I am very happy that I'm not the only person doing posts in honor of national poetry month! Keep sharing your favorites, guys.

Pediatric neurology continues to go well. In clinic I tend to see about 6 patients a day. I've seen a wide assortment of seizure disorders, in addition to developmental disorders, movement disorders... and a few good old fashioned headaches. Trying to puzzle out diagnoses for the new patients is pretty cool. So is trying to figure out the best medication plan for the return patients. Overall it's been much more of a mental challenge than general peds clinic. Tomorrow, I switch over to the inpatient consults side. Although whenever there aren't any consults to be seen, I'll be right back in clinic.

I just got home from Nashville 4 Africa, a benefit concert featuring the African Children's Choir. I haven't been talking the concert up because I didn't even know it was happening until Monday. That's when one of the residents I'm working with offered me an extra ticket that she had. I thought it might be awkward to go hang out with a bunch of residents, so I considered being antisocial and claiming that I had something else to do tonight. I'm so glad I didn't. The concert was amazing!! I'm not a country music fan, but even I could appreciate seeing Keith Urban, Dierks Bentley, and Faith Hill all performing with the children's choir. There were also appearances by Jars of Clay, Third Day, and Brad Arnold (the lead singer of Three Doors Down)-- all bands I did my fair share of listening to in the mid-late 90s.

But even with all the music performers, my favorite moment might've been the brief appearance by Hasheem Thabeet, who played basketball for Connecticut and will be entering the NBA draft this year. As soon as the host announced that the next guest was from "Tanzania by way of Connecticut," I basically squealed "HASHEEM THABEET IS HERE??!!" like I was the biggest Huskies fan in the whole building. It's not that I like UConn that much; I'm just a college basketball fangirl.

Bedtime!!

The NCAA basketball championship game was last night. Unfortunately, it wasn't a super exciting game. North Carolina's win meant that I won the apartment-wide bracket competition against Liz. She and I each created two brackets. Which is good, because with one of my two I got all creative and put Wake Forest in the championship game. With the other one, my predicted Final Four was Pitt (whoops), UNC, UConn, and Michigan State. I don't think I've ever gotten 3 of 4 right before, so I'm happy. And I'm pretty sure that this was the first time I've correctly predicted the winner. I have to say, it's not so exciting when it's the same winner that everybody else in the world picked! Usually, I pick some random middling seed, in the hopes of looking like a supergenius if they actually manage to win.
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Our last Intersession of third year is well underway! This time around, the topic is medical error. I just had a standardized patient exercise in which an "angry" "patient" yelled at me for fifteen minutes. I was talking it over with a classmate afterward, and we both agreed that it was not at all stressful, and if anything, was comical. However, we also agreed that if we'd done a similar exercise at the beginning of this school year, there would've been tears. It's amazing, the difference that nine months of experience can make.

Another part of this intersession involved a talk on communication given by the clinical improvement department. It was an interesting talk, although I wonder about how practical all the suggestions were. One of the scenarios we worked through involved a team briefing before a C-section. I honestly don't know how easy it'd be to get the attending, resident(s), bedside nurse, anesthesiologist, and charge nurse to meet and talk for five minutes an hour before every elective c-section. I never saw it done. That's not to say that there wasn't any communication: there was lots. It's just that the nature of the busy L&D floor made it really really difficult to get all those people free at the same time. In addition, my reaction to the scenario was "This meeting wouldn't be happening because the baby would've been out ten minutes ago." But I'm no OB/Gyn Kenobi... I'm just a wannabe.
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I have more to say, but if I don't go to the gym right now I'm not going to get a workout in today. More later!!

I like urology, don't get me wrong. Given a choice, I'd rather be doing this than shadowing in clinic every day like the people on ophtho. But the general surgery-esque hours, so clse to the shelf exam, are wearing on me. I thought these last two weeks would be pretty lax. Prerounding on 3 patients for 6am rounds is not lax. Granted, I've gotten a lot faster than I was back in January (and let's not even speak of July!). I'm still jealous of my colleagues with later start times. Y'all, I'm genuinely angry EVERY TIME my alarm goes off at 4:30. I'm not going into a specialty with late mornings, so how long will it take to get over this?

