First of all, yes, I was standing in a hole in the sidewalk. Anyway, my Dad and I went to Salt Lake City to watch the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 teams in that region, which happened to be 1- Syracuse, 5- Butler, 2- Kansas State, and 6- Xavier. It was amazing, I'm guessing it was historic for the college game of basketball. The first matchup had Butler beating a Cuse team that most people had picked to win it after Kansas lost, and Butler out played Cuse. The crowd wasn't behind the underdog in that one though, I couldn't figure it out, but I was, and it was great to see the mid-major pull off the huge upset.
Our second game on the first night was Xavier and KSU, both teams had lightning quick guards and between the four guards (2 on each team) there were 110 points put up. It went to overtime with KSU up 3 but fouling on a 3pt shot, so they hit 3 free-throws to tie it up. Then in the overtime, Xavier hit a 30' three to send it to a double overtime where KSU eventually won out. It had to be the best game of the tourney, not to mention that one of Xavier's guards, Crawford, had 30pts and last year dunked on LeBron James. That kid had a great year.
The next day we hung out and went up to Park City, and also ate at the Red Iguana, it's a Mexican restaurant that had rave reviews on the Food Network. It was pretty dang good, the atmosphere was fun, and it was packed in both locations.

For our final game, we watch Butler dismantle KSU, Butler is by far the best defensive team I have seen this year, or maybe even in a few years. The place was going crazy the whole time, it was incredible. After the game, we went with Clarke, Greg, Mike and his wife, and Tyler and his dad to the Red Rock Brewery to eat some food and reminisce of good times and catch up on how everyone is. It was good to see them all together and have some laughs and watch the beginning of the demise of Kentucky on the TV's there.

This has been the best March I have ever been a part of, and which is also why March is always my favorite month of the year. We couldn't have asked for better games and a better time. Thanks Dad!

Okay, so Buford did have a tumor wrapped around his optical nerve and the surgery went well. But looking at my poor guy, he's a tough muther cuz he hasn't complained and seems to be in good spirits despite the fact that he looks like the pet of Jason Voorhees. His appetite is good, but his surgical area is an absolute disaster and I know he's gotta be in some serious pain.





Geez. I can't look at Biff and not feel like the worst person, he's got to be wondering what the stuff is keeping his eye closed (not knowing it's gone) and it's gotta hurt considering he's only on an anti-inflammatory. He's only about a year old, so hopefully he'll adapt well. Geez.

We had taken Buford (aka Biff) to the vet a couple of weeks ago because he had what looked to be a nasty eye infection in his left eye. So we got some eye-drops from the vet and they helped a little bit, but he never got any better and continued to look as though he lost a boxing match to Mike Tyson circa 1988. His third eyelid covered most of his eye and it was really swollen around the eye in general, and since it didn't heal, Melissa took Biff back into the vet today to see if there was some other antibiotics they could prescribe for him.

Well, it isn't good. They did blood work and it all came back to be really good, which means it's not an infection, but something different and worse than an infection. His eye is "bulging" now, and is completely dilated so it's a lot worse than it was, and it's gotten worse very quickly from what the Vet says. Meaning, there is something putting pressure on the back of his eye and pinching his optic nerve, like a tumor or something of the sort. In the below picture on the right, you can see his third eyelid (it comes from the inside corner of the eye, like a flap of skin) covering most of his eye.

Our options consisted of driving him to Sun Valley for a cat MRI so they could see the tumor, taking him to Salt Lake to a cat eye specialist so they could tell me that his eye is messed up, or having our vet take out his eye and scrape what he can of the tumor out. And we went with our Vet doing surgery tomorrow, which I'm not happy in the slightest to have to have done.

I gotta just say that this is complete $#@&^#*% for Buford. He's such a nice cat, he's like the anti-cat in that he's friendly and doesn't think the sun sets on his butt and is completely unpretentious. He's so patient and good, I feel so bad for him and it's not fair to have such a good, young cat (10 months old) have to lose half of his vision. It's not like me to get emotional about a cat, but I can't help but feel like a complete failure as an owner and steward for him, the only un-catly cat in the history of the universe.

Anyway, I trust our vet, he's a good guy. He says it will take some time for Biff to adjust to his new reality, but he should be just fine after a while. They will sew the eyelid shut after they remove the eye, and the sutures will have to stay in for a couple of weeks. The one and only small benefit for Biff... he'll be in the house and away from the unholy terrors that inhabit the home next to us. I swear, (more than I should) those kids next door are the first-borns to Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, those little bastages probably caused Buford condition by causing him to form a stress related tumor. Mama's don't let your babies grow up to be serial killers. Or cat abusers.

Anyway, I'll post some pics of his eye after the surgery and as he heals...

Freeze Time by 311 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas... INCREDIBLE! Watch this clip or you're goat-licker.



