stripethree

I can’t believe it’s the end of the month already. It went something like this…

Happy New Year // Watched the Red Wings beat the Coyotes // Ahhh crap, someone stole my credit card… // Tucson SCCA Meeting // Dodgeball // Got a present for the R // New Autocross Tires! // Autocross in Phoenix // Tucson SCCA Meeting // Dodgeball Tournament // TUS -> IAH -> DCA // Sherlock Holmes // Fantastic Lunch with the all the family in VA // Watched the Terps beat up Longwood // Downtown Silver Spring // RJ Bentley’s College Park, hooray Yuegling! // DCA -> IAH -> TUS // Tried to see how much tire I could stuff under the R32 // Autocross in Tucson // Old Chicago //More R32 parts… // New Season of Dodgeball! // Work Deadlines… // Work Annual Reviews // Hooray refunds from CC disputes! // House Hunting!

Whew.

… but the roller coaster stays the same. Oh Maryland basketball, how you mystify me. There hasn’t always been a lot to cheer for this year with losses at home to Virginia Commonwealth, Boston College, American, and Ohio. American? Didn’t we chant ‘Metro is that way’ whilst beating them by 40+ back in Cole Field house? How did this happen? I still watch what games I get out here in the desert, I cheer, curse, throw things and try to look at the bright side of things, but I wasn’t all that thrilled before this weekend’s game at Chapel Hill. Prospects didn’t look good.

Then you go into the Dean Dome and knock off the previously undefeated, #1 ranked Tar Heels in a great game. Neither team played it’s absolute best, but it was a great game and Maryland knocked off the nation’s number 1 for the 7th time in Gary William’s tenure. All you idiots that were calling for his head, take your foot and shove it down your throat. No, one win does not a season make, but if you doubt Gary’s ability to get his kids to play, you’re blind. If you doubt what he can accomplish with what many of you call ‘less than the best’ in recruits, I’d like you to recall the how highly recruited the roster of our 2002 title team was, because they really weren’t. So please, shut up and support the damn team or just shut up. No, this doesn’t make the early seasons losses at home any less embarrassing, but it certainly, hopefully, wakes up a team that many had left for dead until next year.

I just hope the team that showed up today shows up again, and again, and again, and keeps getting better.

Oh, and c’mon UNC fans, I thought you were better than that, going and pulling a ‘Duke’ and weeping over your loss. Maybe you were following your coach’s lead? (Ouch, ok, cheap shot ) Who knows, but one loss does not your season make and we’ll probably see you all playing deep into March. So grab some Kleenex, chill out, and go root against those kids wearing darker blue down in Durham who’s fans were spotted on ESPN high-fiving Clemson faithful upon hearing of your loss. If there were ever a game where I wish both teams could lose, but I guess the ‘lesser of two evils’ rule applies.

Just ask Duke (twice) and Carolina.

Keep it up boys.

What the hell happened. This is not Gary William’s type basketball. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad that I don’t get most of the games out here, instead I scream at ESPN’s Gamecast, which doesn’t quite have the same effect. My laptop is already struggling, please don’t anger me to the point of further damaging it.

Fix it. Quickly. 5-2 in the remaining ACC schedule is do-able. Steal one from Duke. Close the door against BC, unlike last time. Beat the teams you should beat (NC State), already have beat (Clemson), and who have no business beating you by nearly 20 (Florida State). And go watch some Under Armour commericals, because you must protect your home court.

That is all.

Unfortunately Maryland is not on TV. In fact, it’s the only Top 25 game going on right now that ESPN is not gamecasting. What gives?

This is the one sport I can watch a game (Memphis – Tennessee currently) that I have no vested interest in, but still find entertaining.

Oh.

Go Terps!

