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Break time is comin’

I’m starting to feel a sense of urgency about getting some time off and seeing my friends and family back home. I’ve been here about 9 weeks and, while I’m pretty comfortable and feel very settled in, I’m ready to see my people back east. I’ve been spending some very quality time with my buddies here, but I’ve also got a lot of free time and I have to work hard to fend of laziness. With laziness comes a lot of down-time and a lot of time to think about “home”. Most times, I’m ok with that, but sometimes, I begin to long for the relationships I left there.

That’s why I’m so looking forward to spending a week in Florida in April. It’ll give me some time to chill and see the people that I’ve only been able to talk to on the phone (and not very frequently). Vacation seems to have a wholly different purpose now that I’m working full-time and living 1000 miles from Florida.

Sailing through Narnia

I’ve read a few chapters of Voyage of the Dawn Treader and it’s another good book. It seems strange to me that I’m reading children’s books and enjoying them so much, but I figure if I am enjoying them, then why not keep reading them? Also, reading shorter, easier books is a good way to boost my “books read to date” numbers: there are seven books in The Chronicles of Narnia.

I’m hoping to finish the series before I go for my vacation in April, but that may not be realistic. It can definitely be done, but I’d have to go on some reading binges between now and then. Normally, a reading binge wouldn’t be totally out of the question, but since I’ll probably spend the next two weekends doing nothing aside from watching basketball, I doubt I’ll have time for any binging.

I’m off to watch Letterman and then it’s time for my beauty sleep.

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Bracket busted badly

Well, thanks to a 2nd round upset of UK by UAB, my bracket is toast. I guess, in a way, that’s what the tournament is all about. Ultimately, it comes down to matchups and it’s not necessarily true that the “best” team wins the Tournament. Rather, it’s the team that does the best in its particular string of matchups.

But, that’s why they play they games, as they say.

Relaxing weekend

I had a great weekend of watching basketball and relaxing, but now it’s time to start winding things down, so I can be ready for work tomorrow. After last week and a few marathon meetings, this week should seem like cake. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m not dreading it nearly as much as I did last week.

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Slippin’

Well, of eight games today, I essentially lost six. I still have all my Final Four teams and most of my Elite (or “Great”) Eight teams, but it ain’t lookin’ good. Unfortunately, others who’ve picked Kentucky to go all the way have very similar brackets to mine and haven’t gotten burned like I did in the second round today. There’s still an outside chance I could win it, but it’s a slim one.

Watchin’ the game with the guys

I spent several hours today watchin’ the Tourney games with my buddies and I have to say it was a blast. For one, it’s just fun sittin’ around with a couple guys, screamin’ at the TV and crackin’ jokes at the commentators. For another thing, Tourney time reminds of being at school every March, when things get kinda’ crazy in Gainesville. Usually, around this time, we’ve all just gotten back from Spring Break and, although most people think they can avoid it, we refuse to do work and our performance in our courses begins to slip. Then, just as we’re getting determined to pick it back up in school, March Madness rolls around and we’re sunk. A full month of Conference Tournaments and then the National Tournament distracts us from from school and forces us to spend hours and hours of our time in front of the television, rooting for thirty-something teams, many of which we’ve never heard.

Ah, the Madness. Just thinking about the fun my friends are having in Gainesville right now makes me miss it… and it makes me glad I’m going home for a week at the end of April.

What a poorly written, but emotionally motivated post. I really gotta’ work on that.

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Middle of the road

Well, after the first round of the Tourney, I’m right at the middle of the pack in two of three pools in which I’m participating. I’ll know about the third tomorrow. Middle of the pack is ok with me. Two years ago, when I won it, I was in about the same situation after the first round, so I feel it’s possible I can repeat this year. I’ve only lost one Sweet 16 team–Florida–so that puts me in good position for the rest of the tourney if the second round goes well. From here on out, I’ve pretty much picked favorites, so I guess I’m just hoping for as few upsets as possible. One exception is that I’m hoping to see Manhattan make it to the Elite Eight. If they pull that off, then I’m no worse for picking Florida to go so far.

Playin’ ball in the morning

I haven’t played basketball in a couple weeks, so I’m pretty anxious to get back out there. Last time I played, I had a miserable day, so I can only hope to improve tomorrow. By “improve”, I mean “score at least one point”, although I’m sure I won’t be satisfied with just a point. We’ll see.

Time to play catch up

And now it’s time for me to try to make up for some of the sleep I missed this week.

