Tourney Time Remodeling
March 14, 2005 9:28 AM
The NCAA basketball tournament signifies a time of great change. Bitter cold winter gusts give way to fresh springtime breezes. Bare tree branches begin sprouting green baby shoots. Birds chirp at sunrise, and are still there singing as they enjoy an evening sun that no longer sets at 4:30pm.
It's all about the outdoors now. Time to get outside and show off those new clothes, that new physique, that bursting drive of ambition that tells the world you're ready for anything and everything that comes at you. It's time to make a difference, right?
Not for me. Not just yet.
I'll be inside for a while longer, hiding my paleness until the NCAA tournament wraps up in early April. It's going to be a great few weeks, and I'm not going to miss a minute of it.
But this doesn't mean everything in my life will stay the same, and it shouldn't stay the same for you either. 65 teams playing 64 incredibly important games over the course of three weeks is a lot to take on. If we're going to max out our enjoyment of this thing, we've got a lot of work to do. Tourney Time signifies change, so let's change things up right here where we live!
First things first, you've got a necessary phone call to make. Early Monday morning it's time to let the boss know you won't be showing up at work at all this week. I know, you're thinking you only need to get out of Thursday and Friday so you can watch the games...but didn't the regular season teach you anything? It's all about preparation. Hard work, foresight, desire.
Since it's too late to request vacation leave the week of, you're going to have to go with the illness excuse. If you've got any sick days left, cash in five of 'em. Now don't think of this as a lie. In my case, I know I'd be sick as a dog if I missed any NCAA tournament games because of other peoples' "work", so do what I do and think of your notice as a preemptive, precautionary favor to your boss. It's not like you'd be concentrating on your job if you were there in the first place. If you can't get out of sick days, try anything else that comes to mind. Call a temp agency and see if they've got any recent English Major graduates willing to sit in for you for a couple days. If that idea doesn't work, tell your boss you're getting married, spur of the moment. If you're already married, tell him you're getting a divorce. If none of this works, tell your boss the truth, and see if he wants to come over to watch games with you.
Now that that problem is out of the way, it's time to start working on the new digs.
The first room to tackle is the easiest of all: the kitchen. If you're like me, your cupboards contain items that only get you halfway there. Mixing eggs, butter, and a half a cup of milk is not the type of preparation Dean Smith and John Wooden preached about. Unnecessary steps before food-based gratification is a waste of everyone's time and effort. So scratch the spaghetti, the rice, even the frozen pizzas. If the food can't be ordered in, you don't want it. Set your speed dial to the local delivery joints, and keep the canned goods where they belong...out of the way.
All you need to do in the kitchen is this: clear space on the counter top for the disposable cups, disposable plates, and disposable napkins, then clear the floor to make room for the 55-gallon garbage can you'll be hauling in. That's all you need. Period. Order in, eat fast, then get it in the trash. Before you know it, the next block of 8 games is about to begin.
Next, the bathroom. Unless you've got an idea on how to bring the toilet itself out into the living room (I've tried; can't figure it out), you're going to have to find a way to get the game piped into the ol' lavatory. It is possible to just turn up the TV volume way loud so you can follow the game along with your next-door neighbors, but what fun is that? I recommend a sequence of mirrors, placed strategically at perfect angles leading from living room to hallway to medicine chest to porcelain Lazy-Boy.
The bedroom? Easy. Shut the windows and close the curtains tight. If you actually need to catch some shut eye, you're going to want to get it as distraction-free as possible. An utterly dark, sound proof space akin to a lead box is the only way to go. Get in the bed, power nap, then get your butt back to the 24-hour coverage. Sleep is overrated anyway. Catch up with it as baseball season gets going.
And now, the piece de resistance: the TV room. If you haven't gone too far into debt already, your first purchase this week should be the appropriately-sized, big-as-will-fit-in-your-place widescreen, flat screen, give-a-dog-a-bone HDTV with accompanying high power speakers big enough to rumble the earth's inner crust. If your neighbors complain during March Madness, tell them you've got a religious commitment going on over the next few weeks and that you refuse to be persecuted any longer.
Once said TV is in place, it's time to prep the room. Next on the list...carpet protection. It's best to cover the whole space corner to corner. Industrial sized plastic wrap rolls can be picked up at the local grocery store or slaughterhouse. Think of yourself as your new pet. You don't have time for getting all the food directly into your own mouth, and a spill isn't a spill unless it sinks in. On that note, maybe buy a few extra pairs of socks.
Last, but nowhere close to least, is the issue of anger. What's this have to do with your TV room, you say? Well, now that you've spent those thousands of dollars on that new HDTV, you really don't want to be breaking the thing in a burst of rage before you get a chance to return it. You've heard of stress balls; now hear of stress furniture. Take all existing fixtures and get them out of the way. In comes the newest in NCAA gear: The Styrofoam Room! What better way to react to a terrible call by that idiot ref than a two-fisted smash to your new Styrofoam coffee table. Are you a college hoops fan or a fifth degree black belt? And it's even more gratifying when the chunky salsa bean dip cheese sauce mixture splatters onto the newly set-up Styrofoam walls you'll be destroying after the next botched call. There's no way that was a charge!!!
6 sets of Styrofoam furniture later, you've made it to and through the Final Four, and hopefully your team has gotten far enough to keep you sane. In my case, my team never keeps me sane. But like I said last year, and the year before that, and twenty some odd consecutive years before that, I like their chances to win it all this time. Yep. I do.
It wouldn't be March Madness if we didn't have hope. Filed under: Illini Basketball
