Caught up with me

Ironic, isn't it? Just as springtime temperatures are putting winter on the run, melting snowpiles and creating puddles all over the place, just as all that was happening ... I have come down with a cold.

I had felt it Monday, when my head was sort of clogged up. I had a two-hour meeting that night, and I remember feeling kinda cold after I got home.

Tuesday, I had the sniffles. Another meeting in the afternoon, and I felt tired afterward. Felt cold at night, so I bundled up with a comforter while watching TV. By then, I was taking those Cold-Eeze tablets in recognition of what was happening and in hopes of minimizing the impact.

Wednesday morning, I had to get to an early meeting. Then, in the late morning, I found I had to make some quick decisions about my mom's finances, related to her Medicaid application. It meant a hurried, unplanned trip to Iron Mountain. I was tired when I got back and was feeling cold and tired later on. My head was getting stuffy, too, but I knew what I had to do. Time to seek out the NyQuil bottle.

Except when my wife looked for it downstairs, it wasn't there. She was sure it was and looked around a while longer. Then we found some other stuff, and I took those boxes upstairs, to the bathroom. There, on a shelf, I spotted the NyQuil (actually, a store-brand version).

NyQuil tastes bad, but experience tells me that it does its job. It did this time. I went to bed early to catch up on the sleep I lost the day before, got comfy quickly and soon was asleep. It relieved the symptoms (clogged-up head, aches, an occasional cough, feeling cold and tired) and let me get some sleep.

I'm back at work today, and the symptoms are staying away, but I'm still feeling kinda tired. Sleepy tired. Maybe I can sneak in a nap over lunch. I know I've gotten rather run-down over the last few weeks of frenzied running around. Now I can catch up with myself -- and the cold seems to have caught up with me.

It's supposed to rain later tonight and even some thunder is possible (though not likely). Winter's on the way out. Cold or no cold, that's always good news.

My fantasy life

Yes, I'm actually going to be writing about my fantasy life in this episode. But first a news update.

The ending of my basketball season Tuesday night turned the page on my life. Whatever is happening, whatever the weather, it's now spring. Winter is over. Moving on ...

These last few weeks and months took a lot out of me, and I am still in recovery mode. Mentally, just clearing my head of all the stuff I've been working on, and physically, with my hip/thigh/butt. The bruises are fading. A little pain yet, but it's not so bad. My plan is to make this a quiet weekend and to stay off that leg when I can.

Most nights since Tuesday have been spent sitting with my wife, watching the figure skating championships from Calgary. I'm not into that, but my wife loves it, so it's fine with me--especially if I can doodle around with stuff on my laptop while sitting next to her. As long as I'm near and my warmth helps keep her warm, she doesn't mind. Next week, with the skating done, maybe we can get into some movies again. Along with some documentary series I got recently. (More on those later--once I actually get to see them.)

The BIG thing for me, though, is something I have never written about here before--a part of my personality I haven't revealed to you. The time is right. I'm going to show it to you now. Here we go. I'm going to whip it out ...

I run a fantasy baseball league.

Not a fly-by-night one, either. Ha! This one has been around since 1989, when I helped form it with four guys in town. This year we are expecting 9 or 10 teams, and the nucleus is still from here in town.

It's for money--sort of. We each pitch in $40 for the prize pool at the end of the season. Last year, the first place team won $125 or so. Very small potatoes in the realm of fantasy sports, and I suspect all of us spend a lot more than $125 on our preparations for the Biggest Day of the Year: Draft Day. But the bragging rights? Priceless.

Draft Day this year is a week from today, Saturday, April 1 (insert your own joke). We gather at my office (I'm the only one here on Saturday) and conduct an auction draft. It lasts about eight hours, during which we hold mini-auctions for about 200 major league baseball players.

I know most of you don't know much about this (and probably could care less), so the "how it works" part is the next paragraph only. Feel free to skip past it.

How it works: We have 12 categories (six for hitters and six for pitchers). We assemble teams of 23 players each, moving guys to and from a reserve roster. The goal is to compile better totals in these categories (home runs, batting average, strikeouts, earned run average, etc.) than the other fantasy teams in the league. These are compiled using the real-life statistics of the major league players we have drafted on our team's active roster. Standings are decided by the rankings in each of the categories: first place would be worth 10 points, second place is nine, etc. The totals for all categories are added together, and that decides where you are in the league standings. Simple, right?

I'm the commissioner and run the whole kit and kaboodle. In the early years, I also did the statistics-keeping, using a little computer and spreadsheet program. When the online world revved up, we went to those services. Now, I just have to maintain rosters, organize things and keep the peace.

