Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

 Last Saturday was my annual golf get-together with friends from High School. It was the first time since the fourth member of our group passed away last September. It was bitter-sweet remembering him and playing golf on a beautiful day. Wish I could say my golf was beautiful. It was the worst round of golf I've played in at least 15 years. I am normally a low 40's per 9 golfer and can sometimes shoot in the 70's for 18, although I'm normally a low to mid 80's. I shot 51 on the front and 50 on the back for a final score of 101. I really couldn't do anything right - drives were mostly horrible, flubbed several easy approach shots, putted terribly (42 putts in 18 holes), and so on. Needless to say, I didn't win the tournament this year - that means I continue the longest streak of the remaining 3 without a victory (2017 was my last win). Next year will be the 30th anniversary of the event, although there was one year it was cancelled, so it will be the 29th pl...

We've seen a lot of rain over the past several days. From Thursday the 24th to Saturday the 26th, there's been anywhere from 7 to 10 inches of rain in a 3 day period (different locations near me had 7.35", 8.6", and 10.57" in official gauges). Our house sits on a little bit of a hill, so we haven't had any issues. The sump pump has kept up, and everything is dry inside the house. Others are not so lucky. Several of the streams and lakes around town are busting at the seams. With the storms over those 3 days, there were 2 different tornado warnings. Fortunately, the tornado warnings were because of doppler radar detecting rotation, rather than actual tornadoes being witnessed by spotters. And there's rain in the forecast (potential) for the next couple of days. Hopefully that rain holds off and we can dry things out a little bit here.

 The US Open concluded yesterday and Sunday started out with a lot of promise. After a few holes, there were several people close to the lead. There was one point where 13 people were within 3 shots of the lead and, of those 15, were all of the top 5 in the world ranking and 2 additional players that had won multiple majors each.  At another point, there were 4 players tied for the lead and 6 players 1 shot behind. But then, one by one, the wheels fell off almost everyone in the back 9. Most players it was early in the back 9, and we were left with just 2 players - Louis Oosthuizen and Jon Rahm. Jon finished at -6 and Louis had a bogey on 17 that dropped him 2 shots back, so it was a pretty anti-climatic finish after the great start of the day. There was a ball in a tree (Mackenzie Hughes), a quadruple-bogey by a contender (Bryson DeChambeau), a drive out of bounds by another contender (Justin Thomas, the #2 player in the world), a double-bogey by the #4 player in the world, a...

 After not camping at all in 2020 due to the pandemic, we've already made 1 trip this year and have 2 more scheduled. Hopefully going to have at least 1 or 2 additional trips before packing it up for the year. It's nice to get the camper out of hibernation and on the road. We even got new tires for the camper this year (just the 2 main tires - didn't do the spare).

Congratulations to Phil Mickelson becoming the oldest player to ever win a golf major by winning the PGA at age 50. He also set the record for the most years between victories at the same major at 16 years (2005 was the last time he won the PGA). The most remarkable stat that I heard was that on a very pivotal hole (the 16th), he had the longest drive of the day at 366 yards. When the pressure was on late in the round not only did he deliver, but he delivered better than anyone else did on Sunday. At 50 years old. After he had a bogey on the first hole Sunday, I thought it was going to be a long day for him. He didn't have a great round, but nobody else in close contention did either, and he ended up winning by 2 stokes.

Congratulations to Baylor winning the NCAA Championship. The game did not even come close to living up to its hype. It featured undefeated #1 Gonzaga and the 2-loss #2 Baylor Bears. It was the highest winning percentage for a championship game ever. The teams were supposed to play in December when they were ranked #1 and #2, but the game was canceled due to COVID-19 issues a couple of hours before the game.  Baylor started the game 9-0 and it was 11-1 at the first media time out. There was only a short period of time in the second half when the margin was under 10 points. Baylor led by 10 at halftime and ended up winning by 16, 86-70. The game was under 159.5 points, which is fitting because the unders dominated this tournament. Out of the 67 games, 40 of them went under. That's 60%. And Gonzaga was the favorite (lost the game outright) which means that underdogs were 35-32 against the spread and underdogs won the game outright 23 times. That's 34%, which is really high for und...

