FINAL FOUR!! Georgia Tech is going to San Antonio! Woohoo, go Jackets!! Makes me wish I were still at Tech so I could really share in the excitement; Katie left me a voicemail yesterday sounding ecstatic. 🙂 Despite my crappy picks, I am actually winning the March Madness pool I’m in with the same guys I play fantasy baseball with. My picks sucked through the early rounds, but I did successfully pick three of the Final Four (Tech, Duke, and Oklahoma State) so I’m ahead by a point! Too bad there’s only pride at stake, instead of money.
It was a good weekend, but too short as usual. Friday night I hung out at Becca’s to play Cranium, watch the Tech game, and put a nice ending on my 26th birthday. I do love my birthday. It’s never about the presents, though you’d think it was from the amount I hint at it being my bday. I just love being told “happy birthday,” as it always makes me smile. I even sang the birthday song to myself on Friday morning. Every year I stretch the occasion out as long as I can; I just feel like it’s impossible not to be happy on your birthday! This year it lasted five days: from Wednesday night’s dinner at Lupe’s through yesterday. Ah. I am old. But at least I have a good time getting older.
Saturday morning I played soccer with my coed team, and we won! Woohoo! The final score was 1-0, but we really dominated the other team more than that score indicates. They were not happy that we were beating them either; they got more and more obviously frustrated as the game wore on, until they were yelling at each other as the ball pinballed up and down the tiny Gilruth field. It was nice for our team to get a win; we have really improved a lot. I hope I can say the same for my women’s team when our spring season starts next week!
After soccer I took a trip to the batting cages with Jason, where I made good contact with the ball (why can’t I do that during games??) and ripped a nice blister on my thumb. Ow. I need to wear a glove if I’m gonna swing more than about 30 pitches. From there it was home for a brief bit, then off to the Aeros game, where it was bobblehead night. I have to say, I am really impressed with the bobbleheads we got–they aren’t dinky flimsy plastic things, no…they are nice ceramic heavy-duty bobbleheads! I brought mine to work, where Aeros right wing Dan Cavanaugh now sits on my desk and agrees with everything I say.
I just went to find his bio to make that link, and in reading it I realized he’s younger than me. 24 years old and he already has his own bobblehead. Nice.
Maybe they should make a series of rocket scientist bobbleheads. I think I could sell a couple of me. I’d buy one.
Anyway. I finished the weekend with a very busy Sunday. I got up early to go for a bike ride. My destination was Pine Gully Park over in Seabrook, the plan being that I was going to find Debbie’s geocache with my new GPS handheld (yes, I am a gadget freak). It was really windy, which slowed me down a bit, and the park was a little farther away than I thought–6.5 miles as the crow flies, but more than 11 as the Sarah bikes! By the time I got there, I knew I’d be cutting it close to get back to my apartment by 11:00, when people were coming over to carpool to lunch, so I decided not to search for the cache and instead turned right around to ride home. I ended up going 24 miles in all, and made it home 20 minutes before 11, just in time to shower.
From there, Jen, Becca, Jason, Debbie and I headed over to the Galleria for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, which was yummy even though our waiter was really slow. From there we headed a couple miles down the road to REI, where, armed with my yearly dividend, 20% off coupon, and birthday gift certificate from my awesome parents, I bought a backpack and a tent. I already have a backpack, but it’s for traveling, not hiking/camping. And I already have a tent, but it’s huge and heavy and also not for backcountry hiking/camping. So….now I have great new stuff, and am dying to go break it in! You can click on the links to see exactly what I bought. At 4650 cubic inches, the backpack is a little larger than I had planned on getting, and I won’t need all that space for our relatively short Colorado trip…but with a 20% off coupon, it was very affordable, and I can compress the space I don’t need for a short trip but still have the space if/when I do a longer trip.
You know, sometimes I hesitate to go to REI, because they often charge a bit more for equipment you can find cheaper online…but I keep finding myself going back because they are so helpful. We were there for an hour and a half trying on backpacks, and the salesman was great. He stayed with us the whole time, answered all our questions and even gave me score updates on the Tech game! He was just awesome. I feel like I should write the store a letter praising his customer service.
After REI, Jason and Debbie and I went tromping around in the woods and found two geocaches, then it was finally home for tired ol’ me. I vacuumed finally, admired my new gear, and watched Mona Lisa Smile. It was ok, but I had expected more. Back to the video store it goes.
That’s a nice tent. I would have bought that one but got an awesome deal on a Sierra Designs Clip Flashlight CD with footprint at the REI scratch and dent sale in ATL.
Yeah, I’ve had my eye on it since before Christmas. Seemed to be the best bang for the buck. I can hardly wait to go to Colorado!
You should write a letter!
I’m all about letter writing.