NBA All Stars

All-Star weekend notes…we watched most of the Saturday night stuff and the first half of the game. The TV announcers were onto LeBron for carrying the ball during the skills challenge. Can Kevin Harland give Barkley a hard time? My seven year old was talking about his dislike for Barney the dinosaur, so he thought it was cool when I told him how Charles Barkley beat him up. Not a big deal was made about Dirk reaching the finals of the three-point shootout by hitting the money-ball shot after the buzzer…then going on to win the event. The game introductions were hilarious…guys having fun and laughing at themselves and the others. They sure went all out to attract the white audience all weekend, didn’t they? The symphony and all that other stuff. Lang watched Saturday night on TV, as opposed to being there? Judging the Slam Dunk may be the thing that needs a makeover, though Moses got it right by tying the score to produce a dunk-off. Enjoyed how Nate got Spud to help. Lang might not’ve realized that in the first round the rule was that they had to have a helper on one dunk. Josh Smith is too laid back to win, no matter how good to is, but one day he’ll learn that. His height is another detracting factor. After the off the back side of the backboard dunk, did Andre run across the court, all the way out of the building? Nice touch. Other weekend notes…Friday night we went to see ‘Cheaper by the Dozen 2’ with another family…it was better than I thought it would be, better even than the first remake with Steve Martin. Saturday we went to Lowe’s, HHGregg, and Sears to buy a new dishwasher. Will and Ceil had a meeting at church Sunday afternoon from 1:30 to 3 pm, so I took Matthew to get a haircut and run some other errands with Anna. Ceil wanted to see ‘Yours, Mine, and Ours’, so we went back Sunday afternoon to see that. Stopped by Borders on the way home…Anna wants to buy a Carrie Underwood CD. So I was on the go all weekend, barely catching up on my rest. Gotta stay after my boss about getting me a laptop. Had some downtime in Houston waiting for the customer to arrive, and I worked on some promotion stuff to keep my boss thinking about it…no immediate results, but now I’ve gotta keep the ball rolling. I was afraid that a new phone system would make us change numbers, and this morning I got the bad news…it is. At some point it will change...so the new business cards we got last month are useless. The trip was pretty uneventful…the vendor was pretty established, quality and accounting wise…it doesn’t appear we’ll have many problems, except for the distance. They took us to Papasitos, the Mexican part of the chain. Didn’t get to do any NBA stuff…Lang hadn’t called, it was late, we were tired, so we crashed. It was like the Wizard of Oz…seemed like everyone there reminded me of someone. The plant manager reminded me of Chris Freund, the sales guy reminded me of a co-worker, and the quality guy reminded me of an old friend, except as James Earl Jones said in ‘Field of Dreams’…he was from the 60’s. About 8:30 Thursday night I was driving up 85, taking Randy to meet his wife at Chamblee Tucker. I was in the HOV lane behind a slow moving Explorer. Wanted to get around him, but there was too much traffic…just past Lenox Road. Then the Explorer slammed on its breaks…there was all this wood that had been hit by other cars, broken up. Swerved as much as I could to the left, avoiding most of the wood on the ground. Then there was a bunch of airborne plastic wrap that hit my front bumper on the passenger side…gave me some scratches and a small crack in the plastic bumper. Over the weekend I discovered a few more scratches down the passenger side of the car.