Last night, after the kid is in bed and I've done my daily duties as a man of Texas: wash dishes, sweep, pick up random sock clusters like so many wounded pedestrians, I got to sit down for a Spurs win--which is always a good way to end an evening.

My wife, 8 months pregnant, sat down next to me and wished she could just have a baby by clicking a garage door opener, right there and then. I told her that I don't have any pots of water, or one of those cool masks that hid the pig faces in that Twilight Zone episode, or a turkey baster to get the snot out of the baby's eyes, so she'll have to wait a month. We baste no turkeys.

She watched the game with me.

Normally she tunes in during the playoffs, but due to such an early exit last year I don't really think she caught a game the entire season, so some of these Spurs folks are new to her.

Upon seeing Blair: "I bet he doesn't like to practice." --which is only funny because I'm fat. And I have, like, two fat friends.

Upon seeing Tiago: "Who has such pretty hair as a man? (She's a hair stylist) "The Spurs don't allow people to play with pretty hair." --Then I told her about PTR's long running meme about how Tiago is Edward-esque and how they call him Sparkles. "He is kind of like Edward." And then she said nothing for a long time.

Upon hearing my story about how I got to play pick-up basketball with TJ Ford when I was in college: "That's really neat. I'm going to bed."

And that was it.

I'm so excited about this season for some reason--I have no expectations, maybe?--which allows for me to just relax and see how it all shakes out. I don't remember enjoying two regular season games as much as I have with these last two. Before I'd just be fast forwarding and saying, just get the W so we can have home court advantage, please.

I'm learning to smell the flowers, so they say. And so far they stank pretty well. They stank pretty well indeed.

--Jack Clemens