Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

I just spent the last few evenings compiling a list of the college basketball in-season tournaments to get ready for the college basketball season. I mostly need these tournaments to know where neutral site games are being played so I can compute my college basketball RPI values correctly. Hopefully I found them all - I ended up with a list of 44 tournaments. Some are named very similarly, and some aren't really "tournaments" (like the Big 10-ACC Challenge). Here's the list I have: 76 Classic ACC-Big 10 Challenge Athletes In Action Basketball Hall of Fame Showcase Basketball Travelers Classic Basketball Travelers Invitational Basketball Travelers Tip-Off Tourney BB&T Classic Big 12-Pac 10 Hardwood Challenge Big East-SEC Invitational Cable Car Classic Cancun Challenge CBE Classic Charleston Classic Chicago Invitational Challenge Coaches vs. Cancer Classic Diamond Head Classic Duel in the Desert Glen Wilkes Classic Golden Bear Classic Great Alaska Shootout Hispanic ...

Yesterday I returned from my trip to Central Illinois. I was flying from Peoria to Chicago, then Chicago to Denver. For just about every trip I take, I try to upgrade to first class using my "500 mile upgrade" certificates. I almost never get it, and I have a decent amount of certificates, so I keep trying to use them. Well, for the Chicago -> Denver flight, I was upgraded to first class. Yeah! Except when my Peoria -> Chicago flight was delayed and I missed my connection. So, the one time I get to use my upgrade, it turns out that I couldn't use my upgrade. I ended up in the middle of the exit row on the next flight out of Chicago, so it wasn't all bad. But I'd really like to get an upgrade to actually come through one of these times...

I've been Hilton Diamond for a couple of years now. It's an awesome program. But I'm in danger of losing my status this year because of how little I've traveled. I have 22 hotel nights this calendar year so far. I need 60 to maintain my status. I have 4 scheduled for next week and 2 the week after that. That's 28, so I need 32 more over the last 3 months of the year. I know I have a trip to Boston that will be 4 nights in October. And I know of a trip to Los Angeles in November that is 2 nights. I have a 3 night visit and a 2 night visit that haven't been scheduled yet. But that still leaves 21 days to go. Ouch. This might be a problem. I don't want to lose my diamond status!!

Today our nanny called in sick. So I was at home with Sabrina duty. At less than 3 months, she is doing things in 4 hour blocks during the working hours - 2 hours of up time (eating, activity, play-time, diaper changing, etc) followed by 2 hours of napping. In those 2 hours, I tried to do some work. I failed pretty miserably. There were two such cycles today, so in theory I could have gotten 4 hours of work done. But I maybe, got 3 hours of work in. And with a big gap between, I really didn't accomplish much. I tried to book some travel to New York in a couple of weeks, but all the hotels were either sold out or I couldn't get a good rate, so I had to fight my way through the system (trying a different combination, etc.) and ended up having to talk to a travel agent. Then I had a meeting with a customer. Between those two things, most of my 3 hours of actual work was used up. Hopefully the nanny is back tomorrow and I can get some actual work done...