The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

(As per convention, upon a new year, The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey will be published [excepting vacations and times I'll just forget, God forbid] on a different day than the previous year. That's because I decided to make sure that the first WMNSS would encompass the first seven days of the year, and I would repeat that the rest of the year. Therefore, in 2012 the survey comes out on Sundays, at some point in that day. Of course, since it was on Saturdays last year, this first survey of the year will include games played from Saturday, December 31 to Saturday, January 7.):

#-1: Gopher women's basketball (Last Week: -5). From the outhouse to the penthouse, sisters. I don't know what a 41-point home destruction of Indiana and an eight-point victory at Northwestern mean -- I haven't looked up the records of the Hoosiers or Wildcats -- but my most sarcastic insults that the Goofs will be the worst team in the B1G will not be realized.

Will this team be run by Point Guard Rachel Banham? She had her first double-double ever with a career-high 21 points with 11 rebounds. Marvelously, she was a perfect 5-for-5 from three-point range.

Four games into the conference season and already they're finishing up a series with an opponent? The team they lost to earlier this year, Purdue, comes by Williams Thursday. I miss the days when there were few enough teams to actually pull off a round-robin. That way you could split the conference season into two halves, then schedule the teams in the same order for both halves (just switch who gets to be the home team). It's much more fair that way a) you and your opponent get to play in front of their home crowd and b) you won't face them too early or too late in a season, giving you a better representation of how both teams fared against each other without worrying about whether the team is as good as their record says they are because you faced that team when it peaked too soon or before they rounded into form. You know what I'm saying?

#-2: Gopher women's hockey (Re-Entry!). In a battle between the two top teams in women's top-flight college hockey, the #2 Goofs finished with a split against top-ranked Wisconsin, although the loss was in a shootout, where it officially goes down as a tie and the U. was awarded a point.

Unfortunately, I went to Friday's 4-3 overtime loss instead of yesterday (Saturday) afternoon's 1-0 win. However, the team did show heart in coming back to tie the game three times (the Badgers scored first, then we tied, then they scored, then we scored, then they and finally us). One thing I noticed: Two of the three Wisconsin goals were off of rebounds, while all three Minnesota goals came from screens. Alas, the Badgers won the shootout 1-0 on final skater Hilary Knight's rising wrister. Noora Raty, who I was once really high on, is primarily accountable for three of the four pucks that got past her.

The icers got revenge the next game. Senior Defenseman Kelly Seeler's goal 6:31 into the game stood up. Alex Rigsby stopped the other 41 shots (the U. took 14 shots in each of the three periods; on Friday Wisconsin started off the game outshooting the Gophers 11-0 and finished the first period leading 15-4 on shots on goal before the U. furiously tied up that statistic in the middle of the second period), but Raty stopped all 32 Badgers shots, the first time they've been bageled in 23 months.

Do they now switch places in the polls? If they do, it might be a short stay if they're not careful; they're at Minnesota-Duluth next weekend.

#-3: Timberwolves (Last Week: -3). Weird; they beat the teams I thought they'd lose to, and then they lost to the teams I thought they'd beat. Such is the topsy-turvy world of the NBA, especially in this lockout-shortened season.

They began the screening week by crushing defending champion Dallas by 17 and then outlasting old San Antonio by 10. However, they then lost a close 90-86 game to Memphis and then, I think inexplicably, got outworked by Cleveland, 98-87, in a game where the first overall pick in this year's draft, Kyrie Irving, outplayed the second overall pick in the draft, Derrick Williams. At least they broke that franchise-record losing streak at 18.

This week they play five(!) games, including their first back-to-back-to-back this year, Sunday through Tuesday at Washington, at Toronto, and home to Chicago. They then get two days off before doing a back-to-back at New Orleans Friday and at Atlanta Saturday.

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The final four teams on this list went a combined 0-8 the last eight days. An average of one loss a day from this sorry quartet. Jus' sayin':

#-4: Gopher men's hockey (Last Week: -1). Not good. The supposedly third-best team in the land have now lost three of their last five games after an inexplicable 3-2 loss in the Mariucci Classic championship game to Northeastern(!) New Year's Eve, then a 4-3 defeat to fifth-ranked Notre Dame last (Saturday) night to Notre Dame in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Game.

