D's Notebook

Month: February 2023 (Page 1 of 2)

Ranking Shit: Wasted Items

February 28, 2023 /

I’ve not been very good about continuing with this concept. It seems like I mostly think of it in relation to music, and I figure I have enough music content here already. Or when I get a decent, non-music idea, I have enough other posts lined up. I have a few of those ideas sitting in my drafts folder and will try to share them plus add some new entries so this can be a more regular feature.

Today I’m going to rank the things that get wasted the most in our house. These are in no particular order.

1 – Fresh fruit/vegetables
I feel bad about this one. It seems like we’re always throwing away at least one apple, banana, or orange that sits on the counter too long. But worse are the berries and veggies that get put into the fridge. I’ll remember to take them out for dinner one night then not think of them again for a week, when they are either moldy or mushy. Big time consumer/parent fail here.

2 – Notebooks/notebook paper
I wonder what percentage of notebooks I’ve purchased in my life that were more than 60% used when I chucked them into the trash or recycling. And each spring the girls hand me their leftover loose leaf paper, which goes into a stack that is so tall it will likely never be exhausted.

3 – Ice cream
My family loves to eat about two-thirds of a tub of ice cream then shove it to the back of the freezer where it sits, growing freezer burn crystals, until I toss it two months later.

4 – Leftovers
The girls are not huge fans of leftovers. We try to have one dinner per week that is made up of whatever we ate the previous 2–3 nights. But I still toss far too much food I’ve cooked to clear space before I make a big trip to the grocery store. I feel like most of my recipes don’t result in huge portions, either. I try to do my part, but I have a hard time eating leftovers more than a couple times.

5 – Magazines
I was struggling to think of a fifth entry. Then I looked at our coffee table. I get one golf magazine that I don’t pay for but keeps arriving every month. I never read it. We got Indianapolis Monthly for years without ever doing more than checking the restaurant listings. It looks the they finally stopped auto-renewing it for us, but we still have a stack of them. And S gets several medical journals each month. She flips through a few of them, but a couple are related to her previous speciality and go straight into the recycling. I still love getting a magazine or two before we take a trip, but I rarely get through the entire volume. They’ll join the pile until my twice-yearly purge.

A far cry from when I got Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and a few more magazines regularly and almost always read them front-to-back.

Weekend Notes

February 27, 2023 /

Kid Hoops

A week ago L’s team beat some good sixth graders in the best game they’ve played all year. This week they played another sixth grade team and got crushed.

It was a 50–26 loss. And that was with us scoring six points in the last minute. The team we played made at least 7 3’s to our one. They worked us over pretty good on the defensive end. They dominated the boards. Nothing really went right for us.

L was feeling under the weather and looked like she had zero energy. We were missing our best player. We had another girl who hadn’t played with us all year and was clueless. And another girl who has played a couple times but never goes to practice showed up and had no idea who she was supposed to be guarding when we were on defense. Not that any of that made any difference.

Our tournament starts Thursday, the first game against a team that beat the sixth graders that just beat us. So doubting that L’s team will make a run.

In good news, we had our parent Zoom meeting for the travel team Sunday night. They will start practicing in two weeks. We will miss the first tournament of the season because of spring break, so L won’t get a travel game until April. She’s excited to rejoin those girls, though.

Jayhawk Talk

Whew.

I had a bad feeling about this run of West Virginia and Texas Tech back-to-back. It felt like too many people were chalking them up as wins and assuming KU would be playing for, at worst, a tie for the Big 12 title next weekend in Austin. I hoped the team was taking them more seriously than KU fans were.

I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, whether it was the KU guys not being focused or WVU just playing great, but it was too damn close of a game.

I missed the second half for a social event. I was extra stressed because I couldn’t find the broadcast anywhere on Sirius while we were driving. I checked the score when we stopped to pick friends up and was relieved to see KU up by seven late. A few minutes later I checked again and let out an “Oh shit!” when I saw it was a one-point game. Reminded me of almost exactly a year ago when we went out as the KU-Texas game was going on and my peaks at the score of an intense, close, low-scoring game made me want to throw up.

A dub is a dub, especially on a day that saw crazy ends to games in Tucson and Iowa City. With Texas losing to Baylor, the Jayhawks are one win away from clinching at least a share of the title.

