I Didn't Make My Cousin Scream!

I spent the first part of the weekend in Sioux Falls as we prepare to get classes going for the upcoming fall soccer seasons. I had to attend a mandatory annual meeting this morning. Usually, we go to Omaha for this meeting, but instead this year, they offered it via video conference, and we could stay in Sioux Falls. Well, that's a good thing because I'd have been angry if I'd have driven to Omaha to waste those three hours, plus the 5 hours we'd have spent traveling. Instead, only wasted a little time, but the whole trip wasn't a waste at all.

On Friday night, I braved the snow and went down to Sioux Falls to have supper with a friend. So, we are sitting at the restaurant enjoying supper, and finished our meal, when the little girl, who was about two years old, turned around in her chair, and started smiling and waving at us. And she just kept doing it, and doing it, and doing it, for several minutes, so we smiled and laughed a bit, and so would she! Her mom heard her laugh, and then turned to see what she was doing and that she had the attention of the two guys in the booth across the isle, and she just smiled, and then said to us, "Ohh, just so you know, she'll flirt with you all night long." And the rest of the time, she did, but we didn't care, and neither did her parents, so it was just a fun time. These kids sure learn young though.

That wasn't the last time that would happen over the weekend though. I went to cousin Linz's house to see her little girl, and get some quality playing time in. Well, she was alseep when i arrived, so I took one for the team and napped too. She wakes up making faces at me across the room. If you'll remember the last time I saw her, it was in the Sioux Falls Mall, when she got pushed up in her stroller, and I knelt down to talk with her, and she started screaming immediately. This time though, what a change of heart.

PG Wipf Leads Martin Group to Win

Tyler Wipf had to fill in as point guard this evening, and helped lead Martin Group to a 55-46 win over Diamond Farms. The win for Marin Group snaps a 5 game losing streak (even though it felt like a 20 game losing streak) and give them their first win in 2009. Wipf finished with 9 points, 2-4 from the free throw line, dished out 4 assists, had 2 steals, and did not turn the ball over. Martin Group now moves to 3-7 on the year, and sits in 5th place in the standings (out of 6 teams) Diamond Farms falls to 7-3, and is still in second. MG will return to the floor next Monday night at 7:30p, in the Randalls Gym.

That is the write up that you might find in your local paper coming up tomorrow. Actually, I think it might have been too late for deadline, so it might not make it, but hey, finally a win! And one of those shots I put in tonight, a beautiful high arking teardrop that didn't touch anything on the way through. I had to get it up there high because of the 6'6" guy coming at me. Got it over him, and straight back down, nothin' but net! That's when we knew our night was going well. Speaking of basketball, I was just glad to feel good enough to play. On Thursday night, there was a celebration at the "Thompson Shed" for a couple of our pastors, who had their birthday's on the same day. There was a big basketball night. Now, several people in the Huron area have seen the Kleinsasser Barn, which has the small court upstairs in the hay loft. This court, however is a bit different. It is a full length college floor, with a nice clearance on the ceiling, and two baskets that are nicer then some smaller high school's baskets. I know the floor is a full length college floor, because it's the old floor right out of the Corn Palace. The old removable tiles, remember those, with some dead spots here and there? I sure do. You had to remember to dribble on the seems to keep the ball coming back up properly. Well, I went to this party, and wanted to play, but had a slight strain to my shoulder, so decided to sit out the evening. I just watched, and met some new people at the event, which was still a good time. Now, more about this shed. It had a fairly nice boat parked in there, and, a few cars in the back that I didn't get close enough to see. One was a Ferrari of some kind, and I was told there was a '55 or a 57' thunderbird back there, and the one that I wanted to take home with me (yes, more than the Ferrari) was a 1963 Corvette, with the split back window. Ohhh, how awesome would that be. Completely restored by the owner of this "Shed" Ohh, and it has a 2 bedroom apartment attached to it also, which is nicer than any place I've ever lived since I've been on my own. Must be nice....

My Pastor isn't a Mac

I know I've bragged on Pastor Tolley on here before, but this one in church today made me laugh quite hard. The rest of the people at the early service laughed quite hard also, but I found it exceptionally funny. And, so to clarify that title on the blog, there was a Mac commercial a while back that had something to the effect of you don't have to reboot a Mac like to you do a PC (which isn't entirely true, but you sure don't do it very often). So, here was the story (at least my paraphrased version, although all details were true) as told during the sermon in church today.