It's a lot of fun for us. In the last couple years, we decided to hold an "Owners' Meeting" on the night before the draft. This consists of visiting several bars in the area, culminating with a visit to the Gold Nugget, about 40 miles away--the only strip club in many miles.

The theory is that imbibing beer and observing the fascinating gyrations and undulations of the unclothed female body is the optimum method to prepare for selecting baseball players by auction--starting at 9 a.m. the next morning. You should have heard the groaning from the hangovers as we got going last year. (BTW, I drink very little and don't mind being a designated driver.)

It's a guy thing, I know. But the guys in the league (like me) consider Draft Day to be the biggest day of the year. Over the years, most of them have gotten married and are raising kids. They're good guys who have had a lot of their wild ways toned down considerably by adult life. They deal with the heavy rock of responsibility in their lives. They know that life gets too damn grim if you don't have a little fun once in a while.

This is fun for them and for me. We all love baseball, we all love its link to a more idealistic, happier time in our lives, and my little fantasy league is that link. It's a part of us.

This weekend is the deadline for the eight holdover teams to submit six-man "protected" rosters, around which they will fill their rosters. Later today, I'm e-mailing them out to everyone. (Everything is done on the internet now--another huge change that has transpired over the years.)

Then we all study and plan strategy and dollar values and get ready for Draft Day. Not to mention the Owners' Meeting!

Hurtin' cowboy

Remember the picture of the snow shovel from the previous post and how high the snow reached on it? Tonight, a week later, you'd hardly know we had a big storm last week. The snow is still there, but it has compacted down so much. A product of the time of year.

We're still getting cold air from Canada, but the sun is so much higher now, and once we get air from the west again, the temperature is going to shoot up quickly, and the snow will go bye-bye.

Transition time for me, too. Basketball season ended last night when the team that I cover lost in its state quarterfinal game. I think our team was better--but not on this night. The other guys (two losses all season) simply outshot them, and our team's first loss of the season is also its last. No 1000-mile round trip to Lansing--I would have been driving down there today.

So it goes. I love sports, but it's just a game. Fun to watch, and there's lessons to be learned, certainly, but they lost and the world goes on spinning. (Of course, try to tell me that if the Detroit Red Wings make another first round exit from the Stanley Cup playoffs next month.)

Now that I'll get some time to relax at home now (I'm watching the world figure skating championships from Calgary with my wife tonight), maybe I can rest up and start feeling better. Truth is, I'm a hurtin' cowboy right now.

It happened last Wednesday, while I was walking home for lunch. Due to the snow from two days earlier, the only place to walk was along the street. Anyway, my foot hit a patch of ice and skidded. Down I came, crash, on my hip--right at the hipbone. Ouch. I checked for a bruise that night. Very little.

But in the days since then, my hip and upper thigh have made up for lost time. My butt, right where the hip bone ends, is close to black right now, and the thigh is darkly bruised. But I'm walking OK, sitting OK, squatting and climbing OK. It just aches a bit, especially last night when I was trying to sleep after the two-hour drive home from the basketball game.

Today, I basically took it easy. Stayed at work only until noon, rested at home this afternoon. I've been going pretty hard lately. Time to give it a break for a day. Tomorrow, back to the plow.

Now that basketball is over, maybe I can finally take my wife to the quilt shops in Eagle River she has been wanting to visit for some time. But with my goofy schedule and my mom's condition, it's been so hard to get away for a day. Maybe now ...

Sunflowers' start

It may still be March (it is), and we're still in winter (we are), and the yards are still covered in snow (they are), and I'm still over a month away from the first lawn-mowing of spring (I am).

But the sunflowers are on their way. Take a look ...



This is my wife's little greenhouse. It's a recycled plastic container that once took some tasty cookies home. Now it has earth inside instead of cookie crumbs. And when the lid is closed and placed on the south-facing kitchen windowsill, it works just like a greenhouse. The closed lid keeps the humidity in ... and the cat out.

She had attempted to grow sunflowers in the past, but those were planted in a bed at the base of the clothes pole, in easy range of marauding rabbits and lawnmowers. This year, the tentative plan is to plant them right under the kitchen window, where the rays of the afternoon sun bounce off the white side of the house and into the flower bed. (If the lawnmower doesn't get overly careless. We may have to put out stakes to cordon off the sunflower patch.)

Time will tell, but the location is the best we can come up with. And since she came up with the inspiration to start the plants inside, in March, they will already have a good head start by the time they outgrow the cookie container. This year, something big may come out of it.

Stay tuned for future updates. My wife just took a look at the picture (taken Thursday morning) and said the baby plants are already bigger, and there are more of them.

