I’ve obviously been a little remiss of late. We’re going through some phase changes here, and you know how phase changes can throw me. Throw in a few days with decent weather* and I’ve not been attending to my blogging responsibilities. So some random stuff to get us back on track.
(Our weather has been mostly shitty, though.)
Despite the news leaking Monday morning that Aldrich and Collins would probably be returning to KU, I was still a little shocked when it A) came down and B) both said they never asked for information from the NBA on where they might go in the draft.
They’re coming back.
Let the hype begin.
All that 2008 afterglow stuff will be out the window when college basketball season rolls around in November. Baring major injury anything less than a return trip to Indy next April will be a disappointment. I think my stomach is already starting to hurt.
This probably needs more editing, but it’s almost 10 pm Monday night and I should probably get it posted. And I have a cold, so I might do more damage than help to it if I start hacking.
This is the least angsty, upset, depressed I’ve ever been after a season-ending loss. You know most of the reasons; I’ve been repeating them all season. But I think actually being at the game helped, too.
A brief American Top 40 The 80s update.*
(Don’t worry, an extensive basketball post is coming.)
This week’s show was from 1981, making it the first repeat year countdown since I began listening in January. It was fun to track where songs I heard six weeks ago were in the latest chart. At least for this amateur music historian.
Two things struck me.
First, I have no memory of Blondie’s “Rapture” when it was on the charts.
There’s a slew of stories about the 1979 NCAA title game right now. Linked below is the one that appears in today’s Indy Star. My favorite quote is clipped as well, and it’s one that appears in some form in most of the articles, books, and specials about the game. I like it because it reminds us of how much the world and sports has changed in the past 30 years.
Another for my Father Of The Year file.
A few set up points to begin this story.
First, C. has lost all interest in potty training over the past month. She had been using the toilet once a day or so but lately not at all.
Second, L. woke up around 5:30 Thursday morning, and after a bottle and diaper change was wide-awake and ready to play rather than ready to go back to sleep for a couple more hours.
In March, there are no beauty points, nor any to reason to apologize for advancing. Nor does the regular season, comparing scores and schedules, RPI-based method of deciding who is better come into play. The team that looks awesome one night puts up a dud the next and gets sent home. Winning ugly is better than the alternative.
To say this was one of KU’s least impressive performances in recent tournaments would be fair.
We’re six weeks into our workout sessions with our trainer. Seems like a good time for an update, no?
Up until this week, we were meeting with our trainer once each week. He’d come with a plan put together for the week, guide us through the workout, selecting settings on machines that were appropriate for our sizes and weights that fit our abilities. At the end of the workout, we got a sheet with all the exercises and related info on it to use until our next session.
After taking a look at my picks, I’m hating myself. Despite my belief that the Big East is a little overrated this year - still the best league, but can we stop the slobbering? - I have three Big East schools in the Final Four. And two more in the Elite Eight. Blech.
As I look at the brackets, this feels like one of those wide-open tournaments that comes along every so often.
Well that sucked. Losing to the biggest phonies in the conference stings.
So maybe that game in Lubbock wasn’t a fluke. Sherron looks a little hefty and tired. Cole struggles against anyone shorter and faster than him. You hate to be hearing the term “stress reaction” on a guy that big this time of year. I actually thought a lot of the other guys played decent but when the big two struggle…
M. has finally mastered the Knock Knock joke. It took some help from mom, but she can now say two jokes correctly: the old stand bys “Orange” and “Boo.”
This is a big deal because since she first discovered Knock Knock jokes a year ago, she’s kind of missed the point. Here’s an example of a 2008 M. Knock-Knock joke.
M.: “Knock knock!” Me: “Who’s there?” M.: “Pink flower.” Me: “Um, pink flower who?
“What are the girls saying these days?” you ask. I share below.
I hope I’m not giving C. a complex. She has a small group of words that she pronounces incorrectly. She also has kind of a funny little voice, so when she makes her mispronunciations, it makes me laugh. And then I repeat them back to her, in a silly voice. Something tells me this is going to come back to haunt me when we have to pay for her therapy someday.
I owe my fellow music geeks some AT40 updates. So a couple items from the last two weeks are below.
Last week’s show was from 1986. I only caught the last 15 songs or so, and it was a rather unremarkable collection of music. Sure, I loved a lot of the songs at the time, but with the exception of The Dream Academy’s “Life In A Northern Town,” none are songs I still have any fondness for.
Another effect of being on Facebook: I sometimes forget to post things to the blog. I’ll do a Facebook update and think I’ve covered a topic, when all I did was offer up a blurb that demanded a more in-depth accounting here. Here’s one story I should have shared with you.
The last game I covered was a girls game two weeks ago. I made the short journey to the high school where Eric Montross, Greg Oden, and Michael Conley all played their high school ball.
It’s been a few months since I finally became an active member of Facebook. Based on my discussions with a few of you, my odd reaction to the experience is not one unique to me. It’s just a strange thing.
First, there is the reconnecting with people you haven’t talked to in ages. Here are some of the people I’ve friended in recent weeks: A guy who was probably my closest friend from fourth through eight grades, but had not talked to since 1990 or so.
