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Wait? The Rams did WHAT?!

I have been a fan of the Rams (Los Angeles, Anaheim, St. Louis, then LA again) since the 1970s. I’ve watched us be amazing, and do things that no one in the NFL ever expected. I’ve also watched us crawl down into the depths of utter mediocrity, or worse.

It is pretty hard to be a lifelong Rams fan.

Now then, I was quite happy when we traded up to draft Jared Goff. Sure, we mortgaged our future on an unproven rookie, but he did thrive in the system we had, for the most part. I would say Goff has played well, overall. He doesn’t always make the best decisions, and holds onto the ball a bit too long sometimes, but then again, he is still kinda young.

Then again, one might say we’ve gone about as far as we can go with Goff.

Now then, I’m not one to dream, as a Rams fan. Nevertheless, when I heard that Matthew Stafford wanted out of Detroit, a small part of me wished he would somehow make it to the Rams. Not that I necessarily wanted to get rid of Goff, just that I felt his veteran leadership and proven skill as a quarterback (on a hopelessly horrible Lions team for the last 12 years) would be a boon for us.

But that would never happen. We just gave Jared Goff an ungodly extension a couple of years ago, and there’s no way we would be able to trade him to another team, not with his stats and reputation as a “system quarterback”.

Except we did.

Matt Stafford is now a member of the LA Rams.

We traded Jared Goff and two, 1st round picks (!!) for Matt Stafford.

This surprised the hell out of me, but it really should not have. Remember, our management has a history of mortgaging our team’s future for immediate results or perceived improvements. So we traded a #1 pick for an older #1 pick, and tossed in two 1st rounders in the deal.

That is really “so very LA Rams”.

Now then, how do I feel about this? Good, actually, but also scared as hell!

Look, we just gave up two 1st round picks, and our starting QB in his mid 20’s, for a mid-30’s QB. This is… a lot. A whole lot. A ridiculous price to be paid for what is essentially a “Bridge QB”, to maybe give us a few years behind Center, before we have to replace him, too.

Ugh.

That said, Stafford is quite possibly the best Quarterback available on the market, and one that has put up solid numbers, year after year, on one of the worst teams in the NFL. Call him a Stat Padder if you want, but Matt has a great arm, knows how to read a defense and react appropriately, and can win games with the rest of his team riding on his back.

The same cannot be said of Jared Goff. He’s a fine player, but he’s no Matt Stafford.

Here’s the thing: I see this as a brilliant play by our head coach and GM. They saw an opportunity to trade for a player that should thrive in our offense, and perhaps be the piece we needed to win us a Super Bowl (possibly more than one) in the next few years.

Stafford is the same age as Russell Wilson, who continues to play well, having had a solid team to play with through most of his career in Seattle. Arguably, the Rams have a better team than Seattle right now, especially on Defense, which means Stafford is dropping into a situation built perfectly for him to thrive.

This could very well be the piece we needed, to put LA on top of the NFC West for the next 5-8 years.

Seriously.

Or, let’s be honest here, this could be the trade that cripples the Rams for the next five years, at least. Good players are found throughout the draft, but great players tend to be found in the first two rounds, for the most part. We keep trading away our first and second round picks, not to mention previous first rounders (A #1 pick?! Which we gave up two first rounders to trade up for?! SERIOUSLY?!)… This is going to come back to bite us in the ass, at some point.

I just hope we do well with our new QB. If not, this was the death knell for our Coack McVay and Les Snead’s respective careers in LA.

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So, it snowed last night…

This winter thus far has been anything but a regular ‘winter’, in that it has pretty much just been cold, wet, and miserable. Just not cold enough or wet enough to actually snow or ice anything up.

Basically, a more annoying than usual Autumn.

That was, until the other night. We went from a chance of light wintry mix – the closest thing we’ve had to snow all season, mind you – to full-on snow. Not a lot, just a couple of inches, but certainly enough to blanket everything and cause all manner of traffic issues in my town.

That isn’t where the problem was, at least not for me, anyway.

