The NCAA Basketball Tournament kicks off today. It's one of the biggest sports days of the year, and I, like so many other people, am stuck at my desk at work. This is a travesty of justice. I should be on a couch somewhere, in front of a television (or two).
In honor of the tournament, here's an installment of randomness, March Madness style:
* I seriously thought about stopping at Circuit City on my lunch break and buying one of those little handheld televisions, which I could keep in my desk drawer here at work (next to the cookies). That would enable me to sneak it out from time to time and keep tabs on the games. Ultimately I decided against it, mainly because I couldn't think of a way to explain a power cord trailing into my desk drawer.
* I used to work at the Panasonic plant in my hometown of Troy, Ohio. This would be a good time to have that job again. They manufacture television screens, and they had televisions in every break room, plus a huge one in the lunchroom. These televisions were constantly tuned to CBS, which happens to be the network broadcasting the tourney games. It would be nice just to be able to check in from time to time and see what's happening.
* Since there are no televisions here and I opted not to buy one for myself, and I'm not allowed to have a radio, I have another Internet Explorer window open to ESPN.com's college basketball scoreboard, which I have set to refresh itself every sixty seconds. That way I can click over every few minutes and at least get score updates. Apparently a lot of people are doing this--ESPN.com's servers are running very slow. Our lovely shared dial-up Internet connection doesn't help matters, either.
* As much as I complain about our slow-ass Internet connection, I should note that it's not the fault of anyone here. The powers-that-be want to get a broadband connection, but there aren't any available yet in our area. It sounds like we're ready to make the switch as soon as we can.
* Oooh, this is awesome. I just switched from ESPN.com to CBS Sportsline's scoreboard, and it loaded much faster. Also, the scores are updated automatically, so the page doesn't have to refresh. I like this very much. I'd rather have a TV, or at least a radio, but this is at least a decent alternative.
* My adopted team for the NCAA Tournament is the Western Michigan Broncos, the 11 seed in the Phoenix region. They're carrying the banner for the Mid-American Conference, as the winner of the MAC Tournament and the only conference representative left in the postseason. Conference members Toledo and Kent State both were eliminated in the first round of the NIT. For what it's worth, I was hoping Toledo would lose, and I would not have thrown my lot in with them had they won their way into the NCAAs. Conference unity is all well and good (I was nearly ecstatic when Kent State advanced to the Elite Eight two years ago), but I hate the UT Rockets with all my heart.
* I'm thinking my BGSU season review will be coming early next week. The Falcons' season has been over for a full week as of today, and there aren't too many Falcon fans talking about it anymore. I'm almost ready to toss out my two cents, and then start looking ahead to next year.
Moving on from college basketball....
* I held the door for a State Highway Patrol officer on her way into Subway today. I'm hoping that gives me a little bit of good State Patrol karma at some point in the future when I might find myself in need of some.
* Speaking of the State Patrol...I drove over to Stow yesterday after work to spend the evening with Brandi, and there were a ton of cops on the turnpike. The trip spans 128 turnpike miles, and I saw at least seven cops. That's about six more than I usually see on that particular drive. Apparently they were taking this St. Patrick's Day thing pretty seriously.
* Brandi and I had a low-key evening together. We went out to dinner at a local restaurant called Mike's Place, which we both really like. Other than that, we just hung out together. Our original plans called for us to go out and have a drink or two for St. Patrick's Day, but it didn't happen. We did stop into BW3, intending to eat there and then commence drinking, but it was extremely crowded (a bar in a college town on St. Patrick's Day? Go figure.) so we left to eat elsewhere, and never made it back. Brandi's had a bit of a long week so far, with her car accident and all, and she really didn't feel like going out. That was fine--we had a good time anyway, and we'll probably go out some this weekend.
Tonight I'm looking forward to an evening spent mainly on the couch, in front of televised basketball games. I love this time of year.
No comments:
Post a Comment