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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Madness

As everyone knows, this past week was chock-full of holidays. St. Patrick's Day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, First Day of Spring, and Easter.... it was no wonder Rayna woke up on one day last week and right away said, "What are we going to celebrate today??" Colsen thought Thursday was another special holiday, too... Trash Pick-Up Day. Happily for him, he gets to celebrate that day every week.

But the greatest day of the week from Strider's standpoint was.... the opening day of March Madness. (Well, maybe he changed his mind after Easter, but I don't know for sure). Very sad, but true. I guess he gets it naturally, though: at one point early last week, Pete moaned to me, "Why does the best weekend of the year have to fall on Easter weekend this year??" He quickly retracted it, saying, "Oh, that sounded terrible!" but there it was anyway.

And, as usual, Strider approached the weekend with his usual intensity and passion. (This was him last year.... but this year was even worse). Starting several days ahead, he was writing on his arms about his favorite teams, planning out all the possible scenarios of which team would get into the "Big Dance," etc. He knew a whole list of which teams had already earned automatic bids... when I started to ask him about it he went on and on and on about who won which game and what that meant for the selection and the bubble teams, etc., etc. I got way too many earfuls on all that.

Then once the brackets were published, he carried his around and filled it out with great earnestness. Then he followed me around for the next 2 days periodically saying things like, "Just a reminder: brackets are due by noon tomorrow!" Then on Thursday I kept hearing things like "Announcement! Less than 2 hours until the start of the tournament!"

His focus has been paying off though, I have to say. In the pools that Strider entered online, he's doing reasonably well -- actually way better than both Pete and I are doing. But he may be getting a tad too into it... As he was watching one of the games recently, it was going down to the wire (as they all do) and he commented, "Man! My heart is just beating so hard!"

Rayna, meanwhile, is still pretty clueless. We got her to fill out a bracket, too, and it was a pretty funny conversation. At the end, she looked up at me and said, "Mom, who do YOU think is gonna win? Here are the choices: Anson-C, Georgetown, or George Bush?"

I'm going with Anson-C, whoever that is.

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