Social Outing

S and I attended Cathedral’s annual fundraiser Saturday evening. We’ve gone once before, and that was your standard “dress up, drink, eat, and donate some money” type deal. But this year there was a Yellowstone/Western theme.

If you know me, you know I don’t have much time for the cowboy thing. So I bought a hipster Western shirt and a $20 cowboy hat from Amazon. That was enough to fake the look for a few hours.

It was a fun night. We hung with some friends we don’t see often enough. Saw a ton of St P’s people. It was fun to talk college choices with the others who also have seniors. S ran into lots of people she went to school with back in the day.

We did not bid on anything. Someone did take home a very cute puppy for $10,500. Catholics, man!

M was working the event to get National Honor Society points. One of her friends was tasked with walking around and showing the puppy off to people before bid time. M made sure that girl kept swinging by us. My response each time was that she is four and a half years away from being able to buy her own dog.

Afterward she agreed $10K was too much for a puppy.

I haven’t heard the final haul but several fancy trips also went for over 10K. Again, Catholics!

The Decision

I supposed I’ve buried the lede. As some of you know from direct messages or my Facebook post, M decided last Wednesday that she will be enrolling at the University of Cincinnati next fall. She is excited to have made her final choice and relieved the process is over.

Now begins the work on housing. She confirmed that she can only request one roommate, so she’s back in the pool “meeting” people and trying to find a match.

She got more good news Friday, learning that UC accepts credit from Semester at Sea. That is now on the radar for her junior year, following the path of one aunt and one uncle who participated in that program during their undergrad days.[1]

So she’s going to be a Bearcat. KU plays football in Cincinnati next Thanksgiving weekend, which may be a tough one to attend. The basketball Jayhawks should be in the Queen City sometime in the next two years as well. I already warned her I’m going to be super obnoxious to her on those days, whether I go to the games or not.

  1. That aunt also went back as an adult and served as a counselor, guide, or whatever they are called.  ↩

Friday Playlist

February 24, 2023 /

I didn’t spend much time with the new music this week. Between that and a family development, this week’s selections will lean to the old.

“I Wasn’t Thinking at All” – Cold Irons Band
Jason Isbell released the first single from his upcoming album this week. It didn’t jump out at me. Coincidentally, I also heard this track this week, which definitely has an Isbell-like vibe to it. Bonus points: these dudes aren’t from Alabama like Isbell, or even Nashville. They’re Australian!

“More” – Rachel Bobbitt
A totally lovely track that fits right into one of my sweet spots.

“Such Great Heights” – The Postal Service
This song, and the album it came from, just celebrated its 20th anniversary. This was a huge moment in our corner of the music world, as alt-rock was dying and indie was rising. With the ascent of indie came MP3 blogs, “blog rock,” indie rock becoming the darling of the advertising world, and music that was further disconnected from terrestrial radio. You can hear all the promise of that moment in this song. It was my #23 song of the decade.

“Cynical Girl” – Marshall Crenshaw
Last week Stereogum had a long feature on Crenshaw. In it he talked about reclaiming control of his music and determining if and how they are available on streaming services. I didn’t realize it, but several of his songs that I love are no longer available on Spotify, although it sounds like he will put them back on once he has full rights to them. Seemed like a good moment to share one of his classics, and remind you all of his genius, while I still can.

“Bloodbuzz Ohio” – The National
Hey, a song about Ohio by a Cincinnati band.

“Teenage Wasteland” – Wussy
Hey, a song by a Cincinnati band.

“WKRP in Cincinatti”
Hey, a song about the Queen City.

Special Prince Video Section

Nearly nine years ago I shared a link to a video of a monumental performance: Prince and his band playing “Purple Rain” live for the first time on August 3, 1983. It was an amazing video, complete with comments from one of the sound engineers who helped to record it. Watching, you could see Prince experimenting with a song that was not yet fully formed. What made it so great was that much of the music that was recorded that night served as the basis for the album version of “Purple Rain.”

That video lasted a week or two before Prince had it taken down. I hadn’t tried to look for it since his death, but recently found it again. Even better, I found the second video, which is the entire performance from that night. It is worth noting that this was the first time Wendy Melvoin ever played live with The Revolution. She was 19 years old. And some of the notes she played that night ended up on one of the biggest albums of all time. Can you imagine?

