If you live on the northern Jersey Shore, then you know that last night a gigantic storm dumped a butt load of snow all over the place! Take a look at the pictures below to see what the accumulations looked like around 10:00pm in the Fox Chase development in Tinton Falls. It’s about time we got some snow!
Snow Day Basketball: Monmouth Falls to Rider, 70 – 63
After being in the lead for most of the game, the Monmouth University Hawks fell to the Rider University Broncs by a final score of 70 to 63 earlier today at Monmouth’s MAC Center in West Long Branch, New Jersey. As you’ll see from the pictures below, there weren’t too many fans on hand thanks to the unofficial “snow day” going on in New Jersey. The Asbury Park Press reported that there were about 550 people in attendance for the game – which isn’t so bad when you consider the fact that a blizzard was going on outside the arena. However, there were certainly enough passionate Hawk fans to let the referees know how horrible they thought most of the calls were for the majority of the game. I normally don’t get on the case of the referees because I know that’s a hard, thankless job, but even I was astounded at the ridiculousness of some of the calls this afternoon.
The final score - Rider over Monmouth
Of course, the referees weren’t the reason for the Hawks dropping the lead in the last few minutes of the game. An empowered Rider offense combined with a strong full court press defense to put some severe pressure on the Hawks. The full court press has been tough for the Hawks to combat this season and when Rider brought it out today the defensive strategy helped to foul out two of the Hawks’ leaders.
Here’s a brief recap of the game from the Associated Press:
WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. — Justin Robinson scored 13 of his 19 points in the second half as Rider rallied for a 70-63 victory over Monmouth (N.J.) on Saturday.
The game, originally scheduled for 7 p.m., was moved up to 2 p.m. because of an impending snowstorm.
The Broncs (8-5), who trailed 31-27 at the half, used a 16-5 run to turn a 46-41 deficit with 9:39 remaining into a 57-51 lead with 5:10 left.
That run was capped by three consecutive layups by Jhamar Youngblood, who played two seasons for the Hawks (3-9) before transferring and sitting out last season. Youngblood scored 14 of his 16 points in the second half.
Will Campbell scored 27 points to lead Monmouth, including 22 in the second half. Travis Taylor scored 20 for Monmouth, including nine during a 13-2 first-half run that turned an 8-2 deficit into a 15-10 lead.
Will Campbell definitely had a great game today. As the Associated Press story above reports, he scored 27 points – which also ties him for a career high. Not bad for a Sophomore; Campbell is absolutely one of the foundations on which Head Coach Dave Calloway will build the future of his team. As a fan of Monmouth basketball, that sounds great to me!
Another great storyline that played itself out during the game was the return of Jhamar Youngblood to the Monmouth University campus. Youngblood played a few seasons at Monmouth before transferring to Rider. I’m not sure of the reasons why he left the team and went to Rider, but I do know that there was a vocal section of fans at the top of the lower level across from the benches who were dogging the kid out all game. That’s what happens when you leave one team and go to another, I guess. It was definitely entertaining to watch. Almost as entertaining as listening to the fans on our side of the arena go after the referees! Seriously, though, one of the referees was absolutely horrendous.
The Monmouth team is much better than their record would show. I look for a strong showing from the Hawks in the coming weeks as 2009 comes to a close. Before I close up this post with thirty-something pictures from the game, I want to give two quick shout outs to Coach and GGL for coming along to the game! Oh, I’m experimenting with different functions on my camera and which ones are the best for taking action shots. You’ll see that some of the pictures are crisper than the ones I took at the Monmouth vs. UPenn game, but that other pictures are darker in tone. I’m working on it…
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- The final score – Rider over Monmouth
Aggravation: I Got My First Flat Tire Yesterday…
Talk about unnecessary aggravation. On my way home from work yesterday my car started wobbling and shaking a little bit. I was in the fast lane on Route 195 about one mile from exit 16 (right near Six Flags Great Adventure for all of you non-New Jerseyans out there). I pulled into the right lane and since the car’s wobbling was getting a bit unwieldy I pulled onto the shoulder, stepped out of the car, and noticed that my rear driver’s side tire was in shreds. Awesome.
