On My Mind

Random thoughts for the week (because creating a separate post for each topic seemed a bit like overkill)...

NCAA Basketball: UK - National Champs!!  Woo-Hoo!!!  We are big Cats fans in this house and everybody is excited that Kentucky gets to hang an 8th championship banner.  Brandon and I fill out tournament brackets each year and enter them into a pool that involves money, as well as our "Tabor Family Challenge."  The Family challenge involves everybody in the house (excluding Joseph of course - for now!) completing a bracket.  The kids make their selections mostly based on the team mascot, and with this year's outcome that wasn't always a bad method.  Tabor rules are you get 1 point for each win, regardless of which round you are in.  Person with the most points wins and gets dinner of their choice (at home, not a restaurant).  For the second year in a row I won!!  I am still trying to decide what I want for dinner, but here's the catch - I'm head chef around here.  No way am I cooking my own victory dinner.  So I need to come up with something delicious that can be 100% prepared by my dear husband.  This might take a while...  To go along with my TFC win, my bracket also finished first in the money pool I was in!  I might frame my bracket because this will never, ever happen again.  So I sit here awaiting a pretty good chunk of change for my hard work and good gambling skills.  What might I do with that money, you ask?  Spoil myself?  Buy a new wardrobe??  Day at the spa???  Oh no - I will be purchasing new timing belts and a few other glamorous items for my 2001 Toyota Camry.  And we need a new furnace because ours is totally dead.  Be jealous.  Be envious.  At least I get to brag, right?

The National Anthem: To all celebrities and anyone else who is chosen to sing the National Anthem: This is not your song.  It is the nation's song.  Therefore, if you are so lucky to be chosen to perform this song in front of large crowds do not attempt to make it your own.  There is a 99% chance you will make it sound bad.  Or even terrible.  I have heard many renditions and very few have left me thinking "They did a really good job!"  I bring this up because The Fray was somehow chosen to sing the National Anthem before the fabulous basketball game mentioned above.  I don't know how they were chosen as I can think of many other wonderful musicians from New Orleans (where the game was played for you non-followers) who would have done a much better job.  The musicians started playing and it sounded nothing like the beginning of the song, so I thought maybe they were actually singing something else.  Oh no, not at all.  They sang the words I have heard so many times, but the tune was something I have never heard in my life.  I don't even have words to describe how disappointed and angry I was with the whole performance.  If you feel so inclined you can check it out here.  Good luck making it through the entire song - I will tell you now, it does not get better as it goes on.  We used to be Cincinnati Bengals season ticket holders.  (Yes, that is a topic for a separate post.)  There was a Cincinnati Firefighter who sang the Anthem at about half the games - he was amazing!  Maybe they can just get him to sing National Anthems everywhere, all the time.  I found an old clip of him singing and it still gives me chills.  This is what it should sound like.

Spring Break: At 5:00 today everybody in our house is on spring break!  As luck would have it my kids do not have the same exact spring break, but they do overlap a bit.  Lucas is off this week.  Ella's spring break starts tomorrow and runs all the way through next week.  Brandon is taking off tomorrow and Friday.  Hooray!  Everybody is off!  Oh wait... except mom!  As we always hear, moms do not get a day off, much less a spring break.  But how wonderful would that be... Spring Break for Moms!  Moms Gone Wild!!  I don't even think I know how to "get wild" anymore.  It's wild enough around here as it is.  If I get some time off I want peace.  Put me by the pool with an endless supply of adult beverages and some good trashy gossip magazines with a few of my closest friends.  That sounds heavenly!  Maybe one day I can arrange that...  For now, though, I will enjoy the fact that we will all be home together for a few extra days and make the most of it.  We have big plans tomorrow and a fun weekend ahead and I promise, I really do love when everybody is home even if it does create more work for me!

Wow, I'm kind of a whiner today, aren't I?  No apologies, though, because this is MY blog!  I'm working on my latest You Capture shots - hopefully to be posted tomorrow.  Stay tuned!