D's Notebook

Tag: family (Page 1 of 43)

Holiday Weekend Notes

September 3, 2024 /

It was an action-packed weekend. At least for watching sports from the comfort of my house. Friday night in particular was kind of crazy. High school football on the radio. Indiana Fever and US Open on the TV. Royals-Astros Gameday coverage on the Mac. With bonus weather monitoring on every screen. I guess I’ll break things down by subject rather than day.

KU Football

A slow start turned into the blowout it was supposed to be Thursday night for KU. Not sure you can make any great assessments of the team given the opponent. I thought Jalon Daniels looked a little rusty, but I also don’t know how open the playbook was. It seemed like the coaching staff was doing some experimenting with the offensive line. A pick-six for Mello Dotson, likely not the last for this defensive backfield this season. Devin Neal scoring touchdowns, Luke Grimm catching passes. We’ll find out a lot more about the Jayhawks next week when they go to Illinois.

The first game at Children’s Mercy Park seemed to go just fine. Word from people who went is that it was a great atmosphere. The replay system not working early and likely costing KU two scores was kind of a bummer.

HS Football

A week after beating preseason #1 Ben Davis, #3 Cathedral got a reminder their schedule is still brutal, losing to #6 Brownsburg 30–14. They got there a rather odd way.

BHS jumped out to a 17–7 lead Friday night before lightning was spotted. Although the storm was 10 miles away, and moving away from the stadium, the game was delayed over an hour before a second series of storms popped up and officials decided to postpone the game until Saturday afternoon.

Things didn’t get much better in the resumed game. CHS was playing with their primary running back – who ran for 168 yards week one – hobbled Friday, then without him completely Saturday. L heard Sunday he’s probably having surgery and out for the year. Not sure if he was worth 16 points but I think he would have helped. If he is indeed out for an extended stretch, the Irish’s already brutal schedule looks even more formidable.

Weather

Last week was hot, sticky, and nasty. The heat index was up around 110 a couple days. Friday night three rounds of storms came through, and torrential rains and heavy winds blew the heat away. The humidity stuck around through Saturday. Then Sunday morning it was 52 and 100% pleasant. The extended forecast has a bunch of mornings like that, with a few even colder, and daytime highs mostly in the mid–70s with a few mid–80s sprinkled in. September is a truly glorious month.

US Open

I watched a ton of tennis last week and into the weekend. Week one of the Open might be the best week of tennis of the year, hell one of the best sports weeks of the entire year, with great matches in progress just about any time you turn on your TV from noon to midnight.

Weekend highlights were Frances Tiafoe’s two wins and both Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic losing early. It was a bummer that Coco Gauff went out early, but at least she lost to another American. In general it’s great to have several decent American players in both the women’s and men’s game at the moment. It sure makes for better crowds in New York.

Royals

Crap on a stick.

Last Wednesday afternoon the Royals were tied for first place and were up on co-leaders Cleveland going into the seventh inning, nine outs away from a four-game sweep of the Guardians. Then the Royals melted down a little and they’ve yet to recover, losing six straight games. Three injuries during that span have not helped. At least they still have a cushion in the wild card race for the time being.

It’s been a bit of a charmed summer for the Royals, totally unexpected and built on out-of-nowhere quality starting pitching. The pitching has still been fine, at least the starters; it’s been the bats that have let them down over the past week. They were nearly no-hit Friday and have gone deep into other games with just one or two hits. Maybe, hopefully, surely the hitters can lock back in and they can hold on to one of those wild card spots to complete this surprise season.

Fever

I know I’m not alone in having watched more WNBA games this year than in the rest of my life combined. I now know exactly when the Fever are playing, and on what channel. Unlike other sports, which S doesn’t really pay attention to, for the Fever she gets kind of locked in. Ironically our basketball playing daughter will still just breeze through and watch a few minutes, but rarely sits down and watches long stretches with us.

Two more wins over the weekend for the hottest team in the league. The Fever are now over .500 for the first time in five years. Which sounds made up. Have they really been that bad, for that long? Again, since I never watched I don’t know if that is a real stat or not.

It’s been fun watching this team figure each other out since their disastrous start. Kelsey Mitchell is a revelation, and a perfect backcourt partner for Caitlin Clark. Aliyah Boston finally settled down and started playing like the former #1 pick she is. Lexi Hull is one of the most fun players to watch, and seemingly can’t miss a 3 since the Olympic break.

And, of course, there’s Clark. She was starting to get comfortable before the break, but has looked like a first team all league player since getting some time to both rest and work on her game. In those seven games she’s averaging 24.6 points, 5 rebounds, and nine assists. And that’s with her teammates still booting 3–4 passes a night, or blowing open layups.[1]

She’s added a floater. Her teammates are getting better at anticipating her crazy passes. She’s handling the physicality of the league better. She still makes a few horrible passes a game, but when she’s averaging almost nine assists a game, you’ll take those. And her outside shot still isn’t locked in. That will come next year. Any questions about her transition to the pro game have been answered.

The only real bummer to the Fever turning the corner is it has kept us from going to a game. Tickets were crazy expensive at the beginning of the season, as you would expect. I planned on waiting until the hype died down and the team fell deep into the bottom of the standings before trying to grab some for a weeknight game. So much for that. I was looking at tickets for tomorrow’s game and even upper level seats were going for $200 each. That seems excessive, especially when L isn’t super into watching. Although she would go if given the chance.

Oh, one other WNBA note. The yammering idiots on TV need to drop the whole Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese thing and focus on the real issue: how stupid are the four teams other than Indiana and Chicago who passed on drafting Reese? She’s getting 20 boards a night over the past three weeks and leads the league in rebounding for the season. From watching Chicago Friday, it’s obvious that some of those numbers come because her coach leaves her on the court deep into blowouts to pad her numbers. But 20 rebounds is 20 rebounds.

The rookie of the year argument is pretty much over, as CC is both having a better and more impactful year while Chicago is dropping like a rock despite Reese’s play. That shouldn’t hide the fact that Reese is having a phenomenal rookie year of her own.

College Football

It’s always hard for me to dive in this first week of real college football action. There’s so much other stuff going on, both on TV and in real life, that it’s hard to lock in. I had plenty of games on but other than Notre Dame – Texas A&M didn’t get super focused on any of them.

That was a big win for the Irish. Notre Dame’s defense looks incredible. They have a cake schedule. They will be one of the top four teams in the playoff. The obvious joke is they will then lose to Alabama or whatever SEC runner-up they play in the first round. But that game will be in South Bend. In December. Surely Touchdown Jesus will scare up some lake effect snow, or at least nasty windchills, to aid the Irish.

Family Time

We didn’t do anything big family-wise for the holiday weekend. M stayed in Cincinnati. C and L went to the CHS game with friends Friday, but neither went back to the resumption on Saturday. L went to the gym with basketball friends Sunday. C went to the Pitbull concert Sunday night. We had the in-laws over for dinner Sunday, and three of the nephews over to swim on Monday. S and I went to dinner with friends Saturday.

