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And now it is Gamma’s turn.

It is appointed to our children once to contract roseola, and after that the judgment umm… not to get it anymore.

When Alpha was 15 months old, he got roseola. I had never heard of roseola before, but by now I am quite familiar with it. It started off as a FOUO (fever of unknown origin), and then once the fever had gone and we thought everything was fine, the body-wide rash appeared.

Alpha

So, I learned all about roseola and it passed and was never a problem for Alpha anymore.

Then when Beta was 17 months old, he got roseola. Well, we didn’t know it at the time. We just knew he had a fever. It was very high, over 105, and it wasn’t coming down so we took him to the ER. Beta always did run warmer than the other children, so we should expect his fevers to be higher too.

The hospital gave him an IV and some over-the-counter fever reducer and ran a blood test. The fever came down eventually and the blood test did not show anything. The hospital didn’t know what else to do, so they gave him a course of antibiotics (through the IV – much more efficient, though of course totally useless against the virus that he had) and sent us on our way. We should have known what was coming, but we were surprised a couple days later when spots appeared all over his body.

Beta

Gamma has them both beat. He’s not even a year old and he already contracted roseola. His fever was slight, only 101. It’s hard to pinpoint when or how or where he picked up the virus, since the incubation period is over a week. But slightly over a week ago he, along with his brothers and mother, swam in a hotel pool. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Gamma

We’ll see if Gamma is ahead of the curve in his other developments too. Maybe we should add roseola to the list of developmental milestones. It would fit right in there with when your baby should get teeth, start walking, say his first word, etc.

Okay, okay, it is 2010 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2009 because they match with the 2009 predictions made in 2009 for the 2009 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2009”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.

Results

Here is the list (correct predictions in green, incorrect in red):

Fresno State over Wyoming

UCF over Rutgers

Southern Miss over Middle Tennessee

Oregon St. over BYU

Utah over Cal

Nevada over SMU

Ohio over Marshall

Pitt over UNC

BC over USC

Kentucky over Clemson

Georgia over Texas A&M

UCLA over Temple

Miami over Wisconsin

Bowling Green over Idaho

Arizona over Nebraska

Houston over Air Force

Stanford over Oklahoma

Navy over Missouri

Iowa State over Minnesota

VT over Tennessee

Northwestern over Auburn

PSU over LSU

WVU over FSU

Oregon over Ohio State

Florida over Cincinnati

NIU over USF

UConn over South Carolina

OK St. over Ole Miss

Arkansas over East Carolina

Texas Tech over MSU

Boise St. over TCU

Iowa over Georgia Tech

CMU over Troy

Texas over Alabama

And here are the results of the various forecasting methodologies (see last year’s results for description of the methodologies) (also, use the word methodologies if you want to sound important; methods would work just as well and is shorter) :

• Some Blog Site picks were 15-19 (better than last year!)
• CBS120 picks were 19-15
• HTW was 20-14 for the official Home Team Wins (HTW)
• HTW was 11-23 for the Geographical Home Team (GHT)
• Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate (ITP) was 20-14 if using HTW
• ITP was 16-18 if using GHT

I won’t analyze the results as much as I did last year, mainly because I had more time and more sleep last year. But it was a bad year for GHT; last year it was by far the best method. Just goes to show that college ball isn’t as uniform and well-behaved as the NFL. Of course, by well-behaved, I mean the predictability of the statistics and games, not the manners of the players themselves.

Thoughts on the season’s results

1. What more does Boise St. have to do? They should be ranked second, not fourth, in the season-end polls. Texas didn’t prove they’re the second-best team in the country; they just proved they’re not the best. Boise St. had better get a top-5 pre-season ranking because they deserve the same presumption of excellence that any other big-name school (of which they are now one) would get.
2. Texas did not get a fair deal in the championship game with Colt McCoy taken out on the first drive. That is what happens during football sometimes, but it still felt like I was swindled. I was all set to watch the two Heisman candidates battle it out, and I didn’t get to do so.
3. I don’t personally know Nick Saban, but his expression and demeanor after the Gatorade bath really made me think that he is not friendly. Your team is about to win the championship, your players just dumped a cooler full of beverage on you to celebrate, and all you do is scowl? Maybe his all-business attitude helps him win, but he is the face of Alabama football and he needs to remember to help out the PR department a bit. Yes, winning a national championship is great PR. All I’m saying is that my main memory from the game is the expression on his face and how unhappy it looked. It was so out of place.

