A good friend asked me the other day "Where is IU going from here? I mean, is Crean the answer?" and I can't think a better jumping off point in reviewing this past basketball season than that.

This year was marked with a small degree of optimism for IU fans as the incoming freshman class was heralded as a top-10 class. With actual talent in the program, IU was sure to be more competitive at least. No one was expecting a run to the NCAA tournament, but a NIT bid wasn't out of the question.

But that didn't happen of course. There was the 11 game slide and fans became dismayed with how little things had changed since last year: Stagnant offense, porous defense, turnovers turnovers turnovers. With such a losing streak it's easy to overlook the fact that progress *did* occur.

IU won more games by the start of January than the 2009 squad managed all year. There were conference wins, road wins and the team was keeping themselves in games they had no business being in (Pitt, Kentucky, Maryland).

Also, you can't overstate the impact that losing Maurice Creek had on this year's team. He was the one player that could create his own shot, get to the rim and consistently knock down an outside shot. Losing him really caused the offense to deflate.

But even after he went down IU looked decent. They won against Michigan in an emotional win-one-for-the-gipper game. They beat Minnesota in an overtime thriller and then Penn State on the road. They displayed their immaturity in losing to Iowa at home but then bounced back and put together perhaps their two best games in losing at Illinois at the buzzer and dropping a close game to Purdue at home.

That Purdue loss really set this team back. They gave it everything they had and played their best game but still came up short. I think this team was just emotionally spent after those two games and probably thought to themselves "if we can't win playing like that then how can we?".

And they didn't. not for another 9 games. It wasn't the losses that really bothered fans, but the way they lost. They weren't fighting and they weren't competitive. In those 8 losses they looked even worse than the 2008 team getting beat by an average of 20 points

However, I think that those loses had alot to do with the level of competition than anything. At the midpoint of the Big Ten season, some teams figure things out and get better, others tread water and don't get better. This IU team did the latter which just accentuated their existing deficiencies. In the middle of that losing streak they played Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Minnesota and Wisconsin again. Those teams are as well coached as any in the country and (with the exception of Minnesota) gearing up for a run at the conference title. It was, quite literally, men against boys.

But excuses aside, the team didn't execute well at all during that horrid streak. So who's to blame for this team's lack of progress during that span? As much as I want to make excuses, the buck always stops with the coach. It's the coach's responsibility to get the players to understand the gameplan. It's the coach's responsibility to teach the players the skills necessary to execute it.

But I don't think you can't put it all on Crean. When the coaches have to spend so much effort on teaching the basics, that means less time to work on the more advanced things that the competition is working on. Keep in mind that the amount of time a team can work is regulated so it's not like IU can put in extra time to catch up.

So it all comes down to experience, or lack thereof. This team is just too young--the 10th most inexperienced team in the country and second most inexperienced team in the conference behind Iowa (who IU finished tied with in conference at 4-14). Sure, you can win with inexperienced players but only the elite young players that can make up for their inexperience in other ways (see: Kentucky). And more importantly, even when young players are starting in a program, there are usually more experienced players on the team that these young players are practicing against on a daily basis. IU doesn't have that luxury.

So to prove my point, here's some fancy graphs that correlate experience and winning:



That is Conference Finish related to Conference Experience rank (1 being most experienced and 11 being least experienced). I see a pattern there, do you? The more experienced big ten teams did better. Shocking!

Let's look at some more!



The first graph just took into account wins and losses. So how much the team won. But we all know that college basketball is a silly place. Weird things happen, teams win games they shouldn't, injuries occur at bad times, etc. So the second graph relates Conference Experience Rank and overall Pomeroy Rank (pomeroy ratings are the first and only stats you should care about for college basketball). This essentially compares how experienced a team is with how well they played

And Lookie there! an even prettier correlation! The most experienced teams have a lower (better) pomeroy rank. And surprise surprise, the two least experienced teams are clear outliers.

more, more!



The third graph is a pure relation between pomeroy experience rank and overall pomeroy rank. Here the difference between the two least experienced teams (IU and Iowa) and the rest of the pack is even more pronounced.

(here's the data table if you're curious)

But when analyzing the importance of experience in the Big Ten you really have to look no further than the first 3 most experienced teams: Ohio State, Wisconsin and Purdue. Ohio State was the conference's most experienced team in 2010 and, unsurprisingly, ended up wining the conference regular season and tournament titles. Purdue was picked to win the conference before the season and didn't disappoint, going toe-to-toe with OSU until the end.

