Month: April 2025 (Page 1 of 2)

Good Lord that was a basketball game!

The Pacers laid a big, fat egg early, taking nearly seven minutes to score their first six points, blew multiple chances to put the game away in the second half, then somehow managed to come back from being down seven with 40 seconds left in overtime to win game five of their series and send the Milwaukee Bucks home for the summer.

Actually, there was no somehow about it. As I wrote a few weeks back, the Pacers have been doing this for the past three months, often against Milwaukee: improbably winning games that seemed lost with outrageous play in the closing seconds.

Tuesday it was Tyrese Haliburton getting two steals and a defensive rebound and scoring six-straight points in the closing minute of regulation to send the game to overtime. He then hit a 3 to open OT to stretch his run to nine-straight. However, he missed his next four 3’s, while the Bucks, specifically Gary Trent Jr., hit four straight 3’s to go up 117–111.

Trent was incredible. His shots were barely touching the net. Two were shots he barely had in his hands before launching as the shot clock expired. This should have been one of the great days of his career, and the launching point for someone to give him a shitload of money this summer.

However…

With 29 seconds left and up four points, Trent threw a terrible pass that turned into a Haliburton and-one layup. Seconds later, AJ Green threw a pass to an unguarded Trent as the Pacers tried to trap and get another steal or foul. The pass sailed directly to Trent…then through his hands and out-of-bounds. The Pacers had 10 seconds to go for the win. Which Haliburton clinched by blowing by Giannis and laying the ball in with one second left.

Reggie Miller stuff.

I felt kind of bad for Trent. Then I remembered he’s a Dukie so fuck him.

And then things got really interesting.

After time expired, for some insane reason Haliburton’s dad ran on the court and began taunting Giannis, who initially looked confused then stepped to the old man. They were separated, cooler heads seemed to prevail, and both teams went through the postgame interactions normal after a tense, physical series. Only when Giannis met Bennedict Mathurin, events took another turn. There’s been no word on who said what and who said it first, but soon Giannis was gripping Mathurin tight to his own body, not letting him leave and speaking directly into his ear. Soon players and coaches were pulling the duo apart, but this led to other players yapping and shoving. Amazingly, Bobby Portis Jr, the most belligerent of the Bucks anytime these teams play, seemed pretty chill and was slapping hands with Pacers. And then Giannis and Old Man Haliburton went at it again, with Giannis putting his forehead directly on Haliburton’s as they “chatted.” Kevin Porter Jr. was losing his shit at midcourt, which nearly caused another ruckus.

Eventually everyone calmed down. Mathurin was basically drug to the locker room. James Johnson, the most feared player in the NBA, approached Giannis pleasantly and got an earful about Mr. Haliburton’s actions. Somehow all this happened while NBA TV was interviewing Tyrese so he never got involved in it and was surprised when he got to the locker room and was told about his dad’s actions.

Ironically, while all this was going on Metta Sandiford-Artest, FKA Ron Artest, was sitting courtside taking it all in, looking serene as could be. Thankfully events didn’t spiral they was they did when Artest lost his mind in Detroit 21 years ago.

What a truly dumb moment. A terrific win, one that will be recalled for decades around here, got sullied by a player’s father inserting himself where he did not belong. Mr. Haliburton has always seemed a little thirsty for attention. It might be time to make his ass watch from a suite or outside the arena if he can’t keep it in his seat. I’m not sure what he thought he would accomplish by infuriating a much younger man who is 6’11”, 245 lbs. and all muscle.

I don’t think Giannis was completely innocent here. As noted on Bill Simmons’ pod this morning, he’s had a few postgame run-ins with opponents in the past. Like so many superstars, he is wildly competitive and sometimes lets that get away from him in defeat. But he absolutely won the post-game press conference, which made the Pacers look even worse.

What is important is the Pacers, despite a rough start, closed the Bucks out and can now take a few days to relax before they face #1 seed Cleveland. I don’t think that’s a terrible matchup for the Pacers, as long as they remain focused. Which is always a crapshoot with these guys. They can throw waves of defenders at Cleveland’s guards. They can go small against Cleveland’s bigs. Most of all, they know exactly who they are, how they need to play to maximize their skills, and have been deeper in the playoffs more recently than the Cavs. Cleveland should absolutely be favored. But the Pacers aren’t some sacrificial opponent they can run right through before likely meeting the Celtics in the conference finals.

As I wait out some morning storms before I head over the gym, it seems like the ideal moment to share (or at least start the post that shares) my latest music project.

For months I’ve been thinking about writing a lengthy post about how I don’t upend my digital life as often as I used to. People close to me experienced this when I changed my email address, moved where I published our family pictures, or even adjusted where this site was located far too often. A pain in the ass to you, I knew. But, dammit, I needed to try all the cool digital toys that were available!

This nomadic quality was more apparent if you were to look over my shoulder and see how I interacted with my Macs on a daily basis. I’d switch text editing apps each time a new one dropped. Digital junkdrawer apps came and went even more frequently. A new browser drops? Of course I’m going to import all my bookmarks and give it a shot. And so on. If there was a buzzy new app, I was going to give it a shot, no matter the headaches it caused through moving files around and changing workflows.

I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point I stopped doing this. Or at least slowed it way down. This site has looked the same for, what, 5–6–7 years now? I did switch hosts at one point because of access issues with a previous provider, but I don’t think any of you noticed that unless you tried to check in right when I was moving things around. And I’ve been parked at this URL since right around when we moved into this house, I believe.

Same for the apps I use on a daily basis. I’ll occasionally try something new that I read a review of. But, more often than not, I go back to the ones I’ve been using for years.

Is this all because I’m getting old and don’t like change? Or don’t have the patience to deal with all the extra baggage that comes with switching around constantly? Or have apps largely coalesced around a common set of design language and functions so one really is like the other, compared to back when I ran multiple different podcatching apps that did very different things?

I think we can blame the rise of the iPhone/iOS for some of this as well. I want to be able to accomplish the same tasks the same ways on different devices. It’s harder to switch around when testing something on the Mac breaks how I do things on my phone.

