball season is about to start, and we should already be filling up our fantasy teams. I was the assigned commissioner of a league that I’ve been part of since I started playing this thing.

I got recruited to play with guys I didn’t know by a friend’s partner at the time. They have since broken up, but I continued to be part of the fantasy league and have since become friends with the rest of the guys.

I am an outsider in their circle, but they have come to respect my opinions as sort of an independent player, so they thought I would be a neutral commissioner. And now here I am, needing to toss a coin to decide on a couple of matters and determine the draft order.

I got on a call with a couple of the guys for transparency and honesty. This is all based on trust, of course, and I appreciate that they made time to ensure that no one can cast doubt on how the process turned out.

After settling that, I went back to cooking my galbijjim. It’s typically cooked in a slow cooker, but since I had a pressure cooker, I was going to go for that. I wanted to make sure that I had everything ready before Che came home.

While the beef was stewing, I folded the mountain of clothes that had piled up on the bed. I asked Vino’s help to bring it all there. During this time, he was talking with some friends on his tablet while playing.

I was plating when Che arrived, so the timing was just nice.

I am satisfied with how it turned out, but again, I would prefer finding a cheaper kind of beef short ribs. The mushrooms were nice, and even the radish was good with the sauce. Che liked the flavor, but didn’t like that it was super chewy because of the marbling. Vino had a lot than usual.

I washed the dishes once we were done, while Che and Vino played a game on Roblox. It was called Rivals, and it’s kind of a first-person shooter. Vino was having a good time beating on Che, so she asked me to play with Vino.

He was supposed to sleep already, but since I haven’t played with him this day, I decided to play with him for a couple of rounds.

He was beating me easily, which I think was natural, because he had good weapons already and has played this before. After our match ended 5-1, we went for another round. This time, he said he would use the default loadout.

I got him 3-0, and then he said “ok, I’m not going to go easy on you anymore!”

4-0. I said, “was that not going easy on me?”

Then he pulled out his rocket launcher and other stuff. He got to 4-3, but I ultimately beat him.

Before going to bed, I asked him what we learned on this night. He was a bit confused by the question, so I spelled it out for him:

You can’t trash talk a trash talker. I’ve gotten my fair share of trash talking from friends back in my day, he had to understand that nothing good comes out of it if he’s not the best of the best just yet.

It’s nice to accomplish plans laid out, and everything beyond it was just icing on the cake.