Lehigh As A Kite

Good morning everyone.  Spring Break is officially over and life is back to normal in San Marcos, America.  Well, I assume it is - it's still not 9:00 a.m. and I haven't been out of the apartment, but the students are supposed to be back in town...  Let's start off this ramble discussing the NCAA Tournament.  The bad news is that my bracket has been decimated.  My dark horse pick for the Final Four, the Florida State Seminoles, was eliminated from the tourney last night by Cincinnati.  That was not as shocking as watching a 2nd-seeded Duke team getting tossed out by a 15th-seeded Lehigh squad.  I have to be honest with you here - as bad as this looks for my blog, losing half of my Final Four in the first weekend of play, I know that I'm not the only one.  Couple this with the fact that I have been a North Carolina basketball fan as long as I can remember and that I did not gamble even a penny on this year's tournament, all that I can say is BA HA HA HA HA...  :)  As I commented on my facebook account yesterday, I hope that the video of this year's Lehigh upset of Duke gets as much airplay in the future as the highlights of Christian Laettner's shot to beat Kentucky that we've been shown over and over and over...  On that note, it seems that a lot of folks in the state of Kentucky are unhappy with the UPS commercial featuring Laettner's shot of 20 years ago - DUH!!!  It's ironic that UPS didn't understand that they would get this reaction before airing the commercial, and from what I've been reading, STILL DOESN'T understand the backlash from Wildcat fans...  Okay, since my main bracket is trashed, let's talk about another prediction that I made on the blog here recently that evidently has been washed down the drain.  Peyton Manning to the Arizona Cardinals is evidently not going to happen.  I am much more surprised by this than by my bracket being dismantled.  Great climate, sharp offensive-minded coach, Larry FREAKIN Fitzgerald...  If Manning goes back to the state of Tennessee, where he played his college football and would have Chris Johnson in the backfield, I get that.  If Manning goes to San Francisco with Crabtree, Moss, Manningham, and Gore, I get that too.  I still thought that Arizona would be a great fit for Manning, but what do I know, I'm just a blogger...  :)  I still believe that Denver and that climate would be a horrible fit for a quarterback who has not exactly thrived in bad weather.  Let me take a moment here to give a shoutout to Mario Williams.  This is the man who was the center of great controversy in Houston when he was drafted ahead of Reggie Bush in 2006.  Six years later, and I'm sure that Texans fans are now sick that Williams has left in free agency to the Buffalo Bills, signing a contract that reportedly could be worth up to 100 million dollars, with 50 million of that guaranteed.  I haven't heard of Bush signing any 100 million dollar contracts lately.  If only foresight was 20/20...  I also need to give a shoutout to my friend and co-worker Emily, who visited Las Vegas recently and brought back some souvenir chips for me.  For those of you who don't know me personally, I have previously alluded to the fact that playing with poker chips (three to be precise) is a habit that I have developed since I took up the game of poker, and this habit is far from limited to occurring at just the poker tables.  Although I knew that my friend would come through on her promise of bringing chips back to me, what clinched her shoutout in my blog was Emily's facebook post about "laying under the chairs" at McCarran International Airport while awaiting her return flight home to Texas...  :)  The fact that her good friend and travel companion was ENCOURAGING HER to get married while they were in the desert (the friend said that the marriage could have just been annulled the next day) is just icing on the cake...  I will be back here again on Wednesday, when I will probably have some 'Sweet 16' predictions for you (DON'T forget your pens)...  ;)  Have a great day!