Me gusta March Madness

So, I get 15 right out of 16 games the first day...only to find the VP of my department (I don't think of her as my boss, although I suppose she does have that authority) is 16-0.

I looked good for 19 out of 20 until that Western Kentucky 3-pointer at the buzzer fell...but I don't mind....sometimes ya gotta trade a perfect bracket for the excitement of the upset.

My next home brew will start tomorrow. It's my favorite beer -- Hop Devil. Oddly, though, the "clone brew" version that I'll be following the recipe for comes in at 6.3% alcohol instead of 6.7% that the real stuff is listed at.

I went to Dartmouth, and so sometimes I hear stuff, like, "that's a great school". Well, yeah, it is....but that really only means I performed really well in high school....Once you get into the good school, all ya gotta do at that point is graduate, which isn't as hard as it sounds.

I've been pulling dead cedar trees out of the side of our property by the neighbor's property. They were dwarfed by bigger trees, and so it's like dead tree carcasses....then they fall over (cedars have week bases for some reason) and they stand at 70 degree angles until I go in there and pull them down. At some point I've gotta hire a tree guy to run all these things through the woodchipper.

The guy who plowed our driveway this winter pushed a lot of the crushed stone (I sooooo wish we had asphalt so I could play basketball in the driveway) into a pile. But that was actually good, because the crushed stone by where the driveway reaches the garage had worn away -- it's like a 2-3 inch bump up to drive into the garage under our kitchen.....so having a pile of loose stones was convenient for me to take with a big spade and move to flatten out the approach in.

I went to lunch today with the Mrs....oops, I mean the Dr......and they screwed up my order. I wanted fries, I got a mixture of fries and onion rings. I wanted bacon....instead, I got a seared tortilla chip underneath the burger. What the hell? Ewwww! So they took the meal off the bill. I don't claim to be good at yelling at waitresses....so that was a positive accomplishment.

What would happen if....(3/13 edition)

....there was a sci-fi movie with the following premise: You know how they have that "international star registry" where for some amount of money, you can have a star named after someone? What if Earth was invaded by people from that star (or a planet in that star's system)? How would you like to be THAT guy? It's kind of a lame-enough gift to get, oooh, a billion light-years away there's my star....But then all of humanity is in serious trouble, and people are going to blame you! And really, it's not like you can become this "Earth ambassador" -- the natives to that system don't know who you are and aren't about to want to meet someone who thinks THEIR homeworld is named after him....

So now they have Roth 401(k) contributions, kinda like Roth IRAs....I vote to name the more traditional "pre-tax" contributions as "Hagar 401(k)" contributions. Hey, if Sammy wants to be remembered for *anything* 30 years from now, he should play along, too.

At work we have these RSA security tags, that flash a random 6-digit number every 60 seconds that we have to enter when we log on to one of our Internet-based systems. Now I've come up with a poker game for it. At a fixed time, everyone reveals the poker hand formed by their numbers. Best hand wins. Actually, with a six-digit number, you're more likely to have 2 pair, than no pair.

I saw a book on sale called "A Child's First Bible". And the idea of "a child's first...." is common enough. But how about "An old-timer's LAST Bible"? I mentioned this at work and someone suggested highlighting some of the passages that deal with the impending afterlife. (I simply suggested very large print.)

Lance Armstrong kinda looks like Anderson Cooper.

I like to play cribbage with the stated intent being to make the OTHER person end up with more points. Play to 61 instead of 121, since points can be scarce if you try. Nothing like unearthing a 12-point crib when you LAST want it.

Some people don't like to work on an empty stomach. How about working on an empty liver? Keep that flask in your drawer, ha!

Every once in a while, a couple of peanut M&M's are like siamese twins. However, other occasions have it where the candy coating is compromised. Then there's a peanut you can see, like an exposed brain from a bomb going off near a head.

I used to like chewing on muffin and cupcake paper. Get all the stuff off the inside.

Hey NASCAR....try having one race where they go around the track in the opposite direction. What would they have to do? Maybe re-pave the pit area, since you don't wanna have to do a 120-degree turnaround to approach pit row. It's akin to golf having the random match-play or modified Stableford scoring one week.

Lastly, I was asked to verify some personal questions to change a password. I was asked for my "favourite color".
That seems political....one word spelled British-style, the other American-style. So now everyone's pissed off!

Not a rib tickler...

Ugh.

Friday night....pickup hoops, some guy I've never seen before goes jumping into the pile with the score tied 8-8, I catch a knee to the left side of my ribs, and down I go. Apparently he missed the shot, everyone stood around, he put the rebound back in. About 30 seconds later I get up wondering if I can get a foul called for that. First of all, who the hell calls an offensive foul, right? But DAMN, it f-bomb-ing hurt. The next group of guys was on to play anyways....some clown claimed my own guy hit me (bull feces on that one....)

Anyways, they were sore, but I was able to play the rest of the night....and my Sunday league game went fine.

Sunday night, though....achoo!
I musta cracked 'em then. That's when it really really hurt. Like as bad as anything I've felt in a while. Can't cough, can't sneeze....I feared for pain in bowel movements, but that's been painless at least (imagine...HOPING for diarrhea to avoid having to push)

The doctor on Tuesday said an x-ray wasn't worth it to prove they were broken or not, since the treatment is the same....time, and pain medication (tylenol 3 for me -- the stuff mixed with codeine). It's working somewhat okay, but usually if I do have to cough, I brace my side against a wall to push back against the force. A muffin crumb caused an involuntary cough and that freakin' hurt.

So anyway, the doctor said if I needed it for a legal issue....hmmm, could I sue the town for not enforcing the "residents only" rule at the school where we played? probably not...of course, this past Monday there were rumors (I wasn't there -- I'm on the shelf for a couple of months, I suspect) that the park and rec lady was going to actually check IDs....wonder how that turned out. Maybe instead of 35 playing, we'd have only 15. that's what happens when a new high school opens with a shiny gym -- people from out of town show up.

As long as the ribs don't interfere with my left torn labrum surgery in a month, I can have them both heal together, I suppose.