The Conspiracy--Part 3: Execution

Villanova won it last year but are they strong enough to repeat?

North Carolina was strong except when they lost to Indiana.  Same for Kansas--until they lost to TCU.  Duke is Duke.  Good, sometimes great.  Lose first round one year.  Win the whole thing the next.  Kentucky is always dangerous...except when they are not.

It was making my head swim.

I hated the uncertainty.  How to make sure I had the perfect picks.  Which, when you really think about it (and I obviously was not), is ridiculous because I have never even had mediocre picks.  There has to be some kind of model that will help me.  For &%#(*&'s sake--I'm 1-11 against the one person that hates college basketball.  Doesn't follow it.  Doesn't know it.  Could care less--even when she wins.

I needed help.  Probably as much mentally as intellectually.  I needed someone with a pure basketball intellect.  I couldn't believe I was even contemplating the extreme option I was about to undertake.

"You must be thinking about me again"

I didn't even look up.  He did not even have the power to startle me any longer.  That's right, I had become indifferent to the fact I had a talking dog.  A really annoying talking dog.

"I'm not sure why you are in here", I said sarcastically, "It's 10pm, Danielle's sleeping in Izzy's room again and you're supposed to be downstairs nursing your numerous fake ailments for sympathy"

"But yet, here I am.  And just in time I see."

"And you can see.  There's a shock.  How about the balance?  Still walking into walls?"

"I added that for effect.  It worked too.  Your wife is so afraid I'm going to die soon, she spends every waking moment cuddling with me"

"Which means she's not cuddling with me.  Get to the point..."

"The charts.  The graphs.  The conference tournament results.  The head-to-head matchups.  Ramping up for another colossal failure, I see"

This was disrupting my flow.  "You're disrupting my flow.  No wonder I can never finish ahead of my wife in this pool.  She probably paid you to annoy me so I'd be too distracted to use my basketball intellect"

"Flow?  You call this flow?  You may have had me at delusional traction.  This, however, is far from 'flow'"

"How would you know?  You haven't exactly set the pool on fire either."

"Yeah, play the dog card.  Smart.  If you didn't tank my board every year for some stupid side game, I'd be a lot richer than I already am"

I knew he wasn't kidding.  "That reminds me, where in the hell do you keep all of this money anyway"

"Don't worry about it.  You still haven't restored the house completely from the last time you looked for it."

Again, he's not kidding.

Chewy jumped on the bed.  "Listen, every year you get yourself all worked about this stupid pool.  And for what?  More aggravation than it's worth just because your wife wins?  You need to take a new path this year.  And it starts with relaxing."

I was getting tired.  "You might actually be right this time."  I picked up my Kindle and opened it to the one thing I knew would calm me down.

"You're going to play Sudoku again?  You're supposed to be relaxing"

"This will relax me...IF I can finish the Hard level in less than ten minutes"

Chewy shrugged his furry shoulde...uhhh, he lifted his paws up in the air. 

"Even when you relax, you still need competition"

He was right.  So I dove in.  But I was tired.  And the more tired I am, the longer Sudoku goes on.  As the numbers started to fade, I heard a weird, almost music-like noise.  Even weirder is that it made feel at peace.  As the Kindle fell out of my hands, I had the surreal notion that I was neither awake nor asleep.

But I was happy.  When the alarm went off the next morning, all I remembered the next morning was that I finished the Sudoku game in 9:59.

TO BE CONTINUED