I called my parents to tell them about Match Day etc. My dad asked if I now feel like the end is approaching. The thing is, third year isn't anywhere CLOSE to done. When I saw that Coldplay is coming to Nashville in June, I thought "I have to be on summer break by that point..." But no!! I'll still have WEEKS left. WHY IS THIS GODFORSAKEN YEAR SO LONG?? And why did I think it'd be a good idea to finish the year with three months of zero operating and very few procedures?? I think I am going to have a rough go of neuro and psych.

Today in the OR: this patient had scarring and narrowing of his ureter, one of the tubes going from his kidney to his bladder. (That means urine was backing up in the kidney, which is not a good thing.) So we cut out the scarred part. Then we cut a flap out of his bladder and basically rolled it up to make a pseudo-ureter, attaching it to the stump of ureter that was left. To quote Beth, "That sounds like a thing that it shouldn't be possible to do." But done it was.

Okay. WAKE FOREST???!!!. We need to talk. But not right now, because I might break things.

Well, Match Day is over for the class of 2009. It was pretty awesome! More than ever before, I could really get excited for the fourth years as they found out where they'd be going for residency. I have to admit, I teared up a few times. I couldn't help it, seeing my friends become emotional because they were so happy about where they ended up! There were some excellent matches at great institutions. But I won't delve into that much further. It will only make me more nervous about next year's Match. Which will be my own. I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around that.

There are also some basketball games being played today. I haven't given you guys a detailed list of my bracket picks like I usually do! And I won't. Because I just don't have that kind of time. I'll just update you all as my beloved brackets are busted. So far, so good. LSU managed to pull out the win, even with a hostile crowd rooting for Butler to "pull off the upset." I'm sorry, but I consider neither 9 nor 10 seeds real underdogs. It's not like they were Cal State Northridge, almost beating Memphis. I wouldn't think a 9 seed could overwhelmingly win the hearts of a neutral crowd. Maybe it's the midmajor conference thing.

Now I'm watching Mississippi State play Washington. I picked this upset, mostly out of blind allegiance to the SEC. I got the idea that maybe one of the opening round venues would give us a repeat of Tampa last year. Remember, when two 12s and two 13s won?????? I didn't go that crazy, but I decided that one 13 seed could win, and it could be Mississippi State. I think I was wrong about that.

THERE IS AN IPHONE/ITOUCH APPLICATION CALLED MARCH MADNESS ON DEMAND IT'S LIKE WHAT I USED LAST YEAR TO WATCH ALL THE GAMES ALLLL THE GAMES ON MY COMPUTER BUT NOW I CAN USE MY IPOUD TOUCH SO ANYWHERE I GET WIFI I CAN WATCH ALL THE GAMES LIKE AT THE HOSPITAL AND EVEN IN THE OR IF I DON'T SCRUB IN SO I WON'T SCRUB IN!!!!!!1 PLUS PLUS ALSO!!!!!!!!! I DIDN'T SPEND THE WHOLE ITUNES GIFT CARD I GOT FOR MY BIRTHDAY SO INSTEAD OF FIVE DOLLARS IT'S FREEEEEE AND LET'S BE HONEST I'D PAY FIFTY...THOUSAND IF I HAD TO SO FREE IS GREAT!!! OMGWTF WHAT DID I DO IN A PAST LIFE TO BE ALLOWED TO LIVE IN A TIME WHERE SUCH THINGS ARE POSSIBLE?????????!!!!!!!!!!

Did you know that Selection Sunday is Sunday? I didn't realize that until today! March Madness has really snuck up on me this year. I can count on one hand the games I watched in their entirety this season. And I didn't go to any games. Boo. It seems like I didn't miss a whole lot, as far as the SEC is concerned. This season wasn't too kind to the conference. Nor to Vandy in particular, but that was expected with a team of freshmen.

I finished up my clinic week today. Overall, my favorites were spine clinic with a neurosurgeon, and thoracic surgery. There was interesting stuff in all the clinics I did, but those were the two where I was allowed to see patients on my own. Nevermind that I was sent to do neuro exams without even a reflex hammer (holy unpreparedness, Batman!). I just appreciate being given the chance. Neurosurgery clinic was mostly herniated discs and spinal stenosis. Thoracic clinic included several post-op visits for lung cancer, but I also saw a lung transplant evaluation, and a patient with an overactive parathyroid gland that just happened to be behind his heart.

I also did urology clinic, as a little preview of what I'll be doing for the next couple of weeks. It was actually urologic cancer clinic, so I saw a lot of prostate, renal, and bladder cancer.

