Looking weekend-wards

Well, well. So tomorrow is Friday. Sounds good. I have a busier weekend than usual ahead of me. Saturday is the famous "Rivalry." My alma mater, Calvin College, plays basketball against their arch-rival, Hope College. Calvin is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Hope is in Holland, Michigan. Calvin is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, and Hope is affiliated with the Reformed Church. When Calvin and Hope play basketball, it is televised by satellite so that alumni can watch it.

When I was a student at Calvin and attended Calvin-Hope games, I literally went crazy. And when I say literally, I know what the word means (i.e., not as you see many people use it when they mean not literally but figuratively, metaphorically, or the like). My brain did not function normally, I got caught up in the mob mentality, and I went crazy. Fortunately, it was a fairly contained and controlled mass insanity that took over the crowd at the games, although sometimes the Grand Rapids Press would get sniffy about how we could presume to set ourselves up as a Christian community and still display such animosity at our games. But the Grand Rapids Press liked to sneer at Calvin.

The local alumni will gather at Milt's Pizza Place in Lynden. That is a so much nicer venue than the sports bar where we used to go in Bellingham. At the other place--the name of which escapes me at the moment and which I think has since closed down--we were assigned one TV out of many and other customers at the bar wondered who the heck we were and why our game should be on. The place had pool tables and if smoking were still allowed in restaurants definitely would have been smoke-filled. In fact it was a sports bar, emphasis on the bar. Milt's is a much more family-friendly place, and they make great pizza. We filled up our area and the whole atmosphere was more gezellig. Milt's is clean and sun-lit.

Then on Sunday a family wedding.