Well, my wife and I would like to thank you for the opportunity to go to the pastor's conference last week. Now, I learned several things, but had a pretty rough week health wise. I made it through the sermons a couple weeks ago, then went down to Omaha not feeling very well. We woke up around 3:30am to get to the airport to catch our flight to Florida (suffering for the people at Northridge, huh?). Well, I didn't feel good at all once we got on the plane, and it was hot, and I was having trouble. So, during the flight, I looked at my wife, and said, "I really don't feel very good," and slumped over right there. She saw it happen right away and grabbed my head and sat me up trying to talk to me. The guy in the seat behind me jumped in, and didn't help much, "I think he's having a seizure!" Well, I wasn't, I'd just passed out, but my wife grabbed the flight attendant who declared a medical emergency on the plane, and then came to help try to revive me. So she sat down in the seat beside me, and started to talk to me, and boom, I woke up. Needless to say, my wife wasn't too impressed that she tried for several minutes to revive me and I didn't respond, but as soon as another woman sat down there, it was like I woke up right away. And I was ok. I was talking to everyone, and felt good. I had felt pretty bad getting on the plane, but then I felt pretty much like I had been shut down, and rebooted, just like a computer. You know how you computer is struggling along, and you reboot it and suddenly, boom! it's back to full power and running great. Well, that was me!

I was beside myself at this point. The story was injected with plenty of humor, but when he got to the rebooting part, I couldn't stop laughing. It just came out of nowhere, and was a perfect punch line. Maybe it just hit the computer geek side of me, but that was one of the best church stories all time for sure!

Slow News Day

When I worked at the station, and would fill in for our news director, there were some days that we just call "slow news days". These days are somewhat easier to deal with in radio, because you can shorten the newscast, and it's not a big deal. Well, in television, you cannot do that, because you must fill the entire 30 minutes. You can tell when the station is doing a story about a back sidewalk in a neighborhood, or farmer's bad day that lost a cow and a haystack in the same day. That would indicate a slow news day, and often times it makes me laugh. Now, tonight I was sitting at home, with not much on TV, and i for some reason turned on the national news on CBS. I'm really waiting to see if the Jacks game is going to be on. I'm just a bit early, and watched the news, and today must be a slow news day on the national scene also. Right now, the story is WWE wrestling. See what I mean? That's the best they can come with on a national scene today? Wow. Well, based on an earlier news story, I'm thinking Monday might be national day of mourning. Socks, the "First Cat" under President Bill Clinton died today. Flags should be lowered to half mast, and we should maybe see a bank holiday. I just sat there fairly stunned that it actually made the news. Who cares??? First off, it's a cat, and second of all, who cares??? Seriously, who cares??

On another television note, I spent last weekend at home. I usually don't even watch the local news, but my parents do, so I watched it with them on Friday night. I'd have to say, as annoying as the perception that KELOLAND gives that they are the only station that anyone should know about (even if the ratings say its true), KSFY has now become even more annoying than KELO. They decided to go to this really odd "Action News" Format, that is just bizarre. My favorite was the Wheel of Justice. Whoa, this is ground breaking television at its best! They have this wheel, with four criminals on it. They spin it, and whoever it lands on gets their own 2 minute special on what they've done, and why viewers should report them. I was too stunned to see them do this on a live news cast to even see who it was, or what they'd done. Who thought this was a good idea? They should borrow a line from Donald Trump, and tell them, "You're Fired!" Anyhow, here is the link to the KSFY promo that when it came out, we spent days at the radio station laughing at how ridiculous this was.

Features from Cars of the Future

And Toyota might be leading the way already! I saw this as a prototype in Mitchell just the other day. Toyota has a model of a Prius that does not come standard with blinkers that flash when you turn. I know what your thinking, but I would not have believed it either if I would not have seen it first hand. This sophisticated new blinker system will not alert other drivers that you are turning, but instead, will detect when you are going to merge into a parking space on the street, and will then alert the drivers around you that you will be pulling on to the shoulder of the road. I cannot believe that no one has thought of this before! And the odds that you're going to make another driver mad in the process, well, lets just say the numbers would astound you. Now available on the Toyota Prius, parking only blinkers. Certain limitations apply, see your local Toyota dealer for a demo.

