I
guess it would be safe to say "time flies when you're having fun", as I reached the half-century mark on April 7th. I surely never thought I'd be this old...er, mature, but it certainly beats the alternative, and I'm looking forward to a new decade of growth, change, and many new adventures. Here I am on the morning of my big day right before work.
After I got home from work (on the bus!), Barry and I went to ONE Restaurant right across the street from our apartment for a delicious meal. Afterwards, he gave me my gifts of scrumptious dark chocolate with toffee bits, a couple six-packs of fancy microbrews, and a bike basket for my beach cruiser bike!
I also received another nice gift -- a new batch of photos of the condo we're building in Belize. Click on over to our Belize blog (link at top right) to check 'em out.
Normally, once the UNC Tarheels (my alma mater) are out of the NCAA Basketball tournament, I root for ABD (Anybody but Duke); however, this year was a little different. On a whim, I submitted a bracket to my company's March Madness bracket challenge. I never expected to end up anywhere but in the middle or back of the pack, as most of my picks were a bit random, a few upsets, a few sentimental favorites, and some more of a flip of the coin. I literally spent no more than 5 minutes on my bracket, pointing and clicking through the online form hurriedly, just another task to complete in my busy workday. However, at some point along the way, I zipped up from tied for 12th place with a huge group of bracketologists, to first place out of 211 entrants! I didn't even realize it; a co-worker had to tell me.
From that point on, I was committed.
I rooted for the Tarheels, yes, but almost as hard, I rooted for my bracket picks. In many cases, this had the ironic effect of forcing me to cheer for teams that weren't underdogs (I almost always root for underdogs on principle). Fortunately, I'd picked Duke to go out pretty early, which they did, so I was not in the unfortunate position of having to root for Carolina's arch rivals and my least favorite team on the planet. I actually thought about this during my five-minute point-and-clicking and picked them to lose early for this very reason; I didn't want to have to pull for the Dookies, even a little.
Between the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games, I was in first place in the challenge and starting to taste sweet paydirt -- even though there was absolutely no money or even a prize on the line in this contest -- only pride. My savior in this bracket race was UConn, a team I have no affection for but had picked to go to the Final Four on some vague hunch. They were the only one of my F4 teams to survive this far, and in a year of many upsets, even having one correct F4 pick was a big deal. In ESPN's official bracket challenge, only two people had all four F4 teams correct out of 5.9 million brackets entered. Two people. This was a strange enough year that someone like me actually had a change of winning a much smaller-scale challenge. Cool!
Then came the Carolina - Kentucky Elite 8 game, which would decide one of the Final Four teams. Unfortunately, I of little faith had not even picked my beloved Tarheels to make it past the Sweet 16, nor had I picked UK, another team UNC fans hate. That meant that no matter which team won, I couldn't score any points and would fall from first place in the challenge. That would matter to me only if I couldn't savor a UNC victory, which was more important, anyway.
Unfortunately, UNC lost and I lost my position at the top of the challenge, a double whammy. A co-worker of mine had picked Kentucky to win it all, so he zipped up to the top of the rankings with their victory. Grumble. He spent the week between the Elite 8 and Final Four in first place, while I lay in waiting, poised for the come-from-behind victory. After all, Carolina had done it a few times in the ACC tournament, hadn't they? Crazier things had happened.
So, going into the Final 4, I needed UConn to win their game against Kentucky (the "Cinderella" game between VCU and Butler didn't matter in my bracket). Then, I needed UConn to fall to the winner of the Cinderella game in the grand finale.
Part One went according to plan. UConn's victory not only avenged UNC's loss to UK, it put me back into the number one slot in the challenge. My co-worker who'd picked Kentucky to win it all was now out of contention, and it was down to me and "BRUINSFAN", who'd picked UConn to win it all. A 50/50 shot. If UConn won, so did BRUINSFAN. If Butler could pull off the victory, I'd be queen of the brackets. Go Bulldogs!
Sadly, we all know what happened last night. Butler shot horrendously, couldn't grab rebounds and basically just had one of the all-time worst games ever played in an NCAA finale. As a result, BRUINSFAN knocked me out of first and took the pride prize home.
Despite my #2 finish, I have to say that it felt pretty good to put in such a good showing against a lot of folks who are much smarter about basketball than me. And it tempered the sting of UNC not making the Final Four. If only they could have had a crack at UConn, things might have been different. Oh well, there's always next year, right? :-)
Our downstairs neighbor Eileen gave us this lovely bouquet to thank us for helping her get started with cycling. Over the past few weeks, we took her shopping for her first bike clothes, took her on a short bike ride, and Barry has installed some equipment on her bike and helped her fix a her first flat tire. It is our pleasure to do these things as we so enjoy sharing this activity that we love so much with new "converts", and she's so enthusiastic and interested that it makes our task easy and fun.
Overnight the daffodils opened up and smelled so sweet this morning! Tulips and daffodils are two of my very favorite flowers, so I am delighted to have this pretty arrangement to enjoy for a few days.
