It must be almost softball season! The coaches meeting for the upcoming season was this week Tuesday. Looks like it'll be about the same as last year, no major changes that I could tell. 

Beth has been so sick for pretty much the entire week. She started feeling bad the day after we saw the movie last weekend, by Monday she was sick enough that she called in to work. She's been feverish and coughing all week, so not much has happened this week. And this weekend we watched a lot of basketball. That UConn-Duke game...holy cow!

Life group met on Monday, such as it is. One of the couples wanted to host a session at their house, and this was the week for it. Only the 3 couples that have attended anything since last year attended, so as has been the recurring theme, I'm not sure what to do about it. Maybe we should keep trying to add members or maybe we should combine with another life group that's struggling or maybe we should just tell everyone we're disbanding and they should find another life group if they still want to be in one. Well, we'll keep the status quo for now. Anyway as far as this week's session, the 6 of us got together for dinner and a session of the minor prophets book (Hosea). Winter has been lingering this year, and we still have been getting snow at times, and Monday there was still some on the ground here and there. But by the time Beth and I left their house (near Mentone), the snow flurries had started in earnest. By the time we got as far as Mentone, the snow was coming so thick and so hard and the wind was so strong, we were in complete white-out conditions and I literally couldn't see the road. I had to drive by the sound of the rumble strips for a bit, and was moving at a relative crawl. I could tell that there was a drop-off not far past the shoulder, though, so that also kind of freaked me out. It was bad enough that everyone was texting each other to let everyone know they got home safe. Alex even texted us to remind us to drive safely. The snow abated after a while so we got home in a regular snow flurry instead of a blinding one.

It's NCAA tournament time, which means it's time for a bracket challenge. I filled out two with people at work this year. The one I usually do with the ATS lab, I started filling out and realized that my picks weren't very good already and I didn't like them, so I just punted and picked all Big Ten for the final four: MSU (champions), Michigan, Illinois, and Purdue. I think it's a crap bracket, it just kind of happened. There's another bracket challenge at work though, new this year with the research folks, and I filled out one that may be even worse. That final four was Houston (champs), Kansas, Arizona, Michigan. As of now I'm doing all right in both brackets, surprisingly. We watched some really good games this weekend: VCU knocking off UNC was great. Nebraska-Vanderbilt was great. Purdue-Texas was great. I love the tournament!

Thursday my group from work volunteered for Habitat for Humanity again, at a house being built just off the ZB campus. It's a house that's been running behind schedule and having delays from the utilities. It was originally supposed to be a women's build but they're too far behind schedule right now so that's been waived. We spent the afternoon painting doors and bifolds, laying flooring (Trey is the expert in this and nearly finished the whole house) and doing some wiring. I installed the exterior power receptacles and all the smoke detectors and did some painting. We got a lot of work done if I do say so myself. 

Friday was an event I've been looking forward to for a while now. Opening weekend for "Project Hail Mary," which as I've been telling people I was Jurassic-Park-level stoked about seeing. I loved the book and have only heard good things about the movie, and the trailers were all awesome. So we went to see the movie with the Zastrows and Matthew. I was not disappointed at all! Loved it, 10/10. There was more humor in the movie than in the book but generally I thought the movie tracked the book incredibly well and never lagged. And included almost everything from the book. Great movie, fun time.

Saturday the family went on a road trip to Indy to visit the IKEA. Alex was off work, and he's needed a new dresser for a while. Nat stayed home but Beth and I and Alex drove down to Muncie first to pick up Missy, then headed to the store. I'm always surprised and a little disappointed that the IKEA outside Indy is so small compared to the one we go to in Schaumburg. But we did find a good dresser and were able to schlep it home in the car even though it was larger than we thought it would be. Now we just have to assemble it....

Alex's birthday was Thursday. He picked Red Robin for his birthday dinner, so we went to the mall (he also had some birthday money) and did some shopping and got dinner. He got to hang out with some friends this week as well, but generally it was a pretty chill birthday, I think. 

Saturday Beth and I went to Elmhurst IL (Chicagoland) for the funeral for Laura's best friend Monica. Laura's BFF since before high school, Monica passed recently of breast cancer that spread. We went mostly for moral support for Laura, but I wanted to see her brother Mark as well. We drove to Chicago early in the morning, as usual when we leave plenty of time for traffic, there isn't any to speak of and we get there very early. Anyway, the funeral was nice but short. There was a couple hours of visiting (she was cremated) before the service, then a pastor spoke (but didn't want to offend anyone, so it was spiritually very light), Mark spoke, and Laura spoke. The service lasted about 20 minutes or so, then everyone went to a Mexican restaurant adjacent to the funeral home before heading out. We were home by around 8pm. 

Missy's been home for spring break! Unfortunately we're not doing anything fun, but she had enough work to do over break that it wouldn't have been a great time to do that anyway. She arrived Saturday morning and we've been doing mostly nothing. She did get together with one of her roommates who lives in the FW area on Wednesday, her friend Evie came over (she picked her up) and they spent the day hanging out. I was voluntold to drive them back because Missy didn't want to drive her home and back in the dark. So I did. We took her out to a nice sushi dinner on Friday, and up to Coppes Commons in Nappanee on Saturday (Rocket Science, in particular). She headed back to Muncie Sunday afternoon.

Beth went in to the orthopedic center again for an injection in her back on Friday. She's pretty worried about it not working, because her back has been awful lately and her last injection didn't really help as much as it should have. She got put under this time because she passed out the last time, and it went off with no problems. It's still a bit early to tell how well it worked though. She's also worried that it costs so much money and our insurance just reset at the beginning of the year, but I've tried to allay that as much as possible and told her we're going to be fine and we'll get the shot. At this moment she still doesn't feel great but we're hopeful.