Too Much Food Anyway

I also wanted to eat out on Friday because I had eaten a lot, I think way too much, at home.  My parents cook splendidly and I'm glad I can eat, and for free.  But they make a goddamn lot, and they still make me eat a goddamn lot, and I swear I'm getting fatter and thus unhealthier.  So yes, I understand eating fast food is much less healthy and I am spending money while doing it.  So, if I can control how much I eat, that should be good for me, right?  Well, that plan goes out the window if the restaurant screws up the order, which they did, technically.

OK, so I got home, grabbed my phone which was on my bed all day Friday, was going to tell my parents I was here and then leave but realized they didn't give a shit, and went to my car to order Chipotle.  I had free birthday guac, so I bought chips, and since Chipotle gives you a lot of chips, I didn't think I needed more than one taco (and I got their new chipotle honey chicken) and pop and I would be good.

What I have noticed since the pandemic, with the resulting rise in mobile ordering and the possibly-causal decrease of staff working at these places, is that orders sometimes get real screwed up.  I usually don't do anything because, yes, I'm cynical enough to think it won't make a bit of difference.  But there has been more than one occasion where I have been given more food than I ordered, and that was the case here.  I suspected nothing when I took my bag directly from the workers who had just finished my order.  I intended to eat it there so I could just be at peace to start my weekend.  I noticed a bag within the bag, so that was the bag of chips.  I grab it ... and see another bag underneath.  They gave me two bags of chips?  And then I opened up the aluminum lid of the bowl in which I expected my one chipotle honey chicken taco.  And there I saw three.  (By the way, I only saw one cup of guacamole, not two.  I stopped to buy Top The Tater on my way home so I have something to dip the second bag of chips in.)

My guess is is that they were slammed with orders and were just getting them out.  I also guess that people usually don't order just one taco, so I assumed the workers just looked at the word "taco" and automatically made three.  That doesn't explain the two bags of chips, though, so maybe they wanted to give me a second bag of chips to make up for making me wait, even though I think I got there a bit before the ready-by time I was given on the Chipotle application.  Or they were being nice.  Or generous.  Or a combination thereof.

I know it's weird to complain about getting more food than you paid for.  But I have a waistline I have to tend to, I had a plan to watch what I ate, and dammit, I got all this good food again.  It wasn't unlike eating at home.  But I'm not stupid; I ate the three tacos (pretty good) and one bag of chips with the guacamole before I left.  And I got fat and I was happy I was given all this food.

And I think that, now that I'm done with this blog post, I'll start working on the second bag of chips and the Top The Tater.

Mundo OT Falling By The Wayside?

Circling back to work on Friday ... there was a part of me that wanted to take my boss up on his offer of staying an extra four at work.  I have only worked that long probably once at my company, and (I may have blog posted about this) it was in an effort to work more than 60 hours one week because I wanted to know whether I would get paid double time once I reached 60.  Based on my paycheck, the answer is no.

I did not take him up on his offer for many reasons.  Viscerally, I was still missing my cellphone, which I stupidly forgot at home.  Guess it didn't matter if I came home after ten hours at work or twelve, but I wanted to get home as soon as possible so I could reunite with my phone.  On top of that, it was time I finally began working on my taxes, and seeing I just spent a good hour-plus realizing I had made a mistake before doing this blog post, I think I made the right choice in quitting after ten hours (and 15 minutes) at work so I could go into the break room and finally begin filling out the forms and schedules.  (Mental note: It might be time to hire an accountant or tax advisor.)  Instinct also kicked in: I was hungry, I planned on getting Chipotle because it gave me free guacamole (for my birthday), and I was set on using it, and I'm not sure if I could have had that leisurely dinner I felt entitled to after a long day at work without my cell if I ordered food at 8:30 instead of 7:30.  And although The Third Department was a lot better than I was worried it would be, my workday was still plenty long, and even though I got done with all the work, I think I wanted to quit instead of key for two hours.

And yes, even with all those good reasons, I still regret not working till late.  I'm not sure how much work my co-workers got through yesterday/Saturday, but I take my boss not texting me saying that I could come in to work yesterday or today as a sign that things are under control.  And like I said, The Third Department was not as bad as I thought it would be on Friday, and this was despite two days' worth of forms finally reaching us, so maybe the crush of work that presumably led to the possibility of a twelve-hour workday Friday was a one-time thing.  Finally, the new guidelines in The Third Department is designed to streamline things and, ultimately, get us out earlier than we have.  Even though the jury is still out, at least in theory this is supposed to work.

Add it all up, and this might be the last time I will be given the opportunity to work half a 24-hour day.  If I did my taxes right -- and Buddha knows I've effed it up in the past -- I'm owing a lot of money next week.  And I just looked at my credit card bills -- egads, I'm still living it up.  I still need the money.  I still need the OT.  And I passed up what could be my fattest chance to make as much dough as I could, never to see that chance again, dammit.

Oh, The Things I Can Talk About From Yesterday/Friday. Let's Start With The Phone

Oddly dynamic day, but rife with stuff to blog post about, and that's great since I've been kind of hurting for stuff to talk about.

I'll go in chronological order.  I forgot to bring my phone to work yesterday/Friday.  I had such anxiety not having it with me.  Honestly, not being able to scroll through things is something I did miss, even though I wasn't thinking about it every minute.  Hopefully that means I'm not totally addicted and gone.  No, I was more worried that I would need it and not have it, specifically that I would get into an accident or the car would break down on the way home and I would need to make an emergency call and of course I would not be able to, and I felt as though yesterday would be the day that would happen.  No, it did not happen, but that paranoia was with me.  It'll always be with me.

The other thing with the phone is that I assumed my boss texted me on it permitting me to come in to work today/Saturday.  There is a hell of a lot still left to do, and considering what usually happens when there's a backload of work (and considering that were allowed to work about to four hours yesterday), I would be allowed to come and work today.  However, I need to wait till he gives me the specific go-ahead.  I am surprised by this, but I still haven't gotten a text from him saying basically, "Yeah, if you want to come in and work today, come on in."  But I assumed that he had already done it by the time he left yesterday.  And that's why I told everybody before I left yesterday that I might be coming in to work today.  (And by the way, I didn't tell anybody that I left my cellphone at home.)  So I'm scared that my co-workers thought I would be coming in and changed my mind, when the whole truth is that I was willing and able to come in today, but didn't because I wasn't given explicit permission.

For all I know, my boss wouldn't mind if I come in today.  But I'm not going to get all dressed and come in, only to be told that I can't because I wasn't told I could.  So instead I'm blog posting this, and thinking about what other stuff I think is crazy happened yesterday/Friday.

Hello? Anyone There??

Oh my God, so much shit happened yesterday/Friday, and that's not including the American economy tanking because That Fucking Guy wanted it to tank.  Motherfucker.  And fuck all the MAGAts who voted for him, too.

Anyway, I worked late, but not as late as I could have.  I actually limited myself to 10 1/4 hours last/Friday night, but because indeed two days' worth of work came in in the morning, my boss sent in an e-mail in the afternoon that we could work, get this, up to four hours extra.  I probably won't get into it, at least not for now, but suffice it to say, I was torn.  But I decided to leave.

I told my folks that I was going to not eat dinner.  My original plan was to have Chipotle on the way back.  But dammit, I forgot my phone, so I wasn't able to use the app until I got home.  I figured I would just go in and leave because there was no reason to stick around if I was just going to go out to eat.  So I did.

I thought about letting them know I was home.  I saw the light from Mother's office.  I also heard the TV blaring from the master bedroom, which obviously was where Father was.  I was going to let them know I was here and I was leaving for a bit; I was going to lie and say that I needed to show my co-worker something back at work.  But then I realized that I didn't really sneak into the house.  A chime sound emits whenever the front door is opened.  I think I wasn't loud, but I wasn't quiet when I walked upstairs and then downstairs.  And yet neither parental unit got up and looked up at the front door when I came in.  It's possible that they didn't care that I came in, but I got the feeling that they didn't hear me come in, and that they were concentrating on working and watching TV instead.

That is weird as hell to me.  I kind of find that disheartening to not care that someone opened the door to their house.  But then I figured that if they didn't care to see that I came home, why would I need to let them know that I have?  That makes me it easier to just leave, which I wanted to do anyway.  So I left without letting them know I even came home, which was around 7:45 or so.  I ate Chipotle, was given a second bag of chips I don't think I ordered (another story I may or may not get around to), went to Hy-Vee because I needed to buy dip for these extra chips, then finally came home around 10.  They didn't greet me when I came back home for the night, either.

Do they care?  Do I care?  I don't know!

Too Much In Two Ways

Eating Mother's food is a double-edged sword.  Had egg rolls last night for dinner.  Damn, it's fantastic.  There might be one or two other things she makes that are better, but when I was devouring the egg rolls, it was the best damn thing she ever made.

However, I'm feeling the aftereffects of eating so much right now.  When I eat a lot of certain foods, I get thirsty as hell, and I am thirsty as hell, even as I type this.  I'm almost done with my Coke, but I'm not desperate enough to drink it all.  Had some lemonade that I'm almost finished with, too.  Drank all of the mocha I bought in the morning to bring into work, but let's face it, mochas aren't "quenching."  And while I need to drink more water, dammit, the water ain't cutting it.  I might need to buy a Big Gulp tomorrow if I'm still thirsty.

Oh yeah, there's also getting fat as hell.  That is one reason I kind of threw my parents a curveball late last night and told them I'm not eating dinner tonight.  If I do eat after work, I get to control what I eat, and I hope to Buddha I am smart enough to not buy something big.  Then again, I still might buy a huge bottle of pop.  And I might also feel as though I deserve to eat big if work is a bear today.  See, that's another reason I told my folks (well, just Mother, and I hope she told Father) that I'm not eating tonight.  The work that was supposed to come in from down South didn't.  There were hellacious storms (including nighttime tornadoes, yikes) that cancelled all flights from there.  I still stayed a half-hour over because there is just so much darn work in The Third Department -- and, as an addendum to my previous blog post, my boss gave me a quick rundown of all the changes that are to be made there yesterday, but I will hold off on talking about them until I implement these changes and see if they work -- but that indicates to me that there should have been a hell of a lot of work that came in yesterday, and that will (maybe?) come in today, along with the work that would normally come in today.  So we have two days' worth of work when I can obviously do only one.

