After defeating the Colts, the Steelers headed to Denver to dethrone the Broncos who had never lost an AFC game at home. The Steelers handled the Broncos and Big Ben and Jerome Bettis led the Steelers to a 34-17 win. The Bus is going home.
We'll see you after the Super Bowl.
After defeating the Bengals on the road, the Steelers took to the road again. This time to face the feared Indianapolis Colts and their flashy and finessed offense led by possibly the best quarterback in the NFL today, Peyton Manning. With the score at 21-10 late in the second half, the Steelers were all but booking their tickets to play in Denver at the AFC championship game. Linebackers Joey Porter and James Farrier sacked quarterback Peyton Manning on fourth down, lining up Ben Roethlisberger on the Colts' 2 yard line with Jerome Bettis in the backfield. All of the Steelers Nation stopped breathing when Bettis fumbled the ball just short of the endzone and the ball was recovered by Nick Harper. The only thing between Harper and a game-winning touchdown was quarterback Ben Roethlisberger who came up with maybe his biggest play of the season - a shoestring tackle that saved the Steelers' chances at the AFC championship. Final score 21-18.
Against the Detroit Lions at home the Steelers would have guaranteed themselves a playoff spot as a sixth seed if they won the game. They did. With the final score at 35-21 the Steelers found themselves the sixth seed in the AFC and headed on the road to play the Cincinnati Bengals in the first round of the playoffs. It was the first step in getting Jerome home to Detroit.
In the Steelers' first game against the Indianapolis Colts, Big Ben Roethlisberger came out and played in a Monday Night Footall game after having knee surgery just 3 weeks prior to the game. The Steelers lost to the Colts led by Peyton Manning 26-7. It hurt, and was the first of a 3 game losing streak for the Steelers. While that loss was painful, it perhaps helped define one of the greatest second half of an NFL season the Steelers have ever had.
1st round draft pick Heath Miller proves he's got soft hands and if the ball is anywhere near him, he'll catch it. In the Steelers' first Monday Night Football game against the Chargers, Heath Miller catches a touchdown on the Steelers' way to a 24-22 win over the San Diego Chargers. He completed the game with 4 receptions for 36 yards and a touchdown.
It is now 6 days to Sunday. For the rest of this week I will be posting my favorite Steeler moments from the season leading up to the Super Bowl. See the end of this post for today's picture ...
This weekend I/we:
Hosted our Iron Chef party. The dishes entered were all very tasty and all very impressive. The secret ingredient was cheese. The dishes were:
Rob: Fried macaroni and cheese balls. Macaroni and cheese patted into balls, rolled in Panko, and deep fried.
Jamie: Prosciutto and cheese puff pastry. Little muffin sized puff pastry filled with cheese and prosciutto that oozed when you bit into it.
Michele: Italian fondue. Fontina cheese with pancetta with focaccia, broccoli and salami for dipping.
Christy: Tri-cheese Mediterranean dip. Cheese blended with garlic and topped with artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, and olive tapenade.
Sabrina: White chocolate fruit pizza. A giant chocolate chip cookie topped with white chocolate and cream cheese filling, topped with fresh strawberries and mandarin oranges, drizzled with chocolate
Dawn: Cheese crows. Puff pastry lined with brown sugar and nuts, filled with cream cheese filling and topped with fresh berries.
Heidi : Chocolate turtle cheesecake. Chocolate cheese cake layered with a graham cracker crust and caramel with pecans on top.
Don't you wish you were here to eat all this stuff? I wasn't smart enough to take pictures of all the dishes. That was not smart of me at all. But it was SO good.
Sunday JJ ran the church service and I took the WAM team bagels for breakfast. Benji burned incense during the service and it made me woozy. I did hopetown for the 3rd service and then promptly came home and crashed for the day, being stricken with a miserable cold, origin unknown. Dang cold. JJ got me some soup and orange juice and I just laid out for the rest of the day. I'm still doing that ... I hope it's not bronchitis, but I think it might be.
Today's Steeler Moment of the Season ... Willie Parker's first start as a pro against the Tennessee Titans. He broke for a 10 yard touchdown run in the first half and his final stats were 22 carries for 161 yards and a touchdown. Here he gained the nickname "Fast Willie."
We figured out something REALLY COOL last night at the church. And by 'we' I mean 'Steve' and by 'figured out' I mean 'played with until it worked.' Regardless, it was awesome. What was it? Tap sync-ing the lights. We had our very own little light show with the song "The Whole Earth" during Encounter last night. With blue and orange and purple and red all flashing and blinking, right in time with the beat! Maybe you had to be there, but between the chapel we worship in and the dark outside, and the band on the stage, and the darkened sanctuary, it was very exciting. I am thinking (hoping) that we actually won't do it THAT often otherwise all the cool stuff might lose some of its oomph. I had to share. I was all a-giddy with excitment about it.
