Sometimes it pays to be a geek....

Yesterday I watched my beloved Hoosiers, but the experience was a little bit different than normal. Not because the Hoosiers won their first outright Big 10 championship in 20 years (although that was awesome), but because I got a lesson on perseverance.

I was watching the game behind real time on my DVR, which is not something I love doing, but considering my west coast time zone I am forced to do a lot. In this case, I was doing it to watch the SNL with Justin Timberlake with Chef. Anyway, as I was watching the middle of the first half of the game, I knew it was starting the second half. Considering the Hoosiers were down by 11, I wanted a sneak peek as to whether I was going to be happy or upset at the turn of events.

They started to make it close and by the start of the second half, I was addicted to sneaking peeks at the score on my Yahoo! sports app. I should've known better. I was reloading the score furiously and when I still had about 10 minutes of game time to watch, I saw the final that Yahoo! sports app had posted:

Michigan 70, Indiana 66. "End of 2nd"

I was crushed. But I knew that I wanted to watch the end anyway and see what happened. So I kept watching the game and then with about 3 minutes left, the Hoosiers hit the 66 point mark. I figured "Well, if they can't score in the last 3 minutes of a game, no wonder they lost."

Then with about a minute left, Michigan hit a free throw (their made one of the game) and the score was 71-66. Hmm, I thought. That's weird.  Then the Hoosiers scored: 71-68. Now I was convinced that the Hoosiers were still going to lose, but there was a slight hope that the Internet was wrong. I mean, when was the last time that the Internet has been wrong?

Imagine my excitement when this happened:



I'm glad that I watched until the end.

Still celebrating a Sweet 16 with the Hoosiers

from iuhoosiers.com

I was so loud cheering last night that Chef told me twice to keep it quiet so that the neighbors didn't call the police for domestic violence. I get a little loud. But you have to cut me some slack because it's the first time in ten years that the Hoosiers have been in the Sweet 16. So I can't just act like I've been there before. I've forgotten how it feels, and I'm not that cool.

It's something that I've known for a long time. Most of my life, really. My name is Ashley and I've never been cool. I'm also fairly certain that I will never be cool. I might be witty, or smart or slightly nerdy (I'm not full on nerd and doin't think I can go there either) or funny or odd, but cool is not something people would use to describe me. And I'm okay with that. More than okay, I like it like that. But the problem is that I live in one of the most self-proclaimed cool cities in the world. And cool seems to be important. Or at least extremes. Los Angeles is a city of extremes. Extremely pretty or thin. Extremely stupid or flippant. Extremely cruel or harsh. Extremely fake. It's alas extremely beautiful and lovely and fun.

I still love LA, but I'm having moments when I'm having a hard time finding my exact place here. It happened in Nashville too. I went through a period at almost the same time in my stay there when I wondered if I really belonged. The answer to that is the same as the answer to my LA life: yes, but feeling comfortable in anything takes time. . . Even your own skin.

March Madness Leads to One Shining Moment

Yesterday I was huddled up on my bed watching the bracket breakdown. It's an annual tradition. Typically, I sit there with pen in hand and fill out a bracket that I've printed out or that was printed in the newspaper, but this time I just watched. I no longer fill out paper brackets. No longer use my trusty pink highlighter to show my brilliance or my sad red sharpie to strike through my shame. It's all online now, and I'm finally okay with that.

Chef watched the first few minutes to see where IU fell (or rather to see how excited I was when I saw where IU fell), but then he was done. "It's kind of like watching the weigh-ins to a UFC fight," he said. And he was sort of right. But unlike a UFC fight, there's not the drama of who's not going to get in.

This year was fairly drama free. I was hoping against all hope that Northwestern would finally get in, but I knew the odds were stacked against them. Everyone likes to root for an underdog, though. Or Under-wildcat as the case may be.

Now it's just a countdown until my favorite time of year. And it starts so early here on the West Coast. but there's a blessing to that too, I guess.

Gotta go fill out my five brackets. With Purdue, IU and Murray State all in the tourney, it's gonna be an interesting year.Wish me luck!