The only bummer with the second video is, for some reason, the lyrics are stripped out of “Purple Rain.” So you can skip through it since you’ve already seen that in the first vid.

Reader’s Notebook, 2/23/23

February 23, 2023 /

I’m a little behind once again, so these will be brief both for brevity’s sake and because the two older books aren’t so fresh in my noggin.


The Confession of Copeland Cane – Kennan Norris
I loved this book. It is exactly what the title says: the confession of Copeland Cane, a young Black man from East Oakland. Sometime in the near future (I think it is pegged around 2030), Cane is accused of murdering a police officer. In his post-pandemic, post–1/6 world, both the media and internal policing have been taken over and combined into a single national conglomerate. This entity uses its immense power to lean heavily on people like Cane. In his case, people all over the country are fed a false story about his life and actions and a national manhunt is organized to hold him accountable for a crime he did not commit.

The book is his reaction to that effort. Told in a rambling style that is supposed to be a nearly 48-hour conversation with a good friend, Cane shares what it was like to grow up in the projects of Oakland, how young people of color like him were assumed guilty of any number of crimes without investigation, how the educational system failed them, and how he hustled to carve out a better path for himself. We also see how gentrification wipes out communities of color without giving them any reasonable alternatives.

This is an incisive, infuriating, and brilliant piece of fiction. A piece of fiction that, sadly, isn’t too far from reality.


Box 88 – Charles Cumming
I knew I had read some of Cumming’s works before, but a check shows that I’ve read four of his spy novels. I honestly don’t remember any of them. That’s not a knock on his work; he’s considered on of the best current authors in the genre. It’s more a function of me just reading a lot of books in general and specifically a lot of espionage thrillers.

This one serves as an origin story of sorts. Lachlan Kite is an officer in a secret, off-the-record unit known as Box 88 that combines elements of British and American intelligence to do the darkest of spy work. In the current day, he is kidnapped and confronted by a Iranian man seeking answers for something that happened early in Kite’s career.

The bulk of the book is about that earlier event, back in the summer of 1989. Just before going off to college Kite is recruited into Box 88 when a handler learns he will be spending time in France with the family of a friend. That friend’s dad has direct connections to an Iranian Box 88 believes was responsible for at least one terrorist bombing, and is plotting to carry out another. Kite is asked to spy on the Iranian and has to make hard choices not many 18-year-old ever have to consider.

It was interesting to read about a spy exactly my age, and going back to see his career start the same summer I was preparing to go off to college.

But the story felt uneven. The contemporary half, especially, seemed a little half-baked. It was a quick read, though, so the second book in the series may be an option for when we hit pool season.


The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
C is reading this for her literature class and kept talking to me about it. I told her I had never read it, but decided I should rectify that so we could discuss. I think the reason I never read it was because A) it wasn’t required when I was in school (or I missed it when I switched schools my sophomore year) and I’ve always heard mixed things about it. Some people love it and consider it a classic. It seems like just as many people think it’s overrated.

I fall somewhere in the middle. It certainly takes awhile to pick up momentum. I struggled to connect with the patois of 1920s Long Island. And I didn’t find any of the characters to be very likable or sympathetic.

Still, once it got going, I did enjoy its build toward the series of big events in chapters eight and nine.

I’m just glad I could knock it out in three nights rather than annotate and have to write a paper about it like C did.


Red Cell – Mark Henshaw
I saw this compared to a Tom Clancy novel, which both intrigued and concerned me. Clancy wrote some pretty good stories, especially in the first half of his career. But his work was often weighed down by his clumsy writing style and those super-technical stretches where things got explained in far too much detail.

Fortunately Henshaw is more about the story than the details. He does mimic Clancy by putting an unlikely CIA analyst in the midst of what could turn into the next world war. In this case China has invaded a small island that belongs to Taiwan and the US is forced to make some difficult decisions about its relationship with the two countries.

Agent Kyra Stryker is part of the Red Cell team working to figure out China’s motivations. In the process they uncover a secret Chinese weapons program that could alter the balance of power in the Pacific. In order to confirm their suspicions, they must go to China and sneak out our best asset in the Chinese government before he can be arrested. Their efforts lead to a glorious American victory, which is always fun.

