Tales from La La Land

So, day 1 of the greatest sports month ever is in the books. I’m tied for second in my bracket pool (Holler, Richmond!), which is awesome, but I’m one of those people who dwells on the games I missed, and gets pissed at Florida when they are losing 4-2 one second into the game. As we all saw yesterday, it doesn’t matter if a team is up 23 (cough, UCLA, cough), with under 5 minutes to play. ANYTHING can happen. It’s tourney time, and in that regard you should never count your team out.

I find it quite interesting that there is a gigantic list of shit that you can not eat, do, touch when you are pregnant, and yet nobody bothered to add March Madness to that list. I am telling you: March Madness is not healthy for pregnant people. ESPECIALLY if you’ve got a dog in the fight. I mean, I was on the edge of my seat watching Butler vs. Old Dominion (when in doubt, pick the team with the cutest coach), and was dealing with mid-level stress because I strive to be perfect in my bracket. Which obviously never happens, but it’s amazing how year after year I curse the day Rick Pitino was born.

Then I suffered through Kentucky vs. Princeton (whew), Penn State vs. Temple (whew), Vandy vs. Richmond (HELL yeah). Yesterday was stress central.

But nothing came close to the UCLA game. I have never been in this situation before. I have never gone through March Madness a) sober or b) with my  husband on the bench of a team participating. I thought I’d be fine either way. If they win, it’s awesome. UCLA gets to continue to be a part of this awesome time of year. If they lose, basketball season is over, and after 7 months of Laef working 7 days a week, and traveling all the time, I am definitely ready for us to spend a few weekend together before the baby comes.

HOWEVER, once the game got going, I wanted them to win. (Disclaimer: I like my bracket to be perfect, and, um, well I have UCLA winning 3 games and not many people do so I could totally get a leg up on the competition). I wasn’t thinking about Laef being gone or feeling sorry for myself, I was thinking that this is the best part of college basketball, and it’s awesome to see Laef be a part of it, and would be even more awesome to see the Bruins make a run.

And for most of the game, there wasn’t a ton of stress involved. UCLA dominated from the start, and was up by as many as 23 points. But, seeing as this is March Madness, nothing can be this easy. In the last 3 minutes of the game, Michigan State was able to pull within ONE POINT. I realize that I’ve been forgetting to breathe, I am not sure if the baby is scared from my yelling, and the cat is absolutely dumb founded at how stupid humans can be.

I was a disaster. UCLA held on for the win, but I realized that it’s one thing to pull for Butler because you have them winning one game, and an entirely different thing to watch a team with a bunch of people that you know.

So today I am going to try and chill the fuck out and honestly hope that I don’t have to worry about Akron or Hampton.

Laef mumbled something to me last night about not watching any more games and calming the fuck down.

Well, I’m not adding March Madness to the list of can’t do. I will just have to practice my Lamaze while watching.

It’s a win-win in my eyes.

UCLA is shut down this week for Spring Break. And, because of furloughs, they actually closed most of the departments in the school. Therefore, I am home drinking lime vodka and soda, sunning my gams and mentoring The Sanch. To be honest, The Sanch is not playing along with my Spring Break bliss. He is normally on a very tight schedule: Up at 6:30 a.m., fed at 6:31 a.m., licking the shower door at 6:43 a.m., perched on the windowsill at 7:10 a.m. to say his good-byes.

Today started with him crying at the bedroom door at 6:30 a.m. I exercised the “let him cry until he falls back asleep method” and he was quiet for a while. Eventually we all fell back asleep, but at 9:20 a.m., The Sanch was starving. I was also scarred by my morning dreams, which included Laef engaging in a private volleyball match and super secret text messages, both of which he told me I couldn’t know about. (When I  told him about my dream, he informed me that there’s a cease and desist order on my reading coverage about Sandra Bullock and Tiger Woods).

Anyway, I woke up relieved to know that my husband is not Jesse James, but that my cat doesn’t appreciate change. I fed The Sanch and he then proceeded to walk around the house meow-ing. Non. Fucking. Stop. It’s like he was messed up by the fact that I was there and couldn’t do his super-secret Tiger Woods shit (lounging on the counter, drinking from the toilet, texting the skank next door). Or, he wasn’t tired enough to nap.

