me vs. glenn beck

A student sent me the following email last night:

"I was reading through the 100 most influential people on the Time Magazine website and I thought of you when I read this:

'Glenn [Beck]'s like the high school government teacher so many wish they'd had.' [from Time]

I laughed out loud at this one, I think you are a much better government teacher than Glenn."


And my day was made.  Normally I don't read my work emails after I leave work - I'm not very good at letting things go, and if I get an email that is in any way negative (and I almost always get one of these per day, if not more) I will think about it and worry about it and be mad about it all night.  But I was checking my work email last night and decided that this looked safe enough to open, and boy am I glad that I did.  My kids email me, guys.  Every once in a while they send me funny government-related youtube clips and articles and emails like this out of the blue.  This is why I love my job.  This is why I do my job.

Life is pretty darn good.

four chords

anderson is pretty awesome at forwarding interesting links.  things i like in an interesting link:
1. length.  it should be relatively short or i will get bored.  however, i do like to procrastinate sometimes, so this rule is not written in stone.
2. animals doing something cute.  not required, but greatly appreciated.
3. a great song and/or medley
4. pretty photos
5. an inside joke that only a small group will get, based on some shared experience
6. a delicious recipe

this link satisfies #1 and #3 above.

everyone: please feel free to forward interesting things to me, keeping in mind my requirements above.  now, don't try to find a recipe that is also an inside joke, with pretty photos, a musical interlude, and an animal doing something cute all at once.  if it satisfies merely one of these requirements, i will be content.

clear sky

at a couple minute before 10 tonight i exited 285 and turned left at the end of the exit ramp and there in front of me was the full moon.  i gasped out loud at how gorgeous it was.  there, out of the middle of no where, had appeared this gorgeous moon.

i know that every 28 days we get one of these.  and i see many of them.  but really, the beauty of the world hits me hard sometimes, when i stop to consider it.

i'm happy that i'm an earthling and get to see these things.

hartsfield-jackson atlanta international airport

scene: sunday evening, 9pm, atlanta airport.

the atlanta airport is structured such that there are six terminals plus a baggage claim/ticketing area that all run parallel to one another.  to get from terminal to terminal you can walk or take a little train.  the train has probably six cars and comes every 2 minutes or so.

(if you are ever in the atlanta airport and have some free time, i recommend checking out terminal E - the best food is there, plus a legit mini museum with MLK and civil rights artifacts in it.  i will go to terminal E even if my flight is leaving from a different terminal.  they have a qdoba.  i can't stop myself.)

when flying into atlanta from newark on sunday night, my plane disembarks in terminal A, so i walk to the train and proceed to take it two stops to baggage claim.  of all of the trains running on sunday evening, each two minutes apart, and of all the cars on the train i got on, i step into one car on one train and standing six feet away from me are katie and dylan, two friends from work.

um, excuse me?

what a happy small world moment.

(i would also like to give a shout out to the atlanta airport for how efficient their security screening process is.  IT IS THE BEST ONE EVER.  there are so many people going through atlanta (it is the busiest airport in the world), that they have the process down pat.  there are a gillion different x-ray machines, so each line is pretty short, and the security screeners are pros.  it is efficient.  it is awesome.  and it feels FAIR - i never feel like i've picked the long line and am wasting my time.  all the lines move very fast.  and this makes me happy.  come - enjoy our security screening.  we are pros down here.)

bonus points for you if you know who hartsfield and jackson were...

paul simon + lee dewyze = happy claire

perhaps i should be embarrassed to admit this, but i just spent 5 minutes continuously calling in to vote for lee dewyze.  on american idol.  because i love him.  i mean, he sang a version of simon & garfunkel's "the boxer" last week.  and it was gorgeous.  how can i not love him?

this week the contestants sang shania twain songs, and i love me some country music.  happiness.  i was quite pleased with lee's performance again, but all the contestants were good this week.  so i had to (wo)man up and get out my cell phone and call in for lee.  because i need to keep hearing him.  i need him to win this thing.

this will give you a good two hours of procrastination

this is a great website that anderson found a couple months ago (thanks, anderson!) - it searches all of the public photo website flikr's photos based on the colors in the photos, and then pulls up the best fit for the colors you request. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW IT DOES THIS, but i know that i love the results.  i change my laptop's background every month and i will definitely be going to this website to find a photo to be my next background (right click the image and then click "set as desktop background" or something similar).

ducks on the loose

urban ducklings update!  they tried to cross a road!  ahhhhhhhh!

