D's Notebook

Tag: holidays (Page 2 of 19)

Labor Day Weekend Notes

September 5, 2023 /

It wasn’t that long ago when Labor Day weekends were big, involved deals for us. When we were lake house owners, that would always be the last blowout of the year. Lots of friends or family down for two final days of floating, swimming, boating and fun.

We’ve backed off that pace quite a bit and these weekends are much more laid back. We did have some friends over Sunday evening. I spent about 10 hours smoking a pork shoulder which turned out well. I may have had a beer or two too many, though, and Monday morning was a struggle. Sadly that “beer or two too many” limit comes a lot quicker than it used to.

Here’s what else went on during our final weekend of the summer.

HS Football

It was a PERFECT night for football as Class 6A #6 Cathedral pounded #9 Penn 35–6 Friday. The Irish were up 35–0 at halftime and all the starters sat out the second half. The fourth or fifth string let in a long, impressive touchdown run late in the fourth quarter to ruin the shutout.

This is homecoming week with big rival, Class 3A #1 Bishop Chatard on the schedule.

KU Football

My first point, one I will repeat next week, is that playing a college football game on a Friday night is generally stupid. When you are a program that has struggled to be successful and generate fan interest for over a decade, it is super dumb. So big thumbs down to KU for deciding to play the first two games of the season on Friday nights. Sounds like they had a decent crowd last week, but I bet playing on the night when almost every high school in the state was also playing cost them a few thousand more asses in the seats.

I didn’t get to check the score until halftime of the CHS game, when it was tied at 7-all late in the first quarter. That alone confirmed that Jalon Daniels was not playing.

I was able to listen to the first drive of the second half – a KU touchdown – and then watch the rest of the second half. Obviously I was the key as the team shook off some inconsistent play and did what you’re supposed to do to FCS teams. It was just a few years back when KU was losing these games, so a 31-point win without the starting QB was just fine.

As I only saw part of the game, I won’t offer any assessments.

College Football

OK, we all owe Deion an apology, right? I mean all of you who doubted him. Because I, of course, did not. I believed he would turn Colorado around immediately. Never had a single question.

It was good to have a full slate of games, even if I spent four hours of the day in the car between here and Cincinnati. More on that in a moment…

Auto Update

My appointment to get an estimate on the girls’ car was last Thursday. My big fear was that they would need to open the back tailgate to assess the damage, not be able to get it shut, and we would lose the car because of that.

Turns out that shouldn’t have been my worry.

They crawled underneath the vehicle, looked for about five minutes, and told me the impact bar was compromised and the car was no longer drivable if we wanted insurance to cover the repairs.

Great.

I already got an initial estimate but the car is supposed to be disassembled today for a full inspection, so I guess we’ll see. Turns out the other kid’s family’s insurance company uses the same body shop as one of their preferred vendors, so hopefully no issues getting payment hammered out. The shop told me Mazda parts aren’t too difficult to find, and ballparked it at 2–3 weeks for repairs.

All that means I’m back on the school driving grind for awhile. The only bonus to that is I get to sleep an extra half hour since I don’t have to wake C up as early as when she drives.

A Weekend Visitor

As for that trip to Cincinnati, last Wednesday M texted us and said she had looked at her schedule of sorority events and realized this was the last weekend she had a chance to come home for awhile. The catch was that while she did not have a ticket to the Bearcats’ season opener Saturday, she did want to hang around for “tailgating and fun,” which I thought was a hilarious way to put it. She asked if we could pick her up late afternoon to bring her back for a quick visit. We didn’t have anything on our calendar, so we said of course.

I drove down and picked her up around 5:00. I checked the UC score when I parked and they were up on Eastern Kentucky something like 45–7 just before halftime. It was very hot in Cincinnati and people were already streaming out of the stadium to return to tailgates or just get out of the sun with the game firmly in control.

Long-time readers with great memories may recall the years I picked M up from CYO camp, when she would talk nonstop for the entire 90-minute drive home telling me every detail of her week away. This time she had three weeks of material and talked the entire two hours home. I didn’t mind.

She seems to be doing well. Classes aren’t too hard. She and her roommate are getting along great. She really likes the girls in her sorority. She’s made a co-ed friend group in the dorm.

The only bummer was she found a fraudulent charge on her debit card a week ago. Fortunately it was for only $2.00 and the bank reimbursed her. Glad she has learned the lesson that it’s a good idea to check your account frequently before a single bad charge can turn into a bunch of them that wipe out her balance. She’s been able to manage between Venmo and the balance on her Bearcat Card. Hopefully her new debit card will arrive this week.

Friends who have already been through this will likely agree with me, but one of the greatest sounds you will ever hear as a parent is when your college student comes home and she and her siblings are all upstairs, screaming and laughing together.

She saw one friend while she was home, did some laundry, took some naps, and hung out with us. Pretty low key.

S took her back on Monday afternoon. It was a quick but good visit.

As of now we aren’t scheduled to see her again until Family Weekend in late October, although I may go down for a football game earlier in October.

Weekend Notes

July 5, 2023 /

A lot to get caught up on after a long holiday weekend.

