Sunday

I wouldn't consider March coming in like a lion here today. Cool, but no snow, sleet or rain. I may even wander over to Mom's to see if Margret will fire up this afternoon. (Did! Check her out here!) 3's morning Tweet from Beantown suggests that the zoo may, however, be open in her neck of the woods.

Just didn't have it at SB's this AM.

Two weeks until Selection Sunday. Lots of conference tournament action in the next 14 days. The Big East is so big that the top seeds actually get two byes. A team like ND that has a so-so resume probably needs to win three games to make it to the Big Dance, and I think that the third win only gets them to the conference semi-finals.

Wells Fargo has caved to PC-ness and dropped the Wachovia name from the Charlotte PGA golf event next month. (See earlier rant about the Northern Trust Open last week.) They're staying with the contract to support the tournament, but they are taking a very low profile. Makes a lot of sense. Spend millions on advertising, but don't advertise that you're doing it.

1's comment about Johnny "Red" Kerr is well-placed. He and former Bulls' guard (and announcer) Norm Van Lier died on the same day. I never followed Kerr until his announcing days with the Bulls, and then only when Michael raised the level of play. And 1 became such a fan. Locally, the Bulls aren't on TV as much as they were in Michael's heyday, and I couldn't tell you for sure who their current announcers are, for TV or radio.

The Bulls' radio feed is not currently picked up by any station in this region. Since Michael has been gone, the team has been either awful or ordinary. Pretty hard to get excited about their games, or their players. (BTW, Paxson has not created much of a legacy.) Interesting since in the Summer you can pick up baseball games up and down the dial any night of the week. And I don't know the players on those teams either.

A tip 'o the hat to LV. NASCAR is racin' there today. A quarter of the way through the race and it looks like bumper cars. My bet is that AM has been staying home all weekend.

The PGA event this weekend was at a new desert course near Tucson at a Ritz Carlton resort. The course is very much like the courses we played in January in Scottsdale: green strips and circles in the middle of extreme desert. Very pretty to the eye, but a pain in the butt for the average golfer. Tiger (in his first go since last June) was ousted in the second round on Thursday.

That PGA event's title sponsor was/is Accenture. I'm wondering what the governing committee or board at Accenture had to say about the wisdom of spending money for golf sponsorships in the future. I'm sure that they were locked in for this year, but what will they do in the future? Will the Barney Frank Rule evolve to preclude such sponsorships by any company if they have laid people off in the prior 12 months? Will such expenditures be approved in cases where the company develops a mortgage assistance program, bans private and/or First Class air travel, and all executives wear sackcloth suits?

2 and I are looking at making Bologna or Verona our second major location for our Italy trip. We're definitely staying in Torino for half of our vacation as that gets us close to the mountain climb I want to do in France (the Galibier). The romantic in me (say, what?) favors Verona.

Maybe spin class in the AM. It all depends on how well sleeping goes.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week.

BCOT