Over a week late, finally a chance to put a summary of our trip to Puerto Rico together. Probably a good thing that it was delayed, as that will automatically edit it down by 50%. To refresh, we went down for the wedding of S’s neighbors in Kansas City, who now live in Hoboken, NJ. They’re kind of non-traditional, so decided, “Let’s get married on the beach!” They rented several houses on the beach in Rincon, PR and invited a select few people to join them.
I stayed home, as I had a relapse of my cold last night, but the numbers for M’s doctor visit were: 18 pounds, 8 ounces. 90th percentile. Head size was 90th percentile. Look at the big brain on M! 25 inches and change, 25th percentile. I still don’t trust the height measurement. She really feels like she’s lengthened out a lot since November.
Crazy week, with half of last week’s dozen picking up losses. Complicating matters, some of those same teams had notable wins to balance the losses. Thank goodness I know what I’m doing and can make sense of all of this for you. 12) Michigan State. Will cracking my poll jinx them for their battle with Illinois Tuesday? Quietly playing some very good ball. 11) Oklahoma State. A brief drop, as I think they’ll be fine.
An afternoon with the daughter, a remote, and ESPN FullCourt. Good things can happen on a day like this. Unfortunately, I was working on about 4 1/2 hours of sleep so I napped throughout the day Saturday. I tried to watch the Nebraska-Texas Tech game. Damn near put me into a coma, though. Why will Bobby Knight sell space on his ugly ass sweaters but not let 19 year old kids put their names on the backs of their jerseys?
I try to keep these updates high on the descriptive and low on the boastful. However, I must tell you, my daughter is the most delightful baby the world has ever seen. I say that despite the fact we’re in full teething mode and we’re battling fits of tears and anger with Motrin and Little Teethers gel. In between bouts with gum pain, M. is as funny as I can imagine a kid her age being.
Some tidbits from the weekend: I’m not sure what that was that went on in the KU-Villanova game. I do know this: that game will be looked back at as the turning point for this KU team. They’re either going to take it as a wake-up call, start performing more consistently and get past whatever off-court issues might exist within the team. Or that’s going to be the moment we look back at and say, “They were never really that good because they never recovered from that game.
A lot happened in the two weeks since my last update. Hopefully I’m keeping everything straight. Arizona. Little known fact: I’ve always kind of been in love with Arizona, going back to 1988 when they were in the Final Four in Kansas City. Us kids from the plains always pine for the girls who have tans year-round. Louisville. Pounding people. Just pounding them. Oklahoma. Even without Texas' troubles, they’re playing well enough to be a conference title contender.
I’m working on my vacation wrap-up, but that probably won’t get posted until tomorrow. However, there is this one M. story that demands immediate sharing. As I have mentioned in the past, she’s really into Hide and Go Seek with us. It starts just saying “Boo!” and tickling her, and eventually one of us is hiding behind a door or wall and then jumping out. That’s when she really gets her laugh going.
It’s going to be a busy weekend in La Casa de Blogger. Tomorrow, M. gets baptized for starters. All you anti-Papists out there can make your derisive comments now. Be sure to share them with my wife next time you see her. Sunday morning, S. and I depart for our first extended time away from the baby. We’re off to Rincon, Puerto Rico for five days. S’s neighbor from Kansas City, Jackie (who some of you know), is getting married on the beach 7:00 Monday evening.
I tend to automatically subtract a week from all estimates of time injured players will miss. Schools tend to be conservative with estimates, and kids heal fast. Still, I was surprised Wayne Simien played 37 minutes last night. Probably more just it was Wayne and he has a history, more than anything else, and I assumed they would be exceptionally cautious with him. Want to slow down Curtis Stinson? Put a bigger guard on him.
What, no updates on the developments and tricks of M. in almost a month? I’ve got some serious catching up to do! Here goes. Right before Christmas, she discovered the volume button on her voice. It was fun to listen to her yell at various volumes around the house just because she could. A little more embarrassing when she continually shrieked with glee at the people behind us at Christmas Eve Mass.
It certainly felt like the first day of a spring semester when the clouds rolled in and the wind kicked up just as I was getting to campus yesterday. Ten years ago, such weather would have ensured that I didn’t go to class for four weeks. Things are different in the new millennium, however, and I persevered. Since I’ve done most of the research about grad school on my own, I’ve had no formal tours of campus, etc.
I’ve got my book bag full of notebooks and pens. One of my new Christmas shirts laid out to wear today. And an apple for my professor. I’m off to school in a few hours to start the in-class portion of my efforts to get into grad school. I’m taking the basic editing and reporting class all undergrads who want to get into the J-school have to take, but as a grad student, so I’ll have some extra assignments to justify the grad credit, I suppose.
Years ago, in the times before AOL’s e-mail program had spell checker, I made several typos a few friends found extremely funny and we then adopted into our day-to-day language. One of those typos was putting bug in the place of big, as in “That was a bug win for you guys last weekend.” Taking it global, Oklahoma sure had a bug win tonight. UConn is struggling to find themselves a bit, but OU needed a quality win.
(Compiled shortly after KU’s win over UK. If you don’t know which is which, please move along.) Gonzaga. Hang on just because so many other teams got beat this week. Texas. Rick Barnes, as always, is an ass, but his team is good. Baylor stayed curiously close to them Sunday, though. Kentucky. This week’s Lexington Lament: Why, oh why, don’t the ‘Cats pound the ball inside until KU’s meager frontline is sitting on the bench?
A couple thoughts while I down my post-game Guinness. Tomorrow is a Mr. Mom day and if I don’t post now, I’ll never get them done. Billy Gillespe is doing good things at A&M. They’ve always had one good player who could score 30. Now they’ve got that one player (Wright), some talent to go with it, and what appears to be a system that works. Hell, they ran the high-low better than KU has run it since Self arrived (Too much Roy still in the brain).
It appears as though the NFL has taken over the BCS championship game. The game was played in an NFL stadium. It featured 25 minutes of mega-hype between air-time and kick off. Celebrity coin tossers. U2 at halftime. Oh, and the game sucked too. Sounds like a Super Bowl to me. So much for the potential greatest championship game ever, as so many critics described last night’s USC-OU game in their previews.
Here is my first weekly look at the state of college basketball, the 12 teams I think are playing the best right now. A few ground-rules: A - This is a weekly look at the game. Therefore, there can be wild changes in rankings from week-to-week based on results from only a few games. B - When at all possible, I’ll try to rank teams higher than teams they’ve beat. For example, I’ve got Gonzaga ahead of Georgia Tech and Oklahoma State this week.
What an unbelievable game. I went in thinking that Georgia Tech would get a fairly easy win. KU hadn’t been playing all that well with Wayne Simien; I certainly didn’t expect them to perform well in his absence. Even with a perfect performance, the best I saw was a narrow, character building loss. With about 2:00 left in regulation, I would have been more than happy to take that after being down by 16 twice.
I’m not a big New Year’s Resolution guy, but I do normally write down a few goals for the coming year. One of my entries this time last year was to read 24-30 books in 2004. I passed the lower end of that threshold in May and was sitting at 36 books the day M. was born. Not a bad year, although it sure helped to travel to the West Coast on a regular basis for six months and to live with a woman who works 2-3 overnight shifts a week.