A lost weekend, but that's kind of the point, right? Lots of hoops, which is definitely the point, an uneventful-but-kind-of-beery St. Patrick's Day, a few shorter runs, and lots more sleep than planned.

Let's talk sleep just a bit.

The workweek was slightly longer than usual this past week (and again this upcoming week), with three consecutive midweek days of 7 a.m. start times. Sigh. We'll deal with it. But this means a lot to deal with, as in 6:20 departures for work, and 5:45 or so returns home. Makes for a long day.

Now, it's been determined at some point that I'm not the most disciplined when it comes to maintaining normal sleeping hours. To wit - I definitely had an extended phone conversation with my sister on, perhaps, Tuesday night, and another one with Gurs on, perhaps, Wednesday night. These conversations were deemed more worthy of my time than sleep, and they were, without a doubt. I also, 100 percent of the time when I'm not going to sleep buzzed (and about 80 percent of the time when that's the case), insist on reading a magazine article or a chapter or two of a book or whatever. Habit, I guess. Sometimes, I read an extra article or two, and sometimes I kill an extra 45 minutes writing here.

Point is, sleep is lower on the priority list than it should be.

So, this past Thursday is about my favorite day of the year, I think. (Less favorite this year because, for the first time since high school, I wasn't watching the daytime slate of games. For the first time since I was, I don't know, six years old, I really had no concept of what was going on in the games - didn't even get scores until I got in the car after work. Wow.) Impromptu drinking games, chili, hoops. Perfect. Really, I think Christmas is a better day, and that's about the only one.

So I got home from work Thursday, apparently more drained than I realized from three straight one-hour-extra days in which I had chosen to not compensate by getting to sleep before 1. After missing Wednesday and after enjoying warmer temperatures outside on Monday and Tuesday, I had planned to take a run, return home, shower, warm the chili I had cooked on Wednesday, and watch Michigan State hoops. The run was truncated - after three minutes, I realized it was cold, and I returned home. I returned my mom's phone call. I read some deadspin and The Sports Guy's not-that-good running diary of the afternoon games. I warmed the chili, decided to add a grilled cheese to the mix, and I settled in for a night of hoops. Yes.

I ate my chili, finishing dinner before Marquette had made a bucket. I pulled the burnt orange blanket across my chest, I stretched myself across the couch, and I really settled in.

At the half, Michigan State was in a commanding lead, and VCU was keeping it close with Duke, as we anticipated. Somewhere during the half, I drifted off. I woke up with about a minute left in the MSU game, and noticed in the score box that VCU and Duke were still close, inside of four minutes, as we had expected. I geared up for that finish. Then I drifted off again.

When I woke up, Gonzaga and Indiana were in the battle to determine who would get knocked off by UCLA over the weekend. I drifted off again.

When I woke up, a rerun of Becker was on my CBS affiliate, and the clock read 3:12.

So, pretty much, on my favorite day of the year, I saw less than an hour of hoops, and slept from about 8:02 until about 3:12. Then from 4 until 7. It happens, I guess.

Point is, I still haven't seen the finish of the Duke-VCU game, though that's probably pretty accessible, and it's all academic at this point, anyway.

- - - - - -

Now, I had plans to be kind-of productive on Saturday morning, maybe running and grocery shopping and purchasing some coasters before the noon start of hoops coverage. I need coasters. Alarm for 9, which isn't early, but is earlier than it had to be.

I turned off the alarm at 9. When I woke up, Xavier and Ohio State were underway. It was 12:30ish. Sigh. (I'm thinking that, actually, hoops might not have started until1, and I might have woken up at 1. Wow. Hmm.)

My Saturday struggles being what they were, I still planned to be up on Sunday. Meet the Press, because I'm a Tim Russert guy. That's a 9 a.m. start, so the alarm was set for 8:54. Then groceries in the morning, and a run before hoops coverage started at noon. I had been out Saturday, and I had done some post-beer reading and microwave popcorn-eating, and I probably didn't get to sleep until 3:30.

Alarm at 8:54. I saw Campbell Brown on Today Weekend, I heard the Meet the Press intro, and then I was out again. 11:15 wake up. Sigh.

One day, friends, I'll be a grownup. Until then, I'll continue to wake up at noon.

(All summer long, for the record, I would drink on Saturday and be up Sunday morning to do laundry, often before work at 10. I remember once drinking Saturday night, getting up by 7, and folding my laundry at home to the Wimbledon final, or perhaps the French. And, now, I can't even get up before 11:30. Sigh.)

