a photo a day

rivalry!

my department chair's daughter goes to syracuse, and we've had an ongoing fun rivalry this year.  i teach in his classroom, so we switch places for two hours a day - he sits in my office and does work while i'm in his classroom.  on monday i had printed out the ACC tournament schedule and it was lying on my desk.  i came back after class and he had vandalized it!

except, because he is the nicest guy ever, he made a copy before he vandalized it, so i still have an unadulterated version for following the tournament.  (can i just say - leaving the syracuse bracket on my desk was awesome, and not ruining my one copy was even more awesome.)

go duke!!

9:40pm?  i have to wait until 9:40pm for this duke game to even start?  sheesh, i say.

go devils!

great article from the new york times about jason (fine, i'll learn to call him jay) williams.  and yes, i got teary while reading it.  duke won a national championship when i was a freshman, and as a lifelong duke fan it was an incredible experience to be a student when that happened.  over the four years i was at duke i went to almost every home game - certainly 95% of them.  jason williams and i overlapped for 2 years and it was amazing to watch him play.

end of the those-were-the-good-old-days rant.  just read the article.

best. day. ever.

saturday was pretty much the best day ever.

on saturday afternoon i went to a duke game, which is a VERY exciting event in and of itself.  even better?  we scored free tickets in the first row, center court.  now, we'd bought tickets already (which we then gave away so as to keep the karma gods happy), so these were not really free tickets, but they were incredible seats.  with four friends.  and duke won in a nailbiter.  all of this leads to a happy claire.

in this photo that i took of a tv screen (embarrassing, but true), you can see us - upper right hand corner!  put on your glasses!  i'm above the "e" in "applebees," behind the woman in the ref's shirt (she's the official scorer).  thomas, mike, and andy are to my left.

after the game we met up with three other friends for a late lunch, and while there we realized that no one had plans for the evening.  a plan was hatched to make dinner - free pasta (thomas and lindsey learned how to make this a couple years ago)

+ made-from-scratch sauce (kelly is a pro and made a meat sauce and a veggie sauce - love her!)

+ fresh ricotta (yours truly with kelly as my assistant)

= ravioli!

lindsey made two salads (one for the girls, with delicious things in it, and one for the boys with...cheese on it).

joey and his dad bottle wine, so we had "homemade" wine (or, as mike coined it, "homo-made" - which i hope offends no one, as it did not offend the gay man - we're the kind of friend group that can say this with total love and humor).

kelly did double duty and made tiramisu, as well!!  (kelly - i need this recipe!)

mike promised to clean up afterwards, which he did, and other claire brought beer.

it was honestly the best night ever in a long list of best nights ever.  i have an amazing group of friends, and we laughed our way through the preparation of this feast.  how the food tasted at the end almost didn't matter (though for the record it was delicious).  signs that you're getting old: this is more fun than going out to a bar.  eek.  i can't believe i just said that.

today is the one year anniversary of being snowed in together (you may remember my live-blogging of the occasion).  i'm reminded day after day, year after year of how truly lucky i am.  have i found myself a hot/kind/funny/special man yet?  no i have not.  but i have found myself some best friends for life.  and i'm doing pretty well.

coach k started coaching basketball at duke before i was born.  literally.  i have been a duke fan since i was a little kid, and duke has always equaled coach k.  tonight coach k has the opportunity to win his 903rd college basketball game, the most of any coach in men's division I ever.  i can't WAIT to watch.

when coach k stops coaching, i'm not exactly sure what i'll do.  i hope we have many more years before we have to worry about that.

let's go duke!

more basketball talk

(i know some of you are yawning and moving on...but allow me this for the next two weeks...)

11 big east teams made the NCAA tournament; 2 are left.
4 ACC teams made the tournament; 3 are left.

take THAT, big east!

(go duke!)

impatient

being #79 on the list at the library for a book you REALLY want to read is lame and frustrating, so last night i bought mockingjay (the 3rd hunger games book) on amazon.com for $7.98 and i'm considering it money well spent.  to bring my order up to $25 and earn free shipping i was forced (happily) to buy some other books, too.  now i just have to clear my schedule so that when mockingjay arrives i can read as much as possible in a short period of time.  these books are THAT good.

in other news, who else is counting down the hours until march madness (really) starts?  by my count we're less than 24 hours away.  and 51ish hours away from duke's first game.  with kyrie???  crossing my fingers!  i LOVE this time of year.

since i last blogged i've eaten french fries again, tater tots, another chai latte, and i've drank (drunk?) several beers while watching duke games. spring break eating might be delicious while it's happening, but i feel like crap now that it's over.

