Chocolate custard crepe layer cake

It tastes better than it looks, and it'll look better next time (when I have a crepe pan the right size):

Christmas and Lala on the Kitten Condo

Here's a picture of Christmas and Lala relaxing on top of the kitten condo:

According to Sagarin's computer...

... Indiana has played 2 games against teams ranked in the top 40, and 17 games against teams ranked below 40. Indiana has won all those games against lower-than-40 teams.

Against the Top 40 teams, Indiana has lost by 15 to #14 Xavier on a neutral court and lost by 5 at home to #28 UConn.

Doesn't bode well for our road game against #9 Wisconsin.

Some thoughts on seventeen-and-one

I'm used to Indiana being ranked higher in the computer rankings than they are in the AP... or even higher than seems reasonable... because we've played such a difficult schedule that our SOS is in the single digits and yet we have several losses. In other words, we've played really good teams - and lost to them. This season is a complete role reversal. I can't remember the last time Indiana had a schedule this poor at this point in the season.

Side comment - I'm not complaining about the schedule. We didn't have control over many of the teams we played and we don't have any control over how good our opponents are in a given season. Who would have thought that we'd play in the ACC-B10 Challenge plus play Kentucky and neither of those games would be against a high quality opponent? We've almost always had games against Western Carolina or Coppin State type teams... it's just that this season we had nothing to balance that out. And obviously we've started the B10 with a very favorable schedule too.

Anyway, the point is that this is new territory for Indiana fans. I'm used to arguing why Indiana is the best 8-loss team in the country. I'm used to arguing why Indiana deserves an NCAA bid in spite of our 18-11 record because those other bubble teams didn't play anyone good.

And now I'm looking at our 17-1 schedule and thinking, "The only upset we've been involved in is the game where WE were upset by Xavier. The other seventeen games are a combination of expected victories and closer-games-than-we-thought victories." It's hard to pull off an upset when you're as good as Indiana is, because those opportunities will be rare, but that's the problem - we're trying to judge ourselves against the other top teams in the country, but we haven't played any of them. According to Pomeroy, the best team we've played is #13 Xavier and we lost by 15. The next best team is #36 Minnesota - a five point win on the road. Minnesota is also our best win according to Sagarin, who has them at #46. Think about that for a second. Our best win this season is against Minnesota... an NCAA bubble team that's really happy about being a bubble team.

It's very easy to picture this team being exactly as good as it is today and performing exactly as well as it has this season and being 13-5 against a really tough schedule. We might've already played at Wisconsin and MSU. Kentucky could have been a Top 5 team. We could've been paired against UNC instead of Georgia Tech in the Challenge. And this same team probably wouldn't be ranked in the Top 25.

17-1 isn't completely meaningless. It tells me that this team is good enough to win even when they have an off night, and that is important. We've got multiple weapons and don't need to be firing on all cylinders to beat someone. Remember thinking in years past that Indiana could beat anyone in the country IF everything went just right? We don't need everything to go just right this season. And that's good, because as everyone expected with this team of newcomers, our performance has been variable throughout the season... but with a clear upward trend. I am so happy with DJ and for DJ right now. He's always seemed like a great kid to me, but it's no secret that I have been less enamored with his play than many other IU fans. Well, I'm officially no longer in that camp - he's completely exceeded my expectations this season. This team is still developing and that will continue until the last game, but so far they've won the games they're supposed to win, and that's gotta count for something.

But all that is over now. Forget the gaudy 17-1 record. In spite of their struggles, UConn is the second best team we've played this season. We'll be a clear underdog at Wisconsin. And then after a home game with Northwestern, it's at Illinois, at Ohio State, and home against Wisconsin, MSU, and Purdue. Dang. Now things get fun. We're not going to win all those games. But it's going to be exciting. I can't wait.

My first chance to DVR the Hoosiers

I love watching games from the comfort of my home on my DVR. I get to fast forward through commercials and halftime, I am allowed to turn off the announcers, and I get to watch the interesting possessions three or four times before continuing... and all in High Definition! Mmmmm....

So, now that I've seen the Hoosiers against a real opponent, DVR-style, here are some thoughts.

1. This team is loaded with potential... and to date it is largely unrealized potential. This is not too surprising. While I think it's guaranteed that this team will get significantly better over the course of the season, it's still far from certain that they'll realize their potential.

2. Mike White got elbowed in the face and they called a foul on him.

3. Speaking of potential, I think IU started the season with a ranking that matched their potential -- about #8 in the country. That's what I think this team can be. It clearly is not what this team is today.

4. DJ White jumped up to catch a pass and was undercut by a GT player as he was coming down, causing him to bobble the pass out of bounds, and they gave the ball to GT.

5. This is why playing cupcakes at the beginning of the season is a waste of time. Indiana needed to start the season against a couple decent teams to find out what they needed to work on. Beating Longwood gave the Hoosiers no good information about their strengths and weaknesses. Schedule Longwood right before the conference games start, if at all.

6. Gordon is really good, and dang, he's just going to get better.

7. There's been a couple years when I thought the B10 was better than the ACC even though they lost the B10-ACC Challenge... this isn't one of those years.

8. People who complain about officiating annoy the crap out of me.

9. This was a good win, but it wasn't the kind of game that causes visions of Final Fours to dance in your head.

10. Go Wisconsin!

How I spent my Friday night

First, I'm now so old that I've been looking forward to Friday night so that I could sleep. I've been incredibly busy with work, and I needed a good night's sleep, so that was my big Friday night plan - take a sleeping pill and then sleep all the way through till morning. Yup, I'm quite the party animal.

