It’s halftime at the Purdue-NC State Final Four game. Good game, a little ugly, but the players are understandably a bit tight on the big stage. All I can think is what could have been. What should have been. UK should be there. On our team’s good days, we beat either of these teams. Our team had something I can only describe as flow – when we were in the flow, we couldn’t be beaten. We beat Alabama (Final Four team), Carolina, Tennessee, Auburn, and a half dozen other Sweet 16 teams while in the flow. But we were unpredictable, erratic. Some nights there was zero flow and we couldn’t beat a Div 2 team. So here we sit watching excitement that should have been ours. UK fans deserve better than this. So much better.

The kids left this morning, and of course it’s been a beautiful day here. They had some shit luck on the weather – rainy while they were here, beautiful before and after. Go figure. But the little guys didn’t care – they used the hot tub as their pool in the bad weather and they loved it.

Tomorrow I head east to do a little eclipse chasing. And get the house ready for Derby renters. It’ll be warmer in KY and the spring flowers should be in progress. A trip to Yew Dell may be on the menu.

It’s Final Four weekend, normally a big event, but my only interest now is seeing if NC State’s Cinderella run continues. I hope so, though Purdue is a pretty big monster to slay.

And we have another chance to see a SpaceX launch this evening. It was scheduled for last evening, but they bumped it 24 hours. Weather is looking good; we should have a great view.

I’m rethinking the plan for the eclipse tomorrow. I was going to drive straight up into Indiana, far enough to get within the path of totality, but the traffic going back into Louisville across any of the bridges will be bad. Maybe real bad. So, the new plan is to either (a) drive toward Cincinnati about 60 miles, then take a hard left across the Ohio at a small town, maybe at Madison IN. There’s a bridge there only a few miles from I-71 on US 421. The totality zone is very close to the river at that point. Or (b), just stay in Louisville and watch the eclipse with the kids. All of Louisville will experience approximately 99% totality, so it’ll still be a good show. I’ll decide based on real-time weather and how I feel about driving that afternoon in search of that last 1%.