Name that car…
Clearly, I know nothing about cars. Found this on The Oatmeal.
When does 20 minutes = 8 minutes?
Another tournament visited, another tough day on the court. UW-Platteville was the site of last weekend’s volleyball tournament for the Wisconsin Performance 16s Black team. Leaving the house at 7, we made the trek to Platteville (never been) and found the fieldhouse easily – Thank you, Garmin.
To all tournament hosts: Could we trouble you for some open wi-fi at these things? We have lots of time to kill. kthxbye
Anyway, of the 8 teams (16’s) that were there, we finished 8th. Ugh. I know it’s not all about winning. I know the goal is to improve as a player week after week. Team improvement should naturally follow, right? The thing is, we ARE getting better in small increments. The frustrating part is that the other teams are also getting better during this time. As they say, it’s an uphill battle.
In an effort to improve the team, Coach Emily asked that I record some games. She thought, and I agree, that it would be helpful to show it to the girls and have them see what we all see. Move your feet! Go get it! Call it!
For each game in the post-pool play tournament, I set up my camera at two different vantage points and recorded the action. Each game lasts about 20-25 minutes of real time. Knowing that YouTube videos can only be 10 minutes long, I was afraid I’d have to chop the footage up into multiple uploads. Not to worry. Upon editing the clips down to action-only sequences, there was really only about 8 minutes of footage per game. Obviously, not too many long rallies.
If you dare to subject yourself, feel free. We wear white with red trim – Hannah is number 61 (setter).
Game 1:
Game 2:
To end this mini-rant on a positive note, I must commend my daughter. In reviewing the action again and again (*eyeroll*), I couldn’t help but pick up on the fact that she was always there to help her teammates up, she clapped words of encouragement, and she tried to keep the team fired up – a chore in any environment, especially true that day. On the way home she commented how she really doesn’t care about wins and losses, she just wants to improve.
OK, she’s got it right. I’ll shut up now.
(In case you care, I captured the HD footage on my Canon Vixia HF100 camera and downloaded the *.m2ts files to my computer. They’re great quality for TV, but way too big and unwieldy for a condensed 3-4 inch YouTube window. I converted them to much smaller *.m4v files using AVS Video Converter, then assembled and chopped them together using Adobe Premiere Elements. I could have put transitions and themes and other fancy stuff in, but that would just take time.)
A full 1/2 weekend
Immediately after school on Friday, being all packed and ready to go we, all piled in the vehicle and headed to Wisconsin Dells for a rare Friday night gymnastics meet. As you might guess, it was Clare who competed with her Madtown Twisters team at the big puffy dome on the Chula Vista resort grounds.
(Regarding the venue, allow me to rant for just a minute…$12 a head to watch our kids compete?!?! That’s outrageous. I’ve never seen anything more than $5-6 per adult. Plus another $5 to park. Super. Yes, it’s a beautiful, multi-use facility that has to be a huge pain to swap to different sports. But each gym pays an entrance fee plus each gymnast pays a fee to compete. Give me a break! A recent multi-day volleyball tournament had free parking and was maybe $5/day to get in.)
Getting back to the event at hand, here’s her beam routine:
In the video, you begin to get a sense for how large this place is. Two complete gym setups for girls plus another for boys, a separate area for awards, and additional warm-up areas for each event in each setup.
All in all, it was a pretty good meet for Clare. Two places (6th on beam and 15th on vault), plus a good showing in the all-around (13th).
Since awards ran past 10:00 p.m. (pretty much as planned), we decided to spend the night in town and enjoy the wintery sights the next day. Most of us slept in on Saturday, and Clare and a teammate got in the pool/water park before we checked out. We spent most of the day at the Tanger outlet mall and found some good deals on just about everything. The girls were fortunate to catch us in a giving mood.
Lunch at the Cheese Factory (vegetarian), then we headed home. The greatest part about rushing out and getting everything started early was that by now the weekend was only half over! Spent a lot of time sitting and waiting (at the meet, shopping), but it was good that it didn’t eat up the entire weekend.
Good family bonding, much fun had by all.
To the Slopes!