(try not to laugh out loud when you see the first picture.)

(and thanks to morgan, DC resident, for keeping us updated on my new favorite duckies!)

i heart new york

hooray for having a sister.  i would like to recommend it to everyone.

i went to new york this weekend to visit becky, and as usual the time went by much faster than i wanted it to.  but we ate good food and slept in late and got manicures (in a moment of craziness, my fingernails and toenails are purple - this grey-violet color - and i love them), i bought this dress in a very light lavender color (not listed online, interestingly...) - i tried it on, it fit perfectly, and that was that.  it was a great weekend, and of course i'm tired today, but it was worth it.  more than anything, i realized how really special it is that becky and i went to college together for two years and thus we know many of each others' friends.  well, and that is all predicated on the fact that we both made friends in college that we are still close with six or eight years later.  that in itself is rare, i know.

and while new york in the rain (sunday) is yucky, new york in the sun and spring weather (saturday) is really wonderful.  hooray for that, too.

i heart nc

welcome to asheville, barack and michelle!!  you are staying at the grove park inn?  so fancy.  i've never stayed there, but i have been there, and it's gorgeous.  in fact, all of asheville is gorgeous.  but you know that, because you're hiking off of the blue ridge parkway.  hope you have a relaxing weekend in our beautiful, beautiful north carolina.  (the fact that it's a swing state doesn't hurt, either.)

side note: i love asheville.  i don't want to live in atlanta forever, and asheville is the kind of place where i do want to live when i'm a grown up.  yay north carolina.

puppet show

this entertains me.  rachel maddow is feisty and i love her for it!  i spent some time with my classes a couple months ago talking about this very case, ontario v. quon, so it's cool now to read about the reaction of the justices when they heard the case.

i'm headed to new york this weekend to see the lovely becky, eat great food, hang out with her friends, get pedicures, go shopping, enjoy the city, and just in general get away from normal life.  I'M SO EXCITED.  not that normal life is bad right now, because it isn't, but i'm looking forward to a break from the norm.

and thus begins The Busy Season (also known as The Wedding Season) - i'm out of town five of the next nine weekends (three times for weddings of close friends/family), and then i go to europe for seven weeks.  hooray for all sorts of happy things and all sorts of great adventures, but i know i will miss my couch by the end of it all.

one of these ducklings is an athlete. the others are not.

as if i needed another thing to worry about: i will worry about these ducklings and what happens to them.  SO CUTE.  and so little!

(thanks, morgan!)

alex, i'll take "life goals" for $400.

i have a couple life goals:
1. be happy/fall in love/get married/have kids/love my job/all that jazz.  i mean, this is really the primary goal.
2. be an elector in the electoral college.
3. appear on jeopardy.

willis is about to beat me to the punch on #3.

in january willis and i both took the online test in an attempt to qualify to be on jeopardy.  willis and i then immediately called each other and talked through every question on the test, and out of the 50 questions, willis appeared to have gotten about 5 correct more than i did.

time passes.  (in the movie of my life, this portion will be shown by snow falling and then melting and spring arriving and pollen falling and then staying forever.)

a couple weeks ago, willis receives The Email.  The Email informs willis that he has qualified for the next round of testing in order to be on jeopardy.  willis will go to philadelphia in june, take another test, and sit through a fake interview to see if he is interesting enough to appear on the show.  assuming he does well on the next level of testing, willis absolutely will be found interesting enough to appear on the show.  i mean, have you guys met willis?  jeopardy needs a multiracial, gay, volleyball playing, fashionable dressing, educator like willis from small town missouri through duke and michigan to atlanta.  I AM SO EXCITED FOR HIM.

a zoo morning

this is a 4 year old gorilla.  i am still calling him a baby gorilla, even though he is probably a teenager gorilla.  he was hanging out and eating some leaves when we took the entire 12th grade to the zoo yesterday.  i liked him a lot.

i was reminded yesterday of how human gorillas are.  not just physically, which they are, but behaviorally.  the baby/teenager gorillas like to play A LOT.  at one point, one of the baby gorillas clutched his arms to her chest and rolled sideways down a hill in her enclosure JUST LIKE HUMAN KIDS DO.  at another point, the littlest gorilla (the posted information told me that he is a year younger than the other three gorilla kids in the group) stood up on two legs and ran after the cool older kids and jumped on them when he got there.  i was like, "am i at my school?"  human boys like to jump on each other and rough house, too.  and littler humans sometimes get left behind when the older kids are playing.

gorillas = my favorite zoo animals.

excellent news

yay - singler is staying for his senior year!

how not to pick a girl up

random guy at a bar this weekend, trying to pick up my friend lily*: "you're kind of hot.  how old are you?"

note: this guy did not get very far.


