Adventures of the past week

This past week has been quite the whirlwind...or should I say wind chill (hehe). I'll end the cold jokes now...everyone knows it was cold.

• Last Tuesday we had our semifinal basketball game at Wheaton against Benjamin. We started a little slow, but built up a 1 point lead at the half before extending it to 11 after the 3rd quarter. Final score ended up with us on top 55-47. Everyone made it into the game for at least 1 1/2 minutes and we won. Goals accomplished.
• Wednesday was fairly cold and snowy here. The forecast called for 4-5 inches at school, but I'm not sure we got quite that much. During 4th period, the principal announced over the intercom that all after school events were canceled because of the expected snow and freezing temperatures...except for the 8th grade boys basketball practice in light of the big game tomorrow.--direct quote, no lie. So everyone else went home while we stuck it out in the gym.
• Thursday we had our championship game against Wheaton Christian. In the first meeting, we lost by 18, in the second meeting we won by 3. It didn't look very promising after the first half with us down 24-16, and only thanks to a banked-in 3 pointer at the buzzer on our side to keep it to a single-digit deficit. Thanks to a stellar halftime speech by yours truly, we cut it down to 42-38 halfway through the 4th quarter, but thats as close as we could make it, eventually losing by 6. Three guys didn't make it in the game and we lost. Neither goal accomplished.
• Yes, Friday we did have school despite all, and I repeat ALL of the public schools around us closed. It didn't bother me much...as long as the Beretta started in the morning and I was able to get all of the ice off the inside of the windshield. A number of kids came up to me and asked why we had school but none of their public school friends did. My well-thought out response? "Well, its a good thing that we don't hold our classes outside like they apparently do. Aren't you glad for warm buildings?" All I got were these incredibly confused stares that read "I thought you were on our side here Mr. V."
• Friday night we made a trip to Mom & Dad VW's house. The trip initially was so I could get in one last ice fishing excursion before the season was over, but turned into Matt & Linds bonding time in the car because we probably saw each other a total of 4 hours in the previous 3 days. We left pretty late and got to Grinnell around 12:30.
• Saturday morning we left for Pella in the morning to help Nate & Nicole move into the house they bought. We had to admit to ourselves...having our own house now sounds even better than before. That afternoon, after the wind died down a little, Nate and I took to a farm pond to sit on the ice for awhile in hopes that a fish might find our little grubs appitizing. A couple hours and two non-keeper fish later, we decided to call it a night and hope for better luck the next afternoon.
• So Sunday we went back out in the afternoon. A different time of day, a different location....therefore a different result. We quit counting after about 20 fish each, but I figure we caught between 75-100 fish in the span of 2 1/2 hours. It was an abolutely glorious time, and I know I'll definitely remember some of the memories we made, including the 99% blugill catch that Nate pulled in, and the writer of this blog unsuccessfully attempting to hold in either a bass or a walleye above the ice by using my boots as some sort of trap door.
• For those of you who wish to know, or maybe just because every good post includes some sort of picture, here are the two fish we caught...the top one is a smallmouth bass and the bottom one is the ever-plenty bluegill
  

• Of course it wouldn't be like us to have nice weather driving anywhere, and for about an hour around the Iowa City area, traffic was moving about 15 mph, so we got home way later than we hoped.
• Today was supposed to be a wonderful day of doing errands, planning lessons, and getting some stuff done at school. All of which is difficult to do if you don't have a car. Let me explain...I needed an oil change, so I brought it in at about 9:30, hoping that they could get at it right away, but they said that it would be an hour until they could get to it, and he told me to come back at 11. So I came back a little before 11 and he told me it would be another hour. Well, at this point I just figured that I would just sit there and wait it out, hopefully "save my spot in line". Sure enough...the guy brought the Beretta in 20 min later. Well, that's where the good news ends. He comes back out and asks me if I had seen my tires. Well, I honestly told him I hadn't so he took me back to look and sure enough...the back ones were pretty much completely bald. He asked me if I've been having trouble stopping or sliding at all, and when I told him I didn't, he said I must have been driving really good. (Yea me!!) Anyways, I told him to put two new ones on, and then he asked me if I wanted a new battery because the one I had was at like 30%. Well, I figured why not...add it to the list. (Along with the fact that it probably wouldn't survive another cold spell like the last one.

So long everybody...