UK plays again tonight against a nobody opponent – we’re expected to win by 20-30 points. Woo hoo. Fortunately I’ve gained some perspective about the bad loss on Tuesday. There’s no real reason to think that this is The Team, or that this is Our Year. There are a lot of great teams out there, including right at home in the SEC – Tennessee and Arkansas, for example. Every game against a top 50 team is a dogfight. So I might as well get real about it and enjoy the season, whatever it brings.

In my ongoing quest to get back to an in-the-right-time-zone sleep cycle, I watched an old movie at 3am last night – Ruby in Paradise, starring a young Ashley Judd. It was a beautiful little story about a country girl trying to make it in the “big city” somewhere on the FL panhandle coast. The film’s pace is slow and thoughtful, just what you need at 3am. It brought back memories of how naive I was when I left Ashland, how everything was new and confusing. Judd did a wonderful job in the role, though she was probably able to draw from her life’s experience, as she grew up in small-town Ashland too. It doesn’t escape me that Ashley Judd is now one of the highest-profile UK hoops fans, so she’s a special person for me.

In other news, this year’s political drama is about over. Dems won the Senate, Reps won the House. Biden is still hitting on all cylinders. Dems won a lot of great governors’ seats. And Trump is running again (yawn). I’m glad Trump’s running, as it will remind everyone that it’s important to get out and vote. Reasonable people outnumber the MAGA crowd 60-40 if we’ll just show up.

I’ll keep trying to include some pictures from the Europe trip. Here’s a view of some cool and crooked Amsterdam buildings, taken from our little boat on the canal. They really are leaning that much. Our boat captain said that with Amsterdam being the gay capital of the world, even the buildings aren’t straight.