Just some photos from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette's website from the Steelers' AFC Championship win ....
Here's one of Hines Ward (one of my favorites) hugging Jerome Bettis (one of JJ's favorites)
And here's one of Jerome Bettis and Rian Wallace (who?) dumping the cooler over Bill Cowher
And there you go ... the Steelers are headed to Super Bowl XL. And we could get tickets for the fairly reasonable price of $6,000 for the two of us.
WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!
Sabrina posted birthday presents on her blog already. However, I will point out that we were independently looking at presents online and it is purely coincidence ... besides, my present wants are very different from hers. She's so cute and has the most adorable gift selection ... and I'm so not. ;-) 1. Shoulder handbag from Eddie Bauer - camel or tortoise, NOT white 2. New Birkenstocks - in cocao nubuck or tan suede ... I don't expect to get these - they're pricey but my other ones are 7 years old and slowly dying 3. Bible on CD, NLT translation 4. Fun, fruity smelling things from Bath and Body Works ... I'm not a big lotion user but for soap and shower gels and body washes and candles I'm a big fan. My favorites are: vanilla sugar, mango mandarin, cucumber melon. 5. Pretty candles and candle accessories from Pier 1. Favorite scents: buttercream, lavendar. I'm not really expecting big gifts. I'm not big on birthdays. But as long as it's an excuse to get presents, well why not, right? Plus, posting them ensures that JJ doesn't try and surprise me ... and we all know how I feel about surprises. :-)
I can only say "WHEW!" Between 1-4:30 at the Cooper household yesterday there was a lot of cheering, a lot of excitement and a lot of up and down. I would have hated to see Jerome Bettis' career end on a fumble that cost the Steelers a trip to the AFC championship. So I'm glad Ben made that fantastic tackle. Some notes on the game: *Peyton Manning is right - the Colts had some problems with pass protection. No doubt. However, the 2 or 3 times that Manning had some obvious time in the pocket he overthrew both Harrison and Wayne by several yards. Either Manning was (unacharacteristically) off, or there was some major communication issues between him and his receivers. *The wheels on the Bus are still rolling. Thank goodness. Win one for the Bus fellas. You can do it. Come on. *Hines Ward's streak for a touchdown pass in a playoff game was broken. The Steelers had 3 TDs: Roethlisberger to Randle El, Roethlisberger to Miller, and the Bus rumbled in from about 3 yards out. No Hines. But a win. That's what counts. *Troy Polumalu intercepted the ball. That's going to be talked about for awhile. Here's my opinion on the officiating: It. Was. Bad. On both sides. We had some calls go our way and some calls go the other way. But there was an obvious pass interference on number 21 of the Colts on a pass to Antwaan Randle El that wasn't called. Troy Polumalu's interception. The false start/off sides weird, no foul, call. There was a pass interference on the Steelers that wasn't called. It wasn't necessarily an unfairly called game, it was just a poorly called game. Terrible, awful. And I hope the NFL is looking into it. *Bill Cowher and his coaching staff coached one of the best games in NFL history. No doubt. Congrats coaches. Let's hope that Bill's not headed to Hawaii again this year. 6 days to Sunday. Bring. It. On.
I'm back at the university for yet another semester. For whatever reason I'm a lot more appreciative this semester of what I have here. I love my "lab group." I put that in quotations because we're technically a lab group but we're never working on the same thing. It's more like 3 people who are all Dr. Neil Mulligan's students who happen to have offices next door to each other. But really, Jeff and Ilana are great. Jeff got engaged this past summer, Ilana got engaged on Monday (congrats again to Ilana), and I got married this summer. Obviously Neil's students get along well with others it seems. Plus, I like my teaching position. This morning I made the mistake of not taking my water bottle down with me to lecture and after talking my way through 18 slides and an hour worth of material, my throat decided it didn't like that. I dismissed class amongst a small fit of coughing. I got some water. I'm all better now. But people look forward to coming back here. I'm here sometimes when it's really quiet and empty and it's like the rooms expect to hear from people, they expect academia to be happening here. And then in the mornings and afternoons the halls have students in them, and we're chatting about research and classes, and faculty are busily working and it's like that's just the way it's supposed to be. Maybe I've romanticized the Davie Hall experience a bit. I know I have. But I really appreciate what I've got here. And I'm pretty sure that this semester is going to be good.
