The Slower Road

Even though we’re well into the March Madness frenzy, I haven’t posted anything here lately about our beloved Univ. of Kentucky Wildcats. So I’ll be going a bit off-topic today to correct that lapse.

Here in Lexington today, it feels like “all basketball, all across the state.”

The 95th Boys’ Sweet Sixteen (our statewide high-school basketball championship) is being played out — day and night, from today through the weekend — in Rupp Arena.

And I just heard a report on NPR’s All Things Considered about last night’s NCAA-tournament play-in game between Western Kentucky University and Mississippi Valley State University. The WKU Hilltoppers came back from a sixteen-point deficit in the final five minutes to win the game. And with President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron in attendance, no less.

Now, the Hilltoppers will go on to play our Wildcats tomorrow evening, in Louisville. That’s right. In the tournament’s first round: two Kentucky teams playing in Kentucky. You can imagine how excited everyone here is, and how quickly those tickets sold out!

Go Cats!!

First off, let me apologize for missing the last three days here on the blog. With severe thunderstorms and tornadoes bearing down on Lexington, we high-tailed it out of the office just after midday on Friday. Because we have no Internet connection at home, I usually prepare my weekend posts on Fridays, along with that day’s post. But when I left the office so abrubtly (after we’d turned off and unplugged all our computer equipment), I left the blog undone.

Thankfully, we here in Lexington didn’t have any significant damage from the massive storms (although we did spend a fair amount of time that afternoon and evening in our basements), but other parts of Kentucky and the region weren’t so fortunate. Just now, as I type this post, I’m hearing on the radio news that the tornado that ripped through (and, sadly, destroyed most of) West Liberty, Kentucky, was on the ground for sixty continuous miles!

After all that, the weekend was fairly calm, if a bit cooler than it had been on freaky-weather Friday.

But we woke up this morning to our first real snowfall of the season! Before coming in to work this morning, I drove through portions of the Kentucky Horse Park and took these photos:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.