Almost, Maine

 

Kevin is one of the five boys cast in the Winter Play; seven were called back after auditions.  He doesn’t know his role yet, but, is pretty geeked that he made the ‘cut’ for a speaking role.

From Wikipedia:

Almost, Maine is a play by John Cariani, an American actor. The play is composed of nine short plays that explore love and loss in a remote, mythical place called Almost, Maine……Almost, Maine is featured in Smith and Kraus' New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2006 and is now the most produced play in North American high schools, recently supplanting Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The New York Times reviewer wrote that it is "A comedy comprising almost a dozen two-character vignettes exploring the sudden thunderclap of love and the scorched earth that sometimes follows, John Cariani's play will evoke either awww's or ick's, depending on your affection for its whimsical approach to the joys and perils of romance."

Never heard of it?  Neither have we…..   Youtube has a helpful introduction though.

 

Quizbusters – Update #2

 

Another taping has come and gone; in the battle of Meridian Township, Okemos beat Haslett 560-210.  That’s the Green Division semi-final match; next Monday brings the last day of taping, the Green Division final and the Championship.  It’s been an impressive run by the kids….opponents have struggled to score points and Haslett is the second team that seemed to be buzzing in too early just to get in and answer….and missed more than a few questions that way.

The thing that is awesome about this team is that different people step up at different times.  This game was Kevin’s turn; had a lot of answers and swept the first pop quiz (t-h-e were the letters).  One of the toss-ups led to three questions on Pacific Northwest geography…that’s just not fair, talk about playing to a Kevin-strength (there are times, when you figure out what those bonus categories are, that you know that the kids are just going to motor through them….geography, music, science….then there are what would seem like easy subjects like Harrison Ford movies, that they struggle unexpectedly on).

Last night’s results:

LANE Lansing Eastern Quakers vs. EVER Everett Vikings
winner: LANE 280-260
HILA Hillsdale Academy Colts vs. KENT Kent City Eagles
winner: HILA 350-280
OKEM Okemos Chieftains vs. HASL Haslett Vikings
winner: OKEM 560-210
JACC Jackson Christian Royals vs. LCAT Lansing Catholic Cougars
winner: JACC 360-300

We play Lansing Eastern next; in the head-to-head quiz bowl competitions this year we have beaten them.

Anyway, it is becoming more than a theoretical discussion now.  Can Kevin really walk away from $6K in prize money and not go to MSU for at least his freshmen year of college??? 

Tennis – Finale

 

For each sport, the local paper does an end-of-the-year summary; they name the Dream Team, All-Area, and All-League teams.  It always seems like we get hosed here, some of the smaller schools end up with more representatives even though we win any meet against these teams going away (and the closest match this year was a 6-2 win).

But, can’t really complain about how they did it this year.

So yeah, there’s that.  Named All-League.  Happy for Ashton that he’s named to the Dream Team in his senior year.  Ashton’s Dad and I were talking; he wondered why they didn’t do it by flight….but I understand what they’ve done here, the list is the best players in Mid-Michigan.  The CAAC showcase pretty much showed who the best team in each flight was (we went 6 for 8).

Had to ask why Ashton’s picture was so somber…turns out he snapped it off of his phone the day before publication! 

From the Sports Desk

 

An all-Cpher edition….Christopher’s team travelled to Perry for the season-opening tournament.

Game 1:  All pictures below are from this first game, a 27-17 win over Triple Threat

Cpher had a bucket (the last basket of the first half)….and that’s a good thing because last year was a disaster on offense and he’s become very timid about shooting the ball.  We were on fast break in the 2nd half and he got the ball all alone about 6 feet from the basket….and didn’t shoot, waited for his teammates to come down and then passed it off.  And I guess that’s fine, but, everyone, coaches, teammates, parents, want him to shoot in that spot.

Not sure what kind of mystic marital-art mumbo-jumbo defense Cpher is doing in the photo above…..