Because I got all my clinics out of the way, I'm free to do whatever I want tomorrow. Three day weekend!! My plan is to sleep relatively late, and then coffeeshop the day away. But no more studying tonight, because...

Here's a sign that I may be studying too hard: I dreamt that I was in some sort of learning session with my old Physical Diagnosis group. Our tutor, Dr. G., said that he wanted to quiz us on some scans. So he pulled up all these old images (Xrays, CT scans) of me, from back when I broke my toe (at age 9). For some reason, I'd gotten multiple full body scans for a broken toe. However, in a nod to logic and sense, the images were appropriately grainy for being fifteen years old and sent by fax from an outside hospital. So Dr. G. starts going over all these images with us, asking us to describe the abnormalities. I was dumbfounded, but my classmates were yelling out all these things that were wrong with me on the inside. I got more and more confused, because I felt fine. After this went on for a while, Dr. G. asked "So what should we do?" and I said, "Fix the broken toe!" Which was the right answer, because all those other abnormalities weren't actual problems, and "We treat patients, not imaging." (Basically a direct quote from my main study resource.) Then Dr. G. and I exploding-fist-bumped. Then I woke up.

Friday marked the first time in a while that I've been at school from 8am to 4pm. I went to 8am pharm for no good reason, besides having to turn in a preferences form for some small group thing we're doing. I did not sit through the 9am lecture, choosing instead to go to the computer lab and do some database work for Emphasis. From 10am to noon, we had small group sessions for Biostats. Noon to 1pm, I tour guided for a pre-med club visiting from Oakwood University. 1 to 2:30, I ate lunch and did some studying.

From 2:30 to 4, I participated in a surgical skills workshop. In the almost two years since I've started medical school, this was the first time I acknowledged the fact that I'll have to spend some time in the OR. Actually, I take that back. I took a scrub class back in October. Anyway, I just haven't been dying to get into the OR like many of my classmates. But I figured that my Surgery rotation shouldn't be my first exposure to suturing and tying knots. So for an hour and a half, I "closed" "wounds" in pig feet and tied square knots with giant shoelace things. I got compliments on my vertical mattress, which was pretty cool. But I didn't leave any more eager to cut people open than I was before. I guess if I'm meant to fall in love with Surgery, it'll have to happen during my rotation.

You might remember that at the beginning of this school year, I talked about how all the first and second years were divided into four Advisory Colleges. Well, yesterday we had the first annual College Cup, competing against each other in feats of strength. My college ended up tied for the championship, aided by our first place finish in the trivia competition. The trivia was a bit harder than I expected, with entire categories dedicated to Seinfeld and beer slogans. (Note: Props to grorx for correctly identifying America's World Class Beer. I failed to give him credit at the actual event because I'm deaf in my left ear.) Overall, the questions were good and I had a lot of fun.

Today, I went to church, and then did some studying at school. What really happened was, I had my Biostats notes out, while I watched Elite 8 games online. (Davidson was so close to pulling off the upset!) I'm probably less prepared than I could be for tomorrow's quiz, but... blah.

I honestly think that second semester of second year exists for the sole purpose of making us sick of the classroom and eager to hit the wards. Case in point: the Biostats course directors didn't even know they were course directors until the day after the class was supposed to start, and the course organization clearly reflects that. I mean, after three and a half semesters of really well-organized classes, what other reason could there be for this foolishness?

This could get long, so bear with me. A lot of stuff has happened in my life (actually, not really).

Sports: The NCAA Tournament
This is my ninth year of avidly following March Madness. For the first time ever, I convinced my parents to fill out brackets of their own this year. After the first day of games, I was kicking butt with a perfect score. Here's a screenshot of my bracket in first place (one of probably a hundred million brackets tied for first that day):


("Fruitcakes" is my mom's bracket.)

Instead of being happy about my success on Day 1 of the tourney, I was actually filled with dread. Whenever I do well one day, I always do abysmally the next day. Always. I tried to convince the Big Bracketologist in the sky that I would HAPPILY get 15 of 16 games wrong on Day 2 if my one correct prediction was a Vanderbilt win. Obviously, that didn't work out. On March 21, the city of Tampa was where higher seeds met their doom.

I don't know if the fact that our game against Siena wasn't even close makes me feel better, or worse. Losing by 1 against Georgetown last year was awful. Losing by 21 this year was awful. I mean, it's twenty-one freaking points! However, there's something to be said for the fact that victory wasn't snatched away after being so close. Either way, I now have unbridled hatred for a school I didn't even realize existed a mere week ago.

