Ugh

I just received the first of what promises to be many emails asking if I want to join someone’s “brackets”. If you’re one of those people, let me save you some time and let you know not to bother.

I find few things less interesting than the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, aka “March Madness”. I like most sports just fine. All except college basketball, that is. I think it’s because I have the uncanny ability (for a guy, anyway) to watch a game, enjoy it, and when it’s over, LET IT GO. I do not feel compelled in any way to spend the next 24 to 48 hours of my life rehashing every aspect of the game, much less getting emotionally involved in the outcome.

I work with guys (and I’m not kidding) who can tell you who the 7th round draft pick was for the Seattle Supersonics in 1998, where he went to college, and what his major stats are. Name pretty much any team, and at least one of these guys can give you a full-on 6 hour rant worthy of any competent sports radio guy. God forbid that someone has a differing opinion. Anyone Washingtonian reading this will probably understand why I usually take the day off following a Redskins – Cowboys game.

March Madness goes on so long, with so many games, that I just can’t justify devoting that kind of time to it. I suspect that March Madness taints all college basketball for me. I have a life, and I’m not going to spend a significant portion of it caring about how well a college basketball team does.

So when I get that email, this tends to be my response:

Recovery

Sorry it's been a while. I was a tad under the weather this past week. The Kid brought a case of the sniffles into our humble abode. While she was only moderately phased by it, the virus in question grabbed my normally superhuman immune system by the scruff of the neck and kicked it repeatedly in the groin until it lay whimpering on the metaphorical floor.
I didn't help matters by ignoring the symptoms and pushing myself too hard all weekend until it was far too late. By Monday, it was all I could do to get out of bed and onto the sofa.

Having said that, The Kid is making some fairly dramatic and rapid developmental advancements. She can now crawl with ease, and pull herself up into a standing position using tables, chairs, and on one warm day recently, my leg hair. She is even capable of standing un-assisted for several seconds at a time. Less than a week ago, she could do none of these things. She even danced for the first time, along with some music on the TV. We got a short snippet of that on video, which I hope to post soon.

The creator of Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax, died the other day, and the 14 year-old nerd part of me is saddened by that. It reminded me of that terrific Tom Hanks made for TV movie Mazes and Monsters. Tom plays a kid who gets way into a game just like D&D, and can no longer separate fantasy from reality. I think he even ends up stabbing a friend because he thinks that the friend is a goblin or something. Apparently that was a concern at the time. Would that our modern child-rearing concerns were as mundane...