The car I drive is a 2000 Honda Civic which my Mom bought brand new and kept in really good shape. Then, in his last few years, my father started to drive the car and my younger brother started to drive the car around the same time, too. Somehow, the jack system that I would be using to fix this flat tire wasn’t totally intact. This is good news to find out on the side of 195 when it’s pitch black and freezing out and I only have a thin sweatshirt! Damn it!
So, I’m on the side of the road with cars whizzing by at 65 to 80 miles per hour with a jack that doesn’t quite get the job done while freezing my ass off. Like any good man, though, I figured that I can make this work. So I pull a pen out of my glove box and start turning the jack (which I put in the wrong place) to raise the car. As you may imagine, the plastic pen doesn’t last too long before it’s busted. So, I start searching my car for something that might be able to turn the knob on the jack and raise up this car. Lucky for me, I still have some of the tools from my visits to the organic farm in my car. While digging through the equipment, I found some hand tools – specifically a garden cultivator. For those of you that don’t know, a garden cultivator is that three pronged thing that looks like a claw.
At 5:30pm last night I was on the side of 195 with a garden cultivator turning a jack that was in the wrong place freezing my ass off. Wonderful. Did I mention that the tires were also held in place by lugnuts that were put in place via air-compressed hand guns? Yeah – those things weren’t moving for my tire iron…
The story takes a great turn at this point. After about ten minutes of essentially doing nothing on the side of the road, a Department of Transportation worker pulls over behind me and pretty much changes the tire in a matter of 5 minutes with ridiculously high powered tools. His jack has the leverage of a 4 foot pole that picks up the car with no problem at all. Plus, this guy has an air-compression powered hand gun and blows out the lug nuts in seconds. I tossed my tire iron deep into my trunk so I can forget about it.
The Department of Transportation worker placed the donut on my car and had me heading back home in no time. Actually, I wasn’t heading back home because I clearly needed a new tire. My destination from 195 was to the Sears in Ocean Township. The kid at Sears was nice enough and showed me different types of tires. Then he asks, “Do you just want the one tire?” Now, I now that you’re supposed to buy these things in pairs so I said, “No, give me two. Actually, can you see if I need to get four tires?”
To this kid’s great credit, he went out and checked my car and did not take the obvious bait. In other words, you would expect any salesman to say, “Yep! You definitely need four tires!” without thinking twice. This kid told me that I only needed two new tires, but that due to my extended commute (about 100 miles per day) the other two would have to be replaced in about a month or two. The kid was honest enough and he made enough sense, so I bought four brand new tires as well as the Sears roadside assistance or some such stuff. Whatever service I purchased yesterday, it allows me to have my tires replaced by Sears for free. And since I bought a set of Sumitomo tires that have a guaranteed 75,000 mile lifespan, the warranty should come in handy.
At this point, though, the story takes a bit more of an aggravating twist. No, it’s not the fact that it took these guys two hours to change my four tires (because what I really felt like doing from 6:30pm to 8:30pm was walk around the local Target and Sears while my tires were changed). The aggravation comes in the price. I think, overall, I received a good price on the total package – it came to $402. That’s not a really bad price given the product and services that I purchased. However, getting smacked with such a large expense the week before Christmas pretty much ends my Christmas shopping. Luckily, I purchased a few items for the people on my list last weekend so I do have some gifts to give out. Overall, it’s pretty aggravating, though.
And there you have the story of my night last night.
Slow and Steady – Another “G” Down…
Slowly (almost excruciatingly so), I’m reducing my student loan debt. It was just in October that I announced how my student loan debt was down to $98 thousand and change. Well, today I can announce that it is down to $97 thousand and change. Sure, that might not seem like a big accomplishment, but when you’re in my position and you’re writing $1,000+ checks every month in an effort to speed up the repayment process, that’s big news.
