What the heck is a Roundup?

I found myself asking that question the other day when my sister challenged me to do a roundup.  As the only male blogger around these parts (comment and prove me wrong) I feel it my duty to appease her and give you my version of a roundup.  By the way (I could have typed BTW but I just can't bring myself to use texting terms or :) or ;) or any of those other emoticons) you can go here to see my sister's latest roundup, and lets face it, that link probably holds more useful information for most of you anyway.

Without further ado here is a bunch of stuff I may want to try someday.

The best part about this one is my dad has a whole load of bricks stacked in his carport just waiting for a project and in two months he lives two doors away

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I'm pretty sure I'll be renting a RZR within the next year and when I love it I plan to sell Melissa on all the practical uses for a UTV, like having something to put in the back of my truck.


I don't know much about cars, but I really want to restore one of these someday.  It's a 1969 GMC and for some odd reason I love it.  Problem is they're not too hard to find if you're willing to settle for a 2wd, but lets face it I can never own a 2wd truck.  That's like a one-wheeled motorcycle.



I really need to learn to swim because I would like to compete in this at the end of the summer.



And I need to find some teammates because I think I want to do this too, but I'm pretty sure my knees won't allow me to do those first few miles.


There you have it folks, my roundup.

I almost forgot.  I hope Lebron loses and I'm happy to see that Jim Tressel is going to be punished.  If only the Buckeyes had made it to the national championship against Auburn then the whole BCS championship game would be stricken from the records 5 years from now, about the time that Cam gives back his trophy.

No Place Like Home

We went home for spring break and found a house.  It was a wonderful trip filled with family and excitement as we put an offer in on the above home that sits two doors south of the house in which I grew up and in which my parents still live.  The skepticism we continue to receive when we report that last tidbit is comical to both of us, but really I couldn't be happier to live near my folks and Melissa feels the same way which is all the better for me.  I'm excited to have my kids ride bikes on the same trails that I did 25 years ago and go to my elementary school and high school.  I'm also excited to be able to walk to church.

The real excitement of the trip was in the traveling itself.  We left South Bend Friday night and drove straight through.  Saturday night we arrived at an empty house as my dad was at a track meet and mom was out grocery shopping, but it didn't matter because we were just happy to get out of the car.  Somewhere in Nebraska we lost a blanket, a pillow pet and a pair of pajamas after Kristian decided to lose his dinner upon waking at a gas station at 1:30 AM.  I was in no mood to attempt to clean any of that and decided to pitch them.  My grandparents are rolling in their graves at my wasteful attitude, but in my defense it was 1:30.  Then remainder of our trip out was uneventful.

The trip back was a little bit less stressful to start.  We decided to do it in two days and left Salt Lake at a decent hour on the Saturday of spring break.  We made it to Lincoln, NE before calling it a day.  The next morning we were on the road by 8:00 South Bend time and made great time until we were a mere 3 hours from home.

About an hour outside of Joliet the check battery light in the Yukon came on and I noticed that our voltage was pretty low.  I turned off the A/C, radio, DVD player, daytime running lights and we used our windows sparingly so as to conserve any battery power we might have left.  I figured our alternator was having a difficult time (having gone through an alternator replacement in my first car some years ago), but we likely wouldn't be able to find anyplace to help us out on a Sunday anyway so we kept going.  Upon arriving in Joliet we pulled off the freeway only to have the voltage meter kick back up to normal.  We filled up the Yukon, counted our blessings and got back on the freeway.

Another 20 miles down the road and battery light goes on again.  We pulled off the freeway again hoping against hope that whatever kicked the alternator before would do it again.  We were sorely disappointed when it didn't come back this time so again we got back on the freeway and continued on our trek running on the last battery power we had.  At this time we were driving I-80 along the south side of Chicago which is a very poor spot to break down.

We made it to Indiana and even onto the toll road here where traffic thins considerably.  After about 10 minutes on the toll road the lights and gauges in the Yukon go out but the engine continues to run.  Another 3 minutes and we coast to a stop on the side of the freeway where we wait for our rescuers.