I’m a nerd and so my first order of spring break was spring cleaning. Then I made a fruity drink and sat in the sun. Then I watched a double feature of Swingers and The Proposal.

Basically, I was killing time until March Madness starts up again. I finally revisited my bracket today to figure out where I’m at and if I even have a chance to win. It’s still too hard to tell, but I know this: If West Virginia loses, I am fucked. It would be great if Kentucky lost to Cornell (doubtful) or to West Virgina. Even then, I’m not sure if I’d be in it, but I have WVU in my final so it beating Washington is a must. (Sidenote: Money and pride aside, I would love to see the Huskies win).

So, day 2 of Spring Break will be all about the hoops. I would love to be in Vegas again, but I’d probably lose my ass AGAIN so it’s better to be on my couch high-fiving The Sanch if WVU wins.

For starters, I would like to call bullshit on The Hangover and Swingers. Both of these Vegas-related movies revolve around dudes road-tripping to Vegas. In The Hangover,  said dudes rush back in time for a wedding after spending the weekend in Vegas. In Swingers, the dudes are shown stopping along a desolate highway on their way back to LA.

I am here to let you know that if you drive to Vegas you will not be able to 1) rush back in time for anything and 2) there is nothing desolate about the insane amount of cars jockeying for position on the 2-lane highway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

We drove because we weren’t sure if we’d be able to go this weekend until the last minute and flights were not cheap. We decided to suck it up and drive so that we’d have extra money for gambling. While it is awesome that we can hop in the car and go to Vegas on a whim, I vote for flying if at all possible.

Anyway.

We arrived on Friday around 1 p.m. This gave me time to place a few bets on the Friday evening games. I won’t even get into how stressful it is to watch games when you have money riding on it. Nor will I go into just how hard it is to pick games. It’s one thing to pick your bracket. It’s an entirely different thing to navigate the spread.

I can tell you that I made 4 bets for my brother, one for my mom, 2 for a friend in Eugene and 8 different bets for myself. That’s 15 bets on games. I won on 3 tickets. THREE.

Part of it is my fault in that I went ballsy by only betting parlays, meaning that I placed a bet on 3 different teams and all 3 would have to be right for me to win.

Unfortunately, after the Friday games were over I somehow convinced Laef that we should go to the club. Let’s talk about how NOT fun a Vegas club is for a sober married couple. First of all, there’s no way that it wasn’t some kind of fire hazard. Once we got inside we were unable to move. We managed to get a drink and then stood awkardly on the dance floor wondering why we were there.

We left around 2 a.m. and decided to play blackjack. Because there were only $15 tables, Laef went out quickly. I went up about $60 and decided to put all of my money on one hand.

FAIL. Luckily we left our Saturday money in the room.

Before going to bed though, I made my bets for Saturday’s round of basketball games.

We headed to the pool on Saturday morning. The highlight of the trip was my Saturday parlay of Saint Mary’s, Baylor and Kansas State. While at the pool, I watched Saint Mary’s beat Villanova. My parlay was intact (I can’t tell you how fucking annoying and frustrating it is to have the first game of your parlay fail. At that point your ticket is meaningless and you are left watching the games for…fun? No. Not fun, which means you bet more on the games. Sigh.) Later that afternoon, Baylor won so my parlay was now riding on Kansas State.

K State won, I collected my money and per my brother’s recommendation, we went to the fine establishment Ellis Island. There’s no way to really describe it other than to tell you that it’s one block OFF the strip, it’s connected to a Super 8 Motel and it sells $1 hot dogs.

However, they have $5 blackjack and craps. Laef started at the blackjack table with me, but after losing $40 in about 2 minutes he disappeared. About an hour later I became somewhat worried so I did a quick glance around the casino. I saw him high-fiving a random guy in a Michigan shirt at the craps table. At that point I figured things were going well.

We were both up, and despite several beers each, we made the smart decision to walk away and head back home. Between my parlay victory and the success at Ellis Island, Saturday was a lot better than Friday.