July 4th

Our standard family pool party for the Fourth of July. Almost all the locals were over for a daytime gathering. I smoked rather than grilled burgers for the first time and they turned out pretty good. All the young ones were well behaved, and it seems like both generations of sisters got along for the day, too.

We had neighbors over for drinks in the evening after the family had cleared out. No driveway fireworks this year.

Kid Hoops

Thursday was the last night of summer league games. CHS played a team they lost to by six earlier in June, and both coaches agreed to stack their rosters so that it was a true A game. Which got L excited.

She played pretty well in an eight-point loss. She hit a shot right before halftime to give us a 20–19 lead. But we were on the wrong side of a 9–2 run to start the third quarter that was pretty much the game. L was not on the court for any of that run. When she played, it was an even ballgame. When she sat, our offense bogged down and the defense was disconnected.

She scored six for the night on 3–4 shooting, and had a rebound, an assist, a steal, and a turnover.

She wasn’t super pleased with her play afterward, but I told her about my rough +/- numbers and how I saw her affect the game. There are definitely girls better than her on the team. There are girls with more potential or who are better than her in individual aspects of the game. But of the girls in the 20-ish player pool the JV teams pulled from this summer, no one organizes the game better than her.

Her first summer of high school hoops was a success. She fit in, she got more confident as the season progressed, was high scorer in at least two games, earned the coaches’ trust, and most importantly, she made some new, good friends. I’m excited to see how she improves once fall practice kicks off.

Not much rest for her. The travel team goes to St. Louis Friday for a tournament.

Over the weekend we went to the Y to shoot three times. She came up with a new workout that required her to make 300 shots. Mid-range, floaters, and 3’s. Off-the-catch and off-the-dribble. Lots of free throws. It took roughly an hour to get through it each day. I worked up a good sweat rebounding and passing.

Weather/Power

What a weird weather week.

We began with a terrible bout with the Canadian wild fire smoke. A couple times we had the worst air quality of any city in the US. Wednesday morning we were up to #2 in the world. Never say that Indianapolis can’t compete on the world stage!

It was much worse than our first run with the smoke a month ago. Two days the sky resembled the winter sky right before a big snow storm. Those days we couldn’t even see the sun, let alone take eerie pictures of its light refracted by the smoke. There was also a strange, metallic smell to the air.

Then Thursday a Derecho storm blew through with winds over 70 MPH. Our power went off at 3:57 and did not come back on until 3:00 Saturday afternoon. We filled up coolers with ice and transported our important items from the freezer to a relative’s home, but lost pretty much everything else from our fridges and freezers. S said it was time to replace a lot of our condiments anyway. Our house got pretty toasty each afternoon, but at least our basement remained cool. It was completely comfortable sleeping down there.

At one point nearly 80,000 people in Indianapolis were without power. I was obsessively checking the outage map and watched it slowly tick down a few thousand at a time, only for it to shoot back up after more, if less intense, storms came through both Friday night and Saturday morning.

When our power came back on there were still around 20,000 people in the city without power. I think most of them were back up and running by Sunday evening.

We had zero damage at our house. The neighbors to either side of us kept their power. It was just a thin row of 7–8 houses behind us that all come off the same line that got knocked out. Obviously the big downside of living in an area with tons of old trees and old power lines.

The big surprise was that our pool survived without turning bad. I was worried that sitting in the heat, covered, with zero circulation or filtration would be a recipe for stuff to grow quickly. It has turned cloudy in less time before. But Saturday night it was clear and tested out fine. I shocked it and ran the pump a little higher than normal and it was fine to swim in on Sunday.

In a related note, our refrigerators are very clean and organized.

Taylor Swift

I mentioned in Friday’s playlist that M was off to Cincy to watch Taylor Swift perform. She said the show was awesome.

M just got her tickets a week before the show. She received a text saying that some new tickets had been released. She was worried it was a scam, but noticed the message came from the same number her other Ticketmaster texts came from, so she decided to quickly buy two tickets and hope they were legit. She messaged some friends and they asked if she could try to get two more. The link indeed worked again so she bought four total tickets at face value 10 days before the show. She checked the secondary market and seats in her section were going for more than $2000. Pretty crazy. She was in the lower level in the Bengals stadium, with a great view of the main stage.

The grandparents of one of the friends that went with her live in Cincy, so the girls stayed at their house. The grandfather also met them near the stadium so M could park in a good spot hours before the show, took them to his house to drop their stuff, then back to the stadium. She’s living right these days.

Just a nice bonus this trip allowed her to miss out on about 24 hours of our power outage.

Football Recruiting

I will not address KU football recruiting until December.

Home States

Finally, not only did I just pass my 20th wedding anniversary and my 20th blogging anniversary, but also marked my 20th year living in Indiana. A few years ago I went through the exercise of figuring out how long I spent in each of the four states I lived in.

That was harder than you would think because of the college years, splitting time between two states. I decided to give Kansas ¾ credit for my first three years at KU, then full credit for the last couple after I gained residency and stayed there most of the summers. I’m not sure if that works out exactly right, but it seemed close and fair.

Anyway, my 20th year in Indiana means I’ve officially lived here longer than any other state. That still doesn’t sound right. My current tally looks like this:

Indiana 20 years
Missouri 19 years
Kansas 12 years
California 1 year

Holiday Weekend Notes

May 30, 2023 /

It was a very busy, extra long, extra special holiday weekend. Let’s get into the details.

