We woke up to a beautiful snow yesterday. There was about a half inch of the fluffy white stuff covering everything. Almost all of it was gone by lunchtime.
TOURNAMENT TIME! I don’t want to ignore Nate’s basketball season--they had their third win yesterday--but since the Robertson County Middle School Tournament finished up yesterday I will focus on that for now.
Robertson County currently has six middle schools. The first games on the tourney were a week ago Thursday (the 15th). We were paired against Greenbrier. It was a good game. The most memorable part of this game actually came about a minute and a half before halftime. Greenbrier had the ball and our boys simply weren’t acting like they were taking their defense seriously. Not a single one of them had their hands up to block a pass or a shot. Our coach called a time out, benched all our starters, and let the JV team play out the remainder of the quarter. I think that got their attention because they came back from the locker room acting like they meant business.
Our victory against Greenbrier pitted us against Springfield, the number one seed, for the semifinals. We knew chances of a win were slim but we had a glimmer of hope when we learned that three of their starters lost their eligibility to play. As the game progressed we couldn’t tell they were missing any key players. It was a total blow out.
Fortunately for us the losers of the semifinals got to play a consolation match yesterday for third place. We faced Coopertown and won. This was an exciting game and probably the best game Ben played all season. His shooting was better and he made his presence felt on the court with some of the plays he made.
All losses aside, it has been fun to watch Ben play. He has gotten a lot of game time this year. It’s a big step up from Upward ball but I think his experience in Upward has served him well. I am eager to see what his high school years will bring for him. I’m also glad to see that he conducts himself well on the court.
A RIGOROUS SCHEDULE. In case you don’t know East Robertson High School uses a block schedule. This means Jenna gets a new set of classes each semester, much like college. This time she is taking English III, Chemistry, US History and Geography, and Speech. Her Speech class, like Psychology last semester, is a dual enrollment class. In addition to all of this she is taking an extra US History class. This class is simply a college class, not dual enrollment. She has the same teacher for both history classes, but the classes are not related. This class meets at 6:45 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays making for some long days. Her five course load will also earn six hours of college credit.
Jenna handles the load and stress with grace and ease. Watching her tackle all this has increased my admiration for my daughter many times over. I feel confident in saying that here’s one nursing student hopeful who won’t be fazed by the level of work required when she gets to college. Jenna, I am very proud of you.
CONFESSIONS. Confession is good for the soul, right? If so Jenna’s soul should be healthy. It’s not that she needed to confess anything, but it seems like things come up in conversation every now and then which makes her tell us about things she used to do as a little girl.
For example, the other night I shot Jenna with a rubber band. She held it over the vent in the floor as if she were going to drop it into the air duct. She refrained from dropping it when I told her not to, but that’s when she opened up and told me about all the stuff she used to drop down the vent on purpose when she was little. She went on the say that she liked watching my face as I lay on the floor reaching in to retrieve toys, crayons, and the like.
Proud as I am of you Jenna, I’m praying for grandchildren from you. I’m going to enjoy watching you do motherhood. And trust me, I will be giving your kids plenty of ideas.
Joe
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Monday, January 12, 2015
Colder than Barrow, Alaska!
Winter is here! Last week an arctic vortex dipped down over the Great Lakes and our temperatures plummeted to single digits. We even closed school on Thursday due to the extreme cold. I checked the weather that morning and saw that we were 20° cooler than Barrow, Alaska!
BASKETBALL. East Robertson had two regular season games on their schedule for this month. We felt like we had an opportunity to add another win to our record last week since we had beaten Jo Byrns when we faced them before. It was not to be. Our boys played like they were still on Christmas break.
We went to tonight’s game against Springfield Middle expecting a tail whipping like last time. We were pleasantly surprised to have found ourselves ahead at halftime. We wound up losing by 16 but I’ll say that’s a respectable loss given the opponent. The District Tournament begins Thursday.
As Ben’s season draws to a close Nate’s season is just getting cranked up. He played his first game Saturday, and he contributed two points toward their victory. That’s not too bad considering that Nate is now playing in the 6-8 grade division and is one of the younger players on his team. Also, tall as he is, he’s not one of the taller players on the court. I thought he did very well for the first game of the season.
WHO’S IN THE WINDOW? Vicki sent me a neat picture the other day. She has two porcelain cardinals sitting in our kitchen window as part of her winter decor. They are about the size their real counterparts but unlike real birds they are wearing stocking caps. At any rate, the picture she sent was of these two birds and sitting in the tree outside the window eyeing our cardinals is a great horned owl. She and Jenna said the owl stayed there for almost an hour. Makes me wonder what was on the owl’s mind as it eyed those two birds in the window.
