Tournament Sunday

No, not the NCAA, but the Newgy Robo-Pong St. Joseph Valley Open Table Tennis Tournament in South Bend (wow, that's a mouthful). For this tournament, I entered three events, the under 1500, under 1625, and under 1750. My USA Table Tennis rating going in was 1352, so I was hoping to boost that number. It happened and it didn't happen.

In the under 1625, I was a match point away from advancing further but couldn't close the deal. I led 10-9 in the deciding 5th game, but couldn't end it. So, that was it.

In the under 1500, I lost to a kid with a ranking of 998. That will cause a huge plunge in my rating. However, the kid then lost 3-0 to another guy that I played. Had I beaten this guy 3-0 I would have advanced in this event. However, I only beat him 3-1. So, once again, so close.

In the under 1750, I figured I was just along for the ride. But then things got interesting. I beat a guy with a 1,500+ ranking. Then, in a match my brother Steve called one of the sloppiest he's seen, I took out a guy with a 1,600 plus ranking (he was right, it was a garbage win, but it was still a win). I then finished out by beating a guy with a ranking just above mine, which allowed me to advance into the quarterfinals, which I lost in 3 straight to a 1,600+ player by scores of 11-9, 11-7 and 16-14. So, I was very pleased. This should help regain some of the points I lost to that punk kid from the under 1500 (who actually was a very good player with a good attitude).

Steve, meanwhile, started off early by taking out a guy with a ranking 200+ higher than him, then held his own by not losing to anyone lower. So he should see a healthy spike in his rating.

But, I am WORN OUT! That was quite a workout today. I will sleep well tonight.

A Week Off

The kids were on Spring Break this week, so I took vacation days to stay at home with them. It's been a wonderful week.

On Monday and Tuesday, we went to Fort Wayne to spend a couple nights at mom and dad's house. On Monday evening, everyone but Benjamin was able to come over for the usual (but far from ever being old) dinner of mom's noodles and homemade rolls. It was a fun time having everyone over. Dorene's spring break isn't until the first full week in April, thus the reason she had to stay behind.

Tuesday evening I went with Steve to the Fort Wayne table tennis club. There's a big tournament this weekend in South Bend, so this served to give me some extra practice. I won some, lost some, but overall played pretty good.

The rest of the week was spent just hanging out with the kids, firing up the grill for dinner, and just taking it easy. If any monumental events took place in the world, I would have missed it because I pretty much ignored the news (except for the NCAA tourney).

The next couple months will be very busy for all of us, so the timing was good for the break, and I'm ready to get back in the swing of things on Monday.

BBQ for Lunch

Dorene had to stop by my office today during lunch. She asked if she wanted to bring me anything and I said, "surprise me." So, she brought in rib tips from Frankie's BBQ, the best joint in town. Located in the 'hood, the place ain't pretty, but it's got the best rib tips around.

But now, I'm really full and don't want to go back to work. Oh well, lunch hour is almost over, guess I gotta do what I gotta do.

NCAA Tournament - Dennie Family Predictions

It's tournament time again! Below are the Dennie family picks for this year's tourney:

Rick
Upset Specials - Western Kentucky over Gonzaga; Mississippi State over Washington.
Elite Eight - Louisville, Michigan State, Purdue, Missouri, Xavier, Duke, North Carolina, Arizona State
Final Four - Louisville, Missouri, Xavier, North Carolina
Finals - Louisville over Xavier
I, of course, conducted extensive analysis before filling out my bracket. In other words, making picks based on actual knowledge of the teams. But then again, I never win this thing either.

Cameron (age 6)
Upset Specials - Radford over North Carolina; Stephen F. Austin over Syracuse. For that second one, he just wasn't impressed with "Orangemen."
Elite Eight - Arizona, Dayton, Washington, California, Oklahoma State, Texas, Akron, Michigan
Final Four - Dayton, California, Oklahoma State, Michigan
Finals - Michigan over Dayon

Cameron made his picks based on the coolness of the mascot. He especially liked the Dayton Flyers, the California Golden Bears, and the Akron Zips. But nothing trumped the coolness of the WOLVERINES, due to the X-Men character.

Anna (age 10)
Upset Specials - Morgan State over Oklahoma; North Dakota State over Kansas. I mean, can a "Jayhawk" really beat a "Bison?"
Elite Eight - Arizona, Boston College, Washington, California, Pittsburgh, American, Butler, Arizona State.
Final Four - Arizona, Washington, American, Arizona State
Finals - American over Arizona

Anna made her picks based on her love of U.S. History, thus the picks of "Boston" and "American" and "Washington." She picked Pittsburgh because it's in Pennsylvania, which of course has a lot of history behind it. I think some of her other picks are based on her daddy's love of anything Arizona. Butler snuck in since they are the Bulldogs.

