Tag Archives: basketball

General, Uncategorized

Bracket Kudos

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Have to give props to whomever (I assume it would have been a Michigan resident) actually had Michigan State in the title game.  I mean, seriously?

It was just me against one of the kids who works in the office; we both filled ours out at the last minute, after the first games had tipped on 3/19, actually, and neither one of us were (a) huge fans, or (b) able to pick one than one of the Final Four successfully.  I needed UConn to get to the title game in order to win (he was 2 points ahead coming into this weekend).  It seemed like a lock.  And it SOOO just wasn’t.

Anyway, I’m sure that somewhere under the bridge there is a college basketball fan pumping his or her fist at the fantastically lucky turn of events.  I know that I did back in 2003, when I knew just as little (or maybe less) about college hoops and randomly selected a 3-seed and the 12th-ranked team in the country to win the whole thing.  And they did.  Luck could not possibly get dumber if you gave it an ice-cream-scoop lobotomy.

Have a delightful Monday…

General, Uncategorized

My Bracket Is Frakked

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So when the sun rose on a new work week, I was greeted with only one of my Final Four picks still intact.  Fortunately, it IS the one that I picked to win the national championship, so I guess I have a prayer.  I thin, wispy, glimmer of a prayer.

Yesterday, Michelle hung out at my place to work on some work-related stuff, and we also watched a little “Best of the Price Is Right” on DVD.  Two words– huh.  Larious.  The contestants from the 50s and 60s, as well as the prizes and prices were just unbelievable.  I’m sure the same thing will be said about… oh, I dunno, American Idol in 30 or 40 years.  People will wonder how the hell we ever watched it.

Busy day lined up at work, so I best get to it.  Need to start planning for a big adjustment in our availability schedule as well as regular day-to-day stuff…

How was your weekend?

Climate, General, Uncategorized

The Return of the Monday

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I said to Michelle last night that it would be nice to get Mondays back after the conclusion of my basketball season. Like I mentioned to her, when you typically only spend 4 nights a week at home, getting a 33% boost in time to do stuff is pretty huge. I think I’ll work on… well I don’t quite know what I’ll work on tonight yet, but I know that it’ll be at my house.

Had a somewhat non-descript yet enjoyable weekend. Got a gradual start to my Saturday, wherein I made it to Milwaukee eventually, and spent a little time reading a Ron Rindo story while I drank some coffee in Red Arrow Park. Michelle was looking at an apartment someplace up Prospect with her mom, then met me there afterward. It was a really nice afternoon.

We took a walk around downtown for a bit, but when the wind picked up it got sort of chilly. It was right about then that the fog rolled in off the lake, and it was IMPOSSIBLE to drive near the water. We swung over to Grandma’s house to drop off her other 2 dollar coins, but nobody was home. Christy’s phone was there, though, so we changed her wallpaper.

Had dinner rather early (about 5:30) at Louise’s. We ate a pizza. It was good. The booth was a little cramped, though. We were thinking of going out and maybe bowling or throwing darts after that, but we didn’t want to get started right away. We didn’t want to drive all the way back to waukesha, either, so we stopped over at the Mundschau’s and watched a DVD for a while. Michelle had been up really early on Saturday in order to get to a meeting for work at about 7:30, so she zonked out pretty quick. We watched 1 disc worth of The Office, then called it a night. Pretty low-key.

Made it to St. William’s for 10:45 mass on Sunday morning, and it was a pretty full house. I noted that the deacon was a very, very young guy. He had a well-constructed homily that started to drift at one point, but I was impressed when he tied it all back together and made some sense.

Michelle has been stalking Girl Scouts for about 5 or 6 weeks now (ever since the cookies went on sale), and after church she made what I imagine will be her final purchase of the year– a dozen boxes of Thin Mints. Yes, that’s correct– TWELVE BOXES. I hope she can make them last. When I have treats around the house, I can’t help but eat them, so that’s why I usually don’t. Michelle has a lot more self-control…

We took a ride into Pewaukee and had lunch with Michelle’s mom @ The Chocolate Factory. They were woefully understaffed, but I think that had more to do with the uncharacteristically warm weather than anything else. I imagine that they can usually get by with 2 people working there on a Sunday. Anyway, the sandwiches and ice cream were good.

We did stop over to visit Grandma and ate another sandwich a little later in the afternoon. The drive up to Vegas was quick, and there was no need to eat anything else.

Now that the kids are back from spring break, I could go for a week or two of vacation.

Hope you had a nice weekend. I’m back on the job…

General, Sports, Uncategorized

Report on the Basketballs and Whatnot

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My basketball team had its regular-season-doubleheader-finale last night– we were supposed to have this 2-fer evening early in February, but a snow day @ Fond du Lac pushed it back to the “make-up week.”

