It's the hap-happiest season of all

Let's play "Guess When"! OK, now guess the when I took these pictures outside my front door:



Is it
a) The day I left to go to Ohio for Christmas
b) Right before the first big snow storm
c) A freakin' week after the start of spring

If you guessed "A freakin' week after the start of spring" you're correct! I try not to complain about this too much. I'm sure that there are other people who got more. The only problem is just that it never seems to stop. Maybe the start of baseball will make it end ...

Bracket

I love this time of year. No, not the start of spring - the NCAA Tourney! The sports fan that I am just loves to engulf myself in basketball to almost an overdose level. At what other time during the year would I care about a game between Stanford and Cornell (also known as the "GPA shootout")? What other reason would I have for watching CBS 4 hours straight?

How's your bracket? I've got my multiple brackets filled out and ready to go. But what seems to happen every year is that I play it safe and one of my choosen teams that I have going to the Championship game in a few weeks ends up loosing in the 2nd round a few days from now. As a result, the rounds to be played in the coming weeks on are wrong calls for me and I go down in the bracket ranks.

I guess there's a life lesson here. How many times have I told myself what will happen in the future? "I'm going to find a job here" "I'm going to meet this person" "I'm going to have my schedule empty so that I can do this or that". When in actuallity what happens is that a more recient event plays out, one of those distant plans ends up taking a different turn early on and a whole new path is laid. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a bad thing. But many times I psych myself up for the Championship when I need to instead focus on the 2nd round game.

So here's to enjoying sports as entertainment and treating life with respect. By the way, I've got UCLA winning it all.

Comedians

Hope you all had a great weekend. Friday night I went to one of the local churches here for Comedy For A Cause, a benefit that helped to raise interest and funding for an area home for abused and neglected children. About 5 minutes before the show started they announced that they had to open up some overflow rooms because the 2500 seat church could hold the crowd. The 3 hour show(!) featured 2 clean comedians. The opening act, as usual, was decent. But Tim Hawkins, the headliner, was great. I really like a comedian who can be funny and raise a valid point at the same time, without being overly offensive (e.g. Seinfeld). I encourage any of you who love stand-up to check him out the next time he's in your area (Tim Hawkins, that is...not Seinfeld. But if you can get tickets to Seinfeld by all means do that too [tangent anyone?]). If there is such a thing as edgy clean/Christian comedy, Hawkins be one of the best. Check out the clip below. Enjoy!

I'll take one with extra stupidity

Looking for a way to impress those potential clients at your next sales meeting? Nothing says "Professional" and "Classy" better than taking your laptop to the meeting in a pizza box.

But before you judge. Keep in mind that it's made using "genuine italian-style pizza boxes for maximum authenticity". That's pretty authentic people!
Still interested? You can get one here. But will it be delivered in 30 minutes or less?