I had the misfortune to be surprise my parents and say I'm not having dinner at home and instead go to this loss, just like I did Friday in seeing the Gopher women's hockey team lose. Just like the women, it looked like they weren't able to pass at all, and when they were able to, the puck would flutter up the blade. That's why they were never seemed to be able to control the puck, and thus the game, which hinged on two events: The Goofs' failing to cash in on a five-minute power play on the Fighting Irish's Nick Larson's checking from behind penalty early in the game, and Riley Sheahan's shorthanded tally late in the second period that made it 3-1 and, for all intents and purposes, a sure victory. Two goals 31 seconds apart late in the game disguised the fact that this game was not that close.

Back to the WCHA grind, but the same formidable competition: at North Dakota (now without the Fighting Sioux!) for a two-game series next weekend.

#-5: Wild (Last Week: -2). My goodness, this team is as bad as the North Stars were. An 0-3 week means they have now lost 11 of their last 12 games. And they were outscored 10-3. For all their trades for offensive punch this offseason, scoring is again their handicap: There is no Mild player in the top 30 in either goals or points (although Mikko Koivu, Buddha bless him, is tied for 20th in assists).

Three games this week: home to San Jose Tuesday, then at Chicago Thursday and at St. Louis Saturday.

#-6: Gopher men's basketball (Last Week: -4). Ladies and gentlemen, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Tubby Smith Era. Now that they've entered conference play, and now that they can't schedule which teams they play against, and now that they can't dictate that they play their games at the Barn, they have been exposed as incapable after losing close games at Michigan New Year's Day and home to Iowa Wednesday. They've lost their Big Ten games by a combined 16 points (with a double overtime game thrown in), but they're dead last in the conference at 0-3, with lingering questions over perimeter shooting and defending.

Yes, their best player, Trevor Mbakwe, cannot come back to this team ever again because of his injury. But hearing a promo with a snippet from KFAN's Paul Allen on his show is the perfect rebuttal to that excuse. He says that with a coach with as much stature as Smith, one who has a national championship under his belt, he should be able to find enough depth that an injury to a player, even to the best one on the team, should not result in the complete meltdown of that team. But for the second year in a row, it looks like it's happening. And that, sadly, goes back on the head coach.

They need to pull something out of their asses to save their tournament hopes. Unfortunately for them this week, they've got badass opponents to defeat. They host Purdue this (Sunday) evening, then go to Indiana, which is no longer a doormat after beating the first- and second-ranked teams in the country, Thursday.

#-Infinity: Vikings (Re-Entry!). Allen had good inside on the U. male ballers. But he had this bizarre prediction about the Vikings, the team he's the radio play-by-play guy for, just before the regular season began (and I'm paraphrasing here): "They'll go 9-7, 8-8, and they'll compete for a playoff spot."

My fucking God, what was he thinking? Before the season began I predicted these guys would go 3-13 and have the worst record in the NFC. The second part didn't happen; the Bastard Cleveland/Los Angeles Rams also finished 3-13, and because the opponents they faced had more wins, they get to pick second in April's NFL draft while the ViQueens pick third. But man, if I were in Vegas, and there was a proposition bet on picking exact regular season records, and if I had the balls to lay serious money on 3-13 (or at least the under on the given win total), I would not be in the serious financial position I am in now. Nonetheless, I take little pleasure in being right.

For the second year in a row I decided not to watch the game because I didn't think they'd win. Last year I took in an art show; this year I went to my mall job for extra hours. Both times I was right.

I don't care if I'm pulling shit out of my ass, I'll try and analyze the loss to Chicago anyway:

• Worse than having more evidence whether or not Christian Ponder is this team's Quarterback Of The Future, he has to get hit hard and leave the game with a hip pointer, thus rendering this evaluation maddeningly Incomplete.
• Two picks and just 200 yards? Man, now Joe Webb might not be better than Ponder after all.
• A half-sack short of Michael Strahan's record? Despite depleted talent backing him up, Jared Allen may have been the best player on the team this whole season. Let's hope he'll stay when the defense around him gets overhauled.
• With Adrian Peterson done for the year, the Vikes had to rely on Toby Gerhart. His output the last several games may have saved not only his career with the Vikings, but his career, period.
• You need more playmakers than Percy Harvin, who, luckily, has put his migraines behind him.
• There is not one position that needn't be overhauled, not one.

The big front office news is that the (Bermuda) Triangle Of Authority is no more, replaced by one guy, a General Manager who will be responsible, and thus accountable, for all personnel moves. That guy, however, was one of the sides of that Triangle, Rick Spielman. With such an underwhelming track record drafting (with us as well as when he was with Miami), is having just one guy a good thing? I mean, who cares if it's one guy or three guys or 13 guys if it means the team won't win a Super Bowl? I'm nonplussed, is all I'm saying.