There’s your standard, long-ass introduction to my actual point: for the past two weeks I’ve been testing Apple Music with the goal of switching to it from Spotify.

Big news!

I’m not sure when I first started using Spotify. Somewhere in the range of 10–11 years ago, I guess. Rdio was the first streaming service I used, and to this day nothing has matched its community discovery aspect. When it started to circle the drain, I tried Apple Music. I was deep in the Apple world already and all my old iTunes files would seamlessly blend in.

The only real problem with Apple Music at the time was that it totally sucked. I would listen to a playlist on my iPhone then the next time I used my Mac, there would be two versions of that playlist. Then go back to the iPhone and a third would pop up. I was never really sure why this happened, but it was infuriating.

After a few months of this I bailed for Spotify and never looked back. Spotify, to use an Apple phrase, just worked. And for several years they seemed to have a better selection of music than Apple.

I’ve had no qualms with how Spotify worked since then, although I do have issues with some of their business practices. There were things I wish it did better, but for the most part it did its job.

Every so often I get an offer for a free month of Apple Music. Several times I’ve spent about 10 minutes dicking around on AM before deciding it was too much work to jump. Plus our girls all love Spotify and I couldn’t convince them that their playlists could be copied over to AM easily.

So what changed? Last month I got a new iPhone. With it came the normal offers for free Apple services. The one that grabbed my attention was the Apple One service. I already paid for a higher iCloud storage tier. What attracted me was the access to Apple News+, which would get me behind the paywall of several good magazines and newspapers. I pay for Apple Arcade a few times a year for the girls, and that would roll into it, as well. We would have constant access to Apple TV+ instead of buying it only when shows we like are new. Plus my iCloud storage would take another jump up. Apple Music would be an easy swap for Spotify as part of this process.

I crunched the numbers and once the free trial was over, while I would be paying Apple quite a bit more, the value proposition aspect worked.

Thus I signed up for the free trial and spent an entire weekend getting all my Spotify songs and playlists into Apple Music.[1]

The first thing that struck me was how much AM is still built on the old iTunes architecture. Most notably you can rate songs and make smart playlists based off of all kinds of user selected options. That’s how I interacted with my library the first 12–13 years of the digital music era. It felt like being home again.

At the same time it pissed me off my music geek brain that I had spent so long on Spotify. That was over a decade of play counts, ratings, and other data that was just lost since Spotify didn’t track any of. At least publicly. Suddenly the nearly 4000 songs in my library were all brand new.[2] It’s going to take a few weeks/months to get each track played a few times so the smart playlists can start doing their magic.

For all the annoyance that comes with that process, that is exactly why I think I’m going to stick with Apple Music. Because Spotify lacks those two key features, I find older music gets lost in the shuffle. Literally. Unless I’m listening to an album, I almost always listen in shuffle mode. Because I can’t tease out songs that are old and haven’t been played for a while via smart playlists, or force it to select songs I like the most, it seems to focus on the newer tracks I’m listening to more often. Which makes sense, but also takes away some of the magic that iTunes had by always inserting cool old songs in the midst of new ones.

There have been growing pains. In Spotify adding a song to a playlist does not automatically put it into your library. For example, I kept all my Christmas music in distinct playlists that are hidden away 11 months of the year without adding them to my Liked Songs. So I never get random holiday tunes included when I am shuffling. In Apple Music, tracks are either in your library or not. On the Mac I can uncheck all those holiday songs and they get skipped over. But to the cloud they are still in my library. So listening on my phone, iPad, or in the car can bring those unwelcome surprises of songs meant for December.

It was also enraging that I had to download a separate app to control Apple Music across devices. If I am playing Spotify on my Mac, I can open their app on my phone, see what is playing, control the song, volume, and which speaker the audio is going to natively. I had to do a ton of research, download a separate app, then jump through a bunch of hoops with my Apple account before I could mimic that in Apple Music.

I also had to dive deep into some settings in all that mucking about to get play counts to track across devices. That probably seems dumb to 99.9% of you. My Smart Playlists rely heavily on play count information, so not being able to track those across different devices hampers their effectiveness.

You really would expect that Apple Music would be the service that worked seamlessly across devices and Spotify be the one that took the extra work to build this system.

The Tesla AM app is also a little wonky. Certainly less reliable than Spotify. Both have their quirks in connecting to the network, but Apple Music is more likely to get stuck in a loop where it only loads a few songs and loops back to the first rather than continuing to work through the playlist/library.[3]

The past two weeks I’ve been trying to remember how I organized my music all those years ago in the iTunes era. What were my favorite smart playlists? How did I rate songs? And so on. The goal is to create a Daily playlist that splits the difference between the newest music in my library and older tracks. I think I have the rules adjusted close to how I had them 15 years ago, but, again, I’m going to need to work through my library a few times to make sure they are where I want them to be. Songs I haven’t heard in ages that are indeed popping up, which is good. Hopefully the benefits like that outweigh the annoyances where Apple Music does not match Spotify.

How will this affect you, my loyal readers/listeners? Hopefully not at all. Other than reading this blog post. The girls have talked me into letting them stay on Spotify. Which means I am paying for two music streaming services. The benefit to you is that I can continue to share my Friday Playlists from Spotify, something that is not possible in Apple Music. I’ll build them in AM over the course of the week. Then on Friday mornings I’ll launch Spotify, quickly pull those songs together and insert that playlist into WordPress as I’ve been doing for years.

Another very busy weekend for us, mostly revolving around C’s senior prom.

We kicked off the weekend by going across the street to watch the #1 high school volleyball team in the state, FHS, play our local squad. “What a weird way to spend a Friday night,” you might say to yourself. True, true. We have good friends with a senior on FHS and we’ve been meaning to see him play for a couple years. We couldn’t turn down a chance when he was literally across the street.

After a sluggish opening set in which they had to come from behind to win, FHS trounced the school our property taxes support in the next two sets for an easy win.

