Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

I am officially going back to Las Vegas for March Madness in 2017. The flights are purchased and we have the hotel room reserved. 11 weeks from today is the date we will be leaving. In a few weeks we will be deciding on the viewing parties for Thursday and Friday. There are a lot of different options for viewing parties - do we want no frills, food included, drink included, or food and drink included? How much do we want to spend for a reserved seat all day? Do we want to be on the strip or downtown? Do we want to be close to the hotel? A lot of decisions are needed for the viewing parties, and all that will happen after the holidays.

Today I bought the last thing on my Christmas shopping list. I did almost all of my shopping on line this year (yes, bad Matt, "buy local") but it's just far too easy to take 10 minutes out of my day and find gifts on line and buy them and have them delivered for free. I can't even get to most stores in 10 minutes if I drive.

Very late last night, the Cubs won the World Series. The final was 8-7 in 10 innings. Some people are calling it the best closing game ever. It was an awesome game, that's for sure. Cubs were up 5-1 at one point. Cleveland came back to make it 5-3, then another home run made it 6-3 and things were looking pretty good. Cleveland scores 3 runs in the 8th to tie the game. Rain started in the 9th inning. After 9 innings, there was a short rain delay. I was at Buffalo Wild Wings and the full house dropped to about 50% capacity (maybe less) during the rain delay. But the delay was only 15 or 20 minutes, and the Cubs scored 2 runs in the top of the 10th to take an 8-6 lead. Cleveland came back yet again with a run in the bottom of the 10th, but that wasn't enough as the third out was a short grounder to 3rd base. It has been 108 years since the Cubs last won a World Series, which of course was the longest streak in baseball. Now that torch has ironically been passed to Cleveland, wh...

Game 7 between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians will be tonight. The first two games were in Cleveland. Cleveland won the first game and the Cubs won the second. Then the series moved to Chicago for three games. Cleveland won the first two in Chicago to take a 3-1 lead. Then Chicago won game 5 to send the series back to Cleveland for the last two games. Last night, Chicago won to force the seventh game.

We still have 2 full months to go in 2016, but I've already scheduled 10 days of vacation in 2017. The second half of the school year has some days off (spring break, a couple 4 day weekends, etc) and we've allocated some "daddy-daughter" days on some of those days off. Then I always have my March Madness opening weekend, so there's two days for that. And we have a cruise scheduled later in the year, so I have time off for that. Just seems weird to have all this vacation scheduled already when I can't officially put it on any calendar for work yet.

Tonight is the first night of the World Series. The Chicago Cubs are in there for the first time since 1945. The last time they won it was 1908. They are going up against the Cleveland Indians, who haven't won a World Series since 1948 (although they've been a couple times in fairly recent history). One fan base is going to stop a long drought, and the other will put a stranglehold on the "longest since winning a championship" drought. Tonight and tomorrow are in Cleveland. Then Friday, Saturday, and (if needed) Sunday in Chicago. The final two games (if needed) will be in Cleveland next Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm pretty sure neither team has played a game in November, so if this series goes 6 or 7 games, that will be a first.

The Cubs won the first round of the playoffs over San Francisco last night. The first game was 1-0 with a home run in the bottom of the 8th. The second game was 5-2. The third game was a 13 inning loss (the game finished about 1:45 AM my time). The fourth game was a dramatic win with 4 runs scored in the top of the 9th to win 6-5. Now they will play either Los Angeles or Washington (that series is tied 2-2 with the 5th and final game tomorrow night).

The Cubs won the NL Central division last night. They are one of the fastest to win a division in recent history. Hopefully they can keep the success going throughout the playoffs. They haven't made the World Series in so long (and even longer since they won it) - it would be great to see that happen this year.

