two pieces of mail

All the mail we got last night seemed to be for me. Which is rarely a good thing, though it sounds exciting, on the face of it.

A credit card bill; a mortgage payment slip; and two other things.

The first other thing was great news! Lizzy is now officially a M-----. (I never know how cautious I should be about personal identifiers on the blog. I figure y'all know what my married name is, though.) She was a W------- up until now. You all probably know the story, but I overrode Matt's strong preference when she was born and gave her my name. At the time, I didn't know what would happen with us, and wasn't feeling like making any decisions just then. So I wanted to cover my bases, I guess. I'm not saying it made a lot of sense. But it seemed to at the time. Neither am I saying it DIDN'T make a lot of sense. In any case, she's had to sign in and sign out each day at kindergarten using first and last names, so we've gone ahead and told her her name is Lizzy M-----, and had her being identified that way. It feels good to make it legit, though. Now to tackle her social security card, birth certificate, 529 account, etc. ...

The second piece of mail was a little more sobering. In the sense of making you shout, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!", but then realize that it's not THAT big a deal. I've been selected for jury duty. Oh, joy, rapture! My opportunity to show up, tell them I work for a newspaper, and guarantee that I'm not chosen yet still waste a day in the process! It's the least I can do for my country, I'm told. It does carefully skirt the two vacations coming up that my coworkers are taking. For that, I'm immensely grateful.

In other non-news: It's been a banner season for mindless TV, writers strike or no writers strike. I think for me, it's all about the sort of TV that I don't mind having on while my daughter is busy organizing her many miniature ponies and littlest pets and Barbie Disney princesses and their various horses in the living room. My scripted TV diet of House, Bones and e.r. do not cut it, by those standards. American Idol and college basketball do!
I freely admit that I've been a complete bandwagon-jumper this season for my Washington State Cougs. They were ranked as high as fifth (or was it fourth?) in the nation earlier this season, and are now at ... um, 21st or something. Or 19th? Anyway, right around the top 20. Guaranteed a spot in the NCAA tournament. Many of you probably have no idea what rarefied air that is for Cougs. It simply doesn't happen terribly often, and it's oh so fun when it does.

The Cougs play Stanford tonight, and I'm confronted with one of my most-hated things about the East Coast -- it is three hours off of the West Coast, which rarely matters except where sports were concerned. Think about it -- how great was it for me to work in a sports department, or be a sports fan, in the last place in the country (sorry, Alaska and Hawaii -- but you don't have any major sports teams) to get results? You get all those East Coast scores in nice and early. If it's football season, you roll out of bed at 10 a.m. and watch football absolutely all day long. Reverse that if you live in the East. To watch the Cougs tonight, I will have to stay up until at least 1:30 a.m. Argh!! Fortunately, tonight's game doesn't matter much -- the NCAA Tournament has not yet begun. This is more of a warm-up, and its only effect would be to perhaps slightly alter the Cougs' tourney seeding.

I'm not sure how the in-utero kid is doing with all the shots of adrenalin, either, as I watch. Maybe sports telecasts should be preceded by a pregnancy warning label.