With the kids off from school Friday, I took the day off and Clare and I decided to get some skiing in at Tyrol Basin in Mount Horeb. We’ve never been there, they have cheap weekday lift tickets, and the conditions were right. Twelve bucks for a lift ticket? Bargain. Near 32 degrees? Count me in.
I grabbed my boots, skis, and poles, appropriate snow attire for the both of us, and we headed off. We were going to take a friend of hers, but it didn’t work out. On the way there, Clare commented how a bunch of her friends were going skiing at Cascade. Since it was just us, it was easy to make the switch and head north to Portage. They have a “kids ski free” deal with a paid adult, so the outlay would be about the same. No problem. (If anyone asks, Clare is 12.)
As a premonition to how often we would be heading back to car, we luckily scored a sweet parking spot close to the lodge. I walked on in to get the tickets while Clare got dressed. “One adult and one child, please,” I say. “Is the child with you?” “She’s in the car.” “I need to see her.” “Really?” “Yup.”
Fine. I walk back to the car to get Clare and tell her to look young. Unfortunately for me, she’s tall and looks like she’s in high school. I tell her to slouch and don’t look directly at the guy. Disgusted, we go back to the counter and get the same dude. “There she is.” He nods. Guess he just wanted to make sure it wasn’t some 40-year-old who was going to score the free ticket.
After getting Clare’s rental equipment, we hit the slopes. It was still relatively early, there weren’t too many people on the hills, and we were flying down and back up. Around noon things picked up a quite a bit and we ended up waiting longer and longer to get back up. Time for a break so we headed in for lunch.
Coming out from the lodge, I snapped into my skis and proceeded to walk right out of my right binding. Uh oh. Looking down I see broken plastic. It wasn’t the binding, it was my boot. Walking over to the repair center, the ski mechanic also shakes his head. “Hmmm, boot exploded, huh?” “I guess so,” I respond. He explains that older equipment was made craptastically and it’s really a surprise they lasted this long. Thanks for the support. I guess after 25 years I could spring for a new set of boots. Not wanting to make a snap decision right there, I opted to rent for the rest of the day. Props to Cascade – they offer 1/2 price rentals for broken equipment.
Since I’m renting, why not try snowboarding? I’ve always wanted to try and I know I can switch to skis later if I don’t like it. How hard can this be? The kids can all do it – and I’m at least as good as they are – so I should be a natural, right? In a word, no.
Oh boy. After struggling to get to the chair lift with one foot in a binding and one foot out, we make it to the top and I manage to get off the lift without running into anyone. So far, so good. I strap my other foot in and head down the bunny hill. How do you turn these things? I lean, I tilt the board, I catch an edge and fall on my face. Or butt. Or both.
Thinking a slightly bigger hill will be be better, we move over one lift. We both get off and Clare whips down to the bottom. And I go about 20 feet before, um, adjusting my stance. Speed is not a problem – point down the hill and keep your balance. Stopping – now that’s a little more challenging. And steering. Still don’t have feel for that. One more trip down and I’ve had enough. Sweating my arse off after working way too hard, I gladly unbind my feet, hoof it over to the rental shop and get a much more simple pair of skis. The rest of the day was thankfully much less eventful.
Luckily, there is no video of my lame attempt at snowboarding.
It must have been Marshall day at Cascade. Throughout the day, we saw no fewer than a dozen folks from school (mostly kids) who had the same idea to enjoy our seasonal snow.
Christmas 2009
Similar to last year, I put together a little photo collage to serve as our Christmas card this year. (Google’s Picasa makes this super easy.) All parts of the collage were pictures that were taken in 2009. Going through every photo of the year and picking certain shots is the most tedious part of this process. Crop them to include only the subject, then let Picasa size and arrange the specific images. And resize and rearrange again and again. The collage below was the family winner.
New for this year was a map (of sorts) to explain the origin of each of the photos. A simple Excel spreadsheet was all that was needed to put this together.
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If you were one of the lucky ones to receive an original, keep it someplace safe since it will soon become a keepsake.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Roku Rules
Beginning the day before Thanksgiving, I love my Roku player more than ever.