Thursday

L’s next-to-last day of middle school. She begged us to host the annual 8th grade pool party. After weeks of badgering us we relented. Not sure I would have said yes if her class was bigger, but only 28 kids seemed manageable.

Everyone was well-behaved, they all got picked up on time, and I felt bad for secretly hoping it would storm and cancel the event.[1]

Afterward six of her closest girlfriends spent the night. I think they were all wiped out from swimming so crashed pretty early.

S and I also went to the open house for one of M’s closest friends that evening.

Friday

Our family’s last day at St P’s! After 13 years we are done. Looking forward to stopping that monthly contribution. Not that that balances out college tuition.

I was shocked that L and her sleepover pals were all awake and dressed when I got up at 6:45. I fully expected to need to send S down to get the girls moving.

L’s last day went well. The 8th graders always have a walkout about 15 minutes before school ends. The rest of the students line the hallways, the 8th graders stroll through them to cheers and hugs, and then everyone stands around hugging and crying until it’s time to go.

Way less tears in L’s class than either of her sisters’ classes. Way less standing around and hugging. As I recall from both M’s and C’s classes, the school administrators are always gently pushing people to their cars when it is time for the gates to open. Not L’s class, or at least L. She stood around for a few minutes, then looked at me and said, “OK, let’s go.”

Easiest last day ever!

They graduate tonight (Tuesday).

Friday was also C’s last day of the year. She just had to turn a couple projects in before CHS dismissed at 12:20. She brought some girls home and had a big sleepover of her own.

That evening S, M, and I went to the folks hosting M’s big, three-girl open house in a few weeks for dinner and planning.

Yes, if you’re paying close attention, we let both L and C have a bunch of girls over and left the house, with only another sister to keep an eye on them. As far as we know there were no parties or boys invited over in our absence.

Saturday

A relatively quiet day, although this was day one of prep for our family/close friends open house for M on Monday.

Sunday

This is when the stress really kicked in for party prep. An entire day of cleaning, organizing, testing different strategies for how to display her stuff, shopping, etc.

L and I also ran over to the YMCA so she could get some shots up. Something was wrong with my back which made rebounding and getting a hand up in her face very difficult. That night I was in pretty intense pain. Normally I know when I do something to my back and that pain is coming. This time I had no memory of doing anything to it, which is a little concerning. The pain is finally fading Tuesday morning.

Also…race day! While doing party prep around the house we did the Indy resident tradition of listening to the race on the radio. Sounded like it was a good one. I fell asleep watching the replay Sunday night and haven’t gone back yet to watch the final 15 laps, which were some of the craziest I can recall in an Indy 500.

Monday

Open House day had finally arrived. Which meant the stress went to its highest possible level. We were still getting things organized when people started arriving, which is always fun.[2] My sister-in-law made an amazing grazing table for the main food feature.

Again this was mostly family and close friends, where the bigger party in a a couple weeks will be more about M’s friends. The nephews all got to swim. It was very warm, pushing hot, but still a nice day to be outside.

It was good to break M’s celebration into two groups. We have a big house with a big yard, but it doesn’t really feel setup for having 100-ish people wandering around. I think we had around 50 people over Sunday, but never more than 30–35 at a time. Which seemed perfect for getting to at least say hello and have a quick conversation with everyone. I also didn’t have to worry about people falling into the pool because so many people were milling about.

Oh, a story about pools at grad parties. The kid M went to prom with had his party last week. S and I did not go since we only casually know the parents. Day of their party they opened their pool to be greeted by green water. So they poured 16 gallons of pool shock into it in hopes of killing off whatever was polluting it.[3] That worked; the water was blue by party time. But also highly toxic. The parents spent all night telling people “DO NOT GET IN THE WATER!” Which was a pain because there were a ton of people there, and they were crowded very close to the pool.

We had blue, swimmable water for our party, thank goodness. I definitely watched my chemical levels a little closer than normal and ran the pump a little higher than normal in advance of our gathering.

M was pleased with how everything went, which is kind of the key.

And now it is summer. M has been out trying to find a job to supplement her weekend cooking gig. C really needs to get off her ass and find one soon if she wants to avoid the wrath of her parents. L has a couple days off before summer school orientation Friday, then begins classes next Monday. She is taking health and gym, so will be on campus all day. She also has high school basketball workouts on Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday mornings, and will likely be playing in games on Thursday nights. Kid is going to be tired for the next four weeks.

  1. Because of the holiday weekend and people leaving town, then graduation on Tuesday, we had one day to try to get the party in.  ↩
  2. They were arriving on time, we were just way behind schedule.  ↩
  3. For you non-pool owners, 16 gallons of liquid chlorinator is A LOT. I’ve never poured more than four gallons in at once, although I did put eight gallons in over the course of a day when we had cloudy water once.  ↩

Holiday Weekend Notes

April 10, 2023 /

A pretty good Easter weekend in our house.

Family Weekend

As happens when your kids are in Catholic schools, it was an extra-long weekend. CHS had a four-day weekend, while St P’s had early dismissal Friday and were out for Easter Monday.

Throw in C being home sick and L having her annual school service day on Thursday and it was even longer.

