Back in mid-May 1990, when our circle of high school friends was retuning home after our first year away at college, a good friend was insistent that it was going to be “the greatest summer ever.” It’s tough to measure these things accurately, but I do recall that being a pretty solid summer.1 Obviously that became a running joke each summer after that, and it’s always fun to think of it as we transition into our summer schedules.
One last entry for the 2011-12 academic year. Monday I covered a baseball sectional championship game for a christian school that we normally don’t cover. Part of that is because this is the first year the school, GCA, has fielded a baseball team. I’m really not sure why we don’t cover them in basketball all season, but that’s not my decision. Anyway…it was quite the accomplishment for them to make the sectional final in their first year, obviously.
As I mentioned earlier, Friday was field trip day for M. with the bonus of having me tag along as a driver/chaperone. We were going to Conner Prairie, one of those old time re-creation towns that is on the site of one of the first white settlements in Central Indiana. It’s also five minutes from our house and I had never been there in almost nine years living here. Hey, we’ve been busy!
We’ve reached the manic, two-week period of spring in which all the high school sports cram their playoffs into the final days of the school year. Which means many chances for me to work. In theory. This week I grabbed the plum assignment, the 4A softball sectional in which four of our teams were playing. Wednesday I was to cover both semifinals, including the #2 ranked team in the state (CG, one of our schools) and then the championship game on Thursday.
I wanted to write something about the passing of Donna Summer. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized her music never really qualified as “mine.” Sure, I heard her songs a million times growing up, but her peak - 1976-79 - came before I was reposnible for the music that I listened to. I heard tons of Donna Summer songs because I had young parents who listened to pop music, especially disco.
I have a few friends who are masters of the random celebrity encounter. They have no problem either approaching or breaking the ice with a famous person and have many stories about running into Quincy Jones, Milton Berle, Dave Matthews, or Lawrence Taylor, to name a few. On the other hand, in those rare situations when I see a celebrity, I tend to sneak glances, elbowing and whispering to the people next to me, and keep my distance.
Mid-May is always a big time for C.. Most years her birthday falls right around the end of her school year, which turns our already exciteable daughter into an extra-charged bndle of energy. That’s really the case this week. She turns six today. Tomorrow she “graduates” from kindergarten.1 Following graduation is St. E’s annual year-end bicycle parade. It’s all about C. this week. In addition to the normal birthday night dinner, we always let our girls choose a dinner out the week of their birthday.
A sweep in Texas! Let the long beleagured Royals Nation rejoice!1 Because winning two road games against the best team in baseball in May always means good things for the rest of the season, right? Sarcasm aside, the brief Texas series was fun, and came at a great time following the news that Danny Duffy is the latest Royals pitcher to rip his elbow apart. Bruce Chen was fantastic Monday night while Vin Mazzaro was decent and Tim Collins absolutely filthy Tuesday.
I’ve been (almost) exclusively on the iPad + keyboard combo for nearly two weeks now. How’s it going? I’m glad you asked. A couple years back, in the midst of the nine or ten month netbook craze, I picked up a cheap MSI netbook. I tried to use it for work, but it was just too damn small. The keyboard was cramped and applications written for screens that were at least 12" were nightmares to use on the 9" screen.
Tuesday was primary election day in Indiana. The state continued its shift to the far right, selecting several candidates for the general election who have narrow views of both US history and how our nation should be governed going forward. I’m fascinated by how many politicians run around saying that they want to return our government to the ideals that the Founding Fathers had in mind. Why are so many voters so dumb as to believe the Founders had a monolithic view of government?
We spent most of Friday preparing for a couple social engagements, so I wasn’t able to write anything immediately after learning about the passing of Adam “MCA” Yauch. Here are some semi-related thoughts. Since I didn’t know MCA, I can’t really write about him as an individual. Rather, I must write about him as one of the Beastie Boys. It’s impossible to determine with exact certainty what the Beastie Boys' full impact on music was.
You know, I’ve been blogging for almost nine years now. I figure I repeat myself from time-to-time, and generally if I think I’m saying something that’s been said before, I acknowledge it. But since I’ve moved my Internet Home around so often, eliminating the possibility of an exhaustive archive, I have to guess sometimes. So I may well have written about this topic before. My apologies if that’s the case.
Mercy, there has been some funny stuff over the past week. M.: She’s picked up two new expressions, which she uses ceaselessly. One, ironically, is “It’s an expression,” often preceeded by a defensive, “What?” Example: “You better clean that up or Mom’s gonna kill you. What? It’s an expression!” The other saying is “Think about it.” This one is a little annoying, because she loves to use it on her sisters when they don’t understand something a big first grader knows.
The Colts passed the off-season with flying colors. At least thus far. They cleaned house in the coaching staff and front office quickly and completely. They handled the release of Peyton Manning with respect and honor. While there was some drama to the finals weeks of Manning’s Colts career, it never became a nasty divorce. They handled the lead-up to the draft perfectly, not playing media games about who they might pick and making an announcement that Andrew Luck would be their selection once they were sure.
As I shared last week, we have new neighbors. They began to arrive Friday night, and then spent much of the weekend replacing carpet, painting, and moving their stuff in. We finally met them on Sunday. Nice folks. Like we guessed, they have one daughter who is about M’s age and another who is about C’s age. As a bonus, their cousins, two more girls in the same age range, live about a block away.
Perhaps the column I’m linking to here is elitist and out-of-touch. But given the state of political discourse in this country, I think intelligent people of all political perspectives will find both truth and humor in this brilliant little piece of commentary/satire. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Facts reached adulthood as the world underwent a shift toward proving things true through the principles of physics and mathematical modeling. There was respect for scientists as arbiters of the truth, and Facts itself reached the peak of its power.
Before I begin, I’d like to point out that my generic prediction for the 2012 Royals was that this season would be disappointing. This, though, is not what I had in mind. Ten straight losses, nine at home. Starters who can’t get out of jams. Relievers who throw gas on the fire. Hitters that can’t climb out of holes. Baserunners who make bad decision after bad decision. Curious managerial decisions.
After a couple of days of preparation, today I begin my latest technology experiment: can I survive with just an iPad? I’m often struck by the silliness of me switching back-and-forth betwen the iPad and the MacBook Air throughout the day. I always held on to the Air, though, because it seemed necessary for longer writing and for work assignments. After reading a couple articles, though, and doing some more research on my own, I decided to make a few purchases and see if I really could put the Air away.
Wednesday was a sad day at our house. Our next-door-neighbors, who have lived here for nearly six years, finished three days of packing and left for a new home in Texas. They were pretty much the perfect neighbors: our age with kids, friendly and easy to talk to but not ever in our business. Their kids and our girls spent nearly every day playing together in the summers, and usually hooked up after school as well.
This week’s list of things my daughters did that made me smile. M.: Her class has been busy sending Flat Stanleys all over the place this year. Among other places, they exchanged them with children at a school in Derby, UK. Her friend there returned a package last week that was loaded with cool stuff. British coins, postcards from the Derby area, a sticker of the local soccer team, some Royal Wedding stickers, a British flag, and some plain, universal, girlie stickers.