*name changed to protect the innocent.  even if the innocent wasn't doing anything embarrassing.

hello, sweden.

i have discovered google analytics and it is rocking my world.  in a nutshell: you can set it up for your blog or another website you administer, and then it will keep statistics about who visits your blog, where they live, and whether they have ever been to your blog before.  and lots of other things that are more important, i would imagine, to people whose website is associated with their business.  and i set up google analytics ALL BY MYSELF.  it involved copying and pasting code into my blog's HTML blah-de-blah.  and i knew how to do that.  because i am amazing.

i set this up last saturday, and since then i have been stalking you, dear readers.  google analytics can tell me the exact city that each visit comes from.  or, sort of.  my friend mike was around when i was setting up the program, and i made him go to the blog so i could see if it was working.  he works in houston during the week and his work computer's internet is routed through a server there regardless of where in the world he is, and sure enough - when he went to the blog it showed up as a visit from houston, not atlanta (where he was physically sitting).  so the information i am about to present is only sort of accurate.

this is what i have learned.  in the first seven days that i had this set up:

85 unique visitors went to my blog.  hi, 85 people!

1 person has visited from each of these countries: mali, hong kong, sweden, canada, malaysia, the philippines.  2 have visited from russia, 2 from pakistan, and 3 from the uk.

in the us, there have been visits from connecticut, massachusetts, new york, north carolina, DC, virginia, maryland, tennessee, iowa, wisconsin, texas, utah, california.  and of course georgia.

i have clearly been spending all my free time stalking you on google analytics.  i know who many of these readers are - it's clear who is visiting from north wilkesboro, nc or west hartford, ct or nashville, tn, for example, and it's really bizarre to me that google knows the exact city these visits come from.  like, google - you know where my friends live!

but who is coming from wales, wisconsin?  or mcneil, texas?  or moscow?  or mali?  or karachi, pakistan and lahore, pakistan?  (yes, dear readers, two visits from pakistan.  omg.)  the only one of these mysteries i believe i've solved is the mali one: my guess is that my friend anna in lusaka, zambia has her internet routed through mali.  i have made this decision because anna is the only person i know living in the whole continent of africa.  nevermind that mali and zambia are 3,100 miles apart.  now, i know noone in the entire continent of asia, so these must be new friends.  hi, new friends!

this makes me very curious who is reading this blog.  (in addition, i know that some people read this blog through google reader or some rss software [is that the right word?], and i don't think google analytics is picking up on that - it only records people who go to the website.)  so - blog readers one and all, far and near: out yourselves!  it would mean a lot to me if everyone (even those people whose location i know) would post a little comment and tell me who you are and where you're reading from.  inquiring minds want to know.  as a bonus: the person who is reading from the farthest location from atlanta gets a real life postcard in the mail from me (anna: you might be a shoe-in to win this one, but i'll send you a postcard even if you aren't) AND the person who can tell me the most interesting fact about their location gets a postcard in the mail.  i get to determine what is interesting and what isn't.

ready, set, COMMENT.  google analytics will let me know if you don't, and i will be very disappointed.

i know how to embed things in my blog. i am fancy.

okay, my world is complete.  i have learned how to embed NPR stories in my blog.  so you can just listen to it here!  no need for a link!  i hope you are appropriately impressed.  it was really easy to do (control-c, control-v), but i am embarrassingly proud of this:



do you guys listen to npr's sunday puzzle?  in atlanta, this airs on sunday mornings much earlier than i wake up.  so early that i don't even know what time it airs.  well, early being relative...today i got out of bed at 1:30pm.  so i get the sunday puzzle podcast and i can listen to it whenever i want.  I HEART TECHNOLOGY.

you all know at this point about my love of words and grammar and such, and that crosses over into my love of this podcast.

happy sunday!