NFL Draft

You all know I hate the NFL draft. So many words wasted setting up and breaking down an event when Sure Things routinely bust, and No Names routinely become All Pros. It’s all a crapshoot, but we break it down in more detail than we do the policies of people running for office. “Maybe if we focused more attention on…”

The Colts did ok. They got their tight end in Tyler Warren. Will any of the quarterbacks be good enough to get him the ball, and will the offensive line, which they didn’t do much to improve, be able to protect whoever is taking the snaps?

There was another big story from the draft. But since I didn’t watch a minute of it, I can’t really get into the lunacy of how this story was treated by people inside the NFL media and, bizarrely, by the most attention hungry near 80 year old in the world.

I think the whole Shedeur Sanders thing is weird because I listened to exactly two podcast segments previewing the draft and in both of them there was a clear indication that he was slipping, for whatever reason. One previewer flat out said he would not be a first round pick. And once Sanders didn’t go early, I think there were a lot of teams that might have admired his skill and potential but had no interest in bringing all the drama that would come with picking him into their quarterback room. Especially since, at that point, he’s probably starting as QB3. All I know is he didn’t look that good against KU and neither of the two DBs who basically shut down the CU passing attack, two short passes that turned into long gains excepted, didn’t get picked. Where’s the outrage in that, I ask you????

Prom

OK, onto the biggie.

I missed the fun of C’s junior prom as I was in Cincinnati with L for basketball. Which is where I would have been again this year had L not had surgery. Or, more likely, I would have spent part of the weekend in Cincy but been back in Indy Saturday evening. I’m not sure I would have survived missing two prom nights in a row.[1] Anyway, I was indeed here this year.

On balance it was a good night. C went with a buddy, as did most of the folks in her group of 11. We hosted them before prom for pictures and food, put them on a bus for the event downtown, then had them dropped here afterward. After changing they went to a big post-prom party about a mile from our house. I collected the girls from the bash at 1:45. All of them were able to walk on their own and other than being VERY chatty in the seven minute ride home, seemed no worse for the wear. One of the girls even noted how we had a “fun” conversation when I was driving them around Siesta Key a few weeks ago. I appreciated the self awareness and humor.

Picking up from the party was a scene, man. It was in a very fancy neighborhood. One P. Manning used to live a couple blocks from the host’s home when he was still a Colt. When I pulled onto their narrow street, there were cars parked unevenly on each side. It’s basically a one-lane road, so this made it extremely stressful driving through. In the dark. With drunk kids stumbling around. There was one gap that I could not have had more than a couple inches on each side as I squeezed S’s Telluride through it. I made it. Somehow.

So I’m almost to the house, C knows I’m coming and is supposed to be rounding up the girls spending the night at our house, and I see this kid on the side of the street. He looks at me and kind of waves his arms to get me to stop. I come to a halt, roll down the passenger window, and he leans in:

“Hey Mr. B. Do you want me to go get C for you?”

It was the younger brother of one of M’s best friends. I thought that was hilarious. It was pitch dark, I was driving my wife’s car, and he somehow identified me. Apparently he does not drink, which could have been a factor. I texted his dad Sunday morning to both pass along my thanks and tell him how impressed I was.

I think I got C and her crew right in time. Big packs of kids were wandering the streets. Car alarms were going off. Kids were parked up on very nice lawns. I guess there had been a late flood of students who were not invited and had just been turned out. We didn’t hear about the cops coming, but it would not have surprised me if they showed up shortly after we left.

The kids had great weather for pictures. The prom itself was apparently pretty fun. C’s group all got along, which given they are all a little flakey/squirrelly, was a minor upset. Last year her date, again just a friend, acted like an asshole to her all night. This year she and her date seemed to get along fine.

Just two bummers on the day. Like last year, she had a meltdown when getting her hair done earlier in the day. I didn’t have to experience either episode directly, just had to be the target of S venting after. We agreed that at some point we are going to suggest that when she’s ready, C should elope rather than go through all the stress of a wedding day. If getting her hair done to hang out with friends for a few hours cranks up her anxiety, I can’t imagine what prepping for a wedding will do to her.

The second bummer was Sunday morning, when I came downstairs, I found the large box of Jimmy John’s that had been leftover from the pre-prom part of the night had been taken out of the fridge by the girls and left on the counter all night. There was about $60 of sandwiches in there, and I planned on getting into them on Sunday. I wasn’t willing to play the food poison lottery so, not without anger, tossed the box into our trash dumpster.

I guess the important thing is we survived prom weekend and C, other than being totally wiped out Sunday, seemed happy with how things went.

Another item, and a big one, checked off of her senior year list.

Pacers

When we got back from volleyball Friday the Pacers-Bucks game had just gone to halftime, with the ‘Cers leading by 10.[2] They hit the first shot of the second half to go up a dozen and then the bottom fell out. Horrible shots, terrible passes, curious coaching decisions, Bennedict Mathurin losing his mind momentarily when the game was still close. Tyrese Haliburton letting his home state crowd get in his head. OK, Giannis and Gary Trent, Jr. were going off. Trent hit nine 3’s. NINE. But the Pacers had the game in control and totally fell apart all on their own. Still, up 2–1 in the series.

That set up a pivotal game last night. Which I did not watch, for three reasons. 1) I was operating on about four hours of sleep. 2) I had to get up extra early Monday to take L to PT. Most importantly, 3) Tip off was at 9:30 PM Eastern. WTF????

Apparently I didn’t miss much. Dame Lillard blew out his achilles early. When he went down, so did the Bucks’ chances, as the Pacers played terrific ball for another easy win.

Three-one with the series coming back to Indy and Dame done for the series. Both sad and indicative of the world we live in that the first 20 minutes of Bill Simmons’ podcast Monday morning were about where Giannis plays next year.

A slight change-of-pace this week. I’ve been working on a new music project this week that has slowed down my processing of the new songs considerably. (I’ll share more about that project next week.) Plus a couple of these songs/bands are tough to Google, so I wasn’t able to find out much about them. As a result, a slightly more lean playlist than we’ve had recently. We should get back in the regular flow for the first playlist of May.

