Weekend Notes

A week after prom and before four consecutive weeks where we will be very busy, it was a nice, boring, lazy weekend.

Weather

There’s no delicate way to say this: our weather was ass most of the weekend. It rained Friday night into Saturday, then off-and-on the rest of the weekend. The temps slowly dropped from the 70s into the 40s. Sunday was dark and dreary and misty and generally ugly. It felt more like January in Portland, not Indianapolis the first weekend of May.

Fortunately spring will come drifting back over the next couple days. Our landscaping guys are due here this week to clean everything up and lay new mulch. And the pool guys will be here Friday to get it started up for the season. Spring is undefeated, folks.[1]
That crappy weather meant we didn’t do a whole hell of a lot over the weekend. So more notes about sports than anything else. With one exception…

Moving Back

Thursday S and I drove down to Cincinnati to move M out of her sorority house. It was kind of an interesting trip.

We knew we would be driving into rain, but had no idea we’d spend about 20 minutes driving through a series of near-severe storms with torrential rains. The second round was the worst. Visibility was basically down to zero on the interstate, which is always fun. Even with folks using their hazard lights we were basically crawling, hoping we didn’t hit someone or run off the road. Then I came up on some fool who refused to put their hazards on. We were still in the midst of the storm when a few other fools went blowing past us at normal speeds while the rest of us were maybe going 25 MPH.

We made it to campus safely and had to dodge graduation traffic to find a parking space. Then we had to hustle to get our cars full of M’s stuff before the storms rolled into Cincy. We were parked roughly a block from her house, down a rather large hill. So there was a lot of running up the hill, then walking back down it and its multiple sets of old, concrete steps with arms full of crap. If you know our oldest daughter, it won’t be a surprise that she was moving much slower than we wanted her too, then being overly dramatic about how hard she was working.

Thankfully we got the cars loaded and her checked out of her house just before the rain hit. We went to one of her favorite spots just off campus for her final UC lunch of the academic year. Luckily the storms were going around the city, so it was just a steady rain we waited out while eating. We made it back home in normal time and filled up our bonus room with everything we moved back for the next two weeks before she returns to Cincy for her summer internship. Luckily we won’t have to move everything back right away. She’s sub-leasing from a friend who left all her furniture, so will mostly take clothes for the summer. Now in August, when she moves into the apartment she’ll have the next two years, we will need to rent a truck to get all her furniture down. I’m sure that will be a real joy. And we get to move C to Bloomington at about the same time. Are there people you can pay to do this for you?

Anyway, good to have M home for a few weeks. Her grades aren’t official yet but she’s pretty sure she got straight A’s again this semester. She’s halfway done with college! Actually more because the fall semester of her senior year she will likely be doing a co-op and not taking any classes.

Pacers

DAMN, that’s how you start a series!

The Pacers went into Cleveland, built up a big first half lead, weathered a bunch of Cavaliers runs, and ended up winning by nine after making some huge plays on both ends late.

Now, Cleveland was without Darius Garland, who was a late scratch because of a lingering injury. The Pacers shot the lights out and the Cavs had one of their worst 3-point nights of the year.

But 1–0 and stealing home court advantage is all the matters.

Another game that showed what a great combination of talent this squad is. People who don’t see them every night have a hard time getting it. They’re not an NBA title contender. But they are a team that can steal any seven game series because they know who they are and never get rattled. Tyrese Haliburton was absolute ass on defense much of the night, then somehow forced two huge stops late. Always a wild ride with him.

Local TV broadcasts of games ends when the conferences semifinals begin, so I was forced to watch the TNT feed. Which was fine. Mega props to Greg Anthony for saying, when the Pacers challenged an offensive foul on Myles Turner late in the game, “I like the challenge but I don’t think they are going to win it.” I forgot what wild stuff he says sometimes since he was in announcer purgatory for a few years.

Also, a broader NBA observation, I LOVE how NBA series between evenly matched teams swing. I haven’t watched a ton of ball outside Pacers games, little bits and pieces of each series, but am still deep into The Ringer’s NBA pods, so I hear the breakdowns after each game. It is so fun how team A will win a game comfortably, the series seems under their control, and two nights later team B has made some huge adjustments and are right back in it. The Clippers really should have won their series against Denver. Detroit probably should have upset the Knicks. The Rockets-Warriors series was crazy. I think Pacers-Cavs is headed down that same path, with two of the best offenses in the league taking turns dropping 15–3 runs on each other for another 4–6 games. It’s a league where coaches can scheme around anything but it often comes down to which team gets the hottest from behind the 3-point arc.

Fever

It’s opening week for the WNBA. ESPN showed the Fever’s final exhibition game Sunday, a matchup with the Brazilian national team in Iowa City. You can’t take too much away from the game since this was far from Brazil’s full Olympic squad – one of their best players in yesterday’s lineup is an 18-year-old who will be a freshman at South Carolina this fall – but it was cool to see all the new Fever players. They’ve added a ton of size, but it is athletic, rangy, perimeter size rather than more post players to backup Aliyah Boston. DeWanna Bonner seems like the perfect Den Mom for a mostly very young team, and was a delightful in-game interview. Loathe as I am to give a Missouri alum credit, Sophie Cunningham adds a level of toughness and versatility that was missing last year. And she might have the most “don’t look at it when your wife and kids are around” Instagram account in the league. Not that I looked.

Caitlin Clark missed Friday’s exhibition game with a minor leg injury, and played limited minutes Sunday, but her range looked deeper than a year ago and the experienced players the Fever brought in already understand how to run to spots where she will get them the ball. Kelsey Mitchell will get a little overlooked because of the new talent, but she looked to still be the steady scoring threat who is an ideal partner for Clark. Lexie Hull’s 3-point shot still looks locked in after whatever mechanical adjustment she made in the middle of last season.

As an added bonus, second round draft pick Makayla Timpson might be an absolute steal. I’m not sure if she will be a huge contributor this season. But with so many of the league’s rosters in flux because of the CBA expiring after this season, having a player with her skills on her salary could be massive in the Fever building a team that contends for years to come.

Racing

I actually watched parts of two car races Sunday. That’s how annoying the weather was and how limited the TV offerings were in the afternoon. It is May, I guess.

I watched the back halves of both the Indy Car Grand Prix race in Alabama and then the F1 race in Miami. It was hilarious how, since both races were won by large margins, each broadcast focused on “races within the race” further back in the pack. The F1 broadcast was almost exclusively about the two Ferrari cars and the bickering involved in their team trying to figure out if they should pass each other or not. Such weird drama.

Hey, we actually watched multiple horse races Saturday, keeping the NBC coverage of the Kentucky Derby on for hours, so this might have been the most “watching cars/animals chase each other around a track” weekend of my life!