And The Winner Is . . .

Charlotte.

Each year I put together a little Bracket group.  It gets a bit more loose each year.  We usually have between 9 and 15 participants.  This year we had 9 and a benchmark and the winner was my sister Charlotte.  The final standings were as follows (nobody picked UCONN or Butler to win so we're done as a group):

Group Results  (Edit Members)
RNK	ENTRY, OWNER	R64	R32	S16	E8	FF	NCG	CHAMPION	PPR	TOTAL	PCT
1	C'mon Aggies!, C. Cantwell	220	160	80	80	160	0	Notre Dame	0	700	91.9
2	Straight Chalk, Lefty	250	200	120	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	570	72.7
3	jhipworth 1, J. Hepworth	220	220	80	0	0	0	Kansas	0	520	51.9
4	This is the year, D. Corry	220	200	80	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	500	42.8
5	rskdmt 1, R. Corry	210	160	120	0	0	0	Duke	0	490	38.2
6	Doris in Accounting, Lefty	220	140	80	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	440	17.7
7	Fear the Leprechaun, J. Corry	180	160	80	0	0	0	Pittsburgh	0	420	11.9
8	Moving Home Madness, M. Corry	230	140	40	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	410	9.7
9	Maegan, M. Corry	220	140	40	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	400	7.8
10	corrymark 1, M. Corry	190	140	0	0	0	0	Ohio St	0	330	1.7

C. Cantwell is my sister Charlotte.
Lefty is my cousin Tim who has two brackets but if you look closely (you can't from here of course) you will see that Straight Chalk is the benchmark entry I mentioned where he picked top seeds all the way through.  What that means is that we are all bad at making brackets except Charlotte.  I liken this to measuring your investments against the S&P 500 or the stock market as a whole.  Either that or you can look it as Vegas picks and in this case the house won big.
J. Hepworth is a friend, D, Corry, R, Corry, M, Corry, M. Corry, M, Corry are brothers, sister-in-law and wife.


At least I beat those M. Corrys.  


So why am I writing a blog post about the winner this year when I haven't in years past?  I thought you'd never ask.  I am shocked that Charlotte won and the margin of her victory amazes me even more.  Now if she had won because she picked Butler or VCU to do well I would have chalked it up to a crazy year, but she fanned on those two just like everybody else.  She won with UConn.


What you have to understand here is that Charlotte knows about as much about Basketball as I do about quilting. It's not that she doesn't have the opportunity to learn.  She's surround by family members who live and breathe sports, but is very adept as getting out of any conversation that might enlighten her with the finer points of roundball, heck she even has a brother-in-law that has a blog about sports (though it hasn't been updated since before the ipad).  I could take this quilting/basketball thing further, but I'm not going too.


Now I don't want to go all Rick Reilly on Charlotte's Jimmer, but she'll never make it at the next level.  Sure she was the best in our pool, but without the attention to the details she'll be riding the pine when she goes pro.


Congratulations Char.  I'll give you extra "pride points" if you can explain what I'm talking about in that last paragraph.

Super Spencer

 A few months ago Spencer wrote a book entitled "Super Spencer and the Evil Scientist".  It just so happened that his teacher submitted it to an author competition they have for the South Bend schools each year where a group of improv actors from Chicago comes to town and performs their favorite books as a short play on stage. Well Spencer's book won so we all got to go see his book portrayed on stage.

Spencer wasn't told that he won until they announced his book in the auditorium on the day of the Author's conference and he was very nervous all day.  So nervous in fact that he vomited in the garbage at the registration desk.

I filmed the portrayal of his book, but unfortunately i missed the best part.  Before the performance one of the actors interviews the author and during Spencer's interview he was asked if he was the Spencer in the book to which he responded, no he just liked the name (the Spencer in the book is in high school duh).  I don't recall the entire interview, but the actor seemed particularly interested in Spencer's idea that everyone should have their own personal scientist.  Anyway here is the 5 minute video.  Feel free to watch if you wish, but we all know that this is really for Grandma.

Corry #5

Corry # 5 shows up for it's first pictures :)  We are so excited to have a healthy, happy, baby on the way.  This little one is slated to appear at the end of September.  We'll keep you posted.