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Up and down Florida basketball season ends way down

What a horrible showing today. What a disappointment. “There’s always next year.”

Mediocre brackets

I picked a pretty conservative bracket, but I’m still getting burned by the few upsets I picked. I think the good news is that I only picked those upsets to win one game and then lose the next round, so they’ll each only cost me a point. Hopefully, I can make up ground with my Final Four predictions and the few upsets I do get.

Wired outta’ my mind

I tried to take a nap after work today and couldn’t fall asleep. I said yesterday that I was sure my lack of sleep would catch up with me tomorrow, and I think that’s inevitable now. I guess it could hit me tomorrow night, but I’m expecting to feel totally exhausted all day at work tomorrow. This is gonna’ be a rough Friday.

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Bummed about basketball

Apparently, because CBS does regional coverage of the NCAA Tournament, I won’t be able to see the Florida game tomorrow because they’ll be showing the Texas Tech game instead. So, I guess I’m going to proceed as though they are showing the Florida game–keep my cell off, stay away from IM, avoid e-mail and keep out of earshot of any potential basketball conversations at work–and TiVo it, so I can watch it when I get home. Of course, by “it”, I mean “any little segments or tidbits they might show during the Texas Tech game.” If I remember correctly, CBS tends to sort of bounce around and show bits from games in other regions all day. Hopefully, they’ll show some of the Florida game. Also, I’m thinking that if the game is close down the stretch or goes into OT, CBS might show it. I’ve made my picks and I’ll try and post my bracket once they’re “public.”

Sleepometer runnin’ low

I only got 6 hours of sleep last night, I’ll be lucky to get 6 tonight, I slept horribly on Sunday night and Monday night was only a moderate night’s sleep. So far, I’ve been feelin’ great, had plenty of energy and haven’t felt like I needed a mandatory naptime. But, I’m afraid my lack of sleep is going to catch up with me before the weekend is here. I spent all day today (almost 10 hours) in a meeting and I’ll be in the same meeting tomorrow, although “they” say it’ll only run about 6 hours. I just hope they’re right, ’cause if they’re not, they might have to adjust their voices to compensate for my super loud snoring.

Tunin’ up the workouts

I took last week off from the gym and came back this week with a whole different philosophy. For the past several months (years?), I’ve been training primarily to build some strength and secondarily to build some tone. Mostly, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting pushed around when I played basketball. Last week, I realized it’s been a really long time since I’ve worked out really hard and pushed myself to do a lot of reps and a lot of exercises in short time. So, I decided I’d go back to a workout similar to what I was doing in high school, but only three days a week instead of five. I’m hopin’ to “lean up” a bit and maybe get some of my speed back on the basketball court while maintaining a reasonable amount of strength. I’m also trying to eat better by eating lots of veggies and focusing on not consuming ridiculous quantities of unhealthy food. We’ll see how that goes…

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Fun out west

Turns out my friends live about 65 miles away, so the drive out and back was a beast. But, I had a great time and got dinner with them and the trip was well worth it. It’s always great to see faces from home, or the other side of Texas, that are familiar.

Bracket almost done

I’ve been working on my bracket since Sunday when the Selections Committee made their choices for the 65 teams competing in this year’s Tourney. It’s always stressful because it’s difficult to know the difference between a bracket that is simply “all favorites” and one that is “the right blend of favorites and upsets”. Someone should figure out a mathematical way to determine how many favorites and how many upsets should be picked. Maybe a points system could be devised so that the differences in seeding are taken into account (to compensate for the difference in likelihood of a 16 upsetting a 1 versus a 9 upsetting an 8 ). So, it would be something like: You get a total of 14 points in upsets. A 9 upsetting an 8 is worth a half point, a 10 upsetting a 7 is worth a full point, an 11 upsetting a 6 is worth 2 points, a 12 upsetting a 5 is worth 4 points, etc. (Of course this method would really need to be based on statistics, so these number have absolutely no meaning.) Then you pick your bracket, count the upset points and see if your bracket is balanced. Of course, this would only get one through the first round, but then, that’s the toughest round to pick. I’m sure a similar method could be used for picking subsequent rounds, but I don’t feel like thinking about this anymore.

I’m pretty happy with my bracket and I also realize that a lot of it comes down to dumb luck and freak occurrences, so I ain’t losin’ any sleep over it.

Finishing Prince Caspian

I’m about to finish the fourth book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, so I’m out. That’s all I have to say about that.

