In honor of the Rangers’ unprecedented and long-awaited success in the playoffs, this week’s haiku theme is baseball.
What is this I see?
Hitting plus pitching goes far
Rangers win it all?
You know what to do. GO RANGERS!
Category Archives: Sports
Haiku Tuesday 5 – Football
This week’s haiku theme is football.
Green and gold for life
I don’t care how much we suck
Baylor is my team
Your turn!
Welcome to the Gun Show
Jenny is once again a gym member. She wants to get in better shape, and we decided that joining a gym would be worth it for her. She went gym shopping on Tuesday looking for a comfortable gym that offered good childcare, good class selection, and a reasonable prices. Here’s what she learned from the three gyms she visited in the Euless/Colleyville area:
Pros: Cheapest of the three by far, childcare included with a fun-looking kids’ area, great staff.
Cons: Equipment needed updating, comparatively small, class selection is limited so classes are generally very full, no kids in the pool, very much a traditional gym with lots of muscle-bound people and aggressive personal trainers
Overall: OK if no other options, but not really what Jenny was looking for
Bonus Fact: We belonged to LA Fitness for about a year when we lived in Fort Worth and really liked it.
Pros: Very nice facility, 5 minutes from our house, good class selection, nice childcare workers, few kids
Cons: No kids in the pool, childcare very expensive, kids’ area pretty small
Overall: Better for us than 24 Hour, but hard to swallow the expensive childcare
Pros: Facility is gorgeous and huge, great class selection, indoor AND outdoor pools with waterslides, kids are allowed in pools, great childcare at little extra cost, very family-oriented, free swim lessons for kids, some friends work out there
Cons: Most expensive of the three, much more than we’d originally planned on paying
Overall: She went with Life Time. It had so much to offer that Jenny thinks she will be motivated to go several times a week, including right after dropping Brenden off at preschool twice a week this fall. The boys will be able to swim year-round and to learn how for free. Life Time is more of a sports resort than a gym. Since it’s so kid-friendly, we hope that all three of them will have a good time up there, mostly in the morning while I’m asleep.
Baylor is Saved!
Yuk yuk yuk.
The past couple of weeks have been a roller coaster for college athletics. In case you missed the party, rumors and speculation erupted regarding a possible realignment of several college conferences with the Big 12 right in the middle of the action. Nebraska left for the Big 10. Colorado left for the Pac-10. Most signs pointed toward seeing Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State join the Pac-10 to form a super-conference, leaving Baylor and the rest of the Big 12 North out in the cold. Another possibility had A&M joining the SEC instead, breaking up the 100-year-old rivalry with UT. As a Baylor alum and fan (yes, despite our struggles in the one sport that Texans care about most), this prospect disappointed me. Baylor would most likely be forced to join a lower-profile conference, possibly the Mountain West, which would reduce Baylor’s TV revenue, recruitment success, and player convenience due to unfavorable time zone changes and long distances to travel. Even worse from a fan’s perspective, we would lose the rivalries we have developed with Texas, A&M, and Tech.
I don’t know whether the Bears just prayed harder or the whole realignment scenario was simply a ploy to get more money, but apparently the meltdown of the Big 12 has been canceled, or at least postponed. Texas, the power player in the conference, chose not to join the Pac-10, and the other remaining Big 12 schools followed suit. Somehow the Big 12 is going to receive a huge boost in TV revenue that the remaining 10 schools will share. Baylor’s TV revenue will roughly double, we stay in a high-profile conference, and we get to keep our rivalries and maintain an easier travel schedule for the players. I am very happy, as are most of the Baylor fans.
College Football News posted a nice article that analyzes the situation in more depth.
Quote for the Day
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” – John Wooden, Legendary NCAA Basketball Coach
Grandma Romo
Jenny and I were driving through my parents’ neighborhood tonight when the car in front of us stopped and the door opened. I was a little nervous, not knowing what to expect. The driver, a smiling woman in her 70s with an interesting, unplaceable accent, stepped out and walked back to me. “I’m lost!” she said. She’d gone to the store and couldn’t remember how to get back to her grandson’s house on a nearby street. “Tony Romo’s my grandson”, she explained. I see. Well, I couldn’t remember exactly where the street was, but we couldn’t let Tony’s granny down.
I fumbled around on my iPhone map trying to locate the street until Jenny, wise as she is, asked Grandma Romo if she wanted to follow us there instead. She happily agreed, so we drove off with her in trail. Soon she stopped at (we hope) the right house, and we drove off. My brush with Cowboys greatness was over.
In retrospect, I could have done all sorts of obnoxious things like asking for Tony’s autograph or trying to score some tickets. I could’ve simply asked her to tell Tony good luck in the big game against the Redskins on Sunday. But I didn’t. The weirdness of the whole situation kept my brain from working correctly.