But Wisconsin is perhaps the most interesting story here. Wisconsin was picked in the middle of the pack in preseason polls but roared to the top of the standings during conference play. What a surprise! They became media darlings, the little team that could. Bo Ryan is amazing! How does he do it year after year? Behold:



It's pretty simple, really. Bo recruits players that stay 4 years and his teams are constantly at the top of the conference in experience. Unfortunately, Pomeroy has only tracked the experience stat since 2007 so I can't go back further, but I'd be willing to guess it's more of the same. His players are experienced, they know his system, they execute it well. Wisconsin is always a fundamentally sound team because they've had time to develop those fundamentals. Sprinkle in just a little talent into this system and you have yourself a very competitive high major program year in, year out.

So what's the moral of this story? EXPERIENCE MATTERS. alot. and Indiana has none. My advice to Indiana fans is this: don't panic, and be patient.

From my perspective, Tom Crean is doing everything right. He's recruiting quality kids (both in character and ability), he's stressing the right things to win in the Big Ten (toughness, rebounding), and he's done a spectacular job at galvanizing the fan-base by relishing the program's tradition. He has his work cut-out for him, but he knows what he needs to do (bring in size, quickness and even-out the recruiting classes). The guy plum gets it. He knows how to run a program. Is he the best X's and O's coach? probably not. But I have complete faith that he can be successful by doing what he's already doing. The guy has a 10 year contract, Fans need to give him the time to develop the players he's brought in and build the program the right way.

The alternative is to rebuild quickly by hiring somebody like Calipari to do it the wrong way. This IU fan is not willing to sell the program's soul to get wins quickly. IU basketball means too much to too many people for compromise.

Our verizon wireless contract was ending in march so I had been doing alot of research into phone replacements. I was ready for a smartphone of some sort and was really looking hard at android devices. I wasn't against switching networks, so all the major phones were in play. I ended up narrowing it down to a handful, however:

• iPhone on AT&T
• Droid on Verizon
• myTouch on T-Mobile
• Nexus One on T-Mobile

I'm sure this will come as a surprise to some of you who know me, but despite my affinity for Apple, I ruled out the iPhone pretty early on. I wasn't eager to switch to AT&T's much-maligned network, for one. But I had other misgivings about the device that I'll go into with another post.

I really wanted the Nexus One but Google/T-Mobile didn't sell it at subsidized price ($180) with family plans. So that became cost prohibitive.

So the real choice was between the myTouch on T-mobile and the Droid on Verizon. The Droid really outclasses the myTouch in terms of hardware and software (it has a newer release of the android OS). Also Verizon's 3G coverage is much more robust than T-mobile's. T-Mobile does have cheaper plans and, historically, we spend more minutes talking to people on T-mobile's network (abby's family) than on verizon (my family). Though that might not be the case anymore.

That was were my head was during super-bowl weekend. I had pretty much made up my mind and was just waiting for new developments in the market (such as T-Mobile's recent myTouch hardware refresh). But that saturday abby spilled water in her purse and drowned her existing phone. Our hand was forced and the easiest/least expensive thing to do was to stick with verizon and renew our contract.

So we both got Droids and have had them for a little over a week. I wanted to give my initial impressions. I'll try to separate them as best I can into hardware vs software.

I'll also be comparing it, fairly or not, to my first-gen iPod Touch. It's my only real basis of comparison.

On the hardware side, there's alot to love. First and foremost: the screen. It's really great. It's bright, crisp and the font rendering is beautiful. The touch accuracy is so-so, but i'm not sure if this is a software issue.

The first thing that struck me about the phone itself was how heavy it was. It's hefty. But I find this to be an endearing quality. The device feels more substantial than heavy in your hands. I actually find that its weight keeps it from flying around my car like my iPod does. But the iPod isn't a phone either, and surely has a much smaller battery and less hardware packed in the case. So that's probably an unfair comparison.

It took me about 30 minutes to realize how glad I was that the Droid has a hardware keyboard. I never was comfortable using the on-screen keyboard on the Touch even though I got proficient with it. When you need software assistance to aid your accuracy, there's something inherently wrong with the concept. The Droid's keyboard isn't perfect, but I can type long messages with making only minimal mistakes and not get frustrated with the speed of my typing. Some people complain about the d-pad pushing the keyboard off-center in your hands, but I don't find this to be very troubling. maybe if I had smaller hands it would be an issue.

