There is little joy in Lexville...

...the mighty wildcats have struck out.

Well Friday afternoon a talented Marquette team put this injury-plagued season out of its misery. With a preconference schedule that saw historic losses to Gardner-Webb, Houston and San Diego, a team that missed a ton of playing time due to injury including two starters with season-ending ones (a list to come), a remarkable SEC run to fight furiously to eke out an NCAA bid, an SEC tourney with no fans due to a TORNADO for crying out loud, this has got to be the wierdest, wildest most unpredictable premier season for any transitioning coach. My heart goes out to the Cats for a hard fought, never-give-up, never-say-die season. Senior Joe Crawford poured in 35 in his final game in a heroic effort against double and triple teams. He surely showed his true colors, a warrior to the end.

The injuries I remember were:
Ramon Harris, broken nose
Jared Carter, Shoulder
Michael Porter, Concussion, shoulder
Derek Jasper, Micro fracture surgery-knee
Patrick Patterson, Sprained ankle, Broken ankle-season
Jodie Meeks, Groin, Hip flexor strain-season
Ramel Bradley, Concussion
Joe Crawford, Plantar Fascitis (played through)

Oh, and freshman guard Alex Legion left the team because he missed his mom.

Well, even with the Cats out of the tournament early (first round loss, their first since 1987), I'm greatly enjoying the games. Western Kentucky University, my alma mater, is in the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1995; one game had a three-pointer at the buzzer to win in overtime. Louisville is doing well too, and I always root for state schools in the Big Dance.

I took Ellice out a couple of times to assuage the loss of her husband during this time of year, and she really enjoyed it. We seem to have found some balance for dealing with this, my favorite of holidays, the NCAA tournament. Let's see how we handle it next year with a nine-month-old thrown into the mix.

We did an Easter reading on Sunday, and it went well. Ellice may have a picture of it on her blog. Laurana woke up halfway through the production and started kicking mommy. So far she seems to like ballgames and music a lot.

Still no books finished this year, but I'm working on it.

We are reinstituting writing group, but it is just me and the Mrs., as with testing and busy schedules, it is increasingly difficult to schedule anything on a weekly basis.

On other fronts, I'm still working, spring break is coming (not soon enough for my taste), and I'm still plugging away at these classes. I'm doing more work for these two classes then when I had four a year ago. But I'm managing, with Ellice's support.

No movies to review at this time.

Most wonderful time of the year...

It's that time of year...March Madness and boy is it mad. And a lot of UK fans are mad too.

A tornado struck the Georgia dome last night during the third game of the SEC tournament, and they ended up postponing the UK game (game 4 of the day). What's really wild is they had to move the UK-Georgia game to Saturday, changed the venue to Georgia Tech's campus, and are going to refund the tickets for the rest of the tournament. The only people that will be at all the rest of the games are families of players, workers for the games, media, band and cheerleaders. UK has thousands of fans there, and they are going to be uppp-set. Not only that, but the SEC tourney has to be finished by Sunday at 5:30pm because that's when the automatic bids to the NCAA tournament. That means that if UK wins at noon, they have to play again tonight at 8:30pm. I don't know if that's ever been done in college basketball, especially in the modern era. It will be surreal with hardly any fans there.

Some camera shots of the damage from the winds were pretty dramatic. CNN is located elsewhere in downtown Atlanta, and they were covering the whole thing. It was interesting to see the sports announcers turn news reporters, but it looked pretty scary. Live footage of the dome roof swaying and buckling. Creepy.

In other news, we finally got out to Movie Tavern to see a movie and I'll review that one soon. My food review is good, worth the buck. My review of Applebee's on the other hand is that they are no longer worth the trouble. They don't even include bread any more with their steaks--I'm done with them. They are overpriced, lackluster in service and have lowered their food quality.

Still no books read, but I'm working feverishly on my schoolwork. Ellice has like 8 books read already. I'm languishing here. Maybe I'll catch up this summer (yeah, right).

10,000 B.C.

This one was just good fun. Predictable but definitely has that epic feel, grand in scope and feel but not overly long. I didn't have any problems with this movie, though it didn't stand out as one of the greats. **1/2

Short blog

Midterms. Ellice is feeling better. Baby Laurana is tapdancing on her kidneys, kicking all the time. She's finished 7 books already this year--my count is zero.

No movies to review.
Can't talk now, gotta run...