Unfortunately, Tyler was having one of his bad going-to-sleep nights where not only did he not want to go to sleep, but he was constantly messing around and keeping us awake as well. Given Tyler's normal eagerness to please, this is a strange aspect of his personality -- sometimes he would rather have us so angry at him that we don't trust ourselves to speak than to just relax and go to sleep. Or just relax and stay awake quietly. I don't get it. Last night he was probably revved up because Morgan was at our house having a sleepover with Carson, and he was having a hard time switching his engine back to idle.

So anyway, now it's 12:30 A.M. I'm still awake, Tyler's still awake, Karen's still awake, we're all exhausted... and then Carson strolls into our room, crawls up onto our bed, pauses for a moment on all fours in between Karen and I, and then vomits all over the sheets, pillows, and blanket. So Karen jumps up and cleans up Carson and I jump up and clean up the bed, we remake the bed, get a bucket, Carson continues to throw up periodically, and eventually I go downstairs to sleep on the couch with the animals.

Hooray. It's the weekend.

Decisions, decisions

We've had Time-Warner cable for years. We're happy with it. We use it for Roadrunner as well. They recently ran a new, bigger line from the street to our house (the size they use for apartment buildings) because we use so much bandwidth. No charge.

Time-Warner doesn't have the Big Ten Network.

Indiana has 17 games on the Big Ten Network this basketball season. In HD. I can't watch any of them. We have two games on CBS regional that I usually can't watch. I can't watch the ESPNU games.

That leaves 9 games that I know I can get (ESPN, ESPN2, and CBS National).

Nine.

This appears to be the best IU team in years. A Top 10 team. And I might miss nearly 3 out of 4 games. That's not okay.

DirectTV has the Big Ten Network.

Decisions, decisions...

Italy 2

I'm trying to post several pictures plus a message. I somehow lost the first message and can only post four pictures. Give me a call. Uncle Roger is sick and I want to give you a report. Ove, Mommu

Italy

London

I went to London for a couple days at the end of last week for a customer visit. My first time in London, but unfortunately the quick turnaround didn't leave much time for sightseeing. Here's a couple of my favorites pictures that I snapped:

On High School Musical 2

So here's my question about High School Musical 2.

Should I be really happy that the kids (especially Carson) are really into a wholesome movie about nice, polite teenagers who like sports and singing and dancing and earning money for college -- and the big villain of the movie is a self-absorbed teenage diva who hasn't yet learned the value of friendship?

Or should I be really annoyed that the movie was on 37 times times over the weekend and now all the songs are now stuck in my head, maybe forever?

It's a dilemma.

Washington DC Trip photo album

Here's the whole album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/TBleizeffer/2007JulyWashingtonDC

Here's a few of my favorites.






















Note the plane landing in the background.

On Michael Conley

We were discussing Mike Conley's decision to turn pro and your surprise at this decision recently.

Well, check out this article from Sport Illustrated on the Top Guards in the NBA Draft.

Who do they have first? Mike Conley.

Still surprised?

Happy Memorial Day

Not much going on here. I've basically done two things on my long weekend -- "spring" cleaning the garage and going to our new pool. The pool is the more pleasant of the two activities... though I admit a deep feeling of satisfaction at having a clean, well-organized garage, even if it will only remain that way for a few days.

We got a membership at a nearby "swim and racquet" club. This might seem silly, since our neighborhood has a pool (which is why we've avoided getting a membership for years), but now we're kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner. This place is sooooo much nicer than our pool. First, the pool is a lot bigger, and it has a lifeguards, diving board, a high dive, a water slide, and a big 3 feet section for little kids. And they have activities like swim team. Tyler made the swim team last Wednesday after a couple weeks of practicing by showing that he could swim all the way across the pool in his lane without touching the bottom. He did it, and he was very, very excited. And Lord knows Tyler needs to find activities that involve actual exercise. They also have tennis courts and tennis teams (Carson is going to do tennis, it starts in a couple weeks), plus a half-basketball court (where I can shoot hoops while the kids are in the pool), and a volleyball court. They also have a snack shack that sells drinks and, um, snacks.

Plus Karen knows 3/4 of the parents and kids who go there.

We went there on Saturday and Sunday and I bet we're going back today.

So that's it for Memorial Day... but it's enough.

Bob Kriner

We've been praying for Bob Kriner at Mass lately. I heard third hand that he is very ill with cancer. Have you heard anything from Soupy?

Are the Bleizeffers from Romania?

I found an interesting link about "Bleizeffer" courtesy of Google:
http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/pageload.cgi?bleizeffer::romania::271.html

"I'm looking for any information on the family name "Bleizeffer". I believe they once came from the area around Banat and maybe a town called "Tschestereg or Tschestelek". Any information of the towns or the surname would be appreciated."

Didn't someone do a geneology for our family awhile back?

American Girl Chicago trip - photo gallery

http://picasaweb.google.com/TBleizeffer/AmericanGirlChicagoTrip

Click above for the full 164 picture gallery.

Here's a few of my favorites:

Big news out of Haiti via The Onion

Ariel photos of tornado damage in Greensburg, Kansas

http://www.kansas.com/static/slides/050507tornadoaerials/

Just unbelievable.

In anticipation of the new "Die Hard" movie...

... coming out in a few weeks.



(Thanks to Kung Fu Monkey for posting the link. Yippee Kay Yaaaaaayyyy!)