Sunday, April 27, 2008
I’m working on some new content, don’t worry. Last week was a busy one in and around the house. I power washed and then re-stained/sealed the deck. Worked in the yard. We reorganized the garage, including adding some new storage devices. Had some car repairs taken care of. And did some reorganization inside as well. This week, it’s me and the girls. So hopefully the five or six drafts I started last week will be completed.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
I promised one more KU post, so here goes it. Feel free to move along to other/better things if you’re sick of it all. Well, the hangover remains, although this is an extremely pleasant hangover. I’m down to a relatively normal number of e-mails related to KU again. I was getting about 1000 a day, or so it seemed, most of last week. It’s a little sad, I think, that they don’t constantly replay the game on some easily viewed network.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
It’s bad enough when the two-year-old gets out of bed, opens her door, goes down the stairs, and starts running around the living room at 5:30 AM. Then the house started shaking. Apparently we had a nice 5.4 earthquake this morning. I don’t remember anything from my days in southeast Missouri, right on top of the New Madrid fault (early reports say our shaker this morning was on the New Madrid fault), but I never felt one this big in my one year in California.
Monday, April 14, 2008
As I try to come up with all the funny things the girls are saying these days, here’s a quick teaser. M. refers to anything that is brown as chocolate. She wants to wear her “chocolate” shoes or shirt or likes the chocolate dog or whatever. Her sister is following that example, although C. says “chock-u-late.” As you can imagine, there are horrifying possibilities for this. Some day when we’re out in public one of the girls is going to say something about a “chocolate” (or chock-u-late) person.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
More Jayhawk talk. And lots of it. I promise, only one or two more of these for my non-Jayhawk readers. It’s been an odd couple of days. I still don’t feel great. Much better than I felt Monday, but my stomach is still giving me fits. So I’ve continued to kind of lay around the past couple days. Of course, I read every article about the game I can find, watch every YouTube video of the celebration in Lawrence, and just sit around staring at pictures of the game.
Monday, April 7, 2008
If B. Baby #3 is a boy, Mario is getting some serious consideration. Now I just have to find a way to convince the Mrs. that Mario is somehow Irish/Welsh to fit our Celtic model we’ve used on the first two.
Monday, April 7, 2008
The day after. Feeling about 80% better, although it was a rather restless night of sleep. I thought a lot about what winning a national championship would mean to me, as a fan and alum, over the weekend. The reality, of course, is that it really only gives me a chance to buy a bunch of new t-shirts and ultimate bragging rights on anyone else until the next championship is won.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Sick on the couch all day, laid on my back for the game, but managed to get upright after Mario C saved the day. Not afraid to admit I’m shedding some tears of joy right now. What a team what a season what a shot what a game. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Woke up on what should be a great day with flu-like symptoms. Have been rolling around on the couch for three hours and maybe, finally, felling a little better. Need some major improvement before 9:30 tonight. In case I don’t get a chance, I will say, Memphis is way too good for KU. If KU is a really good college team, Memphis is like a mid-tier NBA team. How can we guard Chris Douglas-Roberts?
Friday, April 4, 2008
What a freaking game. I kept thinking, “There is no way you can blow a lead this big,” when KU started to run out of gas in the first half. As Carolina crept closer in the second, I kept thinking, “Surely not.” As KU kept throwing lazy passes, taking quick shots, and otherwise making it easy for UNC to get back in the game, I thought, “Oh no.” When Tyler Hanbrough clearly committed an offensive foul yet Darrell Arthur got rung up for an and-one foul, I thought, “Oh shit.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Well, I guess I have to say something. On this, the 20th anniversary of KU’s glorious victory over Oklahoma in the 1988 NCAA championship game, I will offer some thoughts on KU-UNC and the Angstfest once known as Roystock. I’ve done my best to avoid much of the national media coverage of the background story to the game. I didn’t want, for the second time in five years, a week leading up to a KU Final Four appearance to be all about Roy Williams rather than the team.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
We’ve entered the Mary Poppins phase of M’s life. If anyone knows how to get “chimchiminee chimchiminee chim chim cheree” out of my head, I would appreciate it.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
If your kid pukes on their bed/floor in the middle of the night, and you just toss all the soiled clothes and sheets into the washing machine, expect to see the half-digested grapes and raisins clinging to the insides of the machine after the cycle is over. Apparently neither kids nor washing machines can process them fully.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Wow. I thought about posting just that one word and the picture, and leaving it at that. I don’t know that you ever apologize for getting the the Final Four, but little beyond the victory itself was worth celebrating about KU’s victory over Davidson in the Midwest Regional Final. For me, it was an unprecedented game. Why unprecedented? I left the house with around 10:00 to play. I’ve turned a few games off over the years, but never have I been so tense that I had to leave the house.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Gorgeous day today, so I was able to get the girls outside for a few hours. The neighbor kids also came out and eventually playground chalk made an appearance. 20 minutes later, C.’s face was completely covered in pink chalk, M.’s in blue. Hopefully the pictures turn out. Their normal Thursday morning bath came about 14 hours early. S. got called into work unexpectedly tonight, so I had to scramble a bit to keep the girls occupied through the evening.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Like a lot of parents, I struggle with how and when to push my kids. To be honest, I don’t push much: if they want to do something, I let them do it. If they aren’t interested, I’m not going to force them to kick a soccer ball for two hours. But I do think a lot about how I’ll handle these situations as they get older and begin getting into activities.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
