AAU Basketball, April

We now know that we have at least three tournaments scheduled in April:
3/31 -4/1 Twin Valley Tournament, Elverson, PA

3/31	7pm	Court 2	Central Jersey	Won	46-23
3/31	9pm	Court 2	Twin Valley	Won	55-18
4/1	2 pm	Court 2	York Rebels	Won	51-25
4/1	6 pm	Court 1	Schuylkill Vipers	NoPlay	---
4/1	4 pm	Court 2	Unscheduled Add: Galloway	Lost	41-34

4/6 - 4/8 2007 Philly Spring Classic, Philadelphia, PA
La Salle University, 3-game guarantee: Pool play and single-elimination tournament

4/7	11am	Court 3	Team Philly	Lost	56-30
4/7	3 pm	Court 2	Coast to Coast	Lost	---
4/7	9 pm	Court 3	Delaware Panthers	Lost	47-19

4/13 - 4/15 Albright College, Reading, PA
Unofficially, by my interpretation: This is a NOT a double-elimination tournament, it is a single elimination tournament, but the first game is used to divide into a "Winners' Bracket" and a "Losers' Bracket". After entering one of the two brackets, it's single elimination. More or less. It's a little odd in some cases. For example, the Courage could win the whole shebang in only three games (Games 7, 25, and 27). Eight teams in the lower half of the bracket need 5 games to win out. Teams in the top half of the bracket need 4 games to win out. Everybody goes home with the first lost beginning with their second game, except (I think) the winner of Bears/Bulldogs who can lose their second game to Courage and move to the Losers' Bracket.

The full set of our potential game times, all on Court 2: Games 8,13,17,27; 12,21,24,26

• SAT 12Noon (if WIN) SAT 4pm, SAT 8pm, SUN 6pm
  
• SAT 12Noon (if LOSS) SAT 3pm, SUN 10am, SUN 1pm, SUN 4pm

Results:

4/14	11am	Court 2	Bangor Slate	WON	49-30
4/14	3 pm	Court 2	York Raiders	Lost	---

College Selection: Shenandoah University

We are excited to announce that Corinne has chosen to accept admission into Shenandoah University in the Conservatory's Musical Theatre program. She will be pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre.

See also the related post on the Shenandoah University visit.

Beauty and the Beast: Good Morning, Belle!

Congratulations Corinne!!
Corinne has accepted the role of Belle in Phoenix Festival Theatre's production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast!

This is Corinne's third production of Beauty and the Beast, having performed as Belle in the high school production and in the ensemble for the production at Tidewater Players.

Mark your calendars for show dates--TWO WEEKENDS ONLY!!
June 8, 9, 14, 15, 16 at 8 PM
June 9, 10, 16 at 2 PM

As for me, I've accepted a role in the ensemble. Hard to say what that might mean, maybe a corkscrew? Maybe a drunken frenchman? Maybe a fish monger? We'll have to see.

Backyard Basketball and Dogs

Not much to say, just some pics taken by LB, including one I used to update my profile pic. Again, a reminder: sometimes the captions work right, sometimes not. These albums have captions. If you don't see them, mouse over the pictures to see the controls, then pick "hide captions" then "show captions".

Basketball:


And the dogs:

French open national UFO files

Stumbled across this and found it mildly interesting: the French have opened up their UFO files to the public.

Translated from CNES Site
(thanks to Google, this portion of the site is in French)
Welcome on the gate of the GEIPAN Opening of the gate of information of the GEIPAN This site will allow, in the long term and in the respect of the private life of the citizens, to place at the disposal of the public the whole of the data collected since 30 years by the GEIPAN on the not identified aerospace phenomena. Right now meadows of 25 percent of the cases observed are available and consultable, which represents the majority of the 20 last years observations. The site will be regularly updated progressively with the validation of the data, including the photographic and video documents which are in the course of digitalization. The GEIPAN thanks you for your patience and hopes that this site will answer waitings of the majority of the people interested by the phenomenon UFO.
Posted 22-03-0007

Click Recherche, and brush up on your French (or have Google translate for you...)

From their site:
Since 1977, Gepan and then Sepra have collected close to 6,000 reports from eyewitnesses, mostly on the ground but about 6% who observed phenomena from aircraft.Once reported events have been grouped into observation cases, about 28% remain unexplained after investigation and analysis.

The cases are classified A to D. A is conclusively identified, B is probably identified, C is unidentified due to insufficient information, and D is unidentified.

