Season is done... ankle is sprained

The last time I paid a visit to the emergency room was after tweaking my knee freshman year during some 400 repeats (I had no idea what I was going to do in track at that point... so I thought - I can run the 400). Turns out, it was just knee tendonitis.

Well, today I paid another visit after bowing out of the Bay County Community Basketball Leage B-3 playoffs last night. We lost by about 12 points I think and in the first half I took a hard foul, was thrown into a wall and came down poorly on my right ankle. It twisted and probably popped a little bit, and I was done for the season.

It's just a bad sprain which requires me to stay off the foot for a few days, use plenty of ice and keep my leg elevated. More of an annoyance, but what are you going to do?

It reminded me of my freshman year at Hillsdale at the outdoor GLIAC championships at Ferris. It wasn't even in competition — it was in warmups. WARMUPS. I was "high skipping" (yes, I was skipping) and came down funny, popped the ankle and it swelled up quickly.

The trainer taped it up tightly, and I competed. I cleared opening height of 6-1 I think, then went out at 6-4 and placed 8th. Not a fun way to end the season.

Same story, different sport.

In closing, tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Good luck to everyone for the next 40 days and 40 nights.

Will I ever jump over a bar again?

     It's a question that I think about quite a lot, actually. And I thought about it quite a few times this weekend when I went to the GLIAC Championships at SVSU this past weekend.
     Hillsdale men's and women's teams competed hard, but finished 7th and 5th respectively. You can see results, here. The meet was highlighted by Amanda Putt who ran a dominating mile race. She had a great finish and is poised to run pretty fast in two weeks at the NCAA DII nationals in Albuquerque, N.M. She ran a 4:53 (4:55 converted) at GVSU a few weeks ago and won the GLIAC title with a 4:57. Good job Putt!
     I spent a majority of the meet at the edge of the high jump apron, watching a few athletes that I had competed against two years ago, but it was mostly new faces — including a freshman from Lake Erie who has jumped over 7'-2" this year. He jumped 6'-11" to win the GLIAC title before missing all three attempts at 7'3".
     My first year away from the sport, I missed it a ton. I was so convinced that I would be motivated and willing to continue to train and compete, hoping maybe something would click and I could be jumping over 6'-10"; 6'-11" and 7'-0"... maybe higher... bars. It was a combination of a new job, new surrounding, lack of places to train, but mostly procrastination and laziness that never brought me to seriously train. I know you will love this classic video.



     Once last year's outdoor season completed, I didn't miss the sport as much, although I think about probably at least once a day.
     So, while watching the meet with my beautiful fiancée Erin, she told me that we should train as a married couple and compete as long as we can. I'm not sure if that's exactly how she said it, but it was something like that. There's a good chance that Erin will finish her eligibility up in graduate school in Colorado — which if I'm living in the same town as her college of choice, I might be able to train and compete at meets. Just like the good ole days!
     Thinking (and writing) about that now makes me really excited. My body isn't as quick because of my inactivity, but it can still be there I think. I play in a community basketball league, which is just one game a week. It's fun, but it's also coming to an end soon. I need to get motivated soon and do something to stay active.
     So, we'll see! I would like to say that I compete again someday, and maybe I will. I was really tempted to jump out during the girls competition this weekend, because I think I could still jump their bars. Maybe opening height of the guy's competition.
     To wrap up this post, I did the following things:

• Erin and I sang kareoke at a country bar. We sang Lady Antebellum's 'Need you Now,' and we both got really into it. Classic, and I apologize no one got that on video.
• Erin and I cooked a meal out of Martha Stewart's food magazine. It's my new favorite magazine.
• We celebrated my mother's 58th birthday on Sunday in Lansing at my sister's house. It was a lovely day and everyone really enjoyed themselves.

     Back to the grind tomorrow! We'll see what the news brings.

iPong... the next must have device.

And it isn't even made by Apple. But I'm a sucker for anything with an 'i' in front of it. Check this out, on behalf of my newest favorite blog: Cool Hunting.

"Playing with yourself isn't always socially acceptable but the new and improved iPong from Joola is a great way to practice your ping pong even when you don't have a partner. The cylindrical ping pong robot has a super slim design and a simple mechanism, allowing setup in under a minute so you can start practicing right away." — Cool Hunting

The iPong fits all standard table tennis tables and is available on Amazon for $149.95. 


