Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

It's almost the end of April and I generally try to post something at least once a month. But with the stay at home order having taking up more than the last 6 weeks, there really isn't much to report. My family has been staying at home, going outside when the weather cooperates enough to go for a walk or play tennis on the driveway or whatever. We do all our shopping online now and go pick things up. For example, we do an online order for groceries and then go pick them up after a few days. (There are so many people doing that, it's a few days between when you order and when you pick up). Then the groceries sit out in the garage for a few days (the longer the better) just in case. That means that we have to plan our groceries about a week and a half out - what are we going to need 10 days from now? It makes shopping really difficult. But we're staying safe and healthy and hoping things return to normal at some point.

The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has forced people to stay at home (for the most part) for the foreseeable future. I've been working at home for the past week and it will continue for at least a couple more weeks if not longer. My daughter was off school last week, the upcoming week is spring break, and then she'll be at home for at least a week and a half after that. Instead of working in the office in the basement, I've moved everything upstairs into the dining room. The setup isn't too bad, and I'm not locked away from everything like I would be in the basement. We can go out for groceries and to do drive through (or curbside pickup) food, but a lot of the town is shut down. It's just a very strange time that will last a few more weeks at least. As of today, there have been 6 confirmed cases in my county, 753 cases in the state (along with 6 deaths), nearly 27,000 in the United States (354 deaths), and over 322,000 world wide (13,829 deaths). It appears that Ch...

I understand the decision, but it still stinks. I've taken the first days of the NCAA basketball tournament off for at least the last 20 years and have made several posts about  my NCAA basketball trips over the years. I really don't know how to respond to this news. It's really sad that some of these players, especially seniors on teams who would be making their first NCAA tournament (Illinois, Rutgers, Penn State, countless others), won't get a chance to play in the NCAA tournament. My wife and daughter are supposed to be going to the Billie Eilish concert during spring break in a couple of weeks. So far, she has not canceled any tour dates, but I'm not confident about that concert still happening. We'll just wait and see I guess. COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on the entire world right now.

I love college basketball and love betting on college basketball. With sports betting coming to more and more states, trips just to bet on March Madness are becoming less necessary. But I still have my entire history of March Madness trips here in one place: https://mattholthe.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-march-madness-trips.html  2001 through 2009 https://mattholthe.blogspot.com/2012/07/march-madness-since-2009.html  2010 through 2012 https://mattholthe.blogspot.com/2014/03/march-madness-trips-2013-2014.html  2013 and 2014 In 2015, I attended the Final Four games in Indianapolis. I saw Wisconsin beat an undefeated Kentucky team and then Duke destroy Michigan State in the semi-finals, and then was back two days later to watch Duke beat Wisconsin in the final. In 2016, we went to Wisconsin Dells over Spring Break. Very close timing-wise to the NCAA tournament, so hard to justify anything other than staying around town for the games.  https://mattholthe.blogspot.com...

I was just gathering up my travel statistics for 2019 (yes, we're almost 2 full months into 2020, I know). What's interesting is comparing the 7 year averages from 2007 (when I started my current job) through 2013 and the 6 year averages from 2014 (when travel slowed way down and I started doing more and more remotely) through 2019. From 2007 through 2013, I averaged 57 work nights a year on the road (basically, Sunday night through Thursday night, excluding holidays and vacations). This meant I was on the road 25.8% of the work nights. Factoring in the entire year (including vacations when I was away from home) I averaged spending the night somewhere besides home 86.6 nights a year, or 24.3% of the year. Starting with 2014, I was still doing about the same number of trips away from home. (Slightly fewer, but not by a significant amount) But now I'm spending an average of 2.8% of the work nights away from home (6.3 work nights per year) and 8.3% of the total calendar ni...

The Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl last night 31-20. They were down in the fourth quarter. (The guy who sits in the row next to mine has said multiple times "with 5 minutes to go", which isn't true - they scored with a little over 6 minutes to go to bring it within 3). They were down every game in the post season and won all of them. My daughter was rooting for the Chiefs, but she didn't really have much reasoning behind it. But at least she went to bed happy last night because "her team" won the game.

Next week is the end of another decade. My, how time flies and things change. Late in 2009 I was moving back to Illinois after becoming a father a few months earlier. I've now lived in Illinois for 10 years and my daughter is in fifth grade. I'm still doing the same job, but travel has gone down significantly. People are way more willing to let me help them remotely instead of requiring me to be on site. So I'm able to get the work done without having to be physically on site. I turned a half a century old this year and I'm realizing that I'm going to have to make a lot of changes to live another 50 years. Here's to the next decade!

