Following up on Marilyn’s suggestion that we document everyone’s birthdates, I’ve now added a section to the sidebar on the right that has a countdown to everyone’s birthday. If you want to know what the exact date for someone is, simply click on the “Upcoming Birthday’s” title and you will be taken to the thread where everyone posted the birthdays of their immediate family members (sorry Shannon, I left your “family members” off the chart).
End of year Penn State sports wrap-up
Just for sake of completeness, I thought I’d give everyone a final wrap-up (OK asemi-final wrap-up – we still have a bowl game left but that’s next year 🙂 ) of the PSU Fall sports scene. My hospitalization three weeks ago got in the way of my weekend posts and it turns out my superstitious fears were justified.
In case you don’t remember, Penn State’s five fall sports programs (football, women’s volleyball, field hockey, and men’s and women’s soccer) had gone through an unprecedented Big Ten season. The teams each won a Big Ten championship going a combined 49-1 with the sole loss being the football teams last second loss at Michigan. Each of the teams advanced to post season play (the football team is headed to the Orange Bowl while the other four squads all competed in NCAA tournaments.
As I reported earlier, the #8 ranked Field Hockey team was the first to taste defeat when they lost to #6 ranked American University. As I’ve also previously mentioned, UncleLar niece Natalie Berrena (shown here with me during our Santa Crawl) was named first team All-American.
The next team to fall by the wayside was the men’s soccer team. The guys won their first two NCAA matches to make it to the Sweet Sixteen but fell to Creighton in a 3-1 loss at home. That loss happened while I was in the hospital.
The women’s soccer team had more success. The made it to the College Cup, soccer’s equivalent of the Final Four, the weekend after I was hospitalized. Unfortunately, the way that the College Cup draw worked, #2 ranked Penn State had to meet #1 ranked Portland in the semifinals. Both Penn State and Portland were undefeated going into their semifinal match and the consensus opinion was that the victor of this game would probably take home the national championship. The two teams battled to a 0-0 first half tie. This was the first time all year that Portland had been held scoreless in the first half of their game. That defensive battle continued as both teams failed to score in the second half also. They continued play through two 10 minute sudden death overtimes, so after 110 minutes of soccer play neither team was able to eke out a goal. They meant that the winner would be determined by a shoot-out. Portland’s two time Hermann Trophy winner (soccer’s equivalent to the Heisman trophy) nailed the final kick of the shootout to give Portland the 4-3 shootout win. Because the game ended in a shootout, it will go into the record book as a tie. That means that Penn State becomes the first undefeated team in NCAA soccer history to not win the title. As expected Portland went on to claim the crown with a 4-0 victory over UCLA two days later.
Two weekends after my operation, the women’s volleyball team took on Tennessee in the NCAA Regional Semifinal. The regionals were being held on Penn State’s home court and the #2 ranked Nittany Lions were huge favorites to win at home and advanced to the Final Four. Unfortunately, one of Penn State’s star players, Christa Harmotta, had gone down with a season ending injury in Penn State’s last home regular season match and the loss showed. Tennessee pulled off a huge upset knocking off Penn State in four games (that made three staight weekends where one of our teams lost – all no doubt due to my failure to make my regular weekend blog post). The Lady Vols then went on to beat Missouri the next day and advanced to the Final Four.
Two of UncleLar’s volleyball buddies did receive post season honors however. Senior libero Kaleena Walters (also shown here in a Santa Crawl photo) was named B10 Ten Defensive Player of the Year and third team All-American.
Senior setter Sam Tortorello (of course in a Santa Crawl photo) was a unanimous pick as B10 Player of the Year and was also named a first team All-American.
Since the bowl game is scheduled for next year, i.e. January 3rd, I thought this would a good time to make a year end wrap up. As promissed, you won’t have to put up with all these sports reports in the future (of course, that’s partially because our basketball team sucks so much – we did beat New Hampshire (sorry Shannon) this week though).
State College Santa Crawl
has now gotten official recognition at the Santarchy!(Santacon) website. We are in the Santacon archives section.
Christmas Carol
I enjoyed the Ray Davies Thanksgiving song so much that I thought I’d post my own favorite Christmas Carol.
With apologies to Dawn ahead of time, click here to listen.
Happy Birthday Lisa
Happy Birthday Lisa! Doing anything special today? Hope it’s a great day!
Christmas Cards
I finished this year’s Xmas card last night and I decided to put these up here for nostalgia and posterity.
I never much appreciated the cards I got each year with friend’s kids pictured. As a rule they were either crappy snapshots or cheesey Sears photos. (Ken, your pix were always the exception to the rule.)
Once I had children I recognized the motivation to send pictures of one’s kids was awfully powerful, but I wanted to do it a bit differently. I started in 2001, when Lex was barely 8 mos old.
2001
The actual motivation behind this picture was the fact that our house was so incredibly messy, every shot we had of the kids had a background of clutter and crap. So I made a “virtual room” for them. Nothing in the shot is real, except for the kids (and the scans of photos, tho the frames are digital…. note the World Trade Towers).
Mommy would have been proud of the shine on those floors, huh?
2002
This was done by Lis on her first and only foray into the world of digital imagery. One long night on the computer, a crash course using a program called Painter, and she produced this masterpiece. A Winter Wonderland hand-drawn on a computer.
2003
A friend took this shot on a visit to Central Park just after Thanksgiving that year.
It was just too fun (and easy) to pass up.
2004
I was at a loss what to do last year and started searching the Web for a graphic to inspire me. Found an illustration of a Christmas Elf (not a fairy, mind you… an elf). I really enjoyed doing this one and it’s gotten lots of compliments, so I just had to come up with something for this year.
2005
I kinda like what I ended up with this year. Still have mixed feelings about it, tho. It’s not what I originally envisioned, but hey…. that’s the way it goes. Hopefully I got it done in time to get printed and mailed to y’all by Christmas, but if you can’t wait and want to know what it looks like CLICK HERE. If not, we hope to get it to you by Christmas (true, it does look doubtful, but you’ll get it eventually).
Happy Holidays!!
Gary & Lis
Happy B-Day Mom!
This is not my beautiful wife….
No, it’s my beautiful house under construction, circa 1908.
The woman we bought it from sent us this and a few others.
The second photo here is from 1912. Notice the little sapling tied to the stake in the front yard? It’s now the 60 foot pecan tree that shades us from the afternoon sun.
Smashmouth ain’t nothin
This is in response to Gary’s Smashmouth posting. I couldn’t post a picture as a comment so I had to start a new entry.
I’ve posted a picture here of our friend Mel’s snowblower. Many of you know Mel. He owns his own auto repair shop and I get out there every once in a while because I help him with his computers. I was actually just there this morning and had his partner send me this picture of the snowblower Mel created. It’s got a V8 engine and dual exhaust stacks. He said he managed to clear his entire lot of 6 inches of snow in about 15 minutes after last week’s storm.
As Mel said, Gary, “Don’t try to compete with professionals.”
Resuming Normal Activities
Following my doctor’s advice to resume normal activities, I went forward with the 2nd Annual State College Santa Crawl on Saturday night. In the initial event last December we had five participants, this year we tripled that number. I do believe that the event now has enough inertia that it will probably double in size next year. That should allow it to take on a life of its own similar to the way the A-Z bar tour that I created in Philadelphia went on for at over 10 years after I left town (for all I know the A-Z tour is still going on).
For more photos of our event, click here.