“Full of the Joys of Spring” – The Sundries
What a joyous week this was, at least in terms of the weather and feeling like spring, etc. Bright, warm, sunny days. The grass is thick as hell after all our recent rains. All the trees, plants, and flowers are budded and bloomed and otherwise looking healthy after the retreat of winter. I’m regretting not opening the pool sooner. Next weekend the lows are going to be in the 30’s°, a good reminder that I did NOT open the pool yet because I didn’t want to pay like we were heating the house in January to get the pool to a reasonable temperature.

“Loline” – The Bats
The Bats have been together, without changing their lineup, for 43 years. Which is amazing. They sound like a band that came up a long time ago, and I mean that in the best way. Here they sing about a popular bike from their homeland of New Zealand.

“Come Down” – Reb Fountain
Where The Bats 100% sound like a band from New Zealand, this singer sounds more like she’s from the UK and influenced by the trip-hop acts of the Nineties. She is, though, a Kiwi, too. And that’s about all I can find about her.

“It’s Your Funeral” – Ultra Lights
Another band that is hard to Google. I would have guessed they were the next, snotty, kind of arty, New York garage band, in the line of The Strokes and Parquet Courts. But they are from Atlanta. Which is wild.

“At Zero” – Dream, Ivory
I’ve been kicking this song around for a few weeks, never sure whether I should include it or not. Luckily for this brother act, I kept it around long enough to run into a week light on music so I had to finally use it.

“In This Mess” – Say Sue Me
I just included a SSM track last week. But when they drop a song this good immediately after, there is no waiting period before I share it. Holy shit, the guitars!

“Give It Up” – 8mm
Long-time music followers will remember this from the early days of my podcast. I’m not sure if I first played this in 2005 or 2006. I do remember it came on the advice of a brother-in-music I’ve lost touch with, and our shared joke was this song was so sultry that we felt like we needed to confess something to our wives after listening to it.

8mm actually has some new music out. Their new song is ok, but doesn’t stand up to this classic.

“Take A Walk” – Neil Finn & Friends
I missed honoring the greatest concert series ever earlier this month while we were on break. With two other New Zealand acts in this week’s PL, seems like the perfect moment to rectify that oversight.

A few thoughts about game two of the Pacers-Bucks series last night.

Once again the Pacers jumped out to a big, early lead. Not as much of an ass-kicking as in game one, but there was never any doubt who the better team was. And that was with Dame Lillard coming back. He actually played remarkably well in the first half, then clearly suffered a bit from his long layoff in the second half. The Bucks have so many holes, though, that his presence did not mask many of them.

The Pacers were rolling when, suddenly, the shots stopped falling in the third quarter. This was not because of anything the Bucks were doing. These were WIIIIIIIIDE open shots the Pacers just kept missing. They could have easily pushed the margin out over 20 and put the game to bed before the fourth quarter began.

Milwaukee did step up their defensive pressure eventually, and that did have an impact. The Pacers went stagnant on offense. The ball stopped moving and every possession turned into a slog of back-down, one-on-one nonsense resulting in forced, off-balance shots as the shot clock wound down. The Bucks made a couple runs thanks to this, even getting the margin down to just two points inside two minutes to play. The Pacers answered with consecutive 3’s sandwiched around a defensive stop and escaped with a 2–0 lead in the series.

The good news if you are Milwaukee is you found some things on defense Tuesday. You played well on offense most of the night. I still think they have too many holes, and the Pacers too many advantages, for that to swing the series. But I also don’t think this is an easy sweep for Indiana as it might seem after the first two games.

The bad news for Milwaukee, ironically, is that aside from the opening minutes, they played really well. Bobby Portis was draining 3’s. Giannis was doing Giannis things. Dame, as mentioned, looked solid and you assume will get better over the course of the series, although there is no telling how his body will react after spending weeks on blood thinners and not playing. Despite all that the Pacers still won, and only a 13–0 run late made it look competitive.

The road games are going to be harder than the first two, for sure. You figure Giannis has at least one GO OFF game in him this series that the Pacers won’t be able to do a thing about. But watching last night, I really appreciated how good this team is. They aren’t NBA title contenders, unless the Cavaliers and Celtics have multiple starters get injured in the coming weeks. But they are a damn solid team that is deep, can shoot, is pretty athletic, has gotten much better defensively, rebound better than a year ago, and play at a pace that is deadly to older teams without depth like the Bucks.

It’s hard to be in the middle in the NBA. For a decade the Pacers were on the wrong side of that middle, never getting those two really good players you need to challenge the best teams in the conference, but also never bad enough to get a franchise-altering talent. Even when they snuck into the high lottery, their reward was Bennedict Mathurin, a player I really like, but who is not THE guy you build around.

This is the perfect team for Indiana. They play hard. They are fun to watch. They win more than they lose. If you don’t have a true title contender, this is the kind of team you want.

There were two different double-technical foul moments Tuesday, and a ton of yapping back and forth. I was almost disappointed when Kevin Porter Jr. slapped hands with Thomas Bryant and apologized after earning a flagrant foul for tripping Bryant on a break. These teams have hated each other for over a year. There will be a genuine dust-up before this series is over. And I can’t wait for it.

While watching S asked me who my favorite Pacer was. I had a hard time answering. Haliburton should be obvious answer. He’s the guy who elevated the franchise after a decade of treading water. He was voted as the Most Overrated Player in the league in The Athletic this week. I’m convinced that is only because he talks so much trash. But it’s not fun trash, or menacing trash, the kinds that earn the respect of your opponent. It’s the always hiding behind a teammate trash. It’s the backing away during a timeout trash. It’s the deadball trash then acting surprised when the opponent takes offense. I’m fine with yapping, but his act can get tiresome.

