birthday (what!?) recap: slept late-ish and watched basketball on saturday. about 600, headed over to eileen's for lasagna and cake with betsy and eileen. drank some wine. blew out some candles. watched nick and jessica on saturday night live. and that was it.

fielded calls from all three siblings, my parents, gurs and sumo. received a to-be-returned voice mail from unstadt. hilariously, former roomie ben checked in about 230 on saturday, with no apparent idea how super the day really was. we chatted and it was wonderful. sharon checked in via voicemail on sunday. melissa got a real answer last night.

(while not much drunkenness was experienced, i did get one free drink this weekend, when i flashed my i.d. on friday at mac's. mac's, incidentally, is the greatest place in the world. i have a few pictures to prove it, although i don't know if you'll ever see them. citron and tonic was the drink. girly? you betcha.)

sister annie, home on spring break, made a visit on sunday. we watched basketball, for at least a little while. we also broke into the stadium to check out the renovations, failed in our search for john deere, and ate vietnamise (is that how you spell it?) food. mom's credit card paid for dinner, as well as a trip to see that new jim carrey movie, joined again by workees betsy and eileen. good folks all.

the birthday haul: checks from both grandparents (more on that later), a check from the parents, one bad shirt, one good shirt, one balloon, and a pair of shorts from the parents. annie brought two half-cooked lou malnati's - one sausage, one spinach, yum - along with her, as well as other assorted foodstuffs.

the bad shirt will be returned to my local kohl's. i've got that credit, along with $30 in expire-in-one-week coupons. i'm eye-ing a toaster oven because, quite frankly, it's been too long.

ncaa tournament pools are generally f'ed, although i'm technically still in the running in the flax pool. again, the pitt-texas final is my hope. if i'm not mistaken, in my number two pool (the one with florida in the sweet sixteen and the spartans in the final four), i'm left with exactly two - two - of the sweet sixteen. duke's my champ in that one.

work is heating up. three full publications left to put to bed, two by the middle of next week (one's yet-to-be-started and requires about four or five articles), and one by monday the fifth. not much time for sleep...we're looking at 7 p.m. ish departures from here on out (note: i'm blogging at work...not so productive).

in somber news, my grandma dolores passed away monday. wake is tommorow afternoon, with funeral on thursday. it'd been sort of expected, but that doesn't really make it any easier. i'm imagining most of my dad's very large extended family will be around, and it's always nice to see them, under any circumstances. i'll miss most of wednesday's work day, and i'll return on thursday early evening. i'll probably return to work to watch some hoop thursday night. i'll tape the american idol results show, so don't tell me anything.