Saturday Night With The Minnesota Timberwolves & Chicago Bulls
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for February 25, 2018
Luke and Avery both came up from college this weekend and Avery brought his girlfriend, Emma, along for the adventure. We braced ourselves for a good time.
It started with a birthday celebration for our beloved Golden Retriever, Blue. He turned 3 this week and was pretty melancholy while we sang him Happy Birthday. He perked up quite a bit though when it was time to eat his muffin. We were glad he allowed us to blow out the candle for him before he dived into it.
The boys told us they invited a few friends over Friday night. We got a little nervous when the doorbell kept ringing and reminded them that our house wasn't their college dormitories. Lucky for us, they are all good kids that came over to visit. So we'll let the boys off the hook for now.
Blue liked having all the company because it meant there was a whole bunch of people willing to pet him. I was a little shocked when all of them went out to the hot tub and apparently were all able to enter it somehow. It is only designed to hold 8 people so how they were able to squeeze 15 in there, I guess I just don't want to know.
Avery wanted to show Emma some of his favorite things we do as a family, so naturally we had to head off to the Minnesota Zoo.
We've been having a lot of snow lately in Minnesota, so we were a bit cold while going through some of the outdoor exhibits. I'm sure the animals felt a lot of sympathy for us.
I wouldn't have thought we would have spent as much time touching the water critters as we did, but they just felt so squishy we couldn't resist.
The white-cheeked Gibbons are a lot of fun to watch. This guy walked on a tight rope for us and jumped to the shore while the ducks were being fed in the water next to him. He actually even swatted a duck that swam too near to him, but I'm going to assume it was an accident rather than branding him as being a violent offender.
I thought it was cute that these two were hanging out on the same branch with one another. I mean it's a huge place with thousands of branches and they still choose to be right next to each other like this? That's pretty cool.
On Saturday night, Miss Sheri and I drove through a blizzard to get to downtown Minneapolis. It wouldn't have been too bad except the dang windshield wipers kept building ice on them and would stop working. So there was quite a bit of cursing going on as we drove almost completely blind down the interstate. The language became markedly improved after we pulled over to smack the ice off of them, though.
The Chicago Bulls were in town to take on Karl Anthony Towns and the home team, Minnesota Timberwolves.
I believe this was Zach Levine's first visit back to Target Center since he was traded for Jimmy Butler last summer. He was a great player for us and won the slam dunk competition twice while he was here. But Jimmy Butler is arguably one of the top 10 players in the league, so I'm still glad the Wolves pulled off the trade.
Zach must either be into that "Cupping" stuff I hear that athletes do or one of his team-mates must have come up and pinched him on his shoulder. Either way, it looks kind of painful...
Speaking of Jimmy Butler, the team lost him to injury in the Houston Rockets game the previous night. Shortly before tip-off, we heard he tore a meniscus in his knee and would be out at least 4-6 weeks meaning he may be able to come back and join the team if they make the playoffs. This was actually good news, because the fear was that he tore his acl and would be out for at least a year.
No. It is not OK if you run little race-cars through the lanes of my hair.
Freddie Hoiberg is now the coach of the Chicago Bulls, but he will always hold a special place in our hearts. He grew up in Iowa and was a star player in Ames in high school and college. He then came to play for the Timberwolves. Eventually, Hoiberg discovered he had a heart defect and had surgery at the Mayo Clinic to correct it. After this, he became involved with Camp Odayin which is a camp for kids with heart defects. Luke and Avery actually met him there one summer while they were campers. So we find ourselves rooting for Freddie whenever we can, except for when his team is playing the Timberwolves.
Halftime brought us this crazy dude who balances on rolling steel cylinders. He kept adding more and more until eventually it seemed certain he would fall to his death. But he didn't. It only looked like the tower would collapse multiple times throughout his show. That's gotta be a tough way to make a buck.
The Bulls played tough, but eventually the Wolves proved to be too much for them and won the game by a score of 122-104. This puts their record at 37-26 and in 4th place in the Western Conference. There's 20 games to go in the season and we will be playing most of those without Jimmy Butler. I'm real hopeful we make it to the playoffs this year, but we will just have to see how things play out.