AVALANCHE. So the boys and I were here at the house Saturday, minding our own business, when we hear the sound of a small avalanche coming from the kitchen. We were perplexed initially when we went to investigate and didn’t see anything amiss. Then Ben looked in the pantry. One of the long shelves along the side wall decided to give way and all the stuff along its eight foot length came crashing down with it. It was one big mess!
We only had two things to break. Sadly they were both glass pieces from Pauline’s kitchen that Vicki had kept for sentimental reasons--a glass chicken that was a favorite of Pauline’s and a coffee pot that her dad, Jessie, made his coffee in. The rest of the stuff didn’t break which was amazing because Ben kept picking up things like the jar of honey, the bottle of vanilla, and the jar of sorghum and exclaiming, “I sure am glad this didn’t break!”
This could have been so much worse. At least we were able to get the shelf back up--more securely this time--and most of the stuff back in place before Vicki and Jenna came home.
THE DIGITAL HEADACHE. I have a love/hate relationship with computers. This is because they can make life easy and hard at the same time. They solve many problems but create new ones along the way. Take home videos for example. Years ago we had a VHS camcorder. Eventually that broke and we bought a miniDV camera. Over time that one played out and we got a video camera that recorded to its internal memory rather than a tape. This worked well until its storage filled up which meant you had to download the video to your computer if you wanted to keep it. That’s all well and good until you fill up all the available hard drive space.
My first solution was to burn our home movies to DVD. I have 34 of these with hours of footage on our bookshelf all neatly cataloged and labeled. Then a few years after making the DVDs Jenna popped one in the DVD player and discovered it wouldn’t play. I checked it in several players only to learn the lifespan of these discs is far shorter than first expected. Uh-oh.
To make a long story short, storage of digital media is a problem--one I know all too well from my experience at work. Hard drives and other media fail, and at the most inconvenient times. Fortunately I haven’t lost any pictures or videos...yet. A new complication to all of this is the smart phone. Vicki, Jenna, and I have snapshots and video clips spread between three devices and they’re not synced to our computer (because it’s too old).
I have a plan, and for the last six months I have been working to consolidate our digital memorabilia onto one large master hard drive which is backed up both off site and in the cloud. So far I’ve gotten almost all of our home videos done. Pictures are next on the list. I bring this up because I know I’m not the only one facing this problem. If you would like to know more about my backup plan or share with me what you are doing to archive your data I’d love to hear from you.
Joe
BASKETBALL. East Robertson had two regular season games on their schedule for this month. We felt like we had an opportunity to add another win to our record last week since we had beaten Jo Byrns when we faced them before. It was not to be. Our boys played like they were still on Christmas break.
We went to tonight’s game against Springfield Middle expecting a tail whipping like last time. We were pleasantly surprised to have found ourselves ahead at halftime. We wound up losing by 16 but I’ll say that’s a respectable loss given the opponent. The District Tournament begins Thursday.
As Ben’s season draws to a close Nate’s season is just getting cranked up. He played his first game Saturday, and he contributed two points toward their victory. That’s not too bad considering that Nate is now playing in the 6-8 grade division and is one of the younger players on his team. Also, tall as he is, he’s not one of the taller players on the court. I thought he did very well for the first game of the season.
WHO’S IN THE WINDOW? Vicki sent me a neat picture the other day. She has two porcelain cardinals sitting in our kitchen window as part of her winter decor. They are about the size their real counterparts but unlike real birds they are wearing stocking caps. At any rate, the picture she sent was of these two birds and sitting in the tree outside the window eyeing our cardinals is a great horned owl. She and Jenna said the owl stayed there for almost an hour. Makes me wonder what was on the owl’s mind as it eyed those two birds in the window.
AVALANCHE. So the boys and I were here at the house Saturday, minding our own business, when we hear the sound of a small avalanche coming from the kitchen. We were perplexed initially when we went to investigate and didn’t see anything amiss. Then Ben looked in the pantry. One of the long shelves along the side wall decided to give way and all the stuff along its eight foot length came crashing down with it. It was one big mess!
We only had two things to break. Sadly they were both glass pieces from Pauline’s kitchen that Vicki had kept for sentimental reasons--a glass chicken that was a favorite of Pauline’s and a coffee pot that her dad, Jessie, made his coffee in. The rest of the stuff didn’t break which was amazing because Ben kept picking up things like the jar of honey, the bottle of vanilla, and the jar of sorghum and exclaiming, “I sure am glad this didn’t break!”
This could have been so much worse. At least we were able to get the shelf back up--more securely this time--and most of the stuff back in place before Vicki and Jenna came home.