However, on Sunday, I decided to do one last parlay with Cornell and Maryland. Thank you to Cornell for following through. And, a big fat F YOU to Maryland for sending me home on a low note.

But, here’s the thing. The bookmakers had Maryland favored by 1 point. The bookmakers know their shit. So even when Maryland was down by as much as 15 points, I figured they’d have to make some kind of run. With about 6 seconds left in the game, Maryland went ahead by ONE POINT. Michigan State and one last shot, and as we all know, the Spartans made it to win. If Michigan State had missed that last shot, Maryland would have won by 1 point despite trailing the entire game. I thought about it the whole way home. The fact that the bookmakers are so spot on is absolutely baffling to me.

Today is Monday and we are back home. I have been trying to figure out a way to get back to Vegas for the games next weekend.

After Laef and I got married we went to New York City to celebrate our honeymoon.

Shortly after we returned, Laef started working with UCLA basketball and the honeymoon was over. Real life set in real quick. Overall, the season didn’t go that well and the Bruins are not a part of the NCAA tourney this year. As much as I’m happy that Laef is done traveling and basketball season is over, it would have been nice for him to experience the NCAA Tourney with a group of guys that he enjoys working with. The tourney is the goal of any basketball program, so it’s a bummer that they didn’t make it.

For me, the NCAA tournament is a very close second to college football Saturday’s. It’s fun. A lot of fun. And frustrating. Very frustrating. I struggled a lot with my bracket this year. I tried not to read too much or be swayed by all the chatter – Kentucky is too young; Duke has a free pass to the final four; Siena is ripe for an upset over an injured Purdue team; Cornell is the new George Mason.

I have switched my picks several times over the past few days, and it didn’t help when I watched Obama fill out his bracket on ESPN yesterday. Everytime I hear something, it’s different than what I heard someone else say, and I start second-guessing myself. Which is stupid because at the end of the day, it’s all a crap shoot anyway.

However, I had picked Florida State over Gonzaga in the first round because the ‘Zags have broken my heart (and my bracket) one too many times. And then yesterday, Laef and I went to Target and were in the checkout line behind Adam Morrison. !!! What. The. Fuck. It’s a clear sign – along with our brand new issue of Sports Illustrated with Gonzaga on the cover – that I needed rush home and switch that pick IMMEDIATELY.

Yes. This is what happens to me in March. I am a crazy person who freaks out over Villanova’s national defense ranking. It’s exhausting.

And so much fun.

We’re heading to Vegas tomorrow. We are staying at New York New York to try and relive our honeymoon. There will be relaxing pool time, but there will also be things like “parlays” (I totally just learned that word) and “betting the moneyline” (I totally just learned that term) and drinks before noon.

Today should be holiday.

I must be growing up. The old me would have typed “Fuckin’” in the title of this post. Now I will just write it in the first sentence.

It’s that time of year again where something like $1.8 billion will be lost in the work force because people will spend hours filling out brackets, watching games online and pacing for the world’s longest 2.2 seconds of the dreaded 12-seed vs. 5-seed first round matchup instead of filing their bosses reimbursement. (Not that I know anything about that).

Sort of.

As usual, I will do my friend Derek’s pool, which I actually did well enough in last year to win some money. I think that might have been the first time I ever won anything on a bracket. I don’t usually care all that much if I’m winning money or not, but I will admit that it was quite a bit more fun when I was in the running.

It was also a lot more stressful.

This year, Laef and I are going to Vegas for the first round. I would say that betting money on the games is going to be stressful, but let’s not kid ourselves: The maximum bet Laef will allow me to place will be $10. He is not allowed to gamble on sports whatsoever, and if you’re wondering why, you can read all about Rick Neuheisel here. So, I will spend our money gambling and drinking while Laef watches Siena versus Purdue just for the fun of it.

I never feel educated about picking my bracket for the tourney, but this year I feel even more skeptical. I tried my hardest to follow college hoops because of Laef’s new gig at UCLA, but I didn’t see much outside of the Pac-10. Which might be why I was not loving college basketball this season. It wasn’t the greatest year for Pac-10 ball, but at least there are two teams in.