claire the baker

for the past two fridays in a row, i have come home, watched a little tv, and then done some baking.  this is in contrast to my normal friday routine of coming home and watching a lot of tv and then going to bed.  i'm EXHAUSTED on fridays.  i am good for nothing.  i need a lot of claire time and i take that time in front of the tv, in my pajamas.  but last friday there were a whole bunch of pears in the fruit basket at school.  (yes, we have free fruit for our students and faculty to try to con them into eating better.  and it works shockingly well.)  and i knew those pears would go bad if they sat around school all weekend, so i took as many as i could carry (7) and came home and baked a pear cake that wasn't particularly pretty (that's the "old-fashioned" part of the recipe, i think, and i like that), and with whipped cream it was heavenly.  kelly and i ate a third of the cake by ourselves, standing up in the kitchen, before we even ate dinner.

this friday when i got home i made zucchini sweet potato bread, except the zucchini i bought two weeks ago when i first intended to make this bread had gone bad.  imagine that.  so it was just sweet potato bread, with walnuts and cranberries like the recipe suggests.  and it is equally heavenly.  i cooked it about 5 minutes too long, so the outside is tough, but inside it is the perfect consistency.  i ate about a third of the loaf before dinner.  joey helped this time.  (thanks to morgan for this recipe!  she introduced me to this blog and i LOVE it.)

on fridays i am good for nothing EXCEPT BAKING.  this is something i'm discovering.  there is something really relaxing about grating and cutting and combining ingredients and making a big mess and cleaning up and running the dishwasher and eating whatever i've concocted.  i've always known this, but been too lazy on a friday night to make it happen.  i still watched a lot of tv yesterday, but the baking calmed me down and put me in weekend mood than the tv did.  and i felt productive - not like the waste of space i normally am.  not that there's anything WRONG with being a waste of space.  it's pretty fabulous, actually.  but now i'm a waste of space with a full and happy belly.

some insight into me as a child

when i was little i didn't understand the phrase, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."  i was around pigs occasionally.  i can't remember if we ever had a pig, but we certainly had friends who did.  i thought their ears were kind of soft.  i thought, "why can't you make a purse out of their ears?"

as you're growing up, you reach a point in life where you realize you aren't normal or your experiences haven't been normal.  when you're very little, of course they're normal - they are all you know.  and then you meet the real world and you find out that other people don't do things the way you and your family do them.  i'm sure this happens to everyone, not just to people who grow up on a farm in a country with not very many farms.  [there were 3 times as many farms in the united states in 1935 than there are now, and there are 2.5 times as many people in the us today. (from here.)]  everybody is weird, right?  just weird in different ways.

my moment came - and i have a vivid memory of this - when i was in preschool and i was playing over at a friend's house.  maybe i was even spending the night?  it came time to change clothes (to go swimming?  go to bed?), and we went into the bathroom to change clothes, me and this little girl who was my friend.  i was like, "people change their clothes in the bathroom?"  in my house becky and i got dressed in the kitchen in front of the heater.  that was the first moment i can remember where i thought, "oh.  not everyone gets dressed in the kitchen.  we do things differently at my house."

different AWESOME, obviously.  but different.

in kindergarden i also once made a girl cry at lunch because she had a white bread sandwich and i told her that my mom said that white bread is bad for you.  but that is a story for another day.

a passing thought

i was just grading some supreme court case projects for my AP government class, and in one a student mentioned a previous court case - united states v. cruikshank.  is it bad that the first thing i thought was, "why did the united states sue hermoine's cat?"

i think perhaps i am delirious from grading.

i will never stop talking about this championship. you can't make me.

i heart march madness (as you've all figured out by now), and i love filling out a bracket and then seeing how well i'm able to predict the actual outcome.  i think most of america made some major mistakes in their brackets this year, myself included.  but will i ever be able to forgive myself for not saying duke would win the championship in a year when they actually DID?  i guess i didn't want to jinx it, or presume too much - and, honestly, i didn't think we could or we would win.  so i picked kansas.  and then cheered (loudly) against them as they lost to northern iowa.  next year i may need to go back to blind devotion to the cause.

my family does a bracket pool on espn, and this year none of us picked duke to win it all.  shame on us.  i would like to publicly give the final standings, though:

1st place: me and mom.  mom won last year, i think.  she is a fierce competitor.
3rd place: dad
4th place: brandon, my sister's boyfriend - also a duke grad.  in fact, we're all duke grads except mom, and she is an honorary graduate at this point.  she certainly cheers like one.
5th place: becky.  i love her, so i can say this out loud: her bracket was, um, not so accurate.  in fact, she didn't correctly pick any of the final four teams.  but that is okay, because she tried her hardest.  (oh, i'm such a teacher.)  she won two years ago (i think), so she is also a fierce competitor.

and this is pretty cool.

three beautiful things

i don't know how i discovered this blog, but way back when i did.  i used to read it daily, and now i catch up every once in a while.  the premise is that the author notes three things every day that make her happy; it's her antidote to noticing only the negative things in life.

here are my three beautiful things from today:
1. i don't drop my yogurt in the parking lot this morning.  it is delicious when i eat it, sitting at my desk and checking the first emails of the day.
2. after school, driving down a two lane road with the window down and the warm air streaming in.  sunglasses on.  good music coming from the radio.
3. while working at world peace cafe tonight, a couple comes in near closing.  they order dinner and a slice of cake and then go sit on the patio.  the boyfriend sneaks back in a moment later to tell me that it's his girlfriend's birthday, and do we have a candle we can put in the piece of cake when we bring it out?  we do, and i get all giggly as i get the cake ready and take it out to them.  he starts singing "happy birthday" when he sees me and she gives him a big smile.

letter from my dermatologist

hooray!

on repeat right now

my favorite new song: state radio - "keepsake."  i discovered it watching "weeds."  have i mentioned before how great the music is on that show?  yes?  okay, well i will continue to shove that lesson down your throat.

awesome

an ominous way to start your day: when walking from the car into your place of employment, you drop your wallaby yogurt, and not only does it break open (ruining your chance to eat your breakfast), but it splatters all over your pants.

SADNESS.

i will now attempt to salvage my morning by heating up some oatmeal in the microwave.  a poor substitute for my favorite yogurt, but it will have to do today.

one of the lucky ones

"And from the look on his face I could see he was one of the lucky ones, one of those people who like doing what they're good at. That's rare. When you see that in a person, you can't miss it."
--David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, pg. 416

i count myself in that lucky group; i like my job (my career - scary word), and i think i'm good at it.  this passage stuck out to me when i was reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle earlier this year, and i think he's right.  you can see that in a person.  so i thought i'd share that with you.

timescast

the new york times has started a daily video (monday-friday) that is available on their main page from 1-2pm, eastern time.  it is called timescast, and it is awesome.  it's about five minutes long, and shows the editors of the times talking around a table about what the big stories of the day are - i read several stories a day from their website, and i love getting the news plus an inside look at how the news is reported.  it makes me happy.

libels

just remembering this from one of my classes on friday:

i'm writing on the board.  i'm making a chart of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, and what each group's philosophy is on social policy and on taxation.  except i don't write "liberals," i write "libels."  and giggled a lot out loud when i realized it.

pubs

one of my coworkers sent me this link to peculiar british pubs, and asked if i'd been to the eagle and child, the pub in oxford that is on the list.  i have, though i almost didn't go there - it's the most well-known pub in oxford because j.r.r. tolkien and c.s. lewis (and probably other people so fancy that they used only their initials) used to eat and drink there, so it felt like a touristy thing to go there.  and i tried (somewhat successfully) to be as un-touristy as possible.  while we ate lunch there, probably five different groups of tourists came in, took pictures, and left, all without having a drink.  and in a country where it is totally appropriate to have a pint of beer or cider at lunch, this is silly.

i went to the eagle and child (aka "the bird and baby" if you want to sound like you are cool and local) with my friend anna (hi anna!) and two of her friends in this weird convergence of two worlds.  anna was flying through the uk last july on her way to zambia, where she has been living and working this year.  and i was in the uk.  she and i live about 400 miles apart in the us, and here we were in the same place thousands of miles away from that.  she met up with some friends for a couple days, and they came to oxford to sight see, and to see me.  we drank beer, ate lunch, bought caramel digestives (the best cookies EVER), and walked around, and it was fabulous.  anna was a year behind me at duke, but a year or two older than me in age, and we liked to call her grandma.  she and i played rugby together and became really good friends and she is wonderful and we miss her now that she is far away.  but she comes home this summer and that will be very exciting.  i don't think our paths will pass again in oxford, but i'll cross my fingers that they will.

