I missed Dancing with the Stars for this!?

Honestly, it was an exciting game to watch. Despite Seattle totally dominating the first half. Pushed the Packers around like it was nothing. I seriously got sick of how gleefully the announcers talked about how awesome Seattle is and this is what we can expect from them all year and isn't it great how they can demonstrate it against the Pack that was supposed to be so good. At least the Packer D played well enough to limit Seattle to a single TD. Did the announcers bother to point that out? How despite the Seattle Defense manhandling GB so thoroughly, they were held to only 7 points in the half? Ha!


Then the Packers came out with a revised game plan second half. Instead of passing every down, they mixed in a healthy dose of run plays. Maintained forward progress, got a first down every few plays. No big plays. Nope, none. But more important than anything else, kept our offense on the field. Turns out it's a lot easier to see how good Green Bay's defense is when the opposing offense never hits the field. 3 and out 75% of the time has a bigger impact when you take the field 4 times than it does when you take the field 16.

Or something like that. Point is, Green Bay controlled the game indisputably the second half. Held the ball, like, 25 minutes. Scored two field goals. Then a TD. Missed the 2 point conversion, but took a 12-7 lead.

Intense, exciting come back. Especially, remember, after Seattle had spent the first half demonstrating what a great team they were. And they were still ground down by Green Bay in the long game.

Then came the final drive. Less than 2 mins left on the clock. Green Bay had just kicked the ball back far enough that Seattle had a long field in front of them. And they began marching down it. Moved the ball further that drive than they had the whole 2nd half. Got a couple first downs. Got as far as their own 40 yard line before Green Bay stuffed them. Hard. Forced a long pass on 3rd and 32(!). Seattle put the ball up, heading straight for a receiver being dogged closely by a GB defender. The defender won the fight to get between the ball and the receiver, had a great chance to intercept it, so the receiver wrapped up the GB defender and the ball bounced off his hands, pass broken up. The officials could have, and looking at the replays should have, called offensive pass interference on Seattle. But OPI is rarely called, right? No one really expects it, even when the foul is that blatant.

But what no one really expected was when the official called pass interference against Green Bay! Seriously?! Seattle's player had Green Bay's wrapped up in a bear hug? And the Packers get the pass interference penalty? Yep. A 38 yard penalty for a Seattle first down. Bringing them into field goal range.

Now . . the game had been plagued by bad calls. I understand all the games have been so far this year. And probably both teams had benefitted from bad calls over the course of the game. It would probably be pointless to try and figure out who benefitted most. You just laugh, shrug and play on, right? What was clear, painfully clear, was that no call in the game had been that absurdly wrong.

Not yet anyway.

Green Bay held Seattle again. With 8 seconds left in the game they were still over 30 yards out of the end zone needing a TD to win. Last play of the game, a few players from both teams skirmish around the QB, but most of both teams sprinted to the end zone and waited for the Hail Mary. It came to the back left corner, two Seattle receivers in the area, four Packers. The defenders surrounded one receiver, totally cutting the second off from the ball. The surrounded receiver hauls off with a violent shove of one defender. I mean, not even remotely defensible as "bumping", but blantantly violent enough to legitimately disqualify him as a legal receiver. Everyone jumped for the ball. Green Bay intercepted it. As the intercepting player came down, Seattle's receiver reached in and tried to rip the ball out of his hands. Both players hit the ground hanging on to the ball, a scrum ensued, when it cleared, Green Bay still had the ball. Two officials were standing right there. One signaled an interception for Green Bay, the other (senior) official a fair catch and touchdown for Seattle.

The play was reviewed. Watching the replay, maybe you could the make the case that as fast as everything happened, maybe it looked like both players simultaneously got hands on the ball, in which case it would go to Seattle.. In slow motion, it becomes apparent that is not really the case, though. And yet they let call on the field stand.

Oh man. I do understand that sometimes games are decided by bad officiating. And when it happens, we should consider that it's not just a bad call that won the game for Seattle. They played extremely well the first half and because of that were in a position where one touchdown would win them the game. But man, I have never seen any calls as bad as those last two of the game. I mean, this is a perfect example of why good officiating matters. The NFL needs to get its scabs off the field and put real officials back in charge.

We Bought a House!

Ashwaubenon. Southwest suburb of Green Bay. Out towards the airport. Great access to the highway. About 10 mins from work (compared to 20 mins from the northeast side of Green Bay). 4 BR, 2 bath place on a quiet street. We close on June 29th and plan to move in the 2nd weekend in July.

Becky, Tabby and I are very excited. It's going to be our own home! Tabby absolutely loved house hunting. The realtor hardly had to sell the houses at all . . . she just let Tabby go to town telling us who would have which room and why it was the perfect place for us. Every house we looked at. So, of course, Tabby is thrilled that we are buying "her favorite".

Sam and Ben have mixed feelings. They're both happy to exchange their current crowded bedroom that all 3 boys share for each of them getting their own room. They're both unhappy about moving away from friends they've made the past two years.

