The Adjustment: Has it been two months already?

There's the part of me that just wants to refer back to what I said a little over a year ago at this time when I recognized that there's typically a lull in posting during the summer. But even looking back on that post, it's hard to believe that I wasn't writing more often when I didn't have a regular job at that point. And perhaps most surprising would be that I still had no idea that what was going on between ™ and I would lead me to being here right now living with her in Austin. It's all still very incredible.

I've wanted to write about a number of things that have happened over the past couple months, like the short visit from my parents or the weekend her siblings spent here, but alas ... this is the first time I've had enough time to really sit with my laptop and pound out a few thoughts. Don't get me wrong; when I last wrote about life down here in Texas, I was stressing about finding a job. Of course, a few weeks later, I got one. And now it eats up a majority of my week. This is how life works, I'm told.

The Braves' Second Quarter: Excuses from the author

While my quarterly thoughts for all Four Bs typically follow the same format, I'm regrettably going to be keeping this update on the Atlanta Braves' past 40 games to much more of a minimum. While I did go and find an image from this gallery to create the annual graphic, I can not in all honesty pretend to have followed this part of the baseball season as closely as I will/have for any of the other three quarters of the season. Part of this can be blamed on the attention I gave priority to the NHL and NBA playoffs, and part can also be blamed on the weeks devoted to the out-of-state move that occurred during that time—not to mention the majority of time spent after completing said move being primarily devoted to looking for a job, securing a job, and then stressing about keeping said job. 

I suppose that from what I've been able to catch of Braves baseball this past quarter, there's still plenty to be optimistic about with the performances the team has gotten from all over the pitching staff. The offense, however, remains underwhelming and inconsistent, so I certainly won't be surprised if come third quarter of the season, I'm busy reacting to a move made at the trading deadline to try and bolster some run production.

I only wish I had been able to better document even the presumably paid online positions that had failed to update Atlanta's record the day after they'd officially arrived at the halfway mark of this 2011 season. While I'd made a mental note of it, when trying to confirm that I had the number of games correct in both our morning newspaper and online at the Sports Illustrated site I use to screencap the standings at that point, both publications had forgotten to do so. As a result, moments after completing a sweep of the Seattle Mariners, I saw the Braves somehow go from 45-35 that morning to 47-35.

Fortunately, the MLB site does allow you to go back to a specific day, and for posterity's sake, here's where the Bravos were situated when they finished playing the first half of this year's regular season schedule:

I'm hoping to be back to regular, die-hard fan form by the next quarter's end in late August.

Final Thoughts on 2010-11 NHL Season: I liked Boston more when its teams sucked

In 1986, the Boston Celtics won their third and final NBA Championship of that decade. It was the same year I was only becoming introduced to professional sports on television, but it would still be a couple more years before I really began following basketball. Instead, the city of Boston, to me, became synonymous with suffering in 1986 for two different sports. After all, maybe you recall what happened to the city's football team earlier on or their beloved Red Sox later on in the same year of that Celtics title I just mentioned. You couldn't help but feel sorry for entire city, and it's little wonder that such embarrassment cemented Beantown's place as a home for sports tragedy in my mind. (If that word choice seems inappropriate to any reader, I might remind you of what else occurred that year. [NOTE: It only dawned on me the day after posting this that the date of this posting was in fact the 25th anniversary])

Fast-forward a decade-and-a-half, and a new century has truly ushered in a remarkably different fortune for Boston. While last year's Stanley Cup for the Blackhawks marked the last championship necessary to allow me to say I've seen all four of my favorite teams reach the tops of their respective mountains, those titles were spread out over the course of a quarter-century. And now in a matter of a decade, "The Cradle of Liberty" has accumulated three Super Bowl victories, two World Series titles, an NBA Championship, and this year, finally, a Stanley Cup. I was fully aware of this entering the final round of this year's NHL postseason, which perhaps factored into me picking against the Bruins each and every single round (you know, in addition to being among the others who were doubting Tim Thomas, and also remembering that picking against Boston has treated me well the past couple years).

But there's little other reason for me to be bitter. After all, every Blackhawks fan can find some satisfaction in knowing that a perennial rival has once again suffered a devastating loss—further worsened by the worldwide embarrassment of that city's hooligans looting and pillaging. To Vancouver's credit, the better residents promptly sought to make things right.