It's playoff time again. I always have mixed feelings about playoff time. I'm caught between "It's just a game" and being married to a man whose very feelings of joy are totally connected with 53 men in black and gold and the fact that I really truly am quite a Steelers fan and I want them to play well. But to me, a Super Bowl ring for the black and gold means about as much as, well about as much as ... knowing who won a high school swim meet back in my home town of Wichita, KS. In fact, 3 years ago, knowing who won that high school swim meet was significantly more important. In my new found football fandom, which is really quite genuine (I can name you the starting line-up for the Steelers on both sides of the ball and about 95% of the backups, plus special teams, both names and probably numbers if you'd like), I still have a hard time mustering up the enthusiasm it takes to be a "true" sports fan. After all, part of me wants Jerome Bettis to make the Super Bowl in Detroit, but most of me figures hey ... he makes close to 100 times more money than I do and no doubt he is chock full of talent, spirit, and is just an all around good guy, but if he doesn't make Super Bowl XL, life goes on. My life does not change in the least based on whether the Steelers win or lose in the playoffs and really with all the hype surrounding everything to be totally honest ... I'm getting a little bored with it all. However, if I ever said that out loud, it'd be off with me head, and "Here-we-go-Steelers-here-we-go." Plus, I'm one of those people on whom excess enthusiasm is simply wasted. More than that, it bugs the daylights out of me. But I understand that to most of the football fan world that all yesterday, all last night, all this morning it was football, football, football. I love football, too, but at some point you have to figure that you can only watch the commentary, analysis, and game footage so many times. You can only say so much about one game before it's all said. Besides, I must have seen Von Oelhoffen slam into Palmer's knee about 30 different times from at least 3 different angles over and over and over again. He tore his ACL ... we hope he'll be back for training camp. It sucks, but it was a fair, even unintentional, hit. We get it. But before 9:30 this morning, yesterday's playoff game against the Bengals was converted and stored onto our video iPod for JJ to take to work with him today. To be watched or listened to in the background while working is what I'm going to assume it was for. I don't doubt that there are people all across the U.S. who hold out for this kind of playoff season. I don't doubt that there are people whose very happiness hangs on who goes to Super Bowl XL and who doesn't. There are the hopeful Patriots fans who are hoping that their boys can prove once and for all that they're the best team ever in the NFL. No team has ever won the Super Bowl three times consecutively. There's the Seahawks, who have the number 1 rusher in the NFL. Can Shaun Alexander and his offensive line carry Seattle to Detroit? And of course the once-invincible-now-a-question-mark-but-not-really Colts with the magic of Peyton Manning's arm, Marvin Harrison's hands, and Edgerrin James' feet. Can Tony Dungy, one of the "good guys" of NFL coaching lead the Colts to a championship? The Steelers sneak into the bottom of the ranks here, but they're one of the most consistent good teams in the NFL. With Big Ben Roethlisberger about as healthy as he's been all year, "Fast" Willie Parker developing into a solid NFL back, safety Troy "My hair is bigger than your hair" Polumalu pulling tricks out of his hat and offensive coordinator Ken "I'm a stud because the flea flicker play I called worked" Wisenhunt's seemingly ingenious calls I guess we can't really even count the Steelers out. 2 more weeks of playoff games, a week of rest, and then Super Bowl XL. Of course, once that's over then we're talking the combine, the NFL draft (otherwise known as "Who gets Reggie Bush/Matt Leinart/Vince Young?"), training camp and then we're back at the preseason. Where is that fat lady already? **edit** I'm not actually this sour about football. I was in a terrible mood when I wrote this. For real. Go Steelers!
Tonight we're going out to dinner at a much more expensive place than we would normally. Because on Monday JJ and I will have been married for 6 months. I'm not a big anniversary-celebrator for stuff like being married 6 months. A year, sure. But this is the one time I'm giving in and saying yes, let's celebrate being married 6 months because, well, it's just silly to celebrate being married for say 1 1/2 years or 2 1/2 years but this is the first time we can say "Hurrah, we made it six months ... and we still like each other a lot!"
Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to launch into the thrills of married life, nor am I about to say that the last 6 months of my life have been incomparable to any other. Nor am I about to claim that after 6 months of marriage that I know it all about the covenant of marriage and what works and what doesn't work. What I will say is that there are times when my husband smells, he's hairy (you have no idea how hairy - sometimes it's like hugging a monkey), he snores (which wakes me up), follows me around like a lost puppy on certain occasions, and annoys the daylights out of me. And I love him ... not in spite of all these things, but maybe because of them. I, too, have nasty habits like leaving glasses out on the table after I'm done with them, changing my clothes twice a day ... and leaving the discharged ones on the floor, emptying the refrigerator on a weekly basis (and therefore throwing things out that he still wants to eat), doing laundry but not taking it out of the dryer (I'll wear wrinkly clothes - but he won't, so that means more ironing for him), and yet he still seems to be happy to wake up next to me in the morning.
