03.29.21 Let's Dance

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia in the 1980's - during the Ralph Sampson era - I was a four year season ticket holder for basketball.  Those were great teams, and they won a lot of games...but never a national championship.

In 2018, UVa went into the NCAA Tournament as the overall #1 seed...only to be knocked out in the first round by UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). They made history...but not in a good way.  That team was the only #1 ever taken out in the first round by a #16 seed.  It was awful.

In 2019, the Hoos came roaring back - vowing redemption - and earning it by winning it all against Texas Tech in overtime!

Last year, like everything else, the NCAA Tournament was cancelled, but this year it's back...and my beloved Hoos were the #4 seed in West Region (even though the entire tournament is being played in Indianapolis).  

After winning the conference championship for the regular season, and a buzzer beater in the first round of the ACC tournament...it looked like they might be cancelled by Covid this year, too...but they made it to the big dance.

However, there's a reason fans refer to them as the heart attack Hoos - Coach Bennett and his players love to keep it interesting until the last seconds tick off the clock - and this year, that meant not making it beyond the first round.  Neither did the University of Texas (where I earned my graduate degree) or many of the other top seeds.  

The first weekend of play was upset central...and by the time the slots were filled for the Sweet Sixteen, there was not a single perfect interactive bracket left!

Even with my alma maters out of the running, I still had a couple teams to pull for...

The University of Houston, which has had great teams since the 60s! My Dad taught physics there in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was in the arena when Elvin Hayes (the Big E) and the Cougars matched up against Lew Alcindor (most of you know him as Kareem Abdul Jabbar) and UCLA in first ever March Madness game, also called "the game of the century".  Living in Texas for most of my life, including in Houston when my Dad taught there, the Cougs are a sentimental favorite.

The University of Maryland, which was part of the (original) ACC and a huge UVa rival in the 1980s when I was in school.  Like Guy Lewis of Houston, the Terps also had a rough around the edges coach named Lefty Driesell.  They also had an incredible player named Len Bias, who had he not overdosed in the summer of 1985, would have gone on to greatness at the level of his ACC opponent, Michael Jordan.  In addition to seeing Maryland play a lot of basketball during my high school and college years, three of my children have degrees from UMD.

Villanova, because their chaplain is the brother of a dear friend.  Whenever we get together we always talk about family, education policy and NCAA basketball. 

Photo: NCAA Sports, 2019 Champs

Neither Maryland or Villanova - along with several other higher seeded teams - made it through the weekend, but Houston did! 

I'm going to keep watching it all...until the streamers and confetti drop and CBS plays the last note of One Shining Moment...

...grateful for the little bit of normal that comes from watching three weekends of great, if heartbreaking, college basketball.

Until next time.

03.15.21 Quarantinewhile* - The Kitchen

I'm pretty sure I've spent more time in my kitchen over the last year than in the previous seven (when our youngest child went away to college, and I started this blog).

Early on in the pandemic I realized I needed to clean out the pantry. I'll spare you the list of things with "best by" dates from the late 00's to the early 10's that went straight to the compost (and their containers to the recycling)...let's just say it reinforced how little cooking I'd done in that period.

It also rapidly became obvious that a lot of things in the kitchen were worn out. It wasn't long before kitchen appliances - large and small - started failing. 

We replaced the mixer, toaster oven, microwave, a refrigerator and two hot water heaters over the course of the spring and summer...just a couple of weeks ago, we had to have the "pilotless ignition" on the stove replaced...and this morning, as soon as I get this post up, I'm shopping for a new dishwasher (the panel on ours is now blinking like a pinball machine).

Despite all of that, I realized I was enjoying cooking and baking again...but, like my office, the contents of the kitchen needed to be sorted, purged and updated.

I started with baking pans.  Instead of sourdough, I baked muffins...but the pan I had dated to my days as a student. It was flimsy and rusty, and needed to be replaced.  I also bought some really nice (and just plain fun) odd sized measuring cups and spoons.  I think it's worth noting, that I am still baking several times a week, so these were good purchases.

From there, I moved on to cabinets and drawers...that was almost as big an undertaking as the office.  For years I'd just shoved things in where I could find space for them. There were threadbare linens that should have been tossed on the rag pile a decade ago, cheap bakeware with dented bottoms (metal) or chipped glaze, as well as sippy cups and plastic juice boxes (did I mention that my youngest child - referenced above - is in the third year of her PhD?). 

