Last week was wild and wacky, which kept me away from my blogging duties. I’ll share some notes to try to get caught up before Christmas.

Family News

I’m very much a creature of habit. I can adjust most of the time. But when things get too out of whack, I do struggle. Last week we had four different schedules for five days of school. That really messed with my head and I was never sure what day it was or where I was supposed to be.

Monday and Tuesday we had one schedule: M on her finals schedule of 8:30-noon and C & L on a two-hour delay because of snow. (More on snow in a bit.) Wednesday C&L were back to normal but M only had one final, so I picked her up just after 10:00. Thursday M had her last two finals while C&L were on a regular schedule. And Friday M was home while C&L had 1:30 dismissal on their final day before break.

Oh, throw in that I squeezed doctor appointments in on Tuesday and Wednesday and a volleyball practice for C one night, and I felt like I was constantly coming and going.

The in-laws also arrived Wednesday night, which added another layer of complexity to things.

Fortunately everything worked out well. M did fantastic on her finals. I only nearly forgot about one thing on the calendar, remembering at the last minute that M needed to be somewhere on Friday.

Now we are in full Christmas vacation mode. Which means a lot of sitting around and doing nothing. M was complaining to me Sunday evening that she was bored. I reminded her that she’s not four anymore and she can control her social life by calling her friends and seeing if anyone wanted to go do something. I can’t wait until next Christmas when she’ll be driving.

Speaking of that, she wrapped up the online portion of her driver’s ed course Thursday after she completed finals. Depending on BMV hours this week, we’re going to try to go her get permit Thursday or Friday.

As I said, the in-laws arrived Wednesday. My brother-in-law who lives in Boston arrived with his family on Friday night. They are staying with one of his sisters. Saturday afternoon they came over, along with another of the locals and we had a mini-preview of how chaotic the holidays will be. There were four little ones running around with our girls. Well three running around; one is just learning how to sit up so she was pretty stationary.

The final out-of-towners arrive from Denver on Christmas night. That’s right, S’s entire family is in town this year, the first time everyone has been here in three or four years. We’re hosting a couple events, along with serving as the meeting point for an evening out. Saturday we’ll also be having some of S’s aunts and uncles and cousins over, pushing our head count well over 30. We have a big house, but I think it will be jam packed that day. Fortunately it looks like it may be close to 60 the back half of the week, so we may be able to kick on the outdoor fireplace and use the porch area for overflow.

Oh, last week’s snow. We got nearly eight inches from three snows over about 36 hours. Luckily both nights the snow stopped well before rush hour so the roads were at least so-so by the time we had to head out. C and L used the gentle slope of our front yard to make a slide for their sled. Once it got good and icy they could ride for about 50 feet before the up-slope slowed them down. It’s been over 50 the past two days and our lawn is slowly emerging.

One final big thing on the family front over the weekend: S had LASIK surgery Friday afternoon. Her eyes aren’t nearly as bad as mine, but as she approaches 50 she’s noticed both some changes in her prescription and less comfort while wearing her contacts. So she got them fixed (hopefully). I’m jealous, as my weak corneas mean I am not a candidate for the surgery. Otherwise I would have had it years ago. I wish I could still wear contacts but my terrible-ass eyes won’t even allow that anymore.

KU

I tried to write about KU hoops a couple times last week. Each time I prefaced it with the need to get some words out before they lost to Villanova. What a genius I was, seeing that L in advance!

That was such a frustrating game. For the first 10 minutes it felt like KU was much better and should be leading by 10+. There was the sense that if they could just get a couple deep balls to go down, they would pull away. Alas those shots never came, Nova righted the ship and forged an ugly 23-all tie at halftime.

With Marcus Garrett going out late in the first half to injury and the Wildcats getting hot early in the second half, I was ready to turn it off and go do other stuff.

But then KU got tough, clawed back, made some huge plays in the last four minutes, and seemed to have control of the game. Until Devon Dotson had the biggest KU point guard meltdown since Elijah Johnson in the Sweet 16 against Michigan. Going brain dead and getting picked from behind and giving up a layup, missing a huge free throw, and not closing out on the game-winning three. He had a chance to atone by forcing a Nova turnover, but ran terrible offense on KU’s two chances to score.

I was downright angry after the game. Not at Devon. Just at the general stupidity that went into losing the game. And to, once again, Villanova being the tougher, better team when they play KU. Those dudes aren’t flashy, they’re almost never pretty to watch. But they always freaking make plays.

Oh well, a one-point road loss to a ranked team in December that will hopefully highlight some areas the guys need to work on isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Culture & Media

Finally, there were two big nostalgia events for my generation this weekend: the release of The Rise of Skywalker and Eddie Murphy hosting Saturday Night Live. I’ll break those out for another post.