PSoTD

February 6th is my birthday. This birthday is a little different from my past ones - it's my first one without either of my parents alive to call me and wish me a happy day, and to relive the day of my birth a bit from their perspective.

To be honest, I hadn't really been thinking about that, which is different from past years. For the past near 30 years, my Dad has made it a point to call me around my birthday, and the first words he would speak after I answered the phone would be along the lines of...

"It was a cold and snowy night, and I had just gotten home with a pizza..."

and I would hear the tale about how Mom went into labor and they went to the hospital and he didn't get any of that warm pizza he had been looking forward to devouring. Of course, in the days well before microwave ovens, he most likely devoured it cold the next day, but that part rarely, if ever, was told, and I couldn't tell you for sure what happened next to the pizza.

My Dad's wife sent me a card that I received yesterday, and inside was a handwritten note. It said:

"It was a cold and snowy night, and I had just gotten home with a pizza..."

and it made me both smile and feel a little sad, simultaneously. But it was still good to think about.

I support affordable shoes.

Charles Brown of Engineering and Science agreed. Brown, a father and longtime boys' basketball coach, has seen sneakers evolve.

"I remember when basketball shoes were $9.99," Brown said. "Now kids are willing to do anything, including the wrong things, to get these expensive shoes."

Some shoes on the market these days cost $200 or more.

It is a shame for those who like to play basketball. There is a big difference in the grip, comfort and weight of basketball shoes that correlate to price, although I find it questionable whether it really needs to... we bought a pair of basketball hightops for our daughter before the basketball season began for about $30, and the damn things always slipped on the hardwood. THEY NEVER GRIPPED. It doesn't make any sense to me, because the shoe and sole pattern are definitely manufactured for basketball, but I figure it is the formulation of the rubber, and that the rubber was too hard and didn't let her weight create slight suction with the shoes on the floor. I washed the shoes to remove dust, I even took 60 coarse sandpaper with the hope of making the surface more grippy, but nothing really worked. They were what they were - slidey basketball shoes. I will not buy that brand again.

We bought new basketball shoes at a store yesterday, at a store that provides a hardwood surface so you can test the grip. Much better at the store. She has practice most of the days this week, and we'll see how they do. They cost more. They weren't anything close to 200 bucks, but still, this is primarily for basketball, so anything more than $40 seems a bit much. I'm hoping they will get us through next season before she outgrows them, she does have a bit of room to grow further into them. But I hope Stephon Marbury's experiment linked above provides quality at a low price, and eventually will bring down the Nike and Reebok prices out there.