The NCAA Brackets are Out!
A commenter is setting up a bracket for TBL readers, and we’ll know more tomorrow morning. Early musings:

- The Midwest is brutal (Kansas, Wisconsin, Georgetown)
- We missed just one team: Villanova. Had Illinois State instead
- Butler got shafted with a 7 seed. Not to mention its opponent is South Alabama, which will have a decided home-court advantage. Butler should have been a 5-6 seed
- Hate the idea of two mid-majors squaring off, like Gonzaga and Davidson
- Man, UCLA has a bloody cake walk to the Final Four
- Indiana vs. UNC in the second round. Love it. Assuming the slumping but dangerous Hoosiers get past athletic Arkansas
- Wisconsin gets a No. 3, and Duke gets a No. 2? What’s that about?

Best first round matchup:
USC vs. Kansas St. (mostly because of Mayo vs. Beasley)

Favorite 2nd round potential matchups:
Arizona vs. Duke
Indiana vs. UNC
Notre Dame vs. Washington St.
Drake vs. Connecticut

Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry welcome a daughter

Halle Berry gave birth to a baby girl at 10:17 am on Sunday morning at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.The baby weighed 7lbs 4oz and Halle is resting comfortable.According to an insider for Star, “Halle had come to the hospital at 4am in the morning because the felt like she was going into labor. It was a bit scary because her blood pressure was skyrocketing and everyone was a little tense. She’s a diabetic so that was complicating matters as well. The doctors checked the fetal heart rate and everything seemed okay. After a while Halle’s blood pressure came down. She wasn’t dilating anymore so at around 2:45pm they let her go home. Halle felt her contractions come on a lot more intensely later that night so she came back to the hospital at 11:00pm Saturday night.The insider continued, “Halle was overcome with emotion when she finally held her little girl. She said everything she had gone through was worth that moment. The tears kept coming as Halle didn’t even want the nurses to take her baby to clean her up and measure. It was a truly beautiful scene.”

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Hope everyone is having a great St Patrick’s day today. I see some of my NZ friends are feeling a little homesick because (In Lou’s words) St Patrick’s Day there is even more cheesy than here!

I am at work. That’s one of the peculiarities of living in Northern Ireland- only some companies shut for the day…leaving the rest of us wallowing in self pity while others have a day off. Ian is off, and the kid’s daycare is shut, so he’s home with the kids today. It’s a gloriously sunny day so I hope they can get out and about and enjoy themselves.

I plan on drinking coffee, furtively surfing the net and generally doing as little work as possible.

It always amuses me that other countries around the world seem to make much more of a deal of St Patrick’s Day than we do here. I hope my Stateside friends will enjoy their green (YUCK- think of the chemicals!!) beer and their parades. I know there are parades here, especially in Downpatrick where my Dad lives, and which has close ties with St Patrick, but nothing on the scale of some places around the world.

Noone ever answers me this when I ask it on my baby boards- so maybe someone will here- I once read that they dye some of the rivers in the States green on St Patrick’s Day. Is this really true? How does that work out environmentally, it sounds rather scary!

Anyhow, hope you have/had a great day! Post and let me know what you got up to (even if you don’t know me- c’mon, don’t be shy, I need something to alleviate the boredom in work!! )

Mary Kate Olsen Dates The Encino Man

Mary Kate Olsen has moved on after the death of Heath Ledger. That thing on the right is apparently what she moved on to. starmagazine.com reports:

While in Paris for Fashion Week, Mary Kate Olsen flirted with Lapo Elkann, the heir to the $7.3 billion Fiat auto dynasty, who overdosed on cocaine and heroin at the home of a transsexual in 2005.

Whoa, that is shocking. To think, the people who brought us the Fiat are worth 7.3 billion dollars. I think dating this guy is a good move for Mary Kate for two reasons a)He looks kinda like Brendan Fraser in Encino Man, which is a highly underrated movie, and b)he’s an international party boy. Who doesn’t love international party boys? Just the exposure to the constant techno music makes things way more exciting. I mean, check out this scene with Mary kate from Full House.