I guess there’s a series of Stryker books, just like there was with Jack Ryan. This was enjoyable enough that I think I’ll try another down the road, although they, too, may be pool season reads.

Jayhawk Talk: Escaping Ft. Worth

February 22, 2023 /

Monday night’s win in Ft. Worth deserves a few notes.

In Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, he attempts to determine what the perfect win is. Now this was British soccer he was talking about, so the standard is a bit different. I think he settled on a 3–2 triumph when your side trails both 1–0 and 2–1 and scores the winner late. That result would be full of drama and angst, have moments of joy, and a big, cathartic ending.

I’m not sure what the college basketball equivalent of the perfect win is. But Monday’s KU win at TCU was not it.

That doesn’t mean the win wasn’t great. It qualified as a Big Monday Win That Got Me So Pumped Up I Couldn’t Sleep For Hours win. Other than the result, though, nothing about that game was aesthetically pleasing.

It felt like both teams were completely exhausted in the second half, with each side missing some very makable shots. All the energy was being poured into defense which left no legs for offense. The weird thing was it felt like KU was totally in control, yet I’d look down and see that TCU could tie on the current possession. Fran Fraschilla mentioned that it felt like KU was up 12. My TCU brother-in-law texted me saying the Frogs should be down 14. Just a weird game.

In the end, though, to walk out of a road gym with a tough-ass win that the Jayhawks controlled almost the entire night, against a team that beat them by 23 in Allen Fieldhouse three weeks ago, was still an outstanding result.

Adding to the strangeness was the pendulum swing of officiating. The refs largely let the guys play Monday. Which is fine. But it feels like there should be some middle point between not calling anything and blowing the whistle every possession. I know some of that is due to how Big 12 teams play such physical defense, with an emphasis on initiating contact. That makes it tough to find a middle ground. No one wants 2.5 hour games with 40–50 fouls. But the last four minutes or so of Monday’s contest felt more like a playground game where both teams agreed to a “No Blood, No Foul” standard.

To be clear, I think that favored KU in those final 2–3 minutes, as TCU was often hunting fouls since they couldn’t get good looks and the refs weren’t bailing them out.

KU is playing its best defense of the year, at the absolute best time. DaJuan Harris and Kevin McCullar are absolutely shutting down opposing guards. Ernest Udeh has brought a big, physical presence that completely changes KU’s defense in the moments he’s on the court. Bill Self loves talking about how teams that consistently win do so by making their opponents play poorly. KU has finally gotten to that level of play on the defensive end.

I LOVED the postgame pettiness from KU. I had not heard/seen that TCU took the game ball from their win in Lawrence and posted some videos with it on social media. I have zero problem with that. You come into Allen Fieldhouse and run the Jayhawks out of the building, you can do whatever you want.

KU grabbing the game ball Monday and responding with their own videos was great. Especially since you could tell they weren’t just reacting but more mocking the Frogs in the process. Oh, and Gradey Dick showing up for a postgame interview wearing one of the shirts handed out to the TCU crowd, with a big, red W written on it in marker was incredible. It’s a shame that guy is going to be a lottery pick because he has definitely has that edge that would drive people crazy if he hung around another year.

An ugly win, but a huge win. KU avoids the TCU sweep. They get a massive road win. They (briefly) take over first place in the Big 12 with three games to play. They grab their 14th Quad 1 win of the season. Most importantly, they seem to be doing the classic Bill Self era thing where they are playing their best basketball in mid-February.

Decision Time Coming

February 21, 2023 /

Our trip to Cincinnati was good.

We drove down with one of M’s long-time friends, A, who was planning on confirming her enrollment at UC on our visit. At check-in we ran into one of their CHS classmates and her mom. When the parents were comparing notes on the college search process, I mentioned that M was waiting to hear from Michigan. She butted in and said, ‘Yeah, that’s not happening, we don’t need to factor that in anymore.”

Probably the smart move and the timeline just got a lot easier.

We began with a large general session for all the kids that were there – there were hundreds – then broke into smaller groups to meet with academic counselors. M was admitted as an exploratory student simply because she isn’t 100% sure what she wants to study and wanted the freedom to be able to adjust if needed.

