- The P.O. Box
- Posts
- 🏠 A Trip Back Home
In this week's P.O. Box:
Home in Colorado
Stream roundup: Galaxy brain ideas
Offszn Book Club: Wrapped up River of Doubt
I’m in Colorado this week visiting my parents.
It always feels weird returning home, but this time is particularly surreal.
It marked our first time taking April on a plane and my first time seeing her in my childhood home.
Luckily, she did great on the 4.5 hour plane ride (although the 4:30am wake-up yesterday morning was not ideal).
So much of Colorado has changed since I initially left in 2005 to go to college in San Diego.
It was always the place I wanted to leave, but now it’s become the place where seemingly everyone else wants to live.
We took April to the Denver Zoo yesterday, and I barely recognized much of the Denver metro area. Even the zoo had been completely overhauled since the last time I was there a couple decades ago. We got In-N-Out afterwards. In-N-Out in Colorado?? That would have broken my adolescent brain.
My parents’ neighborhood, though, is like a time capsule. Nothing appears to have changed whatsoever. The local elementary school remains untouched. The houses, which were built in the 1960s, look the same as they did when I used to wander aimlessly through the neighborhood in the summers.
In high school, I had mapped out a 5K loop in my neighborhood for cross country training purposes. I gave it a shot yesterday for ‘ol times sake while April took a nap.
Running at elevation in 90-degree heat after a 4:30 AM wakeup call was not my best idea, but the bursts of old memories were enough to get me through.
Today, we’re taking April to a park I grew up visiting, and I’ll get to experience another wave of nostalgia.
Thankfully—mercifully—all of the old Warped Tour stickers I had slapped on my bedroom door are now gone.
🧠 The sneaky RB strategy drafters are scared to utilize. I asked Kyle Dvorchak (Rotoworld, Legendary Upside) for his favorite targets and strategies in drafts and then we attempt to execute all of them in a Best Ball Mania V draft on Underdog Fantasy. Check it out on the Deposit Kingdom channel.
☕️ Best Ball Breakfast: Great Drafts With Dusty Vets Challenge. Four more drafts on BBB this week, including ones with Shawn Siegele, Pat Kerrane & Ben Gretch, and the Badge Bros. Topics discussed: the most mispriced WR in the Top 5 rounds, battling WR avalanches, mixing and matching structures with different player archetypes, and how to break ties in favor of correlation. Also: We’re giving away New Balances.
📈 Risers/Fallers & WR Targets w/ Mike Loene (ADP Chasing). Leone joins to break down the latest ADP trends and ETR's rankings vs current ADPs. Also: Leone is the captain now.
🧢 Becoming A Best Ball Bro w/ JJ . Hopped on LateRoundQB’s new show to talk all things best ball, including managing exposures, Elite TE, and my favorite Zero RB targets.
🛶 Book #10 for June (FINISHED): River of Doubt by Candice Millard
I loved this book. It was everything I hoped it would be, even if the epilogue was fairly depressing.
The way Roosevelt acted through the toughest stretches of the journey was incredible. Not just his resolve and toughness, but also his ability to lead, to defer when needed, and also boost morale.
I also couldn’t believe that he’d write every single evening and record the day’s events, despite being sick, injured, and exhausted.
I loved this nugget about him borrowing additional reading material from his son Kermit and hating it:
“It was, therefore, a still greater proof of distress when he borrowed the Oxford book of French verse.” Roosevelt read the book, but he complained so bitterly about it that his Francophile son finally threatened to take it away if he did not stop attacking his favorite works.
His response to the country of Brazil wanting to name the river after him was also very funny:
“I had urged, and Kermit had urged, as strongly as possible, that the name be kept as Rio da Dúvida,” he wrote. “We felt that the ‘River of Doubt’ was an unusually good name.” Roosevelt also realized, however, that this was a generous sentiment on the part of the Brazilians and an occasion of rare good cheer for the members of the expedition.
🕵️ Book #11 for June (Just Started): The Hunter by Tana French
✅ Book #9 for May (COMPLETE): The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
✅ Book #8 for May (COMPLETE): Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
✅ Book #7 for April (COMPLETE): Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
✅ Book #6 for April (COMPLETE): The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson
✅ Book #5 for March (COMPLETE): Recursion by Blake Crouch
✅ Book #4 for March (COMPLETE): The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
✅ Book #3 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk by Billy Walters
✅ Book #2 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
✅ Book #1 in Jan. (COMPLETE): Clear Thinking by Shane Parris
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