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2025-2026 Final Standings

Purdue’s men’s basketball season came to an end on Sunday, falling to Arizona in the Elite Eight.  It was a disappointing, but appropriate, end for a team ranked #1 in the pre-season and expected to compete for a national title but struggled throughout the conference schedule.  While home tickets remained hard to come by this season, I did manage to see six games in five arenas across four states, thanks to a January trip out west to California, a Valentine’s Day visit to Iowa City, and the Big Ten Tournament here at the United Center, tied for the greatest number of games I’ve attended in a single season while adding both the Galen Center and Pauley Pavilion to my collection.

2026 Team Records – Men

TeamName Won Loss Winning Pctg
UCLA Bruins 1 0 1.000
Purdue Boilermakers 5 1 0.833
USC Trojans 0 1 0.000
Penn State Nittany Lions 0 1 0.000
Northwestern Wildcats 0 1 0.000
Nebraska Cornhuskers 0 1 0.000
Iowa Hawkeyes 0 1 0.000
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Book 17 (of 52) – Gone Before Goodbye

Gone Before Goodbye – Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben

When a disgraced surgeon is offered the opportunity to operate again, while clearing all of her family’s debts and pending lawsuits at the same time, she jumps at the chance.  Flown to Russia, she completes the work on both of her patients but then feels like something isn’t right.  Barely escaping with her life, she is taken to Dubai, where she teams with a secret girlfriend of her missing colleague to try and find him and find out what really happened when her husband was murdered.

Actress Reese Witherspoon teams with prolific author Harlan Coben for Gone Before Goodbye, their first collaboration and nominee for the 2026 Goodreads Choice Award for Favorite Mystery & Thriller.  Having never read anything from either one before, it is hard to tell how much input Witherspoon had on the finished product.  It was a quick, if somewhat muddled, read, having the bones of a good story but dropping some of the execution.  While this could have been a good introduction to Coben and his many works, I don’t really feel the need to seek out more from him at the moment.

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iTunes Top 200 Artists: #81-90

Music.  It is a powerful thing that brings people together, creates memories, and evokes emotions.  It is the universal language that speaks to the soul.  It forms the soundtrack of our lives.

It has now been five years since we last counted down the Top 200 artists in my iTunes library, featuring the songs I have listened to the most since 2007.  It is time to do so again, seeing which performers still resonate and if any newer ones have joined the fray.  So, without further ado, here are my most listened to artists, based on number of plays as of January 1, 2026.

We continue today with our next batch of ten artists, covering the genres of pop, alternative rock, R&B, and metal, stretching from the 1960s through the 2000s.

#90: P.O.D.
iTunes stats: 122 plays
Previous ranking: #78

The San Diego band responsible for the entrance music for former White Sox closer Bobby Jenks added just ten new plays in the last five years.

#89: Bell Biv DeVoe
iTunes stats: 123 plays
Previous ranking: #83

A small 19% increase for the former members of New Edition cause them to drop six spots in the rankings.

#88: Ozzy Osbourne
iTunes stats: 124 plays
Previous ranking: #89

The one-time Prince of Darkness, who passed away last summer, picked up 31 new listens, for the six different tracks in my collection.

#85: UB40
iTunes stats: 126 plays
Previous ranking: #105

The British reggae band move up 20 spots on the list based on their 45 new listens, now spread across five different tracks.

#85: Christina Aguilera
iTunes stats: 126 plays
Previous ranking: #86

The former Mouseketeer and Voice star sees a 30% play increase, enabling her to rise a single spot.

#85: The Beach Boys
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Book 16 (of 52) – Half His Age

Half His Age – Jennette McCurdy

Waldo, a 17-year-old high school senior, is drifting through life, living with an absentee mother, a dead-end job, and a boyfriend she doesn’t really care for.  Her new creative writing teacher, however, touches something deep inside of her, giving her feelings she’s never had before.  She goes after him, initially willing to put up with the limitations of their affair but eventually realizing that she wants, and ultimately deserves, more.  After graduation, and after he leaves his wife for her, Waldo reaches the end of her rope, finally realizing it is time to take control of her life.

Former teen actress Jennette McCurdy, who came to fame starring in children’s shows on Nickelodeon like iCarly and Sam & Cat before taking the literary world by storm with her memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, in 2022, returns with her first work of fiction.  Half His Age, I guess, is a tale of growth, as Waldo eventually learns that she can only blame her upbringing for so much and that, eventually, it is up to her to decide where she wants to go and to get herself there.  I assume these lessons were also ones that McCurdy herself had to learn as she dealt with her own mother issues.  This was an intriguing, if not great, book and I’m interested to see where she turns next.

