More Crickets

busy at work + Matthew birthday + trying to get ready for vacation = not much going on here. 

I am sure posting will increase once the vacation gets going! 

1)  End of Matthew’s indoor soccer.  Tied 1-1, Won 3-1.  Played more attacking center mid than anything else.

2)  Dad was seeded #3 in the racquetball playoffs and lost in straight sets to the #2 seed.  Kevin was #5…could have been #4 if he would have made more of an effort to make-up cancelled matches.   Only the top 4 go to the playoffs

3)  Lacrosse has started; in the gym instead of outside right now.

4)  Musical rehearsals continue.  A few pics that I found out on the interwebs….

5)  Quiz Bowl is over…they were undefeated in Leagues again.  More on this later.

Senior Pictures

We finally got them; some delays on the photographer’s part…some on ours.

Anyway, clilck on the collage and you’ll go to the Shutterfly slideshow.

 

Thief!

A depressing day of soccer down in Wixom (lost 3-1 and 4-1 to a U13 team) turned even worse when Suzanne made that “hey, where’d my phone go?” gesture we’ve all made at one point or another.  Walk up to the office in the building, no one has turned it in.  Go back to Suzanne’s Ipad (she had brought both…thought she might be doing some cruise-surfing with our friends) and fire up the Find My Iphone app.  And there’s her Iphone, heading south on Wixom Road.

Call the phone, no answer (of course!)

Activate the Find My Iphone ‘ring’…..and whomever had it just turns the phone off.  Last trace we have of it is on I-96 heading east.  Damn.

So, go to the next step on the App…activate the lock & track feature.  The phone can now only call one number (mine!) and will display a message (our typed message was “You stole this phone.  You are being tracked.  Call now and this can end nicely.”)

So, about 45 minutes later, my phone rings.  It’s Suzanne’s phone!  Everyone around in the stands (including the one dad who is a police officer) is amazed….

Some boy is at the other end…..he ‘found’ it and then didn’t turn it in at the office because “they were in a hurry”.   Said I could come and get the phone…yeah, it’s 45 minutes east in Pontiac

I’m unwilling to travel that-a-way to get the phone…I agree to give them a fedex label via email and they will ship it back.  Tried to talk to the Dad, he doesn’t speak English(!).  Have a phone number, and email address (which is firstnamelastname@gmail.com) and well, we’ll see.

Get a call Sunday night from the mom(?).  Says she is sorry, the boy ‘found’ it.  I say that’s a pretty charitable term…it was ‘found’ until he walked past the office out the door, at that point it became ‘stolen’.  Says they don’t have a printer to print the fedex label; can I come down to Pontiac?….I suggest that there are about a thousand places with printers; schools, libraries, etc and if I have to come down to Pontiac (90+ minutes at least) to get the phone then I’m certainly going to find the time to file a report with the police too while I’m there.

Monday morning I’m a little calmer…if I have to drive down to Pontiac Monday night I will…I’d rather have the $600 phone back before anything else.  But I call the number at about 4 pm and get my little english-speaking friend again who tells me, yup, his Dad dropped the phone in an envelope at fedex this morning.

Will be happy to have the phone show up tomorrow and this saga come to an end!

Orchestral Notes

A whole bunch of Kevin orchestra performances here.  First up are the pieces from the District Festival performance in February.

Adagio For Strings – Barber

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity – Holst

Poet and Peasant Overture – Suppe

We also received the CD of the All-State Performance in January.   You can click on either of the pictures below to play the audio (note:  for Billy The Kid you need to follow the link and download the files…..it is more than one ‘track’)

             

Kevin sent me some photos of some of the judges comments at Districts.  They are pretty good!

Kevin is, um, underwhelmed by what they are performing for their German trip.  I think he used the phrase “ridiculously easy’.  Oh well. 

From The Sports Desk – Another Journey Through the Losers Bracket

Kevin/Dad: Since we are back on standby with Kevin’s knee we went out and did our league match.  I won, but it wasn’t as easy as last time; 15-9, 15-8, 15-9.  Kevin thinks another two weeks and he’ll be ready to stomp me…..I just laugh.  Tried the GoPro outside of the glass wall, might post some video later.

Matthew:  I am four games behind on Matthew story-telling.  No pictures because as always it’s gloomy dark inside.

Game 1:  Beat Farmington 01 2-1.   In this session we play three teams that are a year older.  Their striker was/is was really good; he was a handful.  Traded sloppy goals early and we punched one in midway through to win.  They moved the ball fairly well; a good game overall.  Will see them again later in this update.