Cpher is back to his setting-awesome-picks ways…..and he set a good one here; the guard with the ball just drives in afterwards for an easy layup and the defender gets up off of the floor…..

I like this picture as well…he, out of all of the Okemos players you see in this photo, has done what we ask him to do…box your guy out!  And….

…he gets the rebound because of it.

Cpher scored one basket….if you wish, you can click on the picture ABOVE and see 114 seconds of the game, Cpher has a pick, a box out, a rebound, and the basket.  The rest of the video from the game (and Matthew’s games last weekend) is uploaded to that site as well

Took a shot in the 2nd half and got fouled….and didn’t make either of the free throws.  Offense is not a strength.

But, we won pretty handily, and the team did a nice job of scoring and running our plays….

Cpher will pass this ball back out….and we wish he would just drop his shoulder and go to the hoop.  Oh well.

Game 2:  A 34-11 shellacking of Grand Ledge’s ‘B’ team.  We had scrimmaged their ‘A’ team last Monday and that would have been a good game.  Instead, I think it was 18-0 as the first half came to an end.  Cpher was the only player on our team not to score….I don’t think he even had a shot (I know I remember one play where he got the ball down low and passed it across the lane for the even easier bucket). He was open in the low post, but, when layups are that easy, passing becomes less of a priority.

Game 3:  Sometimes, in soccer, Matthew’s travel team ends up playing community teams.  And those community teams get hammered; it’s just tough, even if you are the best kids in that community, to compete against travel teams that take the best of the region and practice twice as much as you do.

So, that’s what happened in Game 3.  By winning two games we ended up in the Gold Bracket, and got absolutely utterly annihilated, 54-11.  It was 34-5 at the half.  There is nothing good to say about this game except that the kids hustled to the end (Cpher got stuck on the floor at one point, he was clearly tired and we had a sub waiting to go in but there was no stoppage…..and he still ran all the way back and fouled a guy to stop an easy layup.  You can only look for little things when you are getting your asses handed to you.)

Regular season, for both boys, begins next week. 

Quizbusters Update

 

So, the first round win against Linden has been previously discussed, 450-240

The second round matchup was against Owosso; a 380-180 win that won’t air until February 2013. 

The third round was against Kearsley.  I have no idea when this episode will air; the taping was today.  The all-time high score in Quizbusters history is 720 points…the team made a big run at it….the final was 670-100!

(all kinds of smiles after the game was over!)

Fourth round will be against Haslett (tapes next Tuesday evening)

Green Division Final and Championship Match, if the team makes it, would tape on Monday, December 3rd. 

From The Sports Desk

 

An all-Matthew installment:

Basketball:  Travelled to Fort Wayne for a one-day three or four game tournament on Saturday.  The coaches took the whole team in one big van (10 boys in one van…shudder….and I understand that went exactly like I thought it would go!).  Missing two kids from our team…and both of those two I’d think are in our top five players.  So we’ll see how this goes…..

Game 1:  On the schedule, it looked like it might be a tough matchup, a travel team from the place where the tourney is held, the Spiece Wolfpack.

But, they are a group of 4th graders.  And they are good 4th graders….but that’s not a big help against us (Matthew has been in this spot in soccer; his team has played up a year sometimes to play better competition.  And that can be ok, but if you play up too far, it ends badly). 

We are winning 19-1 at the end of the half, 26-5 final.  Matthew has 2 points in the first half.

Matthew is probably one of the better defenders on the team; conversely, he is probably on of the poorer offensive threats on the team as well.  It’s not from a lack of confidence; his two points were on his fourth shot….the boy is going to shoot the ball if he is open.  But, his first step travelling problems seem to still be around (we are going to watch some tape to see if he understands it soon…) and outside shots are always an iffy proposition for any kid this age.  But, if he can play stout defense, he will be just fine.

