What a doozy!

With Georgetown's thrilling OT win over North Carolina, the last placesetting has been set for this year's Final 4!

Here they are: Ohio State, UCLA, Florida, and Georgetown!

Hoya Saxa!

I tried to avoid watching most of the game, catching up with my friend Candice over the phone for part of the first half. I could hear Roger alternating between clapping and groaning downstairs in the family room, telling me it was a close game.

Roger hadn't been this nervous, this involved in a game since the 2004 ALCS.

I joined him downstairs at the half. Georgetown was getting fouled on every play, sending UNC to the line to make easy points. The big men, Hibbert and Ewing, were getting into foul trouble early. And yet they played on. Roger couldn't watch the last ten minutes of the second half, feeling like the game was over, with UNC leading by as much as nine in the waning moments.

But then the Tarheels went cold and the fouls stopped getting called. Georgetown's defense was clean and their offense suddenly hot and wouldn't you know it ... they tied it with two minutes to go!!

Part of me was worried that with the Hoyas' foul trouble and the Tar Heels' deep bench that UNC had the advantage in overtime. But, no, having to play five minutes more proved tortuous for UNC -- UNC were 0-6 in overtime games since 2000! And last night proved to be unlucky #7!

It was a fun ending. I called up Jeff to congratulate him on his alma mater wins (first UCLA, and now Georgetown). Awesome indeed!

Pool standings: 1st place - Lara (Queen of the Brackets!), 2nd place - Genevieve (just following my brother's alma maters), 3rd place - Roger, 4th place - Candice, 5th place - Jolie

Onto the Elite 8 ... and half of the Final 4

Games are happening so fast, it's hard for me to keep up.

... and we're down to 8 teams!

1st place - Lara, 2nd - Candice, 3rd - Genevieve, 4th - Roger and Nancy

Lara has all of the Elite 8! The chalk is holding! (Four 1s and three 2s and one 3.)

... and now half of the Final 4

Ohio State and UCLA are in. UCLA, led by Arron Afflalo and Darren Collison, top the heavily-favored Kansas. With those seats set, we see some surprising jumps up the poll in our little pool. Jolie has leapfrogged to 3rd!

1st place - Lara, 2nd place - Agnes, 3rd place - Jolie, 4th place - Genevieve

Day 4 of the NCAA Tournament

On Sunday, we had to witness the unraveling of the Texas Longhorns. They could not come through, even though they had "the best player ever to touch a basketball" (Roger's words) on their team. There went our giant-killer (Roger and I picked them to defeat UNC in the Sweet 16).

On the bright side, this meant another Pac-10 team, USC, made it to the next round. Go Pac-10!

• Roger: 6 of 8 games correctly picked (Picks out: Wisconsin, Texas);
  
• Genevieve: 5 of 8 (Picks out: Georgia Tech, Long Beach State (from the first round), Texas);
  
• Pool Standings: Candice and me tied for first, Roger in second, Agnes and Lara third.

Days 2 and 3 of NCAA Tournament

Day 2 of the tournament saw only two upsets, Purdue and Winthrop. I called the latter, but I had been upset-happy in my picks, and had called three others that ended up going to the higher seeds. My longshot Cinderella team (Long Beach State), went down, but not without an impressive blitzkrieg against Tennessee. They managed 86 points, which was a higher point total than any of the other winners that day, but not enough to match Tennessee's very impressive 121 points. (Those are NBA numbers!)

• Roger: 13 of 16 games correctly picked (Picks out: Arizona, Georgia Tech, and Notre Dame);
  
• Genevieve: 12 of 16 (Picks out: Arizona, Georgia Tech, Villanova, and Long Beach State);
  
• Pool Standings: Lara and Agnes in the lead, followed by Nancy, Candice, and me tied for second.

--

Day 3, first day of Round 2, was exhausting! Roger went skiing at Pico in the morning and I went shopping. We both managed to catch the first matchup of day, in separate places: Roger at the Pico ski lodge and me at home. Xavier vs. Ohio State, and it was a good one.

