Monday, August 19, 2013
We kick off the first full week of school today. Which means we can begin setting some routines around here. M. was the first to show signs of being tired last week. She had a meltdown one night about doing her homework. It was an easy assignment based on her summer activities and she decided she’d rather have a meltdown than take two minutes to do it. It wasn’t just about being tired, though.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
L. is one smart cookie. I offered to take her somewhere for lunch yesterday after her sadness about M. and C. going off to school.1 She quickly agreed and reminded me that a year ago on the sisters' first day of school, I took her to a bookstore and she got to pick out a book. Can we do that again, she asked. How could I say no? We cruised over to Barnes & Noble and browsed through the children’s section.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
(Administrative note: I’m in the midst of another big, blog redesign project. It will likely take months to complete and I’ll explain more as the re-launch gets closer. Part of that is no longer posting pics of the girls here. I figure most of you who are close to me are either A) friends on Facebook or B) know how to reach our family picture page. So that’s where you need to go to see the obligatory First Day of School pics.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Man, what a ride. I have a feeling, when we look back on this season, we’ll look at last weekend, when the Royals hosted Boston, as the high point. Big crowds, including the first August sell-out since 2003. Exciting games, including the great, six-run sixth inning Friday night. And a feeling that the Royals mattered again. MLB.TV was acting up much of the time, so I listened more than watched. What struck me were the roars from the crowd.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
The shift has begun. We put the girls to bed just after 8:00 last night. They had swum quite a bit during the day, so two of them were tired. M.’s light was still on at 9:00, so I think she was reading. But C. had her radio cranked up and was singing away, as happy as could be. It’s funny how kids think a closed door means no one outside the room can hear what you’re doing.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
I think we’re ready, all of us, for school to begin. Trips to the pool have been the cornerstone of my daily plans for the summer. Give the kids time to veg in the morning, get outside a bit before it heats up, maybe run an errand or two after lunch, then spend the afternoon at the pool. But we’re going on week three of strange weather. When it’s warm and muggy during the day, it’s often been cool at night, making the pool water chilly.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
I’ve enjoyed the recent references amongst my Kansas City friends on Facebook to one of my favorite restaurants, Il Centro. Adding to the fun is the, now, obligatory comments about how everyone was sure to pronounce the name correctly. For the non-KCers out there, as an Italophile, I was quick to correct my friends who called the spot “eel sen-tro” rather than the correct “eel chen-tro”. What was the point of that year of Italian if not to help people with such mistakes?
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Last weekend I was sitting around, enjoying an 80-Acre Hoppy Wheat when Madness' classic 1983 tune “Our House” came on the radio. Being the reflective cat I am1, I savored my beer and considered that I very well could have been listening to the same song exactly 30 years before that moment. I also thought if you had to sum up the 80s, that would be a pretty solid song to do so.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
You must forgive me. I’ve been on a bit of a reading roll lately, ripping through these five books in three weeks, along with a couple other more technical works I’ve been reading bits and pieces of between. Honestly, I kind of forgot all the details of the first. So shorter comments this time. I’ll try to keep up with my books better going forward. The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
It’s been a few days since we’ve been to the pool. The weather began to change the middle of last week, we were at the LVS over the weekend, and so far this week it’s been too cool to get in the water. With just two weeks until M. and C. begin school , we’ve enjoyed our first year as members of a pool. We had been averaging four trips a week until this week, usually for about two hours at a time.
Monday, July 29, 2013
The Royals are doing it all wrong again. After a quarter-century of losing, they decide to rip off a hot streak just as this year’s trade deadline approaches. In the process, they’ve likely tricked General Manager Dayton Moore into thinking they still have a chance to sneak into the second Wild Card spot and thus stop any attempts to move Ervin Santana or members of the bullpen for someone to fill the hole at second base, or other parts that will help when the team reboots next spring.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Nine years and one hour ago (as I type this) M. came into the world, screaming and demanding attention. She hasn’t shut up since. I kid! Kind of. Our girl loves to talk, as she is quick to admit. Now she is in the midst of 30 or so hours that are all about her, which is her idea of the perfect day. We had our annual dinner out at her favorite restaurant, Macaroni Grill, last night.
Monday, July 22, 2013
I’ll admit, sometimes I feel like my life is one big first world problem. I’m super fortunate that while there are some annoyances that test my patience each day, some wrinkles I’d love to have smoothed out, I face no true, big problems. I try to remain mindful and thankful of that at all times, as I know how quickly things can change. With that in mind, I’ll share my current, biggest, first world annoyance: I often have no idea what day it is.