We have a strange dynamic. I heard once, I believe that Pastor Benji preached on it a couple of years ago, that women have 50,000 words a day that they need to get out of their mouths and they can only get about 25K out during the work day so their spouses are stuck with the remaining half when they get home. Men, are just the opposite, so by the time they get home, they're about talked out. Well, we're just the opposite of THAT. JJ LOVES to talk. Talk talk talk, that one. And he talks all day! He does interviews and writes stories and gets quotes. He talks on the phone more or less all day long. And when he comes home, he wants to talk some more! Sometimes I'll talk, sometimes I won't. And when I don't the conversation usually ends with JJ going, "Honey, you want me to just stop talking?" and me nodding vigorously. And he needs to know that I'm not mad at him. And he needs his hugs and kisses. Both much more often than I do. As Jamie put it so eloquently in a toast at our rehearsal dinner, "JJ was the best male girlfriend EVER!" 'Tis true. I am married to some kind of male/female stereotype hybrid. I'm not sure what to make of that yet.
Then, of course, there's the whole learning-to-live-together situation. I will say, though, to my husband's benefit, that in 6 months he has only left the toilet seat up once. Just once! And he graciously does most of the cleaning. I cook. So in other words, I make messes - and JJ cleans them up. That's okay with me! We're getting better at sharing. I'm getting better at entertaining myself, and he's getting better at not needing days of alone time at a time.
Anyway, it's been 6 months. And loving my husband ain't no small thing. But I don't mind one bit.
I've been thinking that it's been awhile since I've been back to Wichita. Not "awhile" per se ... we were there in August for a wedding reception but that was such a whirlwind trip, and such an awkward time where people weren't there, and so busy that I wouldn't have had time to see people if I wanted to anyway. Plus, it seems like every time I go back now it's a battle to make sure that everyone who wants to see me sees me and that everyone I want to see gets seen. But there was always a certain amount of ... certainty that came with visits back to Wichita in the typical holiday season - Thanksgiving, Christmas, you know the kind. After the majority of us went off to college there were certain things that happened when we came home to visit: a night at Danny's house with bad food and a movie and video games, a lunch at Fazoli's with Danny, Charlie, Amanda and whoever else we could scrape up during which we would laugh and laugh and laugh, a night on TL's green couch, often with a movie, sometimes with the dog, and depending on how long the visit was for everyone, often other activities like Taboo, or sometimes we'd get together and go bowling, or just sit around. It's not that I don't have sitting around time here, or that I don't have good friends here. I do. But we don't have traditions and "when we come home" things and places we always go and so on. It seems like no matter how ambitious you are, no matter how much you've wanted to get out of the hometown you grew up in to take on the world, no matter how long you've been gone or how many new people you've met, that first group of true friends that you had ... that's what seems like home. I don't miss Wichita-the-town. But I do miss Wichita-the-people. Who from Wichita wants to go to Fazoli's with me?
I don't do New Year's Resolutions anymore. 3 years ago I made a resolution to swim well in UAAs. My shoulder busted - out of my control, couldn't do it. 2 years ago I made the resolution to run in a marathon. I had issues with shin splints and passing out and all sorts of other things. Out of my control. Again. So last year I made no resolutions. This year I, too, will make no resolutions. Last night, for New Year's Eve, we went to Dan's for our annual "party with Dan and Fogle" party. We had been invited to Steve and Sabrina's for their annual murder mystery party (at which, apparently, Curtis was falsely accused of murder and incorrectly arrested for arson) but since they own Belle and Cooper, and because of Belle and Cooper I always have that teeny tiny chance of anaphylaxis so we opted not to. At Dan's we played DDR. That's "Dance Dance Revolution" for those who might not know. It's so much fun. Fun fun fun fun. I still stink at it but it's still a lot of fun. At midnight we ran in the new year, and then promptly left because we were running the service this morning. I'm not the biggest fan of huge parties that involve binge or overindulgent drinking, I don't consider eating 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight good luck, or eating black eyed peas, but with today being New Year's it does make me think about what this past year was like and what next year will be like. My friend Heidi once told me and JJ that the Holy Spirit has a forward momentum, that God never wishes for us to go backward or to stand still. In light of the coming of the new year that made me think: have I followed the Holy Spirit's momentum and moved forward? My first reaction is I don't know. But upon closer examination I find that maybe I have. Maybe not as much as God might have hoped, and definitely not every time I was prodded, but at least a little bit. So I guess I'm satistified. After all, to me, that's really, in the end, what counts. It's not whether I kept my resolutions, it's not whether I accomplished any academic, fitness, or social goals, or whether I did what people expected me to do. In the end, if I can look back over 2005 and say that I followed God's movement, then I am satisfied. But that does not make me complacent. I hope next year, instead of balking at certain godly directions, instead of hesitating, that I will learn to trust God first, and fear later. I'm not making any resolutions, but that's my growth hope for 2006. May your year be abundantly blessed.
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