Update

I said I was going to blog more this year, so I guess I'm due for another post here. If you're feeling that I'm not doing enough, you can always go to Clark's blog and read the comments. I'm pretty regular in there.

Anyway, January is our department's "off" season. Yes, one month is now a season. We define it that way because it's the only month in which we don't have a class offered to the public and are not training groups of new employees or volunteers.

BUT . . . January is volunteer recognition and our general meeting, which so far has eaten up all my time this month. And we added a Project Wild class next week. And our February classes start on the 9th, so we have to prepare for that. And we have to get our end-of-the-year reports done. And I'm behind on the podcasting project.

Welcome to our off-season.

Making Dad Proud

Jessica gave me the George Harrison double album "All Things Must Pass" for Christmas. I could tell, without even reading the liner notes, that it was produced by Phil Spector.

Pistol

I'd like to take a few moments to address a topic which, I am sure, was on all of your minds this past Saturday. The genius who was Pete Maravich.

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Pistol Pete died 20 years ago, and retired at some point before that (I'm no expert here), but all of you should go to YouTube right now and pull up some Maravich clips. That guy was amazing. He did things with a basketball which seem to be contrary to the laws of physics.

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Last night Elliott talked me into watching a movie about Pete Maravich - specifically, about his 8th grade year in high school. A lot of the movie was fictionalized, but they kid they got to star as Pete had really great ball-handling skills (and Confidence! A lot of the movie is about having Confidence!). In 8th grade, Pete Maravich was a 5 foot 2 kid starting on the varsity team. His dad, a former professional player, coached at Clemson so Pete would practice with the college team. Unbelievable. He'd play 10 hours a day. He dribbled while riding his bike, or out the door of the car while his dad drove. He spun the ball on his fingertip for an hour. Elliott, correct me on any of this if I'm wrong.

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He averaged 44 points a game in college! And this was before the 3-point line was created .

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And he had so much Confidence! ;)

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So anyway, RIP Pistol Pete. For what it's worth, I liked your movie more than Rocky IV and its inexplicable robot.

Socially responsible time-waster

If you have some time to kill, want to improve your vocabulary and feed the poor at the same time, check out http://www.freerice.com/. For every vocabulary word you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice.

I plateau at vocabulary level 47.

Happy New Year!

My resolution this year is to post more often. We shall see how that goes.

This year for New Year's Eve, I didn't have any plans until the last minute. Whew! Thanks to Elliott for having a birthday on the last day of the year, so I didn't have to sit home lonely. A bunch of us went to dinner at Tucci's for Elliott's birthday, and I had the pasta pomodoro. You have never seen such a large group of adults (or, "adults") coloring so industriously on the table covers with crayons. We made very pretty pictures, and at Elliott's request I kept tradition alive and did some Punnet squares. (Elliott x Elliott - he should not breed with himself because his children would be skinny string bean people who would blow over in the breeze. Or so finds my squares.)

After dinner I was invited along to Dan's house for some Rock Band goodness. Rock Band, for those of you who are unacquainted with the concept, is like Guitar Hero plus Sing Star plus Donkey Conga, only with a drum kit instead of bongos. You can also add a second guitar controller so someone can play bass. This kept all of us occupied until 2 in the morning when the PS3 pled for mercy and we turned it off.

I got home way late (I won't say when) to discover that my loving neighbor had decided to park sideways in the alley behind the house, so I had to go out the other end of the alley and parallel park on 8Th South. That's hard for me on a good day, but I think I did very well on my second try, particularly if you take the late hour and snowdrifts into consideration.

New Year's Day was fully devoted to napping, with a brief break to check out the winter sale at IKEA. I got a teapot. Woo!

So, what did you do for New Year's? Discuss.