As a dual birthday celebration for myself and a friend who has a birthday the day after mine, 5 of us went to Tunica, MS for the weekend last weekend. It was a pretty nice weekend, although the 7 hour drive is a bit long. We chose Tunica because it is a more centralized location for the people who came and they have sports betting. We watched and bet on the college football championship games. If Ohio State had gotten a touchdown at the end of the game instead of a field goal (they were second and goal from the 1 yard line) then things would have turned out a little better than they did. I did all right gambling - didn't win, but also didn't lose as much as I budgeted. I really liked the Gold Strike casino where we stayed. The sports bar was great with a wall of TV's and the betting window just outside the sports bar. We also played Top Golf right next to the sports bar and that was a lot of fun. It was all virtual golf but it was pretty realistic and a nice way to spend a ...

Now that the Nationals have won the World Series, the 2010's decade of sports champions is complete. Every one of the 4 major sports had a single team win 3 championships in the 2010's. In basketball, it was the Golden State Warriors. In football, it was the New England Patriots. In baseball, it was the San Francisco Giants. And in hockey, it was the Chicago Blackhawks. Here's the champions from each year: Year Football Hockey Basketball Baseball 2010 New Orleans Saints Chicago Blackhawks Los Angeles Lakers San Francisco Giants 2011 Green Bay Packers Boston Bruins Dallas Mavericks St Louis Cardinals 2012 New York Giants Los Angeles Kings Miami Heat San Francisco Giants 2013 Baltimore Ravens Chicago Blackhawks Miami Heat Boston Red Sox 2014 Seattle Seahawks Los Angeles Kings San Antonio Spurs San Francisco Giants 2015 New England Patriots Chicago Blackhawks Golden State Warriors Kansas City Royals 2016 Denver Broncos Pittsburgh Penguins Cleveland Cavaliers Chicago...

The Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros last night to win the World Series. The road team won every game of the series. That's the first time that's happened in any major sport (NBA, NHL, MLB). It was also the first time all year that Houston lost 4 straight at home. Washington was 6-0 in the Central Time Zone during the playoffs (they beat St Louis twice on the road, and all their other games were either in DC or Los Angeles). The Astros were pretty big favorites to win when the series began, but I haven't heard how the money was flowing to know if Vegas took a hit with the underdog winning. The last time a baseball team from Washington DC won a World Series was 1924. This team started out as the Montreal Expos in 1969. Ironically, that Senators team in 1924 is also only one of 5 teams in baseball history to overcome a multi-run deficit in the 7th inning or later of game 7. The Nationals were down 2-0 going into the 7th and won 6-2.

I'm going to be spending a lot of time at church over the next month. Here's my schedule: Saturday October 26 - running a camera Saturday November 2 - switcher Sunday November 3 - switcher Wednesday November 6 - running lyrics during "Night of Worship" Saturday November 9 - producer Sunday November 10 - producer Friday November 22 - switcher Saturday November 23 - switcher I also initially planned on being switcher the weekend of November 30/December 1 (haven't built that schedule yet) because I'm not going to be available the first 2 full weekends in December. But I might have to rethink that plan at this point - I'll just wait and see.

My car (Honda CR-V) has an indicator that lists real time miles per gallon. Normally it gets in the low 24's (24.2 to 24.4 or so). For the last tank, I decided that I wanted to maximize the MPG. I was able to get 26.0, but I found I had to change my driving. The most significant change was getting up to speed after at a stop light/stop sign. I had to take things really slowly getting up to the speed limit in order to not hurt my MPG. I did some calculations on this tank of gas. I drove 301.7 miles on this tank of gas. At 26 MPG, that meant I used 11.604 gallons of gas. If I had driven my normal way and gotten 24.2 MPG, then I would have used 12.467 gallons of gas. I saved 0.863 gallons of gas. At $2.519 per gallon (I love the 9/10 of a cent to cheat you out of money), I saved $2.17 on this fill up. Was the way I had to drive to get this better mileage worth $2.17? Not really. It was a very significant change in driving, and I'm sure there were times when I reached my destin...

We ended up using the camper on 4 different trips this year. 3 trips with the family for weekends, and then a trip with the guys for one night. The one night trip wouldn't normally be worth it, but it gave me a chance to do the winterizing of the water system at the campground instead of making a separate trip just to do that. I think overall the family likes having the camper. The maintenance all falls to me, which is a decent amount of work. It would be great if that could be minimized or shared or something, but it is what it is right now. I would really like to take a longer vacation to really get some use out of the camper, but our car wouldn't be able to take a trip through any kind of mountains. Maybe in another year or two we'll trade in my smaller SUV (that can't tow) and get a truck. The next trip I'm looking forward to is a guys weekend in Mississippi in another couple of months.