I noticed that my passport was expiring next July. According to everything I've read, you want to send the renewal in about 9 months before the expiration date, so I went ahead and sent it in. Well, it took a grand total of 2 weeks to get my passport back. The process was incredibly painless, as a matter of fact. I filled out the on-line application, which you print and send in with your old passport and a new photo. It probably helped that I'm on the TSA Pre Check list, so I've already been screened and all that - no additional checks were needed (if they would have done them - I don't know). But 9 months seems a little excessive now. And the renewal is for 10 years from the date of issuance, so I basically lost almost a year from my old passport. Oh, well. It's renewed now and I don't have to worry about mine for a while. My wife and my daughter will need to renew theirs in a few years.

We just finished our third camping trip of the year. The camping trips themselves were pretty successful, although my wife getting poison ivy and being miserable for three weeks wasn't fun. Trip 1 - Weldon Springs state park for 1 night. This was the only time we went hiking (which is most likely where the poison ivy happened). The campground was decent, but there wasn't a lot of stuff to do there besides hiking. We were at site 69 which was off the main loop a bit and just around the corner from the showers and the playground. The location was pretty good, but there just wasn't enough to do there. Trip 2 - Kickapoo State Park for 2 nights. There was a lot of stuff to do there, which was nice. We went fishing, but I only caught 1 fish and my daughter and wife didn't catch any. The campground wasn't very tent-friendly. We had to put the tent on part of the gravel driveway because that was the only place where it would fit. There's another loop called the Miam...

Last night was the baseball all star game, which the American League won. But it's the unofficial half-way point of the baseball season. The Cubs no longer have the best record in baseball, they are now second to San Francisco. But they still have by far the biggest run differential: +139 (scored 139 more runs than they've given up). They have a 7 game lead in their division, but 5 of the 6 divisions have leaders with big leads (5.5 games, 6 games, 2 at 6.5 games, and the Cubs at 7). Their pace has slowed down quite a bit (they are actually 2-8 in their last 10 games). I was worried about keeping up that early pace for the whole year. Maybe now with a few days off they will be ready for the second half of the season and into the playoffs.

Last weekend we went on the second camping trip of the summer. This time, we went for two nights and spent the day on Saturday doing some fishing and paddle boat riding. The weather was gorgeous again - even though it was a little humid, it was cool enough to be bearable. My daughter really loves camping, so I think we're going to go one more time this summer. We've been very fortunate with the weather so far, so I'm wondering what will happen when we get rain on a trip. Hopefully it will still be a good enough experience even with rain that she won't be completely turned off of camping. We spent too much money on gear (tent, stove, air mattress, lantern, fan, cooking supplies, fishing gear, containers for storage and transport, and so on) for us to not make use of it for a few more years.

As of today, the Cubs are 41-17 (.707 winning percentage). That's 5.5 games better than anybody else (the Nationals and Rangers are both 36-23). But what's stunning is the run differential. The Cubs have scored 313 runs and given up 164, which is a +149 run differential. The second best run differential in all of baseball is the Red Sox at +70. The Cubs are more than double that second best run differential. That's pretty amazing. But I also guess it doesn't matter how you are doing in early June. What really matters is getting to the playoffs and then how you perform in October.

Last weekend (Memorial Day weekend) my family and I went camping with a friend. It was my daughter's first real camping trip (besides the basement/backyard), my wife's first camping trip that she can remember, and my first camping trip since I was a child. That's why we chose a friend to go with - he has a lot of experience and has a lot of the gear we were missing. We chose to only go 1 night, which meant we had to go Sunday night. (If you picked Friday or Saturday on a holiday weekend, there was a 2 night minimum). We were basically limiting ourselves to the sites where someone picked Friday and Saturday night and left on Sunday so we could take their spot. We found a place about a half hour away. We couldn't have asked for better weather. It was gorgeous, not very windy, and not even a hint of rain. Temperatures were in the 80's during the day and got to around the mid 60's at night. It was a little cool at night, but not overly so. (I woke up early in th...

