Dark Matter

What up? We got back today from a trip to Joisey that was a little longer than planned. We had planned to leave Friday morning, but when we saw the forecast for a big snowstorm on Friday, we decided to drive down after work on Thursday night. We made pretty good time despite running into some snow in Connecticut; it was the kind that comes straight at you. But we drove through it and got to bro-in-law Matt's a little after 11 p.m. It started snowing around 6 a.m. and kept going all day; we ended up with close to a foot when all was said and done. The kids were pretty psyched, especially Hannah and Lily, who hadn't had a chance to play in snow all winter. Matt has a good hill on the side of his house, so we had the kids riding sleds, but we had to be careful because the sleds ended up in the street. We all had fun and got pretty soaked. We shoveled Matt's driveway twice Friday and again the next morning, which was the hardest because it was basically packed down ice pellets. On Saturday, I went on a 7-mile run with Matt and his buddy Joe on some paved paths through the nearby state park; we had originally planned to do a 12-mile trail run, but there was just way too much snow. The roads were plowed so we were able to run at a slow but decent pace. We went to a St. Patrick's Day party at the community center around the lake Matt and Tricia live on; lots of fun for the kids. I had my first beers in three weeks at the party, a couple of Killians. Deb did the same and remarked that it really wasn't worth it, and I had to agree. Maybe if I had had a Guinness or Sam Adams I would have felt differently. Definitely ate more of the stuff over the weekend that I had been avoiding the last three weeks, so I need to get back into the diet groove this week.

Holy March Madness:

• UNH won their Hockey East semifinal game against UMass Friday night, 3-2, in double OT, but lost last night in the finals to BC, 5-2. Still, they'll open the NCAA tournament playing Miami (of Ohio) next Saturday at the Verizon Center in Manchester.
• Speaking of NCAA tournaments, the hoops tourney is in full swing. I stupidly forgot to bring our sheets with us this weekend so we couldn't follow how we were doing. I did okay until today, when one of my finalists, Texas, was bounced. I think I'm officially done for. Oh, well.
• I finished reading the trade paperback compilation of the great Watchmen comics miniseries this weekend. I never read it when it originally came out in the late '80s and had always wanted to; I finally picked it up at Newbury Comics around Christmastime. Amazing stuff. Alan Moore (who also wrote V for Vendetta, a series I had read back in tha day) is a genius. It's a little dated in its references to Cold War fears, but I certainly remembered that whole nuclear armageddon vibe. And really, are things so much better today? We may not be worried about the Russians anymore, but there are so many other people in the world who would like to take the U.S. down. A movie version is supposedly in the works for a 2008 release, with director Zach Snyder (who directed the current no. 1 film at the box office, The 300, an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel) attached. Hopefully, he can do it justice. I haven't seen the V for Vendetta movie starring Natalie Portman, but Moore has denounced it and it got middling reviews.