Between the two sessions we got a solid overview of the enrollment process, housing, advising, and what to expect from freshman year.

Although it was a school holiday for M, it was a normal academic day at UC. It was nice to be on campus while there were some things going on, there were students eating in the food court, etc. A much better view of campus life than we got last summer.

The girls had two lunches. First the four of us wolfed down some Chick-Fil-A in the food court. Then M and A met a couple girls that M had been messaging about possibly living together. They went to a little restaurant for about an hour while A’s dad and I sat in Starbucks. Apparently their meeting went well and M is excited about the possibility of living with these two new friends and another girl.[1]

After that we toured a few of the dorms. They have some weird combos at UC. There is one eight-person option which was very odd. It’s two three-person room-lets and a double that share bathrooms. Very strange and seems rife for things to go sideways easily. At least when I lived with eight guys we all had our own rooms and were spread across the levels of a four-story house. A’s dad is a couple years older than me and went to both Purdue and IU, so we kept boring the girls with stories from our old-school dorms. A couple of the buildings at UC are not much better than my rooms in McCollum Hall.

It was also really strange to be touring rooms with kids actually in them. The RA guides would lead us into a room and there’d be students sitting there, staring at their laptops or reading at their desks. We wondered what these kids get for there to be constant streams of visitors on admitted student session days.

We tried to stop at the Study Abroad office to ask a few questions, but despite the website saying there were drop-in hours on Mondays no one was available to answer questions. M very much wants to do Semester at Sea and wanted to clarify if/how UC accepts those credits.

Finally, we made the obligatory stop at the bookstore. M got another sweatshirt. I eyed some shirts that I might be interested in if she decides to enroll at UC. We ran into one of their good friends from middle school who is also thinking about going to UC. And while we were on campus they saw another kid from their CHS class and two kids who graduated from CHS last year. Weird that on a campus of 45,000+ students they would have so many brushes with Indy people.

Checkout was in the enclosed dining area behind the suites at the football stadium. While A and her dad knocked out their paperwork and put down her deposit, M and I stepped outside and sat in the good seats, watching the football team go through their spring practice workouts below. It was a beautiful day and perfect for watching some football for about 10 minutes.

At one point M told me she didn’t think we needed to revisit IU. I told her that was fine, but not to rule it out unless she was sure it wasn’t going to be worth her time. CHS gives students five days spread over their junior and senior years to miss school for visiting colleges and she hasn’t taken advantage of any. Might as well use it, although I guess if she’s not as interested in IU it’s kind of a waste.

She’s obviously a strong UC lean at the moment. I think she was excited about the prospect of living with those girls she met.[2] We asked about requesting roommates and were told you can only request one with no guarantee of joining with other groups. That could be a snag, as the two M met with are probably tied together and M would have to gamble by living with the fourth girl who she hasn’t met face-to-face. Housing at UC is kind of a mess at the moment, as with apparently most schools. I think she has some concerns about not being able to live with these girls, or close to either them or A and her future roommate(s) if her lottery draw goes poorly. One of those girls she met with Monday is going to call and get a clearer answer on requests. If they found out today those four girls are guaranteed to live together, I think we’d be signing M up tonight so we can get her on the housing list.

But we shall see.

It was a long-ass day – 12 hours door-to-door – but I think it was productive. No hat ceremony yet, but we’re getting close.

  1. M and A are really good friends, but would prefer to not live together. Which made the lunch a little awkward, although A has been talking to another girl who wasn’t in town Monday about rooming together.  ↩

  2. One is from Cincy, one from Cleveland. The fourth girl who was not visiting Monday is also from the Cincy area.  ↩

Weekend Notes

February 19, 2023 /

An early weekend roundup, as M and I are headed to Cincinnati early Monday for an admitted students orientation. We will likely do the same at IU in March as she continues to gather information before she makes a final decision.

Kid Hoops

L’s team played a sixth grade squad Saturday. That always worries me because if a sixth grade team is playing up they are usually pretty good. Checking scores, they had beat a team that beat us by 20 by 32, so it seemed a little bleak.

Our girls played their best game of the year from the opening tip and earned a 50–45 win. We lead by double-digits for a good stretch of the game and only let it get close because we were sloppy in the final three minutes.

