It was an eventful weekend for the B. family. Fridays and Sundays will be taken up by soccer for the next two months. Both girls have their practices on Friday evenings, and the league they’re in this year1 plays games on Sundays only, and this was the first week of games. C. is in the Under-8 league, and her team features three friends from school. Also, I am serving as an assistant coach this year, which could make it extra interesting.
Another great series at the AV Club is Hate Song, where they invite artists to talk about a popular song that they hate. Duh. The latest entry, which features Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio,1 just happens to focus on my least favorite song ever, “Two Princess” by the Spin Doctors. Holy crap do I hate that song. Why? Because it never went away. Nearly two full years after the first time I heard it, the local generic “hits” station in Kansas City,2 would play it endlessly.
Vacation Notebook Leftovers On the way to school today, M. and C. were talking about their ages. M. first said, “C.. How weird is it that next year I’ll be 10 and you’ll be eight?” C.’s eyes gleamed as she considered it. “Wow, that will be weird. It’s like we’re skipping a year!” Sometimes I love the way she thinks. The conversation continued for awhile before C. dropped this nugget.
Last month I shared the list of TV shows I have been watching this year. As I kind of expected, there has been a big change in how I rank those shows. I finally got all caught up on “The Americans” and it is now the show I look forward to and enjoy the most each week. Since it’s still new and “Parks & Recreation” gets some love for lifetime achievement, I’ll rank the shows as co-#1’s for now.
The columns always come this time of year. The celebrations of baseball’s return, somewhere in which each writer must suggest that Opening Day1 should be declared a national holiday so no one has to miss their favorite team’s opener. Apparently whoever makes the schedule at St. P’s is a baseball fan, because M. and C. were off yesterday. Oh, some of you might suggest that the combination of Easter Monday and a Catholic school had more to do with it.
Well, I admit, despite my assertions that I was fulfilled by KU’s accomplishments coming into the NCAA tournament and would not sweat their performance, I could not avoid my compulsory 24 hours of sadness after their meltdown late Friday night. The endless replaying of the last 2:00 of regulation and the final moments of overtime. The questioning of decisions by players on the court and by Bill Self on the bench.
Here’s what I wrote about KU after their second game of the season back in November: I think this team will be quite good before all is said and done. They’ll get through those rough patches and have a high seed in March. And then it will all come down to who they play…That doesn’t mean they can’t play deep into March or provide a bunch of special memories. But it does mean that despite the various prognosticators who are putting them in the Final Four, I see this as a year where getting to Atlanta is just out of reach.
Happy spring! We are home, safe and sound, and the girls are back in school again. Wait. They’re not. We have seven inches of snow and, I believe for the first time since we started at St. P’s, school has been cancelled. It’s the endless spring break! Whoo hoo!1 What a weird thing, to go from the beach/pool on Friday to putting the snow clothes on and throwing snow balls on Monday.
Well, it’s raining again. But it’s only 9:00 and today it looks like the storms are going to blow through in the next couple hours. But, man, yesterday was about perfect. Right around 80, overcast until noon when everything blew away, and we then had perfect Florida skies all afternoon. We did a shell walk in the morning. We watched the sun set from Sunset Beach in the evening.1 And in-between we spent most of the day in the pools.
A lazy morning here on the island, so I’ll share a few details of our trip so far to keep me from having to write 5000 words about it when we get home. Of course, I may end up writing more than that this way, but that’s your gain! Ok, the drives down were uneventful. Sure, everyone was cranky by the end of each day, but there were no major issues.
We are off. To Florida. Again. I know. We are spoiled rotten, and our daughters are going to grow up to be contemptuous brats that complain because they’ve been pamered their entire lives. I mean, who goes to Florida twice in two months? It was an unexpected combination of factors that has us well on the way to Captiva Island by the time you are reading this. We felt a little silly going south for spring break when we were just at Disney.
Those Catholics know how to do timing. I was sitting in the parking lot at St. P’s Wednesday, waiting for dismissal, when suddenly the skies opened up and what had been light flurries turned into thick, white flakes that cut visibility and quickly covered windshields. It only lasted a minute or so, but as those big flakes fell, I couldn’t help but think that they looked like white smoke blowing across the parking lot.
One of the greatest things about YouTube are the people who take old sporting events, chop them up into 10-15 minute versions, and post them for the world’s viewing pleasure. There’s a guy who does a bunch of KU games, and last week I spent an hour or so watching a few condensed, classic games. The one I paid most attention to was a game from December 1993, when Indiana came to Lawrence for a much-anticipated game that ended up being one of the best games I’ve ever seen in person.
It seems there is angst amongst a segment of KU fans today. Some, it seems, are over-looking another Big 12 title because A) the Jayhawks went to Waco and got worked over Saturday and B) they now have to share the Big 12 title with Kansas State. Stop. It’s not the first time KU has been blown out in their final game of the regular season during this nine-year run. And it’s not the first time they’ve had to share the title.
Another rumored major snow event in central Indiana was a bust. Such as been the norm in the winter of 2012-13. We got 4-5" overnight, less than the 6-9" that had been predicted, turning Wednesday into a two-hour delay for the girls rather than a real snow day. They were disappointed when we told them they just had to hang out and play inside for a few hours and then head to school.
I’ve meant to get to my rankings of this year’s TV shows for awhile. But a DVR snafu forced me to wait to see the second episode of “The Americans” until this past weekend. With that finally knocked out, though, I can get to it. Keep in mind, I watch approximately five shows, so making the top five isn’t necessarily a sign of quality. It’s a sign that I pay attention to that program.
My basketball season came to a quick, inglorious end last week. None of our seven teams advanced from sectionals, with four losing in what were at least mild upsets. At one point it looked like I would cover a minimum of three post-season games, including a regional contest next week. But, thanks to all the upsets, I ended up with only one game. But at least that was a good game.
Sunday I was finishing up my story on the state swimming meet at my desk. Around the corner, I heard C. reading a book to S.. It didn’t register at first, but soon I stopped writing and paused to listen closer. C. wasn’t slowly picking out sight words or reading some book for early readers that mixes pictures and words. She was working her way through “The Giving Tree” at a solid pace, hardly slipping up on any words.
One of the many differences between being a fan and being a player is that, as a fan, we can give up. We can suspend hope in the face of compelling evidence. We can look at the clock and the score, sigh and say, “It just wasn’t our night.” Or look at the conference standings and the up-coming schedule and think, “This isn’t our year.” But players don’t have that freedom.
Some various and sundry notes about the weekend past. I covered the boys high school state championship this weekend. As always, it was something else. The event itself is kind of tedious, especially when I only had one swimmer, who was in the finals of two events, to write about. Watching the crowd is the best. I believe I’ve written about it each time I’ve covered a swim meet, but the parents, coaches, and students in the crowd are absolutely nuts.