So there’s been a lot of basketball action since I blogged last. I love the Lady Rockets, but at a certain point (right after that last blog post), I was like, “Oh dear sweet baby Jesus, just let this season end.”
Following that, there was a women-men doubleheader that we only went to the women’s half of (a 1-point loss to WMU), and there was an overtime loss to NIU that was painful to watch/listen to online.
That NIU game was a day game…how was I able to watch/listen to it? OH THAT’S RIGHT, I HAD THE FLU. One of Kim’s disease-vector children, who I sat with at the pink game, came down with (diagnosed) Flu A the same day that I did. I actually had to call off work for 2 days. I still do not regret not getting a flu shot. I do regret holding babies.
I was recovered enough to go sit quietly at the Central Michigan home game on Day 5 of my illness to watch the Ladies lose.
Then, as is always a good idea when you’re coming off of an illness, I had to work nights. I am still coughing.
Wednesday, March 5th was the last regular season home game, so it was Senior Night:
The Ladies beat EMU handily, and we marked the end of a VERY solid Lady Rocket career (my girl Dola), the end of the careers of some ladies who were quality bench players whom we were forced to watch start and play big minutes all season (Nelly, Krunch), and for the sake of completeness, the end of our looooooooong 4-year obligation to a super-dud (Mariah). This Senior Night was not as emotionally draining as when we started our long goodbye to the SuperJew.
Some pictures from their post-game radio time:
That Friday afternoon, I drove to Indianapolis to see Kim in her new apartment. It is a nice apartment, but they really have a lot of kids. This was also evident when we went to get Mexican food that night. Sooooo many children.
The next morning, I woke up at 6:30am (and oh boy did I want to sleep, since I was coming off of nights) to the sounds of the many children. It is worth noting that Kim convinced me to turn the white noise machine on on Saturday night, and I liked it so much I ordered one and use it for night shift day sleeping. Anyway, the purpose of my trip was to make Kim go to the Lady Rockets game at Ball State. We arrived at the barn and watched the Ladies lose (though at some point Dola made it close, briefly). This is the only picture I took while I was in Indy, to show the shitty scoreboard (and shitty score):
While we were sitting there watching the game, we managed to realize that I went to junior prom with the father of Jack’s best Indianapolis friend. He is a weird dude. Also, I made friends with the mother and daughter who were sitting in front of us. They were from Waterville, and the mom and I bonded over how sad Senior Night is.
Kim and I found a delicious Indian restaurant after the game, and we wandered around Homegoods and Trader Joes and then finally gave up and went back to the apartment where the many children were. Here is a cartoon I just recently sent to Kim:
Here is a humorous picture Kim recently sent to me (the baby is not really a giant):
The next week I was off work because basketball. Monday night was the home site MAC game for the women. They beat Ohio in what was really the last game at Savage for the seniors:
Because they won, they got to go on to Cleveland on Wednesday. Wednesday, it snowed like crazy (again, this winter would not die), and we ended up not making the trip.
Here are some late-winter snowy pictures involving squirrels:
Bossman said that the roads were passable if you took your time, and I tried to convince Brian that we should go, but it was fortunate he did not agree. There was some kind of crazy turnpike accident that day that involved 50+ vehicles…3 fatalities, a highway patrol dude seriously hurt when he was pinned between cars, and tons of wreckage…plus, POTATOES EVERYWHERE.
The Ladies won the Wednesday game against Western, so we planned to go to their Thursday game against Akron at 2:30. When we got up, I checked all the news stations and the twitters, trying to find out if the turnpike was back to normal after the miles of crashes. The turnpike twitter said that 2 lanes were open with minor delays, so I thought we’d be OK if we left early, and if the trucks all got off the turnpike, I’d follow them. We left before 11, and we ended up sitting in traffic for 2 hours. It seemed to have been because people were gawking at the potatoes and Easy Mac off to the sides of the road. We didn’t get to the Q until 3:15…right as halftime was about to start. The Ladies were down by about 20 by then. We did see Campy Russell walking around on the concourse, and we got to see the freshly retired number:
A picture during the last game of the 2013-14 season:
Rocksy doing stunts:
The final score, which maybe isn’t so bad because Akron ended up winning the MAC tournament and going on to (get whipped in) the NCAA:
After the half of basketball that we watched, we went to Harry Buffalo and had dinner and then drove home. On our way home, we saw that they were diverting eastbound traffic off of the turnpike before the accident zone. Son of a bitch!
Six hours (and some change) in the car and watching the Ladies lose did not make for the best day ever. The Toledo men played the next night (Friday) at the Q, and at some point we had kind of kicked around going, but after Thursday we took the day off from going to Cleveland. Since we were not there, of course the game was super fun.
We decided to go to Cleveland early the next day to see Ball State vs. Akron in the MAC championship. This was Ball State’s 6th game in 8 days, and 5th game in 6 days, so they looked a little tired. Akron won.
We went to the casino, where we looked at people, I was overstimulated, and Brian gambled five of my dollars. Then we went to the mall.
Finally it was time to go to the men’s MAC championship game. We bought our tickets that afternoon, so they were not very good. Here is our view:
Curiously, the women’s basketball coaching staff had seats one row less shitty:
Here’s a picture of all the Cavs’ banners at the Q:
The men lost, the game was terrible, we regretted going, etc. Here’s a crappy picture of game:
Here’s a picture of the Western horsey looking stoned:
The Rocket men played an NIT game, which was away and also terrible, so who cares.
More excitingly, UT hosted some NCAA WBB first and second round games. We saw Vanderbilt (coached by former Xavier coach Melanie Balcomb!) lose to Arizona State, and Robert Morris lose to perennial powerhouse and guilt-laden Catholic favorite Notre Dame in the first round games:
One of the best parts was the halftime entertainment of the ND game – the jump-roping Pop Rocks out of Troy, Ohio. These ladies were very talented:
On Monday the 24th, we went back to Savage to watch Notre Dame beat Arizona State:
Here’s a cool picture of the start of the game from somewhere high up:
I was stillll not ready to let WBB die for the year, so I forced Brian to go to the BGSU WNIT game versus Michigan on Thursday.
BG won. Also of note, the U of M bandos wear those white Mickey Mouse gloves indoors, which I find weird. Of course, it is difficult to see in this picture because the Stroh is poorly designed and the only video board is at the one end and we had a terrible view of it, but whatever.
BG plays Rutgers on Monday, but I’m not, like, $16.35 interested in going to a BG game. I’ll watch it on TV, perhaps.
One day last week, I shoveled snow from the yard ONTO the driveway to get it to melt. In the backyard, I shoveled snow from near the house out into the less shaded area. I was pretty set on not looking at snow any longer than I had to, and I think it paid off. Suck it, everyone else who still has crusty snow piles in their yards.
Today the sun was out. Even something as terrible as raking leaves seemed wonderful because it was not cold and/or snowy. Soon it will be real spring!