L had a great first half, scoring eight and getting a couple straight steals off the other team’s best player. She didn’t score in the second half – she only took one shot – but still played great D and had a few nice assists. Her best friend took advantage of being the tallest kid on the court and scored 21.

It also helped that we had a girl who hadn’t played with us all year. She’s a really good athlete and has a decent hoops IQ, although she’s a little raw. L played with her at summer camp last year and they got along really well, so was excited she finally showed up. They look like they could be a really good guard duo together at CHS next year.

Those sixth graders were good. I think they’re a team that locks people up on D then hits a bunch of 3’s. We were lucky that we could handle their pressure, guard them on the perimeter, and when they did take 3’s, they only hit a few. Our size advantage meant we owned the boards as well.

One more week left in the regular season before the tournament and then a return to travel ball.

Jayhawk Talk

LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! WHAT A GAME!!!!!!

Down 17, win by 16. I wasn’t even nervous at halftime, this is just what happens with this program right now.[1] Play like ass in the first half, then completely flip the script and come roaring back after halftime. The fact it turned into a blowout instead of a nail-biter and was against Scott Drew made it even better.

Ok, so I was a little pissed at halftime. But I figured Baylor wouldn’t keep shooting 81% from 3 and KU would shoot better than 9% behind the arc. Still, being down 13 to such a good team, even at home, seemed pretty bleak. With a trip to Ft. Worth on the schedule for Monday, it seemed doubly bleak.

So, for the first time this year, I switched seats. Yes, just as I did for the K-State game last January and for the national championship game in April, I moved from the couch to the chair next to the couch.

And it fucking worked again you naysayers.

In other superstitious notes, I hated the Sunflower uniforms that KU wore. I was advocating for burning them at halftime and taking a technical foul to switch into something else. I guess I have to support continuing to wear them since we came back and won? Shit.

Gameday was in town. Ochai, CB, Remy, and others from last year’s team were back in town. The sun was shining through the windows. The crowd was nuts. KU is in first place in the Big 12 with four games to play. It was a great fucking day in Allen Fieldhouse.

Rock Chalk, bitches.

Signs of Spring

It’s been warmer more often than it’s been colder the past couple weeks. The sun is coming up earlier and staying up later. I just scheduled our mulch delivery for May. Spring break is five weeks away.

But the biggest sign that winter is loosening its hold on us is that our bird friends are returning. We had our first two geese of the year in the yard this week. They always show up when our neighbors take their old-people spring break. Sure enough, the neighbors left on Saturday and the geese arrived two days later.

Then on Thursday we had two ducks splashing around in the pond that forms in our yard when we get rain.

It’s still mid-February and this is the Midwest, so we will get bitch-slapped by Mother Nature a few more times over the next 6–8 weeks. But spring, she is a coming.

  1. Totally not true.  ↩

Friday Playlist

February 17, 2023 /

More older music than new this week. And, sadly, another rather important In Memoriam entry.

“It’s Just A Bit of Blood” – bdrmm
Normally by now I’ve already dropped several songs into my running Favorites list that will be the basis of my year end list in December. I had only added one through the first seven weeks of 2023. This is #2. It’s a ripper.

“A Nocturnal Heresy” – Ondara
I had never heard of this cat until last week, when this song dropped into my Discovery Weekly playlist. I’ve been listening to him a ton since. He has a most unusual origin story. He was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, where he fell in love with Bob Dylan and ’90s alt rock. When he earned a green card to enter the US, he settled in Minneapolis since Dylan was from Minnesota. His music is really, really good, and not at all what I would expect from a native Kenyan.

“Teenage Wristband” – The Twilight Singers
I forgot about this band, so when this track also landed in my Discovery Weekly playlist, I figured it was new. In fact it is 20 years old. They sound like the Afghan Whigs because that’s Greg Dulli on lead vocals.

“Beat City” – The Flowerpot Men
I shared this in video form awhile back. It has finally made it to Spotify, so I had to throw it into a proper playlist.

“Sharron Apple” – Airiel
This goes way back. I played it on my old podcast in 2010, but the song was six years old then. My old man brain doesn’t remember when I first heard it. I love how it recalls the pre-shoegaze sound that Kitchens of Distinction helped establish.

