football - Lord Gonchar

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste.

This Weekend

For the past few years, we’ve gotten a real tree for Christmas. Basically, since we moved to Ohio. They always suck. We vowed last year to pick up a nice artificial tree this year/ Ideally, we want a really tall one that we can put in the entry way. We kind of unofficially figured a 12-foot tree would be cool. Seems to be the point where the prices are still reasonable, but it’s tall enough to be something (I measured – the entry in 17 feet high). It’s about time we started finding one – and it turns out it’s not as easy as it seems to find a combo of reasonable cost and quality in a really tall artificial tree. But that’s for another post.

So to start thinking Xmas and maybe start scoping trees we decided to go check out our local Christmas Tree Shoppe. We knew a little about it and had been wanting to check the place out for a while. Well, our mistake for not looking into it more, but it’s probably the worst place in the world. I expected a cute little seasonal holiday-type place. It’s actually essentially a Big Lots with 1/4 of the store filled with seasonal holiday items of the Big Lots quality you’d expect. It fucking sucked. If it burned to the ground tomorrow, I’d chuckle with approval. I actually wished I were in a Big Lots. (for the record, Big Lots is one of my least favorite places on Earth)

Just a big fucking waste of time.

We noticed there was a Burlington Coat Factory in the plaza. We hadn’t been to one in ages, but we used to find pretty great deals at the one in Allentown when we lived there.

Mistake #2.

It smelled…mostly like sad. And there was absolutely nothing worth seeing there…except (and I swear we found these there) for the boys mustard yellow courduroy pants straight off the kids in early-70′s Sesame Street episodes. I had flashbacks.

We quickly slipped out of there and beelined to the other location we planned on hitting – Hobby Lobby. I don’t think I’d ever stepped foot in one prior to this. We saw an ad that said they had a buttload of trees in all shapes and sizes at great prices. It may have been a bit of an oversell. They had one 12-footer, but it didn’t look very real and was a bit bare…and even with the 50% off sale on all Christmas decorations, still came in at a price closer to four digits than two. Meh.

What a waste of a couple of Friday hours.

On Satuday, we had football equipment turn-ins in the morning, then my son and I decided to drive across town to see one of the semi-final tournament games. Looked to be possibly the best game of the entire tournament at the 4th grade level. One team was a sleeper that went undefeated and gave up just one touchdown in the 8-game season and only two TD’s in three tournament games. No one ever put up more than 6 against them. They were playing the team that has been a thorn in our side not just once, but twice in the past. They’re consistently good and passed us in the final week of the season for the highest scoring team in the 4th grade.

On paper it was the unstoppable force against the immovable object.

It didn’t play out that way. The sleeper team gave up 28 points. In one game they gave up more TD’s than they had total in the 11 games prior. We still had fun. Might go to the championship game at UD next weekend.

It was also my daughter’s birthday. I have a 14 year old. Her party was last weekend, so she got to spend the day alone while my wife was at work and my son and I were at the game. She got a cake from Ritters. She wanted a Mud Pie cake. Too chocolatey for me. A weird little quirk of mine is that I’m not fond of chocolate ice cream. Even worse, chocolate ice cream with more chocolate shit mixed in…and then topped with more chcocolate. Not my thing. But Ritters is awesome. It took us a while to discover them (we’re DQ people for childhood), but we haven’t been to DQ in ages. (for the record my very favorite ice cream is Whitehouse)

Tomorrow? Little stuff around the house and a Steelers game tomorrow night. Normally we rake/blow leaves the first weekend in November, but all the leaves haven’t fallen yet. Trees are still surprisingly full for this late in the year. Maybe next weekend.

I’m livin’ it.

Stuff…and Stuff

I’m back to noticing I tend to share quick little things with the good folks on Facebook rather than more substantial things (or even silly little quickies) here with the ol’ bloggy blog. Sorry, blog peeps.

We’re busy right now with the annual halloween/birthday party for my daughter. My son usually has a friend over too and they run around the yard and the woods trying to scare the older kids. Last year was a ‘generic’ halloween theme – standard scary stuff – titled “Lucky 13″ for her 13th Birthday. This year it’s a research lab accident/mad scientist/shit has gone bad theme. We did invitations that we’re all official sounding – as if you we’re privvy to inside info. Very subtlely at the bottom in small font we put: www.researchfacility14.com password:number14

The kids seem to dig it. We’re in the process of setting the garage and deck up and getting it all into theme. Hopefully, I get some photos or video or something. The bad news is that the Camaro doesn’t get to sleep in the garage for the next 4 nights.

I’m also semi-simultaneously working on this year’s DVD set for the football team. Last year’s was such a hit that I think I’ve become the guy who does this for the team. Recording the games is cool and I know the coaches use it as a tool, so I’m contributing in my own special way. The parents and boys love the DVD’s. The entire season’s games are on there along with highlights, music videos and more candid stuff. It’s my job to make 10 year old boys look like rock stars. Amazing how some decent football plays edited in sync to some pump-up music can achieve this to great effect. I have less than three weeks to deliever a finished product to everyone at the end-of-season party. The weird thing is that I actually feel some pressure to up the ante, so to speak. You kinda have to outdo the last one, right?

Then it’s Thanksgiving…and holiday shopping and X-mas and New Year’s and stuff.

October 27th, 2011 - football - fun - holidays - home - insight - life - the kids

Season Ender

We got knocked out in the first tournament game. “Heartbreaking” was a term used more than once. We lost to a team that was solid, but not our better. We lost more than they won.

They won the toss, took the ball and just threw our defense for a loop with a “shock and awe” air attack unlike any I’ve ever seen unleashed by a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds. They quickly scored and went up 7 nothing. On out first offensive play, we fumbled and they recovered. They quickly struck again and we were down 14-0 before anyone even knew what happened. The rest of the first half was ugly on offense – penalties, fumbles, dropped passes, bad snaps. We were killing ourselves. Defense adjusted and stopped their attack for the remained of the first half. We went to halftime down 14-0.

We had the ball after the half and struck just as quickly as they had the first half. After an awfully close call at the goal line for the extra point (the refs said no) we were down 14-6. Our defense was brutal and we soon had the ball back. After a march down the field and a bad snap on the XP, we were down 14-12 in the 3rd quarter and you could just feel the momentum shift. This was ours for the taking.

Defense stopped them again and we headed into the 4th quarter with the ball, marching towards our inevitable win. I even said to my wife, “You can feel it. They just have to ride this momentum wave.” Just as we reached the Red Zone our main running back took the ball and – for the first time this season – fumbled it at the end of his run. We didn’t recover it.

Defense stepped up, but the other team was moving the ball. With less than two minutes and the ball inside the 15, our defense put on a show that had the stands going nuts. We got the ball back with no time outs and a little over a minute on the clock…and much like our only othe rloss of the season, time ran out on us. We were moving the ball again, we just didn’t have enough time.

Heartbreaking.

They boys won their preseason game, went 7-1 during the season and then lost the first post-season game to end the year. We lost those two games by a total of 3 points in situations where the clock ran out on us. That’s amounts to probably less than two minutes of game time between ending a 7-1 season too early and moving into round two of the tourney as an undefeated powerhouse.

8 months until summer practices begin.

October 23rd, 2011 - football

7-1

Weird, ugly game today. Our defense delivered. Our offense didn’t. Final score 6-0.

We end the season one point away from undefeated. Now it’s tournament time.

October 16th, 2011 - football

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