The call clarity is much better than my outgoing phone and I think it picks up a signal a little better too. Despite Verizon's superior network, we get mediocre signal strength in our house (which kinda sucks since we don't have a land-line). At least we do get 3G. The speaker on the Droid is as good as advertised. Putting calls on speaker result is clear communication (both ways, I think considering I haven't had trouble with people understanding me).

I've had zero problems with the Droid picking up my wireless G network at home. It always connects without problem and gets good throughput. It would be nice if i could use wi-fi for VOIP. Get on it, Google.

This being my first 3G device, I have a hard time quantifying the network speed. I will say that It feels much snappier than expected but that might be because of hardware processing speed being better than my iPod touch. Simple pages load quite fast and the only lagging sites are multimedia-heavy sites like ESPN.com. Downloads from the Android Market are surprisingly fast as well. I guess I can only say that I'm not at all disappointed in 3G network performance and haven't yet noticed any network lag.

The camera has been underwhelming so far. The flash was really hyped in its comparison to the iPhone but I've found it mostly useless. Photos taken in low-light are very grainy and distorted, even with the flash. I'm witholding judgement here until I can take photos in the daylight. I also haven't yet tried to take video yet.

My only real hardware gripe with the Droid is it's flimsy wake/sleep button. Unlike the one on the Touch, the droid's is recessed and situated next to the headphone jack making it hard to find by feel. The other two physical buttons are pretty flimsy too and are too easily pressed by mistake. The volume button is nice to have, but I could do without the dedicated camera button.


On the software side theres alot of ground to cover.

I'll start out by saying Android is really the linux of handheld OS's with all that that implies. And that makes since, I guess, since it's based on linux. But more than just the nuts-and-bolts underpinnings, the UI skews more towards the kitchen-sink linux approach than the refined and streamlined apple experience. But what really makes Android feel like (desktop) linux is that things just stop working randomly and problem feedback is inconsistent. I'm a computer geek who has used desktop linux alot in the past so my tolerance for this kind of thing is probably higher than joe-average consumer.

On the other hand, Abby doesn't seem to have as many problems as I do, so perhaps these problems are a result of me being a geek. I have installed and run many more apps than Abby does which is probably what gums up the works. So that's worth noting.

I'll start with the good.

Overall, it's much easier to navigate through Android than with mobile OSX. But that's by design on Apple's part. Android has back-button and a app switcher function concepts that don't exist in OSX. It's nice to be able to hit that back-button and go back to what you were doing in another app. For example, the twitter client will forward you off to the browser and you can hit back to go back to twitter. In OSX, twitterific had to create an in-app web browser to enable this same behavior (which, admittedly, works better in some situations. But that's more overhead on the developer's end).

So Android just has more range of motion within the UI that Apple lacks. The Apple approach is nice in some respects, however, because you don't have to keep track of where you are and what your'e doing. Just hit the one big button to start your next action. Of course this same behavior is available within Android too.

The maps/navigation features are really good. I have a 4 year old garmin handheld GPS that I have used for driving navigation in the past and the android features really out-class it. That's probably unfair because the garmin 1) is not a dedicated driving device and 2) it's pretty old. But having the Android navigation pull maps/data(/traffic!) from the internet and not having to store anything locally is a killer feature (and all for freesies!). These maps also look fantastic on the Droid's screen.

I've only used the turn-by-turn directions a couple times, but so far, the directions haven't been bad. They're better than my Garmin's routing at least.

Google Latitude, on the other hand is underwhelming. I was hoping to use it to keep track of abby's location and vise-versa but it seems to only update your location to friends when maps are active and even then it sends out your location too infrequently to be of any real use.

Accounts integration has been mostly positive. All my google account info gets pulled in of course, but so do my facebook contacts. I was able to add my work exchange account and get access to my work email and calendar, but so far haven't been able to get contacts. But I think this is a problem with my exchange server since I don't get contacts on my mac either.

The browser is good enough. I do miss the multitouch features in mobile safari, but I hear those features are getting enabled with Android 2.1 (which should be coming for the Droid any day now). I miss having multiple windows/tabs like mobile safari has also.

Similarly, the google talk app, messaging (texting) app, gmail app, email app, and calendar apps (two separate apps for normal and "corporate") are all very adequate. They let me get done what I want to get done and I have no complaints about them.