C has the “Punta Plague,” as M is calling it. It should be no shock that a big chunk of CHS came back from spring break sick. It took a couple days to reach her but has kind of wiped her out. She may have had Covid in the front, had a stomach bug in the middle, which may have been associated with strep that came on in the backside.

When we asked M if there were a lot of kids out sick last week her response was, “Bro, the entire school is sick.” Love it when she talks to me like I’m an idiot. She’s been coughing like a smoker but has no other ailments.

I guess that’s what mass travel in the post-pandemic age will be like: we all act like old people after a cruise and get sick for a week or so upon our return.

Like I’ve done every year, I volunteered to assist on the St P’s service day. That has usually meant going to some kind of donation center and sorting things, since there’s only so much these places can ask large groups of kids to do. Which really means I do a bunch of sorting while making sure the kids don’t do anything stupid.

This year L’s group got sent to an adoption center that had just changed locations and were tasked with organizing several rooms that were filled with donations. That was a bonus as there were a lot of diapers, wipes, lotions, bath soaps, etc that had that good, clean baby smell. And most of the clothes we sorted were either new or at least washed if used. Which made it a pretty pleasant experience, and far different from the year we dug through huge bins of donated items and found fun stuff like dirty diapers, broken glass, animal waste, porn, and drug paraphernalia.

Our kids weren’t super focused but they did more work in the four hours we were there than the lady running the place expected, so they left a good impression.

I got a hug from the St P’s teacher who organizes this day since it is my last time assisting. We joked that if she needed extra help next year she was going to reach out to me.

Saturday we spent the day getting the house ready for hosting our family Easter gathering. I decided the pool cover looked filthy after collecting crap for five months and spent nearly four hours cleaning it. For some reason I always forget how long that takes. I think my brain blacks out the memories.

When I was done I opened up the cover to do a quick inspection and get a head start on cleaning out the leaves and worms that worked their way in since October. There was a large frog/toad floating in the water. I tried to scoop him up and it slowly tried to evade me. I think the water was so cold it was still semi-hibernating. I got him into the net and when it looked like he was going to hop out, I flung him lacrosse-style about 30 feet to the grass. Not sure if he survived his flight or not.

Easter Day was super nice here. Sunny, pushing 70. Nearly perfect. We bought some pulled pork and I smoked a couple chickens to go along with.

We had 22 people in all. A very good meal, between the stuff we bought and made and all the contributions from the rest of the family. The five nephews had an Easter egg hunt after we ate, and we were able to sit outside and enjoy the ideal day. Easter is always better when it is warm and you can be out in the open.

The Masters

I watched as much of the Masters as I could, between prep, errands, meals, etc.

I was very glad that Jon Rahm won. He seems like a good, thoughtful dude and plays pretty amazing golf. For him to win by four strokes after four-putting his first hole of the tournament and then having to play in the worst weather of the weekend was quite an accomplishment. He could have easily doubled that winning margin.

Like a lot of people I had mixed feelings about Brooks Koepka’s early domination. I enjoyed his style of golf and brash personality at his peak a few years back, but was disappointed when he fled for the LIV Tour after insisting he wouldn’t. I get that a hundred million dollars, or whatever he got, can change a person’s point of view, especially when he was in the midst of a pretty serious injury recovery and questioned his golfing future. He may not have been villain #1 in the whole fiasco, but I still heap some blame on him.

That said, I couldn’t help but get sucked in by how well he played through the first three rounds. I was glad a lot of golf people that I follow were having similar mixed feelings; it was good not to be alone.

This was my favorite thread that came out of the weekend. It is also a reminder that occasionally there are still a few good things on Twitter. Tech Karen will probably ban threads like this soon, since they give people joy.

Ortho

I took L into ortho Monday morning to have her braces removed. She set the family record of just 15 months; she was originally slated for 23. Other than a little gap when she struggled with her rubber bands a little, I think she did exactly what they told her so she could get them off as quickly as possible.

I guess she’ll have a six-month visit and then we’ll be done with ortho after seven and a half years of regular visits. Knock on wood.

New Year’s Weekend Notes

January 3, 2023 /

Our holidays come to an end today. M and C go back to class tomorrow, although CHS is once again having a two-week J term filled with electives, so they don’t have “real” school for awhile. L has another week off but I will still have to start setting an alarm to make sure her sisters are awake tomorrow.

A rundown of how we ended 2022 and began 2023.

New Year’s Eve/The New Year

Our postponed Christmas Eve family gathering was rescheduled for this night. It was big, loud, a little crazy, but fun. It helped that it was about 50 degrees warmer than it had been a week earlier.

We were back at our house around 9:00 – except for M and C who went to friends’ homes to celebrate – played a couple games before L and her cousin and S and her sister petered out around 10:30. I stayed up to watch football (more on that below).

New Year’s Day was uneventful. Monday morning we woke to heavy fog and five deer milling about in our back yard. One of those fuckers got a little too close to our pool. That’s all we needed to start the year: a deer falling through the cover, tearing up the pool liner, and probably having to call for assistance to get its dumb ass out.

Our youngest nephew turned three Monday, and his family stopped by for birthday cupcakes.