Dorene
Could really care less that the tournament is going on

DC Newsboys

One of the all-time great (and certainly one of my favorite) Christian bands is going through a major change. It was just announced that Newsboys lead singer, Peter Furler, will be stepping down and being replaced by . . .Michael Tait!? He is one of the three original members of DC Talk, along with Toby Mac and some other guy. Now, I really like DC Talk, but I'm trying to picture Michael Tait as lead singer of a band that has had a fairly distinct sound all these years (think Aussie accent). This could take some getting used to. Maybe they should have replaced him with Rebecca St. James and kept the Aussie accent thing going.

In Defense of AIG

Uh, I don't think so. Yeah, I know, they were contractually obligated to give these bonuses to keep the "best and brightest" among them, but are they paying attention to what's going on in the economy? Did they think there wouldn't be any outrage? Their defense was the same as Obama defending all the earmarks; it was a done deal by previous folks and there was nothing they could do about it.

But NEXT time things will be different. Uh huh, we'll see.

Early Morning Prayer

This past Saturday, our church held a special prayer service for Hope Ministries, a local homeless center that we've been involved with for several years. The organization was going to several churches in the area that were holding similar services.

It's a great organization and one of the highlights each year is we take our kids down there to perform the Christmas program we work on. Every other month we also serve a meal and conduct the chapel service.

We had a pretty good turnout for 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday. I've never been the type that could do the early morning prayer/Bible study thing. I'm just not awake enough and will often find myself drifting off to sleep during my prayer time. I'm much better during the midnight hour (isn't that a song?).

After the prayer service we had a breakfast then moved into a work day. Got a lot of stuff done, including cleaning out our balcony which had turned into a major storage/junk area. People can actually sit up there now. But of course, we kinda need to work on getting people into the seats on the main floor first.

Charming the First Grade Girls

Recently I was clearing out Cameron's backpack and found that he had three of his sweatshirts stuffed into it that he wears over his polo shirts. I asked him why he was stockpiling the shirts at school and he said, "Well, I get warm inside the school so I don't need to wear the sweatshirt once I'm there, but Lexy sometimes gets cold so I let her wear mine so she stays warm."

Quite the charmer.

Sign of the End Times?

Last weekend, there was a reunion concert in Orem, Utah that featured, drum roll please, MC HAMMER and VANILLA ICE!

The sad thing is, I actually remember when they were considered cool. Although, Vanilla Ice's coolness reign was a lot shorter.

Deep Theological Question

IU South Bend is an ACT testing site, so I often administer tests on the weekend. On Sunday, I'll be administering a test individually to someone that couldn't test at the regular time on Saturday. The reason they couldn't is because they are Jewish and Saturday is their Sabbath. Thus, I am skipping my Sabbath and will be making money so someone else didn't have to work on their Sabbath.

Am I going to burn for this?

You CAN Count the Stars in the Sky

On the way home from church tonight, Cameron told me that he counted the stars and that there are 21 of them.

As we pulled into the driveway, he evidently had found more, because he said, "Dad, actually there are 57 stars."

Trivia Champs

At work on Friday, we had a trivia challenge to raise money for the Tom Smith Memorial Scholarship. Tom was a colleague in our tech department that died suddenly of a heart attack just a couple months after getting married back in 2000. They had been attending Trinity Evangelical Free Church in South Bend, which is where Dorene and I used to attend. So I knew hi fairly well. He was a great guy and very much well-thought of at IU South Bend.

A scholarship was begun in his name and is used for full-time staff at IU to pay for books and other expenses they incur from taking classes. The trivia challenge was used to raise money for this scholarship fund.

The format was teams of 8-10. When a question came up, you discussed it amongst your group (quietly) and wrote the answer down. Each category had 5 questions, so the group with the most right after 10 categories was the winner. Our group consisted of student affairs staff, with a couple of our big guns (vice chancellor and associate vice chancellor). We had a very good mix of knowledge, with everyone chipping in one way or another. I came in handy when it was necessary to remember a detail from "Willy Wonka" or to identify a picture of Yosemite State Park.

We finished with 48/50 correct. It was especially sweet because we beat a couple groups comprised solely of faculty from the school of education and the college of arts and sciences (in other words, those groups had all Ph.D.'s in them.