I also found a little project for myself over the weekend. It scratches one of my biggest itches and will have a direct effect on some of my blog posts. I doubt most of you will be as interested in it as I am, but I’ll still share more details about it soon.

And with that, summer is over. Preseason training for school basketball started for L today, and I was up at 5:15 to get her to school on time. A perfect way for her to knock out some of her driving in the dark time!

  1. As the father of a lady baller, I will say the most frustrating part of the women’s game is how many layups are missed. That, more than any other area, is where the difference between men and women is glaring. It’s a lot harder to make a layup in traffic when you release the ball a foot/foot-and-a-half below the rim than within a few inches of it.  ↩

Vacation Notes

August 5, 2024 /

Our week in Florida wasn’t perfect, Mother Nature saw to that. But it was pretty good.

For the first time in eight or nine years, we drove for a vacation in the south. It was 11.5 hours, door-to-door, and traffic was not terrible on either trip. A lot of travelers, to be sure, but nothing like spring break volume.

We stayed in Inlet Beach, one of the 30A communities, with our old neighbors. We’ve now been to Mexico, Kauai, Captiva, and Inlet Beach with them. This was likely our last vacation as two families totalling nine: their oldest is getting married next summer. The adults may continue to travel once we navigate the college years.

Our house was nice, two blocks from the beach. That distance was just right on the days we had to pack up quickly because storms were moving in. Our little area was very quiet. We were in a duplex and the other side was empty, as was the duplex next to ours. There was a bachelorette group across the street starting Thursday, but they weren’t too loud, too late. Other than that, we barely saw or heard anyone in our immediate vicinity. Going late in the season, when some schools have already gone back to class, pays off.

I guess that’s my signal to get to the Mother Nature bullshit. On the way down we stopped at Buc-ee’s near Bowling Green, KY, our first ever trip to one. More on that in a bit. While we were grabbing food, C looked outside and said, “Oh, it’s pouring!” She was right. The gray skies were suddenly just dumping. I had to run to move our car closer to the doors so the family members who had straightened their hair before our trip wouldn’t have it ruined before we got to Florida. Not naming any names.

To avoid an accident that had I–65 stalled in Montgomery, AL, we took a side route that involved nearly three hours on state and county roads to the shore. Driving through intermittent downpours. A couple times it rained so hard we could barely see. Fun stuff.

Monday morning it rained just as we were getting ready to go to the beach. Tuesday afternoon it rained and drove us from the beach for over two hours. Same Wednesday, although for a little less time. There were storms Thursday. It stormed, loudly, from 5–8 AM Friday, which didn’t impact our beach time but did make for an early alarm clock no one wanted. Then Saturday, our departure day, those morning storms arrived at 4 AM. We had to drive in rain for about an hour before getting clear.

We’ve been to Florida in the summer before, and are used to the pop ups that come and go quickly. These were all big storms that would blow up and then sit over one spot with lots of lightning so you couldn’t be outside.


This storm sat right over us for three hours. It was the only rain in the entire state of Florida at the time.

It could have been worse, obviously, with Hurricane Storm Debby hitting just down the panhandle as I write this.

We still got several beach hours every day, but were curtailed at least a little by the weather most days. That wasn’t the worst thing, because it was stinking hot, the heat index well over 100 every day. Even with umbrellas and a breeze, you couldn’t sit in direct sun for very long without swimming in your own sweat.

The beach was very nice. Fluffy, white sand. Deep enough that there was plenty of room to find your own spot. Although some big, multi-generational crew decided to set up right next to us on Wednesday. I’m talking like less than three feet between the edge of our stuff and theirs. There were a lot of passive-aggressive dirty looks and music played louder than normal for the next few hours. When you got into the water, could walk way out a couple hundred feet and still both see and touch. It wasn’t quite Cancun, but it was close.

Wednesday I wandered out about as far as I’m comfortable going to enjoy the cooling water. Once I got settled in my chair with a new beer and my Kindle, there was a ruckus. Roughly the same distance I had gone out and a couple hundred feet to our left there was a shark. We could see its fins as it attacked something, fortunately not a person. Folks cleared out pretty quick, although we laughed out loud at a couple meathead dads who only came part of the way back in, then stood there defiantly. As if they had any chance against a shark in waist-deep water. Dumbasses, the whole lot. Meanwhile their wives were herding the kids back to land. Clearly all the brains in those operations reside with the ladies.

Thursday there were lots of small jellyfish around, so I avoided the water early. Once the winds kicked up and produced some waves, they disappeared and I braved the waters again.

We had our own pool, but it was very small. We expected it to be hot, too, but it was surprisingly refreshing. It was perfect for hopping into for a few minutes after dragging all our gear back from the beach.

We had three dinners out, all focused on seafood. M and C both tried snow crab one night, with mixed results. I can share food recommendations if anyone heads that way. We had burger, steak, and taco nights at home. We walked around a little in Rosemary Beach, but otherwise didn’t get out much. One family game night. A lot of recovering from the sun and watching the Olympics at night.

Oh, Buc-ee’s. Never had a chance to stop at one before. Our first stop in Kentucky Sunday morning, at about 8:00 AM, might be the perfect time to go. It was busy, but you could find a gas pump and move around the store easily. I got a breakfast taco that was solid. We stopped at one in Alabama on the way home, at about 1:00 PM on a Saturday, and it was a totally different story. Gas pumps all filled up. Store jam-packed. It’s an amazing operation, because we got gas quickly and I was able to grab a sandwich and pay within about 30 seconds despite the gridlock inside. The people who just left their cars at the pumps while they went into the store don’t understand that we are living in a society. I got a fried chicken sandwich for lunch, which was fantastic. Way better than Chick Fil A. Thumbs up, other than the crowds.

I had to chuckle that the road signs announce Florida as “The Free State of Florida.” 1) Serious Try Hard energy there. 2) As a native of a state that was founded as a Free State, I think the Floridians have a very different idea of what that means that I do. 3) I quickly amassed a list of things you are not free to do, based on my limited knowledge of Florida, that seemed to counter the governor and his lackeys’ assertion.

Worst bumper sticker I saw, just outside Nashville, TN: A confederate flag on one side, on the other “Fighting Terrorists Since 1861.” Oh Lord…

Speaking of Tennessee, what a gorgeous state to drive through. The rolling hills of central/western Tennessee might not be as dramatic as the Smokies of east Tennessee, but are still beautiful.

We also saw lots of Say No To Solar signs. I never realized there was actually an anti-solar lobby.

It boggles the mind why the Florida panhandle is on Central Time. Inlet Beach is literally straight south of Indy, but we’re in different time zones.

Pretty solid trip. I read a good book. The girls got to hang with their friends. S and I spent time with our friends.

And now we’re back to the academic grind. C and L start school Thursday, we will move M back to UC on Sunday.

