I'm the most hated of all of my cousins every single March, and i'm totally cool with that.

Well well well, here we are again ladies and gents. The Big 12 Tournament has ended (stupidly if you ask me. Don't criticize me. I know stupidly is not a profound and intelligent choice of a word. Don't care. That's the term I choose to describe the Big 12 Tournament.)

Selection Sunday has come and gone, and it's that time again. Time for the Big Dance. No, I'm not talkin senior prom (was that a lame joke? I don't care. I never went to senior prom. KC Cheer or die y'all.) IT'S TIME FOR THE NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT!!!!!!!!!

My family all signed up for ESPN accounts a few years ago and we put our brackets into a group and compete to see who ends up picking the most accurate bracket. All. Of. Us. My cousins, aunts, uncles, even my grandma. It's a ton of fun because we all love to talk shit, and because it gives you something to be invested in when the teams you DGAF about are playing.

Here's a little bit of background on my family members and their obsession with basketball: A lot of the boy cousins on my mom's side of the family are HUGE basketball fans. Like they all played in high school, one of them played in college, they LOVE basketball. Hell, there's a 30 for 30 that features my cousins' grandfather, and their uncle was on the coaching staff at UNC for a hot second. Like, they're ALL ABOUT IT. They go nuts whenever I'm in Allen Fieldhouse and I snap a pic and send it to them. They spend quite a bit of time and expertise trying to engineer the perfect winning bracket...

...and I beat them all almost every year. They GET SO MAD!

This is because I could really care less about the sport of Basketball. I am a fan because I attended the greatest Basketball school in the country (I'm not even going to be politically correct and say "arguably." There's nothing to argue about. KU is the greatest.) and even if you don't care for basketball, you love KU Basketball. It's really true. So I put no REAL strategy or thought into my bracket picks whatsoever, and I usually end up choosing a huge upset or two that nobody chose because they thought they did all the research and there is no mathematical way that the 13 seed just beat the 4 seed to get to the elite 8. Well LOL for you guys because it's March Madness. Literally anything can happen.

So this year I'm going to share with you all my bulletproof strategy to pick the winning bracket as a "mildly interested at best" participant in my family pool of basketball nerds. They're all literally going to kill me, and I can FEEL the large collective eye roll coming from Bobby and Chris O'Connell right now.  Hey, whatevs. My outrageous strategies get me mentioned in the email chain pretty frequently. No press is bad press you know what I'm sayin?!

My bracket has the same title every year: Hail to Old K Lew. It has the same winner every year: The University of Kansas. I said I was neither here nor there on the sport of basketball. I AM STEADFASTLY PASSIONATE about my love for the Jayhawks. So there ya go.

Hail to Old K Lew: My Picks for the 2014 NCAA Tournament that are going to win my family contest and piss off all my cousins. :) 

my own little personal homecoming

The weekend was fabulous. Lots of great things happening. I got to go back to Lawrence for the basketball game and all the festivities that accompanied. It was like a mini homecoming, what with everyone still in school returning for the semester, and since it's a long weekend lots of my out of town graduated friends made an appearance. I was in my ELEMENT. I love Lawrence, and since graduation it has not felt as much as "home" as it used to. This weekend it felt just like home and I loved it. 

I love a good reunion. Especially the ones that happen when you share a big experience with people and you come together with them long after it has ended and reminisce on your good times. I love it when the other members of the experience are just as excited about it as me, because I sometimes think in my own brain that I cling too tightly to those memories and other people don't treasure stuff as much as I do because I have an overly romanticized brain and live in a fantasy world. Well this weekend I was pleasantly surprised by these fools:

Who you may remember from this: 

The three of them put up with my psychoness for a solid year, but Rock Chalk Revue 2012 was like one of my top experiences of college. So I was ecstatic to run into all three of them in Lawrence. Once they realized we were all standing right there one of them was like OMG WE HAVE TO GET A PICTURE. I was beside myself. I love it when people get as excited about stuff as I do. It rarely happens because I'm always excited about everything. But it was a great photo, and I had a great conversation with them reminiscing on how psycho I was and how much fun we had. Just like we were back in the midst of things, back to a time that i LOVED.  I also got to see lots of other friends whom I haven't seen in a while, and they're all doing fabulously. That's all I can ask for. 

All in all, great weekend, great friends, great reunions. Lots of cause to celebrate and appreciate all of the good people in my life. 

I'm pleased.