Tourney Time!

Before I started to fill out my bracket tonight I was thinking Iowa really has the kind of team that could make a nice run this year.  Then I printed it out and realized they didn't make the tourney at all.  They did win their first game of the NIT so there is that.  On the other hand, Wisconsin is a fifth seed and they have a pretty smooth ride to the Final Four.  Hopefully I didn't jinx them.  Did you know that Forbes listed Wisconsin the 7th most valuable college basketball team in all the land?  I can almost do one better.  Did you know that Cosmo named Mike Bruesewitz the 16th hottest player in the tourney?  Did I mention he plays for Wisconsin?  Wisco, they have all the hot gingers.  So if you're looking for a really tall Cosmo-hot rich ginger than start watching Wisco basketball.  First game is Friday at 11:40 on that sports network - what is it called again??? - oh ya True TV.  That makes tons of sense.  True, true.

Anyway the whole thing gets under way tomorrow so we thought it would be fun to have Quinny fill out a bracket.  Well, let's just say that he picked a lot of upsets.  He's a fan of Florida so he picked both Miami and the University of Florida to make the Final Four.  (He also picked Florida Gulf Coast University to make it to the Sweet Sixteen).  Apparently, he's also a fan of New Mexico because he picked both New Mexico State and New Mexico to make the Final Four as well.  The eventual champion?  That would be Florida.  I will be upset if he upsets me in our household tourney.  If he wins the million dollars, less so.

Fence is 4' Ugh!

It's a good thing 12 hours a day of TV is about to come on because winter won't let up!  It was a whopping 10 this morning to start our first day of spring.  Yowsers!  I don't think winter is ever going to end.  My buddies and I have Opening Day for the Brewers and a few other baseball games starting next Friday.  And we aren't soft yet either, presumably that comes later like when we hit our 40s, so we're talking about a solid six hours in the parking lot tailgating in our newly built igloo.  Now we've been there plenty of times while it's snowing but the Brewers have never had to clear the parking lot of snow to let us in and the major snow removal project began today to get ready for the fans.  The good news is we won't need ice this year for the coolers or actually coolers at all.  The bad news is we are going to have to buy a sled to take the debauchery to a new level.

Speaking of bad news our oldest took our not so old friend Mr. iPad for a little ride through the tile.  Turns out the glass screen doesn't really care to take a four foot face first fall (how about that for some alliteration!) onto the impending doom below.  iPads and tile, can't we all just get along?  What to do?  I mean at this stage the whole fam is addicted to that thing.  So I take my sorry little tail to the Apple store and plead my case.  Guess what?  They don't really care you let your over-privledged four year old play with Dad's overpriced toy.  They did exchange it for another slightly less absurd priced new one but man that sucked.  So now we have to shell out for, and I mean this literally, a military style case that supposedly can take a shelling in Afghanistan and you just dust the debris off and go back to playing Angry Birds in the trenches.  Put me down for another $100, Alex!

PS  Did you hear the Badgers put Alabama on their football schedule?  I know right?  They play at Jerry's world.  I think I have to go. Don't tell my wife. 

I Roll it Slow

Dancing to the sweet jams of the lanes

As we brace ourselves for yet another impending winter storm (6-10 inches of more snow in the next 24 hours) we thank our lucky stars that we are fortunate enough to live in a place that has four seasons.  Oh, how I love the seasons.  The seasons are soooo beautiful!

As it's March and still holding steady at 24 degrees we are quickly running out of things to do.  Winterfest has come and gone, the escape to the Keys is behind us, sledding is growing monotonous and shoveling is developing into far too tiresome of a task to tackle every day.  I feel like a professional body shoveling builder.  I could really use some HGH.  We need to start getting creative to stave off the "redrum" chants that are appearing with greater frequency on the weekends so we dug deep my friends, and came up with the greatest idea ever - bowling!  Bowling, believe it or not has been around in its present form since 1895, but potentially dates back as long ago as 3200 BC and both the Romans and Egyptians played a form of modern day bowling.  You didn't think you were going to get a history lesson did you? 

Muscling down the roll

My kids were immediately bowled over once they realized they could chuck over sized unbreakable balls at unassuming pins patiently waiting to get bulldozed over.  And get high fives for doing so.  Quinny picked up an eight pounder and mauled that bad boy into the perfect position on his chest including holding the ball correctly with three fingers and kablamo! down the alley it went.  We had three players but it quickly turned into Quinny rolling two out of three balls and doing so with some decent consistency.  He's got a bit of a hook to his roll but if he can straighten that out he's got 300 written all over his game. 

