It's official: I have finally found a new and replacement pair of basketball shoes. After almost nine years playing in the old and battle-worn Shox Status', I found a very similar style replacement pair of Shox. I picked these up in the fall and have been skeptical about the change, electing instead to wear these with my candystripes. After giving them another go tonight, I decided to retire them from outdoor use for good (after only four outdoor wears) and keep them as the replacement basketball shoes. It is amazingly easier to keep your footing on shoes that are not nine years old. Tonight they helped me put on a fun performance more in line with my games of old: 3+ steals, 8-10 deflections, lockdown man defense giving up just 2 points in 3 games, and scoring from inside, mid-range, and on the fast break. It was fun to run the floor and play hard again, the only thing missing from my game today was the three-point shot. Hopefully with more hours on the floor I will be able to keep up the status quo, and if so, I might have a shot to avoid feeling like an old law student playing on Assembly Hall and put up a decent game instead.
Following my own personal basketball resurgence, Indiana had a huge road game on Sunday to follow up the upset loss at Illinois. Again, I am kicking myself for making Illinois my preseason pick to take IU's #1 ranking—I did not expect the Butler and Wisconsin losses, but we got #1 back
just in time to make my prediction come through. Fortunately, the trio of Oladipo, Zeller, and Watford were HUGE and the defense tightened up to hold a solid lead in a hostile environment, giving Indiana their first road win against a ranked opponent in Tom Crean's tenure. This win was especially huge following the "mulligan" the rest of the top-5 teams gave us this week, and we should be able to maintain a solid position as long as we keep winning. My new IUBB GameDay mug got off to a good start in its first use, and will hopefully be enjoying many more victories in the weeks to come!
This was an interesting promotion I stumbled across. They are giving out giant paper bags when you buy something at Hallmark, and then if you bring the bag back in two weeks you get 20% off everything you can fit inside. Unfortunately, I do not really ever have to go to Hallmark enough to actually buy enough to utilize this promotion, but it does seem like it would almost be fun enough to participate just to stuff up the bag like it was a shopping spree or something. If you did enjoy collecting various greeting cards, you could sure fit a huge amount of them in this bag to get your sale!
The Moot Court bracket is officially up and Moot Court Madness begins in approximately one week. Unlike March Madness, where I hope Indiana makes it all the way to the end of the bracket, I am hoping to put up my best D.C. Sports impression and go one-and-done. I am going to attempt to have fun doing it however, as I have set up Mike's Moot Court Scavenger Hunt, where I make my best attempt to sneak in as many famous quotes and/or phrases into my argument while still maintaining a proper and professional argument style. This is my attempt at making additional work more entertaining and productive (and sadly may actually improve my overall performance). Hopefully this does not put the Karma Gods against me and give me an unwanted victory, as Karma is already stacking the deck against me by setting me up for a second-round argument on my birthday, one year after I had to finish an LRW memo on my birthday, should I pull through with the "double-upset" victory (that is referring to an upset for both sides, because I am sure neither of the two competitors in this match will want me to win).
Girl Scout Cookies! I came across these at College Mall this week and had to pick up a couple boxes since I haven't had my own in forever. Naturally, I picked up my two favorites, the Trefoils (old fashioned shortbread), and the #1 Cookies of All Time: Thin Mints. I finally broke into them and they were as good as ever, and even better than I remembered (particularly the Thin Mints). Thanks Girl Scouts for your awesome cookies! They are the perfect way to end the week and head into another long weekend.
On Thursday night it was back to Nick's for the first repeat performance in Bar Review history. Because Bar Review has been lackluster lately, with the bar selection waning as we have made it through most of Bloomington's marquee establishments, and others are being saved for Spring when we can best make use of their outdoor amenities, Nick's was selected for its second go-round in an attempt to reinvigorate the brand. After the recently renamed Team Avalon completed their first match as The Vegas Bombers, it was off to Nick's to celebrate the unique "Valentine's Day Style Bar Review," which basically means, Thursday Night at Nick's playing Have You Met Tim?
On Friday I begun work on my poster to bring to the Purdue game tomorrow, our general admission game of the season. We will get to line up before the game tomorrow to get good seats, and I am going to make an exciting poster to display from my prime Crimson Guard vantage point. What will it be? You will have to watch at 2:00 PM on ESPN2 to find out! And additionally, this photo finally completes the first ever week-long version of Connecting the Dots' "
Photos of the Day[s]!"