See how the crap continues to roll down?  I'm fully expecting to be asked to come in to work tomorrow, and I'm debating whether to wake up early and do a normal day, come in for only a few hours so I can have lunch and dinner with my parents, or a hybrid of both.  (Heck, I'm still thinking I should take back not having dinner with my folks tonight because I might not have dinner with them tomorrow night.  We probably will be that backed up.)  And that affects something else I need to do: My taxes.  Yeah, I haven't even started on them yet.  I was going to this week, but I got both depressed over my team and tired because of, well, me, and so I was going to do them this weekend, but this damn storm has upended everything and given me the opportunity to take back the paid time off I took Tuesday and Wednesday.  Maybe I shouldn't take that opportunity; I really do need to look at my tax forms now.  But I won't make that choice until I absolutely have to, because that's, well, me.

There Might Be Changes At Work Today

I was fortunate to decide to take the past two days off in one way: I missed the worst of the spring snowstorm and not needing to drive when it was sleeting.  I was fortunate in another way: I could sleep in.  (I slept for three hours Tuesday evening and almost 2 1/2 hours last/Wednesday evening; maybe that's a coincidence.)  And there's a third way, I guess: There was a big meeting between my boss, my supervisor, and the two people who hold the same position as I at work yesterday.

But that last point is a double-edged sword.  That meeting, although I was allowed to miss it, was important: It had to do with new policies and protocols streamlining what we needed to do in The Third Department.  This is the one kicking all our asses.  Ever since our co-worker retired around the holidays, the workload was heaped most only one person on most days.  Even though I don't have concrete evidence, it also feels as though there has been a slight uptick in work since the New Year, which only added to the workload.  As a result, we have been working our asses off, staying past our regular eight-hour shift (when possible) in order to do all the work that needs to be done.  Stress, suffice it to say, has ratcheted up as well.

Thus, this meeting.  It's a follow-up to another meeting we had maybe three weeks ago requesting feedback on how we felt Things Were Going On.  I told my higher-ups then my piece: That it's hell, and some of the tasks suck the life out of me, but I understand the work needs to get done, and if they're willing to put up with overtime, I'll put up with ten-hour days.  Now, I obviously don't know what was revealed in yesterday's meeting, but I am sure my supe and boss have an edict from those above them to tamp down OT, so they most likely announced tasks that can be streamlined, tasks that can be given to someone else, and tasks that can be put off till the next day (although needing to deal with them the next day only causes us to stay late that day because the new stuff is still coming in, but that's a given).  Those new plans might be implemented as soon as today/Thursday, when I am coming in to do The Third Department all by myself.

Honestly, I'm torn.  I certainly would like to not be stressed out.  But dammit, I love the money I'm making!  And maybe more important than that, I like the fact I'm not getting any guff from my boss or supervisor for staying late and doing my job.  That's what I'm there for, right -- to do my job, right?

Well, we'll see what happens.  I might hate the changes.  I might love them.  There's a chance they won't work and we'll be back to where we have been all year.  And in the meantime, there is this implication of finding another person and hiring her for the same position as us three.  The issue with alleviating work in The Third Department so that everybody can get out of work "on time" can be easily solved by just hiring someone, and that might already be happening for all I know, so all of this speculation will become reality.  Who knows?

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

Wait, did I not blog post yesterday/Monday?  Shit, I swore I did.  I guess I was so depressed to see my alma mater lose that I just forgot ... even though I was on my laptop doing other things.  Goddamn, I really do think I have brain rot.  At least I didn't forget the WMNSS:

#0: Timberwolves (Last Week: -4).  These Woofie Dogs are the biggest cockteases in survey history.  They have been trying to escape Play-in purgatory for seemingly years now, but they've been always a half-Game behind.  The pieces brought back in the Karl-Anthony Towns trade is still integrating with mixed results -- one step forward, one step back.  They have incredible Wins where they're playing together as if playing a symphony, and then they suffer crushing Losses to teams they should be dog-walking around the park.

Well, they're still not out of the woods.  But they ran the table this Week, winning all three of their contests.  After they put away bloated Phoenix, they started slow at home vs. Detroit and then, midway through the Second Quarter, a fight broke out that reached the first couple rows of fans at one end of the floor.  Seven people were thrown out of the Game, including Naz Reid and Dante DiVincenzo and Wolves Assistant Coach Pablo Prigioni.  (The Head Coach of the Pistons, J. B. Bickerstaff, was also thrown out.  He used to be an Assistant Coach with the T-Wolves.  I remember once attending a happy hour conversation where he was the main speaker.  I asked him a question about LeBron James doing The Decision earlier that Week.)

Naturally, Reid and DiVincenzo were suspended one Game, and it was last/Tuesday night's Game in Denver, a team Minnesota is 4-0 against.  It feels natural to just chalk this up as a Loss, and the Wolves got behind early.  But goddamn, this is where the cock-teasing comes in, because what happened from then on was, quite possibly, not only The Best Regular Season NBA Game This Season but also The Best Regular Season Game In NBA History.  In a back-and-forth affair for much of the rest of the tilt, the Timberwolves were victorious, 140-139 in Double Overtime.  My God, just look at the final seconds of this crazy, ridiculous Game:

 

The Timberwolves have swept the season series from a very, very good Nuggets team.  In fact, they've won their past six matchups with them if you include last Year's historic Game 7 victory in the 2024 NBA Western Conference Semifinals series between them.  Nikola Jokic scored 61 Points, grabbed eleven Rebounds and dished out ten Assists.  It's the most anyone has scored while registering a Triple-Double -- and his team lost.  My fucking goodness.

So three Wins, a brawl, and a mammoth victory without two of your players -- and on the road, no less.  And they still technically are in seventh place in the West, but they have the same record as The Bastard Vancouver Grizzlies, and a few Days ago they fired their Head Coach.  Their visit to Denver began a five-Game roadtrip; this screening Week they travel to Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Milwaukee.  They can move up given the competition, but they have shown a propensity to play down to them, so maybe they won't climb out of the Play-In after all.  Plus, who knows if the Win over the Nuggets sapped them of all their energy?  I'll give them a 0 -- not Positive Numbers, but after what I saw last/Tuesday night, certainly not negative numbers, either.

#-1: United FC (Last Week: -2).  Well, my alma mater's Game was on, plus the Loons had blown leads in their two previous Matches that should have been victories but wound up as Draws, plus it was raining cats and dogs Saturday night, so I still think I made the right decision in not going to Midway to see MNUFC play Real Salt Lake.  And whaddaya know, Tani Oluwaseyi braces (scoring in both halves) to defeat RSL, 2-0.  Oluwaseyi might finally be the Striker that sticks with this organization.

At Yankee Stadium against NYCFC Sunday afternoon.  Maybe I'll attend a watch party. ...

#-2: Wild (Last Week: -3).  Doubled up Washington at the X, 4-2, on Thursday.  More important than that: They didn't allow Alex Ovechkin to score.  However, the Mild then dropped both ends of a home-and-home with The Bastard Colorado Rockies, albeit the road date Monday was via a Shootout.  So that loser point puts them, as of press time, six Points ahead of The Bastard Atlanta Flames for the final spot in the West.  This team had the second-best record in the league in December, and fuckin' St. Louis just passed them.  They can't blow this -- can they?

They stay in the New York metropolitan area to face the Rangers and the Islanders, then they host The Bastard North Stars.

#-3: Twins (NEW SEASON!!).  Ah, these fuckin' guys.  I follow the St. Louis Cardinals somewhat since I vacationed in St. Louis and fell in sorta-love with the city.  They're not good right now; in fact, there is some existential soul-searching over the future direction of this once-proud franchise.  And yet, as old and powerless as they are, they managed to sweep the Twinks at Busch Stadium III to start the season.  The Twinks then traveled to Comiskey and lost the first Game of their three-Game set versus the White Sox, 9-0.  Rocco Baldelli pulled most of his lineup after they went down big in the Third or Fourth (?) Inning.  This is the White Sox, by the way, the squad that set a modern-day Major League Baseball record for most Losses in a season.

Well, they finally registered their first Win of the season last/Tuesday night, 8-3.  But their home opener (after playing once more with the Pale Hose this/Wednesday afternoon) is tomorrow/Thursday afternoon against Houston.  If the Astros jump on them early, and I have no reason to believe they can't, I swear there will be chants of "Sell The Team!!!" that will be as loud as any you hear for Athletics or Bay Rays Games.  And the Twinks ownership will deserve it.

After the weekend they'll travel to Kansas City, a team that tried to improve their club by actually doling out money for players, for a trio starting on Monday.

#-4: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -1).  I swear this was supposed to be a Friday-Saturday-Sunday series.  There is no mention on the website that they moved up the series and made the last two contests a Friday Doubleheader, nor whether weather was a reason.  No matter, I guess; the Goofers got swept at Siebert Field by Iowa.  And the first two contests weren't, well, contests: 16-7 and 13-0.  Oof for them, but good for my alma mater when they play them here later this season.  They continue their homestand with a three-Game set versus Penn St., then a one-off with South Dakota St. Tuesday.