A strange game for Matthew…started at center back but was pulled almost immediately because the coach saw that really super fast striker and realized that was a bad matchup.  But then, in what is going to be a trend in these four games, spent more than his share of time on the bench.  Part of this is Matthew, I think, reverting to one of his bad habits, putting his hands on his hips when he is just standing around….he’s not tired (or at least claims not to be tired) but he certainly looks like he is.   Top that with some dubious decisions that led to turnovers and he definitely earned his place on the bench at times.

At the end of this game took a shot to the mouth and his braces cut into this gums….out again due to that.

Game 2: Beat LCSC 5-3.  The third time this year we’ve played these guys, again, we will play them again later in this session.  Every goal, ours and theirs, all came from the left side of the field...very strange (not a good day for right backs).  Our striker had 4 goals and an assist; a big day for him but a good job by everyone finding him out in space. 

Again, not a lot of Matthew here…..started the game on the bench dealing with bleeding but then would only come in for 10 minutes before heading out again.  Made a big mistake that led to a goal when he was playing out of position……at least he understood what he did wrong.

So, that was the first weekend and I checked in with the coach to see what was up…..that dreaded word ‘fitness’ came up and certainly made me regret not having Matthew play basketball (can’t even think how we would have made that work though!).  The coach took some of the blame, Matthew’s repeated play at center back has meant less running during games…..and now that he’s back out on the field it shows.

The Wednesday between these games was a conditioning practice.  Have never seen Matthew complain about being as sore as he was after that!   Heard a lot of kids weren’t shy about telling the coach they weren’t happy with practice….of course, this just makes it easier for him to keep piling it on!  Glad Matthew kept his mouth shut!

Game 3 (this last weekend):  Lost to Tigers 01 2-1.  We gave up two incredibly stupid goals, one from the new center back who decided (twice even!) to do what I yelled at kids when I was coaching over and over “DO NOT CENTER THE BALL ON DEFENSE”.  The second time it caught up with us and they scored and that kid went to the bench for a little ‘talk’. 

I thought Matthew played pretty well and he played about half the game…..but the coach ripped the team after the game (we had an hour break) and I think Matthew took it all too personally.  We had a little talk during the break and they went out for the next game.

Game 4:  Beat Farmington 3-1.  A much better outing, scored within the first 5 minutes and never trailed.  But not a lot of Matthew….played really well while he was in there but wasn’t in there very much at all.

So…..I guess there are two points to talk a little more about

1)  Fitness – Not too concerned about this….he starts lacrosse next week so he’s going to be going to practices 4x/week.  But I think he is beginning to understand that it can’t just be what he does at soccer practice…he needs to start putting in the time outside of that.

2)  Playing Time – I don’t think he’s playing poorly…so this confuses me.  Will seek more guidance from the coach on this if it continues next weekend. 

Cpher:  The year-end tournament for basketball finally rolls around

We are the #2 seed in the lower of the Gold brackets.  Find out before the tournament starts that the #1 seed isn’t showing up.  This is only neutral news for us…..it is a big benefit for the winner of the #4/#5 game.

Game 1:  So we go out and lose the first game to Laingsburg!  A team we had beaten by 15 in the regular season!  But they came out and made almost every shot…and we missed a lot of layups and easy shots near the basket and were down by 12 at the half.  Roared back to tie it up with about a minute to go….and had a three-pointer to win it that just missed.  So, on to the Loser’s Bracket.

Game 2:  Beat Grand Ledge.  Beat them going away…we win by 20 or so.  Back-to-back games on Sunday until we lose. 

Game 3:  On Sunday….since we are in the losers bracket we get the benefit of the forfeit…our first game is the 2nd forfeit and we don’t have to be on site until 11:30 instead of 9 am. 

We blow out Eaton Rapids.  Cpher plays the last 12-15 minutes of the game as we try to rest some of our other players for the back-to-back gauntlet we have to go through.

How did Christopher play?  Ok…..still wish he was more confident in himself to go up to the basket strong when he has the ball underneath.  But, of the two big men, he played the most…the other guy didn’t play much at all (and that seems very strange to me….we had an opportunity to bury Holt as their big guy was in serious foul trouble.  Sadly, no real effort by us to pound the ball inside when that happened.  Oh well.

Game 4:  Beat Laingsburg in the rematch.  They were again leading at the half but we put them away in the third quarter and the end of the game.

Game 5:  Lose to Holt and that ends the tournament.  Finish in 2nd place.  We hung with Holt and the game was tied at the start of the 4th quarter but the boys are too tired and Holt pulls away.

