The Tour of Homes

It's definitely not going to be coming to our place anytime soon, that's for sure. I think the mint green paint on the outside with the brown trim, or maybe the fact that it's only got about 700 square feet. It's just not quite gonna make the cut. Soon, though, I'll get you a tour of the home via pictures, just for fun. Even though it's smaller, we've got things set up well, and we even had a third person in here last night, and all had somewhere to sit! I think we could have even put 2 more people in here without being elbow to elbow. However, I think this sign will have to be in here somewhere...

I'll also see about getting an office tour for you also. I'm finishing decorating it, so soon that will also come, since our company does not encourage visitors due to the complexity of the building.

What makes Tampa easy to cheer for?

I'll be the first to admit it. I'm a bandwagon Rays fan. But, my bandwagon jumping started early in the year when the Rays jumped out to a lead in the AL East. In a division where there are payrolls that are out of control (the New York Yankees spent over $218 million in 2007, and Boston spent $133 million) it was nice to see the Tampa Rays with a payroll of $43 million defeat these big dollar spenders with ease this season. There are only 10 players on the roster who make more than $1 million per year for Tampa. They just seem like a team easy to root for, especially since this is the first time in history they have made the playoffs, let alone the World Series.

A couple of these games I've enjoyed over at Char's new place. It doesn't have furniture, and there were a few "game breaks" to help her and her roommate clean the house to prepare to move in, but it's been fun none the less. Last night, after a couple of us were sitting in front of the TV watching the game, there came some shrieks from the back of the house. It would appear that one of the girls helping clean found a magazine in the bathroom. I think you know what kind of magazine I'm talking about. They wouldn't let me or my roommate get very close to it. Anyhow, they decided to keep it. Not sure why, but here is a house full of teachers at a Christian school (minus me, but I did coach soccer at one this year if that counts), who are keeping these magazines in their house. I wonder what their administration would say....

Referee in Trouble

No, I'm not talking about me. I've been threatened before, but never that I felt concerned for safety. I don't know if through the busy hunting season opener if you watched any sports highlights, but I didn't believe this until I saw it.


Ok, now I admit, there were times right after I quit playing sports and went to referee, you have an instinct to go and do something to make a play on the field, especially when I refereed soccer. What did you think? The ruling came out from the SEC and said that he was only defending himself after the runner changed direction. The referee was originally a linebacker for my beloved Kentucky Wildcats in the early 70s. You'd think that would be long enough for those "instincts" to die down a bit. As odd as the video looks, I'd have to say the referee probably wasn't attempting to make a tackle, if for no other reason, his age, and not being equipped really to play football. The analysts have said at full speed (which the video above had at first) the play didn't look odd at all. Once slow motion was brought in, it suddenly looks like he tried to make a tackle. It's amazing with the technology and slow motion, how different a play looks.

Just for fun, I searched YouTube for some other fun referee moments, and found a good soccer video. It's not long, and even I got a chuckle out of a few of these. Some of them are tough hits to take, but some are fairly funny.

Counting the Miles....

It's been a well traveled weekend. On Friday, I actually made my return to the radio airwaves (fans you can relax, it was a one time thing) by doing a football game in Miller. Well, that was quite interesting, since everything was done ahead of time for me, all I had to do was arrive and do the game. I reaffirmed myself as a basketball announcer, not a football announcer. Since I didn't play football, I feel like I'm just not a good announcer of it. I feel the same way every time I attempted hockey. It just doesn't feel quite right. Anyhow, I got up early enough on Saturday to get to northwest Iowa to referee soccer, and got a soccer game in today also. Overall, I ended up rolling around 500 miles this weekend, and keeping it filled with sports. Now, I get ready to head back to work for my second week. It's been an interesting first week, hopefully the second is more learning. I think my head of customer service will actually be in this week, so that could be more interesting. It's already interesting since the service department leader works from his home in Bell Fourche. We have a couple people in an office in Montana also, so we are pretty spread out, but it's nice to have extended hours and you always have people on lunch at different time through out the week. It's got it's flaws, but I'm sure they've got those worked around, and it does seem to work fairly well. I actually was given 3 assignments this past week to work on, on Monday, I'll get a couple of those close down to move on to something else.