Last week Monday, we got killed by the best team in our division, by something like 25 points. I mean, we were annihilated. We turned the ball over a LOT, and they must’ve scored 15-18 points on transition turnovers. It was pretty sad. By the last 5 minutes we were just chucking up 3s to try to get back in the game.

With that performance in mind, I fully expected to have a rough go of it playing two games in one night. But it was actually probably our best week of the season. We beat the “kids” in our first game (this team of all 19- and 20-yr-olds, a lot of them former students of my teacher peeps on the team), putting our season record against them at 1-2.

In our second game, we played that best team again, and it was a really close, hard-fought match all the way through. The difference, once again, was a couple stupid turnovers down the stretch in the first half that let them turn a 3-point deficit into a 3-point lead. They ended up winning by 3. We had a chance to take a 1-point lead with about 20 seconds to go, but the shot rimmed out. We missed a 3 at the buzzer that would’ve sent us to OT.

So it was a pretty good last night of hoops– come to find out it wasn’t actually the last night. Apparently, all 5 teams qualify for the “playoffs,” so we have play the kids again next week, and if we win that, we play the #1 team again the following week. There is at least one, and at most three weeks to go.

In my review of how that season went, I guess I wish our team would’ve had more time to sort of “get to know each other,” and play together more often. I think we could’ve been more successful if that were the case. I also feel I could’ve shook some more rust off my game personally if we practiced, or something.

I don’t really anticipate playing in an organized league for any sport again, but it was definitely interesting to try it as an adult and just see what that’s like (it’s like high school, but just hurts more).

General, Uncategorized

Snow Covered, Etc.

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The weekend, considering the weather and stuff, turned out as well as could be expected.

On Saturday morning, I got up at my regular time so that I’d be ready for movin’ fun w/ the Knitts when they called. Snow removal pushed the excitement back to around 10am, after I stopped off at the U-Haul joint on Ohio & Witzel for a few extra boxes.

Joe and April had plenty of help, and a lot of stuff already loaded up, so the moving itself didn’t take too long. I’d say the biggest pain of all was removing a few doors in order to get furniture in and out of houses. I definitely favor moving into a house over an apartment, big reason being the shorter trip from the truck to the door. Hiking up and down a lot of stairs with armloads of stuff sucks.

There is a not-too-flattering photo of Joe and April in their living room at the end of our Saturday on my Flickr page, and I took a couple more pics around the house, too.

It’s a nice little old house. Apparently, the previous occupant had been there for a very long time, and it was in need of some significant renovations. At this point, though, there is fresh paint on all the walls, new carpeting on the floors, and some new windows, too. The only other work it desperately needs is a coat of paint on the outside, and that’s going to be tackled once the weather warms up.

Saturday evening, Michelle was due to show up around 5:30, 6-ish, and we were going to go to Dave Schrubbe’s birthday grand re-opening of DHI. We ate at about 7, and then Michelle needed to finish up some other stuff online before we went over. I don’t even really remember what we were watching on TV or whatever, but it was around 8pm that I just curled up on the couch and fell asleep, basically for the rest of the night.

I felt bad about missing Dave’s shindig and disappointing Michelle with a boring evening, but I guess I was just wiped out after the moving day. *That* realization also made me feel like a tool, because it wasn’t as if we busted our humps for hours upon hours on Saturday– I got to Joe & April’s at 10, and we were done with everything by 3:30. *Shrugs*

I guess I just suck.

On Sunday, Michelle and I did make it to Sheboygan for her Grandma’s 92nd birthday. I was pretty nervous about the weather before we left, but it turned out to be not that big of a deal; it was crappy when we were leaving from there, and we had to drive pretty slow between Sheboygan and Fond du Lac, but otherwise didn’t have any problems.

I was glad we went. I got to meet another one of Michelle’s aunts and her Uncle Larry, and Grandma was looking & feeling lots better than the last time we saw her (she was in the nursing home for a week or so when she came down with the flu earlier this winter). We also watched some old home movies that had been dubbed over to VHS. It was neat.

You’ve probably heard about or experienced the weekend’s snowfall. It’s actually really warm today (34), and the snow is just a mess. I had a wet, treacherous walk to and from work once already today, and if it freezes a little bit later, I expect more of the same.

Tonight after work I have to go the WI Review office and help with the choosing of pieces for the spring issue. Basketball tonight is at 8:15.

I think we have something like 3 games left. Could be a couple more depending on the “playoff” situation. I’ve had a pretty good time playing basketball, but I don’t expect that I’ll do it again next year. It’s been a little frustrating that we never have time to practice (we only show up for the games), and my weekly basketball nightmares, while silly, are pretty annoying. Long story short, it seems like too much anxiety and stress for something that is supposed to be a good time.

Thinking about this sort of thing makes me worry that I’ll be a bad “sports dad” at some point in the future– I won’t have the skills to teach kids sports, and who knows if I’ll have the right sort of attitude to be a good spectator at their events.

I wonder if other people who don’t have kids (or even a spouse) worry about crap like this.