Oh, wait a second ... will we even have a Minnesota Vikings to bitch about come next season?

Have I Screwed Myself Out Of A Job?

So I was woken up in the middle of the morning by a call. I didn't recognize the number, but I recognized the professional, somewhat curt voice on the other end: It was the guy from ProStaff, calling me about another assignment from this job I trained for back in November.

Now, I talked about this guy before. He offered me something a couple weeks ago. I told him I'd be busy until now. And since it's now, he decided to call me. Well, I was in a state of just waking up, but my concerns over liking this job has not gone away. Also, this job starts on Monday, and I scheduled a session at the U. hearing lab then. It certainly isn't a 40-hour job, but honestly, I'd rather do that then this, certainty (I'd be working for the year) be damned.

Still, I hemmed and I hawed. And when I audibly sighed into the phone, I think it was the last straw with this guy. I told him, once again, I had other stuff I'm working on, but I lied and said I had an interview scheduled for Monday afternoon. I wanted to pass it up and, if possible, ask me the next time assignments roll in.

He wasn't having it, not anymore. My training was back in early November, and pretty soon it'd be too old for it to be good to just go into an assignment. Moreover, he didn't like offering me jobs which I passed up on the past two or three phone calls. He suggested that he take me off his availability list ... "because I don't know if you're going to get many more of these calls."

And you know what? That really pissed me off because he threatened me ... and then I realized I understood where he was coming from. I have to realize that I'm not really hot for this job. He has called a couple times, and each time I said no. The only reason I'm still considering this is because I need the money and all the other "jobs" that I have might go away. But as much as I felt I needed the money, especially after my car needed major repairs, I don't feel that anymore. Well, it's either that or I really, really don't like this job and I'll only take it if I have absolutely nowhere else to turn.

Maybe I would have thought differently if I were fully awake, but I decided that there needed to be some finality to this back-and-forth. "You know what?" I told ProStaff guy, "You're right. Take me off the list." And then I started saying that I was an asshole for jerking him around. To that, he immediately went from stern to apologetic, saying that he was sorry for not having something lined up immediately after training (which was something I thought would happen) and that was his fault, and we all went, No, no, it's my fault. Typical nonsense conversation: I cave in, and the other guy immediately steps back from his assertive pose and offers conciliation to look like the good guy. I hate myself when I put my tail between my legs like that.

And honestly, I hate that he went from all "I'm not going to stand for your bullshit" to "I'm sorry for yelling at you, but I wanted to make you do what I want first." The epitome of passive-aggressive. But I think that's just a visceral reaction to a tone that I've always hated, even if it was justified. And it was justified. He's working hard, and I just led him on with my, "Well, I'd rather do something else, but I don't want to let this go if everything else falls through, so can I just pass for now?" I can't go on like this. So, even though I might regret it, I'm not taking the job.

I'm going to regret this, won't I?

Nightmare

I was going to a brothel -- in Paris, maybe. I was with a bunch of guys, and we were all going to have sex, maybe even have an orgy.

I quickly got separated from my group. While others apparently were having fun (I did not witness this in my nightmare), I was left with two beautiful but, attitude-wise, sullen figures.

I got naked, as did they. And then ... I don't remember what. We certainly didn't fuck, but at some point the foreplay and small talk just dissipated. They stopped trying to romance me and soon did their own thing.

The last thing I remember is being in a huge room with at least three beds. I was in one of the end beds. One of the whores, with short, straight brown hair, came in naked and tucked herself in the covers of the bed on the other side.

Have been passing out in the late evening lately. Today I was watching TV and fell asleep around 10:30. Woke up at 3:30 remembering I had to fill out some damn Vegas real estate forms for Father.

Done that lately, at least the past couple nights. Something about waking up early to drop off my piss must have something to do with that.

The Final Signs Of The Death Of The Store

My plan to go home immediately after the U. and clean out the fridge instead of my original plan of helping out at The Store was flipped on its head in one phone call: Father, who, luckily, called me in the early morning when I was actually awake, told me he forgot his cell at home and, if I was up and about, to bring it to him. That meant, at best, I had to do both The Store and The Fridge today.

While standing there, tabulating my expenses for December 2011 and reading a year-old City Pages, I look up and to the right. Against the other side of the front side of The Store, right next to the front door, are some shelves. They used to -- used to -- hold stuff. But the top one ... well, I don't quite recall, but it seemed a lot emptier than the last time I noticed it. And I shuddered.