Gavin was more of a granny-use-two-hands to get a solid roll down the middle kind of high roller.  It gave him some solid control but often he didn't get enough strength behind it.  In short he needs to find the weight room.  With a few more reps of curls in the 2.5 to 5 pound range he could really be an outstanding player. 

Steeeeriiiike!

We only had two instances that didn't go as planned  There was about an inch step to get onto the alley and Q was focused on getting his fingers in the correct position while he was walking up to the lane and took a straight up header falling flat on his face while holding the ball.  Fortunately the ball was immediately jettisoned and his man sized chest broke his fall saving his pearly whites.  It could've been a face full of toothless wonder for the next eight years.  Gavin, is a pretty smooth cat.  The only bowling faux pas that he created was not getting enough spin on his roll and stranding Mr. Fluorescent Orange in the middle of the lane, which required lane rolling personnel to take the long lonely walk down the lane to retrieve Mr. FO.  It was slightly embarrassing, for Gavin, but we told him his 78 was a totally respectable score for a two year old.  In short we had a couple of turkeys throwing turkeys.  Good times.

The Keys

If you haven't been to the Keys I'm not sure what you are waiting for.  If you listen to the news there is impending doom coming your way so for a long weekend shelve your plans to stockpile weapons of mass destruction and put off building that bomb shelter for another weekend and get yourself down to paradise.  Did you know Key West is the southern most point in the US?  Do the tourist thing, have a vacation where getting a cocktail is your first, second and third priority.  You know there are roosters running all over town and there is nothing more entertaining than grabbing a beer and watching chickens cross the road while telling hilariously dumb jokes about, well, chickens crossing the road.  Did you know, on average there is roughly 7 degrees between the high and low in Key West?  I know, that sure does make packing easy!  Four days of speedos!

Care and I took a much needed winter breather to head down to one of our favorite places, Key West.  They say when you shake the US the weirdos fall down to the Keys.  Fine with me.  You're surrounded by pirates, music, art, the occasional cigar and people watching like you have never seen before.  The food is outstanding provided you enjoy seafood.  I had shrimp, oysters, crab, mahi-mahi (some may call it dolphin - it's not actually the flipper variety), grouper, sushi and who remembers what else.  It makes for a low cholesterol diet. 

We try to do something different every year.  This year we left as an impending blizzard moved into town.  That works right? The night before was not pleasant as we were glued to the weather channel praying to the vacation Gods that our plane would beat the storm.  Rules of flying, always take the earliest flight out you can stomach because when you get delayed/cancelled it means you'll be the first rebooked on the next flight(s).  Unfortunately the weather wasn't the only thing we were trying to keep down.  Gavin came home with the flu on Wednesday.  He threw up on Care and me at separate moments in time.  That's called team work.  I love it when that happens. 

Carrie woke up with the flu on Thursday morning around 4:30 am.  We needed to leave at 7:30 am to catch our flight.  The trooper that she was, packed her bags, tossed her cookies not once, twice but thrice and brought her luggage and a barf bag into the car for the ride to the airport.  What a champ!  The things you'll make yourself go through to leave the snowy part of the country in winter.  She made it through the travel day with no public displays of, well, there were no further incidents. 

Most of what went on down there is censored so I'll provide the PG version.  We rented a hog and cruised around the island stopping at various points and beaches.  We hung out at Hogs every night, our favorite haunt.  We saw Capt'n Tony's, got sloppy at Sloppy Joe's, saw a big tree, took not one but two sunset cruises, took a pic with Jimmy Buffett, saw dolphins, went to Irish Kevin's, one of us took a breakfast shot and we watched the Badgers sink a half court shot at the buzzer to beat #3 Michigan at the Key West Big Ten Pub (owned by a Wisco Alum!),. 

We requested Mustang Sally and for the second time in 3 weeks and were publicly chastised for our poor taste in music by the band.  Honestly, why do they ask for requests if they don't expect you to request Piano Man and Mustang Sally?  But seriously people stop requesting Piano Man and Mustang Sally.  And under no circumstances yell, "Free Biiiiiiiiird!!!!"  We found a pretty sweet boat you can rent for $37,000 a week and it came with  a helicopter (on the boat) you know to make a beer run if you needed it. 

Lastly, we went shopping.  Well, Carrie did.  I tried to stand there and be the money man.  The girl saw a mark.  She put a shirt on me and it was a pretty sweet shirt.  It was our first stop so Care set some dresses aside and the girl told me I looked really hot in the shirt so she would stash it with the other stuff.  It turns out it was a $200 shirt.  I didn't know they made $200 shirts.  All I kept thinking about was where do you wear a $200 shirt.  Right, right, right, at Hogs....  Get to the Keys.  You'll go and then you'll understand and then you'll thank me.

PS  I took the shirt back. Do you know how many beers a $200 shirt return can buy?