This was also the first weekend that I missed the opener of pheasant season. It's not gonna be the same anyhow. I don't remember if I wrote that our dog had to be put to sleep earlier this fall. She was hit by a tractor, and that's tough to bounce back from. This is usually a busy weekend anyway at the farm, with everyone from out of state that comes in to hunt at the farm, they had a full party anyhow. Well, hopefully next weekend on Sunday I can get some shooting in, and bag a bird or two. That would also help with the preparing food for the week too.

Add This Company to My List....

Some of the readers will remember that a while back, I made a post on things that annoy me. If you missed it, click here to read all about these things. Now, some of them are in the past, but if you think back, were quite annoying at the time. The top few are things that will annoy me forever. Now, to add to that list, I'll add the company Linksys. They make (and do a horrifically bad job at it) routers, and wireless routers, and switches, and things for computer nerds basically. Well, when I was in Huron, we had one of these for about 5 months before it went nuts, and failed to properly work. So tonight, I've got internet now, and was trying to hook my wireless router up. Now, for some reason, I'd thought it was a good idea to buy that same brand. Wow, that was a good idea. After wasting more gas to return it, I bought a different one that I set up about half an hour ago, and you won't believe this next part, THE NEW ONE (that was a different brand) WORKED ON THE FIRST TRY! If only everyone at Linksys could learn to make things that work on the first try, I bet they'd retain a few more customers. And I would know. I work in customer support now. This company would rank now at #4 on my list, if I run an updated version. And, in case you're wondering, I had absolutely nothing to do with Qwest in my search for an internet provider.

New Surroundings

Well, my move is now complete, and I'm getting settled in in a new town. I moved most of my items last night, but had one flaw: I forgot to grab all of my clothing hanging in my closet at the old house. So, all I had for today was the clothes I wore to church yesterday. But, that is the dress code, and it worked out ok. Thankfully, my grandparents brought me my hanging clothing today. My day at the new job was interesting. Had problems with the desk given to me, then my computer had problems, then we discovered I didn't have a phone. I was supposed to receive software training on the phone, but since my computer didn't work and I didn't have a phone, it didn't happen. Well, I finally got my phone, and now it doesn't work again. So tomorrow, I have to put in for another service request for my phone. Lots of manuals to read, and papers to get turned in, and things to repair.

State Tournament Blog

The Olympic athletes all did their blogs from Bejing, and this is along those same lines, only maybe not quite the same caliber. It's been an interesting weekend already. We won our opening game against Custer 3-2. We'd been beaten by them earlier in the season, and it was the first upset in our division. We were the #5 seed, so we'd automatically finish higher than we came here. Yesterday, we faced the powerhouse of Boys A Soccer, Sioux Falls Christian. We were there trailing 3-2 at the half, but then the more powerful team showed why in the second half, and we fell 7-2 yesterday. That leaves us playing for 3rd place today, against Sturgis. Sturgis gave us our only home loss this season, and it was our first game of the year, so the guys are ready to get their redemption against that squad this morning. It rained like mad yesterday, so the fields are a disaster, but we'll play on this afternoon.

The Snake Charmer

I hate snakes. When I was younger, it wasn't so bad, but as I got older, I didn't like them one bit. The only exception was when I lived with Jordon, his snake in a cage never did bother me a lot. It was quite calm and domesticated though. I put snakes on the same level with mosquitos. Not quite sure what God was thinking when he made them, seems like there could have been a better alternative, but oh well, a little late now. So anyway, me and the snake charmer.....

Last night was one of those where sleep was elusive for me. A lot going on, the mind racing, and just couldn't get comfortable to get some rest. Well, I fell asleep and had a dream that we were having a community carnival at our church. And one of the productions was going to be a snake presentation (don't ask me where this all came from, I have no clue). So, as a church member, I had to help at the carnival, and got assigned to the snake people. Great, what a great assignment. I decided even though I didn't like them, I would buck up and just do it. So they wanted to practice, and they instructed me on how to grab the snake so it wouldn't bite, and then hold it up for the people to see. Ok, no problem. Then they told me I'd be dealing with poisonous snakes, and I'd have to do two at one time. Hmmm, I'm not sure why, but I decided to let myself go through with this. I put my hand in to grab the snake, and wouldn't you know it, I got bit. So, I had to go see the head snake guy to get the antidote for the poison so it wouldn't kill me. It would have taken some time, so I didn't have to hurry, and as he was giving me the antidote, I woke up, thinking I'd actually been bitten by a snake. Oh man, that made me sleep better..... So, what lessons can we learn from this? Two things:
1. Don't agree to be the guy to help display snakes at the upcoming church carnival, especially if they are poisonous...
2. Avoid the teriyaki wings at Big D's on half price wing night. They tend to give you quite odd dreams....

