I’ve written at least 2000 words about Newtown, but none of them have felt right to share here. I may yet post some thoughts about it, but for now let’s focus on more enjoyable stuff. So, holiday notes! Any home with girls in it will have a higher than normal amount of random glitter. Stuck to furniture, in the laundry, and just floating in the air. But this time of year, there seems to be even more.
The Favorite Songs countdown will continue over the weekend. I admit it’s hard to write after today’s events in Connecticut. I’ve never been so happy to be annoyed by my kindergartener as I am right now.
December is a big music month. There is the putting together and sharing of my favorite songs and albums of the year lists. There’s the flood of Christmas music. Combined I spend even more time than normal thinking about tunes. A few notes from the first few weeks of December. I was driving C. home from a birthday party a couple weeks back when RUN-DMC’s “It’s Tricky” came up on the iPod.
I knew it was coming. For two weeks, as rumors swirled, I expected that one night, probably late int the evening, word would come that the Royals had traded their top prospect, outfielder Wil Myers. Likely for a starting pitcher. Almost certainly for one that had value, but still was too flawed to be an ace for the Royals. So it was no surprise when, last night, as I was checking Twitter one last time before bed, the news was just breaking that Myers and others were headed to Tampa for James Shields and Wade Davis.
Many of my regular readers are on our Christmas card list. Thus, they know that we generally go with the obvious option and just slap a picture of the girls on it. Over the years, that process has become problematic. I have no idea why, but there’s something about lining up for a picture in Christmas pajamas or other holiday outfit that makes our girls lose their minds. And thus we lose ours.
Lots of sports, and sports-related things, from the weekend. Friday I had my first boys basketball game of the season. It was a 20-point loss, which is about what I expected. My team actually got as close as seven in the second half, which was not expected. Thanks to a double overtime JV game, I only had time to file a brief story, which was just fine with me. The news from the evening was my attempt at local food.
M. took another step in her religious life last night when she had her First Reconciliation. I’m told this is a big deal if you’re Catholic. In the van after school yesterday, C. asked her what it was that she would be doing later in the evening. As best as I can remember it, here is M.’s response: Well, later, next spring, there's this big thing called First Communion. And it's about getting closer to Jesus or whatever.
It was a fine Thanksgiving weekend for the B’s. As I mentioned last week, we hosted the family get-together this year. We had 16, which for our family is small, but still takes some work to prepare for. I did the bird and stuffing. I narrowly avoided disaster with the bird. My thermometer wasn’t working correctly so I guessed on when to take it out of the oven. Turns out I left it in a little too long.
I might be slipping. You’ll probably recall how I’ve generally been militant about Christmas preparations not starting until after Thanksgiving. That meant no trees up, no holiday music, no exterior decorations, and profound head shaking each time I saw a Christmas commercial before we’ve carved the first turkey of the season. This year, though, I’ve been looking forward to the Christmas season since September. In early October I found myself spending far too much time examining the holiday lighting section at Lowe’s.
How I Became a Famous Novelist - Steve Hely I knew when I picked this up that it was a novel, a satire of our current pop culture where anyone can become famous regardless of how much (or little) talent they possess. But I’ll admit, I just might have been hoping to find the secret to getting published while making my way through it. If only it was as easy as the title suggests.
An oddly busy Monday, with a couple appointments in the morning and the need to squeeze some leaf collection activities in before St. P’s lets out for the day. So I’ll try to crank out some notes here. A mixed bag of football action for me over the weekend. The two teams I care about, the Jayhawks and the Colts, got thrashed. But the games I didn’t have a vested interest in, particularly the K-State-Baylor and Stanford-Oregon games, were terrific to watch.
I am sooo reluctant to write this, but I can’t put it off any longer: the Kansas State Wildcats are the best story in sports right now. Blech. Who, even among the most optimistic of K-Staters, saw this coming? With two winnable games left, the Wildcats are almost certainly going to play in the BCS title game. If they luck out, it will be against a good, but not ready for prime time, Notre Dame team.
I planned on posting some pre/early season thoughts on KU basketball yesterday, but got distracted by one thing after another, and decided to watch last night’s game against Michigan State first. The game confirmed everything I was thinking about this year’s squad: they are immensely talented with some glaring weaknesses and are certainly overrated now, but have the benefit of everyone being in love with KU/Bill Self after last March’s run and people ranking them based on where they think they’ll be next March.
There was snow on the ground, briefly, here in Indianapolis today. Which means its time for what the Hoosier state does best: high school basketball. The girls season kicked off last week, and I had two games. I lukced out and got to see both the teams that are probably our best and which are coached by my favorite coaches. Thursday I had our biggest school, CGHS. This is a school that is very good in almost every sport.
Despite my moratorium on political postings, it is a bit of a tradition for me to wrap up the general election. So here are some observations, thoughts, musings, and what-have-yous. In 2004 I watched the results in our basement, scribbling down thoughts in a notebook and occasionally running upstairs to check things on the computer or send IMs to friend of the blog Dale S. as we tried to figure out how the hell the numbers weren’t breaking our way.
Normally when I vote, I head to the polls, wait my turn, and then cast my ballot. This year, though, I’m going to mix things up. I keep hearing about voter intimidation in some states, and it sounds like something I’d like to learn more about. So today I plan on the following forms of intimidation: Standing extremely close to the person in front of me in line. While doing so I will alternate between ignoring their annoyed looks and moving closer each time they attempt to create more space, and glowering at them with my meanest look possible.
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power - Rachel Maddow. I love Rachel Maddow, at least as much as a straight man can love a gay woman. She speaks from a similar political point of view as mine. And I really like her spin on how to run a news/politics TV show: less yelling and screaming and demonizing and more reasonable discussion of the issues of the day. So I was looking forward to her book, in which she advances the argument that we’ve drifted far from how the Founding Fathers intended for our nation to handle its military affairs.
OK, I take it back. One more political post, although I think this one isn’t likely to annoy anyone. We’ve got a ton of political mailings this year, more than any year I can remember. That’s been fueled by a tight race for Dick Lugar’s US Senate seat and a battle for our state senate seat that is very tough thanks to redistricting. In these final days before Election Day the mailers are flooding in.
We had a very successful Halloween here in Casa de B. The sisters hooked up with the neighbors and had matching costumes. The eight year olds went as fairies, the six year olds as princesses, and L. was the knight to protect them all. So she wouldn’t be alone, the neighbors put a little knight shirt on their dog. We loaded up a wagon with supplies1 and hit the streets. It was quite chilly, so we tackled the neighborhood in two shifts.
What follows is, I hope, my only political post of the season. I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat. Will Rogers I’ve always thought Republicans were better at coming together as a single party than Democrats. Sure, Republicans have plenty of problems within their party, but come Election Day, the anti-tax millionaires from the big cities and the Bible thumping farmers from the county have a much easier time voting for the same candidates than the various wings of the Democratic party.