Becky feels guilty about that and is very, very concerned about how they'll adjust in their new schools. I'm afraid they have a somewhat unsympathetic father. I moved going into 9th grade and again going into 12th. I was disappointed with both moves at the time we made them. But I got through them just fine. That second one, my family left Wisconsin for Arizona my senior year of high school. Even at the time, even not liking it, I recognized that with only one more year at home my own interest in the move took a back seat to everyone else's. Looking back with the experience of being a parent, I don't think badly about it at all. That first move? The one when I was closer to Sam & Ben's ages? In 9th grade from Utah to Wisconsin? One of the best things that ever happened to me, I think.

On top of that, when my family moved, it was a 1500 mile distance. No internet. Mail took a week to deliver. Long distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive. I really was losing friends. Sam and Ben are moving 10 mins across town in the age of instant messaging. I think they'll manage just fine.

Jack really doesn't care at about this move. He's leaving, hopefully, in June to live with some friends in Sheboygan.

Autumn

The Mary Ann Cofrin Building, where I have my class, as seen across the field I walk through on my way from the parking lot.



Venus Drive, where it intersects with Sun Terrace right about at our driveway.

Bugs

One thing about living in Manitowoc and Sheboygan that I don't think I appreciated as much as I should have was just how few bugs there were. I mean, there were bugs; mosquitos, spiders, basement crawly things. After each trip back to visit Becky's parents in Wisconsin Rapids, I did notice how few mosquitos we had on the Lakeshore. But man, I'd forgotten how many bugs there are in Green Bay.

There's a park Becky would like to take our kids to for pictures, but it is so mosquito infested that she just can't. And spiders. Wow, so many spiders. Big, healthy, well fed spiders. Sometime toward the end of September or beginning of October I'll have to get a picture of one of the glass walls on a UWGB campus building. The whole thing gets to be a giant spider community. I mean, the community is giant. And the spiders are pretty big too. It's a mix of creepy and fascinating.

Moved In

Whew.

Friday through Tuesday with no internet. Played Civ IV for the first time in ages. The boys and I played a game together all Sunday afternoon. Jack and Sam have been playing Age of Empires III.

Phone service was supposed to be hooked up Friday, was delayed to Monday, died Monday night, couldn't be fixed until Wednesday. Turns out we have a bad jack that shorts out service if we use it. Yay cell phones.

HOT!

Storage pod was mostly emptied into the house Friday evening. Becky's dad stayed long enough to help set up the beds.

Saturday morning while Becky went to the store, the boys and I finished emptying it. Stocor took it out of our driveway Monday night.

Who would have thought restocking the kitchen from nearly empty would be so hard? Becky has gone to the store pretty much every day. She even let me go once.

There are a dozen or so boxes we plan to just not unpack given that six months from now, when my class is done, who knows what we're going to do. They are finally put away in their closets and everything else unpacked. I mean, well, we need to straighten the garage in order to get both vehicles in. But other than that.

We're close enough to church that we walked on Sunday.

Ben spent a day and a half in bed with a puke bucket.

I've applied for jobs at Ponderosa and Applebee's (currently fully staffed, but taking applications), Pizza Hut (constantly hiring drivers) and Universal Health Group.

Jack has applied at a host of fast food places; McDonald's, Subway among them.

Becky has applied for jobs at Hancock, Joann's and Wal-Mart.

Had a wonderful chat with my grandmother.

There's still stuff to do, but we finally actually feel moved in.

Moving again

One benefit of having our vacation cut short is that it accelerated our plans to move to Green Bay. Today we are going to pack a few boxes to put in our storage unit, tomorrow we will pack up the rest of bags and Friday we are actually moving.

Today we also have on the agenda to get utilities, water, phone and internet set up for the GB address. And a trip to the post office to change address.

A place

Our original plan was to spend the summer in Wisconsin Rapids. We'd get summer jobs, save money on rent, keep our stuff in the portable storage pod and in August we'd move to GB. The more we thought about it, the less sense it made. Other than that "save money on rent part." There ends up being very little time for a job and if we got one it would mean skipping out on going to Utah for sure. Plus there's the stress of sharing a home. As much as we love Becky's family . . . well there's still stress about things we used to control and now don't.

So we spent this past Wednesday and Friday in Green Bay looking for a place to live. We found a nice 3 bedroom, 2 bath duplex on Green Bay's east side. The kids will go to Edison Middle School and Preble High. The kitchen is small and all three boys will be sharing a room, but overall the place is bigger than we had dared hope. The bedroom are easily big enough for three and it has a huge family room. It's within walking distance of church and East Town Mall. Clean, quiet leafy subdivision. We met our neighbor and one of her sons. They seem nice. Our landlady seems real nice too. And, small world, her husband's brother is an IT manager at Acuity.

We're kind of excited about the place.

Monday we're leaving for a vacation out to Utah and back. We'll visit Becky's uncle, grandmother and sister on the way out and/or back. We should be back around July 7th or 8th, then plan to move into the place in Green Bay the next weekend, July 16th-17th.