My “official” GRE scores arrived today. I got the highest score possible on my essays, which I thought I totally fucked up the day of the test. A huge relief, as that makes me feel better about my verbal score. I ended up in the 93rd percentile for verbal, 64th for math, and 97th for writing. Of course, since I thought I had done so poorly on the essays I refused the chance to send my scores for free to IUPUI and have to drop some money to do it now.
I hope all of you had a fine holiday. It was a good Christmas in the home of ye olde blogger. From the wife, I received a sweater and zip sweatshirt from J Crew, an iTunes gift card (sadly the only thing I got from the Apple Store), and book six of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. From my secret Santa, which this year was my brother-in-law who’s in school in Boston, I got book seven of the Dark Tower and a Red Sox World Series hat that he personally purchased at Fenway Park.
My golden age of Christmas gifts ran from roughly age 8 to 13. After that, I really didn’t ask for any big ticket items anymore, since I knew my parents weren’t buying me a car, and my list was dominated by clothes, books, and such. Those pre- and early teen years, though, were filled with items I dreamt about for months before they finally arrived. Here are a few of my all-time favorites:
…snow-blower. The great Christmas storm of aught-four has yet to reach our neighborhood. Unless you have to be out driving in it, it’s frustrating to be sitting on the couch, watching inches of snow pile up just a few miles south of your house on TV while nary a flake falls at your home. We’re supposed to get ours this afternoon and evening, but will be fortunate to get 4-6". About an hour south, they’re looking at 12-18".
So much for burning candles for Wayne Simien’s hand. 4-6 weeks on the shelf. Not crippling to post-season hopes, nor Big 12 title dreams. Realistically, if he comes back for the Texas-Missouri weekend, KU should be 4-1 in the Big 12 which isn’t a bad place to be. What does blow is at best we will break even in the Georgia Tech & Kentucky games, and have a decent shot of losing both.
People who don’t pull forward at red lights. I got stuck in traffic one night last week when I had to go out during the evening rush hour. A trip that normally takes five minutes took over 20 thanks to the normal traffic and added traffic from a nearby mall. At one stop light, I was three cars back and didn’t move during an entire green cycle because the traffic perpendicular to us didn’t move.
I would imagine some of my regular readers will begin disappearing in the next few days for shopping and traveling in preparation for the holidays. Other more occasional visitors may stop in more often thanks to the free time the holidays provide. Happy holidays to all. The big news in Indy today is the new stadium/convention plan which was officially announced this morning. If approved, a retractable roofed stadium will be built just south of the RCA Dome in time for the 2008 NFL season.
Things seen on TV last night. 1 - A Charlie Brown Christmas. M. cried, keeping up a tradition her dad started many years ago. I was a sensitive little lad, and the overwhelming negativity of Peanuts animated specials were always too much for me to take. Whether it was the ridicule of Linus while he waited for the Great Pumpkin, or the persecution of Charlie Brown in pretty much every show, I always got upset while watching the Peanuts gang.
Is there a more consistent entry on a man’s Christmas list than cologne? I realized that when I handed my list over to S. the weekend after Thanksgiving. There’s some point in every boy’s teenage years when parents think they require cologne each Christmas. I forget when I got my first cologne, but it was probably in the 12-13 range. I was somewhat chagrined to find a small bottle of Ralph Lauren’s Chaps cologne in my stocking that year.
I think it’s safe to say last night’s broadcast of the Lawrence North - Poplar Bluff game was a bit of a dud. It was certainly an entertaining game, but that’s not why ESPN decided to show a high school game. They wanted to see Greg Oden go off. If Tyler Hansbrough also happened to put up huge numbers, all that much better. While both players had good halves, neither played like LeBron James did two years ago.
Yesterday was some day for Indianapolis sports fans. The Colts made a major statement about the future of the franchise. There was continued fallout from the Pacers-Pistons brawl. The Indy 500 suddenly got a lot more interesting. And Mike Davis was up to his old tricks. Thoughts: The big thing that jumps out at me from the resigning of Marvin Harrison is that the Colts now have close to $60 million guaranteed to two players, have another major free agent to worry about, and several B+ level free agents they need to resign this off-season.
I survived the GRE, at least for now. I’m not exceptionally pleased with my performance, so I won’t get into it all that deeply. I did better than expected, significantly better in fact, on the math part. But I was guessing on many of the questions so that’s a fluke. I didn’t do nearly as well as I wanted on the verbal, which is really disappointing. I’m still above the 90th percentile, but my goal was the 97th so I’m a bit frustrated by that.
Some assorted thoughts as I prepare to start the final study push for the GRE. I picked the right time to take the GRE. The last ten days have very much felt like finals week back in college. I did actually have a couple decent semesters as an undergrad, believe it or not. The semesters when I had gone to class consistently, began the month of December with an A or B in each class, and had a plan for studying were always kind of fun.
I believe I chose wisely when I decided to scale back the basketball blogging this year. Evidence is my experience watching Saturday’s Kansas-Pacific game. I had a babysitter so I could study, and fortunately she didn’t need to leave until about 3:30. So my “study break” began at the tip-off in Lawrence. At about the 8:00 mark of the first half, I reclaimed my daughter. For the first few minutes, she sat on my lap staring at the TV, waiting for “her player” CJ Giles to get into the game.
First, we don’t have Ken Jennings to kick around anymore. He clearly threw it on Jeopardy. He acted like a thief or a philanderer who has been getting away with his crimes for too long. He seemed uninterested. Downright reckless on the Daily Doubles. I think he was just ready to sign his book/movie deal and get back to a normal life. Come on, how do you miss that Final Jeopardy question?
