Weekend Notes

A relatively chill weekend for us without any of our football teams playing and no KU basketball.

Power Out

Friday morning I was jolted out of bed around 5:30 when high winds sent a tree or branch into a power line located a couple hundred feet from our back windows. The sky lit up with all the fun colors that electricity can produce. Luckily our power just blinked for a moment then functioned as normal. Which was great as the wind chill was down in the single digits and not expected to rise much during the day.

However, right around 4:00 that afternoon, long after the high winds had passed, our electricity failed. I checked the power company’s website and it showed that just six houses were out, and there weren’t any major outages elsewhere in the city. So hopefully it would be a quick restoration.

Our power came on for about 30 seconds just after 6:00 then went back off. I checked the website and it showed that our outage had been fixed. That’s not good. I logged another request and we waited.

About an hour later there were guys with headlamps wandering in our backyard. I went out and told them what had happened and they struck into the wooded area where our feeder line runs through. A few minutes later one of them came back and told me a large tree was lying on our line. The crew that had been out earlier probably caused it, but didn’t think the transformer it led to fed any houses, so left it for someone to come back and repair once the sun rose Saturday. Which was super annoying. The guy I talked to said that crew was coming back out – they better have to return in the cold and dark and fix their mistake – but the catch was they had to wait on a tree crew to come take care of the offending lumber. He said it might be several hours before they made it.

It was right about this time I started watching YouTube videos on how to get our gas fireplace to function when the power was out. It took a few tries but I did get some heat flowing through our living room.

And, fortunately, the tree crew showed up soon after and our power was back on shortly after 10. Our thermostat said 61° when it came back to life. It would have been a lot chillier if we had to spend the night in the dark.

HS Hoops

Saturday we played our annual pre-Christmas game against the Christian academy that’s a couple miles from CHS. They were once a state power, winning seven state titles in a 13-year span, but have fallen back in recent years. We beat them pretty easily a year ago and they lost a couple really good seniors from that team.

We wasted no time, jumping out 10–0, 19–2, and eventually 24–6 by the end of the first quarter. We let them cut it to 10 early in the second quarter but dropped another run on them and basically led by between 15 and 20 until the final three minutes of the game when their best player hit three consecutive 3’s. The 14-point win was our girls’ fifth straight, moving the Irish to 7–4 on the season.

L played in every quarter, logging about 12 total minutes. She didn’t do a ton when she was in, registering just one turnover aside from her shooting. But the shooting was decent. 3–5 from the field for a career-high six varsity points. She hit a fantastic cutting layup in traffic on an inbounds play. I’m not sure how she got the ball off amongst three defenders. She hit an elbow jumper. And she added another cutting, baseline layup off a great pass from our post player. And I’m pretty sure she was fouled on her only other miss inside the arc. She had a wide-open 3 when she first came in that was long.

This was the gym where she got her first serious varsity minutes and scored her first varsity points two years ago. Shame we won’t play there again in her career.

All the juniors were pulled back up to varsity Saturday so I was interested to see how the minutes would be divvied up. For this game at least L got the most run of that group, and she took advantage. She needs to get stronger with the ball but other than that, she’s doing what she needs to do when she’s on the court with starters.

We will be making up last week’s snowed-out game the Saturday after Christmas. That means the girls will play three times in four days, which will be nice practice for the City and State tournaments in January.

Football

Man, there was some crazy-ass football this weekend. I did not watch a ton. I just picked the right games/moments to pay attention.

The end of the Green Bay – Chicago game Saturday night was literally insane. Like bonkers. Nutso. I yelled out loud multiple times and I didn’t care who won. A rematch in the playoffs would not suck, although the Packers seem to lose multiple players to injury each week so I’m not sure it will equal the first two games between these teams.

Then the closing minutes of the Pittsburgh – Detroit game Sunday were nearly as entertaining. Poor Detroit. It seems like they had 20-ish games of excellent football before turning back into a cursed franchise. What other team would be called for offensive pass interference TWICE in the final 30 seconds of a game, each flag wiping out a potentially game-winning score?[1]

Thank goodness there was some solid pro football because the CFP games sucked. I’m glad I missed most of the Miami – Texas A&M game. What I saw was an offense to modern football. It was a shame Tulane was not ready for their moment, and James Madison took too long to get their shit together, making the other two games not very interesting if you weren’t a Mississippi or Oregon fan.

I was able to see part of Alabama – Oklahoma Friday after the power came back on. What I saw was not terribly compelling. It’s almost like the teams that filled out the bottom of the bracket are closer to mediocre than great, yet we’re on the verge of adding more soon. 🙄

Officially On Break

C wrapped up her finals, although it took an extra couple days.

You may recall she had been sick so we brought her home the weekend before finals and then I drove her back in horrible conditions Monday morning.

Tuesday she was throwing up again so had to miss her test that day. I rushed down and brought her home and we spent Wednesday at a variety of appointments trying to figure out what’s up with her. A visit to her normal doc, lots of blood work, and then an ultrasound.

The good news is that everything was pretty clean. That’s frustrating because it didn’t really explain what caused this. We are going to repeat the blood work after Christmas to make sure the things that were slightly askew have returned to normal.

And she’s feeling better, which is the important part. She was able to drive back on her own Thursday to make up her final. She is fortunate that was an option.

L’s final day of exams was also Thursday but she still had to go in for two classes on Friday. At least it was only a three-hour day.

Now everyone gets a few weeks off to rest and, in C’s case, hopefully get back to normal health.

Family Project

In addition to preparing for Christmas week, we kicked off a little DIY project. We’re about halfway complete; I’ll share more in a week or so when we get a delivery that allows us to wrap it up.