Dog-ish Days

July 18, 2024 /

The Dog Days of Summer are supposed to come later, say very late July into the early weeks of August. That gap when the heat really kicks in, the newness of summer activities has faded, and boredom starts to kick in.

But, I realized this week, they really should arrive sooner since kids go back to school a lot earlier than our generation did. Which might explain why things seem kind of dead around our house and I’m lacking in blogging material.

C did knock out her senior pics last night. That was a little dicey. A cold front was supposed to slide through late in the afternoon, bringing cooler weather with it.[1] But, as the front passed, it was also likely to kick off some storms. Right around picture time. Uh oh…

She lucked out, though. There were some storms in the area, but they avoided the locations she had picked. The temperature did bump up to 90 late in the afternoon, and a breeze kicked in behind the front. But neither was troublesome for pics. It sounds like all went very well, and she and S came home in good spirits. You can never be sure with that kid in high-stress moments, so that was a huge relief. And it was the first big item checked off her senior year list.

L and I are off to Louisville Saturday-through-Monday for her last tournament, so no Weekend Notes post until Tuesday. M is off to St. Louis this weekend for a national leadership conference for her sorority. Wish us all safe travels.

  1. It was 60 this morning when I woke up and might drop into the 50s tonight.  ↩

Weekend Notes

July 9, 2024 /

Holiday Weekend

Not a bad Independence Day weekend at all.

S’s sister who lives in Denver and her family came to stay with us from Wednesday through Sunday. We had a couple cornhole tournaments (L beat her cousin in one, and she and I beat the cousin and his dad in the other).The kids went and played mini-golf in the midst of a downpour. We hit a hibachi place one night. And other assorted nonsense.

Our big family gathering was scheduled for our house on the Fourth, but as the forecast showed rain all day, we did a last-minute switcheroo and reserved some lanes at a bowling alley for Thursday at lunchtime. Somehow one of the eight-year-olds had the best score out of the 18 bowlers. The kids then played laser tag and spent some time in the arcade. That evening we went to one of S’s other sister’s homes for food and hanging out. A couple small showers pushed through, but once they passed the temperature dropped and the humidity disappeared and it felt more like early October than July 4.

Our re-scheduled pool party went off Saturday without too many issues. It was warm and breezy and just about perfect. After a couple cool nights, the pool water checked in at 85 degrees, which had to be the coolest it has ever been for our family gathering on July 4. Or July 6, I guess.

And now we’re less than a month from C and L going back to school. Summer flies.

Driver’s Ed

L officially started her in-car driving lessons last week. She’s knocked out three of her six required sessions. Or rather, will have knocked out three by the time you read this. Her third lesson is Tuesday morning. She seems to be doing pretty good. We haven’t had much time to practice because of basketball, family stuff, etc. but I had her drive to the lesson last Friday and she did just fine.

College Visit

C and I visited IU Monday, her first, official campus visit. It was pretty much the same routine that I went through with M two years ago. C seemed to enjoy it but wasn’t blown away or anything. IU is where she wants to go, her grades and test scores seem to line up with what they are looking for. That all makes it pretty easy, fingers crossed.

I don’t know that we’ll make any more official visits this summer. She wants to spend some time with M at UC this fall. M will start leading tours on campus then, so C can get both the official and personal perspectives. She might also visit a friend who will be a freshman at Ball State once classes start. Then we’ll see if she wants to squeeze in any official tours before it’s time to start sending off applications.

Right now she says she wants to study forensic psychology. She is interested in CSI-type stuff, and working for the FBI is one of her goals. Or just deal with patients individually. Plenty of time to dial it in.

We had lunch at the always tasty Village Deli. While we ate C asked me which was bigger, Bloomington or Lawrence. I guessed they were pretty similar, but a check of Wikipedia showed that Lawrence is roughly 15,000 people bigger! That surprised me. It also surprised me that Lawrence has grown nearly 50% since I was in school. Damn!

One interesting aspect of our visit was there are a group of pro-Palestine demonstrators who are camped out on the IU campus. This is kind of a big deal because there was a rather violent encounter between the protesters and campus/state police in April. I’m not going to get into that too much, but it was pretty clear that the authorities WAY overstepped their mandate that day.[1] However, a lot of people in Indiana didn’t care because the Palestinian cause isn’t really a hot issue in this state. And most Hoosiers figured the protesters were dirty, commie, hippies and deserved whatever they got.

Anyway, our information session included a disclaimer that IU supported the right of people to assemble peacefully and express their beliefs. We were encouraged not to engage with the demonstrators during our tour, but were free to go back and talk to them on our own if we wanted to.

There were two groups of demonstrators who parked themselves in an area where each tour group had to pass. They peacefully, but loudly, stated their cause as we passed, which was basically that IU programs have helped develop weapons used by the Israelis in Gaza and IU has investments in Israel they want the university to back out of. A few politely offered us pamphlets.

Another highlight of the day was that the iHeart Radio AT40 station extended its holiday week marathon of year-end countdowns into this week. So we drove down listening to the middle of the Top 100 songs of 1984, and drove home listening to a nearly corresponding section of the 1985 countdown. Not sure if it’s a coincidence or not, but C napped most of the way down and back. I sure enjoyed the music, though!

  1. The state police brought in snipers that were based on tops of campus buildings and helicopters, and entered the fray in full riot gear. All to clear people who had been approved to assemble in an area set aside for protests and had shown no signs of being violent. Naturally the police ran out the old excuse that they believed the original protesters had been infiltrated by “outsiders” who were looking to agitate and force a violent encounter. They never provided any evidence for this argument. The Israel-Palestine situation is awful with no easy or clear answers. We don’t need American authorities making things worse here.  ↩

Weekend Notes

June 17, 2024 /

Father’s Day came at the right moment. After three very busy days preceding it, Sunday was a nice day to relax and not have to be anywhere. S got us donuts for breakfast. We had my in-laws over for dinner, eating some carry-out barbecue. I received a Solo fire pit as a combo Father’s Day/birthday gift. Based on the forecast, I might get to use it sometime in 2025. L and I played two rounds of Cornhole; we started a summer-long competition last week and I currently lead 3–0. These are best of three matches and I’ve been lucky to win two of those, so really anyone’s ballgame at this point.

The only bummer was our pool has developed an issue – some kind of algae – that required me to pour 14 gallons of liquid chlorine into it Thursday evening. If you don’t own a pool, that’s a lot. So much that it made the water too toxic to swim in while it hopefully does its magic and kills off whatever had been eating the chlorine. Fingers crossed it will get back to normal this week, although now the water temp has creeped up and it’s not super refreshing.

Donuts With Dad

Friday morning I attended a Donuts With Dad breakfast for one of my nephews at his daycare. K is one of the two boys my sister-in-law A has adopted on her own. I did the same thing for his big brother M three years ago.

These events are fun because 1) a bunch of dads at a daycare is always a little awkward and 2) K and M are both Black, and they attend a Black-owned daycare that has only Black kids. A few things made me chuckle, and I hope everyone understands I offer these observations with respect for the folks running the facility, love for my nephews, and am mostly making fun of myself.

