proud of myself tonight; i actually predicted some of the upsets in the NCAA tournament's first round of thirty-two games, played yesterday and today. i often make a bracket, usually with no real expertise, but over the years i've found that any group of five young men can beat any other, if they're hot, and if they set their mind to it, and that makes college basketball just a little more fun than, say, very predictable pros.

two of them i got because i always bet on my own favorites one round past what i think they really can do. in this case my two favorites were iowa state and new mexico state; both won upsets. those victories were canceled out however when my own school, iowa, also one of my favorites, was upset by richmond. my other favorites, texas tech, ohio state, and kansas, were all supposed to win and did.

the other upsets that i predicted were really probably more chance than skill on my part. i picked creighton, and tcu, texas christian. ah, the small pleasures in life. there were a few more huge upsets in the tournament, and i didn't pick them, but all that means is that i'm out here in the great world unable to predict much of what comes by.

the tournament always reminds me of tesol, and that makes me nostalgic. over the course of many years i went to many cities, baltimore three times, and almost always, it was ncaa time while we were out there conventioneering. i have stories to tell about things i heard doing that. esl teachers in general have been around the world, in most cases living abroad. they come a long way. you put a beer or two in them and they generally have a lot to say.

you hear these wild stories about life in samoa or some such place, or peace corps in southern africa, and then there in the background is some big ten team running up and down the court on television. outside, a freak snowstorm, spring, cold, wet, difficult. plane flights canceled. a struggle to find participation in the esl world a meaningful experience. but, there were lots of good friends, and i miss them all...

late at night and warm in the house; once again it's been cold and getting colder. It doesn't go down much below freezing, but it's windy, clear and very dry, and it tends to go on all spring. this is spring in southern new mexico.

as i walk the dogs i notice some green appearing in the grasses at my feet. i consider this a miracle, since it's so dry - where did they get the moisture? maybe there is a little dew and the little grass clumps grab at it and use it, knowing it will rain for sure maybe in july. or maybe they got it from the snow, which actually melted and seeped into the earth.

we go on preparing for the move. i had a dizzy spell overnight and that cost me a day. ordinarily if i feel a dizzy spell coming on i can take some meds to alleviate it; they seem milder these days because of meds, and since meds work to loosen up the passageways in my inner ear and my deep skull, this is enough to not seriously waylay my day's plans. but this morning i woke up and things were swirling around, and, i had to throw up. nausea is a partner of dizziness, and once again, the meds can help, they can separate the nausea from the dizziness, but i didn't take meds because i'd been sleeping. my wife was there to bring me a bowl to throw up in. but as i woke up several other times in the morning, each time i was dizzy - the bedroom light pattern was not sitting still - and i kept falling back asleep, until i'd slept until 2 30.

it's not especially painful - disorienting, yes, but not painful - and the nausea though it gives me a dislike for whatever i've been eating, is not really even like normal nausea. what's hard is getting up, walking, carrying on with one's normal life. you just can't.

the pictures below are from an ongoing project of making pop-art out of the world's wilder scenes. sometimes i just live in my own world, noticing such things and basically making pop art out of what i see. then i carry on, to another day.

sunday morning and everyone's asleep, except me, so i leave my hearing aids out and live with the tinnitus that i wake up with. another name for it is crickets, but sometimes i don't mind, especially since the hearing aids pick up so much that i don't like. i've kind of gotten used to living in a sound hell, and never enjoying music, but just making do with the variety within the world i live in. for example, i walk the dogs alot - even with the silence of the woods, i hear the rustling of our steps amplified and the pulling of the leash, etc., and find those sounds, compared to my usual racket, comforting.

spring in new mexico is dry and windy, and this one is no exception. we are thinking of moving back to illinois, and in that case would probably be living with lots of rain, and the beginning of things turning green - but that kind of green is unknown here until about july, when we finally get all twelve of our annual inches of rain. meanwhile, things are so parched that mice break into the laundry shed just to get the dripping from the hoses. but of course they also stole the christmas candy that i was trying to hide. and they became huge in the process.

we have spent days cleaning out that shed. the mice turds were huge and plentiful. they nested in several places, one of which was a bax of old stamp albums, just paper. i had saved it in hopes of scanning some of the pictures and using them. but now in our preparations to move it's scan now, or forever forget about it. i'm not going to save old mouse-nested boxes of anything.

in fact, the guy before us had saved old coffee cans of nails, bolts and such-like things. i was in heaven for a while to have nails and bolts for any project that i wanted to do. i finished a whole dack, in the middle of the pandemic, without having to go to the hardware store. but now my wife's right - why move a bunch of random nails if you're about to move, and you have to pay by weight? and when they're only a couple bucks at the other end? still i find it hard to throw them out. she says it's because i'm a hoarder. no, it's just my values. anything that is useful, i don't want to throw out. even if it's possible use is way in the future.

i never got to make the things i wanted here, and therefore am leaving lots of scrap wood around. for example, wanted to cover the deck, and make a bicycle shed. i just got busy with my writing, and promoting it, and lots of things went by the wayside as a result. oh well, one does what one can. the shadows of the trees in the wind as the sun come up, dance on the walls above my comfortable chair. spring will pass too, it will just take a while, and fortunately, the tumbleweeds stay down in the valley where they belong, and up here in the mountains, mostly what we worry about is if someone throws a cigarette and catches the whole mountain area on fire. which has happened more than once.

the raccoon got the trash can lid off, and it made a huge racket, just as i was getting outside to retrieve the dog beds. we're talking 10:13 tonight, and it's almost my bedtime. retrieving the dog beds was my last chore.

the raccoon and i are competitors, and i had already beaten him tonight, by taking a large load of garbage out of here, so there was no rotting food around where he could reach it anyway. never mind, he probably didn't know that as he was prying off the top of the can. but he knew that i was just coming outside when he did it, and he took off. i didn't see him at all as i came around the corner.

we have decided to move to illinois, and we are making a huge mess out in the courtyard where the garbage cans are. my goal is to steadily get things out of my shed, and get them someplace where i know i can move them, and get everything else off to a thrift store. we've got the thrift store picked out; it's in alamo. they take almost everything and i really like the place. it's an incredible amount of junk though.

slowly, i'm parting with pieces of my past. but the other day i encountered my high school yearbook. now it so happens that there are several coincidences related to this. the upshot of it was, i was going to throw away those yearbooks, but didn't.

the first was that the first person who ever introduced the idea of ukraine to me was a woman named irene voronin, who i knew in high school. and it so happened that i remembered her name well, and was able to look her up in that yearbook. her picture was not in it, but i was surprised that i had remembered the name right. here's to irene voronin - thank you for teaching me about ukraine. i remember what you taught me, and i also remember something about a painted egg.

second, it would be fifty years this summer from when i graduated. so, i wondered if they were going to have a reunion, and sure enough, they will. it will be july 23 somewhere in amherst. amherst, new york, was where my high school was. it was not my favorite place. but it was a place where i lived out an agonizing high school life, fifty years ago.

we have all gone different ways, and it would be interesting to find out what exactly has happened. it's on a kind of radar now. i know it's there, and i could do it if i wanted.