Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Today is the Monday before Thanksgiving. This is the first year in a long time that I'm actually in an office for this week. There have been a couple of years where I had trips - once to Mexico where I flew home Thanksgiving morning and six years ago when we moved from Colorado to Illinois over Thanksgiving week. But that's been it for the last 15 years I think. So normally I have a chance to stay at home and watch some of the college basketball during this week - the Maui Invitational is one of my favorite tournaments. This year I won't be able to watch much if any because of working in an office and other stuff I have going on this week. Oh, well, maybe next year.

Today is the first day of the 2015-2016 college basketball season. College basketball is my favorite sport to watch, and has been for many years. I think I like it so much because games are usually right around 2 hours long, so there isn't a huge time commitment (pro football is a little over 3 hours and college football is more like 4 hours any more). And I like the unpredictability that comes with college age kids playing a sport - there's clearly talent, but sometimes the decision making process isn't as crisp, which leads to unpredictability. And although I don't make bets with real money on games, I do follow point spreads and over/unders in college and pro basketball and football, which does add a different spin to watching the games. Team A is favored by 26 points in basketball? You can still be interested in watching that game, not for whether they will win or not, but whether they will cover the spread or not. It's kind of like playing with a handicap in ...

I did a walk around my entire neighborhood yesterday. It's about a 2 mile walk to get up and down every street. I made note of lots that were empty to see just how close the neighborhood is to being complete. There are two parts to the neighborhood - east and west of a four lane road that eventually (maybe 20 years down the road) will be a major street. Today that street is just a way to get in the neighborhood and nothing more. There's plans to build further north, which will increase traffic on that road, but that hasn't even been started yet. Anyway, in the "east" part of the neighborhood, there are 6 empty lots. One of them is being built on right now (has a basement). On the "west" part of the neighborhood, there are 4 empty lots with 2 of them having "sold" signs on it. By knowing what sides of the street the empty lots are on, it is possible to walk entirely around the neighborhood on sidewalks. (In other words, there isn't a str...