Friday, July 19, 2013
The horse is long out of the barn. That’s my reaction to Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke’s announcement earlier this week that he was pulling his solo and Atoms For Peace music from the streaming service Spotify to protest the minuscule royalty payments it, and other similar services, issues to artists. I absolutely agree with his point: there needs to be a model for online music that balances the interests of artists who perform and write music and are entitled to fair compensation for their works, of consumers who want easy access to huge libraries of music, and the need for companies that serve the music up to make some money for their efforts.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
This year’s All-Star Game retrospective won’t be quite as exhaustive as some in the past have been. By the time S. was home from a meeting and the girls were in bed, it was the top of the third. Fortunately, it was still 0-0 so with the exception of Robinson Cano getting plunked, I saw just about all the best game action. Obviously the story of the game was Mariano Rivera’s final ASG appearance.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Catching up on the weekend and some girls notes as we wrap up a sleep-over. We swapped daughters with our neighbors last night. C. went next door to sleep with her 7-year-old buddy while M.’s 9-year-old pal came to our home for the night. Our evening was uneventful. We ate dinner, then the girls watched the newest American Girl Doll movie1. It took them awhile to get settled upstairs, and we had to make some fan and air conditioning adjustmenst so they could cool off, but by the time I went to bed at 11 they seemed to be out.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Watchmen - Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I was never a comic book guy. I did have some Star Wars comics1 and dabbled in GI Joe comics in the early 80s, but that was about it. I think because I was never into comics, I was also never into super heroes. So while it has become fashionable in some circles for men my age to “rediscover” comics and start building a library of X-Men and Avengers books, since I lacked that early love of the medium and the characters, I’ve spent my middle aged hobby money elsewhere2.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
The promised thoughts on a few of the biggest sports news of the holiday week. Brad Stevens to the Boston Celtics. I was walking into a local brewery to fill growlers for the weekend last Wednesday when I got a text asking what I thought about the move. My first response was “Holy shit!” There were no rumbles here in Indy that Stevens was interested in, or talking to someone about, an NBA job.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Our long holiday week went pretty well. We had visitors from Denver, including the girls' two cousins that they loved seeing. The cousins are three years and 15 months, and our girls think they’re the best things ever. M., C., and L. could not have been happier than they were playing with them, helping the little one up and down the stairs, and trying to teach them all the things they need to know that the B.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Some weekend notes. They did it! The Royals finally made the right moves and designated Jeff Francouer for assignment and called up second baseman Johnny Giavotella. Gio responded by going 3-4 Sunday and making a couple very good plays in the field. Eric Hosmer is warming up, David Lough has been fantastic. If they can just get Moustakas going they can get our hopes up for next year! A few weeks back I jokingly told a friend of mine that the Pittsburgh Pirates would be good about 2-3 weeks longer than they were last year.
Friday, June 28, 2013
My first blog post, on the first version of this site, ten years ago was a Bill Simmons-like breakdown of the 2003 NBA Draft. Now, as I watch the 2013 draft, Bill Simmons is manning the ESPN table with Reece Davis, Jalen Rose, and Jay Bilas. Does that qualify as coming full circle? I won’t mince words: this is a shitty draft. I’m biased about one of these guys, but I think there are two safe picks in this draft: Ben McLemore and Otto Porter.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First - Jonah Keri. It is too tempting, and too easy, to call this Moneyball 2.0&. Where Michael Lewis examined how the Oakland Athletics built a winner on a meager budget through the use of (then) obscure, advanced statistical analysis, Keri details how the Tampa Rays went from MLB laughingstock to one of the best franchises in the game through their own innovative look at the MLB talent pool.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
I’m sure this will suffer a bit for having waited through the weekend to put them together, but some thoughts about LeBron and the Miami Heat winning the NBA title thursday night. It was a lot to ask but still slightly disappointing that Game Seven didn’t live up to the standard set by Game Six. It wasn’t a blowout, but neither was it two heavyweights trading punches for 48 (or 53) minutes.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
All kinds of stuff going on today, not the least of which is another important mid-June anniversary that must be celebrated.1 I’ve been sitting on this magnificent ode to PNC Ballpark in Pittsburgh by Charles Pierce for a couple weeks. It seems like the perfect day to share it. If you offered me a first-class ticket to a decent paying career in any field, after turning down the unrealistic options,2 I would likely select being a sportswriter.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
I’m dragging a little but this morning thanks to that epic Game Six of the NBA Finals last night. In case you missed it, San Antonio controlled the first 36 minutes of the game wonderfully. They stretched out leads, responded to Miami runs, and seemed to be utterly in control of the game as it went to the final quarter. Late in the third period Tony Parker missed an open baseline jumper from about 18 feet that would have put the Spurs up 14.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
I’ve shared before how C. is an impulsive child prone to get herself into trouble when something shiny grabs her attention and pushes all reasonable thought from her brain. Here is the story of her latest impulsive moment. We were entertaining friends a few weeks back and C. was teamed up with one of her seven-year-old buddies. The parents were in one room and the kids scattered about the house. Littered through the kitchen were several hours' worth of empty cans and bottles and the tops that had originally been on them.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Mid-June is always busy with remembrances large and small here in Casa de B. June 2013 is extra special, as it marks the tenth anniversary of many of these events. Last Thursday, for example, was the tenth anniversary of S. graduating from residency. That’s not one we celebrate but, as it was a part of a huge weekend ten years ago, we did acknowledge it this year. Then Friday was our (first) tenth anniversary.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
A few assorted sports notes. Last weekend was a big weekend for people around me who suddenly become big fans of sports they don’t usually follow. For us Jayhawks, our women’s track team won the national championship, the first-ever national title for a women’s team from KU. A big part of their championship was Lindsay Vollmer’s solo national title in the heptathlon, another KU first. Locally, IU advanced to their first-ever College World Series by going to Tallahassee and winning two straight games over host Florida State.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
I realized Saturday, as I was flipping through the latest Sports Illustrated, that I really should have written something about the retirements of Jason Kidd and Grant Hill. There aren’t many professional athletes still playing who were in college at the same time I was, and these were two of the very best to grace the game while I was a student.1 Grant Hill was the Duke player everyone secretly liked.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
We made a brief trip to the pool yesterday, our first visit this season. You may recall that last July 4 was the first time M. and C. jumped off a diving board. M., who is always cautious, took several minutes to get the courage up to take her first plunge, and only, finally jumped when I threatened to throw her off myself. C., of course, took right to it.