Med School: Match Day
On to happier things. In addition to being the first day of the Tournament, Thursday was also Match Day for the fourth years. I watched the webcast from home. Not as exciting as being there in person, of course. The fourth years seemed very pleased with their match results. These included Ortho at HSS, Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson, and one of the six(!) integrated cardiothoracic surgery residency spots in the entire country. (Translation: extremely good residency placements that people work very hard to attain.) I find it hard to believe that my classmates will be in that spot less than two years from now.

Miscellaneous Whining
I had a final exam today, the first day back from Spring Break. Yeah, I think that's stupid too.

I have to go to the dentist. I hate the dentist.

I hate pita chips, for reasons I will explain later.

Percy has apparently picked up the habit of meowing incessantly from 5 to 7 each morning. Yeah, that'll have to stop soon.

I need to do the poster I'm going to be presenting at our school research forum.

There's no lemonade in our fridge.

Okay, clearly I'm running out of things to whine about. That means it's time for bed! I'm sure tomorrow will bring a whole host of new things that irritate me.

If you know me at all, you know that this is my favorite time of the year. I love this time of year because grown men (and women!) can utter phrases like "Major bubble implications" and be taken completely seriously. I love it because UGA, who only managed to win 4 SEC games during the entire regular season, won 4 SEC games over the weekend to become SEC champions. I love it because I have a blank bracket and 92 quintillion^* possibilities in front of me. I believe the word that fits here is "madness."

As the season wound down, my beloved Vanderbilt basketball Commodores lost three of their last five games, and one of the wins was only just barely. During this run, I convinced myself that the Vandy men had played their way into a 7 seed. I am such a pessimist. However, that at least gave me the chance to be really freaking psyched to learn we got a 4 seed⁺. I almost screamed "HOLY SHIT!!" in front of my dad.

Do I think we're overseeded? Maybe. Am I going to complain? No. Am I worried that our first-round opponent, 13-seed Siena^#, seems to be the sexiest upset pick of the whole bracket? A little. Am I going to fill out a bracket in which we win 6 games anyway? Oh hell yeah.





* According to some bracketmaster guy, that's how many permutations there are. I'm sure that calculation involves a factorial.

+ For the basketball n00bs: that means we are considered, at worst, the 16th-best team of the 65-team field.

# Was I aware that Siena College existed before Selection Sunday? Vaguely.

Dear readers, I know most of you don't care about sports. But just humor me.

If you follow college basketball long enough, you will hear or read about a player who "puts the team on his back" and carries them to victory. Tonight I got to see that in person. In his last game ever at Memorial Gym, Shan Foster scored 42 points (including nine consecutive 3-pointers)!! He shot the go-ahead 3-pointer with 2.7 seconds left in overtime, and Vandy beat Mississippi State 86-85. The 42 points was his career high, and the second-most points ever scored by one player in Vanderbilt history. The performance of his career, on Senior Night. To say it was pretty exciting would be a gross understatement.

The undergrads are actually on Spring Break right now, so the student section consisted of the few undergrads who stayed in town, the dedicated graduate students, old people, and Mississippi State fans. The good part is, I was able to get a seat in the fourth row, right at court level (because Memorial is weird, the first few rows are actually below court level.) The downside is, none of the crazed undergrads were there. Trying to be an energetic crowd without the energetic people? It's tiring.

Scary thought of the day: the next time I attend a basketball game at Memorial, I'm going to be a third year. Crazy!!

I had an epiphany yesterday. I realized that If I skipped tonight's basketball game and went to trivia, and Vandy managed to pull out the win, I'd never forgive myself. Never ever. So I showed up to Memorial Gym at 6:30 tonight, an hour and a half before the game. Even so, I only managed to (barely) get a seat in the second-to-last row of the student section. Because of the overhanging upper-level seats, I couldn't even see the scoreboard without ducking. But it was still awesome, because by the end of the game the scoreboard read #1 Tennessee 69, #14 Vanderbilt 72. It was crazy. It was absolutely freaking nuts. I'm so glad I decided to go.

Alas, I missed some pretty good trivia questions, and a step-it-down challenge that I would've known on the 15 point clue. Oh well... I guess I can't have everything.

