S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 46

Social...

Back to the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "Social." Not sure what they mean by that. Feels as if I've sort of written about this before.

I'm not a very social person being a strong introvert. I'm very shy which I've worked hard to overcome but still in social settings such as parties I'm the wall flower. Or I talk to the dog.

And I have to be social this weekend. My nephew is getting married Saturday.

People who can jump into social situations and chat people up amaze me. How do they do that. And I know that extroverts get energy from such situations where introverts get drained by such situations. And I'm definitely drained.

That was one reason I didn't fit in well in the corporate world was the job I had required me to be social. And it was a struggle every time. Now about the only time I have to be social is at book signings. But they exhaust me.

How do you handle social situations? Jump right in or talk to the plants? Let me know in the comments below.

The Huskies are 2-1

With last night's win over the Utah Utes, the University of Washington Huskies go to 2-1 on the season.

This game was significant because it was the Huskies' first in-conference game and it was on the road. Last year the Huskies had problems on the road, their only two losses coming when away from Husky Stadium.

At first the game looked like it might be a blow out. The Utes went three-and-out on their first possession and then the Huskies made a touch down on a Myles Gaskin run on their first play. But after that it turned into a defensive battle which kept both scores fairly low. The final score was 14-7.

The Huskies looked better than they did against North Dakota. But they still have to figure out the run game. Gaskin only made that one opening long run, and had a lot of runs that went almost nowhere. We have a new Offensive Coordinator this year and I'm wondering if that's part of the problem. He doesn't know how to use Gaskin effectively. Also, for some reason, Salvon Ahmed only carried the ball once in the entire game. And he didn't get far, either. I spent the entire summer saying "Ahmed is going to be so good this year" and so far, he hasn't lived up to my hopes. How dare he?

Jake Browning's throwing game is looking better, too. The biggest problem the senior has is he still tries to make plays he just can't make and as a result, gets sacked way back. He needs to know when it's over and fall on the ball. He also got called for intentional grounding once (and I thought it should be twice).

The Utes' defense had two targeting calls against it. One was blatant and the other was a bit questionable. Targeting is when the player leads with his helmet for a tackle. But two Utes were ejected from the game. I bet the Utes' fans will be grumbling about the officiating for two weeks (they have a bye next week).

Next week the Huskies play Arizona State Sun Devils in Husky Stadium. Arizona State was doing well this year, having won their first two games, including beating a ranked Michigan State. But yesterday they lost to San Diego State. Arizona State is one of the Huskies' two losses last year, so the Dawgs will be looking for payback. That game is at a ridiculous 7:30 PM on ESPN,

Elsewhere in the Pac-12, Washington State beat the FCS team Eastern Washington. I thought
Eastern might do better ,but the score was 24-59. USC got tounced by Texas 14-37. That puts USC 1-2 on the season. They may not be the Pac-12 South champion. Right now the Colorado Buffaloes are in first place in the Pac-12 South at 3-0. Stanford and Oregon lead the Pac-12 North at 3-0. So we definitely need to beat Stanford and Oregon to win the Pac-12 North.

One team that's having a tough time is UCLA. They are 0-3 and lost yesterday to Fresno State (a former cupcake). UCLA has a new coach (as do five Pac-12 teams) but if this keeps up, he won't last long.

By the way, the teams with new coaches are Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA, Oregon, and Oregon State (who stole the Huskies offensive coordinator to be head coach).

But it's early in the season. Only Stanford, Washington, the Utes, and USC have played in-conference games. And only Stanford and Washington have in-conference winning records (of 1-0). We'll have to see how things shake out when there's more conference games in the record books.

The Polls:

The AP Top 25 football poll has Stanford climbing to #7 from #9. Washington stays at #10. And Oregon stays at #20. USC and Arizona State drop off the top 25. So now only three teams in the Pac-12 are in the AP Top 25. The top four positions are #1 Alabama, #2 Georgia (up from #3), #3 Clemson (down from #2), and Ohio State #4.

And finally, Auburn (who we want to do well now) lost to LSU, so Auburn dropped to #9 and LSU jumped to #6 (from #12).

Now we just wait a week for the next college football Saturday.

Winter is Coming

Back to the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "Winter." Which is timely because we are into fall now and winter is coming (apparently that's a Game of Thrones reference).

(Okay, technically, fall starts on September 22nd, which is nine days away.)

I used to like winter. But now it just annoys me. The winter of 2016-17 was awful. We had snow for months and just as the roads would get clear, it would snow again. We had freezing rain twice (I think) and once it was so bad I didn't even leave my house for a day. And then there's trips over Snoqualmie Pass in the winter. Snoqualmie Pass sits between where I live and the greater Seattle area. My son goes to school there and he doesn't drive. So I had to go get him for winter break. And every time I went over the pass, the State Patrol decided it needed to be chains required except for all-wheel-drive vehicles with snow tires. Luckily, my car is all-wheel drive and I put on Blizzak tires in the winter. So I didn't have to put on chains. But that's an indication of how bad the roads were.

