Random Thoughts for a Thursday Morning

Losing in the first round of the NIT when you're playing in your home town is one thing.  Losing at the buzzer... really, after the buzzer...... as the ball goes around and around and around the rim and then falls in.  Ouch.

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Did you submit your brackets?  It's an open group and I think that means you can join in any time.  The first games start today at 12:15pm ET. 

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There's a spring smell in the air here in the desert southwest.  The mornings don't have that frosty freezing feeling and the breeze is moving but not particularly cooling.  We've had no rain for the last few days, and the weeds are springing up faster than I can spray them with Round-Up.  I have to admit that it is lots of fun to walk around with my spray container spritzing things I've decided are weeds. 

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I received 5 agave pups from a Master Gardening friend.  Three went in direct sun and two were nestled in a shady corner with a north-eastern exposure. Sheltered by the house and a small wall, those two in the shade are still green and open.  The other three have a case against me for flora abuse.  I moved them into the corner with their friends this morning and by late afternoon they were opening up... just a little, because they're somewhat fried.... but the right plant in the right place has got to be my mantra.

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How I like typing desert southwest and and knowing that it's my home.  I'm not sure that anyone who didn't grow up in the environs of New York City can understand how I feel. This iconic map of a New Yorker's view of the rest of America pretty much says it all:

drawing by Saul Steinberg

This poster was on the wall in every third dorm room my freshman year at Cornell. 

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Ah, Cornell.  It's grey, it's cold, it's competitive and it is big.  Don't like your freshman roommate?  It's completely possible that your paths will never cross again once that long and aggravating year has ended.  I say this having proven it myself.  That's the upside of going to a big school - you can reinvent yourself and no one will care.

On the other hand, the downside of that reinvention is that no one will notice. 

It's possible to be lost and alone amongst 20,000 of your peers.  It's possible to walk across acres of greenspace and not recognize a single person who passes.  In high school, the work may have been difficult, but you were rewarded with A's.  At Cornell, your hard work takes more time and delivers lower grades and sometimes, I suppose, the anonymity and the pressure and the weather and your life gets to be too much and you jump off a bridge.  Literally.  And you're the second one in as many days. And the third this month.

Ah, Cornell.  At a time when you should be celebrating the fact that Jay Bilas picks you to go to the Final Four, you are mourning far too many losses.

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