THE DIGITAL HEADACHE. I have a love/hate relationship with computers. This is because they can make life easy and hard at the same time. They solve many problems but create new ones along the way. Take home videos for example. Years ago we had a VHS camcorder. Eventually that broke and we bought a miniDV camera. Over time that one played out and we got a video camera that recorded to its internal memory rather than a tape. This worked well until its storage filled up which meant you had to download the video to your computer if you wanted to keep it. That’s all well and good until you fill up all the available hard drive space.
My first solution was to burn our home movies to DVD. I have 34 of these with hours of footage on our bookshelf all neatly cataloged and labeled. Then a few years after making the DVDs Jenna popped one in the DVD player and discovered it wouldn’t play. I checked it in several players only to learn the lifespan of these discs is far shorter than first expected. Uh-oh.
To make a long story short, storage of digital media is a problem--one I know all too well from my experience at work. Hard drives and other media fail, and at the most inconvenient times. Fortunately I haven’t lost any pictures or videos...yet. A new complication to all of this is the smart phone. Vicki, Jenna, and I have snapshots and video clips spread between three devices and they’re not synced to our computer (because it’s too old).
I have a plan, and for the last six months I have been working to consolidate our digital memorabilia onto one large master hard drive which is backed up both off site and in the cloud. So far I’ve gotten almost all of our home videos done. Pictures are next on the list. I bring this up because I know I’m not the only one facing this problem. If you would like to know more about my backup plan or share with me what you are doing to archive your data I’d love to hear from you.
Joe
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Welcome to the New Year!
Welcome to 2015! We hope your holidays have been as fun as ours.
For the most part we stuck to tradition again this year doing all the things we typically do: Kenny and Lori’s party on the 23rd, Christmas Eve service on the 24th, brunch at Mrs. Connie’s Christmas morning, and ringing in the new year in Georgia with the Jones family. There were also some activities unique to this year.
I think for me the what got me in the Christmas spirit more than anything else was a concert we had a church back on the 14th (in my haste I forgot to write this up last time). Lydia Gott, our previous Minister of Music, returned with her husband, Kyle, and their three kids to visit and treat us to songs of the season. Their music was good, but more than that it was good to reconnect with old friends. I think that’s what made the evening so special.
The Monday before Christmas (the 22nd) we decided to surprise Mom with a trip to see the lights and decorations at Opryland Hotel. She had not been over there in several years and really enjoyed it, as did the rest of us. When we saw all there was to see at the hotel we headed over to the Cock of the Walk for supper. We had seen this restaurant for years but never tried it. Now we have a new place to return to next time we are in that area. After supper we drove through Jellystone Park, an RV campground also in the Opryland area, where they have a huge Christmas light display that is choreographed to music. All you do is tune your radio to a low power station they have set up and enjoy the show as you drive through the campgrounds. Mom was having so much fun she was playing air piano in the dashboard.
We kept Christmas itself pretty low key this year. Everyone got a few things on their wish list but there were no big ticket items this time. We did splurge a bit by going out to see a couple of movies--Mockingjay, Part 1 and The Hobbit, Part 3--both of which we enjoyed.
Looking back, these last two weeks have been slow and quiet, something I think we all needed. We were busy, but we didn’t overdo, and I think that was absolutely the best Christmas present any of us could have asked for.
Joe
For the most part we stuck to tradition again this year doing all the things we typically do: Kenny and Lori’s party on the 23rd, Christmas Eve service on the 24th, brunch at Mrs. Connie’s Christmas morning, and ringing in the new year in Georgia with the Jones family. There were also some activities unique to this year.
I think for me the what got me in the Christmas spirit more than anything else was a concert we had a church back on the 14th (in my haste I forgot to write this up last time). Lydia Gott, our previous Minister of Music, returned with her husband, Kyle, and their three kids to visit and treat us to songs of the season. Their music was good, but more than that it was good to reconnect with old friends. I think that’s what made the evening so special.
The Monday before Christmas (the 22nd) we decided to surprise Mom with a trip to see the lights and decorations at Opryland Hotel. She had not been over there in several years and really enjoyed it, as did the rest of us. When we saw all there was to see at the hotel we headed over to the Cock of the Walk for supper. We had seen this restaurant for years but never tried it. Now we have a new place to return to next time we are in that area. After supper we drove through Jellystone Park, an RV campground also in the Opryland area, where they have a huge Christmas light display that is choreographed to music. All you do is tune your radio to a low power station they have set up and enjoy the show as you drive through the campgrounds. Mom was having so much fun she was playing air piano in the dashboard.
We kept Christmas itself pretty low key this year. Everyone got a few things on their wish list but there were no big ticket items this time. We did splurge a bit by going out to see a couple of movies--Mockingjay, Part 1 and The Hobbit, Part 3--both of which we enjoyed.
Looking back, these last two weeks have been slow and quiet, something I think we all needed. We were busy, but we didn’t overdo, and I think that was absolutely the best Christmas present any of us could have asked for.
Joe
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