Expanding our horizons

We have a lot to report on the Gracie front very soon. Her first airplane ride to Kansas City to meet the extended family. Big events. But while we gather the pictures and all that good fun, let us take a sports aside to consider this looming college conference expansion. The conference landscape (and its quirks) has long interested me. I guess I just love to organize things.

So, the rumors now that revolve around the Big 10 and Pac 10 expanding and targeting Big 12 schools have me ready to redo the entire lineup. Apparently the Pac 10 wants half the Big 12 and they are going to be the first of many "super" conferences to come. I also want to rework the other conferences before it's official including the ACC and SEC since they have some quirks that have long bothered me as a Big 12 homer. So let's go with the BIG assumption this transpires when the Pac 10 kicks off the chain reaction by taking 6 Big 12 schools making 16-team conferences the benchmark. Fine. Here's what I think, in my worldview, should happen. Also assuming that everything is driven by football, which of course it is.

PS - I really think they should stop using numbers in the conference names. Pac 10, Big 12, Big 10 -- we've seen those counts change so much; let's try names that do not have to change every time people want more money and want to grow, grow, grow. Pac 10? How about just the Pacific Conference? Big 10? How about the Midwest Conference? Big 12? How about going away altogether? Anyway, still using the old naming conventions here's the Jason Conference Armageddon Scenario (JCAS - known as "JaCkASs" because I don't know what I'm talking about anyway but this is what I want) ...

Pac 16
Takes the original Pac 10 plus adds Texas, the Aggies, TxTech, OU, OKState and Colorado. That's the reported desire in the media, and that's what we'll go with to start everything else off.

Big 16 (from Big 10)
So now this becomes the original 11 teams (again, this is why you do NOT name your conferences with numbers and then add Penn State later), plus Mizzou, Nebraska, Notre Dame (they're going to have to do it now because power conferences this big have no room for wimpy independents sneaking into big bowl games), Pitt and ... I guess Syracuse.

ACC & SEC
They each have 12 schools now, but will they keep pace? Sure, especially since the Big East is now being eaten alive by the Big 16. And these 2 conferences need to rework some geography issues they have going on. It irks me that the states of Florida, Georgia & South Carolina split up their big schools between conferences. Especially Florida having 3 schools in 3 different conferences for many years in the past. If that was the case in the Big 12, Texas could have lost to OU or A&M so many times throughout the years and still won the conference instead of losing their division within the conference after one damn game. So time to realign yourselves folks.

Through swaps and additions, the ACC comes out as:
- Boston College, Rutgers, Cincy, UConn, MD, West Va, UVA, Va Tech in a north division
- UNC, Duke, Wake Forest, NC State, Memphis, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, South Florida in a southern division
** yeah, you don't get to do "Coastal" and whatever the other division name is now; that is totally gerrymandered. North, South -- that's it!

Yes that means we've done some SEC swapping (stolen Kentucky & Vandy who are out of place in the SEC) and raided more of the Big East. But we've given a lot to the SEC too. Let's see the new SEC:
- Clemson, South Carolina, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Tennessee, Georgia, Georgia Tech in the east division
- Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Miss St, LSU, Arkansas, Louisville and TCU in the west division

That's a big reach with Louisville & TCU coming in, but the expansion drums are beating and you need teams. You may have noticed the Big East is now gone and Conference USA has lost some teams by now. TCU leaves the Mountain West for football glory in the SEC and we know the SEC cash cow would love the DFW TV market.

Mountain West (MWC)

This is my favorite remaining conference. They have 9 teams now and are probably the most powerful one left standing after you basically realigned the big guns into west (Pac16), middle (Big16), east (new ACC) and south (new SEC) power conferences. They may not get to be a super conference yet, but might as well pick up some left-behinds and get to 12 schools. First, add Boise State which makes way too much sense. They pick up a pair of Big 12 leftovers and teams that want to stay joined together in Kansas and Kansas State. The Kansans can still have their basketball prowess coming out of the Mountain West. If you want TCU replaced, just get their little brother Baylor who was jilted in the Big 12 South.

I would bet the powers that be like 4 power conferences that naturally make up a kind of "final four" of college athletics. Then you have 4 power and 4 second-tier conferences with MWC, C-USA, MAC and the WAC which will all have some second-hand realignments that will work themselves out and probably leave you with 12 teams in each.

This leaves only Iowa St. left hanging from the Big 12. Look, they suck. And they're not trending the right way. This is why I moved Baylor to the pretty nice MWC. They are up and coming in hoops for sure and football-wise they were an injured QB away from being .500+ last year in the Big 12. Iowa St. meanwhile has declined and shows no sign of being good again. They could head to Conf USA (which always seems to adapt and survive and they've lost a couple teams in this shakeup anyway) or try to weasel into the MAC.