(Once, before I owned this car, I had a car that was rear-wheel drive. And it was chains required. I put on chains, drove for a while, and then took them off. It wasn't nearly bad enough to require chains. Another time, in the same car, it was chains required. I didn't put them on and knew if I could make it up the steep hill just before the pass, I'd be fine. I made it. The car slipped a couple of times but I got up the hill, more due to my skill and the Blizzaks than anything else. It's a $500 fine if you get caught without chains.)

And the roads aren't always just bad on the pass. Sometimes they are bad from where you start going up the pass until home. So you're going 35 mph the whole 180 miles, almost. Makes for a long trip. People would pass us and then a couple miles down the road they'd be in the ditch.

I like to drive, but driving in slick conditions take the fun out of it, and makes it work.

Don't know what this winter will bring. I'm hoping it will be more like '17-'18 than '16-'17. But you never know.

Huskies are 1-1

I usually do these posts on the Sunday morning after the game on Saturday. But this week I had a family thing Sunday so I'm posting today.

The University of Washington Huskies are now 1-1 with their victory over the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux Hawks. The Hawks are an FCS team so this is one of those easy non-conference games used to build confidence and get some practice in before playing Pac-12 teams.

I don't know if the Huskies were over-confident but they still didn't play well. North Dakota managed to shut down our running attack so quarterback Jake Browning ended up throwing a lot. At halftime the score was only 0-17. For a top-10 ranked team playing an FCS team, that's a low score. After halftime the Dawgs looked better. But then something interesting happened. With about 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Coach Petersen pulled the starters and put in back-up quarterback Jake Haener (a red-shirt freshman). And he and the other back-up players actually played better than the starters. They got two touchdowns and made it look easy. Haener may be next year's starting quarterback and if so, that's good news.

The final score, because of those two late TDs, was 3-45.

Next week, the Dawgs travel to Salt Lake City to take on a tough Utah team. I hope their play is
improved before then or they're going to have problems. At least they shouldn't be over-confident.

Elsewhere in the Pac-12, Stanford beat USC by a score of 3-17. That means Stanford is going to be a tough opponent when we play them later in the year. And we have to beat Stanford if we're going to be the Pac-12 North champions.

In the AP top 25 poll, Washington dropped one space to #10 and Stanford went up one slot to #9. Oregon climbed to #20 and USC dropped to #22. There's no other Pac-12 teams ranked.

Strength

Time once again for the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "Strength."

Strength is interesting. I've never been a very physically strong person. My upper body strength has always been lousy. Even when I was in the military, I usually just barely passed the physical strength requirements. And forget doing a pull up. I've never managed to do one of those. I did once achieve running a seven-minute mile. I was proud of that. Of course, you watch marathons on television and in the 25th mile they're doing four to five-minutes miles.

But there's more to strength then pumping iron. There's strength of will. For example, it takes a lot of will to write a novel. And I've done that quite a few times. You could say writing a novel is my "marathon."

I've always had a strong brain. A little dyslexic (never was a good speller) and sometimes it gets confused. I will type a word that sounds like the word I want. And often I spell "how" as "who" (same letters, different order). It's strange.

I remember in college people carried planners and they would write down deadlines such as tests and when papers were due. I never did that, I carried it all in my head. Now I put everything in my phone because in my aging brain, I can't carry it all in my head anymore.

How are you strong? Let me know in the comments.

College Football Rivalries

One of the (many) fun things about college football, is the rivalries. Probably the most famous one is Ohio State and Michigan.

But the Pac-12 has some rivalries, too. Most are based on geography (same state or city). Some are based on past history. The Pac-12 usually, but not always schedules rivalry games for the last game of the regular season.

For example, USC and UCLA (both in Los Angeles) is a rivalry. And Stanford and Cal are rivals (same metro area).  And of course Arizona and Arizona State, Oregon and Oregon State. And Washington and Washington State.

But at the University of Washington, we also hate Oregon. For me, this is because they beat us a lot in the past few years (the last two, 2016 and 2017, UW won). And they were insufferable about it. Also, Oregon has a lot of Phil Knight (Nike gazillionaire) money to buy good coaches. So there's a bit of envy going on for Washington fans. Just be assured, Washington fans hate Oregon. To me, the Washington State rivalry is friendly. The Oregon rivalry is war.

In terms of teams I want to beat it's Oregon first, then Washington State, then USC, then Stanford, then the rest.

One interesting rivalry is Colorado and Utah. I kind of think this was a "wag the dog" rivalry. They are the last two teams to join the Pac-12 (making it "Pac-12" instead of "Pac-10" like it was for decades). So they needed rivals in the Pac-12 and chose each other.

Rivalries add fun to college football. Which is already a ton of fun.

Huskies are #9

The AP Top 25 Poll came out today. And the University of Washington Huskies drop to #9 (as I sort of predicted) from #6. The team that beat them, Auburn, is #7.

Other Pac-12 teams are:

Stanford #10 (up from #13)
USC #17 (dropping from #15 after their tough win Saturday)
Oregon #23 (up from #14)

For the rest of the season the AP poll will come out at about 11 AM Pacific Time on Sundays.