#-5: Gopher softball (Last Week: -5).  Holy fuck, man, local diamond sports are absolutely dreadful right now.  Like the baseball team, the U. softballers got swept at home over the weekend at the hands of Northwestern.  While the first two Games were your run-of-the-mill defeats (2-0 and 3-2), the getaway Game was an atrocity, 14-3 which was Mercy-Ruled after six Innings ... for the home team.  The Goofers have now lost seven in a row as they go to Purdue for three.  (Aside: The first two Games of the Wildcats series were on Friday, and the third Match was on Saturday.  I swear these Games were scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, like the baseball Games.  Did the U. just not tell anyone?  Am I being gaslighted?)

#-Infinity: Gopher men's hockey (Re-Entry!).  Yes, I have seen The Play.  I have seen it called as a Penalty, but really, the Goofer went down easy.  And I will trust Goofer fans who said that was a shittly-called Game back on Thursday.  I will even believe you if you say those bad calls and no-calls went against "our team" all night.

But beyond the fact that this club was faltering late and went from being The Third-Best Team In Top-Flight Men's College Hockey to a 2-Seed (to, well, eliminated by Massachusetts), you have to note in that in the last three NCAA Tournament Games they were bumped off, they had a two-Goal lead.  They've blown all three.  When Bob Motzko was hired from St. Cloud St., he had a reputation for a high-flying Offense but a weak Defense, and now he has a reputation of telling his players to play extremely conservative once they're up by two.  That has bit this program in the ass the last three postseasons.  That's a pattern, and something much more disconcerting than a poorly-officiated Loss.

And as usually happens, there have been a flood of players who have left for the NHL.  I think one tweet counted nine.  There were players who swore after that bullshit come-from-ahead defeat in the 2023 National Championship Game where they blew that two-Goal lead and lost to Minnesota-Duluth that they were coming back to win it all.  Well, fuck it, that still hasn't happened, so they're splittin' and gettin' their paper, and what's left is a bunch of green youngsters to try and pick up the pieces of yet another shattered dream.

Motzko hasn't proven he can win the big one, and now he has to start over.  Are we going to just run all this bullshit back, again?

Glad Last/Sunday Night Is Over

So after lunch and learning that I'm helping Father stick an EKG monitor on his bare chest, I hear Mother screaming at Father, over something.  I have never known what they've ever argued over, but I haven't heard Mother yell like that in a long, long time.

We eat a very early dinner (four hours after lunch, which is insane).  I was the one who attached this EKG on Father; Mother was in her office doing her own thing.  I go up to my bedroom and eventually take an early-evening nap before going out to exercise.  Mother bangs on my door to wake me up.  I'll expound on this hopefully in a different blog post, but never wake me up from sleep.  I hate that.

She gets me out to the dinner table.  She needs help booking their flight, although she actually said, "You promised to help me with my frequent flier miles," which is something I don't ever remember her saying.  It was obvious she was in the kind of mood she has often been in after yelling at Father -- wounded, feeling like a victim and lashing out because she felt entitled.  And this type of thing My Fucking Mother ropes me in to doing for her is the type of thing she usually ropes me in to do for her, which is something that has to do with not understanding English words and some elements of the task I believe she knows how to do, but doesn't want to do them because she wants to act helpless.  Besides all that, I feel like I've been dropped in unfamiliar territory, and so I'm figuring what the hell I need to do, but, and this is also typical of her, whenever I run into a roadblock or something I don't understand, she goes, "Well, what are we going to do?"  And I've gotten a little better at pointing to her, "Um, we are not doing anything.  You brought me into this because you don't want to do this.  I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do."  (She also has this tick where I say something to her and she goes, "I know."  She clearly isn't using that phrase when she's supposed to, but I still get triggered because I take her literally at her word, and I want to say to her, "No, you don't know!"  But that's another blog post.)

I can't book a flight online.  Mother asks me to call for her, fuckin' A.  The call wait time is 2 1/2 hours.  They invite me to text instead, so I tell My Mother I'm going to leave for the gym and just text the airline about this.  So as I'm putting on my shoes, my sister calls My Mother.  There is another matter my sister wants to talk to her about.  "Has Unforgivable Wetness talked to you about it yet?" my sis says.  "No," Mother replied, "He doesn't want to talk to me about it."  And I had to shout from the bottom, "That's not true!" and I went back up to the dining room to get my face on Mother's phone to tell my sister Mother's lying, and then to tell Mother that if she wants to talk about this other matter, she should talk to me, otherwise I'm assuming she's handling it herself.  Goddamn.  I've always thought I've gotten my self-pity from Father.  But I might be wrong.

Anyway, I got the gym but had to delay exercising because I was busy texting with the airline rep, or the bot, who knows?  There are no flights available.  So I come home, see Mother at the other side of the front door ... and she's all calm and stuff.  If she weren't calm, she wouldn't even look at me.  So maybe she's gotten over what she needed to get over.

At any rate, this was a Sunday that was a little too eventful.  Glad it's over.

Earlier this afternoon, my parents told me that Father has been given this portable EKG monitor to track his heart.  For many years my old man has been worried, possibly to the point of hypochondria, of his heart.  But it appears as though his doctor sent him this, and of course I have to help them figure out what to do and, looks like prepare.

Yes, this EKG monitor needs to be stuck over My Father's heart.  So, according to the instructions, the area on which the monitor needs to be stuck to has to be washed, shaved, exfoliated, and wiped down so the monitor can be affixed.  I'm guessing I'm doing all of that.  Great.  I'm repulsed seeing my old man shirtless, but I have to do all the crap, too?  Well, he's scared of his heart, so (shrug)

Too Much Time Off

Maybe the best perk I have at work is the number of paid days off I get.  I have so many per year that I calculated that I would have to spend a bit more than two days off per month in order to use and not lose all of those days.  I know this might sound weird, but that's a lot.  And add to it the edict that only one person from our group of 15 can (or is supposed to be) be out on a planned absence every day, and that brings on the added complication that there may already be a dwindling number of days I can't get off between now and the end of the year.

So at this point I not only have to take time off willy-nilly (instead of planning them for vacations), I need to just find dates to take off and lay claim them as soon as possible.  I am doing that Tuesday and Wednesday.  Why those two days?  Really, no reason besides the fact that 1) there are usually enough people scheduled on those two days to cover me and 2) they were free.  I will need to find, like, 16 more days like these to be all set.  In the meantime, I am trying to plan things to do Tuesday and Wednesday -- see a movie, eat out for lunch and exercise are things I've come up with so far.

My Boombox Is Breaking Down

OK, it's more like a radio.  A nice, neat, decent, modest radio that I think my family bought for me back in high school.  I schlepped it to college; once I graduated, I remember my family insisting they stuff that radio back in their luggage to bring it back to Minnesota.

It has been sitting right beside me, at my bedside table, ever since I came back home.  I don't use it often, but I use it sometimes, and I think in recent years I have used it more often -- late at night, when there's nothing on TV and I want something to listen to while I'm surfing the Internet, usually jazz, sometimes sports, sometimes The Current.  I use the CD player around Christmastime to listen to A Charlie Brown Christmas or whenever I get around to buying a CD.

I haven't used the tape player function.  Man, this radio is so old it has a tape player!  But that shows how well it still works after, what, just about three decades of use.  But unfortunately, it is showing signs of aging.  The radio part works fine.  But maybe a couple years ago (maybe a few), while I was listening to the radio, the compact disc cradle popped open all its own.  I pushed the button to retract it, and it did retract, but I could still hear the whirring sound, and the cradle popped back out.  I hit the button a second time, and this time it stuck, but on occasion it would pop back out, and it would take two and sometimes three tries before it would close.  Also around this time, the CD stopped working.  I would put in, say, my U2 CD and push play, but it wouldn't play.  Finally, on a couple occasions last week, hitting the button didn't work.  I had to physically shove the cradle back in, and even then it would pop back out a couple times before me shoving it in stuck.

The last time it got so bad that I've refrained from turning on the radio at all.  If I do, the CD cradle could pop out, and I would have to go through all that crap again.  Maybe it's not the worst thing in the world, since I just use the radio function now.  But that is a sign that it's breaking down, and I'm not sure how long I want to deal with it anymore.

The Trash Bag Gets Smaller For Father

Think I noticed this last year, or the year before, or maybe the year before that, I don't know.  For a trash can, we use a pail -- you know, one of those white pails that street drummers use to drum.  We put a plastic bag in that trash can, and the pail we have fits the plastic bag almost perfectly, so you can tell how big the pail is.

Anyway, I can go weeks by myself and not fill it up.  But when my parents are here and cooking, they are chucking a bag nightly.  But I noticed something in recent years when I threw something into the trash can and the thing I throw away lands with a light "bonk" and doesn't sink to the bottom of the bag like I thought it would.  When I peer into the trash can to investigate, I saw that I could see the bottom of the bag a lot closer to the top of the pail than I would expect.

I then lift the bag that's inside the pail.  And what's there is some plastic container -- think a bowl of instant ramen, or something tofu comes in (OK, these are shitty images that might not resonate with you, bear with me) at the bottom of the pail.  My parents have put this thing underneath the bag to push up the bag's bottom.  Why?  No damn clue.  Well, I have two theories, both stemming from My Father's old age: Either it's very hard for him to bend down and grab the whole bag, or the bag fully filled would be too heavy for him to lift.  But as old as he is, he still has the ability to move his joints, and the bag would weigh a maximum of five pounds.  Those are the only guesses as to why my folks would put an object inside the trash can, but they are pretty bad guesses.

So, I don't know why.  I just think that's weird.  And I hope that, if I ever get around to asking them, and the reason does have to do with my old man's old age, I won't break down and cry over how enfeebled he has become.

Have I Told You Guys Yet That I Fucking Hate The Morning Sun Angle?

Because I hate the fucking morning sun angle.  Goddamn Sun's shining in my eyes just as I hit 694 going east precisely when I have to get to work.  I think it's been this way for a month, and I'll be honest with you, I don't remember it being this dangerous driving this way for this long at this time of the year before.  I'm serious!  I swear that this time last year or in previous years, the Sun would be high enough that I won't have to worry that the glare is going to prevent me from seeing on the road.  But I've been dealing with this shit for a fucking month now, and I fucking hate it.

