One Day More ...

... until the Madness begins. Yes, everyone, it's that time of year again! Yesterday was the first day I went outside and sat in a park and read a book without feeling like I was going to freeze my tush. Oh, the return of spring always makes me happy. I'm reminded of Bambi when everything starts growing again and everybody gets all lovey-dovey and engaged and married and all that stuff. Twitterpated is right, Friend Owl. However, spring always brings on an event (or series of events, since it lasts a few weeks) that seems to deny all that love we should be feeling. At least, it does in the Kelly family. That's right, everyone. I capitalized Madness on purpose! March Madness is here, much to combined delight and chagrin of my family.

Now, I have not paid any attention at all to college basketball this year, despite my access to a television and espn (gasp! horror! megan doesn't get her nightly sportscenter fixes like every male in her family?) and my next-door neighbors. However, this year I finally branched out and made picks for a bracket so that I, too, could participate in this year's Tournament Challenge with the rest of the Kelly Klan. The real pull of joining up is simply to see everybody's trash talk on the page, mocking picks and rubbing losses in the faces of those who are steadily drifting to the bottom (which i guarantee will be me). In fact, my dad and I have exchanged a couple of text messages in which I have derided his hopes of being the first two-time winner. Where's the love?

All I can say in explanation of my family is that, while we are passionate about silly things like basketball (oh, i'm going to get it for calling basketball "silly) and while we can individually be quite emotional and loud about it, we are not an overly sentimental group. The love's there, but we usually express it by quoting movies and recapping sports moments together. Refer to last year's (almost to the day) post about just the Jensens and football. Really. This is what my family gets into. So, it ought to be an interesting couple of weeks. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the brackets of those with futile hopes that BYU will actually make it past the first round (again, i am one of those). Bring it on!

-Me

"In accordance with our principles of free enterprise and healthy competition, I'm going to ask you two to fight to the death for it." -Monty Python