For now, I’m not going to talk about the NCAA tournament. I need to find the right tone so that I don’t anger the Woof Gods. I still have a few superstitions left. I did want to quickly recap M.’s first trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s last week. You may recall that she was invited to a birthday party for a classmate in January, but the flu beat her down that day and we had to stay home.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Some quick thoughts on the tournament before I head to Gymboree. Regarding KU, I’m surprisingly zen about them. I’d love it if their fulfilled their potential and went deep; it would certainly be a lot of fun. But, if they lose early, I’m not going to let it ruin the season for me as a fan. I know that’s a familiar refrain around here these days, but I honestly believe it.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The last time I attended a political rally was in 1992. I figured I was overdue, so I checked out Barack HUSSEIN Obama’s visit to Indianapolis Saturday. The Senator visited in advance of the May 6 Indiana primary, which given the closeness of the Democratic nomination race, is suddenly very important. Here are some observations and thoughts. The event took place at a high school on the far west side of Indianapolis, near the airport, and was open only to people who had a ticket.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
I was watching the Backyardigans with the girls today and wondered, do people outside of circuses walk on tightropes anymore? I’m talking about real tightropes, not metaphorical ones. Maybe it wasn’t as often as it seemed, but when I was little, back in the mid-70s, it seemed like some joker was walking across Niagara Falls or between the TwinTowers on a tight rope every other week.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
First off, I watched shockingly few hours of basketball during championship week. Part of that was because S. was on the day shift, so it was just me and the girls. By the time the games started each day, the girls had seen enough TV already, and I really needed to get them doing something active, rather than just switch to hoops. So, outside the KU games, I watched probably a total of an hour of basketball.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
That’s what is happening all over the Middle East this morning. Why? Because the terrorists have won again. Yes, Indiana’s 7th congressional district elected a Muslim - a MUSLIM! - to represent them in the US House of Representatives for the next ten months. It’s a well documented fact that every single Muslim in the world has the exact same world and political view (Muslims never, ever fight each other), so surely this means our enemies are taking over our government.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Tonight was dads’ night at M.’s preschool. There’s nothing quite like spending an hour with a bunch of wound-up three and four year olds. As with their Christmas program, M. had been letting details of what was going to happen tonight slip for a couple weeks. They’ve been diligently practicing songs and on occasion she would bust into one in front of me. So I kind of knew what was coming.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Today, while playing in her toy kitchen, M. said the following things: “I’m just going to pop this into the fridge.” And, “Hi, I’m Rachael Ray.” And we almost never watch any of her shows anymore. I’d prefer she pick up some proper Italian pronunciations from <a href=“http://www.giadadelaurentiis.com/">Giada</a>.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Every now and then, I write something and forget to post it. What lies below is an example of that. I only thought of this while reading a book this week that revolved around the same subject. I’m glad I found it. I finally caught VH1’s documentary <a href=“http://www.vh1.com/shows/dyn/vh1_rock_docs/122259/episode.jhtml">NY 77: The Coolest Year in Hell</a> this week. If you’re a fan of music, pop culture, or just American history, you owe it yourself to track it down.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Senior Night is awesome. It might be my favorite part of the basketball season, which I think shows that I’m aging a little bit. I’ve become a sucker for saying thank you and goodbye to the players that have represented your team for four years. I love looking back and seeing how players have grown over their four years on campus, both as players and people. And perhaps my favorite part is how, at least at KU, it seems like the guys at the end of the bench who never get to play always come up big on Senior Night (Big being relative, of course).
Saturday, February 23, 2008
I donned my reporter’s hat Saturday and drove down to the natatorium at IUPUI to cover the Indiana boys swimming and diving championships. I hung out with some swimmers in high school, so I understand how swimmers are second only to wrestlers when it comes to strange high school athletes, but had never been to a proper meet. It was an interesting afternoon. First off, people go crazy at these things.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
I’ve come at this a couple different ways and wasn’t terribly satisfied with the results, so I’ll give this a third shot and see what happens. It was ten years ago today (February 22) that my mom was killed in a car accident. As with any anniversary, in some ways it seems like yesterday, and in others it seems like it’s been a lot longer than ten years. As I’ve thought about this, I realized that there is about a 14 hour stretch of time from that day where I remember everything that happened, that I thought, that I said, and that I did, beginning at 6:00 PM when my step-dad called and told me she had been in an accident.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
So I’m kind of addicted to eBay. We won’t get into the details, but since I finally checked it out last summer, I’ve become a bit of a fiend. I’ve sold some things, bought some things, but most tellingly bid on some stuff I absolutely did not need. Fortunately, all the Don’t Need items went to someone else. I’m not going all Woody Boyd on the Home Shopping Network. For the most part, I’ve found eBay to be awesome.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Another streak is broken. Saturday night, S. and I went to see our first movie in a theater together since 2004. One of her sisters informed us that we would be going out and she would be watching the girls, so we decided to go crazy and see a flick instead of just going to dinner. We caught Juno, which I thought was as good as everything I had heard about it.