Another busy week in terms of water polo. Regular meets on Tuesday at Grand Blanc and at home on Wednesday. Friday and Saturday we were north of Chicago for a two-day tournament. Got back about midnight last night. They won the regular matches and won one of four tournament matches. In the losses our girls were quite competitive too. The tournament showing was actually quite good. The Illinois teams, a couple of which are private schools that recruit players, essentially invite Michigan teams over to serve as punching bags. Our girls upset their plans a bit. Our goalie was called for brutality. No one had ever seen that before.
Molly and our goalie on deck.
Our motel had a new example of attempts to keep stupid people from doing stupid things. A little sign reminding you that hanging your clothes on the sprinkler will, not may but will, cause flooding. For starters, you would need to be about seven feet tall to hang your clothes up there. Or pull the ironing board out of the closet and stand on it. I can’t help but feel this is inviting trouble. Some guy is going to say, “hey ya’ll, watch this.” Maybe that’s the idea. Get a bunch all the dumb people in the room and drown them. Except for the guy standing on the ironing board.
A little reminder, just in case you’re seven feet tall and want to hang your clothes on the sprinkler.
We did get a little birding in during the week. Took advantage of some schedule flexibility to hit a nearby flooded field before work on Tuesday. Got greater yellowlegs and Wilson’s snipe. I was real happy with the snipe. That was a problem species last year. People were seeing them around here on a regular basis but I never got them. I finally saw them in Florida, in the last couple days of the year. Later Tuesday we got a hermit thrush in our yard. A new one for the year and for our yard.
After sitting in a tournament and a long drive that finished at midnight, we were pretty wasted today. There are some really interesting birds a couple hours to the east or the west of here but we opted for a laid back day. We took a short walk at a local park and got ruby-crowned kinglet, yellow-rumped warbler, and meadowlark. We then adjourned to a local establishment for some lunch and billiards with Molly and Lindsay. After that I came home and took a three-hour nap. No chasing yellow-headed blackbirds, cattle egrets, or white-faced ibis. I was snoring loud enough to scare children.
So right now the yearly total for Michigan stand at 120 for me (48.0% of the goal) and 118 (47.2% of the goal) for Lise.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 