For the first time in a while I spent a weekend out of the confines of metro Atlanta. Needed some time to reevaluate things and break away from the familiar for a while so I jumped in the car, pointed it northward, and got out of dodge. The road trip was kinda lengthy so there was plenty of time to for random thoughts and such. Some of which are listed for you below.

1. God bless the good people at XM Radio for beaming all of Thursday’s NCAA tournament action via satellite radio for free. I’m too cheap (read: poor) to renew my subscription so it was quite the surprise to flip to the XM station on a whim and hear that the games were on. Someone at XM needs a big hug from me because they provided all the sports talk I could stand thus making the drive completely bearable.

2. Thirty-eight. That’s the number of gout related PSA’s that I heard while listening to the NCAA Tourney games on the radio during my drive to and from my destination. Apparently, there is a serious gout problem amongst men that listen to sports via satellite radio. There were almost certainly more than 38 of these, I didn’t start keeping count until I said to myself at some point, “Damn, what’s with all the gout ads?”

3. No matter where you go in these United States, this time of year there’s inevitably going to be a grown man standing on a street corner dressed as the Statue of Liberty waving at your car in efforts for you to heed his call and have him do your taxes. I thought that perhaps this was a local thing but, nope, there I was 500 miles from home and 6’1 Statue of Liberty was chilling on the side of the road playing a saxophone. I wish I could read the minutes from the meeting where it was determined that American taxpayers would be open to this ploy.

4. Winter is Relative: The weatherman in the city I visited said that there was an expected 5-10” of snow expected to fall over the next 24 hours and that citizens could expect delays in their commute to work. If my local weatherman reports that there will be 5-10” of snow in the next 24 hours in Atlanta, it is Armageddon; there is no commute for the next week…at least.

5. Watching college basketball in the Midwest equals watching college football in the Southeast. It’s the same yelling and screaming, the same posturing and chest thumping, it’s simply a change in sporting venue. After this weekend I’d be willing to put any Big 10 college basketball fan (preferably Indiana or Michigan) against any SEC college football fan (preferably Alabama or Georgia) and just watch them scream themselves into oblivion.

There were several other thoughts that I had during this trip but I can’t tell you how anxious I am to sleep in my own bed so I’m going to stop here for this week. Hope that the weekend gave you all time to think, recharge, relax, and get ready for everything headed your way over the next 5 days.

~thanks for reading 🙂

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