Hockey brings out some passionate and visceral emotions from the fans who hold the sport closest, so it's indeed very possible that this year's victory might be sweeter to many Boston residents than any of those other championships earned thus far in this 21st century. Or it might just be further fuel for Massachusetts' ever-growing number of douchebags. Either way, what's done is done, and in many ways, this is one year I'm going to want to forget.

Final Thoughts on 2010-11 NBA Season: Where the best TEAM won

This past basketball season essentially began nearly one year ago, right around July 8 of last year. Perhaps you recall what happened that evening and presumably helped the NBA garner terrific television ratings throughout the entire season. The Miami Heat became Public Enemy No. 1, which is probably why their loss in this year's NBA Finals has ended up feeling like a victory for every one of us who is no fan of theirs. The celebratory, mocking memes were cranked out in a hurry. An Associated Press headline rubbed it in—although apparently not from this Miami newspaper. I even offered my own dig.

In the end, however, the credit really must be given to the team that ended up hoisting that trophy last night, a Dallas Mavericks team that had been continually underestimated and written off all year long. The boys from South Beach didn't give the series away so much as the veteran Mavs went out and took it.

I suppose once every great while we get this sort of encouraging result in the NBA where the lower-profile, close-knit group of underdogs ends up knocking off the talent-laden predominant favorite. But enough about that Lakers team and the embarrassment they suffered. Like I said, this year deserves to be remembered primarily as Dallas' accomplishment.

The Arrival: In which just getting here was an adventure

After ™ last flew up to Illinois to spend a long weekend with me between her birthday and my own, I reminded her at the airport that the following three weeks until I saw her again would go by pretty fast. I had been saying it primarily to comfort her that unlike, say, the more than two months before that visit when we'd last been able to see one another, this final step was going to arrive much faster. And sure enough, before I knew it—before I'd even remembered to formally change my address, before I'd been able to land a job to start when I arrived, before I'd finished packing ALL of my belongings—I was at O'Hare on May 18 boarding a one-way flight to Texas.

We first moved ™'s stuff from the Houston area to our new apartment in Austin, and then the following day began the roughly 19-hour drive back to St. Charles. While the original plan was to drive as much as we could on the first day and find a hotel when we got tired, we instead ended up stopping for a bite to eat in Memphis that evening and just staying on the road until we arrived at my parents' house early that Saturday morning. After catching some shuteye, we had some rather lackluster Pizza Hut for dinner that evening with my parents and my aunt and uncle. Later that night, we went out with a couple friends of mine in downtown St. Charles.

Over the course of those three weeks between ™'s visits, I kept waiting for the moment that the relocation was really going to hit me. But even as I reminded myself that certain visits I was making could be my last for quite some time, it still didn't seem real.

What stuck with me that last night in St. Charles had to be a moment outside one of the bars just after last call. ™ was hugging me and a girl I'd never met before but was was apparently a friend of one of my friends looked at us and wondered aloud to us why she couldn't have something like ™ and I had. The girl, probably somewhere in her mid-twenties, had just gotten out of a long-distance relationship.

When other friends and co-workers used words like "jealous" or such in response to learning my relocation plans, I had sort of downplayed it as them just being nice. But on that last night, something in that one girl's eyes finally made me feel lucky. After three or so years of convincing myself nobody else in their right mind would ever want to be in my shoes, I finally experienced a real moment of having somebody else saying they wanted what I had.

Ultimately, I was only beginning to realize how lucky I was.

Final Thoughts on 2010-11 Chicago Bulls: One trophy short

As this year's Bulls team accumulated honor after honor—Tom Thibodeau being named Coach of the Year, Derrick Rose awarded Most Valuable Player, and then Gar Forman having to share Executive of the Year honors with Miami's Pat Riley because (just as I had joked in an earlier BMC piece) three other league honchos apparently forgot that John Paxon slipped out of the role two years ago and voted for the team's executive vice president of basketball operations instead (NOTE TO NBA: You might want to fix the way you determine that)—following a regular season in which the team won more games than any other team in the league, I routinely said, "It won't mean a thing without a ring" (and, yes, somebody else came up with that line).

But truth be told, when I think back to what my own expectations were for this team at the beginning of the year, it's hard to be bitter—even if the season did end at the hands of the much-maligned Miami Heat. Oh sure, I had originally predicted Chicago would be ousted by that same South Beach squad in five games a round earlier, but that was back before the Bulls achieved far more than most any fan dared dream this season. And looking back at how the team only seemed to get better and better with each passing quarterly update this season, I myself had indeed sipped so frequently from the Kool-Aid that I was already beginning to apologize to my girlfriend for what I thought would happen to her Dallas Mavericks if they met Chicago in the Finals.

