Well, a weekend full of books and brackets has concluded,
and a day of decompression accomplished, and we find ourselves on St. Patrick’s
Day. Thoughts of a pint of “true” Guinness are
swirling around my head. I don’t care what
they say, it IS better in the Emerald Isle.
Anyway, just a few this’s and that’s have accrued.
Book Sale
Early reports are that the sale did great this year despite
some rather ugly weather (or maybe because of it??) and the county libraries
can receive a nice donation from the Friends of the (St. Mary’s County) Library. It is kind of sad in a way that after the
sale closes, volunteers (from the local Rotary Cub) come and just pitch all the books into big cartons called
“Gaylords”. The remaining books still
contain some lovely volumes that for whatever reason don’t get sold. The Gaylords are then loaded into trucks and a
couple of Rotarians drive up to Annapolis where they are further sorted a bit, and
then distributed to local non-profits, or go overseas to military
installations, so they do go to a good home.
So, the last we see of the books is
Brackets
There are probably very few folks that don’t know “March
Madness” and “Selection Sunday” began this last weekend. Conference tournaments decided automatic bids
to the “Big Dance” and the rest of the field of 68 was determined by “the
Committee”. As usual, that creates broken
dreams for some, and then the pundits are second guessed (how in the world did
UCLA get in and so and so not?) providing endless hours of yakking on the
sports talk shows. Incidentally, it
appears that Dickie V has been sort of retired and Jay Bilas has become much
more visible. A vast improvement. The buffoonery mantle has now (IMHO) passed
to Bill Raftery whom CBS somehow employs.
He happened to be present at the MSU/Wisconsin Big Ten championship game
on Sunday, adding insightful comments like “SLAMMA” and other cheerleading
phrases, all delivered at the top of his lungs. On the court, and I might not be objective here speaking of
the Spartans, I was impressed with them at the end of their semi-final game
with Maryland. Not necessarily because
they played well, which they did, but with about eight seconds left when the
outcome was no longer in doubt, a Spartan somehow got the ball in a clear
court, and he raced toward his now undefended basket. And….. he dribbled UNDER the basket into the
front court and let the remaining seconds expire. There is no doubt that he could have done a
twirling, behind the back, NBA style gorilla dunk, but no, he just dribbled it
out. Maybe I read too much into that,
but I thought it was class, and just maybe represented respect for a worthy opponent (who beat us twice previously) and a reflection on Tom Izzo. He is one of the classiest coaches I know
(and unlike others I also like Calipari) who forever endeared himself to me
when he turned down an NBA coaching job to stay with Michigan State. And the Spartans just missed upsetting
Wisconsin in the title game, when the referees didn't call (apparently legally) a
Badger stepping on the line with the ball at the end of the game, But he saved into the hands of a Spartan who inexplically made a bone-headed push pass that gave the ball back to Wisconsin resulting in
a regulation tie. In the ensuing
overtime, there never was one point scored by the team from East Lansing. Sports are weird.
Bottles
One of my strategies for fighting off the demons in the
night is to listen to a little pocket radio through a pillow speaker (so it
doesn’t wake a sound sleeping MFO) sort of oscillating between sports shows, conspiracy
theorists, alien abduction victims (Roswell is still a hot issue, you know). I happened across a little piece on a
business station that was an interview of the couple who "founded" Barefoot wines. You see them on the shelves in
wine stores usually in a prominent display, lots of times in the “big”
bottles, and are um, “value priced” (cheap is not a good word). They are good for cleaning windshields, for
instance. Anyway, the quality isn’t my
point. Turns out that this couple were
retired attorney’s or something. and decided they would kill the wine market. All they knew about was marketing, and
admitted they knew zero about wine making. Learned a little known fact, that the “barefoot” on
the front label (there was a long story about developing the label that would “sell”)
is the lady’s own. No mention about making quality or even enjoyable wine, just
what sells, baby. Disgusting.
Bubbles
Last week as MFO was doing a load of wash, she noticed a
pond emanating from under the machine. Fortunately,
using a lower water setting eliminated the leak, but she called what turned out
to be a Sears contractor, and set up an appointment with the
service. Well, you know how the cable
company (for instance) pins their arrival usually in the whole morning or whole
afternoon? Well, these folks did them one
better! “they will arrive between 8am
and 5 pm”. Well, that’s fine a whole day
shot. God forbid we should inconvenience THEM. And on top of that, we got a voice
mail yesterday reminding us that there “must be someone in the house between 8am
and 5pm”. Service no longer has its original
meaning.
One thing that never changes, however is
DFD
Homework assignment: what does the phrase "uisce beatha" mean and why is it important today??
No comments:
Post a Comment