Okay, I don't do this often, so apologies but....

I’ve gone into a mild pout because the WNBA season is over and my team didn’t win. “My” team, in this instance, was the Connecticut team – which lost to my other team last year (Seattle) but this year, really, darn it , I hoped they’d win. And they didn’t

So the season is over but just before all that there was an announcement of an expansion team. There will be a WNBA team next year in Chicago and it got me snorting when I heard the exiciting new meaningful name of this team: realy? The Chicago Sky.

This means about as much as Connecticut’s name – the Connecticut Sun. Collectively now, ready? “huh?? It’s a cool looking logo – I got my sister one of their tee shirts right at the start of the franchise but sun is NOT what comes to mind when people think about Connecticut. If you want to talk about summer, mosquitos, yeah, sure. The Connecticut Humidity? Right on.

Over on the Lipstick Chronicles a day or two ago, we were discussing icky mascots (it started with a cute little image of a worm, which I said reminded me of the UC Snata Cruz mascit, the Banana Slug and it went from there (Evergreen State’s Geoducks RULE). I admit to loving the icky slimy mascots from schools that SO clearly don’t’ invest a lot of energy in sports. This led me to reminiscing about MY school, which until about 1968 had been a women’s college. We went co-ed and apparently something about that required that we get a mascot, because we were suddenly playing sports against other schools. Sports other than field hockey. And some day, if you’re really patient (bullsit, if you are really KIND) those of you who haven’t heard about this, will hear me talk about my days a as crew jock. Yes, I rowed and it was the only sport I ever really loved. So we were, shall we say, a tad irreverent and as one of the few sports that was really doing well on campus in the early years, we wanted the Connecticut College Crabs. Hey, it’s New England. They’re colorful. Right? (and those of you who know something about rowing – and why would you – will know about “catching a crab” which trust me, you don’t want to do.)

But no, the administrators wouldn’t. But WHY for the love of all the gods they chose “the Connecticut College Camels” I will NEVER know. And I don’t want to.

So the Chicago Sky. Yeah. That’s sure a feature of Chicago I think rules the imagination. You? Look my local team – Seattle Storm – at least makes vague sense. Of course the BETTER name was the earlier ABL Seattle Reign, because it was punny and more directly Seattle-like. We don’t get a lot of storms. Rain, though…but that league died. And happily, they didn’t go with a “girl” version of the NBA team, the “Supersonics”. Oh, joy. The terrifying images of what we might have done to suck up to the industries of this area – the Seattle Hard Drives, the Seattle monopolies, the Seattle Caffeinators, well Storm’s okay.

But the Chicago Sky? It’s actually a decent logo – more of the skyline than the sky – colors are sky blue and yellow, but sheesh. Of course, what are the options? The Chicago heaters? Kielbasas? Riot police? The Chicago Haymarketers? The Chicago Grafters? The Deep dishes?

An aside for the skating fans among us. It was funny and got funnier. Yesterday, they announced this year’s recipients of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius fellowships”. You know the ones – cool stuff. And one of the winners was a neurobiologist at UC Berkeley named Lu Chen.

Brief aside if you care – Lu Chen is the name of a brilliant Chinese skater, who won medals in world competitions and at the Olympics.

Then Stu turns on the television when he gets home and while channel flipping comes to a story about a Jet Blue airplane that had to make an emergency landing. Stu doesn’t normally watch the revolting Fox news but stopped long enough to note the story and came in to report to me that Fox was getting commentary from their aviation expert, Scott Hamilton.

Good these folks find second careers, don’t you think?