Weekend Notes
Our boring weekends got a little more boring over the one just completed. No college visits. Thick humidity rolling in contributed to that quite a bit. I bet I can still crank out 1000+ words about the last three days.
We had friends over during the day Saturday for a pool gathering. These are two families we spent a lot of time with in our grade/middle school days, but have seen less-and-less in recent years. One family’s daughter and C were the best of friends at St P’s but drifted apart when they went to different high schools. They reconnected last year at IU and that was our opening to have her parents, who we love, over. The other family we’ve remained closer with until the past 18 months or so, when the adults both got new jobs that have them traveling quite often. Their son, who was also in C’s St P’s class, is a D1 athlete (non-revenue) so it was interesting to talk to him about what he’s seen and experienced on his mid-major campus between NIL in their basketball program and how the transfer portal and various court decisions have affected his own roster.
Anyway, it was great to get us all together again. We used to have an annual weekend at our lake house and spent who knows how many hours together on the soccer fields.
Friday I took M to Costco to load up on some items for her to take back to Cincinnati with her, while also getting her worn tires replaced. She packed up her car and returned for her senior year Sunday afternoon. It was nice to have her home for three weeks.
This is “work week” leading up to greek recruitment next week. She is a Rho Gamma, which I’m not going to try to explain because I’ll probably botch what they actually do, but it basically means she helps run recruitment week for all the houses rather than focus on her own. When the rest of UC starts classes in two weeks, she’ll return to the company she co-oped for in the spring, taking one online course while working through December. Four (maybe five) classes in the spring and she’s done.
Today is the final day of L’s summer break. Which means she and her classmates will go to campus this evening and teepee the hill leading to campus for tomorrow’s first arrival. A new part of the CHS senior traditions this year is a Senior Sunrise tomorrow morning.1 They’re making these poor kids show up at 6:30 to watch the sun come up together before they throw toilet paper at all the students and families arriving for the first day of classes. Five of her friends are spending the night here tonight so they can roll into campus together Tuesday.
C is in her final week home; we will move her into her Bloomington apartment a week from today. Last night she went to say goodbye to one of her high school friends who is heading back to Auburn this week. Then she met another friend to see the new Spiderman movie.
As L was working yesterday, S and I realized around 4:00 that we were all alone. Sunday is normally a clean out the fridge night for us. We realized we could not only go out to eat, but we could go anywhere we wanted without kid restrictions. So naturally we picked a normal spot the girls all would have been fine joining us at. We aren’t good at making quick, unexpected decisions! When we arrived at the restaurant they seated us at what seemed like a special table, a half-circle booth that looked out over much of the rest of the room. We felt like this was some kind of reward to preview what empty nesting will be like in a year. We can go out to eat, wherever we want, whenever we want!
Of course our food came quickly and we were out in like 45 minutes, so didn’t exactly make a night of it. However that gave us plenty of time to go home and…
Ted Lasso
…watch the first episode of season four of Ted Lasso!
Unlike last weekend, when we knocked out all of Margo’s Got Money Troubles over two nights, this was just one episode. So it only gets a special section because of the content of the program.
That episode was a love letter to Kansas City, so of course I loved it! “Daniel Manning Elementary School.” I mean, come on!!! There really should be a school named that somewhere in eastern Kansas. Taking the Brits to Gates Barbecue!!! Walking around the Plaza!!! A Frogpond song!!!! All kinds of other little Easter eggs for people who live/have lived in KC.
S was especially disturbed when Ted picked up a box of his old stuff at his mother’s house and I immediately identified a KU basketball book that was under another item based on seeing part of its back cover for about two seconds. I told her that exact book is in my office closet, it really isn’t that weird. She was not convinced.
And two non-KU specific moments that really put the episode over the top for me. First, Ted and his ex-wife being called to their son’s school to review some disturbing “poetry” that was found in Henry’s notebook. When the principal began reciting it, I started cackling and again got a weird look from S. When I completed the lines, she got even more concerned.
Henry Lasso writing down the lyrics to Public Enemy’s “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos”2 probably connected with a pretty significant slice of the show’s audience, at least of dudes over, say 45, maybe 50, who listened to late-Eighties hip hop.3 Then another PE song later in the show!
Great stuff.
This episode was just setting up Ted’s return to London, so who knows what it said about what is to come. I glanced at two reviews of the first four episodes: one writer thought they were great, another was much more reserved in his reaction. Even if the rest of season four is mixed, I got sucked in by Jason Sudeikis’ lovely homage it his (and my) hometown.
Although, I must register my perpetual complaint about TV shows and movies based in the Midwest for some reason making their characters sound southern. Lazy. Sudeikis should know better and be ashamed.
Now we have a week ahead of making sure we have everything organized that we need to get C moved. That’s going to be kind of a weird process, but more on that next week.
Nearly 1200 words later I guess our weekend wasn’t actually that boring.
1. Senior Sunrise used to be in the spring. Not sure if it has been moved or they are doing one on each side to bookend their last year at CHS.
2. One of the great moments of my life was introducing an older, Black veteran to the lyrics to this song.
3. And a certain female Topeka native who currently lives in St. Louis.