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Bad night’s sleep

I slept pretty badly last night, so I’m hopin’ for a better night tonight. I think the culprit may have been a combination of things, not the least of which was all the light coming in my windows. My bedroom is the best lit room in the apartment and I hate it. I like my bedroom to be as dark as possible because dark means more sleepy time. I think this weekend I might have to go buy some curtains… or at least something to put over the windows (I’m hoping for something other than garbage bags or tin foil).

Off to Ft. Worth

I live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth “metro” area, but that title is really pretty deceiving. Tomorrow after work, I’m driving over to Ft. Worth to see a friend who’s in town, but I doubt that drive will feel as though I’m in a “metro” area. It’ll probably be about an hour and a half with lots of traffic and plenty of tolls. I’m not looking forward to the drive, but I am looking forward to hanging out with my friends.

March Madness is here

This post is actually a few days late, but I kept forgetting about the Madness until now. I’ve almost got my bracket finalized and then I’ll be entering at least two pools (both for small stakes: one for 5 bucks, one for 2 buck, winner take all). I won it two years ago and got demolished last year. That’s probably because I feel it’s necessary to take risks to win the pool, and last year’s risks didn’t pay off at all. I’ve tried to educate myself a lot more this year, so hopefully my bracket will look pretty good going into the Sweet 16 (if my teams are good into the round of 16, I feel confident I’ll pick pretty well from there on out).

I guess anyone could say that, though…

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Designing away

I think I’m about ready to start designing JoshDoody.com. I was going to wait on a friend of mine to help me out, but it sounds like he’s too busy and he may not be getting around to my site for a while. I’m very comfortable with design in general, but I’ve never been too good with aesthetics and such. So, lately, I’ve been reading a lot about different design techniques and I feel I’ve learned enough to design a decent site. I guess I’ll know in a bit.

Lazy Saturday

I played basketball this morning, but I only got two games in. That was frustrating, but what was more frustrating was that I didn’t score any points in either game and I was 0-2. I usually expect to play poorly my first game–I’ve always needed a “warm up” game to get going–but I didn’t expect to play as badly as I did. Granted, I only took one shot in the second game, but that’s because I got so gun shy after my 0-for-5 performance in my first game. I think we could’ve won either game (I think we lost both games by a score of 12-10), but my team just didn’t seem to gel. In the second game, I was guarding my guy out on the perimeter when all of a sudden, I ran smack into a pick. I guess that would’ve been ok if I’d been warned and just didn’t pay attention, but since my teammates never called the pick for me, I was pretty peeved. What was worse was that the guy guarding the pick-setter wasn’t around to switch when I lost my guy. That was one of many easy buckets courtesy of our poor communication.

Later in the day, I took a nap.

This evening, I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond to pick up a little blanket to keep by my couch. The couch is right under a vent, so when the A/C comes on, I get chilled. While I was there, I realized how much easier it would’ve been to decorate my apartment if I’d gone there to begin with. I mean, Target and Wal-Mart have a decent selection and decent prices, but they’ve got nothin’ on the Triple-B. I saw a few things there I’ll probably end up going back to get: a couple bar-stools at 30 bucks each and a little “telephone table” that I would put by the front door and use as a place to drop all the stuff outta’ my pockets when I come home from work.

I’m going to sleep now.

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The Passion of The Christ

I’ve been excited about this movie since I first heard about last year. I finally got to see it tonight and I have to say I wasn’t disappointed in the least. Granted, I would like to see it again, so I can focus more on the artistic elements of the movie, rather than being overwhelmed by the initial spectacle, but I think it’ll be a while before I’m ready to see it again.

I think it’s a great film because it’s a somewhat tangible example of the fundamental tenet of the Christian faith: a man, born supernaturally, was tortured and murdered in spite of his own innocence so that the rest of mankind could be reconciled to its creator. I think that idea is articulated very well in this film. It’s also great to see a good piece of “high budget” art produced by a Christian and for an explicitly Christian purpose.

I also think it’s great that the movie is making so much money at the box office. Skeptics seem to think its success is reason for them to make claims that those involved–Mel Gibson, namely–will be making a lot of money. I suspect they’ll eventually be sorry for trying to use the film’s financial success as a means by which to criticize it (ie, claiming that Gibson was interested in the monetary benefits of making the film more than the moral implications), since I think it’s inevitable that Gibson will donate most or all of the profits to charity and the Church.

I could be wrong, but I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t. All in all, I’m glad he made the movie and stuck with it and I’m confident that it will serve a great purpose.