Friday evening was the second annual Light Hall Throwdown. Basically, the administration wants us to love our school so much that we voluntarily hang out there on a Friday night. Crazy thing is, it works. There was a pretty good turnout... I guess free food works every time. I was in charge of the trivia competition, which was fun, if a bit chaotic. At last year's Throwdown, there were only about four people playing trivia! This year there were...more than that!! Maybe around thirty. I probably could've done better a better job in some ways, but I think people enjoyed it.

There was also a "Battle of the Bands," but it wasn't much of a battle. The first-year band has only been playing together for a couple of weeks. They definitely have potential, but for now there's no way they can compete with Music Attack Complex.

People went out for real (to bars and such) after the Throwdown, but I did not. Having dozens of people screaming at me for an hour pretty much killed any desire I had to be social...for the rest of the weekend. Homebody, that's me!!

Warning: Sports Ahead. So, the Vanderbilt basketball Commodores lost to Kentucky in double overtime on Saturday. The way Vandy played for most of the game, it's a wonder they even made it to overtime. Hopefully now that they've actually one, the players will stop acting like they're allergic to rebounding. Being out-rebounded 42-21 is freaking unacceptable. BUT, at this point last season, we were 11-6, so I can't really complain. Also, I think it's a sign of the apocalypse that Kentucky beating Vanderbilt (or anyone, really) at basketball is an upset.

Tomorrow, I get to practice taking a history on a standardized patient! Wheee!

As I predicted, we covered a lot today. But it was fine. I'm not going to complain about it!!

For lunch we had a demonstration of massage and relaxation techniques. Then I came home and took a nap. I either pulled a muscle during the lunch, or slept in a bad position, because my neck is KILLING me now. This sucks.

What doesn't suck is Vanderbilt basketball. 16-0!! I went to the game with a few people, and had a blast. I'd still like to see better defense, better ball handling and some actual effort on rebounding, but again I can't really complain.

Time for bed. I hope I can still move my head when I wake up tomorrow.

Well, the abstract is basically written. I get 2016 characters (with spaces), and right now I'm at 1993. Without the authors' names. So I've got to shave off a few things, and my PI is going to help me with that. I hope. We'll see. If I do get this submitted in time, I apparently have a 50% chance of it being accepted for this research meeting. Pretty nice odds, for a pretty nice opportunity. I'm not the biggest fan of research, but even I understand that national meetings are a big deal.

Sports
How about those Vanderbilt basketball Commodores?? Today's game got off to a baaaaad start, but they pulled it out in the end! We are ranked 15th in the country, and 15-0(!!) going into conference play. But we can't be too cocky, lest we forget Clemson, who started last season 17-0 and then didn't even make the tournament.

Politics
I spent three hours browsing Presidential candidates' websites last night, because my candidate of choice just dropped out of the race. I'm thinking about just taking up the 'apathetic' position.

How boring has this tournament been so far, brackets-wise? Two 1s and two 2s in the Final Four. Really, where's the fun in that? I knew that after last year's craziness, things would probably go the other way, but I didn't know it'd be this extreme. What really pisses me off is that, for the most part, the people winning all the bracket pools are the people who just went through and had the higher seeds win every game. That is BULL. Nobody should be rewarded for pulling that crap. Not when other people go to all the trouble of deciding which mascots would win in a fight.

Also, I hate Georgetown in every way. I can't believe I once thought I might go there. Yuck. I hope they get blown out and utterly humiliated. OR that they lose by one on a last second shot that shouldn't count. Either will do. Yes, I'm bitter.

To close on a happy note, I'll say that whoever decided that Kenny Mayne should go back to anchoring Sportscenter deserves to win some sort of award. Seriously, it's like I got a really awesome, completely unexpected gift. One of the biggest influences on my current sense of humor was watching Kenny Mayne Sportscenters every morning in middle school. So deadpan: "That's his 23rd home run. But not in this game, that'd be a record." Now they just need to lose Stuart Scott and pair Mayne up with Dan Patrick, and I would happily quit med school and watch Sportscenter alllll day long.

The first two rounds of the tournament are over. The bracket I did on Facebook is officially busted, since I had Texas going to the final game. No reason why, really. I was just following the advice I got long ago: to win a bracket pool, you have to pick something slightly "out there", and be right. If you go with boring picks, it won't matter if you're right, because twenty million other people will be right, too. If you make SUPER crazy picks (like, say, an 11 seed in the Final Four), chances are you won't be right (last year = fluke). So I had a Texas in the final, which I thought was at least possible. That was a WRONG thought.