I spent the last two days at a conference called FILO  (stands for "first in, last out" meaning that technical people are the ones that are the first to arrive and last to leave when they work at church). It was a very interesting conference and I learned quite a bit. The problem that I, personally, had with it is that I'm a volunteer at church (although there were a lot of volunteers there). So I'm really only working a couple Sundays a month and nothing during the week. A lot of the information would be more relevant if I was putting in more time at church. Even so, I still got a lot of good information. One thing that was really good about the conference was to find out what other churches are doing. Church congregation sizes are fairly easy to find. And you can see online replays of services and get an idea about how many cameras they run, but you don't know how many people they have in the booth, how many cameras are remote controlled, what kind of audio an...

Last night the UPS driver delivered our brand new tent. Even though we had other stuff going on, I just had to put it up in the basement to see how it looks. The instructions were horrible - if they were in a foreign language it wouldn't have been any worse than they were. But I eventually figured it out and it looks pretty good. It's big (6 person) which is what we wanted - from my (very limited) experience, an "x" person tent comfortably fits about "1/2 x" people, or maybe a little more. Meaning, a 4 person tent is good for 2-3 people. So the 6 person tent would be good for 3-4 people. We're going to try it out for real in a couple weeks when we go camping. My daughter is excited about camping, but my wife isn't. We'll have to see how everything goes with this trip. Going forward, it may be something that my daughter and I do together instead of being a full family thing.

I think the family summer vacation is all planned out now. This summer we'll be driving out to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, Custer State Park, and so on. My wife and I had been there when we lived in Colorado, but we want my daughter to experience this. She'll be 7 years old and should be able to remember this trip when she gets older - she's in the "maybe, maybe not" age of remembering things way down the road. Meaning, I remember some stuff from this age, but not a lot. We figured that if she doesn't remember this, that's all right - there are other experiences we certainly want her to remember (Grand Canyon, Washington DC, and some others) so we're going to wait until she's a bit older before doing those.

What a great finish to the NCAA Tournament. Villanova making a last second shot to win the game, after North Carolina made a double-clutch 3 point shot to tie the game with 4.7 seconds to go. Great finish. Here's the results of my picking the line, total, and money line of every single game this year (except the money line which wasn't available on the 16 vs 1 games in the first round). On money line picks I was 45-18 (71.4%). Tim was 40-23 (63.5%). For straight bets (with the spread) I was 31-33-3 (48.5%) and Tim was 35-31-1 (53.0%). (Note that for some games, depending on when we made our picks, the line was different. That's why I have 3 pushes and Tim only had 1). For totals (over/unders) I was a putrid 29-37-1 (44.0%) and Tim was even worse at 28-38-1 (42.5%). Combing all those bets, I was 105-88-4 (54.3%) and Tim was 103-92-2 (52.8%). If we were betting real money (which we wouldn't do on every single line, total, and money line - we'd only bet the o...

Last September I posted about a trip to Great Wolf Lodge . We ended up going back there for a few days over spring break. We were able to complete MagiQuest (finally defeated the dragon and the goblin) and went through most of ShadowQuest (the next phase). I don't know if ShadowQuest was easier because we knew more than when we started or because it was actually easier, but we were able to finish most of that game when there were things on MagiQuest we struggled with. You can always go back and re-do some of the past adventures, but I don't know if we'll do that or not. Again, the trip was good. The water parks were crowded, but not overly so. We were able to spend enough time in there. We ate one dinner at High Rock Cafe and would certainly go back - that was delicious. So we now have Mac's (highly recommended) and of course Moosejaw Pizza and Buffalo Phil's and Pizza Pub . There's a few others we would like to try on a return trip, which I'm assuming...

I don't think it's ever happened before, but my national champion prediction lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Michigan State lost to Middle Tennessee St in the first round. The bracket is divided into two halves every year. My left half is almost perfect - 15 out of 16 in the first round, then 8 out of 8 in the second round. As for the right half, I got 12 out of 16 in the first round (pretty good), and then only 3 out of 8 in the second round. The sweet 16 starts tonight. Obviously, the left half of my bracket could still win all 4 games. But on the right half, I only have a chance to win 2 of the 4 games. I'm in the 99% nationally in ESPN, ranking 96,467 total. (I don't know how many millions of brackets there are). But of course that could drop based on what happens from here going forward.