Monthly Archives: February 2006

Team Yep wrapped up our broomball season tonight. I don’t know exactly what our record ended up being, but it was something like 2-5. I’m also pretty sure we lost like 4 of our last 5. So much for for all that ‘finishing strong’ crap. Highlight of the year was easily the time that KC full-on hurdled a girl while running at full speed. Hands down the single most athletic broomball play in the history of Team Yep. That’s mostly because none of us can really jump, though.
We’re all getting old and we don’t play our positions very well, so I’m not expecting real improvement anytime soon. Or ever, actually. Good thing we’re in it more for the ‘fun’ than we are for the ‘winning’. At least I am.
On a good note, I think JoePa got his first ever goal this season. Kudos to him.

This morning junior and I went down to Lake Harriet to have a look around. I threw my skates in the trunk before we left, thinking that the recent cold[er] snap may have stabilized the ice enough that the park department would have finally opened the skating pond in front of the bandshell. I was wrong. There was no skating. My hunch is that they’ve just written the whole winter off. Can’t say that I blame them.
Rather than skate, we walked out on the ice and talked with some of the people ice fishing. We looked down the holes and we stopped and watched one kid reel up a 5-inch perch. He was pretty jazzed about his catch and when he held up his fish to show us a bunch of other kids came running over to discuss bait selection and how deep his line was going and all the other nuances of the hunt. Then they went back to scouting new hole locations. There was lots of auguring going on.
Later we were tooling around by the boat ramp when this dude on bicycle rode up. It wasn’t a crazy mountain bike or anything, just a regular hybrid bike with thin little road tires. He slowed down a little bit, rode down the ramp onto the ice, and started pedaling his way across the frozen lake. I looked around to see if I was the only one who thought this was weird. Based on the fact that nobody else was reaching for their camera, I’ll assume it was just me. I find that hard to believe, but I’m certainly no expert in winter ice cycling.
The dude made it maybe 1/4 of the way across before he gave up and started walking his bike. I knew it was crazy.
Winter on.

It was exactly 6:20 this morning when the fuzzy radio of my alarm clock clicked on and, unfortunately for me, it wasn’t an accident. I had set it that early because today was the official registration day for next fall’s Early Childhood Family Education classes and, if you want to get into the class you want to get into, you gotsta get your ass outta bed and go get in line. So that’s what I did.
In reality 6:20 was my compromise time. On one hand I knew plenty of other parents would be there by 5 – and in fact stories of “people who know people who have slept out all night” are common – but I also knew that last year the line was enormous and we still got one of our top 3 choices fairly easily even tho we were near the back. Furthermore, I knew that they start handing out numbers to people in line at like 7, so I figured that if I got there a little before that I’d be fine. By 6:20 the paper would be here, so I’d just pull on my pants, grab the newspaper, and drive over to the school.
The parking lot was already 2/3 full when I pulled in. I walked in through one of the main doors and followed the signs (and a couple of other dazed parents) to the third floor where the registration stuff was going down. This particular school – the old high school – is apparently undergoing some pretty significant remodeling. Lots of walls and ceilings are down, lots of pipes are showing, and much of the hallway lighting is provided by long extension cords full of light bulbs with those plastic ‘construction’ cages around them. It’s all very industrial and urban.
As I open the door to the 3rd floor a familiar looking volunteer lady immediately greets me and asks if I’m a resident or not. I say I am and she hands me some forms and points me down the ‘resident’ hallway and says to take a seat at the end of the line. I can immediately tell this whole thing is going to be logistically flawless. Turns out I’m right.
I turn and look down the hallway. Again with the torn down ceiling and the exposed pipes. Again with the eerily dark single bulb construction lighting. I seriously think I can hear water dripping. And as far as you can see, the whole hallway is lined the parents. Many sit in those comfy folding camp chairs, but others are in the regular hard folding chairs that the school had provided. People had blankets and laptops and iPods and newspapers and magazines and coffee and they all looked greasy and exhausted and yet somehow kind of freakishly punchy all at the same time. It was like half Mad Max and half Lord of the Flies. And it was totally surreal.
I found the end of the line and sat on the floor. A little after 7 a volunteer lady came around handing out numbers. I got 102. I filled out my forms. I read the paper. I enjoyed the free coffee. I ran into neighborhood.mom.Karen and we chatted it up for 45 minutes while we crawled along in the special ‘update your data in our NEW AWESOME database’ line. She’s a hoot. At one point she realized needed to run back to get something from her place in the ‘main’ line, and she *literally* ran. It almost set of a panic. People see someone running, they think they should be running, too. Nobody really knows why, they just assume something is up. I’m sure there’s a term for that, but for now I’m just going to call it ‘amusing’.
Eventually Libby came by and we switched out. She was home by like 10, and that included some time spent browsing in the ’boutique’ they had set up. I’m pretty sure we got our first choice of class time. I also got 2 bagels. All in all, not a bad morning.