See, isn't that fun? We've redistricted the country's colleges into fun little worlds of their own. Why? So that college presidents at major universities can continue to grow these steroided entities that have auditoriums of "classes" and get really into minor-league sports battles. And bear in mind, there can still be no playoff in football because the schedule does not gel with academics. Which as we've seen by the extraordinary time every president seems to be spending traveling to conference meetings, etc. is THE most important thing -- academics. Right?

Of course also bear in mind that despite all this hypocrisy that I'm stoked to watch the Horns regularly battle the Ducks or Bears or Trojans. It's just too much fun! And Matthew McConaughey will be on the sidelines with the student-athletes!

15 Minutes of Fun

Simply put: 15 minutes of entertainment brought to you by the Grape Jelly. First, someone delightfully details all the holes in LOST that have confounded me. This officially puts my wrestling with the show to rest.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

AND! If I only had 10 minutes left to live, I would probably watch videos of my child and wife. What kind of person do you think I am? But I would be tempted to watch this too.



Just beware -- not all of Arnold's lines nor the sarcastic college humorists are work safe.

Home Improvement

Ugh, I was not a fan of that show. But go ahead and grunt if you want; it's cool. Those kid actors, especially the middle one, were totally going to be the next big thing, right? Sure. The only career I've seen for anyone beyond that show (save some terrible Santa Clause movies), is "I don't think so, Tim" on the Family Feud. Now there's a good show! We're playing the feud! I was always kind of a Ray Combs guy for the host. Or just the cartoon version.

Oh, and speaking of TV shows. LOST. WTF? So it's over and I guess good riddance now. As suspected -- wrote its way into a corner and very awkwardly escaped through the floorboards (and out the lighted toilet tunnel). Weak. Here's what I said to our viewing party by email:

Thanks for viewing with me last night. As I ate lunch I began to
search for those who best summed up how I felt about "The End." I
think these two are pretty good. Basically the island was the main
part all along and that was the adventure we watched for. But we got
the TV movie version of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven."
That's fine too I guess, and a perfectly fun plot device to mirror the action
this whole season as it did, but it came at the expense of being able
to wrap up why the first 5 seasons on the island (you know, in REAL
life) even mattered. As those bloggers note -- you could have had 5
seasons of disparate people struggling at work or an Outward Bound
trip instead of a mystical island. If you're going to pick mystical
island, then you better tie up its loose ends since it was (debatable)
the most important character in the show.

But, whatever. I didn't come here to talk about LOST. What happened, happened. Unfortunately. We here at the ranch actually have been busy of late with some home improvement. Gracie said her digs just weren't cutting it. So we've begun some projects outside just when it gets really unholy hot in Austin. Brilliant. First, an update to our backyard centerpiece. It can go by two names -- the Ollie Garden (like Olive Garden -- it's funny!), or the High Life Garden (for it's shape, as you'll see below). We started it last year after we lost "Ollie" (our embryo, pre-known-gender nickname; Gracie, as you may remember, was dubbed "Iggy" until the ultrasound showed us otherwise). Anway, just after completion last March:

You see the High Life resemblance now!

And now after some growth and the usual scorched grass :(


We've also gotten closer to a new driveway. You may recall we had them pour concrete under the carport to give us a solid surface to park the cars and keep dirt/gravel/etc. from tracking into our cars like it has been doing unfettered for 4 years. We bought what we thought was enough river rock gravel to lay down over the crappy gravel that had eroded for the rest of the driveway. Upon laying it and breaking our backs last weekend, we found we came up well short. So another big delivery truck of gravel should finish the job in a couple weeks when the temps hit triple digits! Before:

And not so much "after" but "during" I guess:


Meanwhile, Gracie's just hanging out inside in her ez-chair. As soon as she can figure out those opposable thumbs, she's grabbing a shovel.


Happy Memorial Day weekends to all! Austin was #18 this year for Memorial Day destinations across the U.S. Bam!

Gratuitous Cuteness

It's Friday! And Fridays are happy-happy times, so it seems fitting to post gratuitous Gracie cuteness and leave it at that. First a load of pics from her first (and our first) Mother's Day. We played it pretty low-key with a mid-afternoon indulgent Italian feast and some hang time back at Nana and Pops' house.


Then some sleepy pics and one where a bunch of us new parents got together and took the obligatory lined up babies picture. Awwwwwh.


And finally a couple videos of Gracie the last couple days where she got excited about her bath (a recent and welcomed development) and then went Rocky on some tummy time as her head starts to stabilize.

Have a grand weekend wherever you are! We'll be raking rocks all over the place to create our new driveway and hanging out with our Geneva buddies who are expecting their own baby (Euro) girl in the fall. Yay!