Game 2:  Against another community team from East Noble.  They are 5th graders, and it is a close game but we have a two to four point lead throughout most of the game.  We’re up by two with about 90 seconds to go when the craziness starts.  We steal a pass and drive in for a layup, we are up by four, 27-23.  They throw the ball away, we inbound, score right away, and they rush down the court and we foul them, they are going to the line with 55 seconds left.

The scoreboard still reads 27-23.

The refs go over to the scorers table.  Now, at the scorer’s table, you have two parent volunteers, the one from our team was running the clock, the one from their team was keeping score.  And the ref tells him, hey, you missed a bucket.

The guy, from East Not-So-Noble, insists, nope, I didn’t.  Every parent there, both refs, the teenager keeping score for us, all say, hey, you missed a bucket.  But the guy won’t change his mind.  And the refs, because he is the official scorer, can’t overrule him.

Of course, we lose 28-27.

So yeah, we shouldn’t have blown a four-point lead with a minute to go.  But you have to wonder about a guy who won’t admit his mistake, or the East Not-So-Noble coaches, who stood by and just let it happen.  Our coaches didn’t overreact at all….which is pretty good on their part, I know I would have gone crazy and gotten a technical just to get the technical and make a scene out of it. 

(Matthew gets called for the foul here…77 is not his guy, the other white shirt in the play really lost him.  You can hear me say on the tape to Suzanne “I’ll take that foul every time”.  Stopped an easy layup, made that guy go to the line)

Game 3:  Play a travel team from near Toledo(?), Anthony Wayne.  And we get hammered, 38-20.  Not much to say here…..

Overall, a good tournament to start our season.  Regular season starts in two weeks.

Indoor Soccer:  We are playing down in Wixom this winter; this is a switch from previous winter outings.  But, it’s a good switch; soccer-zone, while fun, teaches bad habits and we had to play up quite a bit age-wise to play teams with similar skill levels…and then the boys would get hammered physically.

So, we’re playing two quality teams that are our age, back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday.  We miss Saturday’s beatings, 6-3 to Waza and 8-3 to Jags, but, the report is that the first game was better than the second and it was obvious the boys were tired at the on Saturday and that helped to make the scoreline worse.

Sunday’s first game is against the Jags….and the first 40 minutes of the 50 minute game were about as good as we could hope for, we’re down 2-0 and the score ends up being 5-0 as we chased the win and gave up easy goals.  But those two goals were pretty quick after 35+ minutes of play….and holding that team to 0-0 for that long is the entire reason we thought we should play down there in Wixom, not in Lansing.

Second game was ugly….we must have lost 10-0 and probably didn’t have a shot on goal.  For many boys that’s four games in 16 hours…and they just died, couldn’t keep up.  Learned an important lesson in stamina and in what happens if you choose not to possess the ball or challenge the other team possessing the ball….they will eat you alive.

String Trio

 

Click on any picture for about 30 seconds of video….it’s crappy video, all I had was the Ipad and it’s probably has the worst of the cameras.  But you’re not clicking through to watch so much as listen I guess….

Friday night brought the first concert, or, if not a concert, at least all three of them trying to play the same tune.  Kevin, I think, is doing the twinkle variation from memory…and he probably hadn’t played that since sixth grade.

French Folk Song….

Baa Baa Black Sheep.  I think it’s cute to watch Matthew and Cpher and see the cross-bowing start (I think they agreed that Matthew is the one who got ‘off’…I have no idea)

Quizbusters – Round 1: Linden

 

“Students from mid-Michigan high schools compete in a fast-paced question and answer game.”   64 teams, divided into white and green divisions (white = small schools, green = large).  The two division finalists are awarded a 5K scholarship towards tuition in your freshman year at MSU and a 0.5K scholarship from the bookstore for books, etc.

For Round 1, the teams are placed in the divisions randomly….win to advance, highest score gets the #1 seed, etc.  We drew Linden.  I was joking with a soccer dad…playing football against Linden would not be good (they are a little smaller than us enrollment wise but a lot better football-wise); quiz bowl?  Probably going to turn out ugly for Linden….