As I said, I really like Mathurin. I think he’s a lower budget Anthony Edwards. Not as explosive or as purely talented as Ant, but a similar game and attitude. There’s an immaturity to his game (and Ant’s, coincidentally) that gives me pause. And I also wonder if he’s going to be the player that gets moved out as the front office has to deal with a salary/roster crunch this summer.

Pascal Siakam has such an interesting game, all weird angles and awkward lunges, and I admire it but I can’t say he’s my favorite.

Myles Turner has been on the Pacers longer than anyone else, and seems reenergized this year. But I still hold it against him for picking Texas over KU out of high school.

Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith both play their asses off, and keep getting better. But they are kind of quiet and anonymous and not the kind of players you get drawn to as favorites.

TJ McConnell is so much fun to watch. He should not be a good NBA player, but wills himself to it every night. But I’ve never been an “adopt the little guy” guy when it comes to picking my favorite player.

Obi Toppin is the best in-game dunker in the NBA, and has turned himself into a decent shooter. But can you really pick a bench player who sometimes disappears just because he has jaw-dropping dunks once a week?

I told S the obvious answer is Johnny Furphy. Jokingly, of course. I think Furph has a bright future, but he needs to be a rotation guy for my Jayhawk love to win out.

After all that the answer is that I don’t have a true favorite Pacer. And despite all those caveats and disclaimers, it’s more about this being a balanced team where everyone is a part of the team’s success than the positives and negatives of any particular player.

As it is Easter Monday, our holiday weekend continues. Or at least it does for C and L, who have the day off. Might as well keep to the normal blog schedule, though. Let’s run through the days rather than individual events.

Friday

A lot of work and errands to get ready for the holiday weekend. L had a PT session. M and her boyfriend arrived from Cincinnati late afternoon. I made a pretty kickass mess of grilled steak, chicken, and restaurant-style beans for Chipotle-like bowls for dinner.

Saturday

We awoke around 5:30 AM to the sound of roaring winds and loud thunder. I looked at my phone and it just said severe thunderstorm warning so I put my head back down. We probably should have moved to the basement. I don’t know what the official winds were in our area, but they reached nearly 90 MPH at the airport. It was insanely loud, followed by rain pummeling our west facing windows. About 15 minutes later we heard that deep, low hum you hate to hear in storms that was followed by the sky lighting up with greens and blues. A transformer was popping off somewhere near our house. I nervously watched our night light and smoke detector indicator, but both just blinked then stayed on. We avoided the outage! I went back to sleep.

Fast forward a few hours. We’re finishing up our morning routines and ready to get to work on more Easter prep. A couple houses there was a crew working with chainsaws to cut up a tree that had snapped in the storm. A firetruck had gone that direction a little earlier so we assumed there was a live line, too. We heard a loud crack and then our power cut out. We’re guessing as they were taking down the tree, the line that leads to our house got snagged and broke. The joys of living in old Indianapolis where all the power lines are still above ground and pass through dozens of mature trees to reach each house.

We ended up being without power for just over five hours. At least it was a cool, cloudy, if slightly muggy day. And at least we were picking up the food for Sunday late in the afternoon and it wasn’t already in the fridge, with the clock ticking on whether it would spoil.

In the midst of the power outage was game one of the Pacers-Bucks series. I went old school and pulled out a radio and listened to most of it that way. The Pacers beat that ass for the first 30+ minutes. Gainbridge was roaring.[1] When our power came back on and I was able to watch was the exact moment they decided to blow a healthy chunk of their 28 point lead. They held on to get the comfortable win. Like Milwaukee did in game one last year. And now Dame Lillard might be coming back at some point in the series? Better get game two tomorrow.

We took the girls plus one out for a hibachi dinner. We normally go to this little hole-in-the-wall local spot that is very good and pretty quick. This time we tried Benihana, which we had never been to before, because we had a gift certificate. Meh. MUCH more expensive than the local spot, much slower, and the food wasn’t as good. It made us appreciate our local spot, which has all kinds of quirks, even more.

Joining us at our table was a trio that were dressed for their prom. They were sweating it a bit because despite being seated at 6:30, our chef didn’t start cooking for us until about 7:30. S was closer to them and got more of the story but I think they were able to eat and get out in plenty of time to make it before their entrance window closed, although they had to hustle through their meal.

Anyway, it was a pretty dorky looking dude and two pretty cute girls. We think they were all going as friends, but I wanted to give him props for overachieving. Times two even!

Easter Sunday

We had been stressing all week because we were expecting to have a larger group than our already large holiday gatherings, and the forecast was not looking promising. More rain was expected, right around our noon start for Easter dinner. The young ones were expecting an Easter egg hunt, too. We weren’t sure how that was going to work if we had to do it in the house. The aunts sent A LOT of eggs for the girls to hide. We have a big house, but I’m not sure we had enough hiding spots for them all.

Thankfully it ended up being a nearly perfect day. Some people ate outside. We had pulled all the outdoor furniture out of storage Saturday and were able to use it. Hell, if the pool was ready kids could have jumped in. The egg hunt came off without a hitch, outside as was ideal. This wasn’t good but one of S’s siblings came down with a stomach bug so his family stayed away, which made us a little less crowded.

After all the prep and stress it ended up being a nice day all around. The final guests filtered out around 4:00, M and her boyfriend headed back to Cincy shortly after, and our house was quiet again. Sometimes that’s the best part of the holiday gatherings, the chance to exhale and relax.

Monday

L and I had to get up early today as she had a 7:30 PT appointment today. News had just broke that Pope Francis had died. That reminded me of when he was elected in March 2013 and that news broke just as I was picking the girls up from school. As the white smoke was blowing in Rome, we had a sudden snow squall in Indy, which seemed appropriate. And then M came running out of school yelling “There’s a new pope! We don’t know who it is but there’s a new one! It’s eight o’clock in Rome!” Right after we got back from PT she texted the whole family to let us know Francis had died. Some things never change.