3 month report

Well, since Gracie is nearing the end of the "fourth trimester" we thought we should give you a progress report. Of course she passes with flying colors (she is a genius after all), but in case you're wanting more specifics...

-she weighs somewhere is the vicinity of 12 pounds, and is about 23 inches long. She is right around the 50th percentile for height, weight and head circumference.

-she can hold her head up pretty nicely now, thanks to all that tummy time training (Jason is her personal tummy time trainer and is kind of a nazi about it)


-she has pretty much made it out of the fussy phase and really only cries when she wants something (hungry, diaper changed, etc)

-she is sleeping great (knock on wood). Usually, she goes to sleep around 9pm and sleeps straight through until 4 or 5.


-she is finally starting to like bathtime and even has even splashed around a bit

-she loves to "talk" ... she is cooing and oohing and aahing all the time and likes to experiment with controlling the volume of her voice


-is generally much more interested in the world around her. She will follow an object from right to left and up and down, and she loves to watch her mobile, hang out on her exercise mat, and look all around when we go outside


- and best of all... will give you a giant gummy grin when you smile at her!

V

Yeah, like the show "V" for "Visitors." No, I don't watch that. I stick to one fantastical ABC show at a time that overstays its welcome, writes itself into several storyline corners and, seemingly, with a couple episodes left has no way to cleanly conclude itself. But I digress.

We've had a few more visitors. Some for several days, some for not even 24 hours. And more are coming . . . just like the smoke monster. Stupid 'Lost' with its stupid unanswered mysteries with stupid non-inquisitive castaways who have yet to even ask the most basic questions to their captors/saviors/leaders and with stupid perma-cologne-model ad Sawyer (credit to Andrew) and his "son of a bitch!" catchphrase. Anyway, where was I? Right, visitors.

So the Cornhuskiest chick in DC - Jill - came down for a few days a couple weeks ago. She was welcomed by some cold, cloudy skies and a home project that was thought to be quick and easy but took all day -- laying some concrete for a mini-driveway under our carport. Witness the colossal cement trunk that wet itself all over our property:


The crew didn't leave until literally night fall (almost 9p nowadays), but in the end they did a great job and we no longer have to drag 4 pounds of gravel onto our cars' floorboards daily. Hip hip, huzzah! Anyway, the weather and excitement (what's worse than watching paint dry? watching concrete dry!) picked up the rest of the week. The ladies and Gracie headed into the Hill Country for some wine tastings
and we all enjoyed some good eats in town. Plus just some hanging-with-Gracie time. Look: the Nebraska fan gets to sit in a big red chair! Yes, amazingly not all of our furniture is burnt orange.

But, speaking of burnt orange, Gracie (we swear...on her own) has declared her fandom for the Horns already. Witness her soothing herself with a message:


Later in that same week, our favorite Cock ...err South Carolinian... Gavin (sorry, co-favorite Emma) came to town for a very quick bidness trip and we caught lunch. Gracie has now seen her tallest person ever at 6'7" and probably won't break that record for a while. Witness:

In between and since then we have been so happy to field continual local visitors too. Nana is visiting twice a week to watch Gracie now that Kelly is back to work full-time and dad is staying home two days a week. So far, so great. One of the ongoing tasks while at home is to figure out what we do or do not need in the house anymore as we start to fill up with another growing member of the household. Case in point: my giant Simpsons beer mug. Sure, it recalls very fond memories of the "big ass beer" at Salerno's in LexVA. (Yes, there's a yelp page for Lexington VA!) But it is a less practical piece of barware these days. So I used it up one last time for fun. Recipe: two tallboys of LoneStar...
One moron to drink it all...

And I'll let Gracie do the dramatization of passing out on the couch not long after...


And with that, the Simpsons mug is retired. And I'm jonesing for some baked ziti and semi-gruff service. MMMMM!

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Well, it's been sweet, but the fun and games are almost over. I'm back to work on Wednesday. My take-away from maternity leave is not so different from normal life.... try to do one thing that scares you every day. And when you have a new baby, lots of things are scary at first. Driving the baby home from the hospital. Walking to the end of the street. Figuring out how the stroller folds to put it in the car. Taking the baby to a restaurant. Trying to walk with baby in the stroller and dog in tow. Breastfeeding in public. Figuring out how to wear your baby. Our motto has basically been... we'll try anything as long as we have the option to bail.

So what have we accomplished over the past twelve weeks? Here's a tally of Grace's outings thus far:

Wineries: 3
Movies ("Date Night" at Alamo Baby Day): 1
Book Clubs: 1
Strawberry Farms: 1
Outlet Malls: 1
Beer Socials to celebrate the opening of a beer co-op opening in our neighborhood: 1
Free Happy Hours at this great motel in our neighborhood: 2

Not bad for being only 10 weeks old!