A couple of years ago I would have considered this to be an incredibly poor turn of events, but as I was waiting for the tow truck I got to thinking about how many things went right for us on this trip.  First of all we traveled 3500 miles in a week and the car broke down with 30 to go.  That's not too bad.  We have an AAA membership that I purposely did not renew in February because we're moving in June anyway.  The week before we left we got a letter that the membership renewed itself through automatic billing and at that time I was ticked because I didn't want it to renew.  Dumb me.  We had enough power in our cell phones to call AAA get a tow and call a friend in South Bend who graciously drove the 30 miles from South Bend to pick up Melissa and the kids.  As if all that wasn't enough the unexplainable glitch in the alternator back in Joliet where it kicked back on recharged the battery back to where it was 30 miles previous to that stop.  Thirty miles from South Bend isn't a bad place to break down.  Sixty miles from South Bend is right in the middle of South Chicago where I-80 is 5 lanes with very little shoulder, not a place I want to be stranded with Melissa and our 4 kids.

We had the car dropped off at a shop just up the road from our home.  They replaced the alternator and we had the Yukon back by the end of the work day on Monday.

It turned out to be a wonderful week and I feel very blessed to have learned the lessons I did, though I still don't know what I should have learned from that gas station in Nebraska with the pillow-pet in their dumpster.

And The Winner Is . . .

Charlotte.

Each year I put together a little Bracket group.  It gets a bit more loose each year.  We usually have between 9 and 15 participants.  This year we had 9 and a benchmark and the winner was my sister Charlotte.  The final standings were as follows (nobody picked UCONN or Butler to win so we're done as a group):

Group Results  (Edit Members)
RNK	ENTRY, OWNER	R64	R32	S16	E8	FF	NCG	CHAMPION	PPR	TOTAL	PCT
1	C'mon Aggies!, C. Cantwell	220	160	80	80	160	0	Notre Dame	0	700	91.9
2	Straight Chalk, Lefty	250	200	120	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	570	72.7
3	jhipworth 1, J. Hepworth	220	220	80	0	0	0	Kansas	0	520	51.9
4	This is the year, D. Corry	220	200	80	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	500	42.8
5	rskdmt 1, R. Corry	210	160	120	0	0	0	Duke	0	490	38.2
6	Doris in Accounting, Lefty	220	140	80	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	440	17.7
7	Fear the Leprechaun, J. Corry	180	160	80	0	0	0	Pittsburgh	0	420	11.9
8	Moving Home Madness, M. Corry	230	140	40	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	410	9.7
9	Maegan, M. Corry	220	140	40	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	400	7.8
10	corrymark 1, M. Corry	190	140	0	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	330	1.7

C. Cantwell is my sister Charlotte.
Lefty is my cousin Tim who has two brackets but if you look closely (you can't from here of course) you will see that Straight Chalk is the benchmark entry I mentioned where he picked top seeds all the way through.  What that means is that we are all bad at making brackets except Charlotte.  I liken this to measuring your investments against the S&P 500 or the stock market as a whole.  Either that or you can look it as Vegas picks and in this case the house won big.
J. Hepworth is a friend, D, Corry, R, Corry, M, Corry, M. Corry, M, Corry are brothers, sister-in-law and wife.


At least I beat those M. Corrys.  


So why am I writing a blog post about the winner this year when I haven't in years past?  I thought you'd never ask.  I am shocked that Charlotte won and the margin of her victory amazes me even more.  Now if she had won because she picked Butler or VCU to do well I would have chalked it up to a crazy year, but she fanned on those two just like everybody else.  She won with UConn.


What you have to understand here is that Charlotte knows about as much about Basketball as I do about quilting. It's not that she doesn't have the opportunity to learn.  She's surround by family members who live and breathe sports, but is very adept as getting out of any conversation that might enlighten her with the finer points of roundball, heck she even has a brother-in-law that has a blog about sports (though it hasn't been updated since before the ipad).  I could take this quilting/basketball thing further, but I'm not going too.


Now I don't want to go all Rick Reilly on Charlotte's Jimmer, but she'll never make it at the next level.  Sure she was the best in our pool, but without the attention to the details she'll be riding the pine when she goes pro.


Congratulations Char.  I'll give you extra "pride points" if you can explain what I'm talking about in that last paragraph.