My biggest complaint about the Android platform is also one of its biggest strengths: multi-tasking apps. I love being able to run multiple apps at once, but I also want to be able to control when they don't run. Apps universally lack a 'close' function so there is no way of killing these processes from within the apps themselves. The only way I can kill apps/processes is by using a third party utility which gets old fast.

I've also noticed the Droid getting bogged down when switching things out of memory when I have too many apps open. The phone will get sluggish and I have to start killing apps to get things to run smoothly again.

On several occasions I've had to reboot the device to get things working again. I've even had problems with the phone functions -- functions that should be rock solid on what is still, first and foremost, a phone. I don't want my phone capabilities diminished by running too many other apps.

I think the Apple approach of limiting multi-tasking and using a push notifications framework for notifications is probably a smarter/more effective smartphone ecosystem. But I'll withhold final judgement until Google has time to iron out their bugs.


On the whole, I'm happy with the Droid so far. I'm hopeful that verizon/motorola will stay committed to keeping the device updated with Android updates. But if they don't, I'm prepared to hack it and install unofficial Android builds. I think that Android is still in its infancy as a platform and needs to cook a little more before it can truly rival Apple's sophistication and quality user experience. That's not to say that it's not a viable platform now, because it is. But it also has flaws that need to be corrected.

My fear is that Google is following the Microsoft model of putting a generic OS on top of variable hardware. This has been a real thorn for Microsoft and caused most of windows' reliability problems. Maybe Google is smarter than microsoft and will handle this complexity better. They've definitely outsmarted Microsoft at every other turn for the last decade.

By late 2007 abby and I were seriously considering making a family. In October, I had a rather uncomfortable surgery to clear up a problem that could cause obstacles in that department. Later that month we squeezed in a quick vacation and visited my college friend in NYC. That was alot of fun.

In December 2007 abby was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and was relieved that there was an explanation for the way she was feeling. She still is dealing with this problem today.

Then came 2008 which was the crazy year. It started out pleasant enough. We attended my sister Deanna's wedding in Fort Wayne in late January. Leading up to that Abby had been feeling wonky really tired but thought it was related to her thyroid problem for which she recently started taking medication. The next week abby was still tired, wonky and decided to take a pregnancy test. which was positive. We weren't expecting that to happen so quickly after my surgery and abby starting her thyroid treatment. but there you go.

We were wishy-washy in the past on how to go about moving back to Indiana. But now that baby part of the equation was firmly in place, it just felt right to move back to Indiana ASAP. So we acted quickly to get that lined up. First priority was to find jobs which we accomplished by the end of March. Step two was selling the house which was a daunting proposition in a suddenly-decrepit housing market. Once we had the house on the market we started looking for an apartment in Indiana move to until it sold. Fishers was pretty much the midpoint between our two places of employment. Abby's sister also lived there so we knew it reasonably well already. So we found something in Fishers.

We moved to Indy in late April and started our new jobs. Our house in Ohio sold about two weeks later. Talk about luck! We immediately started looking at houses in Fishers to move into. We didn't want to stay in an apartment any longer than we had to. We looked at a bunch of houses and found one we really liked. Somehow we managed to get the closings worked out so that we closed on the Ohio house a few days before we closed on the Indiana house. We slowly started moving in to the new house in early June.

In the middle of all that we got the important ultrasound results and found out that the baby was a boy. that was exciting. We started the fun process of picking a name. Oh, and we also had to buy a car in May as our lease expired on the Nissan Murano. That was an afterthought at that point.

The rest of 2008 was more normal as we settled into the new house and prepared for baby. Showers, birthing classes, buying and putting together the crib. stuff you'd expect.

Then came Everett at the end of September. And our lives are forever changed. but for the better.

We had a little more turmoil to end 2008 as our sump pump failed and our basement flooded. That wasn't fun. Soon after, our water heater started leaking, most likely fallout from the flood.

Looking back, we feel incredibly fortunate to have made it through such upheaval unscathed. Things aligned with nearly cosmic precision. What could have been a really *really* difficult period of change turned out to be mostly just stressful and frantic. If one of us had trouble finding a job or we weren't able to sell the house we'd have been in trouble. What's more, we both ended up in really great jobs. We didn't have to settle just to get to Indiana.

Things got gradually easier in 2009 as Everett grew up and became more independent. Our lives are now obviously based around the kid. I wouldn't say life is a struggle, but we have to be more structured and planned these days. Finding time to do anything other than maintain our routine is difficult.