Thrilling Regular Season Finale

I'm still trying to wind down some from the exciting regular season finale we played in this afternoon. We went in knowing a win or a tie would keep us as the #5 seed in the upcoming state tournament. So, we went in to win that game, with one of our starters injured, so we hoped to get some quality minutes out of some 7th graders. Well, it was quite windy, and both coach and I didn't like that too much. We wanted to just have a nice day, but no, that wasn't to be. So, we went into the game against the wind in the first half, and survived some big scares with close shots, and defensive saves. Fortunately, we came out to the halftime break at 0-0. We had chances, and more chances, but the wind just didn't want us to do anything to perfectly, so we knew it might be tough, but we were ok, because the tie would keep us where we were. We had a couple people struggle, and with a few minutes left, coach looked at me and said, "Do we need to make one more change?" I gave my input and said I thought we should, and we did. Just seconds after the substitute entered the game, with 5 minutes left, we broke though with a great chip over the goal keeper and into the goal for the 1-0 lead. The kid that scored had moved to a different position because of the sub we'd decided to make, which made us look incredibly smart. That would hold up as the stout defense again posted the shutout, and we head into the state tournament with a 9 win, 4 loss mark. The four losses we have are to the four seeds above us. That's a comforting stat, knowing we can play with the teams above us, and that we beat all the teams below us in the standings. Plus, I'd told coach at the beginning of the year that I would be extremely happy if we would post 5 shutouts this year. I personally thought that would be tough for us to do, but that we'd have a slight shot at it. We ended the season today with this being our 6th shutout, 2 of them on the road, and 4 coming at home. Just some season ending stats:

- Stout Defense - One of our main goals this year was to defend our home field. We were 5-1 at home, only giving up 4 goals, and all those in the first weekend of the season. We have not allowed a goal in Huron since August 23.
- Scoring - Our goal differential was +9. We scored 30 goals, allowing 21.
- Challenges from top - Of the 21 goals we allowed, to the top 4 teams in the league, we gave up 18 of the 21 goals.
- Road Woes - When we played on the road, and travelled for more than 1 hour 15 minutes, we were 0-3 allowing 15 goals, while only scoring 2.
- Scoring First - We are 9-0 when scoring the first goal of the game.

Just some interesting things that I came up with looking back at the season. Hopefully, we can change a couple of things to get set up for making a run at some upsets at the state tournament. We do feel that we have the people to play with any team in our division in the tournament, as long as we can score first....

The End of the Era

Today I completed my final day of broadcasting. Now I'm only employed by the school as a soccer coach. A week from Monday I'll begin my new job in Mitchell. I'll be moving down there the Sunday prior to my first day, so that will keep me hopping and ready for a new start. The hard part of today was saying goodbye to the friends I've made in the past 2.5 years. Alot of good memories and a lot of relationships and people I'll miss, but they are all supportive of me moving on. Good to know there are still friends in the events of change. I did tell the soccer kids this week too. That story was a bit different though. I told them that I'd quit my job to focus on coaching soccer, and so I could be totally focused on the state tournament. They bought it....

End of Season

Well, the JV soccer team ended their season last night with a win, which made us finish 2-5 on the season. Before the game, the kids had said they wanted to beat last season's record, where they only won one game, and we did just that with a 2-0 win. So, the JV kids are done, and only the 19 varsity players will remain for practice and the end of their season which is Saturday. That leaves my all time coaching mark at 2-4. I'd say pretty good by standards that have that young of a team, and have them progress that well through the season. It was fun to watch a couple kids score their first goals ever through the season, and it was fun to keep making the kids rotating in and out so everyone got a chance to participate in the final game of the season. It will be fun to see how these kids end up doing in the next several years.