i'm committing myself to a week long detox - no sodas, no caffeine, no alcohol, no fried foods, lots of vegetables. starting…6 hours ago. ideally, right, that would be how i ate and drank all the time, but, um, that doesn't always happen. (see: the last 7 days.) so! week long detox to stop feeling so YUCK.

also, let's be excited about these things:
duke beat carolina (convincingly)!
duke earned a #1 seed in the tournament!
my flight back to atlanta was overbooked, so i volunteered to give up my seat for a flight two hours later - and earned myself a $400 delta travel voucher. yesssss!
(that flight was then delayed an hour - BOO - but three hours of wait time [while reading half broke horses and watching the good wife] for $400 of delta money is still a pretty great deal.)

real world, i will greet you when my alarm goes off at 6:30 tomorrow morning.

is it acceptable to eat french fries for three meals in a row?

because i have.  along with sandwiches.  both the sandwiches and the french fries were delicious.  spring break is a little bit of an excuse to eat things you wouldn't normally eat (like french fries for three meals in a row).  i've also had three chai lattes in the past week.  those were pretty delicious, too.  i love spring break.

in addition to french fries and chai lattes, we've played trivia (3rd place!  and my visit to ketchum, idaho earned us a correct answer to one question.  incredible, i know.), i spent yesterday afternoon at the newseum (incredible - i highly recommend it), and spent yesterday evening drinking fruity beers and watching duke beat maryland (always a good thing).

today nora and rachel and i are going to a craft fair and then to a bar to watch the duke-virginia tech game (eek i'm nervous).  minus the nerves, it's looking to be a pretty excellent day.  DC is treating me right.

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

spring break from blogging

see what i did there?  a little "before and after" a la jeopardy.  you notice that watson didn't have to face any "before and after" categories because there's no WAY he could have gotten those answers.  go ken!!

i'm headed up to DC today to visit some wonderful old friends and regular blog readers (nora "the playlistress" from TIP, rachie from duke [we played rugby together and were roommates in the rugby house senior year - yes, readers, i lived in a rugby house], and morgan from duke [we took lots of history classes together]) and i could not be more excited.  this weekend will be filled with really special friends, lots* of duke basketball watching, good food, trivia, a trip to the newseum, and other glorious things.

yay hooray.

i'll have minimal internet access while out of town, so excuse my absence.  i'll be back in a couple days!


*nolan, kyle, seth, mason, and ryan (or as nora calls him, r. kelly): the amount of duke basketball watching i get to do depends on you.  fight for it!!

boo

"storming the floor is probably not necessary when a team is ranked 13 and beats #4.  poor form."
--text message from becky to me, received at 10:03pm

"okay: classless to storm the court when you are ranked #13 in the nation."
--text message from me to becky, sent at 10:03pm

we sent essentially the same text message to each other at the same moment, our little messages passing one another in the magic text message ether between our phones.  that's pretty much the only fun thing about tonight's game.

never graduate

i couldn't find the ad i wanted - from the late '90s (i think): two mice, injected with blood from a duke basketball player (wojo) and a unc basketball player, fight it out (does anyone remember this?  the internet is not being helpful), so this will have to do:



go duke!

go to hell, carolina, go to hell!

you know what i'll be doing tonight at 9pm: watching the duke-unc game at the local duke club bar.  actually, you might not have known that...since i am an old lady who doesn't like to leave her house to watch a game that starts that late.  i won't get home until 11:30 at the earliest, and that is an exhausting idea.  my old-lady-ness has been mocked, though, so i'm going to (wo)man up and go out to watch the game with my duke friends.  it'll be more fun, certainly, than watching it at home.  and i can always take a nap (if i set more than one alarm) beforehand.

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

in the mail today

whoever lived at our address before us - granted, this would have been three and a half years ago, since that's how long my roommate and i have been at this address - was a carolina fan.  [cue scary music.]  how do i know?  we are still receiving this magazine monthly.

[image from here.]

now, a good duke fan would have realized by now that he hadn't forwarded his duke basketball magazine to his new address...but i guess you can't give carolina fans as much credit.  so it arrives every month and promptly goes in the trash.  and i feel a little sick-o joy every time this happens.

don't judge me.

online shopping is dangerous

i don't know what happened this weekend, but all of a sudden i was in DUKE BASKETBALL MODE (even though we're still college football season...but as i care not-at-all about football, it's easy to move past it) and needed new duke t-shirts.  my favorite one will always be a blue one that just says "duke" on it and that i bought while i was still a student...but when there are multiple games a week a girl needs a little variety.  so i bought these:

(both from amazon.com)

they are old school and (hopefully) adorable.  i'll report back once they arrive.  i may or may not be really really excited about them.

and about basketball season.

excellent news

yay - singler is staying for his senior year!

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.

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...)

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!)