A new year is once again upon us, and with it, we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century. We kick off 2025 with the first photo from this year’s calendar, featuring Michael wearing Angelina’s graduation gown at Fair Oaks Farms prior to Danny’s graduation.
Tag / DLM
2025 Calendar
Now that Christmas has come and gone, we can unveil the cover to this year’s calendar gift, given annually to my mom and sister, and made up of pictures I have taken throughout the year. I imagine this will be the final edition, with both Angelina and Danny out in the workforce and Michael away at school despite still being mostly homebound. As in year’s past. the calendar was produced by the good folks at Shutterfly and we will unveil each month’s photo(s) on the first day of the month throughout 2025.
This year’s cover features all three kids posing prior to Danny’s graduation dinner at Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Indiana, with both Angelina and Danny in their respective caps and gowns.
Ballpark Tour: Twins
With the offseason underway, we continue our tour of all of the different baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we head north to the Twin Cities for a look at the Minnesota Twins. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my history with Target Field.
Stadium Name: Target Field
Years in Service: 2010 – Present
Visits: 2
After 28 seasons of indoor baseball at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the Twins moved back outside starting with the 2010 season when they opened Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. The first regular season game took place on April 12, 2010, with the Twins defeating the Red Sox. In 2014, Target Field hosted the All-Star Game, the first in Minnesota since 1985.
I took the long drive up to Minneapolis in the weeks after that All-Star Game, along with Danny and Michael, to see the White Sox take on the Twins. We picked two good games to see, as the White Sox offense came to life and they managed to win both games we attended against the Twinkies. We sat down on the first level, between home plate and third base behind the White Sox dugout for both games, so I didn’t get to sample the different areas of the ballpark, but I certainly liked what I saw. The one thing I didn’t like about the park was the configuration of most of the outfield. Between the large hitting background in center field and the high walls in left and right, there is a lot of dead space in the outfield that seems to put the fans far away from the action. Besides that, though, a good time was had by all, and I certainly wouldn’t mind returning one day.
FB10: Week 44
Despite the turn in weather, and the first snowfall of the season, I managed to stay above the 30,000-step plateau for the fifth week in a row. Things got off to a decent start on Sunday as we celebrated Danny’s birthday, which left me 34 steps away from 5000. Monday saw a big drop, going down to 3200 steps. A charging session on Tuesday helped push me back up to 5300 steps. Another drop on Wednesday put me 3 steps shy of 4000. Thursday was just a little worse, needing 8 additional steps to get to 3900. A slight increase on Friday left me just 6 steps short of 4200. Saturday was the high point of the week, thanks to a trip to the United Center to see the Bulls battle a Zach Edey-less Grizzlies team and leaving me just 17 steps shy of 6400..
Total steps: 31,986
Daily average: 4569.4
Two To The Three
Danny turns the ripe old age of 23 today. To celebrate, we have this shot of him from his senior day celebration at Purdue’s final football game of last year.
College Basketball Tipoff
Fresh off of an appearance in the championship game of last year’s NCAA tournament, the Purdue men’s basketball team kicks off the 2024-2025 regular season tomorrow night. With Danny out of school and an expanded Big Ten limiting how often each team visits the other schools in the conference, it may be a while before I attend another regular season game. So, with the 128th season in school history about to get underway, let’s take a look at the results of the now 24 men’s college basketball games I have attended in my lifetime. You’d think it would be more, since I was a big fan and we had a great team while I was in school, but for some reason I only made it to two games while enrolled in college. The other 22 have been post-graduation, having added four games last year, two at Mackey and two in Detroit for the NCAA tournament. Anyway, without further ado, here are the standings for those 24 games.
All-Time Team Records – Men
| Team | Won | Loss | Winning Pctg |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Texas Mean Green | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Indiana Hoosiers | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Virginia Commonwealth Rams | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Butler Bulldogs | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Purdue Boilermakers | 16 | 7 | 0.696 |
| Northwestern Wildcats | 2 | 3 | 0.400 |
| Illinois Fighting Illini | 2 | 4 | 0.333 |
| Gonzaga Bulldogs | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Houston Cougars | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Iowa State Cyclones | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Jacksonville Dolphins | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Ohio State Buckeyes | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Penn State Nittany Lions | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Tennessee Volunteers | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Vermont Catamounts | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
| Long Beach State 49ers | 0 | 1 | 0.000 |
A Time To Be Thankful
We are entering the home stretch of 2024, and, to celebrate Danny’s upcoming birthday, we have various shots of him from the 2023 Purdue football season. Clockwise from the top left, we have his final drum major breakdown following the IU game, after hitting the drum during halftime of the same game, and, finally, him marching on the field at Ross-Ade.
Ballpark Tour: Red Sox
With the offseason underway, we continue our tour of all of the different baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we look at the Boston Red Sox, owners of the oldest stadium in Major League Baseball. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my one game history with Fenway Park.
Stadium Name: Fenway Park
Years in Service: 1912 – Present
Visits: 1
In 1911, Red Sox owner John I. Taylor purchased the land bordered by Brookline Avenue, Jersey Street, Van Ness Street and Lansdowne Street and developed it into a larger baseball stadium, which he named after the Fenway neighborhood where it was located. The first game was played April 20, 1912, as the Red Sox defeated the New York Highlanders, who would become the Yankees the following year, 7-6 in 11 innings.
I attended my first (and, so far, only) game at Fenway Park in August of 2017, cashing in my birthday gift from the year before. The hope was that Angelina would be moving into Boston University around that time, but her gap year put a kibosh on that. The ballpark was… a little underwhelming. From the outside, you could barely tell that it was a stadium. Michael even asked where it was as we were standing outside it.
The game went about as you would expect. With James Shields on the mound, the White Sox did not put up much of a fight. We were sitting down the left field line, with a good view of the Green Monster. The seats, which may or may not date back to the stadium’s opening in 1912, were not really designed for people well over 6 feet tall, so there was a lot of uncomfortable shifting as Danny and my knees were smooshed into the seats in front of us.
I would have added an additional game or two in 2020, as the plan was to take Michael to Boston for his birthday and enjoy the monster seats, but a little global pandemic got in that way of that. Now that Angelina is done with school and working full time in Boston, there is still an opportunity to increase my number of visits in the years to come.
Falling Into Autumn
We enter the tail end of summer, and the beginning of meteorological fall, with a look back to last summer, when Danny and I travelled to Seattle to visit the Space Needle and see the White Sox take on the Mariners at T-Mobile Park.
2024 College Football Kickoff
The Purdue Boilermakers, kick off their 2024 gridiron campaign today, starting a new era of Big Ten football with new member Oregon coming to town in October, for just their third visit to Ross-Ade Stadium. Now that Danny has graduated, my game attendance is likely to trickle back down to the once every couple of years pace I was on before he matriculated after attending an all-time high five games last fall. That said, it’s time to take a look at the results of the now 32 college football games I have attended since the 1993 season, covering six different stadiums in a whopping three states, including one bowl game.
All-Time Team Records
| University | Won | Loss | Winning Pctg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Syracuse Orange | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Penn State Nittany Lions | 2 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Ohio State Buckeyes | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Wisconsin Badgers | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Louisiana State Tigers | 1 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Notre Dame Fighting Irish | 4 | 1 | 0.800 |
| Purdue Boilermakers | 19 | 11 | 0.633 |
| Northern Illinois Huskies | 1 | 1 | 0.500 |
| Illinois Fighting Illini Continue reading → |