Basement Floor Day 3

Back to work after a long weekend and a host of problems to get to the bottom of.  I was fortunate today to be able to get thru emails, work through incidents, and get everything under control by 430.  We decided to grab some fried calamari and a slice of pizza this Ash Wednesday instead of spaghetti and white clam sauce.

Luke wanted to go shop for a new pair of soccer cleats as practice has moved outside again and his ‘outdoor’ cleats don’t fit anymore.  We go to Sports Authority, and as usual their $10 0off coupon is useless as their selection of soccer cleats is horrible.  Gotta go to Mo’s, Modell’s.  Once at Modell’s, it looks like the same, a very limited choice and not too many youth sizes.   Luke doesn’t like them first go around, but then decides to try on a flashy pair of Adidas.  Typically it is Nike Mercurial or nothing….

He likes the flashy blue and red (or orange) cleat and it fits.  We make haste, and ring out without any extras.  Imagine getting out of the store with a pair of cleats for a steal….$34.99.   I looked at some running shoes, but like a lot of things, the new ones with the zig zag soles are just not me.  Besides, I don’t really need new running shoes yet.

This day in history “

In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold.

The Soviet team had captured the previous four Olympic hockey golds, going back to 1964, and had not lost an Olympic hockey game since 1968. Three days before the Lake Placid Games began, the Soviets routed the U.S. team 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Americans looked scrappy, but few blamed them for it--their average age, after all, was only 22, and their team captain, Mike Eruzione, was recruited from the obscurity of the Toledo Blades of the International League.


Few had high hopes for the seventh-seeded U.S. team entering the Olympic tournament, but the team soon silenced its detractors, making it through the opening round of play undefeated, with four victories and one tie, thus advancing to the four-team medal round. The Soviets, however, were seeded No. 1 and as expected went undefeated, with five victories in the first round.


On Friday afternoon, February 22, the American amateurs and the Soviet dream team met before a sold-out crowd at Lake Placid. The Soviets broke through first, with their new young star, Valery Krotov, deflecting a slap shot beyond American goalie Jim Craig's reach in the first period. Midway through the period, Buzz Schneider, the only American who had previously been an Olympian, answered the Soviet goal with a high shot over the shoulder of Vladislav .”

It seems more and more that sports teams become dream teams.  Beating the odds and pushing aside the belief that they are not good enough.  On any given Sunday, or with my guys, sometimes Saturday and Sunday, we get to watch them beat better teams, and lose to others we think are not as good. 

I get an hour or so in the basement to finish the last few rows of flooring before Luke tells me that Survivor is on.  He goes to pause the show, and like the last few times we try to pause a show, the cable box (DVR) glitches and restarts.  It is weird how this keeps happening, and frustrating as you end up missing the first 5 minutes of the show.

I have started to trim the moldings that used to snap back into their tracks and are now off since the floor goes under the molding as opposed to up against it like the carpet before we got flooded.  So, a brief day 3 update on the basement…97% done.  Will take another picture next week or when the room starts to get decorated and furnished.

Photo of the day “Basement Floor Day 3”