Just returned from M’s four month check-up. She continues to allay any fears that the occasional bottle she ignores is somehow affecting her growth. She checked in at 15 lbs, 12 oz. She was 12.2 at the two month visit. She has grown up a little, 24" as opposed to 22" eight weeks ago. She’s now up in the 90th percentile for weight and just under the 50th for height. I’m still hoping she follows my path of being short and stout for the first year, then growing up like a weed and being skinny the rest of her life.
I hate it when Blogger decides to jack with a couple characters in an HTML line and thus screws up a post. I just noticed yesterday morning that the link I attempted to share last Wednesday was corrupted while posting and thus none of you could use it. My apologies. At times when I use the desktop posting tools I have, strange things happen. This was one of them. I’ve fixed it if you still want to read about Thanksgivings past.
A basketball lover’s Thanksgiving tonight: 6:00 PM - Snack: Indiana vs. Indiana State. IU has a lot of young talent. The question is will Mike Davis screw them up or will the Hoosiers be better than they were a year ago? (Please note, I just think Davis is a bad coach. I’m not one of the people who hate him just because he’s not Bobby Knight. In fact, I liked Davis at first simply because he wasn’t Bobby.
ABC didn’t exactly take my advice last night, but there was a subtle shot at the haters in the MNF lead-in. When I’m watching CBS, I see ads for The Amazing Race with the show hyped as “The Emmy Award winner for Best Reality Series”. I’ve watched the show a few times, and like the concept better than pretty much every other reality show. Still, isn’t being called the best reality series kind of like, in Anthony Michael Hall’s words, being called king of the dorks?
16 days to the GRE. I feel like the more I study my math review books, the less I understand. For the last hour I’ve been looking at a series of word problems and have had no idea how to set them up, let alone solve them. These next two weeks of studying will not be fun. Since David Stern clearly payed attention to my suggestions in handing down suspensions yesterday, I’ll offer some more unsolicited advise, this time to ABC.
Saturday was Brawl Day in Indy. Almost every local newscast was devoted entirely to recapping and replaying Friday night’s brawl between the Pacers and Pistons. A day later, I still don’t know what to say about the event as a whole. So I’ll just move on and offer these suggestions/predictions to the NBA before they hand out suspensions tonight or tomorrow. Ben Wallace: 5-10 games. Every summer you hear about people who innocently throw a cigarette into some dead brush, forget to properly put out their camp fire, or are just screwing around with open flame and end up starting massive, destructive forest fires.
I sweat my way through the KU-Vermont game, which was entirely too close, then switch over to watch the end of the Pacers-Pistons game. The Pacers had the game well in hand, so I was playing with M. who was in an excellent mood after watching her first ever Jayhawk basketball game. Then I hear all hell break loose on the TV. When Stephon Jackson and Ron Artest were taking swings at people in the crowd, and idiots were taking cheap shots at them, I knew I had seen the worst thing I’ve ever seen in a US sporting event.
I gotta share some thoughts on Ron Artest. A quick recap for those who missed last week’s antics: Ron sat out the Minnesota and Clipper games because of a “situation that challenged the integrity of the team” according to Coach Rick Carlisle. Said situation was later identified as Ron asking for up to a month off due to fatigue from production and promotion activities for two CD releases he’s involved with.
Stealing from the NBA, Happy Basketball New Year! The pro season is three weeks old, college hoops started playing for real earlier this week, and my Kansas Jayhawks take the court for the first time tonight. ESPN Full Court has been purchased. Popcorn is only 11 hours from being popped. I’m contemplating what shirt to start the season with. And thankfully the Sports Illustrated college hoops group decided to hang the cover jinx on North Carolina.
I’m not a big fan of music remakes. If the original version of a song was relatively obscure, I can get down with a remake. But if the OG cracked the top 20, the remake generally sounds exactly like the song you enjoyed ten years ago, except with a new guitar solo or something tacked on. I think remakes of popular songs should be relegated to encore sets at concerts or B-sides of singles.
When you become a parent, you quickly learn how many things can be harmful to your child. You plug up all your electrical outlets. You hide any decorative pieces that have sharp edges. You gather up all your assorted poisons and store them in one secure location. What none of the parenthood guides tell you, though, is that the most dangerous thing to your child is much more difficult to manage.
It’s Kansas-Missouri football week, so I’m sure you can imagine how fired up everyone in my neighborhood is! At least M. and I are. We’re hosting a watch party for the local rivalry, Indiana and Purdue, so the girl and I will have to steal away to my office to check the score on the real game periodically. I planned on writing something about the game Friday, including some props to the schools/Big 12 for getting the game back to it’s proper date: the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
Last night we gave M. her first meal that was in a non-liquid form. A week shy of her four month birthday, she got a bowl of rice cereal! We knew it was about time to increase her nutritional intake, and after she woke every three hours Sunday night despite getting no nap in the evening and a huge bottle before bed, we bought a box of rice cereal, some baby spoons, and matching bowls.
Saturday night, I attended my first Pacers game at Conseco Fieldhouse in downtown Indy. I’ve long heard the buzz that Conseco was the best place to watch a game in the NBA, combining both the amenities of modern sports arenas with the feel of a classic fieldhouse setting. Although my experience was not typical, I did greatly enjoy my first visit to our local basketball palace. A bank my father-in-law deals with offered him four tickets to Saturday’s game with the Knicks.
I received confirmation this morning that I can start classes at IUPUI this January. Now I’ve not formally been admitted to the graduate program; I’ll be taking classes under the umbrella called “Graduate Non-Degree Program” which is a way for people to test out a course of study (and for the program to evaluate prospective students) before they go through the admissions process. I got the feeling it was a no brainer to get in at this point, since there’s no risk to the university so long as I pay my tuition, but it’s still fun to know I’m going to be taking a couple classes this spring.