Instead, I find myself rooting alongside her for the one team remaining that stands in between the Heat and a championship. After all, it helps take my mind off the work that will need to be done in order to help these Bulls play into June next year—assuming there's a 2011-12 season, of course.

NHL Stanley Cup Final Predicitions: A drought's about to end

In just a couple weeks, one of those video game depictions is going to come true and a long-suffering franchise will finally be raising Lord Stanley's Cup. This is the first Bruins team to even reach the Finals in more than two decades, and it's been almost 40 years since the team's last championship in 1972. But at least Beantown's tasted victory before, unlike Vancouver, where the team has never been declared champions ever since entering the league in 1970.

So once again, we'll presumably be presented with some rather spirited and raucous crowds in both cities as these two supposedly long-suffering (last year's beloved Blackhawks had a nearly half-century wait between Cups) franchises compete for one last series win.

The big winner in this, of course, would have to be the NHL. Considering that the alternatives last round included the markets of San Jose and Tampa Bay, the ratings could have been a lot scarier. Instead, an appearance from the Canucks is surely the best shot a Canadian team's had at the Cup in quite some time, and most anything involving Boston is almost always good for television.

NBA Finals Predictions: 2006 Revisited

Something's slightly amiss when the NBA Finals are beginning before the Stanley Cup, but alas, here we are with the basketball opener tonight while hockey's final series kicks off tomorrow.

Just as was the case five years ago when the Mavericks and Heat met, I had thought the playoffs would be concluding with another rematch of the previous year's seven-game Finals. instead, the Lakers got swept and the Celtics seemingly never really did get it together after losing Kendrick Perkins—even after sweeping the Knicks in the first round. For Miami, this scenario was something of an expectation. But Dallas has been defying the odds and ignoring the pundits in their own journey this year, having dropped only one game ever since allowing Portland to come back and tie their first-round series before the Mavs wrapped up the opening test in six.

While this time around it will be the Heat enjoying home-court advantage, it can't be ignored that Dallas hasn't lost on the road since that Blazers comeback in the Rose Garden. Miami has certainly played to their potential this postseason than they did in the regular season, but the question now is if the Mavericks can defy expectations one last time. 

NBA Playoff Confrence Finals Predictions: See, I toldja I loved my girlfriend ...

Lakers-Mavericks sounded like a can't miss proposition to some people, I suppose. I hate the Lakers and my girlfriend loves the Mavs. No-brainer, right?

Yeah, well ... of course we know what I ended up going with for last round's picks, but in my defense, nobody had Dallas. I didn't realize how poorly I'd attempted to articulate my logic until ™ posted a screencap of that pick and my drivel to her own blog, a post which she mercifully made "private" (whatever the hell that is), seeing as the Mavericks absolutely kicked the living shit out of the defending champions. In all honesty, I don't think I've ever seen Los Angeles get that embarrassed—and I'm not just talking about that dirty, thuggish thing Andrew Bynum did, although that certainly added to it.

Anyway, just like the second round of the NHL playoffs, the second round of the NBA postseason saw both my Finals teams being eliminated sooner than expected. The usual standings and screencaps of other experts' picks will be added to this post later, but per this blog's policy to attempt to post predictions before events actually occur (novel concept, I know), and seeing as there was this window of a few hours before the official end to the last round and the beginning of the next, I've conveniently already got my mind made up about how this thing's going to turn out.

The Braves' First Quarter: Even better than last year! (Technically.)

Indeed, Braves fans (and any other reader). This year's team is a full game better than the start they got off to last year. So certainly this means they should at least be able to force a deciding fifth game in the Division Series this year—once those Marlins cool off, of course.

While it's hard for me to read too much into how the season has started for some clubs (The Indians are 11 games over .500? Tampa Bay is leading the American League East?), the standings in the National League East look pretty much like what most people expected. There were some who felt the Braves could be surprise contenders for the division this year, and while Atlanta isn't out of the race by any means, the season so far has seen the team hovering around .500 most of the year.

However, the Braves began May by winning the first six games they played to start the month and there's plenty of reason to believe the Fredi Gonzalez era can begin can go into October.