You can click on the picture below to go to the full episode.  If you do not want to know every detail of Kevin’s day until after you watch the video, I would watch the video first before reading any further…..

Poor Kevin….the capital of Kansas will stay with us forever.  A lot of pressure up there, and I’m glad he buzzed in, but, you can just see him lock up and I’m sure he knew as he said it was wrong…..

At least he didn’t get the most embarrassing flub…..missing “What is the eighth month of the year?”

Some other points as I watch the episode:

• 1st question….couldn’t believe he (or others) couldn’t even guess a Z-country.
• The answer to Kevin trivia “What was the answer for Kevin’s first Quizbuster points?”   Alexander Hamilton….
• Sadly, any question now that starts “This country…” we expect Kevin to get…or wonder what happened?
• DEA – These head-to-head competitions seem to do be a team strength….but I’m quickly deciding that this isn’t a Kevin-strength.    Glad he got one of the answers….dean.
• Pakistan – I’m sure Kevin will wonder why it took him so long to buzz in here as well.  But nobody else buzzed in too….
• 180-120 at halftime.  Forgot how close this match was for a while….
• There’s a few Okemos-traditions at Quizbusters.  The first is no uniforms, some teams come wearing the same things…..the second is having a theme for the introductions. Not sure whether he chose the electromagnetic force or got stuck with it…
• The female half of the team was not happy with the male team over the Kony answer…..
• Bad news for the other team when music is the bonus category…you can see Kevin and Martina just smiling the whole time as they know they are going to clean up in this category
• Borneo:  Kevin said he knew this a lot earlier in the question, but, since there was no reason to buzz in early, he didn’t.
• 300-120 before the next pop quiz….
• CAN – Kevin’s taking Brit Lit this year…a little surprised he was beaten to Canterbury Tales.  But went 1/3 here again with ‘canyon’…
• Aztec Empire – Kevin was laughing at the Linden guess afterwards but I had to tell him the way the question started  out I was thinking Byzantine….
• I forgot that Kevin did come right back after the Kansas debacle with a right answer…..Empire State = New York

450-240 is the final.  The 450 points gets the team the 4th seed in the green division and a 2nd round matchup against Owosso (this episode was taped this week but won’t air until February). 

One Thousand

 

Yup.  If you total up all of the numbers in the blog archive section over there to the right, this will be the thousandth post.

That’s a very large number.  It’s led me to think deep weighty thoughts about this blog and why it exists and why it is such a large part of my life.  It has turned out that the blog is not some hair-brained idea that I thought I would abandon long ago….with the photos and video it has morphed into something much more than that.

Why?:  I’ve never had a hobby or interest I’ve stayed with like this one.  I’m prone, ruthlessly prone, to not completing a project (there are a legion of home-improvement projects that speak to this and I’ve noticed the same thing at work…it’s much better if somebody comes in to finish off some of my projects with a deliberate focus instead of me slowly bring the ship into port…anyway…)

But I do this…and sometimes fall behind and feel guilty about that, but more often than not I get back to it and the blog is a fairly accurate family history.  When I’m travelling, I find myself going back and rereading blog entries from years ago….some changes to the blog have happened because of that (I used to embed, and then link, to video….now I always have a picture from that video that acts as a link.  It is more work, but looks better in the end.)

But I still haven’t answered why?   And trying to answer why has lead me to a realization about the last five to ten years (and the upcoming seven to eleven)……these are the best days of my life.  I look forward to nothing more than a weekend full of events and watching the boys give it their all in one way or another.  Life may be chaotic, and there are disappointments, but you couldn’t get me to trade watching Matthew in a pouring rainstorm for almost anything else right now.  I like watching the Steelers score, and can watch Santonio score that touchdown in the endzone over and over and over…..that feeling is nothing compared to watching Christopher grab a critical rebound in basketball, or Kevin and Ross upset the #2 seed to move into the semi-finals, or Matthew doing just about everything and anything.  It just does not get better than that. 

