Birthdays, Basketball and Soup

Knee-deep into college basketball, I celebrated my 31st birthday on Friday night. This year, I kept it pretty low-key (in the past I've done AYCD parties and Vegas) - so a bunch of friends showed up at the bar around the corner from our place, that we've sort of adopted for most non-Illini sporting events. My old friends from grade school, Becky and Amy drove in from the suburbs to celebrate with me, so that was pretty cool. I ended up making it out until about 1:30AM, which is a feat in itself, even more awesome that I was at the bar at 6PM. My tolerance and pacing were awesome.

The final four is coming up this weekend. After a blip in the tradition last year, I'm heading to Detroit for the final four, making it my 6th trip in 7 years. I started going to the final four with some girlfriends back in 2003. I enjoyed myself so much that I made it a priority to go every year, no matter who is playing. Now, I'm not particularly looking forward to Detroit itself, but I am looking forward to seeing my friend Chris (we're likely staying with him for at least one night), and I'm looking forward to the atmosphere. Detroit certainly isn't a place I'd go to on my own, and not what I'd call a big sports town - so it'll be interesting to see how the final four goes.

Finally, I woke up early on Sunday (well, early for me on a weekend), so I decided to look up a crock pot soup recipe and make it. I decided on a really easy beef/vegetable soup, wrote down the ingredients and made my way to the store. It cooked in the crock pot over the course of about 7 hours, and I have to say, it was pretty good. We really need to use our crock pot more often - it's an easy way to make a meal that'll last for a while.

I'm also heading to the new Curves location today after work, after finding out mine was closing for good. The location isn't quite as convenient (heck, it's not really convenient at all), but I'm hoping I'm able to stick it out there. I really need to get back into the swing of things. March is an awful month for me, work-out wise.