 

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Fitbit 12 – Week 9

Another pretty good week, as I surpassed 30,000 steps for the sixth straight week and ran my streak of 4000+ days to 27 despite the (hopefully) last gasps of winter.  The week got off to a good start on Sunday, finishing 32 steps away from 4900.  Despite an overnight snowstorm on Monday, I managed to gain 4200 steps.  More snow came on Tuesday, but I still got over 4900 steps.  A final bit of snow before improving temperatures on Wednesday couldn’t contain me, still ending up at 4800 steps.  A walk around the block on Thursday pushed me up to 5700 steps.  Friday, the first day of spring, used a lunchtime walk to push me even higher, finishing a mere 2 steps shy of 6600.  Saturday finished the week strong, just 38 steps away from 4400.

Total steps: 35,496

Daily average: 5070.9

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All Time Team Records

After a long winter, the 2026 baseball season got underway yesterday.  To celebrate, it is time once again to look at the all-time team records for games that I have identified as having attended dating back to 1984.  Last year, I posted my thirteenth highest total, an increase of twelve games from the year before, and managed to see 21 out of the 30 teams, so there should be some nice changes.

The White Sox are coming off their third-straight 100 loss season and are hoping to avoid adding a fourth this year.  On the other side of town, the Cubs made it back into playoff contention last year and are hoping to move beyond the NLDS this year.  The 2026 season may look completely different on each side of town.

All-Time Team Records

Team Name Won Loss Winning Pctg
California Angels 2 0 1.000
Arizona Diamondbacks 17 4 0.810
Florida Marlins 15 8 0.652
Cleveland Guardians 7 4 0.636
Toronto Blue Jays 20 12 0.625
New York Yankees 20 13 0.606
Philadelphia Phillies 13 10 0.565
Boston Red Sox 22 17 0.564
Colorado Rockies 11 9 0.550
Los Angeles Angels 20 17 0.541
Washington Nationals 7 6 0.538
Detroit Tigers 35 30 0.538
Cleveland Indians 31 27 0.534
Chicago Cubs 246 217 0.531
Houston Astros 27 25 0.519
Chicago White Sox 387 378 0.506
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How Sweet It Is

The Sweet Sixteen kicks off today following an opening weekend light on upsets and heavy on top seeds, although I did manage to lose my champion pick.  Three of my Final Four picks are still intact, which is better than usual.

A disappointing showing from the Big Ten in this region, leading to two of my three misses.

Purdue heads to its third straight Sweet Sixteen, which ties its longest streak in program history and is their seventh trip in the last nine years.

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2026 Predictions

With the Yankees and Giants on track to open the 2026 season tonight on Netflix and the rest of the league scheduled to follow suit tomorrow, it is time, for the 16th consecutive year, to look into my crystal ball and make my picks for the division, league, and major award winners for the upcoming season.

American League

East: Blue Jays

Central: Tigers

West: Mariners

Wild Cards: Yankees, Red Sox, Astros

AL Champion: Tigers

Cy Young: Tarik Skubal

MVP: Julio Rodriguez

National League

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Book 15 (of 52) – The Woman In Cabin 10

The Woman In Cabin 10 – Ruth Ware

Travel journalist Lo Blacklock has the chance to boost her career when she’s asked to cover the launch of a luxury cruise through Scandinavian waters in place of a pregnant co-worker.  On the first night, drunk and suffering from a lack of sleep due to a recent home invasion and burglary, she believes she witnesses a woman being thrown overboard from the next cabin next over, but, when she reports it, the crew insists all passengers and staff are accounted for.  Despite warnings to back off, she continues to dig, unsure of whom to trust or how to escape, until she becomes the next to disappear.

Nominated for a 2016 Goodreads Choice Award for Favorite Mystery & Thriller, Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10 was a rare miss from the author I’ve now read five times.  I might have enjoyed this better had I not seen the movie version this past December, but instead it felt like a rehash of a story I already knew, which is surprising since normally I enjoy going back and reading the source material after having seen the movie adaptation.  It has also been a decade since this was first released, so maybe Ware has grown as a writer in that time.  Either way, she recently released a sequel, so maybe I’ll have to give that a try before it gets adapted and see if that makes a difference.

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And I Would (Once Again) Walk 500 More

This past November, Matt Painter notched the 500th victory of his coaching career against Akron.  In yesterday’s victory over Miami in the NCAA Tournament, he scored his 500th victory at Purdue, where he replaced Gene Keady in 2005.  Painter becomes the fourth coach in Big Ten history to reach the 500-win plateau, joining Tom Izzo, Bobby Knight, and Keady.

Keady ended his time on the Boilermaker bench with 512 victories, meaning that Painter, barring any freak occurrences, should pass his mentor early next season.  Painter will look to add to his total on Thursday, when Purdue faces Texas in the Sweet Sixteen.