And in the end, I want to remember, and relive, these times.  My memory sucks….but the words, the picture, they videos, they remind me.  We’ve been to some awesome places, and we do so much while we are there that things get hazy in the distance of time; I’ve more than once gone back here as a reference on what we did or where we ate or to remind Suzanne and myself about how a certain event happened.

The Good:  I was always worried that there would be a ton of people on this big bad internet who would find this blog and stop here and in some way the blog would come back to be an embarrassment to the boys.  Because that’s all you hear, don’t post anything on the internet.

Turns out that hasn’t happened, the blog is lucky to see five visitors a day, and some of them are because of some very strange search criteria (‘buckle fracture’ has gotten BNS more than a few visitors). 

So far there has been only one consistent visitor other than family (….that visitor is a high school student or parent who did a search about quiz bowl and hit the post I did back in January with pictures of Kevin and the quiz bowl team).  I told Kevin that someone was visiting the blog, and he didn’t care very much one way or the other ( best thing I ever did…set up the free tracking software).  I am surprised I’ve never gotten a stray hit from a soccer parent….or off of facebook (I list the blog in my ‘info’)

I’d like to think that someday Kevin, Fric, and Frac will enjoy this trip down memory lane.  I know that already I appreciate the memories I’ve recorded here.  That’s enough for me.

(one of the reasons the pictures are bigger now on the blog is my understanding of how they look when they are turned into ‘print’….it takes more time to make them larger, but, it’s definitely worth it)

The Bad:  Suzanne almost never visits the blog (“Why would I go look at it?  I’m living it….”)  You know the saying that history is written by the winner?  I’m sure that years from now, when she does read it, my version of events is going to differ slightly from her memories.  I don’t ‘win’ these type of disagreements much right now….but I know I KNOW that since I have it in print, my version will win out.  One of these days. 

So yeah, that’s bad.  But it’s amusing bad.

What is really bad, and has made me reconsider the whole blog deal over the last six months, is my belief that the blog is a substitute for real human interaction for parts of my family.   Took me a while to sort out how I felt about this….especially since I am convinced that this blog has enabled or enhanced that problem.  

It’s easy to click on the BNS bookmark once or twice a day.   Real easy.

Finally decided against turning the blog ‘private’, that wouldn’t change anything.  So yeah, that’s bad.  And sad. 

The Future:  Well, I had more posts in 2012 to date than in 2011, so, it’s not like there’s been a drop off in production.  Still trying to figure out how in the world I posted 242 times in 2008.  That seems unachievable now, especially with all of the video that is uploaded on the many different Shutterfly share sites. 

But the more the boys do the more there is to post about.  Keeping up with Kevin’s tennis was some work (I really like that scanning-in the scorelines in the paper is a great way of ‘scrapbooking’ them for the future) but pretty useful for me; it was an easy place to go and check what the score of previous matches were and remind myself who we played.

It will be interesting to see how long posts with Kevin updates are feasible; seems very strange that we are now thinking in terms of ‘last’ events at home (Suzanne commented that there was only one more Halloween left until Kevin was ‘gone’).

Books:  I know I’ve talked here about the blogbooker application I found on the internet. I printed out the files from the blog (five files, one for each year from 2007 to 2011). The printout, in color, 8.5x11, double sided, the blog in two columns, comes in at over 500 pages. I’m currently trying to figure out how to bind it so that I have a permanent record of all of this.  Hard-cover doesn’t seem to be an option, but, apparently soft-cover through Kinko’s is only about $20 each.  Will have to be two books at that point.  Looks like 2012 might have to be its own book too…..just the first half (where the page above comes from) weighs in at 140 pages.

