The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The NCAA basketball tournament starts Thursday (well, technically tonight with the 1st Four).  This is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (I have that Christmas carol running through my head which Staples also uses for very funny, if you are a parent, Back to School shopping commercial) – I love college basketball and the week of conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament is one of my favorite times of the year.  It is also one of my most least productive times of the year.

BigEastReligionI graduated from Villanova (hence the VU logo for my avatar) and am bullish on the Wildcats this year.  I think they can play with anyone in the country save Kentucky.  Living in North Carolina, I am particularly intrigued by the potential match up on Saturday with NC State.  VU has not done well in the tournament since their 2009 Final 4 run.  I am hoping the recent string of early exits ends this year.

If you’re wondering why updates to Email Users and Google Forms are so slow coming out, it is because I am a bit preoccupied and wasting lots of time reading the analysis from all of the college hoop pundits.  I am also going over my brackets for the various pools I am in.  Once the tournament is over, particularly after Villanova loses, my attention will return to my various projects and updates will become a bit more predictable.

 

Villanova beats Marquette

My Villanova Wildcats are playing really well right now – I hope they can continue it through the season and into the tournament.  Last night they beat Marquette which is particularly nice because my mom, dad, and one sister all went to Marquette as did a good friend of mine who calls me all the time to talk about hoops.

My buddy pointed me to a good VU Basketball Blog which I didn’t know about.  It is pretty good reading.  I have been relying on the VU Message Board which is all right but not great for VU hoops news.  The Rivals.com message forum format leaves a lot to be desired.

Villanova plays this Friday night at West Virginia.  This Friday night Big East game must be something new – Marquette played (and lost) to South Florida last Friday night.  It is on ESPN so I will get to see it.  I only got to see the second have last night as I was at a swim team meeting – yep, it is almost time for swim team to start again.

I guess everything really is on the Internet

This evening I was flipping through the channels and came across a Bruce Springsteen concert on VH1 Classic.  I have always liked Bruce Springsteen – I have seen him in concert three times, twice on the River Tour and once on the Born in the USA tour.

In particular, I remember the first time I saw him which was at the Capital Center in Largo, Maryland (outside of Washington, DC).  I had only been to one or two concerts before that concert so I was ill prepared for a Springsteen show.  I had gone with a group of people I had worked with at Hardee’s.  The show was unbelievable – the energy, the sound, the crowd, the noise, everything.  It just went on and on, I coudn’t believe it.  I got home really late and I remember my mom being up and not believing me that all I had done was go to the concert (which was actually true).  There was a write up in the Washington Post the next day about how it didn’t end until 1AM or something like that so I was ultimately redeemed!

I am not sure what possessed me to look Bruce Springsteen up on Wikipedia but I did and near the bottom is a link to old concert tours and sets lists.  I start poking around it and sure enough, I find the two shows I saw at the Capital Center.  I was at the November 24, 1980 show and the August 7, 2001 show.  I cannot believe the detailed information available for concerts that happened almost 30 years ago.  For what its worth, I also saw him at the Spectrum in Philadelphia when I was at Villanova which would have been in September of 1984.  There were six shows at the Spectrum, I don’t recall which one I went to.