Weekend Notes
It was nice to have a laid back weekend after several weeks of travel and other nonsense. Although a few of us spent time in the car.
Unfortunately, I am still sick. Today will be day 14. I guess this is my punishment for going so long without being ill in any way. Last week I tried one batch of antibiotics we had lying around the house. When they didn’t work, our house doc called in a more potent round that I started Sunday. Fingers crossed I can finally shake this thing and get back to a normal workout schedule. Read on and you’ll learn about the other loose end from our European vacation.
Campus Visit #2
L and I went down to Cincinnati Friday morning for her UC campus visit. As we were walking to check in we heard someone call her name. We looked up and one of her best friends from grade and middle school was walking up with her dad.[1] A nice surprise! We arranged to be in the same group for the tour. Her dad was my roommate when we chaperoned the eighth grade Washington DC trip four years ago, so we laughed recalling all the boys we yelled at that week.
L liked campus a lot. She had some follow-up questions for her big sister who goes there (and used to do campus visits). I’ve felt like UC has been her favorite for some time. This trip reinforced all that. We’ll see if IU can make up any of the gap when we go to Bloomington this week. And we have one more big visit scheduled in two weeks…
Birthday Girl
M turned 22 on Saturday. She celebrated by getting the hell out of town Friday and spending the weekend with several of her sorority sisters/roommates on a lake down in Columbus, IN.
Her big gift was her suitcase finally being delivered after being “lost” for 10 days. The last time I updated you on its status, it was still sitting at the Dublin airport and we had received an email asking where we wanted it delivered. I replied that we were home and it needed to come to Indianapolis, but got no response. A follow up also did not get a response.
S got on the phone Thursday to try to find someone who had an update. While she was on hold M came downstairs and I asked her to check its location again.
“It’s in Toronto!”
That was strange. We assumed Aer Lingus would throw it on one of their direct flights to Indy. Alas, we had no idea how to track the bag other than with her AirTag, so we hoped for the best.
Saturday morning M called us and said the bag was at the Indy airport. A couple hours later she got a call confirming our address and saying it would be delivered within the day. Sure enough, about 1:30, the doorbell rang and a rather grumpy guy had her bag.
I opened it up and everything seemed as it was when we packed it up in London 10 days earlier.
The bag had an Air Canada label on it. I’m not even going to try to figure out how a bag that was left behind by British Airways and ended up with Aer Lingus got shipped home via Air Canada.
A needless stress but at least the saga is over.
Sports Notes
LeBron to Philly?!?!?! The news broke while L and I were eating lunch Friday. I don’t think there was a clear “best” destination for LeBron, but I figured Philly would get beat out by Cleveland or Golden State. I’m very surprised he picked the Sixers. And I’m not sure how that team is going to work. Mostly because I can’t see Jaylen Brown being willing to defer to Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, AND LeBron. I guess this is a true first world problem, getting those four plus VJ Edgecombe to work together effectively. If they can figure it out, the Sixers have huge upside. And the Eastern Conference just got even tougher. It will genuinely be a blood bath this season to earn the right to play Oklahoma City or San Antonio in the Finals.
As noted before, I’m not following the Royals or baseball very closely this summer. But I knew that Salvador Perez caught and then passed George Brett for the all time franchise home run record over the weekend. I’m glad Salvy has gone on a little hot streak lately. Early in the season it seemed like he had aged five or six years in one winter and you wondered if he could be a productive player again. Brett will forever be the greatest Royal. This was a fine milestone as Salvy continues to solidify himself as the second greatest Royal of all time.
All Ireland
On one of our tours in Dublin, our guide told us the story of the upcoming All-Ireland senior football final between Mayo and Kerry. This was important, he said, because 75 years ago, a curse had been placed upon the Mayo team.
When they won their last All-Ireland final, legend had it that the boisterous celebration party passed a funeral procession without showing due deference to the deceased. Someone in the funeral party claimed that Mayo would never win another title until every member of that 1951 team died. In the years since then, Mayo made 11 finals, and lost each one. Four years ago the last member of that team passed.
Our tour guide told us that Mayo had just won to reach the final, to be played on July 26. If they triumphed in Dublin, he said, you could believe that curses are real.
Well, Mayo won Sunday. Every clip I found of the final moments was incredible, even the national announcers succumbing to the moment. But the clip in the Bluesky post below? Amazing. These are the local radio announcers in Mayo, who are genuinely losing their minds. I think you get the point even if you can barely understand them.
“The famine is over! The curse be damned!! Hit the nuclear button! Mayo have won the All-Ireland!!”An all-time great sports commentary moment from Stephen Grealis and Martin McHugh on Mayo’s Midwest Radio.#gaa
- She goes to a rival high school, although they had just hung out together with a group of St. P’s girls a few weeks back. ↩