Stealing from the NBA, Happy Basketball New Year! The pro season is three weeks old, college hoops started playing for real earlier this week, and my Kansas Jayhawks take the court for the first time tonight. ESPN Full Court has been purchased. Popcorn is only 11 hours from being popped. I’m contemplating what shirt to start the season with. And thankfully the Sports Illustrated college hoops group decided to hang the cover jinx on North Carolina.
I’m not a big fan of music remakes. If the original version of a song was relatively obscure, I can get down with a remake. But if the OG cracked the top 20, the remake generally sounds exactly like the song you enjoyed ten years ago, except with a new guitar solo or something tacked on. I think remakes of popular songs should be relegated to encore sets at concerts or B-sides of singles.
When you become a parent, you quickly learn how many things can be harmful to your child. You plug up all your electrical outlets. You hide any decorative pieces that have sharp edges. You gather up all your assorted poisons and store them in one secure location. What none of the parenthood guides tell you, though, is that the most dangerous thing to your child is much more difficult to manage.
It’s Kansas-Missouri football week, so I’m sure you can imagine how fired up everyone in my neighborhood is! At least M. and I are. We’re hosting a watch party for the local rivalry, Indiana and Purdue, so the girl and I will have to steal away to my office to check the score on the real game periodically. I planned on writing something about the game Friday, including some props to the schools/Big 12 for getting the game back to it’s proper date: the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
Last night we gave M. her first meal that was in a non-liquid form. A week shy of her four month birthday, she got a bowl of rice cereal! We knew it was about time to increase her nutritional intake, and after she woke every three hours Sunday night despite getting no nap in the evening and a huge bottle before bed, we bought a box of rice cereal, some baby spoons, and matching bowls.
Saturday night, I attended my first Pacers game at Conseco Fieldhouse in downtown Indy. I’ve long heard the buzz that Conseco was the best place to watch a game in the NBA, combining both the amenities of modern sports arenas with the feel of a classic fieldhouse setting. Although my experience was not typical, I did greatly enjoy my first visit to our local basketball palace. A bank my father-in-law deals with offered him four tickets to Saturday’s game with the Knicks.
I received confirmation this morning that I can start classes at IUPUI this January. Now I’ve not formally been admitted to the graduate program; I’ll be taking classes under the umbrella called “Graduate Non-Degree Program” which is a way for people to test out a course of study (and for the program to evaluate prospective students) before they go through the admissions process. I got the feeling it was a no brainer to get in at this point, since there’s no risk to the university so long as I pay my tuition, but it’s still fun to know I’m going to be taking a couple classes this spring.
For the past couple weeks, more and more people have said to me, “You know, M. is really starting to look a lot like you.” S. has a theory that roughly 90% of all first-borns end up looking like their father, so it appears we’re just living according to the odds. Also, I greatly resemble my mother, who was an attractive woman, so I know it’s not necessarily a bad thing that M.
One thing I’ve learned in the year plus that I’ve lived in Indianapolis is the local hang-up seems to be outsiders confusing our fair burg with a similarly named ville in the northern Midwest. People here can get quite testy when Indy and Minneapolis are confused. So I imagine hackles were up around the city when ABC used Jesse Ventura to do the opening for last night’s Colts-Vikings game. Sure, Minnesota was involved, but the game was here.
I remember exactly where I was. Sitting on my dorm room bed, reading Newsweek or Time, avoiding studying. The TV was on, but the volume turned down. I looked up and saw Tom Brokaw talking and wondered what was going on at 2:00 in the afternoon that required him jumping on air. I turned the TV and heard that the world as we knew it had changed. Most importantly, I realized my freshman folly of taking Russian could come to an end: the Cold War was over!
I’m done with the politics for the time being. I’ve got 1200 words down for my final piece, but over the weekend I decided to think about/do other things. It didn’t help that M. kept me up until 6:00 AM this morning, meaning even though I slept until noon, I’m only working on about four hours of sleep. I’m still bitter about things, but it’s time for me to move on and concentrate on the important stuff in life, like getting my daughter to stay awake during the day and sleep at night, college hoops, and stinging pop culture commentary.
This is my random notes section from Tuesday night’s events. Not quite a running log, but the highlights of my notebook entries for the night. I watched the election from our basement, with a 40 oz. bottle of Miller High Life that I worked my way through slowly throughout the night. I primarily watched NBC and MSNBC, although I stopped on CNN frequently, and even CBS and ABC from time-to-time. A little C-SPAN coverage too.
I’m going to split this up, perhaps into as many as four entries over the next two days, both for ease of writing/editing and to try to make it easier on those of you who are interested in reading through all my accumulated thoughts. As I said earlier in the week, if this bores you, you hate everything I stand for, etc, please be patient for a couple days before I return to less divisive subject matter.
The much anticipated and hyped youth vote didn’t show up. It’s that simple. 1:17 AM EST and Mr. Bush appears to be a lock to gain a second term. I’ve got three pages of notes to work my way through tomorrow but I’m calling it a night for now. Congratulations to my friends who voted red today. We’re all on the same team again tomorrow and even an out-of-touch, godless, immoral, gay-loving liberal like me has to hope the President has more success in the next four years than he’s had in the last four.
It’s too cloudy here, I can’t tell. I’m working on something like three hours of sleep, and shitty sleep at that. I had to get up at 7:30 to take S’s car in for an oil change. So hang in there, I’ll work through my notebook at some point today. I just want to make sure I give an honest effort, rather than use it as my coping mechanism. And in the future, if I make any political predictions, assume exactly the opposite will happen.
A few quick notes left over from my trip to the voting booth yesterday. First, despite several signs stating that all voters must show their IDs when checking in, none of the four volunteers I encountered asked me for my ID. The lady handling the sign in book never even glanced at my signature to see if it matched the one scanned in from my initial registration. A clear sign of rampant voter fraud!
I’m starting this at 1:05 AM, EDT. Election eve and sleep is elusive for me. A tumbler of Glen Livett to my left. My notebook to my right. A slumbering 13 week old on the baby monitor. I’m now voting not just for me, but for the hopes and dreams I have for my daughter. I’ve mistakenly said throughout the year that my vote for president won’t count, since I live in Indiana, which always goes overwhelmingly for the Republican candidate.
Kerry: 299 (MN, WI, MI, OH, , NH, FL) Bush: 239 (IA, NM, CO, WV) Kerry wins popular vote by a margin between 500,000 and 1,000,000 votes Kerry wins Florida easily and early; Ohio is this year’s problem child. Fortunately, Kerry wraps things up without Ohio so the issues there don’t drag the final result out for six weeks. I wrote this late last night so it may not match what a few of you have seen via e-mail the past couple days.
How does a new father get ready for election night? By going to the grocery store and purchasing Similac and Sam Adams Winter Lager, of course! There must have been a lot of other parents making similar purchases, because the guy working the register didn’t bat an eye at the two items in my basket. It may be a bit early for Winter Lager, but I love it so I bought it.
The NFL is stupid. I’m doubly glad I’m not a gambler, because I would have no idea how to bet on games this season. Jacksonville beats the Chiefs and Colts, then looks awful against Houston. The Falcons look like a bad high school team against the Chiefs, then destroy Denver. Minnesota looked like a Super Bowl team, then decide to get rolled by the Giants, who got rolled by the Lions last week.