As for PT, it is going well. Her therapist is impressed with where L started and how she’s progressed through three sessions. She was supposed to ease out of the boot last week, but as she only went to school one day that plan kind of got blown up. At the session Friday her therapist told her it was fine to officially ditch it. After nearly six months in a boot or cast at school, she’s finally back to two shoes again. Thursday was the first time since November she wore khakis to school.

I have an absolutely loaded Friday as we prepare for weekend guests and our extra-large family gathering for Easter on Sunday. Because of that I’m starting this Thursday evening, and I’m not really sure where it’s going to take me after this odd week. Let’s find out together!

“April Skies” – The Jesus and Mary Chain
They’re going to be dark and stormy for the next couple days, at least here in Indy.

“The Feeling Is Gone” – The Horrors
Man, this could be straight off of Depeche Mode’s 1990 classic Violator. And I do not hate that at all.

“Vacation” – Say Sue Me featuring Kim Hanjoo
First the Koreans took over the pop world. Now they’re aiming for indie rock? I give them credit: ain’t nothing wrong with this jam.

“Lean Into The Wind” – Doves
I don’t pretend to understand how the music industry works these days. For example, Doves just released a new album about six weeks ago. Now they’ve released a new song that wasn’t on that LP. Officially, it was a Record Store Day release. Although it landed on Spotify, etc at the same time. Which is fine. Often these leftover tracks didn’t make the album for a reason. In this case, though, I do not understand why this wasn’t on Constellations For The Lonely. It is very good, as good as any track on the full album. Thank goodness we get to hear it!

“Every Time I Hear” – Sharp Pins
Gorgeous jangle pop from Chicago.

“God Knows” – Tunde Adebimpe
The former TV On The Radio frontman’s solo debut is shaping up to be a real dandy.

“Good Friday” – Cowboy Junkies
“Easter” – Strand of Oaks
May the Easter Bunny be good to you all.

“Transmission” – Joy Division
This week, or maybe next, marks the 20th anniversary of my old music podcast. This was the first song played on the first show, which I referred to as transmissions. Good times. Ian Curtis was something else.

A double-barreled discussion of health topics, one about a kid, one about me.

A Hospital Visit

My week got thrown off its already adjusted trajectory by spending four hours in the emergency department with L yesterday.[1] She’s fine but it was a stressful morning.

Her stomach started hurting badly Sunday. She was also hot, sweaty, and looked like hell. She had gone out to dinner with friends the night before and we wondered if she got some bad chicken. Despite hours of feeling terrible, she never got sick, though. We figured she’d sleep it off and be fine Monday.

But Monday she felt worse, so she stayed home.

Same Tuesday.

This was all horrible nausea, severe cramping at times, and the thought of eating anything made it all worse. She struggled to choke down a piece of toast, small bowl of cereal, or yogurt. That’s the worst feeling, when you need to get something in your belly but the mere thought makes you want to hurl. But, again, never had any abnormal GI activity.

She woke up in the middle of the night Tuesday/Wednesday in pain again, so S gave her some stomach meds along with a big pain killer so she could sleep. When she woke up, nothing was better. I was pushing her to go to school so she didn’t get too far behind, but found her with her head on the kitchen table crying. L does not like to miss school, so I knew it had to be bad if she couldn’t get herself together to avoid missing a third-straight day. I checked in with Dr. Mom, who said it was time to take L into the hospital to get checked.

Once there they ran blood work, did a CT scan, and, thankfully, everything came back normal. No appendix issues. No signs of blockages, growths, etc anywhere in her lower abdomen.

Unfortunately for her, by the time we got to the hospital her pain had receded quite a bit, so she didn’t get to receive one of those sweet, IV pain killers like S got years ago when she had severe food poisoning. Unfortunately for our checkbooks the pain also receded enough where she was starting to feel normal.

We were all relieved that it doesn’t appear anything bigger is going on with her. Maybe it was indeed something she ate, or perhaps a stomach bug that never fully blew up and caused her to puke it out.

After we left she wanted to get lunch, and ate it normally, which was the first time she had done that since Saturday night. She ate a regular dinner, too. This morning she said her stomach still feels weird, but the nausea had finally passed. Hopefully she can get through today and then has four days off for Easter to get back to 100%.

Scary but reassuring in the end.

Going to the ED at 9:00 AM on a Wednesday is probably one of the best times to go. But L did get to encounter some interesting folks.

There was a “Sassy Black Lady” running the security entrance, who snapped at anyone who avoided the not-super-obvious metal detector you were supposed to walk through before registering.

There was a woman in a wheelchair loudly sharing that she was there because of a sore on her foot, she wasn’t sure if it was a bedsore or a boil or what.

There was a cute little kid, probably two, walking around staring at everyone, and also coughing on them. We heard her screaming in her room later.

There was an older gentleman there with his wife who had the obligatory “horrible, old person ringtone” that was cranked beyond an acceptable limit which he let ring for 20 seconds while he slowly tried to find his phone, looked to see who was calling, and then commented on them to his wife before finally answering. Then he had a loud conversation with them, although at least he didn’t have them on speaker.

And then a dude came in who was either mental, on drugs, or perhaps both. Or, more likely, he may have been mental and NOT on the drugs he was supposed to be on. He paced nervously, then would sit, then jump up and pace around again. He kept sniffing and grunting loudly. I believe it was his mother who was with him and periodically she would snap at him to sit down and be quiet. The old lady sitting near us told her husband, not very quietly, that this kid made her nervous.

Thankfully we got called back pretty quickly, but this still had to be an eye opener for sheltered L.

Fitness Update

Y’all know that going to the gym is part of my daily routine. It is as much a mental health exercise as a physical one. Especially in winter, I could easily sit inside all day. Forcing myself to walk the two minutes across the street to the Y no matter what the weather is has helped me fight off my usual winter blues. Although I weigh a few pounds more than I’d like, those consistent workouts keep that from being closer to 10–15 extra lbs.

Anyway, I don’t really track my workouts. I have a little pocket notebook I take with me in which I jot down my strength training routine, but I never look at it once I’m back at home.

