November 8, 2008

Well it's sure feels like winter has set in on us this week. Wednesday a storm rolled through and brought north winds with it...and they have stuck around.

Last night we attended the now 10-0 JCHS football team in their second district playoff game with Wichita North. No one was too concerned about this game as WN was 2-7; winning only one game in regular season and had upset a higher ranked team last week in the playoff game. The final score was 53-20, with very few varsity players even playing in the 2nd half. (I think it was 46-3 at half time?) Anyway Alice and I helped with the Booster club concession, which involved serving food in windy 20 degree temperatures for just about the entire first half. They finally wised up and took what food we had left over to the regular concession stand & sold it from there. It was 38 degrees but there was a brutal north wind gusting to 30mph blowing into our faces. Thanks goodness we were dressed pretty well for it & had brought a sleeping bag for our spectator time. We had a pact with our seating group (our wind break) that we would stick through half-time (we HAVE to watch the band preform, of course) then we could all leave after the first score in the 3Q. That was about 3 minutes into the 3Q when that happened (ok so maybe not all the varsity was out) & we gleefully cheered and headed home to heat, radio and comfort. We were still pretty chilled-to-the-bone when we went to bed. With the victory JC gets another home game next Friday vs Wichita Heights who are 9-1 & will definitely present a challenge.

Thursday night the JCHS band had their annual Band Blast in the gymnasium. Basically this is just their normal Thursday night rehearsal except they do use this event to pass out their annual awards, etc. They are so much louder in an enclosed gym! There has been a lot of prep work lately regarding their Cotton Bowl trip in late December. Since K-State most likely won't make a bowl, this may be our bowl trip this year although Dallas doesn't quite measure up, in our books, to a Scottsdale, Miami, Pasadena, etc. bowl experience!

Also Thursday night Max tested for his next TKD belt. If he passes, which he said he did, he will be a red belt - only two belts away from his first black belt. Alice looks forward to the red belt indicating that it's much nicer looking than his current brown-yellow belt. "That color match didn't go well with anything well", she stated. Max can't do anything but tolerate comments like that.

No startling surprises with the election. Think everyone kind of knew that Obama would win but it would have been nice to prove the "we're-always-right" media wrong. I think he will do just fine. Obama himself never bothered me but the team he brings in with him does. I'm concerned that they will be very bad for business in general, bigger government, higher taxes & am concerned that all of these military lives, lost and wounded will all be for nothing if we just pack up and leave the mid-east. Granted I think the repubs were just as disappointed in Bush as the demos but I am hopeful that a rational solution with adequate military leadership input will be made vs just pulling the plug.

As I mentioned to some at Kevin's wedding, the Extreme Makeover Team arrives here this week to build a house for a fortunate family in the area. While I'm not really personally involved in it, I am on the board of one of the organzations that is. So at our last board meeting, we had to sign a confidentiality agreement not to disclose who that family is or when this will all happen but EM has agreed to have a fund raiser for our org during the event in their VIP tent. So we may get to attend the event with all the EM personalities. More on this later when I can say more. The episode will most likely air in January.

This week JC & Milford Lake hosted the national ESPN Bassmaster fishing tourney so we have had 65 of the top nationwide bass fisherman in town. The weather has literally ruined the tournament. They were suppose to have their practice day Wednesday but that weather front blew in and they called it off. The temps have stayed in the 40's as high, winds 30+ and morning temps in the high 20's- making fishing & boating conditions just awful. Thursday was their first competitive day and 18 of these professional fishermen caught nothing! The leader of the day caught two fish & the largest caught so far is 4lbs- nothing in bass circles. It's been a total bust! They cancelled Friday's event and have extended the tourney over to today (& it's not any better today). Can't imagine what ESPN will put on the airwaves and can't also imagine that they'll ever come back. So much for $100K the local CVB and others have put out to have it here. Imagine we won't be sponsoring anything like this again for a while.

There has naturally been a lot of buzz this last week about Ron Prince's firing at K-State. I think this is the right decision for K-State. I think everyone here likes Ron Prince personally; he is from JC and is a nice, ambitious guy but he was just in over his head for Big XII/Div 1 football. Frankly anyone following Snyder would have a tough go & even Snyder was having a hard time winning when he decided to retire. Prince will complete the season and you might see some crazy football for the last 3 games with a "nothing-to-lose" attitude. There was a temporary buzz yesterday that a new coach had been selected but the story was withdrawn as wrong so am not sure who it will be. Alice has some pretty strong opinions about who it shouldn't be.

More later
Scott