As a sports fan, I have to say that the month of September is pure heaven for me! It’s when the MLB pennant chases are going down to the wire and when college and pro football are just getting started. It means the end of a long season of fantasy baseball and the beginning of a brand new season of fantasy football. Gotta love it!

But it also means that there’s so much happening in the world of pro sports that it’s practically impossible for me to keep up with all the big news. So instead of making a bunch of separate blog posts about the interesting stuff that has happened in the past couple of days, I thought it would just be easier to do a roundup and put them all together. Here we go:

• The Mariners once had a comfortable lead in the AL Wild Card race and were even challenging the Angels for the AL West crown. But now that they’re mired in a 9-game skid, they’re in danger of not even making the playoffs unless they turn things around quickly.
• The Michigan Wolverines entered the 2007 NCAA football season ranked No.5 in the nation, and stars Chad Henne, Mike Hart, and a bunch of others decided to return to school instead of going pro in order to take one more shot at a championship. Too bad they ran into Division I-AA team Appalachian State in Week 1, though, because the Mountaineers stunned the Wolverines by a score of 34-32 in what is already being billed as the “greatest upset in college football history.” The Wolverines hopes for a national title are over, right here in Week 1.
• Red Sox rookie Clay Buchholz tossed a complete game no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles in just his second major league start. Buccholz is 23 years old, and certainly shows a lot of promise for the BoSox. Then again, I remember what Kerry Wood did in his fifth-ever MLB start (20 K’s) and look how he turned out.
• Greg Olsen, the Bears’ highly-touted rookie TE, was injured in the team’s final preseason game last Thursday. He was scheduled to have an MRI on his knee, but I haven’t seen any results yet. Olsen is expected to miss at least 4 weeks if it’s a sprain (as initially reported). That puts a big dent in the offensive scheme, as the Bears had supposedly tailored a bunch of plays to feature Olsen.
• Hawaii’s Colt Brennan threw for 416 yards and 6 TDs — while playing for just one half in the team’s win over Northern Colorado. Brennan is now tied with Matt Leinart on the career TD list with 99, and probably has a shot at the all-time record, which I believe belongs to Ty Detmer for Division I-A. Not sure on that, though. Anyway, Brennan has simply been amazing in Hawaii, but I wonder if he’ll be able to adjust to the pro game as well. We’ll see who decides to take a chance on him next year!

Well, these are the only snippets I could remember right now. I think I covered just about everything I wanted to say anyway!

Bears-Chargers in one week!!!

There are a bunch of small home improvement projects that my husband and I want to complete sometime before this year is over. We listed everything that we’d like to upgrade around the house, and calculated that we’d likely have to spend close to $7,500 to take care of the entire list. Instead of saving up for these projects one by one, we’re looking into different loans that are available to us. That way, we can fix our house up all at once and just be done with it.

I know some people would probably wonder why we’d bother going into debt just to make a few optional home improvement repairs, but we feel it would totally be worth it. We view our house as a long-term investment and we know we have to work hard to maintain its value if we want it to pay off in the end. Plus, we’ve had some experience with personal loans and debt consolidation loans before, so we know exactly what to look for as far as interest rates and repayment terms go, which means we’re not likely to get in over our heads here.

Obviously, this isn’t a decision that we’re going to rush into. We are planning to sit down together at the end of the week to crunch some numbers and go over all of our options again. Hopefully we’ll be able to come up with a solution that works!