An example of a "Class A", auto-translated for me by Google:
On October 11, 1992 between 21h30 and 22h30 two independent witnesses observe an oval form blanchâtre which moves slowly above Marseilles. The two witnesses take the precaution to film their observation. The investigations of the 2 brigades will show quickly that the witnesses observed by far an airship based with Marignagne and accomplishing promotional flights of night. The data of the flight are perfectly coherent with the description of the witnesses.
Official Documents

An example of a "Class D", again auto-translated by Google

Witness continued by an orange ball emitting a beep beep stridentLe December 1, 1979 around 7 p.m. 35, a witness, butcher of his state, returns his day to the market. He suddenly sees on his left a large very luminous ball, whose color passes from the white to the red while passing by orange and the yellow. This ball emits a strident noise of type beep beep. The witness is very frightened and accelerates whereas the phenomenon follows it during approximately 2 km the vehicle rolling to approximately 70 - 80 km/h. At the end of approximately 2 km, the phenomenon disappears brutally. The witness underwent a sufficiently important nervous shock to cause an obstruction of the bowels to him. No other witness could be met and the investigation did not make it possible to identify the phenomenon observed.
Official Documents


Uh, did that say it scared the poop out of him? No? It obstructed his bowels? I've never had that reaction.

AAU Basketball

We now know that AAU basketball will consist of three 2 1/2 hour practices per week plus tournaments on every weekend they can manage through the end of July (some 150 hours of practices?!). This weekend's tournament didn't pan out--it was a tournament in York, PA, but it was full before our registration got in. There is one scheduled for next weekend, dunno where.

I auditioned for Lefou, hehe

So I auditioned for Lefou at Harford Community College Phoenix Festival Theatre. Kinda spur of the moment, I only became aware of the opportunity the day before. I knew that auditions were coming up, but I didn't think that there was any chance I'd audition.

I don't know how well you can expect an audition to go when you go in unprepared, and don't have the talent to carry you through. I "prepared" 16 bars (32, but who's counting) of "Gaston" because, well, it wasn't too hard I don't have a vocal repertoire. At the end of my prepared portion, I turned and thanked the accompanist/musical director who told me to keep going. Ooooh. I had to admit I didn't really know the words (not good). I was pushed into trying anyway, and in a few short moments proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I did not know the words (more not good). I received the comment that while preparing 16 bars is fine, it wasn't the 16 bars they wanted to hear (need I say: not good).

No call back. Duh. Not waiting for the phone to ring.

T-man sends pictures

Thanks for the pics, T. I enjoyed chatting with you the other day, keep me on your friends list. I use meebo to access my AIM (and simultaneously MSN and Google Talk), and sometimes you'll send me a message and I won't respond even though I'm online. I'm not ignoring you. Meebo isn't very "in your face" when messages come in, it just gives a little sound, with no popup. Since I usually have sound off, I sometimes miss incoming messages even when I'm on the computer! That happened this morning when you sent me a "hello". So a belated hello in return!!

BTW, there is a meebo IM service active on this very site that is a direct link to me. See it on the right side, a little way down? If I'm not online, the message you send will come to me the instant I get back online, and I'm online most every day. Just don't forget to put your name in the "nickname" so I know who's sending the message to me!

The pics: He throws! He catches! He hangs out with Cal Ripken!

Christopher XOXO?!

These are dated pictures. They are from a trip we took to NY shortly after Christmas 2006. Check out the Christopher picture, looks like this:


Chris and I split from the group for about 15 minutes, I took three pictures, just because I wanted to get a picture of him by himself. The featured picture is approaching the Hershey store. Did not notice that the store had a rolling sign that just happened to say CHRISTOPHER!! XOXO.. on it when I snapped the picture. Didn't notice that until 3 months later, just browsing through some pics. What are the odds?!?!

Birthday Party

These are not the only birthday parties going on, but they are the only ones at my house, and the only ones I have pictures of.



Laura's cream of crab soup was excellent, a big hit. Can't give props for any particular culinary skill here, but the grapes were very good also. Lots of them got tossed, a few of them were even caught.

Weather was awful, about an inch of ice fell.

Elimination: A pair of SemiFinal Games

Game 4:
SemiFinals, Winners' Bracket.
Tied at half, we played solid defense, but struggled a bit offensively. A manageable second-half deficit of 4 pts jumped to an insurmountable 7 pts with a bank-shot 3 above the top of the key.


In double elimination, winner goes to the championship game, loser goes to the Losers' Bracket semifinal.