- - - - - -

Gluttony.

I don't know how it's happened (actually, it's the hoops thing and the no-roommate-to-impress, or whatever that'd be called, thing), but I've gluttoned myself lately.

Since Wednesday evening, excluding a Thursday lunch of my leftover fajita concoction, I've basically subsisted on the following:

- Bagel with fried ham, scrambled eggs and cream cheese or American cheese, in some combination
- At least three grilled cheese sandwiches
- Chili, a pot of it, sometimes over rice, sometimes straight out of the bowl
- A Papa John's Sausage Sensation pizza, for which I got dinged for a delivery charge
- Beer
- Vodka
- Diet soda, sometimes combined with vodka
- Applesauce
- Raisins
- Burnt microwave popcorn

Granted, the cheese is of the least-awful-for-you variety, but, man, that's unimpressive. Probably my most unimpressive string of eating since I was eating macaroni and cheese and hot dogs and piles and piles of pasta my junior year at NU.

Combine this with my three late-week days off from running, and I've probably put on about 10 pounds since Tuesday morning. Now, this is a morning to an end-of-day comparison, so it's not that valid, but it's kind of valid. Better eating plans for this week, to be sure. After all, the chili's gone.

- - - - -

Indication that readership truly is plunging:
I was talking to Harper tonight, and that was great. We mostly talked about the earliest stages of his wedding planning, particularly his ability to say "Whatever you want is great," while sounding like he meant "Whatever you want is great" rather than "I really don't give a crap what shade of pink the invitations are printed in," and about his pending work-related trip to Vegas. His life's far more interesting than mine, clearly.

Anyway, we get to me, and he asks "What's up?" and I start talking about getting settled into the new place. "You moved?"

When I've lost Harper, damn, that hurts. Badly. Crap.

- - - - - -

I sprung the 15 bucks for the MLB Radio package. I listened to Pat and Ron do Cactus League baseball today. I think that it's already paid for itself.

- - - - - - -

I'm going to venture a guess to say that this final will be of interest to just about nobody who reads, though there's a shot that Flax could be genuinely interested, and that The Boy could be kind of interested, and even that Nemo might care just a bit.

This is the second year that, through Amazon, I've ordered both Baseball America's Prospect Handbook (of interest, definitely, to none of the three mentioned above) and the Baseball Prospectus annual. About thirty bucks, and about 2500 player scouting reports, or capsules, or summaries, or blurbs. The former, of course, is exclusively about up-and-comers.

The latter is about players you know and love, or may come to know and love, and it's genuinely hilarious at times.

About a player you know and love, the great Carlos Lee (it peaks at the end - please read):
As the Lyle Lovett song says, "That's right, you're not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway." The Rangers dealt for Lee, and not to be one-upped, the Astros signed him to a six-year, $100 million deal. Lee's home run power didn't show up quite so much in Texas, where it was assumed that the ballpark would liberate him, but he still enjoyed one of the most productive stretches of his career thanks to an uncharacteristically high batting average. Note the top PECOTA (ed: their projection system) comparison, Kevin McReynolds, another outfielder who ate himself out of a good career; originally a good defensive outfielder, McReynolds came to resemble a bleached Grimace and his career quickly faded. (ed: Big finish!)This is a danger for Lee - if at some point during the season the Astros suddenly and unexpectedly put Chris Burke on the DL, it might not be that he's hurt, but that Lee ate him.

Zing!

And, not, on Scott Tyler, a current Marlins farmhand who once played for the Twins, and whom I'm geniunely pulling for, but from a distance (this one's esoteric and downright weird):
By the time the pitching gods got to the T's, it had been a long day. They had endowed distinctive characteristics to the one they called Takatsu, and gave the Tavarezes, the Trachsels, and the Timlins some resiliency. But when there was just one name left on their list, they wanted to go home. They had no more ideas. "What is the most common young pitcher profile?" asked Walkmetheus, the God of Untranslated Walk Rates. "Why, a hard-throwing yet wild right-hander," answer Mechanicus. "Then let us make this Tyler one of those." "Shall we prepare his elbow for ruination, too?" asked Mechanicus. "No. Let's wait a while on that," said Walkmetheus on his way out the door. And lo, it was done.

So, yeah, I think that Baseball Prospectus 2007 is worth your 15 bucks.

I sit down to skim through it, and suddenly Kansas and Kentucky are midway through the second half. It's riveting, in a completely nerdy, I-can't-believe-Opening-Day-is-only-two-weeks-away way.

God, I wish there were some drama to RHH. Crap.