In the evening the seven of us did an escape room thing. It was my first time doing one. A little weird, especially since we had one kid (take a guess which) being a little bossy and uncooperative. But we made it out with 13 minutes to spare.

My sister-in-law and niece were supposed to fly back to Denver around 10. Their plane was also coming from Denver and kept getting delayed because of the weather out there. It finally took off two hours late. I dropped them at IND around 11:45. Looks like they made it home after 2:30 Denver time. I bet it was fun to clear the snow from their car at that hour.

Our drive to the airport was very weird. We were again under a thick layer of fog. Moments after dropping them off a big storm rolled in. I spent about the first 15 minutes of my drive home on the interstate going no faster than 40 mph with my wipers on high and hazards flashing. There was intense, bright, blinding lightning that was a lot of fun when I was already struggling to see the road. Fortunately there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic at midnight on a Tuesday morning, and I made it home safely.

With family visiting we didn’t get to taking down the Christmas decorations yet. I’ll pull the plug on the outdoor lights today and take them down if the rain clears out. But the inside tree will probably stay up until either Thursday, S’s home admin day, or next weekend. Don’t worry: the Christmas music was retired on Christmas Day!

KU Hoops

What a stupid, wonderful, infuriating, magnificent beginning to the Jayhawks’ Big 12 season. Playing like absolute dogs in the first half and letting a mediocre-shooting Oklahoma State squad light them up from outside to go down by 15 at the half. Followed by a brilliant eight minutes or so to eliminate that deficit and leave us with 12 minutes of knock-down, drag-out basketball that was probably a pretty good teaser for how this Big 12 season will be.

It was the third time in the 2022 calendar year that KU came back from 15 or more down at halftime. I guess they knew the football team came up just short Tuesday and needed to lock in one, last crazy comeback for the year.

Looking back, in 2022 KU hammered Villanova in the Final Four, beat North Carolina for the national championship, came back and beat Duke in the Champions Classic, destroyed what has turned out to be a pretty damn good Missouri team, hammered Indiana, and then had the two mega comebacks against Kansas State in November and Oklahoma State on Saturday. I saw a thing Monday that showed Quad 1 wins for the calendar year. KU had nine more than Baylor, which had the second-most in Division One.

Seems like a pretty good year. I have the shirts to prove it.

CFP

As soon as the KU game was over, I had to scramble to get ready for our New Year’s Eve gathering. Our hosts are not sports fans and do not have cable, which meant I was following the TCU-Michigan game on my phone. As was my sister-in-law whose husband is a Frog. Fortunately for him, he and their son were at the game. Looked like they had fun.

Really glad TCU is the school that got the Big 12’s first-ever CFP win. Not that I am a big Frog fan or anything, but it makes it better that it came after Oklahoma failing for years and Texas never getting there.

M was very astute and asked what I would do if it had been a KU Final Four game that was at the same time as a family gathering and I would not have access to a TV. I told her I would probably have skipped the event, which would have earned me a dirty look or two from S but really would have been better for everyone. No one in the family needs to be around me when I’m watching a stressful KU game. Hell, the girls were making fun of me for screaming during the OSU game Saturday. Can you imagine if it was a game in April?

I was able to watch most of Georgia-Ohio State, which was filled with wonderful momentum/mood swings. Ohio State’s potential game winning field goal sailed left just as the clock struck midnight here in the Eastern time zone. Our Christmas tree automatically turns off at 12:00 AM, so as the ball knuckled into the air, the lights clicked off behind me and the fireworks kicked in outside. It’s like it was all planned to happen that way.

Georgia-TCU should be an excellent game, and I’d be fine with either team winning. Just glad it won’t be Michigan or Ohio State, to be honest.

NFL

I was going to write something about how weird it still feels for there to be regular season games two weekends into January. But after what happened in Cincinnati last night, that feels wrong. I’m glad I wasn’t watching. I’m glad the teams seemed to show way more awareness and empathy than the NFL showed. And I’m really hoping that Damar Hamlin makes a recovery that allows him to live a meaningful life.

New Year’s Day Playlist

January 1, 2023 /

I believe I promised this for Monday, but it makes more sense to share this today. Happy 2023 to all!

“nye” – Runner
“The New Year’s Resolution” – Spielbergs
“New Year’s Day” – U2
“New Year’s Resolution” – Camera Obscura
“New Year’s Day” – Taylor Swift
“The New Year” – Death Cab for Cutie

Christmas Weekend Notes

December 26, 2022 /

A stressful but pretty good Christmas weekend.

Obviously the big issue the past several days has been the weather. We ended up only getting between 1–2” of snow Thursday, a far cry from that initial forecast of over a foot. But it was still enough, combined with the wind and cold, to make travel difficult and dangerous. Fortunately, for us, S was home before the roads got bad and the rest of us had no need to be outside of the house on Friday as the windchill dropped to over 30 below zero.

With fridges and freezers full of food and temps dangerously low I was super concerned about our power staying on. The weather people kept saying because it was supposed to rain all day Thursday and then quickly freeze, followed up by 48 hours of high winds, power lines would be in great danger.

Thank goodness our electricity never cut out. Well at least it didn’t until right in the middle of our Christmas morning brunch, when the power winked out for a couple seconds then came right back on. Thursday night, as the winds howled and shook our roof, I kept waking up, thinking the power had gone out and having panics about our food going bad or the pipes freezing. Luckily we didn’t have to deal with any of that.