This is getting old

Here is what my Monday morning was like ...



The big storm hit Sunday night, and while shoveling everything away the next morning, I leaned the shovel against the snowbank (that's the front walk I'm trying to clear) to record the scene for posterity. How high were the drifts? They went to just a little above my kneecap, and I'm an average size guy.

(BTW, I wanted to borrow my wife's wooden quilting yardstick, but the way she frowned when I hinted at my plans told me to back off.)

The week was marked by the regional basketball tournament in Houghton, about 100 miles away. The semifinals were played Thursday evening, and on the trip north I stopped at a gas station. While pulling out, I thought I saw something along the road, so I pulled over. Sure enough ...



A cold venison dinner (a roadkill, plowed off the road--hardly unusual up here). But the eagle didn't want me to watch. Off he flew to a nearby tree ...



... where he sat and posed. "Make sure you get my good side."



On I went. Just past L'Anse, at the end of the Keweenaw Bay, I saw more critters, where the ice was starting to break up. Here is a familiar species ...



... but these definitely aren't. I was surprised to see them.



Anyway, on to the regional tourney. Our team won the semifinal game Thursday eveninh and then the regional championship this afternoon. Next stop: the state quarterfinals this Tuesday night in Escanaba.

If they win that one, their next game is the state semifinals in Lansing on Thursday. I could have a lot of driving ahead of me this week.

The rabbit

It had to happen. It does every year. And sure enough ...

Last week, we had a little warmup, and some of the snow melted. Didn't get that warm, but highs in the 40s are nice when you've been stuck in the 20s for so long.

Today, we got hit, but good. Large parts of the Midwest are seeing hail, heavy rain, damaging winds and even tornadoes. But the same system doing all that has also given us a heck of a snowstorm. It may be our biggest storm of the winter. Not sure of that yet, but I can say (from personal experience) that it's the heaviest/densest snow of the year. "Heart attack snow." Very heavy to lift and shovel. As I did late this afternoon.

For as heavy as the snow is, it sure drifts well. It's cold and windy tonight, and the snow is blowing and drifting all over. I had to drive about 15 miles away tonight, for a meeting, and the snow was blowing all over the roads. They had the highway cleared well enough for me, and the driving wasn't too bad. All the same, I'm glad I don't have to go out later tonight. Closer to Lake Superior, they have blizzard warnings out.

Last Saturday, it was a nice, springish day (springish for us, of course; everything is relative). Highs were in the 40s. Some of the snow had melted.

After we got home from that volleyball tournament, we (David, my wife and I) were going to watch a disk at home. My wife was late coming in. She had seen something across the street (which is the main highway through town) by the streetlights. A small critter moving near the curb. She wasn't sure what. A squirrel, maybe?

I looked. I could see the movement. After a few minutes, I put my jacket on and went to see. David came along.

It was a rabbit, lying on its side in the grime by the curb. We have a number of rabbits around the area, and you usually can see their prints in the snow each morning. My wife watches just before dark, as one occasionally comes around for a bite to eat. (She loves to feed her birds with stale bread and crackers and whatever.)

Obviously, if this one could have hippity-hopped away, it would have. Evidently it had been hit by a car or truck. Regardless, there it was. It was moving and was obviously seriously hurt. Now what?

I knew that I had to do something I had never done before, certainly not deliberately. I felt bad, but what else could be done? If I grab the rabbit at its shoulders, twist its body one way and snap its head the other way, its suffering would be over. I sent David back to the house and crouched down, petting the rabbit's side.

That's when I noticed that the rabbit was lying still. I pressed its side. Its legs were quiet. Its eyes weren't moving. I pressed again. Nature had taken care of matters.

David brought out a shovel, and we moved the rabbit off the road and onto the curb. Not sure what's the right thing to do for deceased critters, but I didn't want it to become highway pizza. I didn't feel like seeing a movie after that. But I do know how grateful I felt that I didn't have to do what I felt I had to.

The rabbit may still be out there ... now under a foot-deep white blanket. So it goes.

****
Cripes, do I have a lot of snow to shovel tomorrow morning!

District week in the rear-view mirror

Hi. It's pretty outside here today. Sunny, temperatures in the upper 30s. Not a sign in the world that our area is going to be buried by a major snowstorm in the next 24 hours. This time, we might get a foot. It's supposed to start after sunset tonight.

Anyway, I'm taking a "mental health break" from writing sports stories to give you an update.

Last week was district basketball week for me, and it involved five major trips (70+ miles each way) out of town in six days. (Tuesday was the exception.) Lots of hours away from home. On Saturday, I covered the regional volleyball tourney and took my wife along.