  William Hill sports book was doing a promo for new customers. Get a "free" bet of up to $300. If you lose the bet, you get your bet back in site credit. This means you have to "bet through" that amount. So, if you lose the $300 bet, you have to make 15 separate bets of $20 each before you can close your account. I went 50/50 with a friend of mine and we chose a 4 point underdog to win outright at +165. They ended up winning an incredibly stress-filled game and we won $495. It was a great win for us.

Today is the last day of the college basketball regular season. Quite a few games were cancelled because of COVID-19. Usually at the end of the regular season there are a bunch of 20-win teams. This year there are 20 out of 357 NCAA division 1 teams.  Illinois had a great regular season. 20 wins, 6 losses. Second place in the Big Ten conference. It looks like they will earn a top seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament (the bracket is announced one week from today). They are 1 of 4 teams to be ranked in the top 10 nationally in both offensive and defensive efficiency - Gonzaga, Michigan, and Houston are the other 3. That metric is normally a sign of a national championship - 10 of the last 12 national champions have ranked in the top 7 in offense and all have been ranked in the top 20 in defense. Illinois, Michigan, and Gonzaga are the only 3 teams that fit into that group this year.  Since there was no NCAA tournament last year, people are little more excited than usual for Marc...

Last year the NCAA basketball tournament was cancelled due to COVID-19. This year they are isolating it to Indianapolis and doing some other things to keep players and coaches, etc. safe. Today the TV schedule was announced. It looks pretty similar to other years, but the first four games are all on the same night instead of on consecutive nights. And the tournament itself is pushed back a few days. Usually the round of 64 games are Thursday and Friday, this year they are Friday and Saturday. That means that I don't have to take 2 days of vacation this year to watch the games - I'll just take Friday off. Here are the times (all times Central): First Four Thursday 3/18 at 4:00, 5:20, 7:30, and 8:50 Friday/Saturday First Round games 3/19 and 3/20 at 11:00, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30, 1:45, 2:20, 2:50, 3:20, 5:15, 6:00 (x 2), 6:15, 8:10, 8:30, 8:45, and 8:50 Sunday/Monday Second Round games 3/21 and 3/22 at 11:00, 1:30, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 6:30, 7:30, and 8:30 (I won't be taking Monday...

 We bit the bullet a few days ago and got rid of all TV providers and are only going with streaming now. A few years ago we switched from Comcast to a local company called Metronet, but still included TV. Then, once the introductory prices went back up, we switched back to Comcast because the package of TV+Internet was cheaper. Now, after that contract was up, we switched back to Metronet, but with an Internet-only package. We're using only streaming services for TV.  So far it's been decent. There is the occasional time when there's buffering on the TV, but it's minor and goes away fairly quickly. The speeds seem to work well for us and we haven't had really any issues, but we're also only a few days into this new way of watching TV.

People generally know about winning the grand slam in golf - victories in the 4 major tournaments (US Open, Masters, British Open, PGA). There have been 5 players who have done it in history - Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player have done it. Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods won each of those majors at least 3 times so they are each 3 times grand slam winners. Any discussion about the greatest golfer of all time comes down to those 2 golfers. In addition to winning the majors, there is a thing called the "second slam" where you get second place in all four majors. There have been 8 players who have done this. Craig Wood, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen, and Dustin Johnson are 7 of those. What about Tiger and Jack? Tiger hasn't gotten second place in all the majors. Jack, in addition to winning the grand slam three times over, has won the second slam 4 times over. In my mind, that closes the argument. Tiger has won a lot of tournament...

In a normal year, the college basketball season would have started by now. With this being 2020 and all, it's starting the day before Thanksgiving. I'm an Illinois fan. I'm not a season ticket holder, but I know people who are and I buy 2-3 games a year off of them to go watch. Illinois is ranked 8th in the nation in the pre-season. I can't imagine what it would be like to be one of these people who invested all the time and money over the last however-many years hoping this team would eventually be good, and now they are good and you can't go to the games because of COVID-19. What a bummer. I'm sure the Iowa fans and season ticket holders feel the same way. At least I'll be able to watch the games on TV. And I'd rather they be good than bad, even if I can't see them in person.

