Fangirl, Part 2

First of all, I was at the Bulls game yesterday.  I didn't see Derrick Rose fall - it wasn't until the guy sitting next to me started going "Oh no, oh no..." that I noticed there were only four Bulls standing and looked at each one and realized none of them was D-Rose and then saw he was lying on the floor.  Yes, I think the ACL tear that has ended his season is bad for the team's chances in the post-season, but that's not why I was one of the many people at the United Center who left that game feeling like it was the saddest, most awful victory a team could win.  It just was so painful to see Derrick injured again after all the other injuries this season, and so badly this time, with his near future, at least, such a question mark now.

A picture from before it happened:

(Luol Deng, Derrick Rose, Tom Thibodeau, Joakim Noah, Richard Hamilton)

Second from the right of the photo, behind the word "HOME": Bulls color commentator Stacey King, with Neil Funk, the play-by-play guy, to the right of him.  This is him today:

And me!  Talk about fangirly: I drove about 60 miles each way today to go meet Stacey, and when I walked up to the table, he looked at me and said "Karen, right?"  That took care of the remaining social anxiety that was making me nervous on the entire drive over.  I've been giddy ever since. (I follow him on Twitter and occasionally he'll respond to something I've tweeted to him, and he recognized me from that.)  He was very nice, asked questions about things I'd tweeted, talked about the game, asking if I'd been there - and it turned out I didn't have to wear the heels I wore after all, since he wasn't standing up: I thought heels might help if the photo had been taken with him standing, since he's almost a foot and a half taller than I am.  I was so excited (yes, I am 14 years old) that he knew who I was that I forgot to get his autograph and had to circle back around to the end of the line of people waiting to meet him to ask for it.

Other news: I was back in New York last week, looking at some apartments (nothing that worked), and going to my first show since Jerry died, the formerly off- and now on-Broadway adaptation of the movie Once.  I love the movie, and the show is very good too, more broad and less subtle but still nicely done.  Back here since Wednesday, and nothing has gotten done on the house since then: tomorrow I'll get back to it.  Painters were here while I was gone and did a nice job on de-molding the basement and touching up other things.  I'm feeling a bit more stressed about things now that I'm a bit farther along in the process. Natural, I guess.

But still grinning about today's latest fangirl episode.