It could be the first time she has ever gone with me to a high school sports event I cover. Truth be told, she doesn't care too much for sports and would rather be home. But I was also planning to visit my mom on the way home. Besides, there's a Wal-Mart along the way. You can't get too much canned cat food or Honey-Nut Cheerios, you know.

I know a lot of women love sports, and I have wished more than a few times that she was one of them. Wouldn't it be nice, I think, if she liked baseball or football or hockey? That we could share that passion together? Wouldn't it be nice to have her along to keep me company on those long drives out of town? But if wishes were horses, etc. She isn't, and that's all there is to it. (Grumble, grumble.)

By the way, once we got to the nursing home, we found there was a visitor ban because of illness. The best we could do is wave to her from the sidewalk outside.

I thought the volleyball team would win its regional, and they did win the first two games of their semifinal match. Then they lost their focus, lost the next three games, and their season is over.

So that just leaves the boys basketball team, which is now 22-0 after winning their district. They play in their regional up in Houghton late this week. If they keep winning, I may have to drive down to East Lansing late next week for the state finals--a 520-mile trip, each way. Life would be so much easier for me if they played in the high school tourneys in Wisconsin or Minnesota. For one thing, the drive would be a lot shorter.

I had one more incident yesterday, but I think I'll write about it separately. Later today maybe.

Late winter photo album

I have had a quiet weekend, but winter continues. We are getting some light snow tonight. (A few miles away in Wisconsin, they are getting more than we are.)

Winter is on the way out--but it's still here, as these photos will show you. First, here is the official measurement after a storm we got in late February ...



Yes, that is a 13-inch ruler my wife got somewhere. Here is what the yard looked like before the snow shovel went to work and the plow arrived ...



I went to visit my mom that day, and I took the camera along in hopes of getting pictures of snow drifting over the road. Alas, the cold north wind had mostly died down by then, and this photo shows that if I had left an hour or two earlier earlier, I would have gotten what I wanted.



These next two pictures were taken over the last few days. The first one shows a scale model of the Alps.



It's the mountain of snow that has been plowed up next to my driveway over the last month or so. In the background you can see my car, and just in front of it is the crossbar of the clothespole--the end closest to the camera is the one that will be bonking me on the top of my head when I mow the lawn this summer. That's how high the snow is.

This last one was taken on Saturday, on my way home from a district volleyball tournament about 70 miles away. This is about 30 miles west of home--it's a snow- and ice-covered meandering stream that has become a highway for deer during winter. (Deer typically walk in single file, you see.)



I saw it on my way to the tourney, but I was running a little late, so I waited until the trip home to get a photo. Unfortunately, by that time it was late afternoon, and the brook on the other side of the highway, a multiple series of snow-covered S's, was now in the shade--too little contrast to see the undulations.

If I get a sunny afternoon this week, I'll make a special trip out there to get a shot of it. It looked real cool. (Cold, even.)

It's the time of the season ...

I've been dealing with a lot of stuff lately, as you know. But that's about to change.

Three reasons.

First, I "passed the kidney stone." That's how I described it to S in a e-mail earlier this week--all the work I had to do to gather documentation, forms and etc. and so forth for my mom's Medicaid application. It took several weeks to locate everything I needed, including some extensive searching of my mom's papers at her place, but it's all there now, including quit-claim deed, auto title, insurance numbers, property tax forms and the like. On Wednesday morning, it went out in the mail.

Second, the frantic and hectic winter sports season is on its last legs. This is/was the last week of the regular season. Over the weekend, the volleyball district tourney. Next week, the basketball districts. I fully expect two teams I cover to be "one and done." The others may go on a ways. Nevertheless, the work will be a lot easier. Not so many plates to keep spinning.

Third, we're in for a big meltdown. Our weather has stayed colder than normal, and the snow--about two feet of it now--it still there. But the sun has been out a lot lately, and it's getting higher and higher in the sky. That means, it has more power, and once the temperatures get above 32, we are going to see some big-time melting. The days are over 11 hours long now, too. Winter is on its last legs.

That doesn't necessarily mean we'll be seeing "spring" anytime soon. Typically, we get some melting, then it gets colder and a little more snow, than more melting. We have to be patient about things like this. By mid-April, we should have seen the last of our snow. Around May 1, I'll have to mow the lawn for the first time.

Patience is tough to come by, though, when you're eager to put the heavy coat away, to leave your jacket open and forget the gloves for a few months. The snow shovels are still at hand. Looking forward to putting them away and getting out the grill again.

Yeah, Old Man Winter may clock us again. But his days are numbered.