You know how to take a hint and act on it! I laud you summa-la-ly.

Last night was one of those nights when my hateful brain decided that 3 am was my final hour of sleep. By a little after six I was in the office staring blankly at my computer monitor, hoping for at least a couple of synapses to fire. By eleven, I had realized the impossibility of that goal and had succumbed utterly to my fog, concentrating nearly exclusively on keeping my eyes open and my head erect. Then I got a call from the receptionist, “You have something here.” After my heart stopped racing from the startling jolt of the phone, I went to retrieve my “something.” It turned out to be a dozen, beautiful, red roses, each one perfect.

Thank you wonderful gift giver!!

When a lady receives flowers at the office, it generates a lot of interest, but when that lady’s husband works in the same office and knows he wasn’t the one who sent the flowers, it makes for an interesting, eyebrow-arching, squinty-eyed husband. It’s particularly interesting when said husband searches memory for potentially forgotten occassion and then attempts to scratch out the sender’s name on the attached note and write in his own when Enchanting Sunshine closes her sleepy little eyes for just a minute.

Growing up in Baltimore, the Orioles were the center of my sports world. There were the Blast and Skipjack games. A few boxing matches with Sugar Ray Leonard. The Poly/City and Calvert Hall/Loyola games were pretty important. But baseball, baseball was the only thing that really mattered. (I won’t mention the sport that I never got a real chance to like before an untimely midnight exit.)

When I moved to Charlotte, I had my first taste of professional basketball. The Hornets were here back then and they were good. Maybe I was living under a rock, but it was also the first time I saw or experienced the enthusiasm over college basketball and the NCAA. “It’s just college teams. What’s the big deal?” I wondered (the same question I still ask regarding college football and the “Bowls”). Nevertheless, college basketball is a big deal here, and when UNC (aka “Carolina”) or Duke is playing, good luck trying to move in any of the sports bars.

This year the CIAA and a couple of NCAA games (to the tune of $200) are being played in Charlotte, eliciting the expected excitement from an already enthusiastic following (how’s that for alliteration). Saturday, we had severe storms, including tornado warnings. As their intensity was known from the considerable damage already done in Atlanta and South Carolina, the televised game was interrupted by the local station to warn viewers about the impending danger and provide safety tips. Just to prove the point about the severity of the storm, here’s a picture that a friend of mine took of the hail in Atlanta.

If you want to rile a television audience here, and really raise their ire, interrupt their basketball game. The local newscasters had to interrupt their own broadcast to ask viewers to please stop calling the station complaining about the storm coverage. “This is a serious storm and our first duty is public safety,” they admonished callers. Unpersuaded, viewers continued to call until the local news gave up and returned to the basketball broadcast feed.

For the first time ever, I get it. To use a Vick analogy, this year I have a dog in the fight. My friend Mindpinball shared this story that explains why, this Friday, at 2 pm, if there’s a storm, there better just be a ticker across the bottom of the screen. It will also be the first time another team will have priority over the Orioles.

It’s a nice treat to not be bored by the endless basketball coverage. At least until the Retrievers are knocked out, which will probably be around 4 pm on Friday.

Short-lived glory is better than none at all.

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