It was an extra-long weekend featuring many hours in the car.

Hoops in the Lou

L and I drove west to St. Louis for her first out-of-town tournament of the year.

The hoops were good. We went 3–1, winning the championship game by nine thanks to a 9–2 run in the final minute to put away a game we were trying to lose. We led by nine with 8:00 left, five with 5:00 left, but by just two as the clock ticked under a minute. Against a team we had blown a 15-point lead against on Saturday. Tense, but the girls got it done.

That team was a local St. Louis squad. The parents were a little rough. One dad just yelled the entire game Saturday. Mostly kind of positive things at his team with the occasional barb at the refs. But he just never stopped. And as we blew our lead, he was one of those dads who decides he needs to walk onto the court to celebrate when his team makes a big play. He was harmless as he never directed anything at us or our girls. But since he never stopped and thought he had all the answers, he was mega annoying.

We thought it was hilarious that between games he and the other parents from their team were in the parking lot sharing a joint. At like 2:00 PM on a Saturday. I checked and I don’t think this kind of use is protected under the new Missouri marijuana law, but I’m no attorney. I’m not sure if that chilled him out a little for their second game, as I was keeping score rather than in the seats and couldn’t hear him.

Sadly he was missing for Sunday’s championship game. He may have partied a little too hard Saturday night.

L had a good weekend. She scored 23 points across the four games, had 9 total rebounds, 9 assists, and had four steals alone in our Sunday morning game. Our second game Saturday was tight but she helped blow it open with a 3-pointer on one possession, then a bucket, foul, and free throw on the next. That helped push a two-point lead to 12 before we gave up three buckets in the last 30 seconds to only win by seven.

We were in St. Louis because our coach’s wife is from there, and her family was celebrating their mom’s 80th birthday over the weekend. So rather than go to the big GUAA tournament in Louisville, we went to a smaller, local tournament so he and his daughter could be with us. Good thing, since she scored six of our nine points in the last minute of the championship game.

Friday night we hung out at his wife’s sister’s house. I took some good-natured ribbing from a house full of Mizzou fans. I offered to show them the national champions sticker on my car and they politely declined. I spent a good chunk of the evening talking to the brother that played basketball at Central Missouri in the late ‘90s, mostly about the St. Louis high school scene he grew up in.

The big bummer of the weekend was our hotel. In a word, it was a dump. It was one of those places that might have been nice 20 years ago, but probably hasn’t had any renovations or deep cleanings since then. The rooms were all full of stains and disrepair. Some of the rooms – including ours – were only half-cleaned. The room across from us had two dogs in it, plus the humans with them seemed to be smoking a lot of weed. There was a room down the hall that definitely had birds in it. Several families couldn’t get their door keys to work properly. The overall vibe made you not want to touch anything.

The final straw came Saturday morning. We heard the shower in the room above us running and soon heard dripping in ours. The water damage to the ceiling I noticed when we checked in was a result of the tub on the second floor leaking directly into ours. I was off to the front desk to get a new room. Fortunately our second one had been cleaned and was away from the weed-smoking dog lovers.

We realized later that a big, municipal dump was right across the street, thus the terrible trash odor when we tried to sit outside.

A dump by a literal dump.

Hopefully we didn’t bring home bed bugs or anything, but at this point nothing would surprise me.

Also, on our trip home, the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on a highway happened. I’m honestly not sure how to describe it. Basically, it looked like a small cat fell out of the car in front of us as we were traveling at roughly 85 MPH. Like it dropped out of a wheel well or some other space underneath the car, not like it jumped or was tossed out the window. It was skidding and trying to get its footing as I went over it, definitely alive and not a stuffed animal. It was right in the middle of the lane so I sailed past comfortably but I’m assuming it met a horrible fate not too far behind me.

Thing is, I was traveling behind this car for awhile; for 10 minutes at least. Who knows when they had last stopped. Had this poor thing been hanging on for dear life for 30 minutes? An hour? Longer? Or did it come from a car further up? No one in front of me braked or swerved so I honestly can’t be sure where it came from.

Or maybe it was just all that passive weed smoke I breathed in at our hotel that had me seeing things.

There’s an obvious National Lampoon’s Vacation reference here but it feels wrong directly quoting it.

A mostly good, if weird, weekend in the Lou. We’re back-and-forth to Bloomington next weekend.

UC Orientation

Monday morning we were in the car bright and early to make the quick trip down to Cincinnati for M’s UC orientation. For the first time S rode along so she could finally take a look at campus. She approved.

That was pretty much the highlight of the day. Since M had already attended admitted students day and gone through virtual orientation plus done her advising appointment and made her schedule online, there wasn’t a ton of new information for her. They didn’t have the dorms open for tours, which was a bummer, as S really wanted a look to help focus our shopping.

M is supposed to move in the weekend of August 12. She will find out in a couple weeks what her official move-in date/time is. Because UC is such a tight campus you have to request a window for your arrival. Things should be a little easier for her as she’s going down a week before official move-in day for rush, but we still won’t know our time until the whole process does its thing. She’s hoping for August 12, as there are rush events the evening of the 13th. There is a chance, though, we could be moving her in during the day on the 13th.