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The second weekend of the tournament is now complete, and I only picked 1 of the Final Four. Preposterous! How can UNC be the only school I expected to see at this point in these games? At the beginning of this weekend's games, I switched gears from rooting for my bracket to rooting for the underdog in virtually every matchup. Because a messy bracket means a happy Heather. I think it's probably like betting against your team in a big game. If they win, you don't even care that you lost the money, and if they lose, you have a payout instead.

And so, I'm having a blast watching this year's tournament fun. The games, for the most part, have been really great -- tight contests with high energy and unexpected performances. This is the part of the year when coaches and players lay everything they have out on the court and see if it's enough. And lay it out there they have. Awesome game yesterday, Villanova! Great game today, Michigan State! There were so many last weekend, I can't even name them all, but if we can keep the underdogs winning, I will be quite the happy camper. Three seed to win it all, anyone?

Friday Random Ten

"If We Are the Body" by Casting Crowns on Casting Crowns
"A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy on Saturday Night Fever
"F.O.D." by Green Day on Dookie
"I Eat Cannibals" by Toto Coelo on Living In Oblivion
"Let You Down" by Dave Matthews Band on Crash
"Pancho and Lefty" by Merle Haggard on His Epic Hits: The First Eleven
"Thank God I'm A Country Boy" by John Denver on The Very Best of John Denver
"Annie's Song" by John Denver on The Very Best of John Denver
"I'm Gonna Love You Too" by Buddy Holly & The Crickets on From the Original Master Tapes
"Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac on Greatest Hits

This is a pretty "Greatest Hits"-heavy set, but I liked it anyway. And, since I'm feeling under the weather, that's about all the commentary I can manage.

* Acts I've seen live

Dividing the House(hold)

The house is the only really complicated thing that we have to figure out how to handle. We only bought it a year ago, and while the market in Santa Barbara hasn't tanked like it has in other parts of California, I seriously doubt we could break even at this point. So, we'll probably refinance it (which was the plan when we originally purchased) to something a little more manageable for one or the other of us (most likely with renters), and the other will officially move out. It would seem obvious that I would be the one to move out, since GB actually has a job there and I don't, but looks can be deceiving. He's on the short list for a tenure-track faculty position, so that could mean he'd be moving, and I'd be the one to take over the homestead. Ugh. I hate limbo. I'm ready to make some decisions and move forward. He should hear on that in the next couple of weeks, and then we'll go from there.

We also have a lot of other stuff that we've accumulated in the last 10+ years. Excessive accumulation has occurred in the book department. We have four full bookshelves of books, as well as the boxes of books that we've never had a place for. I guess that happens when many Friday nights were spent at bookstores. I think when we moved out from Austin, we had 20 boxes of just books.

And then GB told me about a dream he had last week. Apparently, in the dream, we were trying to divide up all the stuff, and we were fighting about it. Not fighting about who was going to get anything in particular, but about who was going to HAVE to take stuff.
"No, no, no. Like hell I'm going to take the books."
"Well I don't want the f*ing books!"
"Goddammit, you *have* to take them. 'Cause I sure as hell don't want them!"
"If you're going to be that way about it...You have to take the house if I take the books."

And I just laughed and laughed. Partly because I am really enjoying laughing again, and partly out of relief. The subconscious mind does some crazy stuff while sorting through things, and this little subconscious moment in GB's head says that we can probably work this all out as adults. It really shouldn't be that hard for us to do as reasonable humans, but this was the first indicator that we might not be completely crazy for trying approach this as a mediated (rather than all-lawyered-up) divorce.

Basketball Therapy

This past weekend, I had the most fun I've had in an extremely long time. I took Thursday and Friday off of work, and spent 4 full days watching basketball, basketball and more basketball. I've never actually taken the days off work -- always just was unproductive for the day keeping up with four games at a time. Forty-eight games in four days just doesn't leave a whole lot of time for much of anything else. But it was an absolute blast.

Part of the greatness of the weekend, though, didn't have anything to do with basketball. Recently, I had reconnected with an old friend from college, and on a whim we decided to get together to watch all the games of the first weekend. So I drove up to Dallas on Wednesday night, and I couldn't believe how easily we just jumped back in like no time ever passed. It was the most comfortable I've felt in my own skin in such a long time. I was reminded I used to be funny -- witty, silly, dorky (of course), but mostly I just hadn't remembered being laughed with in so long.

Overall, it was just a perfect vacation weekend. And those two overtime games were about as awesome as they could have been.

Radio Silence

During the last five months, I have pretty much been at a loss for what to write. Without knowing what we were going to do, I found myself loathe to write about the massive amounts of vitriol coursing through my veins. I didn't want to have to backtrack out of really horrible things that I would have said about GB, and I do have some family that reads this little chronicle. If we would have decided to reconcile, that would have made for some awfully awkward family gatherings afterward.

That doesn't mean that I need to spew it all now. I just feel the need to explain that even though I've been the biggest blog-slacker on the internet for a long time, It has nothing to do with a lack of desire to write or any sort of abandonment of this medium. I just learned that whole if-you-can't-say-something-nice-don't-say-anything-at-all lesson too well growing up. Well, maybe not completely. But enough to know that I only had over-the-top horrible things to say, as opposed to normally horrible.

I did write, just things that aren't meant for public consumption. It was all really boring and tedious, but to sum up: lots of self-loathing, lots of pain, lots of crying, lots of depression, some self-destructive behavior, lots of really pathetic crap, decision made, weight lifted. I think I'm already starting to be a bit less of a raging lunatic in the office. I just have a bit more emotional reserve to deal with some of the really stupid questions that come my way without having to take that out on the people asking them.

And mostly, I really miss being the giddy, happy, silly person I used to be before all of this. I'm looking forward to finding her again.

Next Steps

GB and I have decided to get a divorce. Not terribly surprising, I suppose, but a difficult decision nonetheless. There are lots of logistical decisions yet to be made, and we'll work through them. In the meantime, I'm very much at peace with this first decision in the process. I'm not precisely sure what direction this little spot on the internet will take. But, then, I'm not real sure which direction my life will be going. Perhaps you'll come along for the ride?