What is going on?

Things have been pretty busy for me lately.  I took a brief vacation last weekend and visited my baby sister and got to see my nephew, the baseball star, play.  His team won both games, he scored the first run in one and drove in the game winner in the other (and according to my internet research, he appears to have won this past Thursday’s game with a solo homerun in the top of the 7th inning).  It was a good time, I always enjoy spending time with Munchkin and her family.  Yesterday and today seemed like they would have been great days to fly, but, alas, I didn’t get to.  I hope to get in some flying again in the next week or two, but that will depend in part on the work situation.  The company and the union are still negotiating although the contract expired last night at midnight.  If the union goes out, I’ll have to work in a new place and, I’m told, it will be 6 12-hour days per week for the first few weeks (if the strike lasts that long).  Ah, well, it isn’t flying weather now, we have thunderstorms and a tornado watch and they are predicting snow tomorrow and Tuesday.  Gotta love spring, huh?!  Oh, well, tomorrow is opening day of the baseball season and the NCAA championship game (in basketball), so I’ll try to OD on that and enjoy the snow.  It also just occurred to me that yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis.  As I think I wrote before, I really came to appreciate him much more in the mid-70s, but I do remember the rioting that broke out after that awful day.  I’ll try to write something of substance in the next week.

Hoops OD and first ride of the year

Yesterday, I enjoyed the Buckeyes win over Michigan State (after upsetting Wisconsin in the quarters) in the Big Ten tournament semi-finals.  Today, the temp is around 60°F, so I decided to get the bike out and take my first ride of the season.  You can see the info in the column to the left.  It was a bit chilly and I probably would have gone a bit further, but I got a headache about 0.5 miles into the ride, so I settled for the 6.4 mile loop.  Fortunately, the tail wind was for the last half of the ride (I like those), so it overall felt pretty good for the first ride of the year.  Now, I’m sitting down to watch the Big Ten championship game (Purdue-OSU), then the NCAA tournament selection show and later this week will be the annual hoops overdose days Thursday and Friday from noon-midnight (half days of vacation both days, so I don’t feel guilty).  Spring must nearly be here.

Some random thoughts

It has been a while since my last entry. I’ve just been busy. Erin’s season ended with a heartbreaking 3 point loss to UC-Clermont in the ORCC semifinals. OU-L led most of the game (by as many as 10 in the second half), but some questionable officiating late and just not hitting some of their late shots cost them. It was a disappointing ending, but they had a pretty good season (18-14 or something like that)

Ohio got a lot of attention due to the tight Democratic race for President. I was actually kind of hoping that this past Tuesday would put an end to it until the conventions because, frankly, I’m tired of it. Alas, that was not to be, but at least I won’t get all those automated calls in my answering machine (at least until Oct).

The Buckeyes men’s basketball team got the win they needed to keep any hope of an NCAA bid alive when the upset #15 Purdue in overtime on Tuesday. Now they need to do the same to Michigan State and get a win in the Big Ten tournament or they’ll be going to the NIT.

They’re calling for the biggest storm since 1993 (I honestly don’t remember a bad storm in 1993, but that’s what they said on TV this evening) in the next 2 days. We’ve been getting hit with storms every Tuesday and Friday for the last 2 months, but they’re talking about 5-12″ out of this one. I don’t mind, I love snow.

OU-L women win 2nd round tournament game

Erin got a fair amount of playing time including the last 7+ minutes of the game. The OU-Lancaster women were the #3 seed, so they had a first round bye and didn’t have to play on Saturday. This evening, they played OSU-Lima and dominated them pretty much from the start. On Saturday, they’ll be playing the #2 seed, UC-Clermont. OU-L handed them their only conference loss of the season last month, so they’ll probably be out for revenge, but if the OU-L women can get double-figure scoring out of 5 players again like they did tonight, it could be a good game and OU-L should have a good chance.