You see, my commute to work is just under 50 miles each way, which takes roughly an hour to get there in the evening, and a bit over an hour to get home in the morning. This tends to take longer when it snows, if only due to idiots who can’t drive right when it rains, let alone when crystallized rain falls from the sky. So, I asked My Lovely Bride™ to please wake me up, should it actually snow, and look like it might amount to something.

I didn’t actually expect it to do anything, because it hadn’t all season.

I was wrong.

So, My Lovely Bride™ woke me up what felt like mere minutes after my head hit the pillow, but also felt like it was just a couple of hours before I normally get up. “It’s snowing! You need to see this!”, she exclaimed.

I popped up out of bed, because I will admit, I secretly was hoping for some snow to fall this winter. You see, I kind of have this reputation as “The Guy Who (Almost) Always Makes It In To Work When It Snows”. Considering that I drive 50 miles each way, in a 2015 Chevy Spark, mind you, it makes for some good fun when I can point this out to my co-workers who don’t make it in, despite living much closer to our office, and driving cars much more suitable for the conditions.

I’m kind of a dick about it, actually. If I can make it in to work, why can’t they?

Well, plot twist: I didn’t make it in last night.

Okay, let me set the scene for you: It’s just a bit after 2pm, despite it feeling as though it were both 11am and 5pm simultaneously. I wasn’t quite awake, you see, but I had been roused enough to put my furry slippers on, so I could step out onto the front porch to look at the snow falling all around us. Huge flakes of snow, falling gently all around, which was indeed blanketing our neighborhood in white. We had roughly an inch of snow on the ground at that point, and it didn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.

Now, if I had left it at that, and had just stepped back inside the house, everything would have been fine. While we ended up with about two inches of snow in our area, the city was out plowing and dropping ice-melt on the bridges and major streets, so all I had to do was make it a few blocks before I would have had clear sailing all the way to work.

The Chevy Spark might be a tin can with wheels, but it handles driving in lightly snowy conditions just fine, even without snow tires.

Alas, I didn’t just turn around and go back to bed. I didn’t reset my alarm clock so I could get up an hour early, to allow me more time to get to work, should I need it. I didn’t do the smart thing.

Instead, I stepped down off of the porch, to walk out into the middle of my front yard. I wanted to let the snow fall all around me, if only for a moment.

My slippers are smooth-soled. Very warm and comfy, due to the fur-lining, but still… not the best foot-wear when stepping into the snow.

So I fell on my ass.

Yeah. Anyway, I ended up going back to bed, after I picked my stupid self up and made it back into the house again. And after I had called my work, to tell them I wouldn’t be coming in, due to my now-screaming lower back aggravation. And after I had taken some spare pain meds I have left over “in case of emergency”, suddenly the back pain wasn’t really a problem anymore.

Oh, it still hurt. I just didn’t care.

So, now it’s been over a day, and I’m back at work again. My back still hurts, and I may have to look into getting another steroid shot in order to fix it, should this continue to be a problem. I have a disk that burst a few years ago, and is pressing on my spine right at the bottom, for which only steroid shots or surgery will generally help. Yay.

But I’m here. Miserable, but here.

And I really hate snow right now.

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Well, this is awkward

Hi, I’m Scormus. Master of all I survey… which isn’t much, granted. But just the same, “Master of all I survey!”

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a…

  • GameMaster and Player of tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) for the last 40+ years. You will likely hear me talk quite a lot about this here in the future.
  • Experienced player of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs), since 2004. You may also hear me talk at length about this subject going forward.
  • Alleged Musician. I dabble a bit at playing the guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, and violin. When I say “dabble”, I mean I am a base amatuer, but I keep plucking away at learning them, as I have in various degrees for the last 35 years or so.
  • Longtime blogger on various gaming-related websites. Roughly 21 years or so.
  • Podcaster, in various forms, over the last ten plus years.
  • Now-former Livestreamer. Tried my hand at Twitch for a while, and it didn’t work out.
  • Huge fan of Renaissance Faires. Don’t judge me!

Anyway, That’s pretty much about it. I will be using this site as a sort of personal blog, to free up my main website (Scormey.com) to cover solely gaming-related content. That’s about it.