We normally do a big family gathering on Christmas Eve, but because of the cold, the bad roads for a few locals, and one out-of-town group delaying their visit, we decided to postpone that until New Year’s Eve. We had a couple nephews over for an impromptu pizza party.

Christmas morning was nice. Our girls long ago figured out if they are only getting three things, they should only ask for three things. I think M even told S a couple nights ago, “I pretty much know what I’m getting…” They were still excited to open the gifts, though. A lot of clothes and beauty products. C got some Uggs that we were sweating the arrival of, but made it just in time. L is now into photography so got a new lens and tripod for her camera.

Then it was the annual family Christmas brunch. We were down a few people so it wasn’t as huge as it often is, but still two full tables of folks celebrating the holiday together.

Christmas night, after all the guests had left, we convinced M and C to watch Glass Onion with us. L was too busy reading the book that came in her stocking to join us. It’s been a long time since we watched a movie together. It took awhile for the girls to get into it, but eventually they were all-in and enjoyed it. I think C at least wants to go back and watch Knives Out.

By midday Christmas, the wind chills had finally crept above zero. Funny how that seems like a big change and then you take the trash outside and nearly freeze. S and I ran out this morning to check out a couple sales before the traffic got too heavy. Despite actually cracking 20° it was still not a very enjoyable walk from the car to the stores. Later this week it may push 60°. Typical Midwest weather bullshit.

We have out-of-towners coming in a couple waves later this week, so I imagine there will be some additional gatherings over the week heading into the New Year’s Eve family deal.

I hope all of your Christmas events were warm, safe, and joyful.

Holiday Week Notes

December 22, 2022 /

It’s been a crazy couple of days. That will happen when a massive winter storm is predicted to arrive just as the biggest holiday of the year arrives.

M and C finished finals Tuesday. They seemed pleased with their performances. We’ll find out in a few weeks.

L wrapped up school Wednesday. It was pretty much a useless week, as all tests and assignments were completed last week. She cracked me up by wearing a Santa hat to school each day, then again when we went to the gym on Tuesday.

I have been to grocery stories 150 times this week. OK, that’s not true.

I did the normal weekly shopping on Monday.

Tuesday I stopped into a store right after dropping off L to try to get a bunch of stuff for the holiday weekend before the storm-induced panic buying began. I made a decent dent in that list.

Wednesday was my big shopping day. I dropped L off at school and had a window of 8–8:30 to pick up our ham. So I popped into the store next to the ham place to see how well they were stocked. Turned out they were not stocked well but I did get a few things before it was Ham Time.

Next it was onto another big grocery store that was very well stocked. I got 90% of what I still needed there.

On the way home I wanted to stop at a liquor store, but it didn’t open for another 15 minutes, so I ran into the grocery store next to it to work on that last 10%, and maybe avoid a trip to Costco.

I was unable to avoid the Costco trip so after taking C to ortho, we headed that way. When we arrived, at about 11:15, the parking lot was packed and there were literally dozens of people parked on the grass. I told C if it was really this crazy we were going to skip it. But we went down one aisle, immediately had three parking spots to choose from, and headed in. We just needed a few things, but the checkout lines were backed up through the entire store. I made sure to get into the one targeted for the self-check machines and we were out in 15 minutes.

Then Thursday morning I ran to our neighborhood store for a few more things.

So that’s six stops at grocery stores, plus Costco, liquor, and ham.

Ridiculous but had to be done as I think the entire city is going to shut down tonight into Saturday morning between the snow, wind, and cold. The windchill here is forecast to be 25 to 35 below zero Friday morning. That’s no good for anyone, especially people making last-minute grocery runs.

The girls are currently off having their annual Christmas breakfast/cookie-baking party with their grandmother. S is normally home on Thursdays but has to run into the office to help see some patients that were re-scheduled from Friday. Once everyone is home we’re going to hunker down, crank the heat up, and hope the power lines in our part of town survive the winds until our first family gathering Saturday evening.

I’ve enjoyed watching the forecast adjust over the past week. As with any winter storm there is all kinds of uncertainty. The weather app I use on my phone, Hello Weather, has a cool feature that allows you to pick between one of eight different sources for forecast information. In the winter I love toggling between them, as some make a very conservative calculation and others take the worst-case option. Last Sunday, when this storm first got pulled into the seven-day view, these forecasts varied from a prediction of two inches of snow to 22 inches. That’s quite a range! As it stands now, we are in the 3”–6” window, and it’s starting to look like the lower half is more likely.

Regardless, it appears that this will be our first truly white Christmas in at least four years. And that one was just because of a dusting of snow on Christmas morning.

I know this storm is affecting most of my readers, so I hope all of you get through it safely, with heat and power, and that you are able to make all the gatherings on your calendar.

Catching Up

December 1, 2022 /

A few things happened either before or while we were traveling that deserve a few words.

Youth Sports

The Friday before we left, St P’s had an assembly for the two girls basketball teams that made it to the City finals including L’s team. She still refused to hold the trophy. I laughed. It was a nice way to end the season.