When I arrived the owner’s husband greeted me at the door. I’m not sure if he got the memo I would be coming because he paused for a moment before letting me in until I introduced myself. Then he was super friendly and thanked me for coming. A few minutes later his wife walked through the room and greeted me by saying, “I remember you,” as she passed by.

That made me laugh to myself. Guessing there aren’t a lot of other relatives like me who come in for special days.

The other dads, grandfathers, uncles rolled in and we sat in stilted silence. I would imagine any of them who pick up their kids/grandkids from the center know my sister-in-law, so weren’t surprised to see a white dude there. But I’m sure a few were curious about my presence.

Before they brought the children over, the owner’s five-year-old wandered in. It was his graduation day and he was dressed up for the occasion. His father asked him, “Have you said hello to the brothers?” The kid then made a circuit around the room, shaking everyone’s hand. He didn’t seem fazed by me and said “Good morning,” as he shook my hand. In my head I was again laughing at the prospect of him skipping me because I wasn’t a brother.

Again, more making fun of myself than my hosts.

K eventually came in and handed me a card he had colored. He looked super tired and not into the events. That’s standard for him. We jokingly say he’s an 80-year-old man trapped in a four-year-old’s body. He gave me a hug and stood next to me silently. I tried a number of questions that he answered sleepily without much enthusiasm. Until I asked him if he heard the storms overnight. That got him going and he told me all about how he heard the thunder, how he stayed in his bed (he did not), how he never goes into his mom’s room (he always goes in there), and on and one. He didn’t stop talking until I left.

The owner’s husband gave a nice little speech about the importance of father figures. He asked us all to say something about what parenthood means to us. The kid ate donuts and ate orange juice.

K and his family stopped by our house Sunday and he was still talking about the orange juice, so it must have been the good stuff. Or maybe my sister-in-law just never gets OJ.

Kid Hoops

L had six games in three days last week.

In the Thursday summer league, CHS played both Lawrence North, who should be a top five team this fall, and Lawrence Central, who went 30–1 last year, won state, and return just about everyone.[1]

There was a rising senior showcase elsewhere in town, so most of the teams were missing their best upperclassmen. LN did not have their stud point guard, but had a perfectly acceptable replacement and most of the rest of their team. We closed the first half on a little 4–0 run and went to halftime down seven. The dad I was sitting with and I felt pretty good about things. Then our girls gave up a 23–1 run in the third quarter. We ended up losing by 23, but fought hard to get it from 32 to 23 in the closing minutes. I thought our girls played hard but were just up against a much better team. L actually felt pretty good after this game.

LC was basically playing their JV. Their best player, who was the Indiana Gatorade player of the year as a junior, and her younger sister were both sitting and watching in street clothes. None of their other varsity starters were even in the building. We started up 11–4 but got sloppy and led by just two at half. The second half was back-and-forth. We trailed by six, got it to two, missed three chances to tie or take the lead in the last 19 seconds, and lost by two. A game we should have won. Even if it was a team full of sophomores and freshmen, it would have been cool to beat the defending state champs.

I don’t think L scored against LN; she had four against LC. She started both games, but two senior starters were gone for either the senior showcase or soccer.

Friday and Saturday we played in a team showcase that college coaches could attend. We saw one coach from Purdue but most were from smaller D1 or lower level schools.

Friday we played a tough 4A team from Fort Wayne. They had two long, athletic wings, a tall shooter, and a 5’11”-ish center who was a joy to watch because of her footwork. They worked us over pretty good and won by 18. L scored four.

Game two was against Jennings County, who just sent a girl to Michigan State but return a very good junior who scored 20+ on us last year. I bet she scored close to 30 Friday. It was actually a really good game. We trailed by nine multiple times but tied it with about three minutes left. L got a rebound, went full court, juked a defender, and then put her floater off the back of the rim. We never had another chance to take the lead and lost by nine, L scoring five.

Saturday the matchups were a little better. We played a semi-rural 3A team to start. Neither team scored for the first four minutes of the game. From there we went on a 33–5 run. We were super sloppy in the second half and only scored like 10 points, but only gave up eight or nine so it was a super comfortable win. L had five.

Our final game was against Norwell, who lost by three in the 3A state title game last spring. They lost seven seniors but were still stacked. They trapped everything, every player was lanky and athletic and aggressive, and they gave us fits for the first two, two-and-a-half quarters of the game. We trailed by eight in the fourth quarter before we finally figured out their pressure and used a 17–2 run to take the lead. We ended up winning by three. Really good way to end a long week. L didn’t play as much in this game because the pressure really bothered her, hitting one long 2 in the first half.

I think the team got better. The coach is figuring some things out about the lineup. I could probably guess our starting lineup and rotation if the real season started this week. I think L would be the first or second person off the bench, depending on what we needed and who the opponent is. She’s also seen what she needs to work on to make sure she gets those minutes after playing against older, bigger, stronger girls for three consecutive days.

US Open

Ugh. I’m glad our dinner with the in-laws coincided with the final 7–8 holes Sunday. Although I did walk in to see Rory McIlroy miss his short putt on 18 that cost him a chance at a playoff. I didn’t realize at the time he had missed a shorter put two holes earlier. Gutting.

I don’t like Bryson, I don’t buy that he’s changed, and some of the clearly PR flack cleared nonsense he was spouting after his win directly contradicts things he’s said before. And it’s patently ridiculous for a grown-ass man to wear the idiotic LIV team logo he has plastered on all his gear. Even with Rory’s meltdown and his disappointing avoidance of the media after, I will perpetually be Team Roars over anyone who has taken the Saudi blood money and claims, with a straight face, to have done so to “grow the game.” Especially when it’s a meathead like Bryson, who has a genuine, amazing gift for golf, but is equally off-putting in his personality and comments. Glad I only watch golf four times a year anymore.

  1. The arch rivals played three times last year. LC won by two in the Marion County tournament, by three in the regular season, and by seven in sectionals after trailing by 14. None of LC’s other wins in the state tournament were closer than 13 points.  ↩

Wednesday Notes

May 29, 2024 /

A few more random notes that didn’t fit into the weekend wrap-up.

Number Three Behind The Wheel

L finally got her learner’s permit today. She had been gung-ho about driving since she was 13, and dove into the driver’s ed self-teaching program when we signed her up back in December. We’ve been taking her across the street to drive around the high school parking lot since last fall.

Then a couple friends, who are smart cookies like her, failed their learner’s permit written test on their first tries. I think that spooked her. And one day when she was out with S, S let L drive her Telluride on one of the most difficult roads on the north side of Indy, Kessler Boulevard. This is a four-lane road that is riddled with potholes, is extremely narrow, there is zero curb, where everyone drives way too fast, and has a brutal double curve that can be frightening to even experienced drivers when it gets busy. C and I both avoid it when we drive to CHS, trading a slightly longer route for not having to deal with Kessler’s headaches. L didn’t wreck, thank goodness, but it freaked her out and she suddenly stopped asking to drive or bringing up going to take her permit test.