We took our first vacation with Everett in August 2009 when we went to the Gatlinburg area of Tennessee. I got sick, everett had the runs and diaper rash, but overall the trip was positive. It was good to be traveling again.

So there's that. a not-so-brief history of my 3rd decade. when shit got real.

2005 started out with me taking a new position within Miami. One that really helped me grow professionally and allowed me to make some really great friends at work. This was a very positive change.

Abby then followed suit. She left 5/3 for greener pastures at Luxotica Retail in march of 2005. There she was able to make use of her new accounting skills that she had learned in her post-grad schooling. Luxotica was also a lot closer to home being located the suburb of Mason, OH instead of downtown. Though she had a rough first six months, Luxoitica proved to be a very good experience for Abby. Mostly because she made some great friends there.

Abby broke her foot playing soccer in late June. That was a major concern at the time because Abby and I were preparing for a hiking trip in early August. Even if Abby could get back in time her conditioning was going to suffer. In the end Abby recovered and hiked the mountains like a champ. You can read about it here here and here. View the photos here.

I started growing a beard on the trip and I've kept it ever since. I can't imagine getting rid of it at this point. I cringe when i see old photos of myself without it. The beard is probably the most symbolic physical change of my maturation. well, that and the glasses. and about 10 pounds of excess weight.

I started wearing glasses full time in 2004. I got them initially in 1998 sometime so that I could better see the blackboard in the large lecture halls but didn't wear them all the time. I'm not sure what caused me to start wearing them everyday in 2004. probably just diminishing eyesight.

There's a big difference between how I looked sans glasses/beard at the end of 2004 and how i looked at the end of 2005. I got new, thicker rimmed, glasses in early 2006 which solidified my current 'look'.

I took three new albums with me on my iPod for that hiking trip. They were Alligator by The National, Illinois by Sufjan Stevens and Meadowlands by The Wrens. So much driving requires alot of music listening. And I played the hell out of these albums on the trip. I'm not sure if there is causality there, but these three albums have become some of my all-time favorites. Maybe they were just great albums that happened to coincidentally come along in time for the trip. This happened before as Radiohead's OK Computer came out just before I embarked on a similar backpacking trip to the Canadian Rockies after I graduated highschool. For whatever reason, good music and hiking trips go hand-in-hand with me.

2005 turned out to be a phenomenal year for music. for me anyway. In addition to Alligator and Illinois, Okkervil River released Black Sheep Boy, Spoon released Gimme Fiction and Animal Collective released Feels (though I wouldn't get to that until later). My interest in music certainly piqued in 2005. (note: Meadowlands was released in 2003, but i didn't get to it until 2005. and incidentally, it's probably my favorite record of the decade)

In November, 2005 we acquired our third (and hopefully last, for awhile) cat, Sid because he was just too cute to pass up. Abby promised me a computer in return. A promise that went long unfulfilled. She is forgiven, however because she let me upgrade our technology situation after moving into the new house. We got a HD projector, receiver, PS3, readynas and replaced the aging 12" powerbook with a new mac within the last year or so.

2006 was pretty uneventful. We took two vacations, New Mexico in June and Northern California to visit Abby's brother and family over labor day. Abby wasn't a huge fan of the New Mexico Vacation but I really enjoyed it. You can read about it here. We both really enjoyed the trip to California. There's something to be said about taking it easy on vacation instead of go-go-go all the time. We were able to just hang out with family which was very refreshing. We also spent a day in Napa Valley which was fun.

The last major event of 2006 was the Wii launch when abby and I camped out at Walmart for 12 hours. It was actually more fun than it sounds. and considering the scarcity of Wiis that lasted for over a year, I'm glad we did it.

2007 was our last year of the easy life. Although it started out inauspiciously with me losing my wedding ring while changing a tire in the snow. Even though we couldn't quite settle our plans, we knew that we were approaching family time. We talked about moving back to Indiana and considered the various scenarios. Have kid in Ohio then move? move then have kid? We couldn't really decide. There were too many working parts.

We took a vacation to Mexico. Since we were starting to think about making babies, we knew this would be our last big vacation for awhile. We decided to go out with a bang and do the international thing. It was a very positive vacation overall. We had some really awesome food there. I successfully avoided the sun. And sammy hagar.

By 2007 i was getting really into beer thought it's hard to pin that down to a specific timeframe. My love of good beer goes all the way back to college when I was drinking sam adams varieties instead of keystone or nattie light. By 2007 I was thumbing my nose at anything macro-made and trying new microbeers every week. This continues to be my biggest obsession, i think.