Huskies are 0-1

It's tough having your first game be one of your biggest games.

Yesterday the University of Washington Huskies played the Auburn Tigers in the "Chick-Fil-A Kickoff" game in Atlanta. Before this game, the Huskies were rated by the AP at #6 and Auburn at #9.

In the first quarter, the Huskies looked as if they had forgotten how to play football. After a three and out by the Huskies, the Tigers marched down the field and made a touchdown.

In the second quarter, the Huskies played better. In the third quarter they played like they used to. In the fourth quarter, they played as if they were tired. They still tried, but made too many mistakes. If they had played the whole game like they did in the third quarter, they would have won. As it was, they lost the close contest by 21 to 16. It was a very defensive game and missed fieldgoals hurt both teams. But the Huskies more so.

The Auburn offense shut down the Huskies' vaunted run game. Quarterback Jake Browning could pass but he missed too often. And Auburn played dirty, earning a lot of penalties. At one point I thought the referees gave the Huskies an offensive pass interference just to make up for all the Auburn defensive pass interference calls. At one point Jake Browning was obviously targeted with a helmet-to-helmet tackle and it wasn't called.

The AP poll doesn't come out until Tuesday due to the Labor Day holiday. So we won't know until then how badly this hurts us in the polls. It should drop us to at least #9.

Also, this likely means the Huskies won't make the College Football Playoffs (CFP). And in order to win the Pac-12 North they'll have to win every game for the rest of the year. To win the Pac-12 championship, they'll have to win the Pac-12 North then beat the winner of the Pac-12 South who is projected to be USC. Right now the Huskies are tied for last place in the Pac-12 North with Oregon State, who lost to #5 Ohio State by a score of 77 to 31. Oregon State is the worst team in the Pac-12.

Other teams that lost in the Pac-12 on opening weekend were UCLA and Arizona.

Of course, I still love my Huskies. It was 10 years ago that they went 0-12. And I loved them then, too.

Next week we play North Dakota at home. North Dakota is a FCS team. They are the "Fighting Hawks." They were the "Fighting Sioux" until the Pesky Promoters of Political Correctness at the NCAA made them change it. I wonder if any Sioux were asked about it.

Huskies Start Football Tomorrow

The University of Washington Huskies start their 2018 football season tomorrow facing Auburn in Atlanta for the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff game. It'll be on ABC at 12:30 P.M. PDT.

Last year the Huskies had problems with on-the-road games. They lost to Arizona State (and shouldn't have) and Stanford both while on the road. They lost their bowl game to Penn State on the road. But they were undefeated at home.

The pre-season AP top 25 poll has the Huskies at #6 and Auburn at #9. All the other pre-season polls I have seen have the Huskies ranked higher than Auburn. So at least the voters of the polls have faith in the Huskies. But Atlanta is about 100 miles from the Auburn campus so this is basically a home game for them. Atlanta is around 2,200 miles from Seattle. So the odds makers have Auburn slightly ahead or even.

Playing a team such as Auburn in non-conference play is an attempt to avoid the problems Huskies had in 2017 when their non-conference play was deemed too easy ("cupcakes" as ESPN put it). They played Rutgers, Montana, and Fresno State.

This year they play Auburn, North Dakota, and Brigham Young in non-conference play. North Dakota is an FCS team but Auburn is a very good team. I'm not sure how good BYU is. So it's going to be tougher to be unbeaten in non-conference play this year. And if the Huskies hope to make it to the CFP (College Football Playoffs) again this year as they did in 2016, they'll probably have to win all non-conference games.

If they win tomorrow, they will be on their way to possibly another CFP appearance. If they lose, all the naysayers will come out saying 2016 was a flash in the pan and the Huskies can't play in the big leagues.

Tomorrow's going to be a tough game for the Huskies. I'm hoping they win, of course.

Community

Time once again for the 52-week blogging challenge. This week's prompt is "Community."

I'm not a real community kind of guy. I'm a strong introvert and I tend to be alone more. Or just with close family and friends.

However, I have been in Toastmasters for seven years. I've held several offices in the organization and I have achieved the highest educational award: Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM). I'm sort of trying to drift away from Toastmasters. I've pretty much lost interest in it after so long. Plus it would be nice to have my Monday evenings free again.

I also was on the board of the local economic development council for six years. And for four of those years I was the secretary of the organization. I enjoyed that a lot as I knew what was happening in the local economy before most other people did. Often the companies coming would be secretive about it and not want their name out in the public. Code words would be used such as "Project Springboard." One time the Executive Director said, "AstaReal is coming to our area and that's no longer a secret" and we all said "Yay!" Then at the next meeting he said "Don't tell anyone that AstaReal is coming to our area, it's still a secret." And we all said, "Oops." Of course, it's not a secret now as they are here in town.

But I haven't been on that board for a few years now. I did some freelance writing for the organization but they stopped having me do that.

So I guess I've been more involved in the community than I originally thought.

Tomorrow I'll probably start writing about University of Washington football since their first game is Saturday. Go Dawgs!