Fortunately she finally got past all that, studied this week, and knocked the test out in like six minutes.

Now she goes onto the Ready to Drive list, and hopefully we can get her six in-car sessions scheduled and completed before she goes back to school in August. The school across the street has a 12-week wait, so we signed her up in Carmel which was 3–4 weeks last we heard.

The Electric Company

We’ve had the joy this year of dealing with insane billing issues from our electric company. Late last year they updated their billing system – to serve us better, of course – and the result has been a disaster for some people. They claim only 10% of their customers have been affected, but it has to be more otherwise the issues I’m about to lay out would have been fixed by now.

We do the budget billing plan, paying the same amount each month. That total gets adjusted up or down each June based on our usage over the previous year. For some reason they adjusted ours in February, increasing it by over 50%. Our new monthly amount was 28% higher than our biggest month of usage charge over the past year. A couple weeks later we got an email saying we had been billed incorrectly and a credit would appear on our account. Of course they still took out the incorrect amount, because we are signed up for automatic payments.

The next three months we did not get a bill at all. I kept checking the local media and Reddit, and our company said “a small number of people” were not receiving bills. Others were getting bills that were wildly incorrect. One lady called and they couldn’t find a record that she had made a payment on her account since 1970. She was not close to 54 years old. The company claimed they were working on a fix and were not disconnecting service or charging late fees for customers getting incorrect bills.

Obviously we could have kept paying our monthly amount but given we had zero confidence they wouldn’t apply it incorrectly, we just waited for a new bill.

When we didn’t get a bill again in May, I called the special line set up to handle billing issues. I talked to a lady who could not have been less helpful. She wasn’t rude or anything, she just had zero ability to assist me. It took her five minutes and multiple tries to even find our account. I slowly repeated our account number three times and our address as many times. Despite my name being listed first on our bill, she said I was not on the account and asked if I had S’s permission to access our account. We’re all for challenging traditional gender roles in this house, but I thought that was wild that I was being asked if I had permission from my wife to call about our bill. I thought about telling her that my wife lets me have my own credit card and drive on my own, too.

Eventually she found our account. She couldn’t tell me a damn thing I couldn’t see for myself when I looked at our information online. Her advice: keep checking every few weeks, they were working on a fix.

Uh-huh.

We finally got a bill two weeks later. It charged us for the three months we had not been billed, which is appropriate. What was not appropriate was that they charged us three months at the new, incorrect, budget amount.

So I called the regular customer service line. It literally took eight minutes navigating their phone tree before I finally smashed 0 and was able to speak to a real person. Every other option just played various recordings, most encouraging customers to use the company website to get assistance.

Once connected with a live human, I explained my dilemma: our budget bill went up much higher than our highest actual bill, we never received the credit promised, we didn’t receive a bill for three months, and now we were being charged 3x the incorrect amount.

This lady was very nice. She told me to just pay our old budget amount. She said they were working to fix all these errors, but, “Obviously they haven’t got to yours yet,” she said with a sarcastic chuckle. She said she would flag our account again so it, hopefully, gets reviewed and corrected. I could tell she didn’t have much confidence that would happen. Unlike the other lady, who seemed to just be reading from the script in front of her, this woman was friendly and empathetic. I told her I knew she was probably getting tons of calls about these issues, and appreciated that she actually seemed to care about helping me and was nice about it. I think I made her day. Hell, it’s not her fault her company sucks.

So we’ll see if we get a corrected bill here in the next few weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised it if takes another call or two after that bill comes to get things straightened out.

I normally don’t post on Reddit, but I’ve checked into a couple threads on the local thread chiming in with my experience. Again, it sure seems like more than 10% of customers are affected.

Strangely our state utility board has taken zero action to force the power people to get this straightened out. They even approved a big rate increase in the midst of this. Again, to better serve us, I’m sure.

Bill Walton

I found the varied reactions to Bill Walton’s death very interesting. You either loved his schtick as a broadcaster or you hated it, and that view affected your first thoughts when you learned he had passed.

I did not like his TV style at all. That’s because I’m a super fan that takes sports way too seriously. When I’m watching a KU game, I want descriptions and analysis of what is happening. Not wild asides that have nothing to do with what’s on the court. Nor histrionic statements based on one play rather than an entire body of work. So I loathed the rare times that Walton did a KU game. He distracted from whatever the Jayhawks were doing on the court. In time I learned to keep the TV muted, or the volume barely high enough to catch some crowd noise, if he was on the mic.

As I thought about his life and career, though, I realized he really was a trendsetter. All of these modern, alternate broadcasts, which have reached their peak with the Manningcasts of Monday Night Football, stem from how he called games. “Don’t take these things so seriously,” he seemed to be saying, “they are just games and there are far more important things in life like your relationships with the people you love and how you interact with the planet we call home.” Well, the Mannings and Kevin Harts of the world probably aren’t thinking that deeply, but Walton opened a door for non-traditional broadcasts that people who don’t care about the game turn in to watch.

That’s a much healthier view of sports that I generally take, at least when my teams are involved. It was good that someone was pushing that idea, even if Walton’s technique was maddening.

For all his goofiness and frustrating qualities, the outpouring of love for him after his death has been wonderful to read. He was a truly unique human, and he very much lived the peace and love values his generation espoused in the Sixties. There have been so many examples of him going out of his way to make other people’s lives better in difficult moments, or needling people he cared about with perfectly timed barbs.

Let’s not forget that Walton was a remarkable player who had his career cut short by a series of cruel injuries. He was one of the most dominant college players ever and was on that trajectory in the NBA until his feet and legs started failing him.

I won’t miss avoiding him on ESPN, but I appreciate that he made the world a better place in his 71 years.

Weekend Notes

May 28, 2024 /

A long holiday weekend filled with guests, rain, and fun.

L had a group of girl friends over Friday night. Storms curtailed their pool time but otherwise they kicked off their summer well. Since she spends so much time with basketball girls, it’s always good to get a confirmation that she hangs out with other freshman girls sometimes. Sorry, sophomore girls!

She took me to the gym Monday morning for a shooting workout. She shot the best I’ve ever seen her shoot…until the friendly maintenance guy came over and asked me if I thought the rim was crooked. She had already told me it felt off, but something about him asking got in her head and the second half of her trip around the 3-point arc wasn’t as good as the first 40 minutes of shooting.

M had three UC girls from Ohio stay with us Saturday and Sunday nights.[1] A few local UC kids linked up with them at various points. The group took over our pool Saturday evening. Seemed like good kids and everyone had fun. M enjoyed showing off her hometown. This was the first time I’ve ever bought alcohol for my kid and her friends, which was a little odd. I thought it was funny the Ohio girls all brought drinks of their own but didn’t bring them into the house until they realize we didn’t mind if they drank as long as they stayed at our house once they started.

C ran around with friends a few times over the weekend.