One of the first days of this year, I came across a post in which someone shared a little bubble dot calendar in which you could keep track of any habit, really, over the new year. I thought that was a cool visual reminder/tracker/reinforcer and printed one off. I figured I would brag on myself and share my progress through the first quarter of the year.

The colors don’t show well here, but the legend is that blue indicates strength training, red cardio at the gym (or in the pool once we get to summer), and black is either walks or other vigorous activities. “Vigorous activities” was basically my way of giving myself credit for breaking a good sweat on the days I had to shovel snow for more than 20 minutes. I reserve the right to include other intense yardwork that burns calories as the year progresses. You’ll also note three days with circles around the dots. Those are days that I did both a cardio exercise of some kind and then went out and threw snow around.

Bottom line is I worked out 73% of the first 90 days of 2025, which is pretty good. Allow me to apply those extra workouts to offset the days off, and I’m a little better than that. Having this visual reminder on my desk was a motivator on those days I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to bundle up and face the cold.

The only hangups have been a new, stupid, old man pain, this time in each foot, that has slowed be a bit for the last month or so. That stretch when I worked out once in five days in February came when I could barely put weight on one foot. Pretty sure it is a combination of arthritis and old shoes on the treadmill that knocked me out. I should note I was just walking on the treadmill, not running. But I did have the incline cranked way up. I guess my feet can’t handle steep inclines for extended periods anymore. Traveling for spring break knocked out a couple days, but I made sure to get a morning walk on the beach in during most of our time in Florida.

So 73% is my target to beat in Q2. I’ve already missed a couple days this month because of being busier than expected. Like when I have to take my kid to the ED. Hey, the pool opens in three weeks and that will open a new option for burning some calories while protecting my delicate joints.

It’s never too late to start tracking your healthy habits, thus here’s a link to the sheet. Apparently this person publishes a new one year each if you want to save it and come back when 2026 begins.

Given that our government is run by a fool who should be on some serious ADHD meds, it is nearly impossible to follow what is going on in Washington as it wildly careens from one insane policy to another every 6–12 hours. Thus, a couple of the articles I’m linking to below were out-of-date almost as soon as they were published. That doesn’t mean they aren’t still worth reading, though.

These are crazy times. Thus, it seems totally appropriate that one of the best breakdowns of our country’s ludicrous new trade policy comes from a writer whose primary focus is sports.

When I go to the store and buy something, I incur a trade deficit with the store, but most of the time I don’t feel like I got ripped off. The store got my money, I got something I wanted, everybody wins. But Trump—and this may be a window into how he himself does business—seems to see every buyer as a mark and every seller as a con artist. If we’re buying more from them than they are from us, we must be the suckers, and if we’re the suckers, we need to do whatever we can to reverse the imbalance and resume our rightful place as the alpha grifters of the world.

Four Totally Logical, Sensible, Legit Explanations for Trump’s Tariff Plan

This is a more serious look at why “Bringing Manufacturing Back to America!” is far more difficult than any politician will ever admit.

A ‘US-Made iPhone’ Is Pure Fantasy

There needs to be a Things Are Generally Fucked Up chart in here, too.

30 Charts That Show How Covid Changed Everything

Now for something completely different, it’s not every day I link to The Curling News. You know it’s going to be a doozy when I do.

This is, hands down, the worst thing I ever seen or heard of in my 42 years in this sport.

As a result, it’s the nightmare scenario: a player or players in the year 2025 who are deciding to blatantly cheat, and break the rules, because they think they can get away with it.

OK, maybe that’s not so different from what’s going on in the rest of the world after all.

China Caught Cheating in Curling

I’ve never been a huge Air Jordan guy, I haven’t owned a pair of true Jordans since the originals,[1] but for some reason I always read articles ranking the various editions. For the record, I would rank them 3, 4, 1, and don’t care after that.

Air Jordan power rankings: Which shoe is tops as the brand celebrates 40 years?

I know several of my friends are like me, and will have a kid traveling in Europe sometime over the next 12 months. This isn’t super useful for communicating, but is a fun tool to see how words change as you cross borders.

European word translator

A pretty chill weekend, at least for me. We knocked out a bunch of yard stuff over the past few days. I installed some new exterior lighting with a huge assist from a friend. S and I ripped out some dead plants and replaced them with new ones. Our lawn crew came for the first time on Friday. If not for all the washed-out mulch from the storms of two weeks ago, our front yard would look like a million dollars. Saturday I pulled out the pressure washer and blasted six months of crap off of the pool cover. We won’t open the pool for another three weeks, but at least that collected layer of dirt, tree debris, pollen, worms, etc is gone.

In other words, my friends, we are deep into spring. Last week was unseasonably cool and this week was predicted to be the same. Then, magically, every day’s forecast got nudged a few degrees higher yesterday. It won’t be as warm as friends and family in Kansas City and Denver have been experiencing, but I also won’t be wearing a coat to the gym in the morning.[1]

On to the other stuff we should cover.

The Masters

RORY!!!!!!

Fucking finally!!! In typical Rory fashion, it was not easy. Or, rather, for two-plus days it was very easy and then the last two hours threw everything about the Rory McIlroy experience at us. Wait, let me correct myself. Two holes into Sunday’s final round I was ready to turn it off as he had already blown his lead and trailed Bryson DeChambeau.

I’m glad I stayed tuned. That might have been the best Masters Sunday ever. You had a popular star racing to a historic win, only to fall apart, get it back together, fall apart again, and figure it out in the tournament’s biggest moment. You had multiple people making runs. The last two hours were engrossing, exhausting, and exhilarating.

A four-shot lead and the tournament was seemingly over as Rory stepped to his third shot on the 13th. Which he proceeded to, inexplicably, shank into the water. That was a mistake I would make. There is no way a PGA golfer with a three-shot lead on the back nine of a major should ever make.

Over the next five-plus holes he added another horrific approach shot and missed four short, makable putts. Make any of those putts and he wins in regulation. He also threw in two of the best shots of his entire career, hell two of the best shots you’ll ever see on the back nine of a major, and had either of them been hit at simply an A level rather than A+, could have cost him the tournament.