I noticed over the weekend that I haven't been on a plane since July of last year. I highly doubt that I'll be on a plane the rest of 2020. That will be a span of at least 16 months between flights. I started my current job in March of 2007. It started out as a travel job - going to customer sites. In recent years things have been more remote, but I've still had periodic trips. Going back to early 2000, when I moved to Colorado, I would fly back to Illinois at least once a year if not more. I don't have records for the 1990's, but my wife and I are fans of vacations and most certainly took flights at least once a year going back to our marriage in 1997.  All this means that I'm guessing it's been 25 or more years since I've gone this long without being on a plane.

 Last week my family and I spent the week in Branson, MO. We chose to stay at a VRBO condo to minimize any potential contact with other guests (like we would see in a hotel). We were a bit concerned at the start of the trip - we did carry out pizza the first night and walked in to pick up the pizza and the 3 customers (2 others plus myself) were all masked but out of the 7 or 8 employees, there was only 1 mask. We did find out that Branson had implemented a mask order on July 31st, so those employees should have been wearing a mask. The rest of the restaurants we frequented during the week were all masked up and had signs telling people to wear masks. Early in the week we went to a show in a theater. People wore their masks coming into the show, but the majority of people took them off when they sat down. I would say the theater was around 15% full. There was nobody in our row and nobody directly in front of or behind us. There were groups in the row in front of us to either side, ...

 Just like a lot of districts across the state and nation, our district is starting school remotely. School starts on Monday, August 24. Initially we were given a choice of 100% remote learning from a different company (outside of the district) or 2 days on site and 3 days remote from the district. We figured that at some point everyone would be remote, so it would be less disruptive if we just did all remote from the start. Turns out, "at some point" was "before the start of school" and now we're just like every other kid in the district learning remote from the district. It's going to be strange, and it's supposed to be "real class" instead of what they were doing last March, April, and May attempting to just make it through the school year. We're talking online web conferences with the different teachers, online videos when they aren't doing web conferences, and so on. An actual structured learning day.  Here's hoping it all goes...

Over the weekend I took a very mini-vacation up to Iowa to play a couple rounds of golf and stay at Riverside Casino. We drove up on Sunday through some horrible rain and played in the afternoon. The weather for golfing was perfect - mid 80s, sunny, light breeze. Then we stayed overnight and golfed Monday morning before driving home. It was a bit strange seeing all the masks on everyone, but it seems like most people were being smart and trying to stay safe. This was my first time golfing this year, and it showed. I shot a 91 both days, although I did manage a birdie each day. The course we played is pretty difficult, and shooting 91 isn't anything embarrassing, but I still would have liked to have been in the 80s - I don't like shooting worse than bogey golf (a bogey on every hole would be a 90).

I realized that I didn't post anything in the month of June. Last post was about getting our dog. She's working out pretty well - the cats still don't really want anything to do with her, but they get along well enough. We're doing some training with her. She's smart, but she's also a bit stubborn - some things she knows what we're saying, but will only obey for a few seconds.  We still haven't brought out the camper this year, and I honestly don't know if it will happen or not. Camping is an outdoor, socially distant, activity, but part of the fun in camping is doing all the stuff the campground has to offer - the playground, the pool, and so on. That stuff isn't the best with COVID-19 potentials. And the campground bathrooms should be strictly off limits. Our camper has a bathroom, but since it hasn't been out this year, it's still winterized from last fall. That means a lot of extra time to de-winterize in order to use the bathroom. An...

Although not officially adopted yet, we now have a dog. Bailey came to our house last Saturday (May 16). With the coronavirus stuff still going on, we haven't been able to take her to the vet or anything like that yet. She still needs to be spayed (which will happen as soon as possible, but nobody knows what that means). She's a rescue that's estimated to be 1 year old and has already had a litter of puppies. Bailey and the 2 cats still need to work some stuff out. So far, they just tolerate each other. There's been a little bit of growling, but it's been better than expected so far. I'm hoping that the growling goes away and that they simply tolerate each other - I'm not expecting anything more than that.

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...