I shouldn't be this upset after getting seven hours of sleep, but I have to blog post about something quick, and this is what I've got.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -7).  In total, this screening Week was a very, very shitty one for local teams.  (At first blush this might not be a good time for the Twins to start their season, but looking at how awful most local teams were the past seven Days, it actually might be a great time.)  It was particularly execrable on campus ... except for the Gopher Nine, who were able to feast on low-major talent, knocking off St. Thomas on Wednesday, 8-2, then then taking two-of-three over the weekend versus High Point, all four Games of which at Das Bank 2.0.  Compared with the crappy performances the other Twin Cities clubs turned in, this looks downright dynastic.

They now leave the Vikings' stadium and go to their home, Siebert Field, for the first time this season as they have a three-Game series against Iowa.

#-2: United FC (Last Week: -6).  I am trying to maintain hope for Eric Ramsay, but honestly, after the past two Matches, I don't think the Loons are a good team at all.  One Week after blowing a three-Goal lead and ending up tied at Kansas City, they hosted The Los Angeles Galaxy -- who, like Sporting Kansas City, had accrued only one Point going into their contest with MNUFC -- and blew not one lead but two.  The Galaxy, defending MLS Cup Champions and the squad that eliminated United FC in last Year's playoffs, hardly look like they did last Year.  But they do have Christian Ramirez, who started and leveled the Match at 1 with a header from a very acute angle.  (Why in the fuck did Adrian Heath and Manny Lagos trade Christian Ramirez I don't fucking know, but he still would fit in as the perfect Striker for the Loons, and I mean it.)  Kelvin Yeboah slotted home his second of the tilt via Penalty Kick, but three Minutes later, in the 90th Minute, traffic in front of fill-in Goalkeeper Alec Smir allowed the Galaxy's Carlos Emiro Garces to kick a slow ball into the corner, and the Match ended 2-2.  I'm sorry, but if you can't put away awful teams, you cannot be a good one.  And now the Loons, sixth in the West but falling slowly, host Real Salt Lake Saturday.  And RSL has six Points, not one, so they are going to be a tougher opponent to draw with.

#-3: Wild (Last Week: -2).  The slow-motion collapse continues.  They started off the Week crushing both Seattle and Buffalo at home, but versus real good teams, they folded: 3-0 at The Team That Was Stolen From Us v.2.0. Monday, 5-1 at home to (Las) Vegas last/Tuesday night.  Meanwhile, St. Louis is now only two Points behind the Mild.  And only four Points behind the Blues is Calgary.  The Flames are in ninth place ... and that's where Minnesota might be if they can't haul this quivering, malfunctioning carcass of a team across the regular season finish line.

They finish their three-Game homestand against Alex Ovechkin and Washington and The Bastard Colorado Rockies, which is the start of a home-and-home; the two teams play in New Jersey Monday.

#-4: Timberwolves (Last Week: -1).  The more the season plays out showing how the Timberwolves aren't gelling, the more infuriating it gets.  They had a two-Game series versus The Bastard Charlotte Hornets at Target Center.  They walloped New Orleans by 41 on Friday -- but that was after they lost to this shitty team by four on Wednesday.  They then lost by 16 at Indiana Monday, and the doubts surrounding Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert, and even Anthony Edwards are popping up again, with only nine Games left in the season.  And they are technically eighth in the West, a place where the Woofie Dogs have stubbornly been nearly all Year.  Maybe these guys aren't that good.

This Week they host Phoenix and Detroit before traveling to face Denver.

#-5: Gopher softball (Last Week: -4).  Oof, I'm getting the feeling this program is going nowhere.  The club got swept in Lincoln by Nebraska, who managed to score eight Runs in all three of their victories.  They are now 2-5 in the Big Ten and have lost four in a row, and open up play at Cowles Stadium vs. Nebraska Northwestern over the weekend.

#-Infinity (tie): Gopher women's hockey (Last Week: -3) and Gopher wrestling (Last Week, respectively: -3 and -5).  Have I pointed out that the Gopher women's hockey and wrestling teams usually cease at the same time?  I may have not noticed much in recent Years, but this Year both teams ended with a conspicuous and extremely disappointing thud, albeit for their own distinct reasons.

For the U. women's hockey team, the way this season ended was more disastrous than others because they were hosting the Frozen Four.  It's great that the U. and Ridder Arena appear to be on a regular rotation for this great and burgeoning event.  (I just took a quick look at the history of the event; I think I've been to four of the past five Frozen Fours that took place at Ridder.  I'm kind of proud of myself.)  It would be even better if the U. won the NCAA championship.  But they haven't done that since 2016, and they haven't even been in the title Game since 2019.  In fact, the past three championship match-ups in top-flight women's college hockey have been Wisconsin vs. Ohio St.  That was assured when the Buckeyes doubled up Cornell and the Badgers ripped through the Goofers on Friday, 6-2.

So, like I said in my previous blog post, when I took my seat in Ridder Sunday for the title Game, I was in a row and a section and, frankly, a rink filled with Wisconsin fans.  There was one section and scattered small groups rooting for The Ohio State University.  Otherwise, it was LaBahn West.  And, like I said, the Badgers were rewarded with a thrilling, come-from-behind victory in Overtime.  Also, like I said, that the Goofers' home venue was filled with the two schools that have thoroughly lapped the U. in prestige and success should be a source of embarrassment for Minnesota Athletic Director Mark Coyle.  But there has been no talk (at least as far as I have heard) about replacing longtime Head Coach Brad Frost.  It looks like Coyle operates the athletic department laissez-faire; he will only make a change when there is significant pressure from the fanbase (and in particular the moneyed folk) to do so.  That might have happened when he relieved Ben Johnson of duties with the men's basketball team.  I would not disapprove of the same thing happening with Frost.  But it looks like it ain't happening.  So we will get another season of a team going through the motions with no possibility of breaking through.

As for the wrestlers, there is no reasonable path to thinking they're going to win a championship for a generation, or at least as long as Cael Sanderson is the Head Coach at Penn St.  Yes, those goddamn Nittany Lions won another overall title -- their fourth straight and twelfth in the last 15 NCAAs.  Turns out the Gophers finished in a tie for fifth, the best-ever finish under Brandon Eggum and the school's best since they finished second in 2014.  Sure, the U. only managed 51.5 Points when Penn St. got 177, but still.

That isn't the storyline coming out of the NCAAs, however and very, very unfortunately.  The only reason to follow this team is Gable Steveson, returning to lord over the heavyweight division once again.  He did it all season ... and then he fell in the final to the 2-seed, Oklahoma St.'s Wyatt Hendrickson.  Steveson was about to motor to his fifth overall title, but with two Seconds left, Hendrickson took him down and won, 5-4.  It was the first time Steveson ever lost as a collegian, and it apparently will be the last Match he will ever as a Gopher.  Many in the know call it The Greatest Upset In College Wrestling History.  (To make matters worse, Hendrickson shook the hand of That Fucking Guy, who was there getting his ego stroked.  Of course a Minnesotan has to lose to a fucking dumb MAGAt.)  Look, the fifth-place overall finish is nice, but the only thing we Gopher fans had to look forward to was Steveson being King Of The Mat again.  And it didn't happen.  And that is a very, very bitter pill to swallow.

Second Snow-Out Date: IDK

I forgot to note when the real/second snow-out occurred.  I thought it was late February, but then we had that snowstorm the first week in March, so I needed to note when all that snow melted away.  I couldn't note it, however, because I got busy with my parents and work and all the other stuff I had to do.  It might have happened last week, but I honestly don't know if that's, and I certainly can't pinpoint a particular day.

Then again, we might get some snow this weekend, in which case there would be a third snow-out date.  Maybe I'll remember to note when that will be.

Toast-Yays! I Salute You!

Fantastic Frozen Four Final (for the women) yesterday/Sunday afternoon at Ridder.  Ohio St. was up on Wisconsin, 3-2, when, with 18.9 Seconds left, play was whistled dead on a huge scramble in front of the Buckeyes' net.  The Badgers challenged the stoppage; they said an Ohio St. player covered up the puck while it was in the crease.  After review, the officials determined that was the case.  The remedy for that: A Penalty Shot, which Kirsten Simms, a Junior Forward from Plymouth, Mich., deked home for the tie:

Just more than two Minutes into Overtime, Simms put away a rebound for the OT Winner, and Wisconsin (and by the way, Ridder Arena was jam-packed with about 85% Badger fans; the atmosphere was excellent, but seeing Ridder become Madison West has to be fucking disconcerting for the U., and if Mark Coyle doesn't feel ashamed, he should) won its eighth title overall and fourth in the past six seasons.  Great Game -- and I paid only $13, the face value of the ticket, to watch it!

Anyway, as I was leaving, I saw, of all people, a Girl Scout and her mom selling cookies.  Don't know if I would've thought to do that, but what do I know?  Anyway, I am obsessed with the fact that the Toast-Yays! are going to be discontinued after the season.  I've had them before, and I liked them so, to, well, commemorate their "retirement," I had already bought a box.  And you know what?  They're even better than I thought!  The icing is great, but the cookie part is sensational as well.  There's something dusted on top of it, and that really makes each Toast-Yay! pop.

This is an underrated cookie.  If the Girl Scouts stop making Toast-Yays! because they're not selling, well, the people have no taste in good cookies.  So I bought another box, right outside of Ridder.  I'm just about done with the first one, so I'll probably quickly eat my way through the second.

RIP, Toast-Yay!  You have been done dirty.