Friday night M, S, and I went to a grad party. Right when we showed up heavy rains made a right turn from the path they were taking and drenched the party for about 30 minutes. Worth noting this was a mostly outdoor party, so that was kind of a bummer. We huddled in the clubhouse during the actual stormy part of the rain, then escaped to squeeze under a tent when it switched to straight rain. I ran into the guy who coached L’s St. P’s team her 8th grade year and we caught up a bit. Also saw one of the people somewhat responsible for S and I meeting 24 years ago, who was down from Michigan for the party.

It being Memorial Day weekend in Indy, the Indianapolis 500 dominated events. For a week we knew the weather would be a problem. Sure enough, just before the race was scheduled to start severe storms blew through central Indiana. We knew a lot of people at the race and apparently it was a lot of fun to go sit in cars or squeeze into shelters for the 90 or so minutes it took the storms to pass through. The four-hour delay turned an already long day into a monumental investment in time. We know people who got to the track around 6:00 AM and didn’t get home until close to midnight. That sounds horrible to me, terrific race or not.

The bonus of the storms, and the window of clear weather that followed, was that the IMS decided to waive the local TV blackout. So when the green flag dropped at 4:45, we were able to watch live for only the third time since I moved here.[2]

What a great race! Or at least the last ten laps. The last lap specifically. Two passes between winner Josef Newgarden and runner up Pato O’Ward in the final trip around the track was a lot of fun. The UC visitors were watching with us, and the Ohio girls were enthralled by the finish.

Monday we had our family gathering, with most of the locals present. I had two grills going to feed everyone. It was also the 8th birthday for one of our nephews, so there was cake and presents. Another round of storms came through late Sunday/early Monday and made it a blustery and cooler day. I cranked up the pool heater and the nephews didn’t seem to mind, although none of the parents or our girls got into the pool with them.

I had a moment over the weekend when I had some longing for old school holiday weekends, when your favorite radio station had a Block Party Weekend, or some other gimmick to get people to tune in. I remember an All Eighties Weekend around July 4 in the late 90s, which seemed like such a crazy idea. Imagine playing nothing but 80s music!!! It seemed like everywhere we went that weekend, people our age had that station on and we talked about how great the selections were.

Anyway, I realized that The Bridge, the eclectic KC radio station I stream sometimes, was doing a block party deal, and the iHeart Radio AT40 station was playing a marathon of year-end countdowns. I’m sure other outlets had gimmicks, too. The problem is me, and how I just don’t listen to any radio feeds for more than when I’m making/eating lunch or dinner or otherwise hanging in the kitchen. Otherwise it is all streaming playlists I have made myself, or whatever new album I’m spinning on Spotify.

Pacers…man, what a disappointing week. They had game one locked up until Tyrese Haliburton made a horrible, unforced turnover, Rick Carlisle failed to call a timeout to advance the ball which led to an awful turnover which led to an unforgivable defensive lapse that led to Jaylon Brown sending the game to overtime with a corner three. And still the Pacers had a chance, until Haliburton again sucked in the final minute of OT.

Then in game two, they were hanging in there, battling, down just four in the second half. I left to help S do a few things to get ready for weekend guests. I was away from the TV for maybe five minutes. When I came back the Celtics were up 15, Haliburton was in the locker room injured, and Pascal Siakam, who had been torching the C’s, was on the bench with the rest of the starters.

Game three, again, was right in the Pacers’ hands. Even without Haliburton, who re-aggravated his hamstring injury that derailed the second half of his season, the Pacers built an 18-point second half lead. They blew the entire thing, losing by three. They became the first team in the last 25 years to lead two NBA playoff games by five in the last two minutes and lose each. They became the first NBA team to ever shoot over 51% in the first three games and lose them all.

Last night’s collapse to give the C’s the sweep was inevitable. The Pacers failed to score a point in the final 3:33 and again lost by three.

The Celtics are clearly the better team. The Pacers lost their best player seven quarters into the series. Yet they could have easily been up 3–1 this morning, headed back to Boston. This team is so flawed on the defensive end and on the boards, yet they are so good offensively they still almost make up for it against maybe the best team in the league. If I was a Boston fan, I’d be worried that my team couldn’t put away a team that was missing their star and plays defense like the entire team has five fouls and don’t want to pick up their sixth.

Great, fun season, though. If Haliburton hadn’t gotten hurt in January, maybe they are higher in the playoff seeding. But that would have robbed us of the dramatic wins over the Bucks and Knicks to get to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Fingers crossed they re-sign Siakam. There is a ton of talent on the wing. Is Ben Mathurin the perfect third cog with Haliburton and Siakam? Maybe they move a couple of those guys to both clear playing time and find another solid defender/rebounder. Maybe rookie Jarace Walker is ready to contribute next year, as he seems perfectly designed to fill that role. They really need another big body. They don’t have a first round pick but do have three second round picks to play with. Should be an interesting summer for a team on the rise.

  1. One from outside Cleveland, one from Dayton, one from Cincinnati.  ↩

  2. The other two times were the 100th running, which was sold out months in advance, and the delayed 2020 race that had no one in the stands due to Covid.  ↩

Weekend Notes

May 13, 2024 /

A nice weekend here in Indy. I know eventually it will come back to bite us in the ass, but this is like the fifth or sixth straight season here that has been terrific. It got warm early but didn’t turn into summer in April. We’ve had a few cooldowns but none of those surprise weeks when you go from shorts and tees to coats and hats again. All that after a mild winter, a normal fall, a terrific summer, another nice spring, and I believe a relatively warm winter a year ago. Mother Nature is loading up for something big.

The pool has been open since Monday and by Friday the water was both warm and filtered enough to get in. L had friends over Friday night, and after spending the night they hung around to swim Saturday. We hosted S’s dad and stepmom for dinner Saturday night. Sunday we hung out around the pool, with two of the local nephews coming over to get their first swims of the year in.

Kid Props

I mentioned Friday that I had to attend a function Friday morning. I went into school early with L to attend the Blessed Basil Moreau awards ceremony. We knew she would receive an award. We were not told what it was for or who had nominated her when we got the invitation.

When we arrived her religion teacher, Mrs. K, strolled over and sat with us. She had both M and C in her classes, so we chatted a bit about them.

The ceremony began and Mrs. K went to the podium and asked L to join her. She said a series of nice things about L’s attitude, leadership, and dedication. She said L was the kind of kid you wished you had 24 more of in class. She then shared a specific example of L’s behavior.

One day L saw one of her friends getting picked on in class. L didn’t think that was right, so she went and sat with her friend, calmed her down, got her back on track, and after class let Mrs. K know about the situation.

That all sounded pretty good.

After the ceremony I asked for the whole story.

“It was T,” she said, referring to a basketball teammate who is autistic and has been targeted by a few mean girls this year. “This little bitch was picking on her because she knows T won’t say anything back to her. So I went over and shut that shit down.”

Even prouder, especially for how she related what happened! Of course, if Mrs. K had heard that version she might not have nominated L for the award!

