Fred and Valerie

I’m a touch bitter about the Auburn women’s basketball team getting knocked off by Rutgers last night, but I don’t think I’d be the only one who found the following just flat out crazy. Where else, in a tournament setting, can you find such blatant disregard for seeding? The upsets are listed in bold.

FIRST ROUND
#11 Georgia vs. #6 Arizona State (Duluth, GA): 53 miles vs. 1,868 miles

#15 Lehigh vs. #2 Auburn (Piscataway, NJ): 58 miles vs. 947 miles

#13 Montana vs. #4 Pittsburgh (Seattle, WA): 478 miles vs. 2,526 miles

#12 Gonzaga vs. #5 Xavier (Seattle, WA): 281 miles vs. 2,399 miles

#10 San Diego St. vs. #7 DePaul (SDSU Home Court; San Diego, CA): 0 miles vs. 2,077 miles

#9 Temple vs. #8 Florida (Storrs, CT): 233 miles vs. 1,139 miles

#15 Evansville vs. #2 Texas A&M (South Bend, IN): 321 miles vs. 1,210 miles

#10 TCU vs. #7 South Dakota St. (Lubbock, TX): 314 miles vs. 1,070 miles

Obviously, it doesn’t matter too much with some of the First Round games, particularly games like #15 Lehigh against #2 Auburn. But, when you have #9 Michigan St. playing, literally, at home in East Lansing, MI and #8 Iowa playing in their home arena in Iowa City, IA and #6 LSU playing in their home arena in Baton Rouge, LA, it makes you wonder why a #2 seed like Auburn has to go all the way to New Jersey or a #4 like Pittsburgh has to go all the way to Seattle or a #2 like Texas A&M has to go to South Bend, IN instead of Lubbock, TX, like #10 TCU.

And things get worse in the Second Round with most of the lower seeds out of the tournament.

SECOND ROUND
#5 Kansas St. vs. #4 Vanderbilt (Albuquerque, NM): 727 miles vs. 1,220 miles

#12 Gonzaga vs. #4 Pittsburgh (Seattle, WA): 281 miles vs. 2,526 miles

#7 Rutgers vs. #2 Auburn (Rutgers Home Court; Piscataway, NJ): 0 miles vs. 947 miles

#10 San Diego St. vs. #2 Stanford (SDSU Home Court; San Diego, CA): 0 miles vs. 477 miles

#10 Minnesota vs. #2 Texas A&M (South Bend, IN): 501 miles vs. 1,210 miles

#9 Michigan St. vs. #1 Duke (MSU Home Court; East Lansing, MI): 0 miles vs. 740 miles

#12 Ball St. vs. #4 Iowa St. (Bowling Green, KY): 285 miles vs. 725 miles

#6 LSU vs. #3 Louisville (LSU Home Court; Baton Rouge, LA): 0 miles vs. 759 miles

I don’t think it’s necessary to ensure that the higher seed always plays closer to home, but these examples are just flat out ridiculous. #1 Duke had gone 11 straight seasons of winning their first two games in the NCAA tournament and now, because the tournament committee saw fit to send a #1 seed to the home court of a potential opponent, they’re out of the tournament. A #1 seed playing a true away game?!?!?!?!?! If it wasn’t for real, I’d think it was a joke.

Four true home court games for the lower seeds in the second round of the women’s NCAA tournament is stupid. Maybe next year they should all just reject NCAA bids and go with the NIT where the higher seed always has a home game.

I didn’t actually finish A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906; I’m just finished with it. After slogging through page after page of this Geology lesson for weeks, I started flipping the pages to get to the text about the actual earthquake. After all, with a title as great as this book’s is, one would think there would be a lot of great writing about the Great California Earthquake of 1906. And one would be wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.

Instead, readers are “treated” to seemingly unending pages and chapters of earthquakes in other regions, the constant beating over the head of the idea of plate tectonics (yes, we get it, there are plates and they shift and move and cause earthquakes, now MOVE ON!!!), and stories about people that the reader never gets enough story about in order to actually care.

The worst part was getting to the pages and chapters that told the story of the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (it’s about 250-300 pages in, depending on how much fluff you care to read) and realizing that the “story” was little more than a laundry list of events. The reader would probably be better served with a set of bullet points:

• All was calm.
• Some people were returning from the nightshift and others were waking up for the dayshift.
• The earthquake struck.
• A lot of people panicked.
• And died.
• There were fires.
• Lots of fires.
• Did I mention there were a lot of fires?
• And that a lot of people died?
• Over 3,000 people died.
• Oh, and plate tectonics explains most of the earthquakes in the world, particularly the San Andreas Fault in the case of this earthquake, except for a few earthquakes that geologists still can’t explain.
• The widely accepted magnitude of the earthquake is 7.7 and the epicenter was located about 2 miles out into the Pacific Ocean.
• The End

There, I just saved you about a month worth of time of trying to get through Simon Winchester’s borefest.

Next Up: The Best American Sports Writing (2006)

When we returned from our quick First Anniversary trip, we took the top of our wedding cake out of the freezer and put it into the refrigerator to defrost. We weren’t sure what to expect because we hadn’t properly sealed the cake, but after having a taste, we realized it was actually quite good. The only downside was that the outside frosting wasn’t that great, but as soon as we scraped that off we had good cake to eat and have been having some every night this past week. We’re down to the last bit and it’s been nice to have the First Anniversary cake for an entire week.

A few panoramic photos from our quick First Anniversary trip to Madrid and Paris.

• March 6, 2009 – Madrid – Real Madrid Stadium (High View)
• March 6, 2009 – Madrid – Real Madrid Stadium (Lower View)
• March 6, 2009 – Madrid – Real Madrid Stadium (Pitch View)
• March 7, 2009 – Paris – Notre Dame
  

It took a while for us to get a major snowfall in Virginia, but the storm we got last night certainly made up for it. Overall, we got over six inches here in Stuarts Draft, but other areas to the West of us had upwards of a foot of snow. Because of some project commitments, I had to drive into work, while Valerie stayed home for the day.

It wasn’t a terrible drive, except for the part where I almost hit a girl crossing the road. I was driving on the U.Va. connector road in Charlottesville and, because it was slick, I was only going about 10 MPH. Still, as I rounded the corner and topped the hill, I saw a girl heading towards the crosswalk completely oblivious to me and my car and the slick conditions. I tried to hit my brakes a touch and that wasn’t going to happen; the road was just too slick to stop in time. Thus, I honked my horn and she stopped and proceeded to give me a “You’re supposed to stop for people in the crosswalk” look! It’s amazing to me how people (see: students) seem to think a crosswalk makes them invincible.

The drive back home was much easier and the roads were almost completely dry.  However, with temperatures as low as 2° tonight, I don’t expect the snow everywhere else to melt off any time soon.