(I’ve never seen a team make it successfully through the loser’s bracket.  Just a long way to go…especially if you lose on the first day to end up there!)

Knobbly Knees

MRI?  Negative.  Nothing abnormal there at all.

So the most they can recommend is doing some knee strengthening exercises; we have downloaded them from the internet and hopefully Kevin does them daily.  They offered some physical therapy to start with….I declined it but will give Kevin the option to accept if he wants to go that route.

So that, I guess, is that.

Blog Booker

Another year means another opportunity to use my favorite web site; Blog Booker!

(the fourth edition of a BNS book!)

The blog booker website is free for use, they only ask for donations.  I have been religious about donating (they suggest 10 euros) because if the site every disappeared I would be really sad!  Export the .xml file from the blog, click on a few options, and well, depending on how many posts and what dates you input, a few minutes later you get a .pdf you can download.

I create the pdf every 6 months

I have a Word document that I use for the covers…..I only now realize I messed up and didn’t use art for the front in 2013…but honestly, I think the days of boy-generated art are long past.  And Wiley deserved a cover shot! 

Printing the book was a bit of a challenge; the books can get really long (300+ pages) and even the cheapest commercial option of FedEx/Kinkos was hundreds of dollars to get color printing. 

So, (shhhh!), I print the books at work on the laser printer there.  Up until the 2nd half of 2013, I’ve been printing 2 column double-sided pages

This worked out and kept the size of the books down (they still run about 1-2” thick…they aren’t small!).

But, the latter half of 2013 prompted a change to single-column sheets….turns out that those game reports from Coach Stu didn’t format very well at all in 2-column mode.  Will have to work on that this spring, but, the 2nd half of the 2013 book is only one-column.

(I guess, depending on the size, I’ll have to look at more one-column printing.  Because the pictures are nice!)

The binding is pretty straight-forward; I tried to go for a hard-bound book deal but just couldn’t make that happen.  Fedex/Kinkos has something they call perfect-bind, so, the pages are glued together to the binding.  I give them the .word file with the cover; they print it 18” x 12” and there you go.  The local branch doesn’t do this work, so, they have to ship it down to the Troy location; it usually takes a week, and it costs about $12/book (since I’ve provided them all of the pages). 

Last Friday Night

Kevin and I spent a good chunk of Friday night in the Sparrow Hospital Radiology Department.  How we ended up there is a bit of a story.

Last May(?); well, I think we are a little unsure of the timing exactly.  Kevin was certainly home alone with Christopher, we remember we were returning from soccer in Grand Rapids, so, that would seem to make us think it is August.  But, Kevin remembers telling this story in school afterwards, so, we’ve been calling it May 2013 when we’ve talked with the doctors this week.  May it is.

Anyway, we get this slightly panicked call from Kevin and it goes like the old commercial; he has fallen and can’t get up.  Literally.  Ask him what happened, he says he doesn’t know, he was just sitting there and Wham, crushing pain in his right knee and any motion in that leg is a 10 on the 1 to 10 pain scale. 

I recall Suzanne and I weren’t very sympathetic…..wasn’t much we could do til we got home and really, if you can’t tell us what happened then what could the problem be.  Tell Kevin to have Christopher bring him some aspirin and try to get to his feet at some point. 

Kevin eventually gets to his feet and reports that he could feel something slide back into place and all is well.  And that’s the end of that.

Track forward to this January; we are sitting here watching the Seahawk – Saint playoff game and out of nowhere as he’s sitting on the couch it happens again.  We are getting ready to head to urgent care and Kevin is bracing himself against Suzanne and I as we pull him to his feet and sllllip, whatever happens happens and he’s back to normal.

Now, as I type this, you would think two events would be enough to have us going to the doctor, but, no, it takes the third event last Saturday to seal that deal.  Mind you, after the Saints-incident, Kevin went and played racquetball the next day with no issues.  But last Saturday night, while he was watching movies with his friends, it happened again.  Kevin sends a text telling us what happened, but, this time, it’s the other knee.  He knows what to do now; they give him some aspirin and about 10-15 minutes later they help to his feet  and sllllip everything is how it should be.

Call the orthopedic doc on Monday; we go on Wednesday.  Not quite sure what is going on, so he sends Kevin for an MRI.  The earliest we can do that is 9:45 pm Friday night.

(MRI imagery.  Your guess is as good as mine what this means)

The doctor guessed that Kevin might have torn his medial meniscus.  This is not particularly good news; apparently those don’t heal easily and surgery might be an option.   We shall see.