Still asking, "Please let us win"

This week was my third basketball game for the team with the bad guards. We're 2 and 3 now I think. This past game could have gone really wrong (the score was 22 to 6 at one point), but a new guy (who showed up for game #2) was there mid-way through the first half. It's amazing how much it helps to have a person who can actually pass and can see more than one person to pass to.

In the first 5 minutes, our two bad guards had 4 or 5 passes picked off and the guy from Russia had 3 shots blocked before they even left his hand. It was embarrassing.

I shot horribly (2 or 3 out of 8 from the field). But I did have a couple of great blocks. We snuck by with a loss of less than 15 points, which I felt good about.

With the new guard, the team is bearable. Though the guys still need to learn how to play a zone.

Wow, diaper facts

I finally got to reading the article I told y'all to read. These facts really stood out:

Some of the facts: 18 billion disposable diapers are thrown in landfills each year, taking as many as 500 years to decompose. Disposable diapers make up the third largest source of solid waste in landfills, after newspapers and food and beverage containers--a significant fact, considering they are a single product, used by a limited portion of the population.1 It takes upwards of 82,000 tons of plastic and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp, or a quarter-million trees, to manufacture the disposable diapers that cover the bottoms of 90 percent of the babies born in the US.

( (2.) Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corporation.)

Wow. Really, check out the article.

Diapers

Yup, you'd better get used to it. We're gonna have a kid, and I'm sure that my posts will have a lot more content revolving around the rug-rat-to-be than I've posted about the cats.

Today's post is about diapers. We've decided to use cloth. Mary dove in first with the research, and I started reading after she wowed me with some stats. Cloth really shouldn't be a big deal, and it's good for the environment and could even save us money.

Here were two good articles giving some rationale for choosing cloth. First, from Mothering magazine, and the second set from Punkin Butt on the environmental issues and cost. Punkin Butt has a bunch of interesting articles to begin your education.

Don't be surprised if I call you up all excited about baby's first poo!

Another Year, Another Moab

I think this was my 8th trip to Moab. The big surprise of the trip was that, finally, my freehub finally made me money. Sam and Ron both bet me that I'd break my freehub on the trip. But it held true. Glory be to Kris King.

We did some climbing in Moab and just north of Moab. Sam has pictures of the climbs and biking. I took a few pics with my camera phone, but none really turned out. The light was beautiful that night - if only some of the lazy butts had come riding with me, we could have had some awesome pictures.

In the end I rode the slickrock trail on 3 different days. The ride truly is spectacular. Along the way I made some quick friends - two women who talked trash, a couple of dudes who really appreciated the tip to ride Amasa Back, and a 5 year old girl who seemed content to just take in the view after being pushed up the hill by her dad.

It's True

Mary and I are having a baby. Yup, you heard it here ... much later than you heard it in person.

For whatever reason, I've not blogged about having a baby yet. At first it was just a part of the cautious approach, then I probably didn't blog about it so as not to jinx anything, and then it became habit.

Well, I'm breaking the cycle and announcing to the world, Mary and I are having a baby in the beginning of June. We don't yet know the sex, we're planning on having it at home, and we haven't yet decided on names (it's likely to not be named MacDonald Hall Jackson IV, but that hasn't been ruled out).

But, since you already knew all that stuff, I had intended on writing about a cool book I found.

Baby-Gami - a book on how to wrap/swaddle your baby and how to use slings. It's cute and uses lots of puns, but there are a couple of useful methods of wrapping the baby - one I hadn't thought of was using a brown paper bag (as the book says, when the baby has a blowout and you're out of clothes, you've gotta do something).

I'm sure we'll try a couple of different methods of carrying the baby. Mary has something she got from a friend/family member, my mom and dad have a carrier they used for Sam and me that is from Japan, and I'm sure we'll try a sling or two from the book.

Hmmmm.. I could try swaddling the cats for practice.

Please Let Us Win

That's the name of my new basketball team. Kinda sad, and I should have taken it as a sign.

Tonight we played our first game of the season. It's going to be a long season.

The guys are nice, though I'm probably old enough to be their father. Their youth does lead to a couple of benefits: quickness, energy, and fitness. However, the lack of experience playing will make it tough to win a game.

The first half started off horribly. Luckily, the other team we played was just as bad. Really, this was probably one of the worst organized games of basketball I've ever had the fortune of playing. Our two point guards (one was the guy who invited me on the team) only had eyes for each other - often choosing to make a long, risky, bad pass to the other one instead of a simple pass to the person open right next to them. Oh, and instead of crisp passes, they preferred high lobs (one of the few passes to me was a good 15 feet in the air). They also felt that a pass to them was an indication to shoot. And shoot they did.

(Un)fortunately, their defensive skills balanced out their offensive play. The guys they were guarding regularly drove past them for open shots. Or, their men just appeared in the open with the defensive player nowhere in sight. The only saving grace was that the other team was as one dimensional as we were. For instance, the guy I had the fortune of guarding never shot and rarely got the ball (even though I barely guarded him).

Oh, and in the first half we played zone. Only one guy had no idea what a zone was and repeatedly followed a random offensive player around. I kept telling him, "you stay in this area and guard whoever is there," but he just didn't get it. The other guys similarly played more of a man-like defense, leaving the key wide open. That left a lot of the defense to me - and I had 3 or 4 'stuff-it-in-your-face" blocks that half.

In the second half I didn't get very winded as I realized I didn't need to run back on offense because by the time I got to half court, the guard I passed it to would have already shot. I may be old, out of shape, and slow, but I'm not that slow. As a result, I wasn't in position for rebounds. My stats were 7 boards, 8 points (1 missed free throw), 3 blocks, and 1 assist.

Hopefully the schedule will be kind to us and we'll play some other bad teams. But I have a feeling that it's going to be a long season.