Samuel and I went to 311 Day in Las Vegas, they have a massive concert every two years and it's on March 11, appropriately. The concert in and of itself was amazing, nothing less than the gold standard of 311-ness. The Mandalay Bay had a huge arena, it held close to 12,000 screaming 311 fans. And the band, wow, great set list to play, full of rarities and the classics. I mean, they even played "Slinky." SLINKY. Yeah, it was that good of a time, and I can't wait to see them play again this summer in SLC.


While we were at the concert, I had the "opportunity" to undertake a field-study of what happens to guys when they drink at a concert, not that I had any choice in the matter. The 4 subjects sat right in front of me and Samuel and provided the fodder from which I derived my study. I will type the summary of what I hypothesized:

- Buzzed- After a drink or two, the subjects became buzzed, which meant they were in control of themselves, but beyond the normal means of being hyper. Screaming in each other's faces to "psyche" themselves up seemed to be the means of communicating. Having a beer in their hand also seems to give them something to do with that hand while dancing, as they would not know how to dance using the said hand, if it were empty. The other hand in this process rocks with the "horns" to the flow of the music.

- Beginning Drunk- This is where the subjects exhibit the first of their incredibly annoying antics, acting like a mime. Yes, a mute mime. They feel that to most effectively show how into the music they are, that they must act out the lyrics to the songs with their hands. This includes gestures of pointing, pretending to drink from an imaginary beer bottle even though their real beer is in their other hand, and waving their hands like they are a belly-dancer trying to seduce the Sultan of San Fransisco... it was quite a spectacle to watch four men in their 20's do. Towards the end of this phase in drinking, the subjects get about 40 decibels louder when they communicate.

- Officially Drunk- Being officially drunk at a rock concert commences the time to express deep-welling love. For everyone. For everything. They have big long hugs and hold nothing back in expressing how much they love their friend, NO REALLY, I MEAN IT, I LOVE YOU MAN. For professed "straight" men, this is where their homosexual tendencies begin to show, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm sure their wife/girlfriend would probably need to know this. When a friend brings back another beer for one of the subjects, this prompts the longest "I love you" speech I may have ever heard.

This is also the phase where every song played is "my song." "Hey, THIS IS MY SONG!" Followed by screaming like a 4 year old girl in the Dora-the-Explorer Factory Outlet. The subjects also lose all rhythm to their dancing, as it becomes more like poorly controlled seizures and hand-swinging than a controlled dancing motion. Elaine from Seinfield comes to mind at this type of body movement.

- Sloshed- Barely on the brink of consciousness, the subjects hold the railing in front of them and nod their heads up and down, albeit, not to any sort of beat or rhythm. Occasionally, one will try and prove his "manliness" and stand up and scream something not understand, and violently seizure what I'm sure must be wasted dancing. This ceases as the subject loses balance and falls over, to get up and act like nothing happened. Every 5 minutes, two or more of the subjects will leave to visit the urinal. Incoherent babble and leaving the facilities like that of a comatose zombie ends my observation of the subjects.



Just to go along with my little study, one of the dudes in front of us had a fat-roll in the back of his head. And no matter what angle he held his head, it looked like he had a rolled up newspaper under the skin on the back of his dome. It didn't help that he had a military hair cut to pronounce his tumorous looking fat-log. As sad as it is, I think he added two pounds to his head fat that night to add to his girth-roll, although I'm sure it was just water-weight from beer intake.

My next study will have to be the 50-something-year-old ladies next to me. Think Stiffler's mom, or Janine from the movie "Click." I about fell over dead in a fit of girlish giggles as she took a puff of a giant roach, trying to "fit in." It was hilariously sad, and very scary at times as well.

Anyway, we spent our time hanging out on the Strip, checking out all the stores and hotels. We even hit up the pound, LIED, to see if we could find a little dog for a friend. Alas, they had a day waiting period so he will have to find his own dog, I wasn't about spending an extra day in sloppy-drunk-city. He'll find a different place to get a dog, though hopefully from an animal rescue or pound. Anyway, here's a couple of pics from our travels:

















The first is Samuel, with our hotel Excalibur in the background. The one on the right is Samuel with New York New York behind him. I'm not going to lie, besides the 311 concert, the highlight of my trip was going to the 2 story Coca-Cola store. Seriously, if they would have had a Coke waterfall, I would have jumped in and drowned happy. And I'm grateful that Samuel is now old enough not to talk to the vagrants and beggars on the streets and not take things that they hand out (LIKE CD's IN NEW ORLEANS), as I'm sure he would have ended up with enough porn cards to start an adult store.

It was great to see 311, they announced that they will tour this summer with The Offspring, which is going to be fun to see. But lets be honest here, had they announced that they were going to be touring this summer with Frankie the Peruvian Flutist and the Percussionist Bolivian Buttslappers, I still would go... just maybe an hour later.

Well, I already have fuel for my next post, but until then: Jackpot.