Check this baby out in action:

I love Angry Birds...and cake

And that is why I love this video. If you have ever played the popular bird-flinging game for the iPhone/iPad, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't — you're missing out.

This is the greatest birthday cake. Ever.

Enjoy.

The greatest weekend in sports

There are few sporting events that excite me — the Super Bowl, of course, a Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day game and NBA ALL-STAR WEEKEND. The Olympics, too.


I was lucky enough to enjoy last night's skills challenge, 3-pt. shootout and dunk contest with my beautiful fiancée. What more could I ask for? Here's a clip from last night's winning dunk contest:



Tonight (Sunday) is the finale to the all-star weekend, the halfway point between the 82-game NBA season. In the past decade, the series between East and West is 5-5. The game always lacks defense and is filled with high-flying alley-oop dunks and Harlem Globetrotter-style plays. Tipoff is at 7 p.m.


Another week on the job starts tomorrow. We'll see what another week of news can bring — have a great week!

Laziness is over... What I've been up to

Erin and me in Traverse City

I do my best to read all of my friend's blogs (17 in my bookmarks right now), but I haven't done a good job writing for my blog! I really have nothing to blame it on besides laziness. Well this week, I'm taking a new turn.

Most recently, Erin (We got engaged, if you didn't know...) treated me to a romantic weekend in Traverse City for my birthday. We spent a balk of our Saturday wine tasting, including going to our favorite winery — The Grand Traverse Chateau — and coming home with some new favorites. It was a lovely weekend.

Work has been busy as of recently. Today (Thursday), our newsroom was focused on Gov. Snyder's proposed budget which comes chalked filled with cuts to education, senior citizens and many other areas. I understand that it will be hard for people and groups to adjust to a new budget, but everyone has to learn to do more with less.

I look to our newsroom as a perfect example. Now, I don't know what happened in the Bay City Times newsroom of yesteryear, but I do know they had many more people. I've heard on numerous occasions that we are writing more and breaking more stories with a staff that's a fraction of the size (We have four full time reporters, two part-time and two interns). It's an exciting time to be in journalism — especially in our newsroom. The rush of breaking stories and being the first to publish, the sparking of a dialogue among MLive.com readers and of course, watching competition play catch up are just some of the things that make it great. Throw in a great team of journalists to work with, and you have a job that you look forward to everyday.

And speaking of journalism and the news business — here are some of the stories I've been working on as of recently. (Also, since I've been lazy on this blog - I was assigned to cover the city of Midland as my new beat after the new year. Midland is home of the Dow Chemical Co. My new assigment is very online focused assignment and I'm expected to blog, aggregate and report lots of news! I previously covered education in Bay County.)

• Search crews continue looking for Meridian High School cross country and track coach Bob Cole
• This has been a highly read story since it started last week. Bob Cole, 62, the cross country and track coach at Meridian High School in Midland County, went missing after searching for his daughter's dog near the Tittabawasse River in Edenville Township. Search crews found the dog, named Joe, dead on pack ice on Saturday, but have yet to find Cole. The search heads into its 10th day Friday. Search officials have yet to put a limit on the search.
• I've been updating this story each day. My favorite story I've written so far, however, is about a past runner of Coach Cole, who nows runs semi-professionally (he's sponsored by Brooks, along with some local running stores). Jason LaFave said the news simply broke him down, and he even considered hanging up his running shoes for good. I felt like this turned out to be a pretty motivating story and I think my fellow trackletes would feel the same. Read the story, here.

I share many of my stories on Facebook, but you can see all of my recent work, here. Here was a little Valentine's Day special story.

I hope everyone is doing well! The weather is getting warmer in Michigan and it feels like spring is finally on its way. Maybe that whole Groundhog thing isn't too far off.

What I've been up to at work

I need to be more disciplined when it comes to blogging...


Work has been going alright — a little slow — but it's picking up steam as the holidays approach.


Probably the top thing I'm working on right now is a story about a Montessori school that is under investigation and possible could shut down because it left a 3-year-old boy at the city's spray park after a field trip for about an hour. It was their third offense - read the report, here.


I worked Black Friday doing coverage from midnight to almost 3 a.m. - the highlight of my night came at Old Navy. Here's a video I captured:

The "Gobble Dance" as it is called was a promotion for Old Navy this year, and as you can see- the employees got pretty good at it.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving! I'm heading to Louisville this Friday to watch Erin run at the NCAA national meet on Saturday! With the lady Chargers luck!