That was also Semi State Friday for Indiana football, featuring Cathedral’s rematch with Center Grove. The windchill was in the 20s, it was snowing for much of the game, and we had shit to do to get ready for our trip, so I stayed home and listened on the radio. M still went. She said it was the last game of her high school career, since she would miss the potential state championship game, so she felt an obligation to go. I appreciated the dedication. She also said she might only stay for part of the game because of the weather.

CHS jumped out to a 10–0 lead after two possessions and seemed to be firmly in control. Then they gave up 33 straight points. Yeesh. 33–10 final.

M ended up staying for the entire game. I had coached her two weeks earlier on how to interact with her boyfriend if/when the Irish lost. She was way ahead of me. “Oh, none of us are going down on the field if we lose. It will be bad.” I think she and the other girlfriends indeed stayed away from the players after the ass-kicking was complete. She refused to even look at his messages after she got home because she was sure they would make her cry.

So 10–2 playing two levels up from their natural class with a crappy offensive line that forced their stud QB to scramble for his life all year. Not too bad, but it sucks to go out that way. CHS loses several important players – three of them are Power 5 recruits – and will stay in 6A for at least three more years. So M might have had the best run anyone in our family will have with a regional loss, two state titles, and a semi state loss.

KU Football

I saw a few moments of Texas’ destruction of KU while we were eating at O’Hare. That was the most predictable result of the season. Texas had been hearing for a year about losing to KU last November, in contexts that often had nothing to do with football. Not sure even if KU had been completely healthy they had a chance in that game.

Last weekend I went to bed knowing KU was already down two scores to K-State. Didn’t seem like a game to fall asleep on the couch to. From a summary podcast I listened to sounds like it wasn’t a total destruction and the margin, once again, largely due to self-inflicted errors. Now three weeks or so to get healthy for a bowl game.

The big KU football news came mid-week when KU announced a contract extension for Lance Leipold. That was huge news. Sure, the bloom is off the rose a bit by going 1–6 after starting 5–0. But the most optimistic predictions for this year had the team winning four games. The Vegas over/under was 1.5. Leipold got them to six wins and a bowl game, something that might have been on the table next year for the sunniest of KU fans.

When the final contract was announced this week there were a few interesting notes. The buyout is pretty manageable for any bigger program that really wants him. From Twitter I gather there was some mocking of the clauses that allow Leipold to opt out if the construction projects on the stadium and practice facilities don’t begin by a specific date next year. To me those were pure window dressing, another sign that these projects are, indeed, finally happening.

There’s still a lot of work to do. The defense fell apart over the last two months and needs a lot of help, perhaps even a new scheme. The schedule is a little tougher next year, with Illinois replacing Duke.

You would think most of the big names would return with Lance guaranteed to be their coach, but you never know these days. Jalon Daniels is the big key. He seems like a kid who loves KU and playing for Andy Kotelnicki. NIL can change that in an instant.

For programs like KU the big carrot of a bowl game isn’t just the chance to play an extra game but also that extra month of practice you get. Between that and hopefully another good year in the transfer portal, the chance is there for Leipold to really begin to build something next season.

I know, I know. KU football fans should never get their hopes up. I’d like to think times have finally changed.

KU Hoops

I didn’t see a minute of the Bahamas games. Because of time zone weirdness I was awake for a couple of them. But I was in Italy, for crying out loud, and these were games in November. I was not going out of my way to find them.

Getting humbled by Tennessee sucks, but the Vols currently have the best defense in the country, and KU is too reliant on Jalen Wilson at the moment. I’m not going to get too concerned yet. It would be nice if we figured things out before December 17 when Indiana comes to Lawrence.

MJ Rice breaking out Monday night was a nice bonus.

Higher Education

L got her acceptance into Cathedral last Tuesday. No surprise but it was still fun. Her Golden Ticket package was in the mail when we got home; this year the gift was long Irish socks. We get to go pick up her Class of 2027 shirt and yard sign next week.

M also got a message that she has been granted direct admission to IU’s honors college. She was surprised by that since she didn’t think she had even checked a box on her application that she was interested in the program. She’s a little torn on that path. She doesn’t want to take all honors courses in college as she’s only taken one or two per semester in high school. And she doesn’t want to live in the honors dorm but with the “regular” population. We have friends who have a freshman in the honors college and we told M to reach out to her and get her perspective before she made any decisions.

Holidays

I did not listen to any Christmas music until we got home. In fact, as we were leaving the parking garage at O’Hare M said, “Once we get on the road, can you find some Christmas music?” That’s my kid.

We got a jump start on our holiday decorating. We put up some of the inside decorations a week before we left. I put lights on two trees three weeks ago and planned on not turning them on until right before we left. When he had that snowstorm a couple weeks back it seemed like the right time to flip the switch on those. And we decided to go ahead and put up our tree over a few nights the week before we left. S said there was no way she would have the energy to do it upon our return. I was good with that plan.

Oh, and I watched the Cheers “Thanksgiving Orphans” episode that Friday before we left. After 36 years it remains the greatest 22 minutes of televised comedy ever.