Other than that, I usually base my choices on random things or hunches, but I don’t really have any hunches this year. I picked Ohio State to go pretty far because I love this blog, written by one of the teams walk-ons. Funny guy. Funny blog. So, I picked them. Awesome strategy, if you ask me. (Talk to me in a week and we’ll see how it worked out).

I’ll try not to bore everyone with my tales of bliss and misery regarding the tourney, but there might be some cursing on the blog over the next month.

I am not sure if any of you can understand some of the problems that can arise when your name is Laef.

Aside from the most common problem – people calling him something that falls from a tree- there are others.

There is the “Oh, is your boyfriend Scandinavian?” The answer to this is no.

Or the ever popular “Like Leif Erickson?” The answer to this is yes.

But, mostly, it is the five minutes spent everytime Laef introduces himself to people. Or when he places an order at Pinkberry or a pizza place. Pinkberry is the best because they type your name into the register and put the printed receipt on your yogurt cup.

So, we get to actually see what goes through the cashier’s mind. We have seen everything from Lace to Lale.

Last night we went over to our friend Raman’s house to watch the NCAA Championship game. (Sidenote: Mommy finished 4th out of 76 people and won $146).

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that Raman (yes, everyone, the joke Raman Noodles has been used) encounters name issues as well.

We decided to order some Thai food and when they asked for the name, Raman said, “Robert.”

Me: “Did you just say your name was Robert?”
Raman: “It has changed my life.”

Seriously.

Life. Changing.

He did not have to repeat his name 12 times. It was quick and dirty.

Laef and I exchange glances.

He says, “I’m using Blake.”

Another week bites the dust.

Why do I feel like as I’ve gotten older the weeks seem to fly away in furious fashion? I swear to gosh I was just enjoying my winter break. I have no idea what happened to January and February.

I may or may not have mentioned that we’re in the midst of March Madness. I think I twittered (or is it tweeted?) 97 updates about the tourney. I finished yesterday picking 15 of the 16 games correct. I am happy, but the first round doesn’t really mean shit. And, the last time I bragged about my standings in a sports-related league, my team quickly shit the bed.

Which means I am fully prepared to go 2-for-14 today.

A few people (Kel) have mentioned that they have no interest in the tourney or college basketball. I agree to an extent. I watched exactly one college basketball game this year and it was complete poop. Granted, it was the Ducks (worst Pac-10 team this year) vs. Washington (best Pac-10 team this year) so there wasn’t anything exciting to see.

I am not a basketball fan. Hate the NBA. Don’t love college hoops the way I love college football.

But, it’s the tourney people!

Even the President has a bracket.

You can know jack shit about all 64 teams and STILL care about Western Kentucky, VCU and Butler. Last night, I watched as UCLA nearly lost to VCU. I was sweating that shit out big time. I picked UCLA because 1)I work here and 2)I really didn’t think they’d lose in the first round. But a lot of the experts picked VCU.

The Bruins clung on to a one-point victory in a game that came down to the last second. As I was celebrating and dancing around, the Western Kentucky vs. Illinois game came on. I hadn’t been too concerned with this game because WKU led by as many as 14 at one point. But, suddenly in the last few seconds of the game, Illinois had a chance to win it. Again. Sweating. It. Out. WKU hung on to win it.

These games that come down to the wire are what it’s all about.

Especially when there’s money on the line.

Well, it’s my favorite time of year.

March Madness.

Bring on the crazy.

Um. Last year I had Pitt vs. Clemson in the final. So, I was basically pissed off and out of any sort of money very early. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking.

This year, I am playing it a lot more conservative. There are no 12 seeds in my final this year. The problem with having all No. 1 seeds in the final four is that a lot of people take that approach, so winning money is equally as hard.

I picked a few upsets along the way, but don’t have any of them advancing very far.

Somehow I ended up with Louisville vs. Carolina in the final. It’s risky. Last year was the first time that all four No. 1 seeds actually reached the Final Four. History shows that one (or more) of them will stumble along the way, but I’m not smart enough to determine which one it will be or against who.

