Hail to the Chief

Tuesday July 31, Robert is elected President and CEO by unanimous vote of the board of directors. Laura takes her first company officer position as Secretary. Ron resigns President, but retains most of his shop management duties and the title Chief Operating Officer.

Corinne in Les Miserables

Just a quick post... Corinne is doing Tidewater Teens this summer, as she has in previous summers (West Side Story, Footloose, Grease) and this summer is Les Miserables--actually it is Les Miserables, School Edition. This summer it is done as a "camp", so the cast goes M-F for two weeks and the show opens. Casting is done on day one, and by day 10 they are running the show! Corinne is Fantine, Brandon is Javert. I expect it to be an awesome show!

Les Mis shows at Tidewater two weekends: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday August 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12. It's coming up VERY quickly, and I couldn't say much about it before now, 'cause it just got started! Call Tidewater for tickets if you can make it. I as at the theatre today and it was cool, and they will have someone come for maintenance on the AC tomorrow, so the plan is to keep it that way. We can hope! Plan to bring tissue.

AAU Nationals, Cocoa Beach Part 5

Thursday July 19.
It was a good day of basketball. First, the only known picture of the entire team that represents the 14U Chesapeake Bay Breakers in the 2007 Division II AAU National Basketball Championships.

This was the first day of Single-Elimination, Win-or-go-home basketball. As long as a team's win-streak continues, it's two games per day until the championship game. Today we had our first and second wins! We continue tomorrow!

Game 4: 9:00 am, "Win or Go Home"
Venue: Eau Gallie High School
Opponent: Maryland Stingers

WIN: This was the first game where we simply outmatched the opponent across the board. We found out that there is a sort of a mercy rule: When leading by 30 points or more, you may only defend your opponent from inside the 3-point arc. We got technical fouls twice for "forgetting" we had to drop all the way back before playing defense. Final Score 71-39. Some pics:



Game5: 6:20 pm, "Win or Go Home", Classic Bracket Level 2
Venue: Catholic School
Opponent: Hoyas(?) of Durham, NC

WIN: A lot of effort in a hard-fought game. We jumped out to an early, albeit slow and low-scoring lead. Durham made a run through the second half and brought the game essentially tied into the fourth quarter. I thought we might falter as there was missed opportunities during the first half and into the second half to substitute players, and as a result, we seemed to fatigue down the stretch. But we held on, final score: 42-36. Give or take, I ran out of battery power, and missed recording the final score, not to mention lots of photo opps during play. Great game, lousy pictures. Pics I got:

AAU Nationals, Cocoa Beach Part 4

Game 3, 2:20pm
Venue: Eau Gallie High School
Opponent: Hawks from NJ

A tight game lost 52-48. I could be slightly off on the score, they took the score down before I could get the picture for the record. We got off to a good start with our defense shutting down the opposition. The score was 8-2 with time running down in the first half when the Hawks hit a buzzer-beating three pointer. We surged, we stalled. Despite the man defense, we appeared to play better team basketball. Tomorrow is another game: win or go home from here on out.

Some pics. I couldn't resist putting in the shots of McDonalds. This was the third day we tried to "stumble across" a McDonalds Bistro. Really cool, can't believe that you could get plates and silverware and leather chairs and pasta and panini and desserts and espresso and Belgian waffles and eggs Benedict at a McDonalds, where you can still get a quarter pounder with cheese and a Filet of Fish. Not that it was better than basketball...

AAU Nationals, Cocoa Beach Part 3

Game 2, 6pm
Venue: Melbourne Central Catholic High, home of the Hustlers. Somehow that doesn't seem like an appropriate team name...
Opponent: Quasars from NC

This was a hard-fought, competitive game. We were up at the close of the first quarter, but Quasars made a second-quarter run to take a significant lead. Things got a little excited in the second half, and as everyone knows I can't manage to take pictures when things get too excited.

We switched to street-style man-to-man one-on-one basketball in the second half. This bothered me a lot, and was part of the reason I was too excited to get pictures. I wasn't avoiding pictures in protest, it's just my blood pressure was up. Every possession seemed to be one-on-one dribble and heave. No rebound, sometimes the ball went in. Still we recovered to within 5 (3?) but suffered a technical foul on a player--cause was not evident from the stands, and a pair of technical fouls and ejection on the coach. I believe that you can defend the call of the first bench technical (although in this tournament, I would have advised a stern warning instead) but even an impartial tournament official concedes that there was no reason whatsoever for the second technical/ejection. This is another disappointment with the way the game was managed by the officials. I believe the game was very likely to be lost, but the players were capable of bringing it to that conclusion, and none of the technical fouls had anything to do with the gameplay itself. So a tight game, 5 point spread, under a minute to go, was bloated to a 12-point spread due to the technical foul shots hit, with about half a minute to go.