Addendum To: I Played Myself

As paying ten more bucks than I needed to wasn't bad enough, I saw something at the X I didn't think I would see.  There was a merchandise stand there, selling several items related to the conference (the NCHC) and the event (the Frozen Faceoff), but not as many items as I would expect for an event of that size.  Two of the items, a shirt and a pint glass, commemorate the fact that this is the last time (or so they say) the conference will have its tournament in St. Paul (and for the first few year of the NCHC, it was at Target Center in Minneapolis)/neutral ice; starting next year and for the foreseeable future, the conference tournament will be played on campus sites.

The tag line for the event was "Last Call In St. Paul," and that slogan was on a shirt and a pint glass.  I saw the shirt (but not the pint glass) while I was walking the concourse inbetween the Semifinals on Friday and thought, "Hey, that's kind of cool."  And then I saw there were a few people at the stand, so I figured that I would continue to get my steps in, buy food (a pizza slice because it was the shortest line) and, once I got done with that, go back to the stand to purchase something.  Swear to God it was maybe 25 minutes at the most.  But once I went back to the merch table, the "Last Call In St. Paul" shirt was gone.  I never thought that, what, 5,000 people would buy enough shirts to sell out, but it sounds from the merch people that they didn't have much to sell.

What did catch my eye was a scarf.  It had the NCHC logo, the year of its birth ("Est. 2014"), and the 2025 Frozen Faceoff logo.  It makes no mention of the fact that this is the last neutral site Frozen Faceoff, but shit, this is as close to marking this "end of an era" as I'll get, especially if they don't make this scarf anymore, which, in hindsight, I doubt.  But I bought it, for $30.

I went back there last/Saturday night for the Frozen Faceoff Final.  (By the way, Western Michigan came back from a 3-0 Second Period deficit to win it in Double Overtime, 4-3.  Some kid from Prior Lake potted the Game-winner, his second of the night.  I didn't see it in person; I left early because I had to catch the last light rail, at a quarter after 11 [which got pushed back to 11:25 or so -- damn, Metro Transit has to be more accurate with that stuff], to get back to where I parked my car at Midway)  No new shirts or pint glasses.  But they still had scarves.  And now they were selling them for $25 apiece.  I looked at the sign with the price; someone printed out "25," cut it into a square, and taped it right in front of the "30."  I have no fucking clue why someone suddenly discounted the scarves by five bucks, but I feel cheated, and I feel so goddamn impotent because I want to complain to someone about it, but I don't want to come off as a whiner.  But why in the hell did they knock off five bucks on the scarf?!

So now, not only did I overpay for the ticket to that Game by $10-3, it looks as though I paid five bucks too much for that goddamn scarf.  So that's $15-8 I feel like I need to make up by not spending on something I would spend money on, like coffee and breakfast before work.  Man, that shit just pisses me off.

I Played Myself

I knew I shouldn't've checked prices this morning.  But I got spooked once I got home and saw that prices for the NCHC Frozen Four Final were not dropping as immediately as I thought they would, so I bought one before I went to bed.  It was ten bucks below face ... but if I had waited until the morning, it would have been $20.  And I realized I have overpaid because I was scared the prices were going to go up.

I can say that I bought the ticket before I went to bed because I thought I would be too busy to buy the ticket in the morning.  Well, I tortured myself all night thinking I might have screwed myself, so I was going to be up in the morning anyway, so that's no excuse.  This is not the mindset I need going into my volunteer event, but I this was I get -- both for panicking, and for going out of my way to see if I panicked.  Cram the self-hate down, UW. ...

Today Might Be My Busiest Day This Year, And Maybe In Many A Year

And I'm not even working.  Instead, I am going to this volunteer event I've set up, then I had to arrange this ad hoc Game-watching event right after the volunteer shift at a bar I've never been to, and then I have to leave that watch party early because I have to go to the United FC Match, and then after that I am supposed to go by light rail to the NCHC Frozen Faceoff Final at the X.  These events are supposed to be a lot of fun.  But as I look at it, I'll be doing a lot of running around, and I will be desperately hoping to take a nap, even though there is no good time to do that.

About the ice hockey Game: I say "supposed to go" because I just bit the bullet and bought a ticket through Stubhub.  It says I need to wait till I get an e-mail saying the ticket has been "released" to me.  I think that e-mail is sent right after the confirmation of purchase e-mail is, but I haven't gotten that second one yet.  I'm hoping that's because the seller is asleep and doesn't know I bought his/her ticket.  But I remember Stubhub kind of giving me the run-around when I needed to buy a second Rolling Stones ticket because the first one never showed up in my inbox.  This might be that nightmare all over again.  Come to think of it, I've had several instances where for some reason I was not satisfied with the ticket I bought.  That ain't good.

(This Is The Blog Post I Meant To Publish Yesterday/Thursday)

This has been the toughest bracket I've wrestled with for a long time, if not ever.  On the one hand, people in the know say that this field is replete with upsets.  On the other hand, people are pointing out the advanced metrics that say Auburn, Duke, Houston and Florida are historically good, so upsets taking them out are highly improbable.

With those contrasting possibilities dancing in my head at the same time, it took me a lot of hours thinking while I went to not one but two bars to think on Wednesday.  Finally, well, I split the difference between the teams I really wanted to pick and teams I think could win, but I'm lukewarm about.  I don't know how much of my thinking will matter because some weird upset will blow one part of the bracket to hell, like it annually does to mine.  But we climb aboard this rollercoaster and see where it takes us ... even though I always crash in the end.

Oh, Shit, Did I Miss A Day?

Goddammit, I missed a day!  I didn't blog post yesterday/Wednesday.  First time in years I've done that.

I have an excuse -- I think.  See, I didn't sleep at all before going to work Wednesday.  I managed to get a quick cat nap in around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday evening, but I only managed to do that because 1) I was scheduled out in My Main Department that day and 2) I had no plans in the evening, like working out (which I did Monday) or working on my bracket while drinking (which I did Wednesday).  So even though I had a power nap in my car Wednesday afternoon, and I felt good going to two bars to work on my bracket and then coming home to fill it up on every website I wanted to play on, I eventually crashed, and hard.  When I blog post and review what I wrote and I can't understand what the hell I wrote, that's when I know to pack it in.  So I published my blog post and went to bed around 12:15 a.m.

But I didn't.  I guess I didn't hit the "publish" button, because I just now saw that I what I intended to blog post for yesterday/Thursday (and honestly, I still don't understand the last sentence I wrote) was still in Draft Mode.  I swore I did; otherwise I would have checked before yesterday/Thursday turned into today/Friday.  But it looks as though I was so damn tired I didn't even know to publish my daily blog post.

I would be mad at myself for breaking my streak of daily blog posting if not for the fact that I know I have to listen to my body when it says to go sleep, and when I'm as tired as I was just about 25 1/4 hours ago, I will sacrifice everything to go unconscious.  And I can't change anything now, so (shrug).  I think my next blog post (which will be in the afternoon since I am taking today/Friday off) will be the blog post I wanted to publish for yesterday/Thursday.  Well, I'll fix that last stupid sentence, and then I will blog post it.  Just to make up for my miss.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Timberwolves (Last Week: -1).  It was kind of difficult for me to figure out who to place first.  Eventually it came down to the Timberwolves and the Wild (one team had a perfect screening Week, but I didn't consider them for the top spot; I'll explain for their entry).  Both teams individually have circumstances that kind of cancel each other out, but those circumstances appear to be mirror images of each other if you compare the two squads, if that makes any sense.

In the end, I went with who had the better Week, and that was, far and away, the Wolves, who managed to extend their winning streak to a season-best eight Games with victories at Denver and at home over Orlando and Utah.  Unfortunately, that streak ended Monday with a 132-130 Overtime Loss at home to Indiana on a desperation Three-Point make by Obi Toppin with 3.2 Seconds left.  Their previous defeat was on February 28, 117-116 in Salt Lake City (to a Bastard New Orleans Jazz club whom Minnesota blasted on Sunday, 128-102).  The Wolves have had a propensity of playing up to their level of competition, as witnessed by that extremely impressive 115-95 successful home invasion of the Nuggets Wednesday, and playing down to their level of competition as well.  I guess you can say that issue will solve itself if and when the T-Wolves reach the postseason proper because all that will be left then are good teams, huh?

The schedule from here on out is favorable to the Wolves.  The have the opportunity to make hay against teams just playing out the string, but unfortunately, they remain stuck in seventh in the West.  They have a two-Game home set tonight/Wednesday night and Friday versus The Bastard Charlotte Hornets, then travel to Indiana Monday in a relatively light Week.

#-2: Wild (Last Week: -3).  Meanwhile, the cash-strapped and injury-riddled Wild are wheezing down the playoff stretch.  In the heart of their seven-Game homestand, they lose to the Rangers in OT Thursday, got booed out of the X as they got their asses kicked by St. Louis 5-1 Saturday, then beat on Monday a Los Angeles outfit that cannot win on the road, 3-1.  Despite mediocre form as of late, they're still in playoff position ... albeit as Western Conference Wild Card 1, despite the margin between them and two teams coming for the Mild, the Blues and Vancouver, sliced down to six Points.  That seems comfortable, but it was obviously bigger even a Week ago.  Twins fans are quite familiar with seeing the home team collapse.  And there are still 16 contests left for the pro hockey team to do just that.

This screening Week they finish their homestand against Seattle and Buffalo.  They then go play at The Bastard North Stars on Monday, then fly back up here to host (Las) Vegas the next night, oy.

#-3: Gopher women's hockey (Last Week: -6).  So yeah, this is the team that had a perfect screening Week.  Sure, it was only one Game, but it was a tournament Game, and on Saturday at Ridder Arena, the fourth-seeded Gophers advanced to the Frozen Four, which will also be held at Ridder, by beating fifth-seeded Colgate, 3-2.  Unfortunately, they had to hold them off; they built a 3-0 lead after two Periods and somehow managed to hang on.