So this shit will be consuming me for the next few weeks. And, I am sorry to tell my nephew Brady that I will be watching games during his 1st birthday party this weekend. Sorry, bud. But you might as well get used to being neglected for sports because I’m pretty sure your daddy is a fiend for Sportscenter.

Speaking of neglect. I have been seriously neglecting this blog, my Twitter account and my IM.

But I totally thought of all my internet peeps yesterday when I was behind the following mini-van:

I really wanted to call ya’ll up and talk about this. Then I thought, damn, this might be Lamb is six years. I could totally see her birthing 8 babies at home. And putting them all in matching cloth diapers.

My question regarding the smorgasbord of stickers on this van. Actually, scratch that. I had several questions. But there was one that was burning eternal until I got home.

Did she birth the family bunny at home as well?

OK, so Pitt losing yesterday wasn’t the end of the world. Well, it sort of was. In Rob’s pool, I have Pitt beating Clemson (have I mentioned that yet?) in the final. I’m pretty sure there’s no way for me to win any money in that pool unless UCLA or UNC loses soon. It seems like those are the most popular final picks. In that pool, I’ve got six elite eight teams remaining and two final four teams. However, there are no doosies (a la Pitt/Clemson) in there. They are all teams that most everyone else probably has as well so I probably won’t separate myself much.

In Derek Nagy’s pool, I’m currently 7th overall out of 66 participants. The top five finishers win a piece of the pot. It’s hard to tell how it will shake out, but I’m in a better spot there in terms of still being able to earn points. I did not have Clemson in the final in that pool and I have UNC winning it all, so the Pitt catastrophe wasn’t a complete disaster. I was pretty bummed though. The further Pitt went the more I would have been able to separate myself seeing as not many people had them in the final four.

So, today I’m rooting for Memphis, Texas, Georgetown, Tennessee and UNC. The big ones are UNC (final four), Texas (elite and Tennessee (elite 8).

Duke losing yesterday was somewhat of a help. I think some people advance them all the way to the final four because of its name. I also feel like that’s why they got a No. 2 seed this year. I don’t think they’re that good. I had them losing yesterday (although, NOT to WVU…to Arizona) so I’m fine with it. Speaking of WVU, what they hell are they doing? I thought they were a football school. I’ve got Xavier advancing to the elite 8 in that region so hopefully WVU run ends there.

Seeing as I’m not holding on quite as tight anymore, we’re headed to the beach today for an Easter picnic. It’s supposed to be 84 degrees so I wouldn’t feel right sitting in front of the TV all day. Yay for TiVo!!

Happy Easter.

I woke up this morning and I’ve swallowed the Clemson pill. I didn’t really consider the whole 5/12 upset tradition or do much research on Clemson. I finally pieced together why I had them in the final. Because I didn’t know much about it, I went to Clemson’s web site and looked their schedule. Apparently, the only thing I noticed is that its three losses to North Carolina this year were either in OT or double OT. In my mind, I instantly put them all the way through to face Carolina and figured the fourth time would be a charm.

The one pool that’s most important to me (there’s 64 people in the pool and each put in $20 so there’s quite a bit of money at stake) is OK because I must have panicked and picked UNC over Clemson. So I’ve got UNC facing Pitt in the final. But, still, Clemson is in my final four and that’s embarrassing.

Anyway, back to the real reason for this early-morning blog. Bill Simmons is a hilarious writer on ESPN.com. His wife did a bracket and below is a link to the story on Page 2 about her picks. The part about Gonzaga and the Bachelor is quite funny as is the line in which they turned of “John Adams” because they “couldn’t get over the guy from Sideways playing anyone else except for the guy from Sideways.” Anyway, I realized that my blogs pale in comparison to his (and hers) writing so this is definitely worth your time.

Gooooooooooooooooooo Panthers! By the way, she also mentions “why would anyone want to live in Pittsburg” as her reason to picking someone over Pitt. That does not bode well for me. But, she also has USC in her final four so you never know.

Bill Simmons’ Wifes Picks