Now L is a part of the Holy Cross council at CHS. Not sure exactly what that entails but she acted mock put out about it. “More meetings,” she sighed.

As a parent you hope that your kids have a strong set of core values and that they will speak up when those values are violated. One of the things I am most proud of is that our girls do exactly that. When they see friends in need, they help them. They all, to a certain extent, are wiling to confront people who they think are being assholes.

It’s one thing to convey these lessons to your kids. It’s another for them to have the strength to stand up for their values when presented with an opportunity. Our girls aren’t perfect, but it gives me immense satisfaction that my primary job for the last 20 years has not been in vain.

Pacers

I was pretty pissed after the first two games of the Pacers-Knicks series. Yes, there were a lot of bad calls, most of which seemed to go against the Pacers. I mean, how do referees get kicked ball calls wrong against the same team, in clutch moments, in two straight games? And how do they claim they can’t correct an incorrect call one night, when it goes against the Pacers, then stop the game to huddle up and correct an incorrect call two nights later when it allows the Knicks to keep the ball in the final two minutes of a close game?

But, let’s be honest: bad calls or not, the Pacers lost the first two games because they couldn’t block out on the boards or stay in front of anyone on defense. They reverted to December Pacers ball, thinking they could just score 150 and win by two. That shit doesn’t work in the playoffs. At least not usually.

After two games in Indy, though?

WHOOOOO DOCTOR, WE’VE GOT A SERIES!!!!

An incredibly frustrating and tense game Friday, with the Pacers jumping out early, giving the lead up, getting another cushion just after halftime, then not only blowing that but finding themselves down nine points with nine minutes to play. Were they going to get swept? They righted the ship, made some big plays, and Andrew Nembhard threw in a prayer of a 3 with 17 seconds left to break the final tie.

The Knicks are about as banged up as you can be so there was no reason for this game to be close. Yet the Pacers’ refusal to even pretend to play defense killed them.

Sunday all that switched. The Knicks looked injured, tired, and short-handed. The Pacers defense was nearly as good as their offense. The lead was 20 points in the first quarter. It was around 40 points much of the third quarter. The fourth quarter was one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen in the NBA: both teams cleared their benches early and just let those cats roll for 12 minutes. It was not scintillating basketball. Pacers fans didn’t care.

Two-two, going back to New York.

You figure there’s going to be a huge swing after game four. The Knicks can’t play that poorly again, can they? The Pacers can’t play that good on the road, right? It feels like this series is going seven, unless either Tyrese Haliburton’s or Jalen Brunson’s bodies completely fail on them and their teams are forced to play without them.

Northern Lights

We missed them here. Friday evening it was mostly cloudy in our part of Indy. I walked outside several times between 10 and midnight but never had a clear view of the sky. Where the low level clouds had gaps, higher clouds were reflecting the ground light and preventing any glimpses of the colors. I saw great pictures that people got not too far from our home, so had I hopped in the car and driven even 20 minutes I could have seen the spectacular views on my own.

But it was late, I was fired up after the Pacers game, and had drank a beer. Bad combos for an old man. Probably best to stay at home.

Saturday our skies were crystal clear but the lights weren’t as intense in our part of the state. Again, I could have taken a drive but M and one of her friends tried that without success so I stayed home.

Bummer. I’ve never seen the Northern Lights in person and this weekend’s show seems like it was one of the best in memory. Seeing them would have been a nice companion to watching the eclipse last month.

Blog Archives

For some reason I got out of my routine of reading through my posts from 20 years ago in February. This weekend I caught up on three months of blogging from 2004. It was fun to read through a lot of pregnancy posts. I was surprised how much I wrote about American Idol and The Bachelor. That was the one spring I watched both of those shows.

Anyway, if you’re ever really bored, a reminder that I have nearly 21 years of archives you can read through. Could be good for nights you can’t sleep. Probably better than white noise for easing you into a slumber.

Weekend Notes

April 29, 2024 /

Some quick weekend notes. I’m going to try to really let the content flow this week. So be prepared either to read a lot or be disappointed if I only crank out a couple posts.

Home For The Summer

I went down to Cincinnati Friday morning to pack up M for the summer. She had called me Thursday night to let me know that in addition to being the day a lot of the dorm kids were leaving, UC was hosting two big graduation events Friday.

Urban campus + limited parking + people moving out of dorms + thousands of extra people on campus for graduation = ???

It ended up being not as bad as I feared. I thought I was going to have to park well away from her dorm and then we’d have to huff it several blocks to drag all her crap to the car. Right when I got to the front of her dorm, though, a police officer directed me to a spot right across the street. He even held traffic so I could spin around and pull in! The only downside was once we were done, we had to wait about 20 minutes for traffic to clear to get out of our spot. But at least we didn’t have to walk blocks.

Move-out was pretty easy. Her roommate had gone home the previous weekend, and I had taken a load of stuff home from L’s basketball games last week, so her room was fairly empty. Thursday night S suggested I take her Telluride so I had plenty of room to load everything. I scoffed at that, saying she didn’t realize how much cargo space the Model Y has. I admit there was a moment Friday when I wasn’t convinced we were going to squeeze everything in. But we managed.

We stopped for her last lunch in Ohio for four months then headed home.

She’s been submitting job applications online for several weeks without any bites. She was scheduled for jury duty starting today. When she called last night to get her status, she was cleared. So her task for this week is to complete some applications in person. S gave me instructions not to complete getting M a car until she’s got a job. I told her C has first dibs on the Mazda if we don’t have a fourth car when the Audi goes back, so hopefully that lights a fire under her ass. She already helped one of her aunts do some stuff, but she needs a real job.

She was the first of her high school friends to get home for the summer. A friend who goes to Pepperdine got home Saturday night. One who went to the College of Charleston arrived Sunday. The bulk of the kids who went to public schools will trickle in over the next 10 days.

Strangely, as we were waiting for traffic to clear Friday, I got notifications from CHS that both C and L had earned High Honors for the year. With a month of school left. Bizarre. Not sure if this was an error and was supposed to just cover the third quarter. The certificates in the emails clearly noted the entire academic year. We told them this doesn’t mean they can slack off for the last month.

Pacers

What a weekend!

Friday night’s game three could not have been more exciting. The Pacers jumped out to an early 19-point lead, hitting just about everything they shot. They were up 12 at the half before a 5–0 run extended that to back to 17. The Bucks methodically sliced into that margin, finally taking the lead late in the fourth quarter. Some back-and-forth, including a ridiculous Khris Middleton shot to send the game to overtime. Another crazy Middleton 3 with about five seconds left in OT tied it again. Then Tyrese Haliburton torched Patrick Beverly for the game-winning shot.

Sunday, no Dame Lillard, Beverly got injured early, and Bobby Portis was ejected in the first half. Yet the Bucks played their asses off and stayed in it until a couple huge Pacers runs after halftime broke the game open. Even then, the Bucks trimmed a 17-point lead to six at one point. Myles Turner might have played his two best games as a Pacer over the weekend to key the wins. And now the Pacers are one win away from advancing, with both Giannis’ and Dame’s status in doubt going forward.