That fall was my 10 year high school reunion. I decided to attend at the last minute. I ended up having a good time and left wondering how people could change so much but conversely still stay the same.

This is an update of sorts, as well as a documentation of the life of our little speedster, Everett.

Everett is 15 months old, nearing 16 months here soon. He is just a little joy to us. If you couldn't tell by my title, he's fast. People ask me if he's walking yet, and my response is, "He's running." The kid doesn't idly walk somewhere. Wherever he wants to go, it's a full out baby sprint. He always looks like he's going to fall forward. Sometimes he does, but for the most part, he has that balance down.

The title of this post, while a testament to Everett's speedy demeanor, is a good segue way into Everett's main interest in life: books. The post title is from a book by Sandra Boynton (who writes EXCELLENT children books) by dinosaurs. If Everett was a dinosaur from that book, he would be Zoomer. Anyways, we read through 10-15 books a night. All he wants to do is read "bops". We have a basket of books on the floor he goes through every night and then he requests several top shelf books that he must pick out himself. I don't think the kid even needs his toys. Usually, when we travel, we don't bring toys. We just bring a stack of books and that will do him just fine.

He's talking some. That, ball, cup, cat, bop (book), mama, dada, up, down, all done, off, on, apple, cheese, dog, Jessica (funny - the older daughter of our daycare, who we have been using as our babysitter as of late), keys, car, baby, eat, shoes, socks, hat. His favorite word is that - everything is "that" as he points because he wants it now(!). My favorite word of his is snow. It's precious. He also does sign - baby when he wants to watch baby signing time, bath, eat, hat, shoes, and sleep are a few that come to mind.

And we are just starting to get into tantrum season. It's funny. He literally throws himself on the floor. It's too bad for him that we don't fall for it.

A few funny things Everett related:
1) We use a tupperware bowl for the cat water. A couple times in the past day, Ev has gotten a similar bowl out of the cabinet and placed it right next to the cat's bowl. Maybe he thinks they need more water. It's probably true.
2) We have to diligently watch the trash for magnetic letters that magically end up there. Everett's only going to learn 2/3's of the alphabet as a result.
3) We have a water cooler, since we are such avid water drinkers. Sometimes Everett will take his cup over to it and try to fill his up too. Thank goodness he hasn't quite figured out the button, or there would be water EVERYWHERE.
4) The kitchen rug is a great hiding place for old CDs and expired credit cards.
5) The couch is the most fun place to be in the entire house. Who knew.
6) Bath time is the coolest time every day. He loves to play bathketball and wear the lobster on his head. On days he doesn't take a bath, he gets pissed and throws a tantrum. Everett would be in heaven if we could only combine bath time and the couch. Sounds like a bad idea.
7) He has finally been able to go down the family room step. He tried for a while and always ended up on his face, so he gave up. But after a month of trying to teach him to "sit (down by the step) & scoot (your butt close to the edge so that your feet can reach the floor)" method, he finally gave in. And now he expects a round of applause every time he does make it down that step!
8) He's gotten very good at saying "All done" when he doesn't want to eat what we gave him.
9) Remotes double as a play phone. Remotes are also what you hand Mom and Dad when you want to watch baby signing time.
10) This kid loves to dance like a white guy. I'm glad he likes my music, and not Kirk's, much to Kirk's dismay. But he has certainly taken after Kirk's dance moves (oh, Snap!).
11) We have a Melissa & doug puzzle where pieces get placed behind doors (i.e. dog get placed in the dog house, car in the garage, turkey in the oven). Kirk took 4 or 5 pieces out and Everett was able to place them in their appropriate places on his own.

In short, he's a funny, fast, and smart boy. You know, just like every other kid. But he's ours and that alone makes him special. :)

here's my annual wrap-up of all the music i listened to in 2009. not that you care. but that's my name on the blog so deal with it.

Favorites
my favorite and/or most listened to albums of 2009 (in no particular order)


Japandroids - Post Nothing


Real Estate - Real Estate


Dinosaur Jr. - Farm


Andrew Bird - Noble Beast


The xx - xx


Califone - All My Friends Are Funeral Singers


Polvo - In Prism


Atlas Sound - Logos


Girls - Album


Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way To Blue


The Flaming Lips - Embryonic


Metric - Fantasies


Wilco - Wilco (the album)


Cymbols Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains



Most unexpectedly decent album