“The Rat” – The Walkmen
Let’s keep that early 2000’s run going with this classic. It predates my podcasting days, but did fall in a period when I was still sending mix CDs out to friends occasionally. This track was on a bunch of those disks.

“Dakota” – Stereophonics
And one more, although this song is new to me. While bombing around in my loaner vehicle last week I decided to mix up the SiriusXM stations I stored in the favorites section. I added the U2 X-Radio station, which I don’t normally listen to. One afternoon I heard this. It sounds very U2, musically at least.

“Peaches” – The Presidents of the United States of America
Happy President’s Day Weekend! Hope you spend it as the Founders intended, buying discounted mattresses and appliances.

“Eye Know” – De La Soul
David Jude Jolicoeur, aka Trugoy the Dove, aka Plug Two, died last Sunday. De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising was one of the most magical albums in the entire history of hip hop. I can’t say I followed them super closely beyond that cassette, but that band will always mean a lot to me because of that first album. RIP to a real one.

Car Chronicles: The Loaner

February 16, 2023 /

I had the pleasure of driving a loaner car for the past week. All the excuse I need to dust off the Car Chronicles series!

My Audi Q5 has been great. I’m nearly two years into my lease and other than a few annoyances, I have been extremely happy with it.

Late last year I received a notice for a recall on the backup camera. When I called to schedule an appointment in early January, the dealer told me the repair would take at least a day, they were only scheduling two per day and the next opening was in February, and I would get a loaner while they had my car. They recommended I add on anything else that needed attention, so we included my annual maintenance and I asked that they check out my tailgate, which had been opening and closing erratically for awhile.

I got excited when I heard the scheduling lady mention a loaner. I figured Audi probably gives you a nice car, right? A few years back when my base trim level Suburban required an extensive repair, the Chevy dealer gave me a high-end Tahoe. That worked, as when the Suburban lease came up we replaced it with a more expensive and nicer Tahoe.

It is 2023, though, and I wondered if inventory issues would affect what Audi could give me.

Last Thursday I dropped off the Q5 and my service rep handed me the keys to a brand new (195 miles) A5 S-Line Sportback. It was pretty sweet!

L was excited when I picked her up from school in it that day. She got a big, silly grin on her face when she saw it. I noticed a lot of kids giving it long looks as they walked to their cars.

The A5 has the exact same engine as my Q5, but by being so low and sleek and weighing about 1000 pounds less, it seems significantly quicker. When you punch it, it goes. I never went for it too hard, as I was always in traffic, but I got from 0–50 a second or two faster than I can in the Q5. The engine also sounds a lot different. It definitely has a sportier growl than my SUV.

I figured my car would be ready Friday afternoon, so after lunch I took the A5 out on the highway and headed north. I drove about 30 minutes north of Indy but never could get out of traffic to really drive fast. I tried to come flying down an entrance ramp, but I timed it poorly and had to aggressively brake to squeeze in between an RV and a couple tractor trailer rigs that were stacked up. Once there was a clearing to the left, I floored it and zoomed past them.

Just good, clean, fossil-fuel eating fun.

Turns out that tailgate issue required the dealer to order some new parts, which didn’t arrive until Wednesday morning. So I got to keep the A5 for six days. As fun as it was, I started getting nervous that someone would hit me, I would blow a tire on one of Indy’s famous potholes, or something else dumb would happen. I still enjoyed zipping around in it, but didn’t drive it any more than I had to.

I’m a committed SUV guy. I both enjoy and feel safer sitting up above traffic a bit. The Q5 is no beast, but you sure have better visibility than in the A5. I could never really get comfortable sitting so low, always nervous that something was happening around me that I couldn’t see.

My biggest complaint was that there was no grab bar to assist getting in and out of the vehicle. I could drop in pretty easily, but it was a chore getting out. It very much reminded me of my stepdad’s Corvettes, and the process to unfold my body and find something to gain leverage with to pull myself out of the driver’s seat. There needs to be the same handle that is on the inside frame of most SUVs.

Another semi-bummer was how the A5 and Q5 are near mirror images of each other inside. My car is a higher trim level, so where I have leather seats that are heated and cooled, the A5 has cloth seats that are only heated. L actually liked the cloth seats better because they weren’t as cold when she first sat on them. So while I was very comfortable with where everything was, when dealing with the electronics it didn’t feel new and exciting compared to what I’m used to.