Meanwhile, my ESPN bracket is doing slightly better. I was perfect yesterday. I wanted to brag last night, but I figured I'd wait and see how today turned out. Could I be on my way to a perfect Sweet 16???!

No. Of course not. I only got four (of eight) games right today.

But, since I can do whatever I want in this space, I'm still going to brag. So here's a screenshot showing that my bracket was in the 99th percentile of all entries (and being ranked in the tens of thousands is pretty cool when there are millions of entries). Clicky clicky!!



Forty-eight games in four days. Most unproductive weekend EVER!

So there's some basketball going on. While I'm just as obsessed about it as I've always been, I just haven't had the time to actually obsess. I filled out brackets, we'll see how those go.

Today was Match Day: the fourth years found out where they'll be doing their residencies. It was both very exciting (that'll be me and my classmates in three years!!) and very scary (that'll be me and my classmates in three years???!?!?!?!). The event was held in the med school's big lecture hall, so as each VMS IV's name was called, they walked to the front and opened their envelopes in front of tons of people. There was also a live webcast. I like the idea of making it a big event, but it would suck to get disappointing news in front of everybody. Only a couple of people were visibly upset. I don't know how many ran to the bathroom to cry after it was all over. Hopefully, not too many.

As a first year, I haven't had too much interaction with fourth years, but I've made friends with a few, mostly through Bible study. I'm super-happy for all of them. Pediatrics at CHOP or Mass General, Derm at Vandy...good stuff. It makes me all motivated to go study... just as soon as this game ends.

Let's do a little thought exercise. Close your eyes, think really hard, and try to remember Saturday, February 17, 2007. You don't have to think that hard, do you? Because it was four days ago. I remember the day pretty clearly myself. There was snow, and there was cold. Well today, it was 71 degrees outside. Now, I can't tell if I'm sick because I was out in the cold (and did I mention the snow??) Saturday night, or because of the sudden weather change. I don't mind cold weather. I don't mind hot weather. I just really really hate schizophrenic weather. The troposphere needs to make up its mind.

Also on Saturday: unranked Vandy played number 1 Florida, and won 83-70. Today, four days later, unranked Mississippi State beat number 17 Vandy, 83-70. First of all, the score thing is just freaky. Secondly, State?? Really? Thirdly... I had another comment, but I remembered that I'm me, and far too superstitious to actually put certain thoughts in writing. So just imagine that I said something funny, and let's move on.

Now this one might be a little harder. Let's think back to Anatomy, last semester. Remember the professor who gave the longest, most dense lectures, and who would ask the most nitpicky questions about the most obscure details from those notes? Now, imagine that she's no longer simply a lecturer, but rather a course director. In charge of not just the material she lectured on, but the entire exam. Now, it shouldn't be too hard to imagine just how scared I am of this Histology midterm. I've got a lot of long study days ahead of me.

During my preceptorship on Thursday, I realized that while I see myself entering Medicine as opposed to surgery, a completely procedure-free practice would make me want to end myself. There's only so much excitement to be had from looking at scans.

On Friday, get this. I went to Physio. Twice. Keep in mind, I have skipped 4 of our 6 heart lectures, and all the vascular system lectures, and all but one of the muscle lectures, and... you get the picture. But I saw on the schedule that we were covering temperature regulation in a single day. I figured I could show up for that one day and know my shit when it came to temperature regulation, if nothing else.

This will not seem nearly as amusing if I fail our upcoming midterm. Highly likely, considering I haven't been using the skipped class time to study physio on my own.

Saturday. Today. I woke up early and headed to school to get in a little histo lab time before the basketball game against Florida. Vandy did pretty well, maybe you read about it on the front page of espn.com??? Being at the game was so far beyond awesome, I don't have the words for it. The twenty bucks I paid to attend home games? Worth it. Basing my decision to apply to schools on the presence of Division I sports? Worth it.

There was other social stuff this weekend, a Mardi Gras party and a med/law/business/nursing school mixer. Fun enough, but not the highlight of the weekend (see above).

And now I sleep.

Tonight, I just chill. Last weekend was so full, I'd like to spend as much of this one in bed as possible. There's an entire, brand-new batch of stuff I have to add to the thesis, but that's what Saturdays are for.

Last Dance wasn't exactly a hard read, but I devoured that book. The chapter on the selection committee, the guys who make the bracket, was my favorite. There were also a lot of stories about all these famous coaches and games. I'd say my ability to answer college basketball trivia questions has increased by at least a factor of ten.