Go Cubs go

The season starts today. I'm excited but also terrified; see the Cubs blog for more.

Oh, and I've got a mantra for the season:



Hey, it worked for Obama! (And since he's an annoying Sox fan, if appropriating his slogan would tick him off even slightly, all the better.)

They're watching me, watching me fall

Sure enough, right as October rolls around, the weather cools off precipitously. On one of the last warmish days, last Sunday, Alma and I went up to Elkhorn, WI, for the Apple Festival at the Apple Barn. It was probably nostalgia to some degree; I'm sure I haven't been apple picking in 15 years, and I can't remember going more than once, but it was something I had been thinking about doing.

There are closer places, but the Apple Barn had a few attractions besides merely apples, namely the Apple Festival's promise of cider donuts and a tree maze. Unfortunately, it turned out that cider donuts are either the hardest baked good to make in the world ever, or just the most popular. The Apple Barn was limiting orders to a dozen per person due to a problem with machinery, and the line showed no signs of moving. We actually ended up going to Apple Holler, just north of Kenosha, where they did have cider donuts - and it was still a 20-minute wait because of demand. As for the tree maze, it wasn't exactly that tough. You could see through all the trees inside the maze, and the whole thing was only about 30 or 40 feet on a side.

Picking apples itself was pretty fun. I got a bunch of Cortlands and Ida Reds, which are both supposed to be on the tart side. I've actually only eaten one so far, so I should probably get on that this weekend before they all go bad and I feel like an idiot. I have been enjoying the cider we got at Apple Holler, which is really nice and tart, which you rarely see in cider.

To continue the nostalgia back to a time I'm not even old enough to be nostalgic for, we went for dinner to a Dog 'n' Suds drive-in in Lake County. It was interesting, although it was a bit cold for keeping the windows open by that point (the last day for the drive-in is actually this Saturday; it finally occurs to me why Sonic doesn't have any serious penetration north of the Mason-Dixon Line) and they were having trouble with their eponymous root beer (Alma did manage to get it in diet). I settled for Green River, which isn't a bad second choice.

On the way back from the Apple Barn, we drove past a farm that touts itself as having Illinois' largest corn maze. We might go do that this weekend. We spend so little time outside, might as well get it in before it gets too cold to do it at all, and some walking (the corn maze apparently covers as much as 11 miles) couldn't hurt either.

Fall fever: catch it! (Don't bother catching Cubs fever, though; it's only a 24-hour bug anyway.)

That's... weird

I was watching the Cubs/Cardinals game this afternoon. In the Cubs' big fourth inning, Mike Fontenot came up with two men on and the Cubs leading 3-0. Kyle Lohse threw a pitch that went for a ball. Suddenly, in the top of the screen, the graphic flashed "Home Run Cubs" and the score changed to 6-0. After a couple seconds, "Home Run Cubs" vanished and the score returned to 3-0.

Five seconds later, Lohse threw another pitch; Fontenot hit a home run.

I'm sure someone had just hit a wrong button, but is that weird or what?

Curse of the 2 seeds

Aside from last year, it's actually been fairly common for a while that #2 seeds don't fare all that well in the tournament; I think for a few years it was normal for two #2 seeds not to make the second weekend. That's what we had this year as well, and it would have been three if Butler could make a layup.

The question is, have we set ourselves up for a more boring Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight because of this? On paper, for example, UCLA vs. Western Kentucky looks like a blowout. It's funny, though; as Drew pointed out to me earlier, two regions were total chalk (1-2-3-4 in the East, 1-2-3-5 in the South) and two totally blew up (1-3-7-12 in the West, 1-3-10-12 in the Midwest). Frankly, I think that besides UCLA/WKU - and possibly not even that - we're probably looking at decent games for the most part, in all four regions. Stanford/Texas should be great. Louisville/Tennessee oughta be good. UNC/Washington State is going to be really damn interesting considering UNC is averaging 110.5 ppg in the tournament and Wazzu just came off allowing 41 points to one of the highest-scoring teams in the country in Notre Dame. Xavier/West Virginia will probably be pretty good. And I think Davidson is capable of getting to the Elite Eight if they shoot a little better and can get to the line against Wisconsin with anywhere near as much frequency as they did against Georgetown. Kansas/Nova, with all due respect to my huge Nova fan coworker, is liable to be the ugliest game of the Sweet 16 (although given how often Kansas falls on their faces, even that is no lock).

I'm rooting, at this point, for Washington State, Michigan State, Davidson, and Xavier, by region. (I know Xavier is the second-highest remaining seed in their region, but they're the likeliest team among the mid-majors to actually be good enough to make noise in the Final Four, and I'd love to see a mid-major win it all for the first time since 1990.)

Oh, also? Baseball starts in a week. Get ready. And for you Cubs fans, Diary of a Mad Cubs Fan is updating again (and has a few posts in the past few days).

Not the greatest day

Thank God for Alma, because if not for all the time I spent with her, today would have been a pretty bad one. First I went to a mini golf course in Libertyville and it was not fun - you know how most park district courses are either boring or ridiculously difficult for their pars? This was the latter. That stuff will be up later. Stuff that's up now: a recap of the Cubs' awful weekend, and a review of the shockingly bad Fletch. Those two links will pretty much tell you what I had to suffer through today. (Obviously if this is the worst thing that happens to me on most days I don't have anything to complain about, but in my life as it stands, this is what passes for "bad days," certainly on weekends.) But Alma elevates everything.