Some various and sundry notes about the weekend past.
I covered the boys high school state championship this weekend. As always, it was something else. The event itself is kind of tedious, especially when I only had one swimmer, who was in the finals of two events, to write about. Watching the crowd is the best. I believe I’ve written about it each time I’ve covered a swim meet, but the parents, coaches, and students in the crowd are absolutely nuts.
I covered both the prelims Friday and the finals Saturday. As I said, I only had one kid make it to the finals in two events on Saturday, and he finished fourth and fifth in his two races. Not bad for a sophomore. There were four other swimmers and three relay teams from my schools that made the consolation heats as well, but the focus of both stories was on the kid that advanced.
The last time I did the state meet, three years ago, a kid from a school up north won a bunch of races. I forget the exact number. By the end of the day, he had set the state record for most individual state titles and tied the record for most total titles (individual and relays). Or vice versa. Anyway, he has twin brothers that are currently juniors and swam over the weekend. One of the brothers set four new state record times, breaking his big bro’s record in one race. I talked with a reporter next to me who was covering that team. He said there is a sister in the family that graduated a year ago who won six state titles over her four years. Talk about good genes!
I pay attention to two auto races each year: the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400. But I’ll admit I switched by the Daytona 500 yesterday just to check up on Danica. Her popularity waned here in Indy as she always seemed to be looking towards NASCAR, she never won, and she acting like a spoiled a-hole much of the time. But I still think it’s pretty cool what she’s doing. I’m not going to start sitting the girls down to watch her each week, but it is cool to have another woman showing them that no one can ever tell them they can’t do something.
Man, you know I don’t watch the Oscars, so don’t ask.
C. got to spend 45 minutes selling Girl Scout cookies with some of her troop at a grocery store yesterday. I dropped her off, made sure she was settled, and grabbed a cart to do my shopping for the week during her shift. After a few minutes, I could hear the girls (there were 4-5 there at a time) asking people if they wanted to buy cookies in sing-song voices. There was giggling and everything seemed to be going fine. Then, as I was on the far side of the store, I heard screaming, a clatter, a pause, and then belly laughing. I had a guess as to what had happened.
I finished my shopping, checked out, and walked over to the table. One of the girls incessantly tried to sell me cookies while I asked C. how things were going. C. was stacking up new boxes of cookies and just smiled at me and said, “Fine.” The cookie mom walked over and said that someone had leaned too hard on the card table the cookies were stacked on and it tipped over, sending them everywhere. Just like I thought.
C. had a good time. As I expected, she kind of hung back and let other girls talk try to make sales. Which is fine. Now that she’s experienced the rough-and-tumble world of grocery store cookie sales, I doubt she’ll ask me to do it again next year.
Later Sunday I was sitting there reading when I realized the Royals were playing a spring training game in Arizona. I remembered getting a message the previous week that my MLB.TV subscription had just renewed, so I opened the iPad, download At Bat, pulled up the game, and listened for a half inning. Listening to baseball in Indiana in the middle of February. These are great times, my friends.
Man, it’s been a cold but dry winter here. After that busy week around Christmas, when we got about a foot of snow total, and well more just to our south, we’ve only had an inch here, a half-inch there. There’s a chance of snow every day this week, but at this point it’s never supposed to pile up deeper than an inch. I wonder what it’s like to have a real, snowy winter?
Yes, I am trolling my Kansas City friends. Hang in there, brothers and sisters!
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