Another Game...Another Loss

I looked it up, and December 16th was our last win. We are struggling, and that's to say the least of it. Of course, since December, I've been in as big of a slide as the rest of the team. The scoring isn't there much anymore. It's starting to come back, but a long ways from the double digit point totals I put up in December. We are kind of painful to watch actually. In the 4th quarter of our game yesterday, I'm pretty sure we gave up at least 5 offensive rebounds to our opponent off of missed free throws. And when you're fouling to stop to clock, then giving them the ball back on the o-board, that isn't gaining you any ground. I'm thinking i may need to get more shot attempts. I've been trying to be unselfish, but we are 0-8 or something like that when I don't hit double digits in points. We were cold as ice from the floor shooting, and just couldn't get the game going all night. It was frustrating to say the least. Now, I'm wondering if I'll heal by next week's game. A guy landed on my arm last night after I faked him out of his shorts, but it led to a shoulder muscle strain. I can feel it trying to pop out of the joint sometimes. I'm thinking that's not a good situation, but we'll see how it feels tomorrow.

Things Aren't So Big in Michigan

This is related to the Some Things are Bigger in Texas post that i had back in November refering to the chicken fried steak that I had eaten. This, is how little the steak I ate tonight was. I'm out on the road again, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.


That thing wasn't very big at all, although it was quite tasty, and very tender. A few mashed potatoes with it, and about 6 veggie slices, and a salad, and you've got my meal. And the price tag, just a mere $40. This photo looks very similar.


I just can't live like a rich person, because i can't eat such little portions!

Watchin' Good Basketball

That wasn't the theme on Monday night when we took the floor. We actually had nine players, which is alot for us. So, game time approaches, and our captain tells the five of us to go out there. We only had 3 guards, so i was in the starting lineup. We went out, and bang, bang, band, it was 10-0, and we had 3 missed shots and 3 turnovers, and only 2:00 had run off the clock. We turned the ball over once, and on the way back down the floor, one of the forwards looks at me and said, "Hey, you gotta stay home at the top of the zone here." We always played zone, until the end of the game last week, when we had to go man because we couldn't stop the one shooter from killing us. Well, prior to the game, as the starting 5 were walking out onto the floor, I'd said to the captain, "So, we're going to match up?" And his replay was yes. Flash forward to us being down by 10, and I looked at the forward and told him we were playing man. That was news to the other forward and the center. So, we'd played 2 minutes of ball with two guards playing man to man defense, and the three big men playing zone. I'll tell you right now, that's not a good sign. Well, we struggled to shoot, and they cut into us deep. Finally, they scored to make it 18-0 with 6:00 to play in the first quarter and I decided it was time for a time out. The rest of the game was much better. We played well as a team, and at one point late in the 4th quarter, we had the ball with a chance to tie the game. We lost by 4 or 5 points, and I became the second Martin Group player this season to foul out. I wasn't happy about that, mainly because the inconsistency of the final three fouls I got tagged with. But, ohh well, not much I can do about it. So, we're now 2-7, and at the bottom of the league.

Tonight, I'm headed out to watch the Mitchell Christian James Valley Christian Game. Should be good, and I gotta get going. That's the good basketball I'm going to watch.

Don't Push that Button!

That is what one of my co-workers learned the hard way about 5pm Thrusday evening. You've heard me talk about Jeff on here before, and we were up wrapping up our work day, and he was ready to log off, and leave for the weekend. Suddenly, he decided that he needed to log back in, so he pressed the combo of buttons to log back in, and as he was pushing the L button *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* incredibly loud buzzer went off. Jeff's eyes became as big as saucers. Somehow, with the combination of keystrokes on his machine, Jeff had set off the fire alarms. Of course, it freaked us out at first. I'm not a fan of fire alarms. They should start flashing, and slowly become louder, instead of paralyze you with fear when they start blasting. So, we grabbed our coats, and went outside. We then realized we were the only ones who left the building. As we were walking back to our offices, we noticed everyone still sitting inside theirs. No one evacuated. I said to my team members, "Look guys, I like my job here, but I'm not willing to die for it....I'm leaving." They all agreed, and we just called it the end of day, and Jeff just decided to take today off, he was so distraught. As it turned out, the alarm had actually been generated by construction on the south end of the building. We're as far away from it as humanly possible, but apparently there had been absolutely no smoke or fire. Our alarms are so sensitive, they go off on vibration caused to the building due to construction. They must be built to double as an earthquake detector.

