GOP_Tiger

Was at a Christmas party and missed it. But we shot 8 of 33 from deep and still won?

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they had top five valuations on both Fears and Queen, they believed they were trading for a top 5 pick a year in advance


Wait I thought it was fears 5 and queens 6. He saying they was both in top 5. Has anybody seen the exact rumored spot Pels had each?

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I think that your memory is correct that Fears was #5 and Queen #6 on our board on draft night. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't have graded out both of them as worthy of top-5 picks.

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That makes sense and explains why some of the 9-12 teams turned the deal down--they didn't understand the totality of what was being offered.

As a teenager, my daughter enjoyed watching her play soccer and liked her book, Wreck My Life. IIRC, she was pretty messed up after her dad committed suicide due to financial stress caused by and IRS audit.

Mo was really a star soccer player for LSU. The stuff about her trying out for the football team shouldn't define her in the minds of LSU fans.

I took my daughter and niece the first week of March in 2019 (Mardi Gras break from school for us, but late summer for them). Since we only had a week, we just flew into Queenstown and spent our time in the SW part of the South Island.

We hiked up in the Mt. Cook (Aoraki) area to the Mueller Hut, up above the treeline. New Zealand has a number of these mountain huts that you can arrange to stay in. You get shelter and a rudimentary kitchen and an outhouse, and it's fun to talk with other travelers.

Here's one of the views on the way up:




The Kea is the world's only alpine parrot. Keas are often curious about humans and sometimes hang around like this one.




The sunrise the next morning was the most spectacular sunrise I've ever experienced. There's no filter on this pic; it's just the golden light hitting the snow and rocks.




Here's the hut in the same morning light.




We also did the Te Anau glowworm cave, and that was an amazing experience. My understanding is that the glowworms are the same in the several caves in New Zealand where you can see them, but the caves are obviously different, and this tour happens completely by boat.

People can get very different experiences at Milford Sound. We didn't get the postcard view because of the rain, but it was still amazing to see the rain being blown up the cliffs by the wind.




From there, we did the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand's eleven "Great Walks." These are walks along well-maintained trails with huts for the night. The Routeburn Track is normally done as a 2-night or even 3-night trip, but we were only able to reserve the one night at Lake McKenzie, so we did it in a somewhat arduous two days.

The trek begins near Milford Sound, in the temperate rainforest, and that part of the trek is amazing.




Here's Lake McKenzie, where we spent the night.




The lake at Harris Pass, where you cross over the Southern Alps:




The scenery on the way down is great, but more conventional than the rainforest experience on the coastal side of the mountains.



Doing the Routeburn Track in only two days meant that our legs were tired, so we spent our last day doing more leisurely "tourist" things, like visiting the gold rush town of Arrowtown, panning for gold nearby at a now-disused mine, and taking the gondola up in Queenstown to race the gravity-propelled go-carts down the mountain.



For me, driving on the left in New Zealand wasn't nearly as hard as it was in England (wider roads and fewer crazy roundabouts), and it's really the only way to do a trip like ours. Since the Routeburn Track is a one-way hike, we did pay for a service to drive our car from the beginning of the trail to the end of it, which worked well.

Get on a plane to the Azores.

In the SEC, it just means more. Here, if a coach is banging a staff member, he'll crash his motorcycle with her on it and go out in style.

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would also skip San Gimigano due to the hoards of tour buses from Florence. That town felt much more “Disney world” than others.

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I am planning to visit, but we'll get there very, very early, before the tour buses.

I've definitely read a lot of people say that the crowds ruined the experience there.

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Make it further away so chest pass won't reach and a bigger hole so percentage of makes stays the same. Problem solved.

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Makes sense, but the problem is that the chest pass is the only way that girls have a chance to win, so they won't do it.

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Lucca is pretty cool and not that far away if u do the touristy visit to Pisa.

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Not going to make it that far on this trip. We'll go west to San Gimignano and Volterra, but that'll be as far as we go.

I did end up cutting a night in Rome. We now will have three there, then we rent a car and drive Tuscany and Umbria for five, and then we'll have two each in Florence and Venice. I think that this will be a great introduction to Italy for my daughter and son-in-law.

I have my hotels booked now: a night in Orvieto, a night in Perugia, and then three nights in Siena. I'm really only planning to spend one day actually in Siena, and then to base myself there to explore.