bottom line, though - the pubs listed in the article i linked to at the top are really interesting, and you should waste time looking at them.  that is all.

coconut red lentil soup

i've linked to her blog before, but i love this chef/cookbook writer/food experimenter heidi and her vegetarian recipes.  this week i made her coconut red lentil soup, except i used green lentil, because that's what kroger had, and let it thicken until it was less soup and more stew.  DELICIOUS.  i felt like an amazing chef after making it because all the different components came together so well.  it's lentil-y and a tiny bit spicy (it feels thai because of the curry powder and coconut milk) and hearty, but also has a sweetness every once in a while from the ginger (i used pickled ginger) and the raisins.  SO GOOD.  i brought some leftovers for lunch today, and i am now counting down the hours until i can eat it.  because i live from meal to meal.  and maybe that isn't a healthy way to look at things, but it's the way i look at things - planning my next meal as i finish my last one.  who's with me on that?  (i know my sister is, because we do it together...)

david vs. daaaavid

jon stewart talking about duke basketball?  two of my favorite things combined?  oh, life is good.  (he starts talking about it at about minute 1:30, so just enjoy his first joke or two before he gets to the good stuff...)

southbound train

train tracks run right next to my neighborhood, and dozens of times a day we hear the rumble of trains going by.  i don't know what it is, but something about hearing a train go by - not the loud whistle, but the noise the train makes as it goes over the tracks - is really soothing.  these are my train tracks.  hello, train.

the sound is soothing to me in the same way that a thunderstorm is soothing - maybe it's white noise?

speaking of thunderstorms, we need one, and we're supposedly getting one today.  great green-yellow clouds of pollen are blowing off of trees and covering everything in sight.  we need some rain to clean up our city.  this radar map makes me pretty happy.

(from weatherbug)

i learned how to spell kyrgyzstan for this post

"large scale protests appear to have overthrown the government of kyrgyzstan."

we take for granted, i think, that it would take more than 17 deaths in an attempt to overthrow our government, let alone a SUCCESSFUL attempt where the president flees for his life to norway.  yikes.  this is scary and unstable.  and i had to go to google maps to find kyrgyzstan.


and, since in 2010, there are immediately videos of it on youtube.  of course there are.  videos of people in suits coming from the office and riot police and shots being fired.  what crazy world is this that we are living in - where there is immediacy like this?

drag race

for people who are tired of reading about basketball, i offer this:

on sunday i went to a drag race with willis and dani.

that is, i went to an event in which drag queens raced in high heels.  they call it a drag race.  this entertains me greatly.

it actually sounds more interesting than it was.  it was fun, certainly - we scoped out boys for willis, saw lots of men in tacky drag outfits, were horrified when families with small children walked by, and giggled at the races.  but it was also hot, and i melt in the heat.  we stayed about an hour and then left for air conditioning.  because it was in the high 80s this weekend.  WHERE DID SPRING GO?  WHO TOOK HER HOSTAGE?  I DEMAND SPRING BACK!  it is supposed to cool down a bit starting thursday, and rain some, which we need.  then, hopefully, i will have my spring back.

text message record

a selection of text messages received:

9:58pm - nora: i may not live to age 27 if this game continues as such.
10:16pm - jenny: fritz has already damaged his laptop slamming it shut repeatedly.
10:33pm - nora: not going to lie, i have a mini-crush on the butler coach.  if he's the cause of my death it will affect my attraction to him.
11:00pm - becky: only at a duke bar are thirty percent of the fans wearing suits and ties.
11:38pm - jenny: +1000 for zoubek!!!
11:39pm - nora: duuuuuuuuuke!
11:40pm - becky: OMG!!!!!!!!!!  zoubs is a herooooooooo
11:52pm - nora: now i can more openly have a crush on the butler coach, whose name i can never remember.
12:48am - new york times news alert: duke wins NCAA men's basketball championship


here is a great sports illustrated article.  more thoughts later.  let's just say that my heart was beating a thousand miles per hour for the full two hours last night, reaching a fever pitch with about a minute left to play.  i shouldn't have even gone to the gym yesterday; the game gave me a workout for my heart that can best any cardio routine.  zoubs and duke: you have attained greatness.  i knew you were capable of it.  what a team.  SO sad that the season is over, but what a way to end it.

