5 Friday Fraagments (blogs, March Madness, shopping)

Friday Fragments is hosted my Half-Past Kissin' Time for bloggers to post a list of short things on their minds that aren't really enough for a whole post. Here we go:

Shopping

The bad news is when we went food shopping last week at our Giant Eagle, I was told they discontinued my salmon cakes because not enough people bought them! Boo hoo! They are delicious and I love to have them for either lunch or supper during the week. I am definitely calling customer service about this.

The good news is we bought a new lightweight cordless Gtech vacuum cleaner.  More on that this week.

 

Best St. Paddy's Day Post

At Lady B's Time for Tea, you can take a trip to Ireland with her--this is the best St. Paddy's Day post I saw!

New Blog Found

Through The Note Card party hop, I found another blog to follow and added it to my blogroll called "Grandma's Blessings" by Sylvia in Georgia. It's always fun to discover new blogs. That's one reason I like participating in different blog hops even though they are time-consuming. I actually was drawn to her blog by her picture and comment she left on Lady Linda's party post. See, sometimes it does pay off to leave a comment!

March Madness Basketball

Well, I'm not off to a very good start on my bracket after the first day. Did anyone pick Harvard? I wanted to, but a seed 14 beating a seed 3 just didn't seem likely and Harvard is not known for being good in sports. You just never know who's going to win, that's why they play the games. There were some blowouts but also some very close ones. It's always fun to make a bracket and join in with friends or co-workers in our case to see who can pick the most winners.

Spring?

Still getting snow here, does not look like spring at all yet!  This is what we woke up to this morning.

Share this:

With Spring Comes March Madness!

Buckeye Fans:  Moe & Patchdog

The college basketball “March Madness” tournament has begun! I normally wouldn’t care, but when you fill out a bracket and enter a pool, it makes it a whole lot more interesting! Gerard and I both enjoy marking our winning picks and hoping to end up winning the pool.

The nice thing is that you really don’t have to follow basketball to play because there is plenty talk about the teams on TV, the Internet and in the newspaper Plus, their rank is listed right on the bracket—not that those mean a whole lot, anything can happen! That’s what makes it exciting and why they play the games.

Office Pools

My office pool costs $10 to enter which gives big winnings! There are 107 people this year who have entered, but I chose not to again and just enter Gerard’s pool which is made up of only 12 entries at $5. I figure my chances are much better to win in his than mine and it costs less. (I did win last year!)

Our Picks

This year I went with Ohio State, Duke, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh for my final four with (drum roll please, can you guess?) Ohio State for the champion.

Since we both entered the same pool, Gerard picked Ohio State, Duke, Louisville and Kansas State for his final four with Duke as champion. (Louisville lost in the first round!)

What do you think of March Madness? How many pools do you enter?

Related posts:
I'm So Glad He Won Our Office Pool!
Taking Off For College Basketball March Madness
An Entertaining College Basketball Weekend

I'm So Glad He Won Our Office Pool!

The attorney who won our office March Madness pool used his winnings to buy breakfast for our whole floor from Brennans Catering in Cleveland. The breakfast was delicious!


We had bagels (I’m not big on these but others like them.)

Read more »

An Entertaining College Basketball Weekend

The March Madness NCAA Basketball tournament is off to a great start. Many close games and lots of upsets made the games fun to watch. Both of us enjoyed keeping track of how many we picked right for our brackets. I only entered one this year at my husband's work so don't know where I stand on that, other than I got 30 correct. Gerard threw his away when Kansas lost since he had them winning on that one. Fortunately for him, he also entered the one at my work and picked Duke on that one so he still has a slim chance. He's currently 38 out of about 80 but it goes by weighted points and there are only three people ahead of him that also picked Duke.

The highlight for us was Ohio State progressing to the sweet 16. I picked them to go all the way to the championship game against Duke so that was really big for them to win! Poor Pittsburgh lost but had two chances right at the end to tie it with a 3-pointer but couldn't do it. Their shots just weren't falling in for them and both Gerard and I had them winning in the second round.

My biggest let down was Cornell beating Temple and going on to win in the second round too because I was going to pick them but changed my mind after hearing the ESPN guys rattle on and on about how great Temple looked and that their team was named the Owls. So since I like owls, I listened to them and picked Temple instead of Cornell. Cornell was a 12 seed too so those who picked them got a lot of points for it.