Wednesday we had our belated, mini Thanksgiving dinner. Based on requests from the family, I made green bean casserole, Giada’s dressing, corn soufflé, and sweet potato casserole. My plan was to smoke a turkey breast. Which I tried to do. But since the windchills never got out of the 20s yesterday, the bird wasn’t close to done at meal time. We waited half and hour and it still wasn’t ready. So I let it keep smoking and dinner was just sides. Which isn’t a bad thing. Once the turkey came off it was really tasty, so leftovers should be good tonight.

Weekend Notes

November 7, 2022 /

An unexpectedly long weekend. And not just because of the time change.

Flu

Both M and C got the flu and stayed home Thursday and Friday. They tested negative for Covid and had all the classic flu symptoms. I don’t think either has ever had the true flu before, and were a little overwhelmed by how it kicks your ass. They were still dragging a bit on Sunday but trending back towards normal.

L had Thursday off for parent-teacher conferences, and we were already scheduled to get our flu shots that day.[1] Seemed like tricky timing but we both appear to have avoided catching anything from her sisters. Fingers crossed…

FNL

Friday was, likely, the last ridiculously warm day here. It was pushing 80 in the afternoon and utterly delightful.

As it was so nice out and the Cathedral game was on TV, we sat on the back porch and watched the Irish win their sectional championship game.

Next week is regionals, which brings a trip out to Brownsburg, where the Irish lost their only game of the season. Brownsburg just shellacked both teams in their sectional so my confidence is low.

Weather

This really might have been the greatest fall I can recall. We had a few cool weeks early on, but it’s mostly been warm and dry. I think we’ve had rain three times in the last two months.

Saturday we had some showers blow through then crazy winds for hours and hours. Our power blinked a couple times. We know some folks who still didn’t have their power back on Monday morning.

This week still looks warm, although about 10 degrees cooler than last week, peaking in the mid–60s. The furnace has been off for two weeks but will likely kick on a few mornings. Next weekend is when it looks like we’ll have the first “Oh crap, winter is close!” set of days. I actually saw a low in the teens about a week out.

KU Football

YES! SIX WINS, BITCHES! SHITTY BOWL GAME HERE WE COME!

L, of course, had basketball Saturday afternoon. But we made it home in time to see most of the KU-Oklahoma State game. I could not believe that the Jayhawks were a one-point favorite by kickoff. Wasn’t it just two weeks ago that OSU were the Big 12 favorites? I know they had several injuries to important players, but so has KU.

I guess Vegas knew what they were doing with that line.

The game was never really in doubt. When we got home KU was up 7–0. I believe the margin never got below seven again as the Jayhawks rolled to a 21-point win and bowl eligibility.

As great as the beginning of this year was, I was having a hard time buying into this team getting a sixth win. A lot of it was Jalon Daniels going out to injury. His replacement, Jason Bean, has a lot of talent, but that talent always feels unharnessed. Plus he’s prone to making big mistakes in big moments.

But Bean was fantastic on Saturday, playing a nearly perfect game. Props to that guy, who could have easily left KU after last year knowing Daniels was the likely starter this year. Bean barely got on the field the first few weeks, and even when he did was often used as a decoy rather than an actual playmaker. While his first three games as a starter this year were erratic, he kept KU in every game. His 74-yard TD run Saturday was a beautiful moment of catharsis. And his visible emotions after the game were terrific.

Devin Neal was a beast, and dropped one of the greatest performances in KU history. When he committed to KU, I had to wonder if he was really as good as his recruiting profile claimed. Maybe he just racked up those gaudy stats because he was playing in Kansas. Maybe KU was the only school he had a chance to play at from day one, and that’s why he took their offer.

He’s a straight-up stud, though and proved that on Saturday.

I was also having a hard time believing the sixth win would come just because of all the scar tissue that remains from the past 14 years of KU football. So many Saturdays sitting at a soccer field or a cross country course or in a gym and checking the KU score, knowing it would be bad but hoping that maybe they would surprise me, and then seeing they were losing to a crappy team by three touchdowns in the first quarter. There was rarely a reason to turn the game on when I got home. Those five-straight wins to start this year were fun, and Lance Leipold clearly has the program pointed in the right direction. But there was no way we were going to beat one of Oklahoma, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Texas, or Kansas State, right? Not with a backup QB who is limited, not without our most physical running back, not without our top cornerback, not without our best pass rusher. KU is better but there still isn’t the margin of error built into the roster to make up for that many injuries.

Yet they’ve done it. And now who is to say they won’t be able to grab a seventh win somewhere between now and the end of the season?

I saw one bowl preview list Sunday (why do they do those things now when there is so much football to be played?) and it predicted that KU would play Missouri in the Liberty Bowl. What a way to return to the postseason!

Colts

I’m so glad I only caught a few minutes of the Colts’ putrid performance in Foxborough. Blow up this team and start over. They stink.

Kid Hoops

We had a lot of kid hoops over the past week. So much that I’ll share those notes in a different post. I will provide this teaser: we had one of the most stressful games of year, one of the most embarrassing games of the year, and the best performance of the year. More on all that tomorrow.

Christmas Shows on TV

WHY THE FUCK WERE SO MANY CHRISTMAS SHOWS AND MOVIES ON TV THIS WEEKEND? IT’S NOT EVEN ELECTION DAY, PEOPLE. CHILL.

  1. I got second Covid booster as well. She was Covid positive about a month back so gets to avoid that jab a little longer.  ↩
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