Days 251-253: February 6-8, 2013

Another week in the books as Wednesday rolls to a close and first-weekend begins. Stopped by TIS in the afternoon to pick up a few things and took a look at the mural again now that the construction in the parking lot is finally gone. Looks like the artist was thinking ahead and left plenty of room for a sixth banner. Hopefully I will still be in Bloomington to see the murals completion! After TIS I went by the HPER to freshen up my basketball skills a bit. This time I actually remembered to practice my free throws after playing, and finished a surprising 14 for 25. That is a marked improvement, considering I was the player that once missed 12 consecutive free throws in a game. (The good news being I became a 50-60% free throw shooter following that game. The bad news being 50% is not a good free throw percentage.) And I started even stronger than I finished, missing my last four after hitting six in a row (which has to be a personal record as I don't think I have ever hit more than three consecutive before).

Thursday was a beautiful day out, reaching the mid-60s and making it a good day to go out for a run. Afterwards, it was over to Yogi's for bar review and to watch the Hoosiers defend their fresh #1 ranking. Sadly, it was a brief defense as Cody Zeller decided the last 0.9 seconds of the game would be a great time to take a defensive series off and chill out pretending to set screens for Illinois. Fortunately though, numbers 2, 3, and 5 also lost this week, so if we are able to pull out a win in what is now a must-win game at Columbus on Sunday, we can consider this week a mulligan and hopefully not drop too far in the national rankings and the Big Ten standings.

When I was at TIS on Wednesday I picked up this cool new five banner coffee mug. This should make for a fun Gameday mug going forward, and just like the mural, they have left a spot to fill in a sixth banner. Unfortunately, that spot happens to also be where the handle is, so I suppose when the time comes the mug will have to turn into its own version of a "ceramic mason jar." Now that is how to be practical and resourceful.