Since I was being mean to Buffalo yesterday, I figured I should do something nice for a Buffalo native this morning. And, conveniently enough, one of Becky’s high-school classmates needs my, and your, help!

Sara Crowther (née Alpsan) is competing in the "Be a Milk Rock Star with Rascal Flatts" contest. She uploaded a video of herself singing "God Bless the Broken Road," and it’s currently ranked 14th out of 219 entries, based on viewers’ votes. That’s up from like 85th or something when I first checked! You can help keep that momentum ("Crow-mentum"?) going by clicking the above link and voting for Sara!

Sara doesn’t need to finish first — she just needs to crack the Top 10 by April 15. Then Rascal Flatts and MilkRocks.com will pick the winner from the Top 10 entries. Whoever they choose will, according to the contest rules,  "win
a trip for them, and three friends, to see the band live and perform
their song entry onstage with Rascal Flatts; a Gibson Les Paul Studio
Guitar autographed by Rascal Flatts; their own backstage dressing room,
a meet and greet with the band; VIP accommodations to and from the
concert on the Gibson Guitar Tour Bus and a webcast featuring their
performance aired for 30 days on MilkRocks.com."

So anyway… vote for Sara! Here’s her video:

Gonzaga loses. :( Tennessee holds on. Now Drake and Western Kentucky are going down to the wire. #12 leads #5.

Davidson has rallied to take the lead over Gonzaga with 7 minutes left. Tennessee-American still tight (Vols by 4) with 3 1/2 to play.

As a follow-up to my dad’s post, Loyette and I would like to wish you & yours a very happy St. Patrick’s Day:

Awww. :) Cutest. Leprechaun. Ever.

Georgia wins 3 games in 30 hours and earns an NCAA bid!! Absolutely incredible!! The most amazing story in the entire history of Championship Week, IMHO. And somebody's bubble just burst. Illinois lost, though. T minus 18 minutes till the selection show!

Heh:

Actually, that photo was taken on Thursday during the Pac-10 tournament. But I have a feeling it will be a common scene both tonight and throughout the next few weeks. :)

(Just before the picture was taken, Loyette was actually staring straight at the TV screen for several minutes. It was really cute.)

Oh, and yes, we realize our entertainment center isn’t remotely baby-proofed. But we should have a little while yet before she starts crawling around and that becomes an issue…

I totally forgot to plug this earlier, but if anyone has Sirius satellite radio, and happens to see this post in the next half-hour, tune to Channel 110, Indie Talk — I’m scheduled to be on their "Blog Bunker" program from 5:00 to 5:20 PM EDT.

I have absolutely no idea what the topic(s) will be, so if I seem stumped or surprised, now you know why. :)

Back in December, as I pondered what to buy Becky for our second wedding anniversary, I had a brainstorm: wouldn’t it be cool to get her (er, us) tickets to the Ron White comedy show on March 8 in downtown Knoxville? Becky’s a huge live comedy fan generally, and a Blue Collar Comedy fan specifically, so I knew she’d love it.

There was only one problem: by March 8 we’d have a two-month old, so we’d need a babysitter. And I figured new mom Becky wouldn’t want to entrust our brand-new little one to just any old babysitter. But I knew Loyette’s SHA-girl “aunties” all wanted to come visit at some point, so I figured maybe I could get one of them to come out that (i.e., this) weekend. I e-mailed Kristy, she enthusiastically agreed to come visit, and long story short, yesterday she flew in from Denver, and tonight she’ll be babysitting Loyette while Becky and I go out on out first real post-baby date.

You know your friends rock when they’ll fly in from 1,500 miles away to babysit. :) Anyway, here’s a shot of Loyette and her Aunt Kristy at the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame this afternoon:

Awww.

P.S. Here’s a photo Kristy took of me blocking Becky’s shot at the Hall of Fame’s court:

We're at the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame here in Knoxville with Kristy. Geno Auriemma's book doesn't seen to be selling to well at the gift shop. I'm shocked, SHOCKED… :)

Mike Tran took his first jury verdict yesterday, and it was a very good one. Almost every count was 12-0 for the defense. Sitting second chair, Mike’s been in trial virtually every day since he got sworn in (by his trial judge) in November. A lot of civil litigators go an entire career without ever taking a case that long and complex to trial, much less defensing it. I think he had fun, too. He’s only a three-month lawyer and he already has half a dozen really good war stories — and a huge victory in a trial where the other side’s two lawyers had more than 50 years of experience between them. The case won’t make the L.A. Times, but it’ll probably be in the Daily Journal’s Verdicts & Settlements in a few weeks.

In a sure sign of the changing "seasons" here on the Irish Trojan’s Blog — the lull before the Pennsylvania  Primary and the approach of Selection Sunday means that, inevitably, politics will increasingly take a back seat to basketball this month — I’ve updated and expanded my College Basketball blogroll, and bumped it up above the Politics blogroll.

As I did with the Politics blogroll, I’d like to ask for your suggestions. Fellow hoops fans: what sites am I missing? Which ones should I take out? I haven’t really been reading basketball blogs very much this season, so I don’t know what’s the new hotness in the CBB blogosphere. Any thoughts will be much appreciated!

And never fear, fellow political junkies. I’ll still blog about politics. :) Just maybe not quite as much… but I think there’ll be plenty of time for USC/ND/Gonzaga-rooting and Hillary-bashing!

HUGE crowd at the WDVX Blue Plate Special today for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's string quartet and, in the show's second half, renouned Cape Breton Island fiddler Natalie MacMaster. So cool.

We went up to the Sunsphere's observation deck for the first time. Pretty cool.

Driving past UT with Shannon -- we didn't realize the Kentucky game just got out. We may be on Cumberland for a while. Oh well, at least the Vols won, so it's happy traffic. :)

Shannon’s visiting us this weekend, and today we drove out to the Smokies. Here we are in Cades Cove with a sleepy Loyette:

Shannon, incidentally, sat next to Lady Vols star Nicky Anosike’s 6-foot-10 brother, Ifesinachi (a.k.a. “E”), on her flight into Knoxville on Thursday. (He had requested to change seats because he couldn’t fit well in his original seat near the back of the plane, and being next to 5-foot-3 Shannon worked well.) She said he was a really nice, friendly guy, and they had a nice time chatting on the flight. Their flight ended up making the news, in the lede of the AP article about Tennessee’s senior-night win over Florida on Thursday:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nicky Anosike’s family arrived just after halftime to see her play in her final home game at Tennessee on Thursday night.

By then she and the third-ranked Lady Vols had already taken care of business.

“They are always late. I expected that, and I was prepared for it,” she joked after her family’s flight from New York was delayed.

Heh.

Anyway, back to today’s trip to the Smokies… I also got a couple of nice photos of deer: