So, this weekend started on Friday afternoon with Penelope, Oma, and myself making a tip out to Cosco. I like to use Grandma’s VIP Costco card to go get giant burro-sized bags of rice and such. On this excursion, while looking at a gigantic something-or-other, I noticed an Asian man carrying a teddy bear that was taller than he was. I was intrigued. I kept an eye out and finally noticed the refrigerator box full of fluff.

PJ let out an extra-special yelp and I knew we had a winner. But a lesson had to be taught. I was a kid who wanted a lot. Not that I wanted for much I just had an internal drive to acquire stuff and my family did not have the means to satisfy my Ricky Schroder sized yearnings. So I learned to scheme. Not ask-mom-then-dad type rudimentary scheming (mostly because my dad wasn’t havin’ that) but forging myself into a full-on Jr. HustleMan. The lesson for Penelope on this day was that we take a picture of what we want and maybe It’ll just appear at our door. I have trained myself to see something in stores and come home to price check. Then, if I want it enough and can find a hook-up, the mailman brings it to my door a couple days later. So we threw Pippa in the box ‘o bears and snapped away.

Then we left the bears there and headed home. Wifey was disappointed I didn’t pull the trigger on the bear, but normally I don’t like to make big decisions on my own. And even at under $30, this bear was giant. But I told her I would go back to get it the next day, and hoped I could just borrow mom’s card and sidestep questions about why “Joanna Schultz” had a beard. Moms obliged and Costco as well. I was in business. But first, I stopped at Best Buy, as all husbands do on their way to go run errands. While I was there looking for, something… I stopped to play the new baseball game for xbox. They already had the Tigers @ Yankees all setup, and as any Tiger fan knows, Detroit was in NY that weekend. As for the video game, let’s just say Verlander fanned 7 thru 6 and Delmon Young hit for the cycle.

It was cool. A bit of redemption for Mr. Young. Overall it was a 20 minute bonding experience for myself and the old folks who walked up on the screen thinking it was the actual Tiger game. I still wist I could get The Show for 360 tho…
But I digress. And headed toward Livonia, and the Costco Bear that I knew would change my daughter’s life. When I found the perfect one, I carried it to the register, again hoping not to have my true identity revealed to the sleuth/cashiers of Costco.

I did feel a bit like I was at a carnival, with all the envious parent and jealous children eyes on me and my prize. I got to the front, paid and went to try and cram this giant stuffed beast into my car. I drove home down I-275 and will never forget all the double and triple takes from the other drivers. I had a giant bear as my co-pilot and it looked for all intents and purposes like a man in a bear suit. Plus I still have the beard. So everyone noticed us.

When I arrived home, of course, Penelope was elated. I instantly took to calling the thing “Big Bad Bear” because, well, just because. Pippa took to wrestling him and straddling his neck.

My wife did notice instantly that it looks like a man in a bear suit. So she took to being startled by him. Big Bad Bear. In the House. I put him in a snazzy outfit, obtained from the UofM Garage Sale. I only bought one maize and blue sock at the sale (“Why would I really need one sock, much less two?”) but regret that logic at this point. I think I’ll try to contact David Brandon and see if he can search around Yost for a match. I really like all the cool stitches in them to sew shut the many holes in them. I did wash the jersey so Big Bad does not, in fact, smell like a sweaty ‘Canuck.

Big Bad “lives” in the family room now and is a full-fledged member of the Schultz Clan. I decided he was a boy -nay- a man (he is big and bad after all) so the gender-scales are balancing out a little. Indie, Jess and Pippa still got us beat, but me and B.B. are bigger that all of them put together, so we hold our own. He defiantly commands a certain presence in the room, but not in too startling of a way. He just sits there and looks at the TV. And entertains my daughter. She is now pretty officially spoiled. She has a bigger teddy bear already than I had combined in my entire childhood. All hail Princess Pippa.
Here’s the link to the flickr set for all the photos of Big Bear.

So yesturday was the annual University of Michigan Spring Game for Mott. I wasn’t back from DC for last year’s game, but I heard alot of effort was invested to try and make it much more of an event than in years past. I’m also told this year’s game was televised on B1G Network, although I’ve dumped my cable and can’t testify to that. I heard about the game and got several emails from the Athletic Department, touting a whole day of celebration in the Big House. It was almost rained out though, and that’s where my day began, trying to check the Free Press for Spring Game Status Updates.

I planned on getting an early start either way, because I wanted to check out the hockey garage sale. I completely forgot about the football garage sale (until about 11:30 on the morning of the sale) and have kicked myself every time I saw an ebay listing about a Michigan jersey someone picked up at it. I don’t know why, but I figured the hockey sale would be a low-key event, but I was wrong ’bout ‘dat. I also figured it’d start at the time listed on all the emails from the AD I’d been getting, but I was wrong ’bout ‘dat too. I got there 15 minutes early, and they opened the doors over an hour early, supposedly because the line had gotten too long. Things were pretty well picked through by the time I got in.

When I did get in there were at least a thousand people milling about with winged hockey helmets and maize-and-blue gloves. I got none of those good things. There were a couple used hockey socks and a practice jersey, that was about that. I met a nice Canadian lady who brought a van full of tweenie-hockey boys to their own ‘Canuck version of Valhalla. I saw a man with a cart who got checked out ahead of us and paid $4953 for his haul. The guy in front of me said he’ll make triple that selling the stuff at his Pro Shop. The Canadian boys all got gloves and cool sticks so I was jealous. But their mom said they left their little Canadian hometown (Sarnia?) at 2AM last night and have benn outside the building since six. So hard to begrudge them their haul. She was very nice and held my spot in the GIANT slow moving line, several times so I could run to try and grab some cool left-overs.

From then it was home, it was drizzling and I wasn’t going to put up with that for the Alumni flag football “event.” But I met up with my dad at noon and watched the Spring Game Practice. My impressions were good overall. They had Jim and Dan piped in to the speakers and of course all the action was on the giant TVs. All in all it was pretty easy to follow. But harder to score. There was no official score, or time being kept. The clock ran, but the “quarters” just ran into each other until it was time to leave. The one thing that was easy to tell was that Denard was not going to play more than one series. Devin took the rest of the snaps with the starters and the third-stringer looked better than he did. Every time the defense made a play, it meant the offense looked bad. And overall, they helped the defense shine. Brandin Hawthorne looked like he was everywhere during the second half. Had the ‘d’ been allowed to hit Gardner, they would have easily had more turnovers than they two they caused as-is.

But it was fun. And it was quick. Plus we made a bunch of money for Mott Children’s Hospital. I have heard since that it was much more low-key than last year, and some injury attrition kept it from being a true game. It did feel more like a glorified scrimmage. And only glorified by the fact that you were in Michigan Stadium. Speaking of which, I have never had so much room to stretch out in the Big House before and Papi had a good time too. Makes me glad I live in Ann Arbor. Go Blue!!!

Nic Pics

After the wildly successful picks I made during last year’s NCAA Tournament, I decided to go all out for this year’s brackets. I set out to create the ultimate DIY bracket sheet. Prior to ESPN’s bracket challenge, men like myself who filled brackets out every year had to carry around a sheet of paper with all our picks, scratches and notes scribbled on it. Well I have created an alternative. A visual representation of all my picks, using team specific art. For the 1st rounds I used the school’s logotype, 2nd round gets ballcap ligatures, third is mascot heads and the rest were whatever other art I had. They are all vector, therefore infinitely scalable, so maybe I’ll rent a billboard if Kansas wins.
Either way. I laid out all my winners and did the same for my wife’s picks, then printed them back-to-back and laminated them. And let me tell you, they look damn cool. Beyond aesthetics, the picks themselves are looking pretty darn good too.

Wifey Picks

Wifey – not so much tho. She lost her first Final Four team, Missouri, on the first day. That was also her pick for national champ. So yeah, that sucked. Then the next day she lost Georgetown and its been pretty much downhill since then. She still has a shot at getting her office-pool entry fee back by having the worst picks, but even that’s looking improbable.
For me, it’s gone much better. We must have watched some of the Big12 tournament together because I too had Mizzou in the Final4. But other than those lame Tigers, I have OSU, Kansas and Kentucky so, well, I kinda nailed it. Watching Ohio lose to Kansas last night felt great, both for my inner Wolveine and my bracks. So my national championship game is in tact, and I’m looking for a big Kansas ‘W’ on Monday to reaffirm my prognosticational dominance. Rock Chalk!!!!