All thoughts that I was thinking things that actually weren't there was dispelled when Father came up to the front with a ladder. He needed my help bringing things down from the tops of the walls. There were decorative ... um, paintings for lack of a better word all around The Store. I know they haven't been there the whole time, but I barely remember a time when they weren't there. In other words, these decorations have been up for a long time. And Father took the occasion of having his second-born son around to finally bring them down.

When it was over -- it took about a half-hour and he wasn't done before he decided to stop -- I looked up at the walls. They were up there for a long time, and we certainly didn't wash the walls. So seeing these bright, clean rectangles outlined by years of dirt and incense smoke is another stark sign.

Later, a couple came in, a mother and daughter. The mother recognized me from way back; "I remember you when you were this little!" she said, pushing her hand down, palm down, indicating the size I was the last time we met. I did not recall her at all.

Father helped her get medications from the cabinet, which is right next to the front door. That's when he said something really chilly. This mother wanted to grab a lot of medicine, but he tried to limit what she wanted to buy. Well, turns out it was what she wanted to take: "Be careful -- this isn't ours to sell anymore."

Sell? Anymore? What do you mean? The Store is ours. Then I thought that I had to deal with impending sale and closing of The Store. Now you're telling me that it's already happened? Are we now mere caretakers of The Store? We're interlopers in our own business?? I'm a stranger in a place that I've known all my life???

The daughter later clued me in because I had this puzzled look on my face: Father apparently told her mom to come on down and take what she wanted, even though now he's backpedaled and is all "wait-wait-wait!" to the mother now. From what I gather -- assuming it's true -- he has already inventoried all the things in The Store for, I guess, the new owner, and anything that isn't there by the time the new owner moves in has to be accounted for.

I am as indignant about what I guess is happening as I am sad. I guess it's business, and I have resigned myself long ago to the fact that I'm taking this much harder than my parents are (and that they don't care about this, about The Store or anything else, for that matter), but a lot of shit just caved in on me on my stay at The Store today. I saw both a physical sign and overheard a financial transaction proving, with increasing surety and proximity to my world, that The Store is no more.

What has been a rock in my life, in my family's life, is going away soon. And I still can't get over it. I'm sorry, but I can't.

And the worst part about this is that I need to go back to it, to this scene of profound sadness for me, tomorrow. For The Store. And because I don't know how much time I have left with it.

Expenses Without Receipt

Since Friday:

• Sunday night, went to a strip club. Beer, tips and one dance with some chick named Taylor: $37.50.
• Monday morning, made copies for parking passes at the local library: 30 cents.
• Later that evening, before going to the airport, dropped by My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition) for tips and a dance from Justine: $26.
• This (Wednesday) morning, finally had breakfast at the Ideal Diner. With tip: $12.50.
• Later this afternoon, Grandmother gave me money to buy a chicken sandwich for her at McDonalds. Infusion: $5.

For now, that's it.

Edited to add: I went to another stripclub before going to the strip I described above. Had a Coke, tipped the waitress and then tipped the two strippers I saw onstage. Total: $7.

Grandmother's Food-Wasting Problem

Have I talked about this before? Returning from a full day of sitting on my ass in a hospital bed for an experiment, I shove the jar of piss into the fridge, only to see, once again, a brown goo leaking at its floor. I still don't know what it is; all I know is that it happens when there's a lot of vegetables down in that refrigerator floor sitting for a long, long time.

That there are a bunch of veggies down there is Grandmother's fault. She still has this problem of using her welfare money to buy food that, by and large, none of us don't eat. It is one of the two main things -- forgetting things that puts the house in peril, such as forgetting to turn off the sink or close the back door -- that leads Father to push for Grandmother's move into a nursing home. It is a prime bone of contention for him. It's a mere pain in the ass for me, but I can't ignore the fact that Father is going to go off if he sees this tomorrow. Hell, he might have done that already and decided not to clean it up because he was too sick and/or tired.

Which means I have to step in. I wanted to help out at The Store, but I know these vegetables piling up is going to be a big problem, and I need harmony at the house before The Store, even if it is, um ... sorry, it's still hard for me to say. So after I drop off my piss at the U. and go to the mall for my free chocolate, I'm going to spend some time cleaning out the fridge, figuring out what needs to be thrown away and mentally tabulating how much Grandmother wasted on food.

(Oh, and there are four gallons of skim milk in the fridge. Two of them have expired. My fucking God, what is wrong with her that makes her buy so much shit?)

I doubt Grandmother will protest. All she will do is buy more food none of us eats again.

I don't think that's enough of an issue to throw her into a nursing home. It's just so annoying that sometimes I want to. That's all.

