Father of Texas, professional wrestler or the Six Million Dollar Man?
I am debating which of these has a better chance of beating UCLA tomorrow.
Our family has a long tradition of participating in March Madness with a random draw bracket. We all go in wanting to get certain teams, and can be torn when we don’t get one of our favorites. And – we all want to get a coveted number 1 seed. After all, there was chocolate at stake. [Treats for each win, double if it is an upset.] But it is a random draw. And random is random.
We had a wonderful time doing the draw. We had a 3-way Skype going, with Pooh and Mark standing in for Ashlan & Rey doing the actual drawing out of the bowl. When all was said and done it was my job to enter the results into the bracket, and add the teams after they were drawn.
It was only then that I realized the highest seeded team I had drawn was a No. 5!!! Really. No 1, 2, 3, or 4 seed graced my share of the bracket. [I did manage 3 of the 4 number 5 teams.]
Still, a number 5 seed plays their first game against a number 12 seed, so you would think that I could get a few games out of my 5s. But NOOO. Two of my 5s went down to Harvard and Stephen F. Austin. As luck would have it, I also had the No. 12 seed – Stephen F. Austin, so I was still alive for the next game.
For the round of 32 I had only four teams. Stephen F. Austin (12 seed), Pittsburgh (9 seed), Oregon (7 seed) and St. Louis (5 seed). It is now Saturday evening, and I am down to one team. Stephen F. Austin. A 12 seed, slated to play UCLA – a 4 seed.
We used to joke about directional schools not having much of a chance. For instance, Michigan and Michigan State just have the name of the state. Western Michigan has to add a direction. Stephen F. Austin does not even get a state name, although you might consider it a City name. Sort of.
Anyway, I think I am going to be out of this tournament faster than anyone in our family has ever made an exit.
In addition to tracking the basketball scores we took a walk today. A few sightings.
Wheee – phone booths
We have plenty of collections at our house, but none like this.
We introduced my brother-in-law to a new waterfowl on his recent visit. Wigeons, or mallard with a mohawk as we like to refer to them. We usually have American Wigeons around Seattle. But occasionally there are some visitors from the east that arrive with their American counterparts. We had told Mark about the Eurasian variety, but never saw one. Today we spotted one in the flock at Green Lake.
Eurasian Wigeon on the left, with the rusty head
Oh – HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! I will call tomorrow (I am not the best daughter today).
Raincharm's Weblog 
March 24, 2014 at 6:19 am |
who knew that gettingi a 12 seed was going to be bettere than a 5 seed? interesting factoid — 11 million people entered brackets on espn.com. As of Friday afternoon (second day of the tourney, but before the full round was over) there fewer than 2,200 perfect brackets left. By mid-Friday night there were 3 perfect brackets left. By end of play Friday there were 0.