As usual of late, watching Maryland basketball is a painstaking experience so the game is on mute and I will glance, or grimace, at the score every once in a while. The apartment is empty, left for me alone for a week and a half, and even thought I’m feeling a tad sick (maybe that pasta was in there longer than I thought), I’m happily relaxed for the first time in a while. As potentially nerve wrecking as a the first meeting with a girlfriend’s family can be, I found it to be quite the opposite. Maybe it was the experience, I mean, well, let’s just say that given past experience nothing really would have surprised me. Maybe it was that I was getting of town for a short stint, to somewhere new, where stresses and worries couldn’t possibly follow all the way to the end of I-66 and I-81. Or maybe it was the car ride to Tennesse, staying awake for the majority of an eleven-hour marathon in order to help keep a beautiful, smiling driver awake and on the road. Possibly. One might think an eleven-hour car ride with you and better half of this relatively young relationship would be potential for well, awkward silence in the very least. Again, I’m wrong, time and time again. Sure, it wasn’t a non-stop banter of everything we didn’t already know about one another, but we had to do something, I mean, someone forgot their CDs and we were left with nothing but a single disc for eleven-hours; one can only take so much John Mayer. So what happened, might you ask? It was so natural and comfortable that it was almost awkward in it’s comfort (thanks to me and my keen observations), if that makes any sense whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, if I am faced with the grim prospect of having to ride eleven-hours in a Cavalier again and I can only pick one person to come with me, well, I know who it will be. I know, I’m such a nerd. I managed to get lessons in politics, was given a motivation to stop being so intellectually lazy (as I called it) as I have of late, and I think I might have even unconsciously set some of those goals that I thought I was sorely in need of to provide me with some direction. I can only hope that the pilot on this little journey was able to get half as much out of this as I was.

It’s funny, because in many respects, our personalities are very different but they end up balancing so well. You realize it after the fact, through various, not insignificant but at the same time, not overly significant moments that make you smile inexplicably when you remember them.

—

Alright, enough distraction by this poor excuse for basketball. Maryland, you frustrate me with your underachievement.

Anyway, there must be a way to get back into the groove. I sit on this couch for way too much of my time, letting myself think just a little too long about the things that distress me. Money, school, work and the more minor things that in one way or another fall under one of those three realms. It is not that there is even a problem to solve, just that I am again, impatient, and seek too often for an immediate means to an end, even if that end is further off than even I can plan. More carefree, less careless. There’s a rather large difference in those two things to me, if not for you, well, to each his own. It’s acyclic, this little issue of mine, given that I get myself wound up over things, then get wound up about getting wound up. It can be stopped; it must be stopped; ok, now we’re getting slightly overdramatic. At least I can laugh at myself in all this swirl of insanity though right?

Well, I’m going to wrap this up for now, I’m getting distracted by instant message conversations, a crashing instant message application, and the ever increasing drama of this college basketball game. Dammit, and once again it’s way past my ideal bedtime.

Less than 48 hours until the beach, and even if it is only partly sunny and somewhere in the low 50′s, it’s out of College Park. It’s spending as much time at a bar as I usually spend at a computer. Florida is going to be golden, sunny and 80′s all week apparently (I’m not the one that’s been watching the weather religiously, but those who have will probably scold me and tell me I should).

Curse you Michael Holley (The Boston Globe) for picking UTEP as your most likely first round upset on Around the Horn today. The other Michael on PTI (Wilbon, The Washington Post) acknowledged the 4 seed as overrated, but picked the Terps to possibly go as far or further than St. Joe’s. I’m sure the Philly faithful love that. Oh wait, they are either too busy either drooling over Terrel Owens (overpaid) or bitching about Allen Iverson, who, by the way, should not be traded because he IS that franchise. Did they learn nothing when they traded a guy named Barkley and then cellar-dwelled until AI came along? And has anyone taken a look at the Georgetown basketball program since he and a guy named John Thompson left? AI does need to do more of his “talking” on the court, even in practice.

Cheers to the beach. I’ll catch you on the flip side.

This weekend had some of the best college basketball I have ever watched. Although Maryland’s games, and the ACC tournament as a whole are definitely at the top of that list, I cannot remember when I was this interested by the games in other conferences. It’s tourney time, and even though we got a higher seed that we probably should have (c’mon, let’s be honest here), this team’s got potential. It wouldn’t be March Madness though without some “wtf”s from the selection committee: Why put the last two national champions in the same bracket, potentially meeting in the second round? Why are Gonzaga and Oklahoma State not 1 seeds? Why, instead, do we have two 1 seeds that did not even win their respective conference tournaments? I’m sure there are more…

I love this year’s tourney though, just on the fact that I haven’t the slightest clue on who to pick to get to the Final Four. All ACC? Do you know how much that would rock? Anyway, time to sleep on it. Here’s to another kick ass weekend. Three days until the beach and seven until Florida. Rock on.