It would be great if these damn loans were out of the way and I didn’t have to worry about them. The more that I repay and the more that I learn about student loans, the more I wish that I had started to pay them back when I was in school. Out of control student loan debt can really stifle a person’s ability to move to the “next step” in life. For example, I was talking with one of my coworkers the other day about our 401k plan and how we all lost a large percentage of money last year, but we’re making it back this year. Well, I found out that she’s contributing 10% of each paycheck to the 401k. Ten percent! That’s pretty significant. The truth is that I spent the last year contributing 0% of each paycheck into the 401k plan – I just couldn’t afford to do it (and I make good money). I opted to take the money that wasn’t going into the 401k and, instead, put it against my student loans. I’m not sure if it helped at all (especially with the NJHESAA loan accruing interest at an outrageous 7.33% rate), but it’s what I had to do.
Extreme student loan debt is stifling – even for a guy like me who works a day job and teaches at night. In the coming year, I’m going to have my day job and I’ll be teaching at night during both the spring and fall semester as well as teaching online for the first time; I’ll also have my website company, which is growing a little bit bigger each month. My hope is that with all of these irons in the fire that enough income comes in where I can make a larger dent in at least one of my student loans (the NJHESAA one so I can be done with that organization once and for all). In the mean time, though, I’m wearing myself thin by working seemingly around the clock and not accumulating savings at the same rate that I could be accumulating them. Just think about it – since 2006 I’ve repaid about $25,000 in student loan debt and that’s just the principal. When you tack on interest, I’ve written student loan checks for over $35,000 in the last three years!
Pretty disgusting, huh?
I’m not overly bothered by it because I know that I have a plan to repay this debt quickly and efficiently. I am, however, annoyed that it seems more and more that I won’t be able to take advantage of the current housing slump due to the student loan debt. It’s not that I wouldn’t get approved for a mortgage by a bank (I think that I would be approved), rather it’s that the $35,000+ that I could have used as a down payment is gone. Yeah, I have some money sitting in the bank and I’m actually doing very well with my personal investments in the market and in my savings account, but $35,000+ is a lot of money!
Oh well. I leave those thoughts for another day. Today, though, I celebrate knowing that the student loan debt is down to $97 thousand and change. And I also “celebrate” knowing that an additional $1,300 payment is already in the mail – so I should have another post announcing how the debt is down to $96,000 very soon!
A Quick Joke About Sesame Street’s Tickle Me Elmo…
One of my old fraternity advisors sent me this joke in the e-mail the other day and I got a kick out of it. I’m sure that it has a few different variations, butI thought that this variation was pretty funny.
There is a factory in Northern Minnesota which makes the Tickle Me Elmo toys. The toy laughs when you tickle it under the arms.
Well, Lena is hired at The Tickle Me Elmo factory and she reports for her first day promptly at 8:00 am. The next day at 8:45 am there is a knock at the Personnel Manager’s door. The Foreman throws open the door and begins to rant about the new Employee. He complains that she is incredibly slow and the whole line is backing up, putting the entire production line behind schedule.
The Personnel Manager decides he should see this for himself, so the 2 men march down to the factory floor. When they get there the line is so backed up that there are Tickle Me Elmo’s all over the factory floor and they’re really beginning to pile up.
At the end of the line stands Lena surrounded by mountains of Tickle Me Elmo’s. She has a roll of plush Red fabric and a huge bag of small marbles. The 2 men watch in amazement as she cuts a little piece of fabric, wraps it around two marbles and begins to carefully sew the little package between Elmo’s legs.
The Personnel Manager bursts into laughter. After several minutes of hysterics he pulls himself together and approaches Lena. “I’m sorry,” he says to her, barely able to keep a straight face, “but I think you misunderstood the instructions I gave you yesterday…”
“Your job is to give Elmo two test tickles.”
See, I got a kick out of that one the other day. I hope that you enjoyed it, too!
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