WOW. That means another Edition of WUMF is in order. For those of you just tuning in, smack yo selves!
I’ll wait. Make it a good one.
There. Better?
OK, like I said, for those of you just tuning in, WUMF stands for What’s Up My Friends. Basically, this is me just phoning in a post at the end of the month that ties up some loose stuff that happened which didn’t constitute a full post or at least didn’t happen because I was lazy.
1. Mother Nature Just Made the D-Bag Awards Ballot
This past month’s weather has been ridiculous and coupled with last month’s tornado here in my area, Mother Nature has secured her place on the D-Bag of the Year awards for 2011. Between the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, the tornadoes that ripped through the south and especially the one mile wide EF5 Tornado that just engulfed Tuscaloosa Alabama there is mounting evidence that Mother Nature is pissed off this year.
Last month my kid’s KinderCare teacher sent home a progress report stating that she has not been mastering such concepts like creativity or spelling. After putting aside the ‘My kid is a genius, you’re wrong!’ mentality, I began questioning my daughter on why she doesn’t seem to be showing how smart she is in school.
Her answers amounted to, “I don’t like answering the teacher when she asks me those questions.” That tells me that she knows the answers but just doesn’t want to be an organ grinder monkey and perform on cue.
First, her creativity and ability to solve problems in a creative manner shone through this Easter as she decorated the house, on her own using an empty Scooby-Doo Rohgurt box and a Silly Bandz to create a hanging decoration. She realized that the open flap of the box wouldn’t hang on the nail, so she attached the Silly Bandz as a way to hang on the nail.
Next we worked on letters and numbers. We’ve been working in a book that has all kinds of activities surrounding letters and numbers. She does a pretty mean connect the dots exercise, calling out all the letters and numbers by name. However, the most impressive feat of intelligence was being able to spell “Pittsburgh”, “Steelers”, and “Moosehead” from the various signs around the restaurant/bar that we often go to for dinner. We didn’t even have to prompt her. She willingly says, “That is spelled…” So, it’s not that she’s dumb. She would rather do it on her own time… at the bar.
3. Golf Season starts for the Penguins
Last night was a frustrating loss at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Considering how the Pens got to the playoffs after losing Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin to injuries and Matt Cooke to stupidity I can say that they really did perform beyond expectations. This is a team that found a way to win during the regular season with so many issues. However, when you get to playoff hockey, you need a little more. They just didn’t have it. Haters will say, “Kovalev did nothing.” “Neal underperformed.” “Fleury fell apart.” “The fans lost faith.” And there is some truth to that. But the reality is that this team did way more than it should have done, given its makeup and they were playing with House Money.
Tampa Bay is not a Stanley Cup winning team, this year. They aren’t. But they were better than the Pens and managed to overcome a three game deficit and win.
Game Sevens are notoriously bad luck for the Pens and yet it should never have come to that. Fleury shares some blame for that but the scoring was just not there. You cannot expect a team to go into a playoff run without having the ability to score on the Power Play. For as much blame as there is to be heaped on Fleury, who played awesomely during Game Seven, there is just as much blame to be placed on the offense. Now, Fleury did fall for that play behind the net leading to Tampa Bay’s only score of the game. We saw that in Game Si. But the defense should have picked up the blind spot and let Fleury try to follow the puck if they happened to not pull off that move and wrap around the front.
Finally, it was not meant to be. Believing this team could win a Stanley Cup was wishful thinking, at best. It is a better thing that they would not have had to face The Caps in round two, because the disappointment would have been all that much greater. There would have been hopes that Crosby would have come back to square off against Ovie and had he not, it would have crushed the city that much more. Let him take the off season to fully recover from the concussions and we’ll try again next year. Just do me a favor, powers that be, do not schedule Pensguins' playoff hockey games on the same night as Pirates games. It seems that every time the Pirates would win, the Pens would lose. Pittsburgh has somehow fallen off its axis and PAT buses, all three of them have started sliding up the sides of skyscrapers, Inception style.
4. Bailey, Pick Up Line One
Some outfit with the University of Chicago keeps calling my house to do a survey about kids. After the first couple of times of getting no messages on my machine I called them back. I asked them to take my number off the list and they said sure. They promptly called two more times the next week. I answered one of them and asked them again to remove my number from their list. They promptly called me two more times this week.
My daughter got a tape recorder for Easter. My mother read a bunch of books and recorded her voice to tape for my kid to play and read along. While this may seem like a totally unrelated piece of useless information, I plan on putting a blank tape in the recorder and waiting until the next time the bastards call back. Then, I’ll let my kid answer the phone and record the call from the phone in the other room. Hilarity will ensue and maybe they’ll get the point.
Here’s to May.