Meanwhile, the two true powers in the sport, Wisconsin and Ohio St., romped in their first Games in the tourney.  While the second-seeded Buckeyes draw third-seeded Cornell, the top-seeded Badgers await for another meeting 13 Days after the Goofs lost to Wisky on a last-Minute Goal for the B1G tournament title.  If they can score the upset Friday night -- and they won't; that's why I'm going to St. Paul to see the NCHC Frozen Faceoff Semifinals instead -- the NCAA championship Game (for which I do have a ticket) will be Sunday afternoon.  Home-ice advantage is the only thing Minnesota has going for them; will they be able to harness that for anything at all this weekend?

#-4: Gopher softball (Last Week: -5).  So the softballers started conference play in, of all places, Devon Park in Oklahoma City, Okla., splitting a pair of two-Game sets with both Michigan St. and Penn St.  The club will get to play in a city within the conference footprint this weekend as they are in Nebraska for three.

#-5: Gopher wrestling (Re-Entry!).  The Big Ten Wrestling Tournament was actually a Week ago; I just neglected to do a write-up about it.  The U. finished the conference championships fourth, behind Penn St. frisky Nebraska, and Iowa.  Still, that's the best finish for the Gopher grapplers in the B1G champs in The Brandon Eggum Era.  And yes, Gable Steveson won at Heavyweight, the fourth time he's done it.  Unfortunately, two other Gophs lost in the title Match: Vance VomBaur at 141 Pounds, and Max McEnelly at 184.  It was the first time he lost in college.  Shit.

NCAAs are in Philadelphia this weekend.  Steveson is the only thing to look forward to.

#-6: United FC (Last Week: -2).  Just because I wanted to get out of the house, I went to the Black Hart to see the Loons visit winless Sporting Kansas City.  I'm always wary to go out of my way to see a MNUFC watch party because I'm afraid they'll lose, but I was feeling really good when Tani Oluwaseyi's second Goal of the Match a Minute into the Second Half gave United FC a 3-0 lead.  I really didn't think they would relinquish it -- but goddammit, they did.  SKC scored three Goals over the course of a dozen Minutes (the middle of which was a Morris Duggan Own-Goal).  The Match ended in a 3-3 tie, but make no fucking mistake about it, this was a fucking Loss.  They could have put themselves in second place in the Western Conference, but they're fifth instead.  And they host The Los Angeles Galaxy, who have only one Draw to their name, Saturday afternoon; is another choke job in store for us fans, who might be able to witness it in person this time?

#-7: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -4).  Oh, God, did you hear what happened?  Last Wednesday afternoon at U. S. Bank Stadium, the Gopher baseball squad got the shit beat out of them, by Kansas, by a score of, get this, 29-1.  It was so bad that the Mercy Rule was invoked, and the Game was called after seven Innings.  In the top of the Third Inning, the Jayhawks hit Home Runs in not one, not two, not three, not four, but in five fucking consecutive At-Bats.  For the record, Caden Capomaccio tossed the first two Homers, Adam Urban the last three meatballs.  And this isn't a David vs. Goliath thing; the Golden Gophers beat Kansas the night before!

The Nine then went out to Eugene and lost two-of-three to Oregon.  They won the getaway Game, 9-1, which ended after eight Innings; the Game was delayed five Hours because of rain (First Pitch was at 5:20 local time) and was called off because the Gophers had a plane to catch.  But hey, did you see what happened last Wednesday afternoon?

They begin a twelve-Game homestand ... er, more like two homestands tonight/Wednesday night, when host St. Thomas at U. S. Bank Stadium.  They then finish up the Vikings stadium portion of their schedule over the weekend with a three-Game series versus High Point.

#-Infinity: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -8).  Welp, these Goofers were one-and-done at the B1G, losing last Wednesday to Northwestern in the First Round, 72-64.  And maybe this was inevitable, but after four Years in charge, Ben Johnson was relieved of his duties as Head Coach.  (Athletic Director Mark Coyle was part of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Selection Committee; he had to sneak away from the hotel the committee was staying in in Carmel, Ind., and fly back to Dinkytown where, after the team came back from Indianapolis overnight, he canned Johnson.  The U. posted the announced the firing on social media just after 1 a.m. early Thursday morning.  Man, this couldn't wait until the morning?)  Maybe I'm grading on a curve knowing that the University of Minnesota has not been as ambitious (or organized) when it comes to NIL, but I thought that there were enough surprising Wins in Johnson's resume to give him yet another season.  But maybe Coyle thought he was going to get yet another middling Year and cut the cord, which is understandable.  However, note that Coyle tried going the "One Of Us" route in filling the HC spots for both Gopher b-ball teams, and it became clear that both Lindsay Whalen and Johnson frequently looked like they were in over their heads.

Such as it is, the current favorite to be the new Head Coach is Niko Medved, current HC of Colorado St., who is in the NCAA Tournament.  Yes, he is One Of Us; he was born and raised in Minneapolis and went to the U.  Let's hope Medved is convinced that there is enough tangible financial backing to make it worth him to leave Fort Collins, Colo., to come back home.

The Songs Playing The Minute Of My Birthday

You know, I wonder if doing this every year allows someone to track my identity.  But I need to blog post something quick because I have to work on my bracket and I have to go to bed early because I need to wake up early.

• Cities 97: Hozier, "Too Sweet"
• KQ92: Led Zeppelin, "Stairway To Heaven"
• 104.1 Jack FM: Queen, "We Are The Champions"
• 101.3 KDWB: Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen, "I Had Some Help"

Addendum To: Next Weekend Will Be Hella Busy

Welp, my thinking that ABC will highlight my alma mater for one of their four weekend afternoon slots came true.  They're playing Saturday afternoon ... just as my volunteer shift is ending.  I wished it had been a couple hours earlier because then the whole Game would happen right as we are volunteering.  Instead, there is a possibility we could watch it.  We would just have to find a place really close to our volunteer site in order to catch tip-off.  And then, on top of all that, there's the Loons Match I really, really want to go to, and in order to get there before first kick, I probably need to leave late in the First Half.

Ugh, Christ.  I am asking the group for its opinion, and I'll most likely go with what the people say.  But things would be so much easier if I didn't have a choice, to be honest.

Actual Results Of Bracketology 2025

OK, so according to their seed list, here are the final teams selected and not selected:

• Team 64, also known as The Team That Would Be The Last Team In In A Just World: Utah St.
• Teams 65-8 (in order): Texas, Xavier, San Diego St., North Carolina
• Team 69, who should be known as The Last Team Out: West Virginia

I don't analyze how the aggregated bracket in The Bracket Matrix did with the real bracket, though maybe I should.  According to a tweet from Matt Schick of ESPN, only 27 of the 111 brackets that make up The Bracket Matrix has the Tar Heels in.  Indiana, which is Team 70/the penultimate team out, is in 80.  And the Mountaineers are in all 111.  Huh.

Bracketology 2025

I don't know why I feel less and less enthused about this with every passing Year.  I think fattening up the field to 68 (a horrible decision, and I don't care who doesn't want to know it) removed teams that would have been on "the bubble" and, frankly, didn't do enough during the regular season to warrant inclusion in the NCAA Tournament.  I also think are now so many bracketologists that a groupthink has set in and solidified.  I don't know how much variance is now left year after year because it feels as though all these self-appointed "experts" have, or at least think they have, understood the process of selecting teams and now all see that process the same way.

With that said, I need to publish The Bracket Matrix's aggregated tourney field now, even though I don't think it has synthesized VCU's Win over George Mason in the Atlantic-10 Championship Game that finished just now.  I know The Bracket Matrix will update after the Big Ten and American Athletic Conferences complete their tournaments, but I won't wait.

As of press time, these are the teams on the bubble, in order of inclusion:

• Actual Last Teams In: Utah St., Oklahoma, Arkansas, West Virginia
• Play-In Games: Vanderbilt, San Diego St., Indiana, Texas
• Actually, They Should Be Called The LAST Teams Out: Boise St., Xavier, North Carolina, Ohio St., Cal-Irvine

Next Weekend Will Be Hella Busy

I am so distracted with what is going to happen next weekend that I probably will forget something I should be doing this weekend.  Things are always crazy for me around this time for me, and it usually has to deal with sports, mainly events I want to see.  But my alma mater's women's basketball team will start NCAA Tournament play next weekend, and that pretty much upends everything I have in place next weekend.  I have to organize game-watching events for that team, I just have to.  But that pushes aside pretty much anything I want to do if there is a time conflict.  Is there a conflict?  That's the problem.  I won't know until game dates and game times are determined, and they won't be determined (by ESPN) until, probably, some time Monday.