Conferences

Since the strength of the conference has something to do with the results, I thought I would tally each conference’s bowl game record for the 2009 (and the first bit of 2010) season.

• ACC: 3-4
• Big 10: 4-3
• Big 12: 4-4
• Big East: 4-2
• Independent: 1-0
• MAC: 1-4
• MW: 4-1
• PAC10: 2-5
• SEC: 6-4
• Sun Belt: 1-1
• USA: 2-4
• WAC: 2-2

So the best conference was the Mt. West and the worst was the MAC. Perhaps you could say that the SEC was the best because they had ten teams go to bowls. Or you could say the SEC was just the most popular conference.

Alpha is a good sleeper, which means that sometimes he is not the easiest child to awaken. A side effect of that is that he is not ready for breakfast when he awakes. Beta, on the other hand, usually asks to eat breakfast as soon as he is awake.

One morning, I could tell by Alpha’s expression and body language that he was not in the mood for breakfast. That, and the fact that he refused my initial offer of cereal and yogurt. Since we had some unusual leftovers in the fridge, I thought I would try to pique his interest in eating breakfast.
I: How about a bear breakfast?
Alpha: What?
What do bears eat?
Fish.
(giving Alpha a serving of smoked salmon, which he likes) Yep, and salmon are fish. What else do bears eat?
Berries!
(serving a small dish of blackberries) Yep, and you’re having blackberries.
Blackberries and salmon would be very yummy for a bear.
So you’re having a bear breakfast.
Beta (running from the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the living room while waving his hands in the air): Ahhh! Run for your lives!!! There’s a bear in my house! There’s a bear in my house!

Never a dull moment here, folks.

Another day, I was finishing my meal and Beta was already done and making up a game. I don’t know exactly what kind of game, but I think it was related to football. He came in from the living room and announced the teams: he would be one team and I would be the other team. Then he announced the names.

You’ll be the Princess Buddy Mermaid team. I’ll be the Silver Rock Monster Bullet Grumpy Bear team.

I see where I stand. And apparently they’re never to young to start smack talk.

On New Year’s Eve, my wife went grocery shopping and came home with steaks for dinner.

Steaks are always welcome, but they were raw at that point, so I asked how she was going to cook them.

“Either boiled or fried” was the response.

Boiled? Ugh. No thanks. I’m sure it would make the meat safe to eat, but that’s just not right. Save the boiling for hot dogs. Although . . . I usually just microwave those.

Fried? Maybe, but a steak deserves better than that.

“Alright,” I said, “I’ll grill them.” You know it’s bad when I volunteer to cook. But steak is a treat, and I was home because of the holiday, so why not?

“In this weather? It’s snowing out there!”

“It’s not so bad. Besides, the grill will keep me warm.”

Here is what grilling on New Year’s Eve in the Midwest looks like:

While I was grilling, my wife was making the potatoes. Rather, she was trying to make the potatoes. She had a bag of potatoes, and the bag claimed that all one needed to do was microwave the bag and the potatoes would be cooked.

However, after being microwaved and put into a bowl to be mashed, the potatoes looked like this:

My wife knew that potatoes are not supposed to be green. Thanks to the internet, she confirmed that green potatoes are very bad.

So she threw them out and considered calling the company to complain about their attempted poisoning bad potatoes.

The best part about the meal was when the kids sat down to dinner and Alpha exclaimed “Steak! I love steak!” Get ’em started young.

The second-best part was that there was a steak or two left over. A breakfast later during the holiday consisted of steak and eggs.