(photo courtesy of the new york times)

duke vs. butler

in honor of the game tonight.  i love this photo:

rip 'em up, tear 'em up, give 'em hell DUKE!


(thanks to dolan and willis for finding this!)

photo

courtesy of the new york times, this is the photo of butler and huggins from last night that i think says it all:

and i didn't say it in the earlier post, but i totally got teary during this moment of the game.  having to watch butler in such pain, writhing on the floor, and then to have huggins come in to comfort him...so touching.  such a human moment...they were two people in that moment, not a player and a coach.

i will take back all the bad things i said about huggins wearing a warm up suit and not a real suit when he coaches

hobbits love the scheyer

is it bad that this doesn't feel real?  that it doesn't feel like duke's playing in the national championship game on monday?  i think it's because i know that duke has imperfections, that we don't have any superstar players, that as recently as february we had games where we played like CRAP, and even in this tournament we've had moments were we struggled.  when we made this run the last time it was in 2001, and we had battier, williams, dunleavy, boozer.  two of those players had their jerseys retired quickly.  THAT was a team of superstars.  i know that basketball has changed in ten years - that more players leave to go pro before finishing four years, so we may never see a team like that again.  and a team like ours - a great TEAM, as coach k said - may be able to win it all.

but it just doesn't feel real.  we played a great game last night - by the end, we were clearly a better team, or a team having a better night.  i'm such a happy girl - and so proud of what they've accomplished.  i know that real athletes play to WIN, but i watch duke basketball for the forty minutes of entertainment.  i like it a lot when we win, but i'm really along for the ride, good season or bad season.  and this is a good season.

I LOVE COLLEGE BASKETBALL SEASON.  come on, devils - let's win one more!


[i will also never get the image out of my mind of bob huggins leaning over da'sean butler and cradling his face and talking him through the pain and the devastation of his season ending right there.  the most tender moment.  you could tell how much huggins loves his players in that single unplanned and unanticipated interaction.]

more pink

a week ago the tulips were just budding and now they are nearing the end of their lives.  still so beautiful, though.  in this photo they are soaking up the heat.  i think they look pretty happy.

bottom line: i love the colors of spring.

final four

charlie rose did a really nice interview with coach k that i've been watching this afternoon.  if you have a spare 30 minutes and care about these things, check it out!

i woke up nervous.  my nerves will be on end all day, i know.  it's final four day.  LET'S GO DUKE!

flowering tree confetti

now begins the time of year when the streets of my neighborhood become covered in the petals from flowering trees...

spring evening

71 degrees when i left world peace cafe at 10:15pm tonight.

drove part of the way home with the windows down.

no school tomorrow.

ceiling fan on in my bedroom.

will be sleeping with the windows open.

[correction: will be sleeping AS LONG AS I WANT HOORAY NO SCHOOL TOMORROW with the windows open.]

atlanta: i am in love with you.

wilkes county

when i saw my parents last weekend, claire #2 and i were telling them that we're going to see the zac brown band in atlanta in may and we are SO EXCITED.  my mom then told us two facts, one of which is true and one of which is not.

fact #1: the zac brown band is coming to merlefest this year!  (a quick google search confirmed this.  i was impressed that my mom (a) had heard of the band, and (b) remembered that they were coming to merlefest.  merlefest, for those who don't know, is this big mostly-bluegrass music festival that happens in my hometown every may.)

fact #2: my mom then says, "zach galifianakis, the drummer in the band, is from wilkes county!  i know his mom!"  my dad was EXTREMELY skeptical.  (so was i.  in fact, i did no research and just wrote this off as false information.  it was interesting, though, that she came up with this [unusual] name seemingly out of nowhere.  perhaps she was on to something.)  fast forward two weeks.  last night i was on facebook.  for those who don't know, facebook suggests friends for you if you know people in common or went to the same school.  there on my facebook homepage was this: "become friends with zach galifianakis.  you both went to wilkes central high school."  HOLY SHIT.  now, he is not in the zac brown band, but my mom was right about something.

wilkes county will now be famous for: lowes foods and lowes hardware starting there, having a nascar racetrack once-upon-a-time, tom dooley, merlefest, famous siamese twins who lived here, and the birthplace of the longest serving senator in us history.  and zach galifianakis.

easter

for easter, instead of a baby chick or a baby bunny, i would like a baby otter.  this is the cutest thing i have EVER SEEN.