The Ohio State was down down 61-52 with 2:54 left. But they rallied and with less than 9 seconds left tied the score with a 3-pointer, sending the game into overtime. They went on to win it 78-71. Xavier put up a really good fight!

After that exciting game, Roger came home and we cozied ourselves in front of the tv to witness a parade of close and overtime games, including a double OT game between Washington State and Vanderbilt. Our big pick, Indiana vs. UCLA (we both have UCLA in the final) was very tense, defense-heavy, and low scoring. The Bruins lead got whittled down to two, 47-45, with under 2 minutes to go. Fortunately they picked up their free throw shooting and a steal to win.

• Roger: 6 of 8 picks (Picks out: Maryland and Washington State);
  
• Genevieve: 7 of 8 picks (Pick out: Maryland)
  
• Pool Standings: Genevieve, Lara, and Candice are 1, 2, 3.

Day 1 of the NCAA Tournament

Yesterday was Day 1 of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. This is the first year that Roger's really gotten into it, filling out brackets and watching games and following scores during the day -- the whole nine yards.

Baseball and football are still Roger's favorite sports. He has yet to experience a seminal tourney game, the ones that will burn in your memory and fix you on the tourney forever. For me, that includes the oft-mentioned '92 Duke-Kentucky game and also last year's UCLA-Gonzaga game.

Roger and I each submitted one "brackets of integrity". Results after the first day:

• Roger: 10 of 16 games correctly picked (Picks out: Duke, Gonzaga, Texas Tech, BYU, Old Dominion, and our beloved Stanford);
  
• Genevieve: 12 of 16 (Picks out: Gonzaga, Old Dominion, Marquette, and our beloved Stanford).

In addition to his cardiology pool, Roger joined the Yahoo! pool that I formed with my draw group and friends. As of yesterday, in the lead was our friend Lara (her first time playing too!)! With Agnes, Candice, and me tied for second.

Good luck to everybody! Day 2 begins in an hour!

Yahoo! love

The more I read about Yahoo!, the more I come to appreciate the company.

Like most early adopters, I have 2+ email accounts, including Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail. And while the latter two may get more press these days, Gmail especially as the coolest domain, I think Yahoo! is definitely more my speed.

I also like the way Yahoo! has set up portals to help organize information about web, wheras Google still relies heavily on its search pages to filter and group things. (Although Blogger is now a Google company -- I don't know yet what the Yahoo! equivalent is for hosting blogs; I need to look into that.)

What's also interesting about Yahoo! is the company it keeps -- or rather the companies they have acquired and help grow, including Flickr and del.icio.us. The latter is one that I'm just getting familiar with, as we are hoping to do a program on Web 2.0 next fall/winter.

You Can't Fire Me ...

I don't work in this van!

And more "The Office" websites -- this one compares the US version with the UK version:

http://www.theofficevstheoffice.com/index.shtm

Winter's Work

The condo association recommends to its condo owners that we shovel the snow off our back porches so as to avoid wood rot. Here are some pictures of Roger hard at work, clearing the snow from the Valentine's Day storm.


The view from our living room


Digging right in


Now where do we put this?

Lenten season

I told Roger that for the Lenten season, I've decided (among other things) to give up reading Television Without Pity, that addictive web site that gives detailed commentary and episode summaries of popular tv shows. For 40 days, no recaps, no spoilers, no discussion forums. No reading up on spoilers and guffawing over recaps of "Ugly Betty," "Heroes," and "General Hospital." I am a tv junkie.

Of course, this just means I've been diverting interest and browser to other sites. The list includes:

• For Better or for Worse, my daily comic fix;
  
• Amanda Congdon, quirky news fix;
  
• Rocketboom, more quirky news;
  
• Morningstar, mutual fund fix;
  
• finance.yahoo.com, more mutual fund fix;
  
• Fanpop's "The Office" site, with full episode videos; and
  
• answers.com, so I can look up anything and everything, and exhaust my interest in it.

So much for trying to lead a quieter, more focused 40 days!