You may know the device as a way to stream Netflix movies to your TV over your home wireless network. By itself, it’s worth the $99 to be able to sit down and watch any movie in your streaming queue whenever you like. The middle Netflix plan allows for an unlimited number of streaming hours per month. Awesome!
Beginning a few days ago, however, Roku introduced a Channel Store that expands the reach of existing Roku players beyond Netflix. Conveniently, it includes many services that I already use via other devices.
Chief among the additional services are free hooks into flickr, Facebook photos, Twit.TV, Revision3, and Pandora.
There are links on this blog to our flickr photo stream and our Facebook profiles, but now we have the ability to view these on our TV. So much easier than dragging out a laptop and having people crowd around the small screen.
Likewise, I already subscribe to various audio and video podcasts on Twit.TV and Revision3. My Twit.TV favorites include TWIT, Security Now, MacBreak Weekly, and Windows Weekly from Leo and his friends. Revision3 shows to which I subscribe include Diggnation, Scam School, ROFL, the Digg Reel, Tekzilla, and the Totally Rad Show. Instead of watching these shows on my computer or on my iPod, I can put them on the big screen whenever I like. Shweet!
Although I’m not familiar with it, Mediafly is another service that is available. It looks like a podcast aggregator which makes it useful for shows that aren’t available through the above services. I’ll definitely check it out.
If you know me at all, you know I rarely watch live TV. I prefer to record shows when they air, then watch them on demand when I have time. This new feature of the Roku box plays right into that philosophy.
Stay Off the roads!
Guess who’s 15 1/2? If you’re smart, you’ll stay clear of any road in or near Sun Prairie for next few years.
Hannah recently celebrated (?) her 1/2 birthday by dragging me to the DMV to obtain her instruction permit (temps). Her biggest decision of the day? What to wear for the photo. Since when did you get a photo license for your temps? I remember it being a pink slip of copy paper.
Taking advantage of the beautiful weather on Saturday, we headed out on her maiden voyage in my car. While cruising the neighborhood streets at a whopping 10 mph, the only time I laughed out loud was when she turned on the wipers when trying to turn right. She quickly got the hang of things and we were topping out just above 20 in no time. Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to have my chauffeur take me into Sun Prairie to drop some things off. There were many firsts along the way: first parked car, first street light, first car following us, and first parking lot. If you know Hannah, you’ll believe me when I tell you every first was duly noted.
I hereby apologize to everyone who is behind us.
Homecoming pix
A little late, but I finally uploaded some Homecoming pictures to Flickr. Hannah and a couple of friends got ready at out house before heading out to…wait for it…Fazoli’s for dinner. Really? I’d spring for something a little better than that (since I’m paying anyway). Can’t wait to see where they end up for Prom. Olive Garden?
See them here.
Homecoming 2009
Congratulations to Hannah for being elected to the Marshall High School homecoming court as the sophomore representative. Yay!
Here she is in the parade with JT (thanks to Peggy for the pictures):
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Accompanying video:
Later that night, the court was also recognized at halftime of the football game. As you might have guessed, the band performed a field show and belted out three songs in the cold night.
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The perfect capper for the day was the football team taking care of Cambridge Friday night, 40-something to much less than that.
Next year will be even more fun as both girls will be in high school…
A few wins
The wins are few, so we should enjoy them.
The Marshall volleyball squad is nearing the end of their season, and they’ve notched a whopping 2 match wins thus far. New Glarus and Westfield fell to the mighty Cardinals; both were away wins.
There is one more chance for the girls to win at home next week – the last home match of the season is the traditional senior night. Right in the middle of Homecoming week, this match will probably be the first where Hannah won’t start – all of the starters will be seniors.
Hannah is having a great time playing with mostly upper classmen, getting to know them better and learning to be a leader on the court. Her serves are quite a bit better, her setting is much better, and I think she actually had a couple of blocks this year.
Here are some pics from the Adams-Friendship tournament. They didn’t play well, but, they got their revenge against Westfield the following week.
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Don’t just watch, get up and block! |
2 blockers? No problem… |
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Geez, arch your back a little… |
