March Meanderings

Through these half-opened blinds, I see the world. I see the red brick of my neighbors house, his fake white duck, and a black cat skampering under parked cars. Except for the slight chill in the air and a few lingering clouds, it's a decent Monday in March. The birds, freshly-returned from the south, harmonize with the buzz of a distant chainsaw which never fails to run when I'm trying to read or write. Oh well.

I'm glad the birds made it back safe. You never know what's going to happen when you go south. I wonder if they're met with the same southern hospitality other visitors meet when they arrive. Does anyone have them over for a home-cooked meal of deep-fried worms? Do they pick up a little twang in their chirp? Maybe there's a Southern Baptist mega-nest they all flock to on Sunday mornings. Who knows. I'm just glad they came back.

Unfortunately, March also brings back the madness of the college basketball championship. All the sudden everyone seems to know everything about every college basketball team in the country. So much so that they proceed to pick who will win every single game. And whether you want to or not, you will see every game. It's a shame to walk into a sports bar during the always-intense NHL playoff race and witness nothing but college hoops. Surely it wouldn't hurt to put Rangers vs. Penguins on one of the small screens. But no. Those are the times I seriously think about packing my bags and catching the next flight to Canada. Thankfully the end of March is right around the corner which means no more brackets, no more Dick Vitale, and no more wasted big-screens.

While I'm being kind of random, you might like to know I live to the soothing sounds of a Longarm quilt machine. Down four stairs from my room is my mom's quilt studio. Every night she's down there tirelessly turning the t-shirts of strangers into beautiful quilts, a money-making metamorphisis where old baseball jerseys become a stitched masterpiece. So for most of the day, the humming, stitching, and beeping of the quilt machine are the sounds of our house. The machine has almost become another person in our house, one who pays the rent a lot better than I do. It's program, called the Intelliquilter, makes me wonder if it really does have a mind of it's own. What if it came to to life one day like one of the Transformer machines? That would be sweet. Probably not as fun as the Transforming cars, but your bed, like mine, would never lack a finely stitched quilt.