That's bad enough, but even if my alma mater's women's basketball team weren't in The Big Dance, next weekend would be plenty busy.  To wit:

• Friday: I have designs on attending the National Collegiate Hockey Conference Frozen Faceoff -- basically the conference men's college hockey conference tournament -- both Days, with the Semifinals beginning late in the afternoon.  This is important to me because this will be the last NCHC Frozen Faceoff at The Xcel Energy Center ever, or at least for a while; starting next season, the conference is switching to campus sites only.  For nostalgia reasons, I want to be here ... but since it's the Semis only, I can skip it if my alma mater is playing in the late afternoon or evening.  It would help matters a lot if they played in the early afternoon; I checked tipoff times for the First Round of the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament last Year, and the first one started at 10:30 Central Time.  I doubt that I would get that break, however; my alma mater is out west, so I really doubt that they'll have my team play at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time.  (Moreover, even though I asked for this day off, my boss scheduled me to work all day on this day.  I think it's a mistake, seeing that he authorized the day off about six weeks ago.  However, it is a type of special day where everyone who can work is supposed to work.  There is a non-zero chance that my request not to work on this day is taken back for this reason.  I'll know when I come into work and check my e-mail ... some time today, since my boss has authorized overtime for a Sunday, which is quite uncommon.)
• Saturday: The most important day.  There is a big volunteer event at noon that I am spearheading, and I cannot move it and I sure as heck can't cancel it.  If there is any one event that supersedes watching the Game, it's this one.  Beyond this volunteering event, which will end around 2, MNUFC plays at 3:30.  I want to go to the Match, partly because I (duh) have a season ticket for it, but also because it neatly fits into my day, even with the huge driving distance, and my OCD likes the order this brings into my schedule.  Saying that, I have skipped at least a couple Matches every season, so if the Game happens after I volunteer, that's fine.  Beyond that is the NCHC Frozen Faceoff Final in St. Paul at 7:30.  It would suck that the Game could be scheduled then.  But since it's a time when people watch sports on TV, I can also totally see the Game scheduled exactly then, so that would bum me out.  The only, and I mean only, thing I would consider about not holding a game-watching event is the fact that it's the First Round.  My alma mater is going to have a #1 Seed, so they almost certainly will beat the crap out of the poor #16 Seed it draws.  Seeing that it'll be a curb-stomping, do I really, really need to hold an event at our place in downtown Minneapolis?  Probably I do, but maybe I'll be selfish and say no, I want to go to the hockey Game in St. Paul instead.
• Sunday: There is probably the second-biggest thing going on that day: The Women's Frozen Four Final.  The NCAA women's college hockey national Semifinals and Final are being held in town at Ridder Arena.  (The Semifinals are on Friday; they're happening around the same time as the NCHC Frozen Faceoff Semis, and so I decided that if I had the time, I would go to the X instead of to Ridder.  The Women's Frozen Four will probably come back here in 5-7 Years' time, whereas this is the last time the NCHC will be at St. Paul, or at least that's what they say.)  I already bought a ticket to the championship Game.  Monetarily it's not a loss; as an aside, paying only about $15 for a top-flight collegiate title Game in any sport is a pretty good deal.  But it's at 3, a really bad time if, including getting to and fro, my alma mater's Game begins any time from the mid-afternoon to the early evening.  Another wrinkle to all this: Sunday and Monday are the Days for the tourney's Second Round Games.  If my alma mater plays on Friday, I won't know when they play on Sunday until after the last women's tournament Game Friday night finishes.

My team is not only one of the best teams that'll be in the field but also one of the glamour teams.  Most of the Games will be on ESPN, but ABC, the over-the-air network that will get a bigger audience, will probably showcase a pair of Games Saturday and Sunday afternoon.  I don't know for certain, but chances are my alma mater will play then.  And if I am thinking along those lines, I really am hoping my team plays Saturday at around high noon so I have an excuse not to have a Game-watching event.  I then can go about my day of volunteering, then going to the Loons Match, then going to the NCHC Frozen Faceoff Final.  Then the Second Round Game is on Monday night, when I have no conflicts.

So you see my predicament?  The verdict comes in about, oh, 36 hours from now.

It might be so late as to be irrelevant to note now that my parents are home, but I finished all of the food they left for me, the last being an apple turnover I ate at work, about 2 1/2 weeks before they got home.  It would have been slightly humiliating to still have food when they came home, so I dodged a bullet there.

Ate Too Much (Again)

Ever eat so much that you feel like throwing up?  That even smelling more food made you nauseous?  That is how I felt after eating at this steakhouse/supper club after work last/Friday night.  They are very generous with their birthday coupon -- $25 off!!!  So I had to use it for their most expensive sirloin ... and the hashbrowns, bread, and watermelon in a cup (?) that went along with the dinner.  Thank God I had an Old Fashioned, a Coke and a water to wash it down or else it wouldn't have been good.

But for all the times I complain and hate myself for eating a gigantic meal, believe me, what I did last night was insane (well, that or I am getting old).  I didn't think I was going to be able to walk out of there.  I felt like the guy who died via "gluttony" in Seven, only this was self-inflicted.  I had to walk around Hy-Vee to feel like I got any sort of exercise to work out the food, even though I had a lot of meat sweats that set in after I got done eating (although I then realized I needed to buy travel-sized Kleenex).  And then I fell asleep, which helped my body deal with it all.

As I write this I'm still full, but not as stomach-bursting like several hours ago.  And yet I brought home the second helping of bread that I was so generously given.  I think I can keep these until lunch today.

Still happy my folks are home.  But I just remembered that one of the big drawbacks to them being home is that I have to be very, very careful and very, very quiet when I decide to masturbate, like I just did now.  I want to think they're asleep by now.  But I get my weird sleep times from my parents, so for all I know, they're both tossing and turning in bed, and all of a sudden they'll hear this fapping from upstairs, and I'm busted.

There are other, less weird things I'm worried I'll get busted over.  I might blog post about those soon.

Tonight, I Am Glad My Parents Are Home

So I just picked up my parents last night.  So far they haven't commented on all the new scouring pads and steel wool I will say I bought for them but didn't.

My car has been driving a little funny.  And then, on our way back from the airport, the low tire pressure light from my car came on.  Goddammit!  Shit like this always happens when I'm driving to do something important!  I was freaking out; the light went on as I was driving north on 35WN.  But my parents told me we could take the car all the way home.  I didn't think it was a good idea, but frankly, I reverted to child mode, and I trusted that I was going to be OK.  And, now that I think about it here, I was going to be OK.  Because I was with them when this bad thing happened.  It beats being alone when your tire pops in the middle of the highway.

So while I was panicking as all get-out, I drove my car, rarely going above 60 mph, all the way to the nearest gas station closest to home.  We parked at the air pump in case the tires were still good enough to get us all the way home with pumped-in air.  And Father said that, if worse comes to worst, I can take the minivan to work while they, who are retired, get the tire fixed.  But the darndest thing, all the tires looked upon initial inspection to be just fine.  And I broke out my tire pressure gauge to see if any of the tires was extremely low.  None of them were.  In fact, all of them were well above the recommended pressure.  I actually need to let air out.

I need to wake up early and look at the tires one more time in the morning, just in case the tires were lying to me.  But if they're good, the tire pressure warning light lit up in error ... which it has done on occasion, though not any time recently.  A sigh of relief if it is only a bad sensor instead of a flat tire.  And a gigantic smile for me that I didn't have to go through that episode alone.  I had my parents with me, and I am grateful, at least on this one night.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Timberwolves (Last Week: -6).  This team has now won five in a row after running the table this Week with victories over Charlotte, Miami (although that one was really close, 106-104), and San Antonio.  Goddamn that they still are in the Play-In scrum, a half-Game behind The Bastard Philadelphia Warriors for sixth.  But I want to say that there have been many Days where more than one local team has played, and this may be the second or third time in 2025 that the Timberwolves were the only ones that won their Game that Day.  The Wolves have been the only reason there haven't been more #MinnesotaIsLoservilleUSA tags this calendar Year.  And I and Twin Cities sports fans are grateful.

They travel to take on Denver tonight/Wednesday night, then start a five-Game homestand playing Orlando, The Bastard New Orleans Jazz, and Indiana.

#-2: United FC (Last Week: -1).  The Loons, having a hot start?  There are only two Sides that are a perfect 3-0 (-0), Philadelphia and Vancouver.  And MNUFC isn't too far behind the Union and the Whitecaps as they went to San Jose (and legendary Head Coach Bruce Arena) and beat the Earthquakes, 1-0, on a sidefoot Goal by Striker Kelvin Yeboah.  I don't know if you can chart a team's fortunes based only on three Games, but at two Wins and one Loss, a lot of people are being impressed by United FC right now.  Hope it lasts into their Match at Sporting Kansas City Saturday night.

#-3: Wild (Last Week: -5).  Dropped consecutive 3-1 results in Vancouver and at home to Pittsburgh, then defeated The Bastard Quebec Nordiques in a Shootout last/Tuesday night at the X.  But Colorado had slid past them in the standings and they still are.  The Mild, once the best team in the NHL, now has a Wild Card spot only.  Now, they are eight Points ahead of Calgary, who has the other one.  But this team is still missing Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek, and they spend the NHL Trade Deadline trading for two Forwards, Justin Brazeau and Gustav Nyquist (who played for Minnesota before), that might make the whole team slower.  That might help come playoff time, where the rules against interference and close play are loosened up, but it doesn't help in the regular season, where skill is rewarded and penalties are called quite easily.  It's like politics: You want to appeal to your extreme base in the primary, but once you win your party's nomination, you want to tack back to the middle to pick up independent voters.  But there are more disgruntled Wild fans that don't think General Manager Bill Guerin can be so deft.

With the Boys' State High School Hockey Tournaments now done, they have begun a seven-Game homestand, which continues this screening Week with Games against the Rangers, St. Louis and Los Angeles.

#-4: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -2).  Dropped two-of-three in their conference-opening series against Purdue at U. S. Bank Stadium over the weekend, then started a two-Game mid-week set with a 10-6 Win at Ooooos-Banhk over Kansas.  Golly, a BcS school coming up here to play the Golden Gophers in baseball -- I would love to go see opponents like the Jayhawks in Tuesday's matchup.  Anyway, they finish up with Kansas this/Wednesday afternoon, then travel to Oregon to play a weekend trio against the Ducks.

#-5: Gopher softball (Last Week: -3).  In the LSU Round Robin over the weekend, they balanced out a pair of one-Run victories over South Alabama with a pair of ass-kickings at the hands of LSU that were so bad, they got mercy ruled at five Innings in both Games.  And they traveled to Beaumont, Tex., and got shut out by McNeese St., 2-0.  Oof.

OK, so this is weird.  The Gophers begin conference play this weekend.  But they are doing so by playing four Games but two B1G foes -- two against Michigan St., then two against Penn St.  Moreover, they will be playing these league Games at a neutral site nowhere near the Big Ten footprint: Devon Park in Oklahoma City, Okla.  

#-6: Gopher women's hockey (Last Week: -8).  This has been a really crappy past Week in Dinkytown.  Considering that of the four winter sports winding to its conclusion the Gopher women's hockey club fared the best is a reflection of how horrendous the performances were from the big school.

Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on this team.  In their WCHA Final Faceoff Semifinal Friday afternoon in Duluth, the third-seeded Gophs took it to second-seeded Ohio St., tripling them, 6-2.  Then again, if you're cynical enough to believe that the Buckeyes didn't try because they sewed up the playoff position and situation they wanted to sew up, you might not be cynical enough.  Minnesota still had something to play for, however, in the title Game vs. 1-Seed Wisconsin, and they played like it: They tied the Game at 1 (Allie Franco scored 20 Seconds after the Badgers' Casey O'Brien kicked off the scoring), went ahead with three Minutes to go in the First Period on a Goal by Josefin Bouveng, and then tied it up again at 3 late in the Second Period on a Power Play Goal by Natalie Mlynkova.  Unfortunately, with 25 Seconds left in the Third Period, a perfect centering pass was fired in by Wisconsin's Sarah Wozniewicz, and the Badgers denied the Gophers a conference tournament championship they haven't won in a long time.

Now, would winning Saturday afternoon moved the Gophers up past the #4 Seed for the NCAAs?  Possibly.  But Cornell has that, and so, despite getting to play Saturday afternoon's Quarterfinal at Ridder, they play 5-Seed Colgate.  I have a bad feeling about this.  And by the way, once again The NCAA Women's Hockey Tournament has 11 teams.  Eleven!  Why?  How did they come up with the crooked number of 11?  And as I'm on this topic, why in the hell does every basketball conference tournament this season only 15 teams big?  What an odd number to settle on, 15.  That means there are only three tilts in The First Round of a 15-squad tourney.  But that means that there are four First Round and four Quarterfinal contests the two following Days.  Those quadrupleheaders are all played on the same Day.  So why isn't the First Round four Games big?  Why in the hell aren't the conference tournament fields 16 teams big?

#-7: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -7).  What happened last weekend was fucking shocking and humiliating.  In the B1G Quarterfinal series they were hosting at Mariucci, these Goofers lost a three-Game series to Notre Dame and have been eliminated from the conference tourney.  Friday's 3-2 defeat should have been a wake-up call, and they responded the next night with a 4-2 Win.  And yet the message didn't stick because the Fighting Irish -- the last-place Fighting Irish -- blasted the Goofers Sunday, 4-1.  How the fuck??

That upset pushes the U. down the PairWise (Pairwise?) down from third to fourth, being passed up by Maine.  Thank goodness that, at least according to College Hockey News' Pairwise Probability Matrix, it is unlikely that the Goofs will split to fifth and thus lose one of the four 1-Seeds for the NCAA Tournament.  But that possibility was highly unlikely before getting ganked by Notre Dame.  Meanwhile, CHN's Adam Wodon still believes one of Minnesota, Michigan St. and Boston College is coming away with the title.  His belief in the local team has not wavered; for I and I think for many who witnessed that atrocity over the weekend, that faith has been heavily shaken.

The Selection Show is on the 23rd.  The team will have a hell of a long time to reflect on what they allowed to happen.

#-8: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -4).  Finished the regular season with two more Losses, home to Wisconsin last Wednesday night and at Rutgers in Overtime Sunday.  (Aside: Rutgers has two players, Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, both of whom many prognosticators believe will be top 5 picks in the NBA Draft in the summer.  A few are saying that those two will go #2 and #3, with Duke's Cooper Flagg being picked first.  You don't need The Fab Five to win a championship in top-flight college basketball; two potential pro superstars may be more than enough.  That the Scarlet Knights will not get into The Big Dance without winning the conference tournament is one of the most head-scratchingest puzzles in college sports in a long, long time.)  Dawson Garcia is the only bright spot with this squad; the loyal returnee was named B1G Second Team by both The Media and coaches.

So a season that had many signs of encouragement -- again (all those Quad 1 Wins, all going to waste) -- will end up with yet another First Round appearance in the B1G tourney.  At least this one isn't going to be in front of a home crowd; the tournament is being played in Indianapolis.  And like their female counterparts, they will be in the kickoff Game, versus Northwestern, this/Wednesday afternoon.  Will they go meekly like their counterparts, the ...

#-Infinity: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -9).  The collapse of the U. Goofers women's b-ball team in its second Year under Dawn Plitzuweit is now complete after going out like bitches in the First Round of the B1G Women's Basketball Tournament last Wednesday, a completely uncompetitive 79-65 Loss to a below-mediocre Washington squad to whom they lost by ten, at home, the Wednesday prior.  They lost eight of their last ten Games.  And what was to be a breakthrough season under a Head Coach known to turn around programs -- Charlie Creme once had the U. pegged as a 10-Seed -- likely ends with another fucking appearance in the WNIT.

The arc of the season is concerning.  That this club, and this program, hasn't improved under Plitzuweit, should be even more concerning.  You cannot say Minnesota doesn't have talent -- or can you?  Everything should be on the table.  It is downright miraculous that there wasn't an exodus the two previous off-seasons, but that can't happen three off-seasons in a row, can it?  I guess the more important question is, Shouldn't it?  I don't know how the state of the program is viewed at the office of Athletic Director Mark Coyle, but there appears to be less panic than there should be.  This wasn't a good season, y'all, especially how it ended, and there needs to be changes, full stop.

The Price(s) Of Going To A Concert

As I may have mentioned earlier or in the past on WAF, I have wanted to see Helmet for some time.  I am familiar with only one song, but it's the song -- "Unsung," featuring the most kick-ass long outro this side of "Layla."  It probably is one of my 15-most favorite songs of all-time, and it could be top ten.

And because of that, and despite me not really being a Helmet fan just because I know the one song everybody else does, I decided to pay money to go to a concert to see the band just for that song.  It may not be efficient, but if I love the song enough, I have decided it's worth spending the money to buy an overpriced beer, stand behind people blocking the view of the stage, and wading through song after unknown song just to hear the one that you've been rocking out to since your twenties.  I didn't buy a ticket to the Dakota when Cowboy Junkies were in town.  "Sweet Jane" may be, IMHO, The Second-Best Cover Of All-Time, but the ticket was just too expensive when I might know only one other song that I have heard of from them.

But Helmet?  The ticket price was more manageable -- at least I thought.  I was going to go, but I really did not want to pay full-price for it.  So, once I remembered that the Helmet concert was last/Monday night at the Varsity -- I've been busy with work -- I waited and checked (when I could, or when I remembered) on scalper sites SeatGeek and Stubhub.  For some reason Stubhub was more expensive than face value and some tickets on SeatGeek were below.  But I also checked the firsthand website selling tickets to the concert and there were still tickets available.  I figured that so long as it's not sold out, people selling secondhand have to offer them for cheaper than full price, and that is where I really want to strike.

I was going to set a drop-dead date for Sunday.  If I didn't find a below-face ticket by then, I will just go to the firsthand website and buy there.  But then I got busy thinking about packing up the house for when my parents come home.  I decided that if I was going to spend any money on Sunday, it would be cash only.  So when decided that Sunday was a no-credit card day, I totally forgot about Helmet.  And so by the time I paid for Chipotle that afternoon and a carrot cake and tea at Caffetto that night, I had committed myself to only purchasing through paper currency, and that meant not using my credit card to buy a ticket to the show online once I remembered the concert.

But, dammit, I couldn't help myself.  If I waited until the next day, one where I would permit myself to go back to using credit cards, the place might be sold out.  So just before I went to bed, I checked Ticketmaster to see if the price of the ticket I saw when I was checking the same site a few hours before at Caffetto.  But the damn page just stalled out, and it gave me an error code.  Oh, shit.  Did they just sell out the show?  Or are they pulling all unsold tickets?

Well, as peeved as I was at myself with hesitating and losing, I decided then that if the ticket was above the price I last saw it as, which was a bit more than $41, I will skip seeing the band.  I tried again the next morning.  This time there were tickets available, but it was for $48.  And I saw the phrase "Day of Show" -- ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, so that's (probably) why I got that error code when I checked for tickets overnight.  They just needed to adjust its price higher.

And yet that made me dig my heels in more over not paying more for a ticket than I saw it as.  Never mind that I kind of screwed up.  Maybe people were still selling tickets they can't use.  So I waited through yesterday/Monday at work ... well, it was easy to wait because I got so wrapped up in all the crap that came at me at work that I totally forgot.  And when I got home, determined I was going to go to the concert, I was equally determined to eat Jimmy John's first.  So I got Jimmy John's, went home, ate, relieved myself, then got back in the car ... all the while forgetting to check SeatGeek or Stubhub.

I remembered I hadn't done so while I was driving.  Shit.  I had to go to a gas station and park while I got out my phone and looked at the scalper sites.  I saw one on SeatGeek going for $21.  Ah, so thinking there would be a dirt cheap last-minute ticket from someone whose friend cancelled did work after all!  And I tried to buy it, but as I progressed through the pages, I kept getting an error message, so when I went back, the ticket was gone.  Goddammit.  I might have had time to buy the ticket if I looked through SeatGeek while eating my sandwich, but I didn't, fuck me.

But I was still on the road, and I wanted to end a bad day at work with Helmet, dammit.  My only thought, then, was to go there and see if there were tickets still available.  Thank goodness the Varsity is not one of those places that has a fake box office, where the person behind the window tells you go to the app instead (that was the case, or at least I think, at the soccer park for St. Louis City).  Indeed, Helmet tickets were available -- and for $37.50.  That $48 I saw that morning included a convenience fee of $13.  So, all in all, buying the ticket the old-fashioned way was cheaper than buying online, at least in this case.  And I still remember the hell of not getting that Frozen Four ticket last year, so maybe I wouldn't've gotten that $21 ticket after all.

And you know what?  I liked the Helmet concert, even the other songs I've never heard.

Have I ever posted a video of "Unsung?"  Well, even if I have, here it is, the second version of the video with the remastered, "known" version of the song remastered once they signed a major-label deal: