A very busy few days. So let’s catch up quickly.
Halloween was postponed a night in most of central Indiana thanks to some heavy rain and dangerous winds that rolled through Thursday. It actually wasn’t bad until most kids would have been inside, but I doubt walking through the rain would have been very much fun for anyone. Friday was a gorgeous, mid-fall evening. We had a peacock (M.), cat (C.), and Power Ranger (L., of course). They were quite successful in the 90 minutes or so we were out.
We hooked up with a couple other families and at one point had 10 or so girls in our group. Which of course is all kinds of difficult, as certain kids are running ahead while others are dragging behind. At one point a few of the girls were yelling at others “WE’VE ALREADY BEEN TO THAT HOUSE!” The parents had to let the screamers know they were two houses ahead of the rest of the group and needed to chill out so everyone could catch up.
Friday was also All Saints Day, as my Catholic friends know. This one was especially poignant as it was the final year one of our girls was participating in the St. E’s parade of saints. L. reprised her role of St. Margaret of Scotland, and did so with aplomb. She marched right up to the mic and owned it. “I’m St. Margaret of Scotland. I helped feed the poor.” Of course, she said the same thing last year. And she saw M. rock the St. Margie gear at least once. Still, not every kid was as confident as she was.
Saturday I covered the state cross country meet, which meant a long, boring drive out to Terre Haute. It was brisk but dry, and really a fine day for early November. I only had three kids to worry about, but one of them had a legitimate chance to do well in the boys race. He did extremely well, running in one of the top three spots for the entire race, well ahead of the main pack after about the first kilometer. He finished second, partially because the kid who was leading by 20 meters collapsed about 200 yards short of the finish. But still, my kid did great.
His sister took 10th in the girls race a few minutes later, and I had a nice little theme to build my story around. Never mind that I did the same thing when I covered the regional meet two weeks ago, or the writer who covered the semistate race between just wrote about them, too.
We hosted some of our soccer team friends Sunday night for dinner and fun.1 I drank some good beer and ate a lot of good food. So with the Colts down 18 at halftime, I packed it in. You’d think I would know better by now. But in my defense, Houston looked fantastic in the first half, the Colts awful, and two huge calls went against Indy as well. Just seemed like one of those nights when it wasn’t meant to be. I even woke up in the middle of the night and wondered if I should check the score to see what happened, just in case the Colts made a game of it. I’m glad I passed. I may not have gotten back to sleep if I had seen the score at 2:00 AM. 6-2, 2-0 in the division.
Now soccer is over and we can move on to important things like blowing leaves three times a week. We need one more good storm to clear out most of the trees, although just about everything left is a gorgeous gold right now.
Coming up this week, some leftover baseball links, the books of October, and the giddy look ahead to the Andrew Wiggins experience, which officially begins Friday. Oh, and I think I already have a groovy vid picked out for Friday.
- A soccer season round-up is coming later this week. ↩