Two Bad Weeks In a Row

Well, it's been a rough couple of weeks for the Martin Group bball squad. Actually, it's been a rough 2009. We haven't won a game since December 8th or 15th, I can't remember anymore, its been that long. We are pretty much at the bottom of the division. I've hit an ice cold streak, only going for a total of 5 points in the past couple of weeks. Now, I have drawn some tough defenders those weeks too, but unfortunately, I've not been playing well. Free throws struggle because of how sore my arms are from the pulling and tugging and slashing and hacking. It's rough inside, yet I continue to go in there. I still have fun though, most of the time. Last week was tougher, because I missed a few free throws and a few layups, and we lost by 2. This week we got beat by 11, so a couple of misses doesn't sting quite so bad. But, we still go out and compete, and have a good time doing it. Hopefully when we get to the playoffs, we'll find ourselves again. Until then, I might be spending some time at the gym to get some work in, for the good of the team.

People Watching...Odd Outfits / More "Small World" Moments / Superbowl

I'm the type of person that loves people watching. I could sit in an airport, or a mall, and watch people for hours. It can be kind of fun to wonder what they are like, or just things that we automatically assume about people. Of course, that also means we cannot get caught into judging people based on how they look. Well, I caught myself doing that this morning in church. The guy caught my eye when he was walking in with some plaid shorts, and an interesting colored and looking tshirt. Now, it was 31 degrees here this morning, so it feels like spring is right around the corner, but lets be realistic here. It's February 1, and it's still winter. Now, this guy sat not too far from me, but a couple rows in front of me so I could not really see this outfit again, which is probably good. However, I could see the tattoo on his neck, of a pair of lips. Now, of all the tattoos a person could get, that was the best available, and on the neck? I should not judge, but the decision making process that led to that decision would interest me a lot. But then I caught myself. I shouldn't judge. I don't know anything about this guy, or where he comes from, or where he's at. Just because he didn't look like I think people should look, doesn't give me the right to judge. So, now, my curiosity looks more into wondering what he's really like, because I'm guessing that the opinions I'd have given him if I'd have seen him in a mall or an airport, it probably wouldn't have been good. One thing I don't like about Sunday's, is how guilty I feel afterwards a lot of the time, and the bad part for me was the service hadn't even started yet.

After the service, I went and talked to a pastor at the church that they just hired at the beginning of the year. He is Pastor Paul, and came from Brookings. I was actually talking with the senior pastor at the time, which I find cool. I love hearing him preach, and I've talked about that in past posts. I like that the pastor of a church of around 500 people takes the time to talk with you one on one, and makes an effort to actually remember people and associate with them. So, I switched gears and went over to Pastor Paul and introduced myself, and he recognized my name immediately. Well, he knew the Wipf's from Huron area, and had known several people from Huron in Brookings at his church. I found out that he was the pastor at the church that I went to, Bethel Baptist, in Brookings. He was there when I was, knew alot of the people that I knew, and it was just a great discussion of I know who you know, and we had a real connection. He said sometime we'd have to get together and play the "Mennonite Game" (where you figure out how you're related to each other through Mennonites.) He can do this because his wife was originally a Kleinsasser, and in the group of Kleinsassers that founded Bethel MB Church over 100 years ago. I realize that I'm not that far away from Huron, but these situations keep coming at me too often, and they just boggle my mind.

Well, 5pm is the time for the Superbowl Party. I missed football last weekend, and to be honest, I've not even turned the TV on to listen to any of the pregame stuff this week leading up to today's game. I get annoyed at ESPN and all the experts who have all the answers to every team and how they can win or lose. Well, if they are so smart, why are the on television telling us about it, instead of working for one of these teams actually doing it. I guess it's under the guise of, "Those that aren't good enough to be out there actually doing it, just talk about it on radio/tv." Yes, that was also me poking fun at myself. Well, this evening, I'll be going for Arizona in the big game. I like Kurt Warner, and how the "old guy" can play in a league where every talks about having to be fast to compete. Speed helps, but a saavy player can outwit the speedy guy as he runs right past him. We'll see how it turns out, and how over stuffed I'll come away from tonight, but that's one of my favorite parts!