1. I continued my long and slow process of learning how to use Lightroom both for organizing and editing photographs. I think the word I've heard for people who teach themselves stuff is autodidact. I freely admit: I'm a mediocre autodidact! I'd be doing much better with this project if I were under another person's guidance and could ask questions. But, it's fine that I'm mediocre. I am determined to watch videos and read materials and come to an increasingly fuller understanding of Lightroom's many features and functions.
I had fun continuing to scroll through my Flickr albums and picking out more pictures to possibly edit and print. Very few people look at my Flickr albums, which is fine, and for that reason I am absolutely indiscriminate about what I post there. I've found that my evaluation of pictures changes over time and that sometime photographs I didn't think much of at one point in time look better to me later (and the other way around, too!). So I just post everything on Flickr. The quality of pictures in these albums is, at best, inconsistent, but I can see in my failed pictures what I was trying to do and might even learn from these picture what to do better on down the road.
2. Family dinner tonight was a blast. We started off in Paul and Carol's living room with chips and salsa and a fun cocktail Fizz Stupendous. Paul's version blended sparkling Rose (Rozay) wine with raspberry syrup and some liqueur. I tried cranberry and then grape liqueur. It was a fun and unique cocktail, almost like drinking Belgian lambic beer.
For our main course, Christy made a delicious grape salad, Debbie fixed a fresh and tasty mixed greens salad, and Carol made church potluck favorite, Grandma Martha's Spanish Goulash. It was a delicious and comforting take on goulash. It wasn't seasoned with paprika but with cumin and chili powder and was deliciously cheesy. I could see why the members of Paul's grandma's church insisted that his Grandma Martha bring this dish to their potlucks. It's flavorful and left me just feeling good.
3. Once dinner and our family conversations drew to a close, we returned home in time to watch the second half of the NCAA Men's Championship basketball tournament. The University of Connecticut Huskies have played superb basketball throughout the tournament, winning all of their games by double figure margins and they continued in that vein tonight against San Diego State. The Aztecs played hard with a lot of determination and heart, but UConn simply had more talent than San Diego State at every position. UConn pretty much matched USDS's defensive intensity and were much more versatile on offense. UConn also got USDS in foul trouble in the second half and converted a high percentage of their free throws. UConn triumphed, 72-59.
One very welcome but unexpected experience I had during this tournament was in my regard for UConn's head coach, Dan Hurley.
I don't enjoy volatile coaches, coaches who regularly blow a gasket, who scream at the referees and get bug-eyed and wave their arms and run up and down in front of their bench and the scorer's table.
Dan Hurley, since I began to take notice of him in the last few years, has been (like his brother, Bob) an animated gasket blower on the sideline.
But during this season, that changed.
I didn't notice this change until the Gonzaga game, but after that game Dan Hurley revealed in a post-game interview two salient confessions.
First, during an early winter losing streak, Hurley came to realize that his antics on the sideline were distracting to his team. He decided to make a determined effort to calm down, spend more time in time outs working with his players, less time hectoring the referees, and he decided to improve his general demeanor on the sideline. (By the way, I was happy to hear CBS broadcaster Bill Raftery list Hurley's change in comportment as one of the factors that helped pull the Huskies out of their early winter slump.)
Second, in this interview, Hurley revealed that to help calm himself, he's been practicing meditation. He talked about the impact of meditation in the post Zag game interview and in another interview before tonight's game, when asked if he'd seen Lamont Butler's game winning shot against Florida Atlantic, Hurley answered he hadn't seen the shot live.
He was meditating.
It doesn't matter a hoot what coaches I enjoy and which ones I don't.
I know that.
But, for me, I'd much rather enjoy a coach and admire how he conducts himself (or how she conducts herself -- I'm not crazy about Kim Mulky's sideline antics) than not admire the coach.
I guess the calmer, thoughtful, candid Dan Hurley was always there, but was overpowered by the bug-eyed, screaming, gasket-blowing, tortured Hurley. I enjoyed seeing a more mature and quieted down Dan Hurley emerge and I'm happy to be relieved of the negative feelings and responses I've experienced in the past watching him at work.
I sure hope this calmer Dan Hurley is permanent, that this change endures the test of the inevitable ups and downs that lie ahead.
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