The S-line stuff is purely cosmetic; it isn’t a true S5 with the bigger engine. I did really like the S-line steering wheel wrap. That sounds dumb, but it sure felt better than mine.

The A5 was already set to the Dynamic driving mode, which I stuck with for the week. I’ve read a lot about Audi’s driving modes and people argue about how much they actually alter the driving experience. I normally drive in Auto, which adjusts depending on road conditions. It’s tough to compare the two since they are different cars and I don’t know how much of the variance in feel was based on car vs drive mode.

The A5 was super nice to drive. It was gorgeous, smooth, fast, had that nice engine growl, and cornered amazingly. I would happily drive one again for a few days if someone offered one to me. My old man body can’t take getting in and out of something so low, though, so I don’t think when I begin looking at cars again in about a year the A5 will be on the list.

Jayhawk Talk: Streaking

February 15, 2023 /

A few brief-ish notes about the Jayhawks, who are suddenly in a three-way tie for first place in the Big 12 after a very good week.

Tuesday’s win at Oklahoma State was terrific in many ways. It capped a week in which KU got better over the three-game stretch, beating two very good teams relatively comfortably. It was a fantastic team performance, with the offense looking as good as it has looked all year. That was especially important as Jalen Wilson struggled and DaJuan Harris and Kevin McCullar both rolled their ankles and either missed chunks of the game (Harris) or left the game without returning (McCullar).

Ernest Udeh continued to provide nice minutes. Although his numbers weren’t as flashy as against Oklahoma, he slowed down Kalib Boone. Zuby Ejiofor got back on the court for the first time in three weeks and also guarded Boone better than KJ Adams did.

McCullar was probably playing his best game of the year before he got hurt: 15 points on 6–9 shooting, 8 assists with no turnovers, and though he was only credited with one steal he was super disruptive on the defensive end of the court. He also hit two huge baskets when both Wilson and Harris were out, in a moment when it seemed like OSU could crawl back into the game. The health of his right ankle is HUGE not just for the Baylor game Saturday, but for how KU closes out the final third of the Big 12 schedule.

And Gradey Dick got going! His first three of the game was on one of the prettiest plays you’ll see, with Harris passing to Ejiofor to McCullar to Dick who hit a rainbow at the first half buzzer to give KU a lead they never relinquished. He hit his first three shots to open the second half, which, given the final score, effectively ended the game.

Eighty-seven points. On the road. Against one of the best defensive teams in the league, one that seems designed to give KU fits at its weakest point. And with KU’s leading scorer only playing 28 minutes because of foul trouble, and only scoring nine points in the first 35 minutes of the game.

That, my friends, is a confidence-building win.

I’ve been laughing at ESPN’s Chris Spatola’s recurring line that fans should “call your congressperson” to fix the scourge of replay reviews that are ruining the college game. It’s a little over the top, but I like it. You would think the NCAA, in its efforts to regain control of college sports, would step in and make some changes. I think an overwhelming majority of fans would be fine with restrictions on reviews. But since we know the NCAA won’t do a damn thing about it, I guess Congress is the next step.

One more announcer note, I loved how in one of the KU games Jay Bilas did recently, he threw some subtle shade at how Texas ruined the Big 12 from day one. When ESPN flashed Danny Manning’s career stats, he wondered why those records were only called Big 8 records. “Those other schools joined the Big 8, right? So shouldn’t the records still stand?” While he was broadly blaming the four schools that joined the Big 8 in 1996, everyone knows it was Texas that nuked the existing record books.

As a KU fan, I approve. We need to get Danny back on top of all the conference lists he deserves to lead. As a child of the ‘80s, I enjoyed Bilas sticking up for the era he played in.

I think I complain about this once a year, but it drives me crazy that ESPN can’t be consistent in crowd audio. One game it sounds like you’re in the arena, with all the noise from the crowd pouring out of your speakers. Other nights it seems like they have one, small microphone laying on the press table. While you see fans going crazy, the audio is more like you’re a couple blocks away and only getting a small hint of the roars and yells. Tuesday’s game had great audio. When KU played at Iowa State a week ago it was awful.

« Older posts

Archives

© 2024 D's Notebook

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