Death Of A Girl With A Dragon Tattoo

Went to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition) tonight. One of the women there broke the news that a veteran stripper committed suicide.

I'm still in shock. The last time I saw her was at the bar's Christmas party. She was happy, as usual, all smiles, drink in her hand, sexy as hell, moving her body, tattoos all over her body (the biggest of which was one of a dragon that covered her entire back -- fucking hot) telling a story that was deep and complex. I didn't know she was either sad or really, really sick.

I knew her. We weren't close, but I had a couple dances from her. But we knew who each other was, and it was always great to see her through the years. It's a damned cliché, but it's true: I never thought she'd be capable of doing this.

I don't know what to say. The other girls there, the ones who were much closer to her, are taking it very hard, and right now I'm hoping they're going to be OK in coping with this. Since I started going here, she is the second stripper who has died.

There are so many mixed feelings right now. I tried to ask the girl who told me questions about signs. Was she depressed? Did something happen? No. Nothing.

There is a hole in my life now. It may not be as significant as it would be if it were a family member or close friend, but now I'll have to adjust to life without seeing her at the strip bar. The other women there, it'll take a long time to get used to it. Maybe they never will. Maybe they shouldn't have to.

Frankly, I am kind of angry at her, too. She has two kids, and now they're going to have to grow up without their mother, and they have to do it knowing she took herself out. How can two young children grow up like that? And why should they? And I'm pissed off because I don't think I'll ever know the answer as to why she would do this to herself, and to us.

In the end, though, this is a reality check. I keep pissing and moaning about The Store closing, Grandmother's wobbly health, and my continued search for gainful and meaningful employment. I keep talking about these things as if they're life and death. But this is real death, actual death, and right now, those feelings of self-pity are shoved aside, where they belong.

My heart goes out to her family and her friends.

My Final Day At My Mall Job Was A Frustrating One

So all I was supposed to do was clean up this department. And I thought I was doing it just fine. But then the guy who was doing the register started complaining to the other clean-up guy. Apparently we were doing something he didn't like, namely adding to his workload.

I had the bad luck to do this while moving shirts that were in my way onto this pile close to the cash register, which was the added work he was complaining to the other guy about. So he then came down on me. He seemed like a nice guy the minute I started working in the department an hour or two before, but now he was bizarrely upset over what I thought were innocuous actions.

I got away from him and situation, did what I was doing down at one end of the department, and tried to think of a way to diffuse the situation. What I thought of doing is explaining that I too have priorities and that I was only doing what my supervisor supervisor for the day told me to do. Big mistake: He was having none of it, only complaining about all the work he would have to do now because of us.

I really, really did not like his attitude and his tone of voice when speaking to me. A man who appeared to be nice turned out to be nothing more than a whiny little bitch. It was very hard to keep my frustration down as I had to alter what I was doing and hang up all the shirts that were piling up on the cash register. Doing that prevented me from cleaning up the department -- which I believe to be the fucking that I was hired to do in the first fucking place.

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Moreover, I didn't get done. I don't know exactly what needed to be done, and there was the complication that there were supposed to be three people working the department and one of us didn't show up.

But I realized when I returned from my last break, with 20 minutes left in my shift, that we were nowhere near cleaning up the department. In fact, one big eyesore, the shirts on the cubes, was a spot that not only I didn't really start, but really didn't even think of to do.

So I spent the rest of my shift clearing the tops and shoving the shirts into the cubicles. But my main duty was to sort the shirts for inventory. It was just about useless to throw different styles of shirts into the same cube, but because I didn't want to get into trouble for leaving a mess, that is exactly what I did.

We needed more time to clean up the department; another day and I could've done it right. But as far as I know, I'm not coming back, which means, in fact, that New Year's Day was the last day I worked at the mall. And after my supervisor supervisor sees that all I did was shove shirts willy-nilly, I will never come back. I feel bad; he seemed like a really nice guy, and he gave me the opportunity to work a little more after my job working nights with my old supervisor supervisor got done. He'll think I'm nothing but a lying asshole, sadly.

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And to top it all off, my parents come home tonight! And I haven't finished shoveling the sidewalk!! And the journey to The Death Of The Store resumes!!! Yay!!!!

Expenses Without Receipt

My first post of 2012 is Expenses Without Receipt? Yay:

• Thursday, I went to My Favorite Coffeehouse (with thip): $5.25
• Friday, paying my friend back for the ticket to the British television awards: $10
• Later that evening I went to My Favorite Coffeehouse (with tip): $5.25

I think that's it.