SonicChicken blog

Normally I’m very supportive of the Sacramento County Building Department. Nearly everybody I’ve dealt with has been helpful, professional, and even pleasant. On top of that, the inspector who’s assigned to our job is outstanding. But he must be on vacation or something, because today I had my first less-than-positive interaction with somebody from the building department.

Enough about that. It doesn’t even warrant a post on its own, so here’s the important news. Our gable vents finally arrived, so we can finish the three “showpiece” gables! (The one over the entry and the two in the back yard.) We are going to finish prep work for lath this weekend so that the stucco crew can come in on Monday and get the house wrapped and lathed. They’ll be finished by Tuesday evening or Wednesday some time. While they’re doing that, I’ll be finishing the electrical rough-in. Once both the electrical and lath are done, we’ll call for our rough frame inspection. Insulation will go in the walls the day after frame inspection, (assuming I remember to call them back and confirm!) The day after that, drywall starts. Drywall delivery is scheduled for next Friday morning at 7:00, so the house and garage will need to be completely cleared out by then. If we’re super lucky the drywall will be up, taped and textured by the end of the following week (Nov 2).

Just to make sure this weekend is extra fun, we’re driving to Napa (1.5 hrs) tomorrow for Caitlin’s gymnastics meet (4.5 hrs), after which we will be going down to Oakland (1 hr) my cousin’s housewarming party (who cares how long, it’s a party!), then driving back to Sacramento (1.5 hrs, designated driver presumed). So enough blogging, I’ve got way too much to do!

The second meet of Caitlin's 2006 gymastics season was "School Days" held last Saturday afternoon at Golden Gate Gymnastics in Concord, California.

This was Caitlin's first event at GGG, and I thought they ran a great meet! In spite of the rather small gym, there was plenty of room for spectators and gymnasts. (It may have helped that we were in the final session, since one of the earlier attendees told me that the morning and afternoon sessions had many more gymnasts.) During the late session there were about 10-15 girls per event, so the competition floor wasn't very crowded. I assume that the meet organizers would want to keep the earlier sessions maxed out. Thus the final session can run "light" and finish as quickly as possible, so the meet staff can start cleanup ASAP. Perhaps we should request the final session in the future?

Caitlin medaled in every event this weekend. She took second place on the uneven bars and fifth place on vault, beam and floor; however, between her very good score on bars and her consistent finishes in the other events, she managed to pull third place overall.

Continue reading 'School Days 2006'

Caitlin began her level 5 gymnastic season last Sunday at the 2006 Judges Cup held at Sac State. This was her first meet as a member of Pozsar’s Gymnastics team.

We were up against some stiff competition in our session: Airborne and San Mateo Gymnastics always do very well. I was unfamiliar with Central Coast Gymnastics, the final squad in our session, and they had only one athlete in Caitlin’s age group so I didn’t get to see much of them.

Trudi, Pozsar’s head coach, was a bit worried that our girls would lose points for wearing a sleeveless leotard to a meet, but a new athlete joined our team a few weeks ago and she hasn’t received the team’s competition leotard yet. We didn’t want to exclude our newest team member, so everybody wore their tiger leo’s and we took the deduction for our non-standard uniforms.

Caitlin was still feeling a bit of jetlag after her return from Sweden last week. (I’ll write about the Sweden trip later.) She didn’t rank very well in her session, even though her scores were actually pretty good:

I believe a score of 32.000 is enough to qualify for Zone finals, so I’d say 32.525 isn’t bad at all!

Caitlin and her teammates, getting some last-minute instruction from Trudi. Left to right: Cassie, Alyssa, Caitlin, and coach Trudi.

I think all the girls were a little disappointed with their rankings, but they were up against some really good teams. It’s a bit disheartening to start the season this way, but they seem to be bouncing back and working very hard in practice this last week. I’m looking forward to watching Caitlin and all the rest of Pozsar’s gymnasts throughout the season. We have some great meets to look forward to, but I’ll have to write about the upcoming schedule in a follow-on post. For now, I’ll close with a group picture of the whole team:

Left to right, front row first: Tori, Carly, Megan; Alyssa, Caitlin, Cassie, Marci; coaches Nicole and Trudi.

Caitlin has two more gymnastic competitions this weekend and next. A few of her fans have been asking me for details, and I’ve been embarassing myself by forgetting where, when, etc. I’m posting the information here so I can just tell people to check the blog. I get the “good Dad” points, without needing to remember anything beyond my blog’s URL and my daughter’s name–”Just search the blog for Caitlin!”

The first meet is the 2005 River City Classic, tomorrow (2005-09-10), at Byer’s Gymnastics in south Sacramento. Caitlin’s group starts at about 17:30, and I’m guessing that they will finish by 20:00. (That’d be 5:30-8:00 PM for those who can’t handle 24-hour time.)

The next meet is the Girls’ High-Tech Invitational at Technique Gymnastics on Sept 17-18, 2005. Caitlin is in session 5B, so she’ll be competing on Sunday, 2005-09-18 from about 12:30-17:00 (12:30-5:00 PM).

She also has an “away” meet October 29-30, 2005 in Vallejo at North Bay Athletic Association, but we don’t have details on that yet.

Caitlin’s hand is healed up, unlike her first meet, and hopefully she’ll get over her competition jitters. If nothing else, I think she’ll be more comfortable tomorrow competing in “her” gym.

Good luck, Caitlin! Love, Dad.