Weekend In Review

It's amazing how a little rain can green things up.  My lawn was looking about as poor as it ever has, given that we hadn't had any significant rainfall in something like 6  weeks.  Well, we got almost 2 inches of rain Friday evening in what turned out to be a pretty wild evening around the Triangle and surrounding communities.  There were numerous tornadoes - the nearest being out in Fuquay-Varina where my folks live.  Luckily, tornados in North Carolina are rarely very powerful and almost never stay on the ground for long.  To my knowledge, the one in fuquay caused tree damage and nothing more.

But the lawn greened up considerably!  And the weather is now absolutely gorgeous.  It was a beautiful weekend.  I raked up the pine needles and stuff from under the trees, sprayed weed killer in the back yard, and had some random door-to-door folks clean my gutters for $40.

And then, it was time to watch some Michigan football!  The Michigan-Notre Dame game is always a big game.  It held a little extra national interest this time because both teams were 0-2, meaning one of them was going to be 0-3.  Well, Michigan proved that it wasn't as bad as its 0-2 start might've suggested.  And Notre Dame proved only that they're a really bad football team with very little talent on the offensive and defensive lines.  Michigan completely dominated the Irish with a 38-0 victory.  Hopefully, it will give them some confidence as the big ten season starts next Saturday.  They'll need it, because Penn State is a fine football team this year - possibly one of the best in the league.  Michigan will have its hands full!

Proof that nobody is REALLY impressed by a win over Notre Dame is that fact that once again, nobody voted for Michigan in the top 25 poll.  That's fine and completely understandable.  If they beat Penn State next week, they might start getting a few votes again, but they're definately going to have to earn their way back into the rankings!

As for Notre Dame... it's not going to be a good year for them.  Michigan State heads to South Bend next weekend, where I'm reasonably certain Notre Dame will be pummelled as State looks pretty good this year.  Then Notre Dame heads to Purdue where they'll again be pummelled by a very solid and underrated Purdue squad.  They'll follow that up with a trip to UCLA - a game they'll almmost certainly lose, and then back home to host 14th ranked Boston College and top ranked Southern Cal.  That would take them to 0-8.  Then they'll have to deal with Navy (probable loss), and they might finish with wins against Duke, Air Force, and Standford.  Maybe.  I think 4 wins this year might be a best-case scenario for the Irish.

Yesterday, Emily and I went to the Caniac Carnival to get some free tickets to the preseason opener, which was yesterday at 3pm against the Wasington Capitals.  Emily couldn't go to the game because she had a playdate scheduled with her friend Leah, and then had to go to Awana with her friend Rachel.  Awana is a children's ministry that is big in the baptist church.  We don't go to a baptish church, but Emily does like to go to Awana with Rachel, so that's cool.

The Canes game was a lot of fun.  There was a decent crowd on hand to see them win a 4-3 "overtime thriller" - at least if you can consider a preseason game to be a thriller.  The Canes trailed 2-0 going into the third period, but scored two quick goals (less than a minute apart) by Babin and Cole.  The Craps took a 3-2 lead with only 2 minutes left in the game, but Justin Williams tied it up again with only 1 minute left, and Erik Cole scored the game winner in overtime.  Staal assisted on both of Cole's goals.  Staal also assisted on Babin's goal.  With 5 points in 1 game, things look good for my prediction that Cole and Staal would combine for 180 points this seasn.

I watched Resident Evil: Apocalpyse on TNTHD last night.  Though I've never played the game, I assume the movie is much like the game - basically a shoot-em-up Doom-like movie.  The premise of the movie is interesting.  A giant, powerful corporation ("The Umbrella Corporation") runs a lab where they create biological weapons, and there's an accident involving the "T-Virus", a virus which reanimates dead cells.  Unfortunately, it kills everyone and then they turn into Zombies.  Umbrella tries to cover up the incident by releasing the Nemesis experiment to wipe out non-infected surviving employees with knowledge of the incident.  Another "experiment", the main character named Alice, attempts to get out of the city and save a couple other survivors before Umbrella nukes the city in order to contain the epidemic, and claims an meltdown at the nuclear power plant caused it.

It was interesting enough where I might go see the upcoming Resident Evil: Extinction when it comes out in theaters.