HS Hoops

L didn’t have any games this weekend. But she did go to the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony with several of her teammates Saturday to watch their head coach get put into the hall. That was kind of cool. L and her teammates all snuck out after about 90 minutes as there were A LOT of speeches and they were more interested in doing silly high school girl stuff than listen to old people talk.

Weather

Man, it suddenly got really nice. We kicked the air on Sunday because it was warm and muggy. The forecast ahead looks great. We are opening the pool next Monday. I probably should have scheduled that a week earlier.

Weekend Notes

April 22, 2024 /

A super busy weekend, with plenty of time in the car.

Kid Hoops

L had her first, big, out-of-town tournament as a high schooler in Cincinnati. It was a three-day deal, and we had booked two nights in a hotel. Then we got the schedule which had our first game at 12:30 Friday and our second at 6:30 Saturday night. Our team agreed it was easier to drive back-and-forth than try to kill approximately 30 hours between games.

So we headed down Friday morning, played, ran to UC and had lunch with M and grabbed a bunch of her stuff to move home, and headed back to Indy. Saturday afternoon we returned to the Queen City, checked into our hotel, and got to the gym for two evening games.

The hoops were decent. We went 2–2, three of the games were very close, which made it fun.

We won our first game 50–9, starting the game on a 19–2 run. That was a far cry from our first travel tournament two years ago when we lost by approximately the same score.

Saturday we fell behind by 14 in the first half of our first game. We steadily worked our way back into the game and tied it with just under a minute left. But we gave up an and-one, couldn’t get a shot, and the game seemed to be over. I was talking to a dad next to me when we somehow picked off an entry pass, threw the ball ahead, and got an open-look from 3 to tie. It rimmed out and we lost by 3. Good game, though.

Our second game Saturday was against a team that beat the girls we beat Friday by four, so we figured we had this one in the bag. Jinx! We gave up a 9–0 run to start the game, and the girls kept trying to make the 6–8 point play to erase most of the deficit in one shot. We finally answered with a 7–0 run but were still down five at the half.

We started the second half much better and finally took the lead about four minutes in. We stretched that out to a seven-point margin and seemed to have the game in hand. Cue the 8–0 run by the other girls. Fortunately we rallied again and held on to win by four.

Then Sunday we had a single game. This was a “live” event for recruiting, so there was no bracket play. This one was good, too. It was against a team we beat by one in Indy while we were on spring break. We did our usual dig a hole early thing and played from behind all day. Never more than five points down, but each time we got it to one or two, we couldn’t get over the top. I believe we took the lead once briefly in the second half, but couldn’t stretch it out. We had it tied twice in the final 90 seconds but never had the ball with a chance to lead. We ended up losing by two.

Both the parents and kids agreed at our post-game meal that even though we lost two of them, we much prefer these close games. L told me she thinks it makes her better because she has to stay focused. And while it’s more tense, it is a lot more interesting to care about the result until the final buzzer.

L played decent. She didn’t score much, only eight total points for the weekend. She did have 13 rebounds and seven assists with just 3 turnovers. In that last game, especially, she was great moving the ball and playing defense. She got isolated in the post against a big girl on one possession and did a terrific job battling, making the girl pass out twice before she finally took a bad shot and L got the board. Her jumper still is a mess so she was reluctant to take any. In the last game she also had two beautiful drives she couldn’t finish, which would have helped in a two-point game. And her biggest mistake was in the last game when she got caught on a screen and bumped a 3-point shooter as she tried to fight through. That girl hit two of three free throws which, again, were kind of important. That was my one coaching point for the weekend: when you get caught on those screens, you have to let the shooter go because the refs will always call that foul when you try to block them from behind.

I took over reserving the team hotel rooms this year, in hopes of avoiding some of the bad places we got last year. This tournament is “stay to play,” meaning you are supposed to use the official travel site to book your rooms and do so only at hotels on the list. Even though we booked in February, all the decent hotels were taken, so I booked at a Quality Inn that seemed to be in a good area and got good reviews.

Well, it wasn’t as bad as the hotel we stayed at last year that literally had people doing crack near the dumpsters, but it wasn’t great either. I don’t think it had been renovated in 40 years. The entire place smelled like a combination of weed and Indian food. The girls found what they claimed to be a heroin needle outside. L said she heard people fighting in the hall in the middle of the night, which I somehow slept through despite not sleeping very well. For the after-game hang, we went to the much nicer hotel across the street where two teammates who booked late were staying.

So not great. But our room was clean and we only stayed one night. I have another iffy place lined up for our next trip to Louisville next month. Fingers crossed…

This whole Stay to Play thing is such a scam. I think the majority of the time they don’t really care where you stay, especially for a team at our level. But as travel organizer I didn’t want us to get denied entry because we couldn’t prove we’re in an approved hotel. And I wanted us to be less than 20 minutes from the buildings we are playing in plus stay for a reasonable rate since our families are spread across a fairly wide swath of the economic spectrum. Feels like you have to come up short in at least one of those three areas – quality of hotel, location, or price – to find a hotel at these big tournaments.

Prom

While I was doing the Good Dad thing and watching my youngest kid play basketball out-of-town, I was missing my middle kid’s prom night. Which I think qualifies as a Bad Dad thing, right? 😬

Fortunately things seemed to go fairly well here for C on her big night. She had a date who is just a friend, which ended up being a good thing because he acted like a bit of a douche from what I was told. There was some stress getting ready, which is almost required on prom night, right? But she recovered and it was like a 98% great night. Good weather, she avoided the assholes she wanted to avoid and most of her friends got through the night without drama.

When we were at lunch with M on Friday she said C had told her she just wanted it to all be over. That’s the sad thing about events like prom: there’s so much prep and pressure on the night that it can be hard for kids to relax and actually enjoy the evening because they are so wound up about 50 different things.

Pacers

Yeesh. After a week of hearing almost every national writer pick the Pacers to upset the Bucks, mostly due to Giannis being unavailable for at least the beginning of the series, the Pacers clearly were not ready for the big lights of the playoffs. It was like a five point game when I muted it when C came down to tell me her prom details. Next thing I knew the Bucks were up by 20 and Dame Lillard was hitting everything. That’s not the way to start a series at all. The Pacers looked like a team that hadn’t been in the playoffs in four years. The Bucks looked like a team that was laser-focused on erasing all the negativity and mediocrity of their regular season. It’s only one game of seven, but the Pacers at least needed to be competitive in game one.

Tyrese Haliburton continues to look like a shell of the player he was pre-injury. This might be the most destructive hamstring pull in NBA history. I believe the Pacers missed their first 14 3-pointers. We’ll see if Rick Carlisle can get this shit fixed for game two.

PJ

Hey, that new Pearl Jam album is, indeed, very good!

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