One of the most satisfying outcomes of this process is that now, when I open the cabinet that contains plastic storage containers, not only does nothing fall out...but I know every piece has a matching lid.

Last, there were the bookshelves...like the cabinets and drawers...they were overloaded.  I pulled everything off, and gave it all - the books, the tchotchkes, and the shelves themselves - a thorough dusting and wiping down.

I recycled years' worth of magazines that I had kept - for reasons I could no longer remember (or, because they contained a recipe that is now online) - which freed up a whole lot of shelf space, and made it possible to line the books up properly, with nothing stacked on top of them.

I don't think it's much of a leap to guess what I did with some of the newly available space...

...I upgraded!

Dented baking pans and cheap plastic utensils (from the same era, with melted spots on the handles) were replaced with deep ceramic pans and silicone untensils.  I traded frayed, faded linens for new, bright colored ones...and all those new tea towels (both the ones sent by friends, and those I purchased) fit in the drawers.

I'm really glad to have gotten rid of things I wasn't using, and not feeling any buyer's remorse about the new stuff. I'm going to be serving up three meals a day at home for the foreseable future.  This is the new normal - at least as far as dining goes - and it's nice to have things that are pretty and functional.

Now, you'll excuse me while I go whip up a marble pound cake.

Until next time.

*again, the disclaimer that I totally stole this term from Stephen Colbert.

03.01.21 Quarantinewhile* - The Office

We have a four bedroom house, and for 23 years, one of those rooms was the home for my education finance consulting business.  I closed the business at the end of 2019, and planned to devote my time to improving and expanding my jewelry endeavors.

Well, as my grandmother liked to say...

"Man plans, God laughs".  

So here we are in 2021, and I haven't been at the bench in almost a year...I've spent more time than ever in the room that I figured I wouldn't be using much...and I've cleared it out, a lot.

In the beginning, it was about making space to be able to take yoga (over Zoom, of course).  When I started the process, I had just enough space to roll out my mat, but I couldn't really even spread my arms without bumping in to something.

Amazingly, I didn't burn up the shredder

It was a multi-step process...to clear the floor, I had to get rid of or find space for the dozens of binders, bins of files and countless books that were consuming valuable space.

It's a wonder how much paper one person can accumulate in a career (especially if it spans more than 30 years)...in my case, it was enough to fill a 96 gallon recycling bin a half dozen times.

I got rid of a lot, and it took weeks - the greatest limitation being the recycling schedule, although our bin is huge, it only gets picked up every other week - but once I was down to just the things that were worth keeping, I actually had space in my filing drawers...

...so much space, in fact, that I was also able to clear off the top of my desk.

You might think, at that point, I would have stopped - satisfied with my clean and spacious desk top - but instead, I used all that new found space for the kind of fun, new accessories (my husband calls them "unnecessary plastic things") I never had room for when my desk was covered in work.

I started with some artificial greenery...because I can't keep real plants alive.  

I made a lovely little air plant garden at an Crafternoon event with my talented and crafty friend Emily, back in the before times...and managed to kill the plant. I also won a small succulent garden in a raffle from Amanda Deer...and did pretty well with that for a while, but eventually, one by one...they died off, too.

Enter Etsy...and faux succulents...voilà! Plants I can't kill.

I just kept going with the botanical theme...ordering a Rifle Paper pencil cup and trinket dish, and a darling floral desk calendar (all from Paper Source).

Yes, a desk calendar.  Not because it's particularly useful, but it was on sale and just too cute - and frankly too clever - to pass up!

There are six cardboard sections, printed on both sides with a different month and flower. At the end of each month, you turn the section around and place it at the back...so the little garden changes all year.

The last, but far from least, unneccesary plastic things were two SHERO action figures from FCTRY.   Now I have RBG and MVP (Madam Vice President) keeping me company every time I sit down to write a blog post, Postcards to Voters or attend a Zoom meeting (and yes, that IS an Official Inaugural Announcement, on my desk).

It wasn't all silly stuff, either...

I bought a  mug warmer, filled with coffee beans, that you heat up in the microwave to keep my cup o' Joe warm,

a great (and inexpensive) Bluetooth speaker for listening to music, 

and a nifty little technology brush to keep my keyboard dust and crumb free.

So, until I can get back to the jewerly studio, my desk has become a happy place, along with the kitchen (more on that soon).

Until next time.

*with apologies to Stephen Colbert, I totally ripped of  his term "Quarantinewhile".