The March Madness tournament is huge, but I must admit I didn't know anything about it until I married Gerard. That's when I became interested and found out about doing a bracket (predicting who will win throughout the tournament). I heard about the office pool so decided to join in on the fun. I did fairly well too the first few years I played, but last year I did awful. That's because I listened to all the sports talk shows about the bracketology and studied what the paper said about each team when I made my picks. I'm better off just picking the teams I like and forgoing the research.

What about you? Which team would you like to see win? Did you watch any of the games over the weekend? Do you fill out a bracket and if so, how are you doing? I am looking forward to watching more games next weekend since I sill have teams in each region left on my bracket. It makes it more interesting when you actually care who wins.

Tweet This

8 Things I Learned This Week--#63

Highlighting

According to my one new attorney, a study was done that showed people remember what is highlighted in orange better than what is highlighted in yellow so she uses orange highlighters.

Cleveland Browns

Brady Quinn is now a Denver Bronco. I wish him success and am sorry to see him go. Another shock was hearing Wimbley is now with the Oakland Raiders. This was a surprise because he really did good playing for the Browns. We wish him success too!

Blog: For Love or Funny

I am excited to have found a new blog this week that I really enjoyed. Lynn at For Love or Funny has a great variety of posts about her family, her dog, and just plain creative posts. I love the way she works her dog into her posts about other things too. If you like this blog, you'll love hers--it's so much better but along the same lines. Definitely worth visiting. Oh, and she wrote a book too: "Right Next to My Heart."

Red Pine Mountain

My blogging friend, Mountain Woman, has taken the leap and moved to a new blogging platform. Here is the link to her new fancy blog that you should be sure to visit: www.redpinemountain.com.

Iditarod Race

I playing my trivia game, I learned that Lance Mackey and his dogs won the 1,150 mile sled dog race, The Iditarod. This is their 4th win in a row. It took them 9 days!

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Estimated attendance at the St. Patrick's Day parade in Cleveland was 400,000! I know there were lots of people out there (me being one of them for a short time), but 400,000 I think is exaggerating a bit. How would they even count all those people in just a couple hours anyway? It's not like there's a turn style and people are moving around all the time too with new ones coming and going like me. I wonder if they counted me.

Printing Problems

This morning when I went to print Gerard's updated March Madness bracket, I learned my printer was out of the Cyan blue ink and I didn't have any! I never ran out of a color before that I didn't have a replacement for. Not a good start to the day. I had planned a trip to OfficeMax tomorrow anyway. I have a $10 coupon and was going to go last week but forgot the coupon so just waited until this week to go. Oh well.

ESPN's March Madness Brackets

Gerard just told me this morning that 4.8 million people entered brackets on ESPN's website and only 56 had 100% of the picks right after Thursday. I'm surprised anyone got them all right with quite a few upsets. I got a little over half of mine right.

Click here for more Friday Fragments.

Tweet This

Taking Off For the College Basketball March Madness Tournament

Since I participate in our office pool, I have a great interest in these games and both Gerard and I complete brackets. I think I read in the paper that Cleveland State will be in it this year! This year I decided to only work half days on the first two days of the tournament so I can watch it. I know certain sites have live coverage of the games, CBS Sportsline being one of them, but we are not supposed to watch it at work so I am avoiding temptation by leaving early to watch at home. Of course, they may put a block somehow for that site at work, but just in case they don’t, I want to avoid the temptation by leaving.

I Corinthians 10:13 comes to mind which says,

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

I’m escaping! What about you? Are you doing a bracket this year? I know someone who knew nothing about the college teams but took third place in her office pool by choosing the teams based on their uniforms. That's usually how I pick mine too for the teams I'm not familiar with. So far, I've done better than my husband every year except last year so this year when my upset picks didn't pan out. It just goes to show you really don't have to follow the college basketball at all to win. Are you planning on watching the first rounds during the day?

My final four are Louisville, Duke, Gonzaga and Washington. Gerard's are Louisville, Memphis, Pittsburgh and Gonzaga. What do you think of that? I'm pulling for Gonzaga to go all the way!
Happy St. Patrick's Day!