There’s a great show on Current TV called infoMania. It’s their weekly review program; their version of E!’s The Soup or VH1’s Best Week Ever. This week was the obligatory <a href=“http://current.com/items/89810903/this_week_s_infomania_tramps_in_schoolgirl_uniforms_the_worst_of_the.htm">Valentine's themed-show</a>, featuring some funny segments about online dating. They threw in a reference to a site for people who are looking to have affairs. The site’s tagline is “When Divorce Isn’t An Option.”
Ummm, ok.
I’m no prude and believe people can do what they want so long as they’re willing to accept the consequences, but isn’t this stuff supposed to be hidden?
I better write this now, because tomorrow I expect to be in great pain.
S. and I bit the bullet and signed up for a personal trainer at our gym. We thought what better way to ensure we’re consistent in getting to the gym, are meeting our goals, and throw some more money to them each month?
Our first session was today. The pain is already kicking in.
I should have expected it to be different.
That’s the best way I can describe last night’s KU-MU game. The Jayhawks just forgot to win. Of course, Mizzou had a lot to do with that, as did both Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins operating on fumes the last four minutes. There were a few dicey calls, including a classic “Horrible Call That Only Happens When KU Goes To MU.” But those didn’t cost KU the game. They pissed away a game that was in the bag in Columbia last night mostly by themselves.
The best thing about the scandalous revelations that A-Rod, too, has ‘roided? That many less hours ESPN has to push the Duke-Carolina game on us. I bet they were sweating it, though, and were worried A-Rod wouldn’t talk to Peter Gammons until Wednesday. No way they devote the entire 6:00 p.m. Sportscenter to the interview and reactions on the night of the <strong>BIGGEST RIVALRY IN THE HISTORY OF RIVALRIES AND PROBABLY THE UNIVERSE ITSELF</strong>.
A little trivia from this week’s American Top 40: The 80s* rebroadcast.
(Apparently this is the official name for these programs.)
Until 1980, no artist had ever had two top ten hits at the same time as both a member of a group and as a solo artist. Diana Ross did it first in late 1980. Another artist accomplished the same feat this week in 1981. Care to take a guess?
It was a busy week here. Let’s try to catch-up.
First, we had the sixth biggest snowstorm in Indianapolis history. They measured 12.5" at the airport. I had 10.5" at our front door, although I think we might have had another inch on top of that based on how things looked away from the house. Of course it hit during a week when S. was on the day shift, so there was no sleeping in and letting the snow fall.
I’m going to throw caution to the wind and declare that L. is the happiest baby ever. This comes with some risk, since each time for the past 2.5 years I’ve praised C. for sleeping through the night, she would immediately go back to her old ways. But I’m confident L. can shake the curse of the blog.
L. just went through that hyperspace mode of development where, before Christmas, she was just starting to look around and gurgle a bit and now suddenly she’s laughing, chatting, and trying to get your attention.
In case you missed it, and chances are you did, Indiana is now home to Miss America, ending our embarrassing 77-year drought. Now I no longer have to hang my head when I return to Kansas City and hear from friends who live both in Kansas and Missouri, “What kind of state can’t even claim a Miss America title?”
We’re off the shnide. Suck it, Iowa.
And, more importantly, my daughters finally have a real role model to pattern their lives after.
A long-winded attempt to steer you towards a cool television channel and speculate on whether weird hobbies could derail a budding relationship.
I spend a little time each day watching Current TV. If you’ve never seen Current, it is a citizen journalism outlet that lets pretty much anyone submit small videos, which they call pods, of 2-5 minutes about just about any issue. Some pods are about serious matters like the economy, the war on terror, or child labor while others focus on cultural or technology issues.
A post that is (mostly) not about what you might think it is about.
I’ve slowly, over the past three months, been making a very important change in my life, and finally completed that change yesterday. I have ditched my contacts and am wearing glasses exclusively for the first time in 23 years.
Why on earth would I do something like that? If you were at my wedding, you know that my transition to contacts back in 1986 was a big deal (Thanks for bringing that up, Mr.
I need to give our four-year-old some credit. As maddening as her behavior has been much of the time since L. was born, she does have her moments of pleasantness. And, apparently, usefulness.
She may be potty-training C..
For a few weeks, any time M. was using the bathroom and, to put it delicately, required a few minutes to complete her work, she would call C. to come in and watch.
In which a game goes down to the wire.
My high school basketball reporting experience this year has been decidedly one-sided. Other than two games that featured two local teams, and thus had me covering both the winners and losers, just about every game I’ve done this year has been a comfortable win. More often than not, the team I’m writing about has been on the wrong side of the blow-out.
In which I listen to the music of my youth.
Those of you that follow my Facebook status may have caught that I spent Sunday morning listening to a 25 year old American Top 40 rebroadcast. Our local retro hits station began reairing AT40s from the 80s last fall and, life with a newborn and two preschoolers being what it is, this was my first chance to sit down and actually listen to one of the shows.
I’ve never had a problem changing diapers. It’s part of being a parent, and when I decided to be a stay-at-home parent, I signed myself up for a lot more diapers than the average dad. No worries. My one technique to make the process a little more tolerable, though, has been to pull my shirt up over my nose when changing dirty diapers. It’s not that I can’t handle the smell.
A few quick updates on little L.
She’s actually not so little anymore. All of a sudden she’s looking big to us. Part of it is because, well, she is getting big like a healthy baby should. But I think some of it is because she’s moved into that second phase of infantdom where she actually keeps her eyes open and interacts a bit. When the personality begins to present itself, they just suddenly seem a lot bigger.