Light at the end of the tunnel

This is the shirt that Lixi got Jarom for Valentines Day. What is she trying to tell him?

It snowed again yesterday, but it seems like winter's deathly cold grip is starting to slip. The sun is rising earlier and earlier, and we are starting to have some pretty nice days. This is wonderful news as Jarom begins lacrosse practices again in the coming week. Jarom and Alixa each had recent intramural basketball games that did not go so well. Lixi's is playing basketball for the first time since she was about 16. Although she did seem a little rusty, she played well. Her major offensive limitation is that she can only dribble right. And I don't mean that she can only dribble with her right hand, I mean that she has an irresistable urge to dribble with her right hand and move to her right, until she runs into a line. So she got herself stuck on the baseline a few times, but we are going to work on that. After hanging close during the first half, the team fell apart in the second and ended up losing by about 40. They have nowhere to go but up now!

Jarom's team had a game this week, and due to a clerical error was forced to play with only four players throughout the entire game. They handled themselves quite well, and were actually only down by two points with about 4 minutes left in the game. At that point one of their players was injured after a hard foul and could no longer run up and down the court. So he stood on the defensive end and they played 3 on 5 on offense. It was just too much to overcome, and they ended up losing by about 10. Jarom did have four fouls, much to Alixa's delight. If he could have hit a three pointer or two, maybe they would have been able to win.

Alixa is really starting to like her job, which is great. She loves her coed class, even though the boys confuse her. It feels like every day she comes home and tells me that they played dodgeball again. She can't understand why they love that game so much and never get tired of playing it. Jarom is just jealous and wants to come in one day to play with them. He can't figure out why anyone wouldn't like dodgeball.

Jarom had his phone interview with West Virginia last night, and despite Alixa's worst fears, it went well. It wasn't very long, but he is optimistic about his chances. We should hear back from them in a few weeks, during which time Alixa will constantly worry and panic about the outcome while Jarom tries to get her to relax.

I read a book this week that I recommend to all of you. It is titled Good to Great, and is primarily a business book, but contains principles that can be used to improve any organization. There were some good tidbits on how to improve personally as well. One of my favorites was that we should focus a little less on to do lists and write a not to do list. As easy as it is to let our lives get overcrowded with junk, I found this to be a simple yet profound piece of advice. I think that there should be more new years resolutions that involve stopping things that we don't need and fewer about starting up new things, some of which we also probably don't need. There's my $.02.