It's fitting that the special section of Bobby V's dedicated to his time as Red Sox manager includes the jerseys of Crawford and Gonzalez. That's where I was Friday night for the annual Smarch Smadness get-together. That V has some cool memorabilia, I tell ya. You'd need a lifetime in there to see it all.

Once again I used my "simply look at the point spread" method of picking the first round, and once again I dominated. Got all three 5-12 games right, and three had the 12 winning. Also had the Harvard upset. The way we set it up was for me and Chan to split a bracket, I pick the first round and trust him with the rest. After I passed the baton, Chan has come through, nailing the toppling of both Kansas and Wichita State today. We've got six of our final eight alive and all of our final four. So we're in good shape. Really fun tournament so far. (Billy Mumphrey's downfall was picking Nebraska to go three rounds--I had to do it. (Though Chan noted I could have just picked them to win one round.) Hopefully we can overcome those lost points.)

After the Stamford meet-up, I went on to NYC with Chan and stayed for the weekend. As you can see, they were breaking the hammocks out in Central Park, where we played our usual Aerobie in the 60-degree warmth on Saturday. At one point a guy walked by and said "nice hat." Later, in a different part of the park, he came around again, this time with his girlfriend. By then we were Sox Pals, so the three of us gave full-on greetings. I love it--a random person was essentially forced to say an audible Hi to me in New York City simply because the guy she was with had made a brief Sox-nection a half-hour earlier. She seemed happy to do it, though; I think she was one of us.

Made it all the way back to Providence this morning in 2:30, i.e. "the time it would always take if traffic jams didn't exist." I only had to slow down for a minute as I passed this flipped car with half-flipped trailer on 95. The cops hadn't even arrived yet. These poor mofos seemed very calm though--I get the feeling nobody was hurt. Which is amazing when you look at the above picture--check out what happened to that tire. It's not even, like, in the tire...area. Bonus: Look just to the right of the mirror, way in the background. Is that a witch?