It took a long time to leave the venue, and as always a long drive back to the hotel. We got in at quarter after midnight. Another chance tomorrow...

AAU Nationals, Cocoa Beach Part 2

Game 1, 9am
Opponent: New York Red Rockets

Our opponent today was big. All down the roster they had size. We got off to a quick 2-0 lead on a break and layup off the tip. The lead soon evaporated and we played the half from behind. We struggled a little early with their press, which had us playing a bit tight, while they played loose. Our shots missed, theirs fell, we got tighter, they got looser. We had two players go down, both later returned. The deficit grew to double digits, and when we sank a 3-pt prayer at the buzzer, the lead was 11 at the half.

We cut the lead to 5 in the second half, but didn't have enough as the Rockets pulled away to a 71-53 final.



After the game, we got Chris for a few moments and had lunch at Panera's. We had to return him for "business" after lunch, so the rest of us wandered around Universal City Walk, enjoying the sights and sun (and air conditioned shops). We caught "Live Free or Die Hard" at the theaters there on City Walk.

AAU Nationals, Cocoa Beach Part 1

Day 1 (Sunday)
Today's agenda was registration in the morning and opening ceremonies in the evening. It quickly became clear that Chris had no need for me, so while he was biding time, we got some lunch and hit the beach. We caught up with Chris again at the opening ceremony. If there was a picture I wish I could have captured, it was this scene: 100 teams of 12 kids all on the floor of the gym--looked like we were going to do graduation. Each kid had a glow stick, that could be bent into a circle. This made the rings easy to fling. (Corinne was able to add a few pictures of this for me!) Part of the opening ceremony had a lady walking up the long aisle belting "Hit Me With Your Best Shot". Boy did she get it: glow rings were flung from all distances, and the best shots hit her! She hustled up to the front stage to finish, but the glow rings continued being flung.

That I don't have. I do have Lunch at Tropics City Bistro, and Sun on The Beach, and a few shots at the Opening Ceremony. My battery went, and I forgot to grab my spares when I got changed from the beach. Oh well.

Footloose! 2005

I came across a selection of photos yesterday from Tidewater's 2005 Footloose! They had been put on an alternate computer, and I had just had cause to put Google's Picasa application on that computer. Wow the lost gems that were found!

I hadn't done anything with the pictures before, because the quality was pretty bad. Prior to finding Picasa, that's where the story ends. But in a few brief moments of Picasa editing, VOILA! A little cropping, a lotta "I'm Feeling Lucky" (it's a Picasa photo-fixing button). Photographic genius, no. But presentable pictures from the past:

Fireworks weekend

We kicked off the weekend going to the Seussical Jr show at Tidewater. Good times, posted separately.

Then Cool Chris did a tournament this weekend. We split a pair of games in Upper Marlboro (Largo High School) on Saturday. Because of the lighting, I didn't think the pictures would turn out so well (they didn't), so I didn't take many. My best offering:



So besides going to Upper Marlboro (Largo High) for a pair of games, we joined up for a fireworks festival in Jacksonville. I know what you must be thinking. What would it look like to take pictures of fireworks? I wondered that very same thing, since the camera I use has a fireworks setting. Turns out the look something like this.



But the fun doesn't stop there. After church (it was my week for music, more on that later) we took off for day 2 of the tournament. The tournament in Upper Marlboro, you ask? Yes, and no. Day 2 of the tourney put the boys in Fairfax at Paul VI High School. We only had one game, maybe best to leave it at that. After the game, we put Chris and a pair of his teammates in the van and headed home. Somewhere along the way we got distracted, and found ourselves ordering cheesesteaks at Pats in Philadelphia. No, it really isn't on the way home, but sometimes you just need a good cheesesteak. Laura and I both got a cheese-wiz wit, and Chris got an American witout (that's wit(h) or witout onions...) Chris and I went back to split another Cheese Whiz without. Then we went home and played some doubles tennis. LB and I played Chris and Josh. Scoring 7-6 (CB), 6-3 (LB), 2-0 (CB) . By agreement, that meant Chris and Josh took the match. No pics of tournament day 2, Cheesesteaks, or tennis.

Tomorrow: orientation at Shenandoah...