Finally, The Chairman Has Come Back...

...home.

If there's one thing that I miss, it's watching The Rock on WWF.

I had some travel misadventures, and the moral of the story is actually more of a line from Stone Cold Steve Austin. Which goes, "DTA, Rock. Don't trust anybody." Now, what happened on TV was that the Rock got wide-eyed, and then turned around just in time to get kicked in the stomach and dished a Stone Cold Stunner, as prophesized by Austin 3:16. What happened to me was that I ended up hanging out in the Vegas airport for way too long, eating overpirced airport food, and having to negotiate with US Air employees for way too long. Oh yeah. And I managed to get home only through a long-distance, last-ditch Hail Mary. Otherwise, I'd still probably be in Phoenix. Which wouldn't be so bad, except for that my professors would have me killed upon my arrival in Champaign.

My problem was simple. The folks at US Air have a very bad information network. I got to the airport in plenty of time, as I never check baggage, and usually do the self-check in that they have at the electronic kisoks. Only this time, it wouldn't let me take care of it there, for no goo reason, so I had to wait in line (which was about 90 minutes). So, while I was waiting in line, I tried to get through to US Air's customer service, only they were so backlogged with calls that no one ever picked up. By the time I got up front, I had missed the window to check-in by about 5 minutes. Which meant that I was screwed.

Long story short, (if you want details, I suppose that you could e-mail me), I finally get home way later than expected, way more tired than expected, and way more surly than expected. let's just say that it involved an early morning pickup from the airport in Chicago, an overnight drive to Bloomington, eating a lot of fatty, smoked, pork products at Denny's (which was actually wonderful), and finally driving back to Champaign. Upon which I slept. A lot. Part of the exhaustion was my fault. I just had to go gamble until really, really late on Saturday night, and then drive out to the airport on 2 hours of sleep. But then again, that's just how I roll.

So today, oddly enough, after 11 days on the road, the one thing that I wanted to do was fire up my stove. Nothing fancy, but there's something therapeutic about dicing onions and peppers and sauteeing sausage. I'm still groggy, despite sleeping a lot, but have to get back to work. And in all honesty, I need to hit the gym. So, I'm a bit behind the 8-ball right now. But the next couple days will be nice and productive. Back to adult ed for research, write out a chapter or two on my dissertation, do a first pass at a revision of a paper, and set up some sessions to collect data with Korean people.

I've been watching the Illini out of the corner of my eye, though I did get a chance to see the Penn St. game on TV. I like how we're moving the ball on offense, and I think that our defense will be strong enough to keep us in games. We'll have a good shot to take care of Iowa, and make me a prophet - to this point, the only game that I've been wrong on has been at Purdue (which I changed my thoughts on at the start of the Big Ten season, thanks to Jig). We probably can't get the 3 seed, but if Indiana chokes, and Michigan St. doesn't pull off two upsets, I think that we will get to the Big Ten finals, beat Wisconsin in our run-back.

I haven't chimed in on the whole Jamar thing. I will say that as soon as the report came out that the accident happened late on the 12th, a Monday night, I knew that alcohol was likely involved. It didn't really start snowing for real until about 2am on Tuesday morning. So, I was expecting the worst. I wasn't expecting to hear that Jamar left Carlwell there to die. But hey, I'd probably do the same. I mean, what's the point in sitting there waiting to watch someone die when you could just go back to the apartment to make a sandwich and have a Diet Coke? I don't like to be all reactive, and like "Oh, I've got to stay with my friend and teammate because they are dying." I'm more proactive, and like, "Sucks to be that guy. Man, I'm hungry. Let's go make a tasty sandwich with a little fried egg, some ham, and a nice slice of melted provolone." After all, you can't look back and change the past, right? So I can totally see why Jamar did what he did.

The biggest down-side to this is that we sort of lose depth in our guard rotation, and will likely have to give Calvin major minutes. He'll make us a bit more athletic, but I really hope that he continues to improve on offense, both with and without the ball. We also lose some depth up front, but Marcus has stepped up his game, playing pretty effectively on offense, and reasonably well on D. But it could be that a shorter rotation works out well for us. We'll see.

Plus, a couple days in practice without a game coming up will help things solidify just a little more.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to an interesting Dance this March. We'll see how smart I am when the brackets come out.

-Chairman