Weekend

The weekend was much too short for my tastes. When it was over I still had a pile of stuff left over that I'd wanted to get to, but I ran out of time. I did make some progress on the Empire Mortar. With another 1-2 hours I think I could finish up the crew and move on to another unit. I might try to paint the Knights next, although that would mean making my first attempt at painting horses. We'll see how that goes.

On Saturday while we were out getting some groceries I saw a Nike Outlet store and decided to go in and have a look around. There were a few neat shoes in there, but as is usual with outlet stores the selection was a bit sparse. While I was looking at the basketball shoes my wife walked up and said, "If you started playing basketball, you could probably justify buying some basketball shoes." She has a point.

In middle school I played a lot of schoolyard ball during the lunch break and after school with friends or at Boy Scouts. I also had a whole pile of basketball cards, including a decent-sized collection of Hakeem Olajuwon memorabilia. I was never much of a player. I couldn't shoot, my ball-handling was terrible, and bigger guys (pretty much everyone) were able to bump me out of the way with relative ease.

I liked rebounding and blocking shots, especially if I got the upper hand on a taller guy. I stopped buying basketball cards when the focus really moved to premium cards with insanely small print runs and serially numbered inserts as collecting all or even most of the cards of any one player became nearly impossible. This was about the time that Olajuwon's career began declining.

It was probably around that same time that I quit playing basketball or following the NBA outside of looking at Houston Rockets boxscores and playing fantasy sports. It would probably be fun to get back into it a bit, but I think I would be seen as a liability out on the court.

Boston played very well in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and now have a 3-2 lead in the Series. One more win and they will take the trophy. They will have to win at LA, though, so it will be a little tougher. Most of the Lakers looked like they'd started their summer break early in the last game. I guess we'll see if the home crowd energizes them a bit. Glen Davis didn't really figure into the game, but that's how it goes with role players off the bench. If the starters are doing well it doesn't make sense to pull them.