Thursday Rory trailed Justin Rose by seven strokes at the end of play. Sunday when Rory got to –14 Rose was seven shots behind him. Then Rose began a miraculous run through the last nine holes, briefly taking the lead, capped by a 30-foot bomb on 18 to get to –11. When is where Rory finished when he pulled his par put to win ever-so-slightly.

It seems especially cruel to begin a playoff on the 18th hole. Especially in this case, where Rory had just gagged the tournament away when all he had to do was finish the hole in four shots. He looked shellshocked. I would have been shaking uncontrollably, barely able to grip the club. Instead he piped his drive into the perfect spot, then answered a terrific Rose approach with an even better one, his ball trickling to three feet. This time he nailed the putt and 11 years of chasing golf’s Grand Slam was over. Fourteen years after a meltdown on the back nine cost him a chance to win the Masters as a 21-year-old, he had finally grabbed his green jacket.

That was one of the realest moments of celebration and relief you will ever see.

I, like so many people, love Rory because he has a wonderful game when he’s on, as good as anyone who has ever played. But, like Phil Mickleson, he has these remarkable breakdowns in the biggest moments. Phil’s were generally because of hubris and stupidity. Rory’s seemed more relatable because they were often inexplicable or maybe mental? Any one who has ever tried to play golf understands that kind of failure more than Phil’s.

I also love Rory because he is one of the most thoughtful, honest, emotionally available athletes in any sport. He has been the conscious of the sport over the past five years as so many of his contemporaries have taken the Saudi money and fled the PGA. Notably to some of us, he also approaches life in general from a different perspective than 90–95% of other pro golfers. I wouldn’t say he’s a bleeding heart liberal, but he’s called out politicians like our current president for their hate and lack of empathy.[2] He does not fall into that convenient conservatism so many golfers adopt because they hate taxes or just grew up around the privileged at country clubs and can’t see any other perspective. Rory’s parents were working class. He grew up playing on muni courses. He, for the most part, seems to have never forgotten that.

Good for Rory for (finally) grabbing the Masters jacket he’s been chasing for so long. And thank goodness he did. I’m not sure he could have recovered had Rose won the playoff. Now, maybe, he goes on a run where those mental blocks that have plagued him fade and he wins a whole mess of majors over the next few years and ends up right where we thought he would he when he won four before he was 25.

Oh, as always, one of the great things about Masters week is Chris Vernon’s updates on Thursday and Friday. These never get old.

Pacers

Some end to the season for the Pacers. Thursday they had to rally to beat the Cavaliers B-team. In doing so they clinched the #4 spot in the Eastern Conference. Sunday their own mostly B-team came from 21 down to again beat the scrub Cavs in double overtime and clinch the franchise’s first 50-win season since 2013–14. Since mid-December, when they were floundering a bit, the Pacers are 39–17, the 4th best record in the NBA over that span.

Not really significant, but Johnny Furphy scored 17 and 15 in the final two games of the season. He was expected to be a full-time G-Leaguer this year. Thanks to a lot of injuries early, he got more minutes than expected and ended up playing more NBA games than G-League ones. It’s fun to hear the Pacers TV guys get fired up every time he enters a game. Oh, and he murdered Goga Bitadze Friday.

It’s been a weird second half of the season. Over the last 4–6 weeks the Pacers have had a ton of bizarre wins. There was a stretch in March where almost every game involved some crazy comeback or insane shots in the closing seconds.

In other words, I’m not sure if this team is quite as good as their record indicates. Or, on the other hand, maybe they’re a team that never gets down on themselves and are comfortable in difficult situations. Throw in the experience from last year’s conference finals run, and perhaps they are a super dangerous team?

They get a quick test. For the second straight year, they open with Milwaukee. Last year it was a 3–6 matchup, the Bucks owning home court. But Giannis did not play and Dame Lillard got injured during the series. This year Giannis is healthy (for now) but Dame is (likely) out for the playoffs. The Bucks are also less deep and a year older than a year ago. And a potential game seven would be in Indy. The fun part is these teams hate each other, so it should be an intense, physical series.

For all the flukiness, the Pacers also finally seem healthy and have their rotation locked in. Pacers in seven. I hope.

PT

L started physical therapy on Friday. If you’ve ever been to PT, you know these initial visits are filled with questions, tests, taking baseline measurements, etc. before you finally do some work. L’s therapist was impressed with the condition of her foot. In one measure, it was actually more flexible than her right foot, which the therapist attributed to tracing the alphabet with her toes since having her cast removed. The clearest difference was in the strength between the two, which we knew. When L had her cast removed she almost screamed at how skinny her left leg had gotten. I told her some of that was just from compression, not necessarily muscle loss. But she does have some work to do to get her strength back on that side.

She will begin weaning herself out of the boot this week, starting the day in a shoe then switching back to the boot after a few hours. The therapist didn’t make any promises, but when she heard CHS begins summer workouts in June, she acted like that might be a reasonable goal to be fully active for. That’s eight weeks away, which would be sixteen weeks after surgery, so right on schedule.

The best news is L’s only pain was in the incision line while doing her PT, nothing inside the foot where the bone was removed and tendon re-attached. She was sore Saturday, but otherwise seemed ok. We went out and shot some non-jumping shots for about 20 minutes.

So she’s on the right path.

It was both nice and a bummer to get a message from her AAU coach Saturday saying how much he missed her, both on and off the court. His daughter texted L directly and said the same thing. Their team had a rough weekend, although they had to play with a few replacement players thanks to spring breaks. Not that L is the best player on the team. But she is definitely a glue girl both during games and when the team is hanging out that they are missing. I think that was a little ego boost for L. It’s good to be missed.

Mom’s Day

S drove down to Cincinnati Saturday for M’s sorority mom’s day. It was a pretty low key and nice day. S got to meet some of M’s friends. And her boyfriend. Who she is bringing home next weekend for Easter. Oh boy…