My last post was "have yet to go camping in 2019". Since then we've had 2 camping weekends and anywhere from 1 to 3 more scheduled for this year. All have been weekend trips, but getting it out and using the camper has been fun. It's a decent amount of work, but I enjoy it. We have 1 more trip for sure scheduled in September, but I'm trying to get a guys night out scheduled and we want to do a trip in October before running through all the end of year stuff.

It's been a busy start to the summer of 2019. We have yet to bring out the camper and go somewhere, even for a weekend. And it's going to be another month or so before that situation is rectified. This coming up weekend is my daughter's birthday party, and then the next weekend we leave for vacation (which covers 2 weekends). It's going to be mid-July before we have a chance to bring out the camper and go on a weekend trip.

Tiger Woods won the Masters today by 1 shot. It was his first major title in 11 years, and the 15th of his career. He's now 3 behind the record of 18 set by Jack Nicklaus. One odd thing to point out - Jack won his 17th major in his 76th major played as a professional. Tiger has played 75 majors as a professional. Through 75 majors played as a professional, Jack had 16 victories, 15 2nd place finishes, and 40 top 3's. Tiger has 15 victories, 7 2nd place finishes, and 26 top 3's. That's the thing that always amazed me about Jack - he was always on the first page of the leader board it seems. Jack's peak went through major number 83. After that, he played in 73 more majors and had 1 win and 6 other top 10 finishes. But in majors 1 through 83 Jack had 17 wins, 18 seconds, 19 finishes from 3rd through 5th (54 top 5's) and 66 total top 10's. 80% of the time Jack was in the top 10 of a major. That is simply incredible.

Today is round three of the Masters. Coming into round three, there are 5 people tied for 1st place at -7. Each of those 5 players -- Italy's Francesco Molinari (2018 Open Championship), Australia's Jason Day (2015 PGA Championship) and Adam Scott (2013 Masters), South Africa's Louis Oosthuizen (2010 Open Championship) and American Brooks Koepka (2017 and '18 U.S. Open and 2018 PGA) -- has at least one major championship title. Five players with major titles have never shared the lead after any round in any major. In fact, it's the first time since the 2002 PGA Championship that any five players -- with or without a major title -- have shared the 36-hole lead at a major. If that's not enough, 2 of the 4 players one stroke behind in 6th place are Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson, who have won major titles themselves. I'm looking forward to watching how all this unfolds this weekend.

A year after Virginia because the first #1 seed to lose to a #16 seed, theywon their first NCAA Championship. It was a matchup between teams who had never been to the championship game - Virginia against Texas Tech. The game went into overtime and Virginia won 85-77. The over/under on the game was 120 with these 2 defensive-minded teams, and they went way over that. The game was back and forth, although Virginia led for a majority of the game. I wasn't able to stay up for the whole game, which I guess ended somewhere around 10:45 PM my time. The last time the championship game when to overtime was when Kansas beat Memphis back in 2008.

The college basketball conference tournaments started this week. This year, a friend and I are having a conference tournament challenge. We are picking the semifinal and final games for all 32 conference tournaments, plus the quarterfinals for the "power 6" conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, Pac-12, and Big East). That's 32 finals, 64 semifinals, and 24 quarterfinals, or a total of 120 games. For each game, we have to pick either the point spread or the total (but not both). You can also do the money line if you don't like either the spread or the total. And we bet (fake money), between $22 and $100 on each game. Person with the biggest bank account at the end wins the bet. Everything starts today with the Atlantic Sun semifinals - North Florida (o/u 139.5) at Liberty (-9.5) and NJIT (o/u 145.5) at Lipscomb (-12). Should be an interesting 11 days.

It took until the end of February, but I finally got sick this winter. And it's been saving everything up. I thought at first it was a mild case of the flu - I got my vaccine in October, but it wouldn't be unusual for someone to still get the flu, just not as bad. I had chills Sunday night. I stayed home from work Monday. Tuesday I felt a little better, but worked from home to not spread any germs around. Wednesday (yesterday) I did a regular full day of work in the office, but I was coughing a decent amount. Now, today, I'm coughing and blowing my nose and I feel pretty run down. I'm hoping I can get over this soon.