Game 5:
Same team we defeated in Game 3. Win and we go to the championship, lose and go home. A tight game, we were tied at the half AND at the end of regulation. Overtime period is two minutes, an extension of only 1/20 of a game. Down 1 with 11 seconds, we got the ball down the court and put up a tough shot that touched nothing. We rebounded right under the basket and could not convert the 2-foot jumper. From the position of the rebound, we were a little too deep under the basket to make it a layup. That close.



That ends the Rec, Travel, and Towson Travel season. AAU basketball practice begins Monday and the first tournament is next weekend, don't know where.

Travel Tournament, Game 3

Game 3:
Victory! A tough, tight game against a very good and aggressive opponent. Final margin of victory: 52-47. CB went down hard in the second half, to the crowd it looked like he went down hard on his back and head, with no feet to slow the fall, and lay motionless momentarily. To him, this is an overly dramatic representation. He had to go to the bench, but we couldn't keep him out long. Very exciting game. Too exciting to take decent pictures. Here's what I got.



Good luck next game.

Littler Basketball, Season Finale

Watch out for Number 8! We had a great time, congratulations on a great season!

Travel Tournament, Game 1, 2

12-Team, Double Elimination Tournament, Results through 3 games:

Game 1:
Victory!



Game 2:
Victory! OK, the draw was very good to us. Our opponent was their region's "B" team, and they were never very competitive. By size, they were a team of guards. Coach opted to sit our traditional "starting 5" and start our traditional "reserves". The game probably wouldn't have been close if we played the whole game on the reserves. We certainly expect upcoming games to be MUCH more competitive.

Note: Many of the pictures have captions, if you don't see captions in the slideshow, hit "hide captions" then "show captions" and they should come back.

Meanwhile Back On The Couch

Had an absolutely SPLENDID evening enjoying the KC Players "Meanwhile Back On The Couch".

Lots of pictures of varying quality. No flash photography was used, so my options were limited. The slideshow is pretty long, but has maybe half of the pictures I took. I just kept clicking, because I couldn't tell what if any were going to come out.



The slideshow was created using Picasa2 and WebAlbums. It's as easy as using Picasa to select the pictures [edit, resize, etc] upload to WebAlbum, then running the slideshow feature and capturing the URL. Stick the URL in an iframe and you're done. I use

(iframe src="[Full URL, no spaces]" frameborder="0" width="550" height="400")
(/iframe)

Substitute < for ( and > for ).
[Anyone know the html for entering code? tt and blockquote didn't do it.]

March Church Music

I continue my monthly contribution at the piano during early service. This week's pieces for the contemporary service (Italics are the piano solos of my choosing):

1. O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
2. We Have Come Into His House
3. Praise the Name of Jesus
4. Almighty
5. Alleluia
6. Just As I Am*
7. (Doxology)
8. Am I A Soldier Of The Cross
9. The Church's One Foundation
10. The Family of God
11. His Name Is Wonderful
12. I Sing A Song Of The Saints Of God
13. Shine Jesus Shine

"Just As I Am" was used as the offeratory, and was played piano solo one verse and then sung in three parts with piano accompaniment for verse one only:

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee
O Lamb of God, I come, I come

It was sung as a trio with less than a week's notice, and run through maybe a half dozen times. Brandon and I sang the bass clef, and Rinny took the melody, because if she sang the alto there'd be no one left for the melody. Thanks to both of you, well done, I appreciate the effort. The piece was special to me, although I don't know exactly why, and I was honored by your willingness to perform it on almost no notice. We may be able to do that again as a full(er?) choir and cover all the parts.

Still, I am not cool enough to post either the recorded performance or even the MIDI tunes, but I'm hoping one day...

Next service for me is Palm Sunday (and Grandma's birthday--April Fools). What can YOU suggest for favored Palm Sunday/Easter Season songs?

Photo collage

Hey Dad, I need a collage for tomorrow. No problem... Check it out:





This was done with the free image processing software "GIMP". This was the first time I'd used this software, in fact I downloaded it just for this project. Very capable software, but not for the fainthearted. I'd tell you where to get it (free) but if you get frustrated trying to figure out where to find it on the web, you probably won't hold up to the learning curve.

It might have been easier if I actually looked at the 39MB help file...

Happy 14

HBDTY, CB!

You Like Me! You Really Like Me!

Congratulations Corinne on being accepted to the Conservatory at Shenandoah University in Musical Theatre! We're very proud.