Suzanne Facebook Photo Dump

 

I knew there were at least two photos over there that I wanted to make sure ended up here….turns out there were more than a few.  So I made a post out of it.

I’m trying to figure out if Suzanne took these pictures in Mallorca with her Iphone or with the nice camera.  I guess I really don’t remember saving them, but, she posted them on Facebook…..

They are not presented in order.  This is probably the first in the series

And this has to the last…taken right before we boarded the ship

This picture is what makes me think Iphone…..I’m sure Suzanne would have zoomed in more with the other camera.  I remember Suzanne commenting on the one little white sailboat sitting in all this blue water as I was driving along trying to keep the car from stalling and us from falling off of a cliff…..

In Mallorca.  I have no idea what is since we didn’t stop there.  I really don’t remember it that much…..

Not sure what that metal thing in the foreground is supposed to be….looks kind of like a face mask and football helmet now that I really check it out.

Picture #1 that I was really looking for….the boys at the Michigan State game.

Picture #2 that I was really looking for……we hollowed out some pumpkins and used them as flower pots for mums.  Looked pretty good….but the pumpkins rot a lot quicker when you need to add water for the mums…

Picture #3 – Kevin and Suzanne went to the Seahawks – Lions game last Sunday.  Some nice seats and a pretty good game….even though it didn’t end like they wanted it too…..

Dahl-y

 

The phrase was enough to strike terror in Cpher’s soul.  It certainly scared the crap out of me.

“Three book reports.  160-pages each, minimum.  Due October 4, October 26, November 11”

Cpher still sees his tutor twice a week….Suzanne and I have had this discussion recently and the answer is “he’ll go as long as we can reasonably make it work out”.  There’s no doubt that it’s been good for him….and these book reports were probably the surest example of how that’s working it out.

Cpher went on a Roald Dahl-fest for these reports; he started with Matilda (a school story), then went to James and the Giant Peach (science-fiction/fantasy), and is finishing up with Witches (his choice).  Finished the reading in plenty of time to get the three paragraphs done.  And best of all, with only a little discussion from Mom and Dad about format, generated three decent paragraphs for us to work on and edit.

Hand-written writing will never be a strength; Cpher needs those red-squiggly lines in the word processor to help with his spelling.  But what has really improved is his word choice….he’s using “five-dollar” words now and has taken the rubric-guidance to heart, he almost always uses an example from the book to back up what he’s saying in the report.

His teacher commented on one of the words he used on his first report; did he choose it or did his parents?  And he said he did…and we had saved his rough draft to show his tutor just how he was progressing, and sure enough, that word was there…it wasn’t one of the edits.  Whew!

Got 25/25 on Matilda…..no score back yet for the Peach….he did say his classmates were checking out his diorama though when he brought it in.

Blasts from the past

 

Sundry photos and stuff that was captured from the internet or the scanner.  Most is dated, a few are current.

Kevin circa 1997 – in 18 months we have to pick a baby picture for the orchestra to use at the last concert.  I am sure it won’t be this one, but, I am also sure it will be one with his crazy curly hair!

Found this on a Father’s Day card that we had saved…..taped to construction paper

Found this near the scanner/filing area….and sat there and went “I don’t remember this”.  And then remembered that Suzanne, Kevin, and Matthew went to Seaworld while Christopher and I went to the zoo the last time we were in San Diego.

Think Christopher would have really liked this though. 

From Costa Maya.  Don’t really remember….it’s either that or Cozumel I guess…

Recommendation letters Kevin needed to collect before he submitted his application to be part of the Senate Page program.  Still not sure what happened here other than he wasn’t selected….don’t know if Stabenow’s office (or any Senate office) had funding or if they just chose someone else…..

Stolen from Kevin’s facebook.  I think she had some post that if you liked it she would say certain things.  I remember the comment incident…she dropped him from facebook for months and was pretty pissed off about it.

Didn’t make the main paper, but, there was this little blurb about the State finals in the local once-a-week paper….