It's the most wonderful time of the year...

It's that time of year again, when one minute it's January, then I blink twice and it's March.

Where the heck did February go? Not that I'm terribly upset. I know it might get me kicked out of RWA, but I personally think February is a waste of a month.

Yeah, yeah, hearts and flowers, I get it. As a huge fan of the Romance genre, I'm supposed to revel in February in all its Valentine's glory. Meh. Whatev.

Sorry, but it's way too short to even count as a month. It's more like a really long week. To me, it's the month that comes after that's infinitely more exciting. That's right...March Madness, baby!

This week marks my favorite part of regular season -- Rivalry Week! On Sunday, my Duke Blue Devils will be taking on the evil Tar Heels to decide Tobacco Road bragging rights. Back when I was in college, it wasn't unheard of to spend half the semester sleeping in a tent just to get into the big game. Good times...

And then next week are all the conference tourneys leading up to the Big Dance! Whoohoo! Next Sunday is what's known as Selection Sunday, when the NCAA announces the seeds, officially stopping office productivity dead in its tracks for the next few weeks, as people fill out their brackets and continuously hit refresh to update the scores.

(That's assuming the office has disabled streaming video. Um, not that I would know anything about that. Nope. *whistles innocently*)

Last year I filled out two brackets. The first one I researched, carefully making my picks according to strength of schedule, how the teams matched up, what the analysts were saying, as well as my longtime method of never allowing Carolina or Kentucky to advance past the third round. Of course, I had Duke winning it all, but anyone who knows me would pretty much expect that.

I had my then-3-month-old daughter pick my second bracket. Say, what?

I know it sounds crazy, but if my friend Christina can win regularly $500 or more in her office pool by asking herself which mascot would win in a fight, then surely reading off the names to my baby and choosing the team she smiled at wasn't too ridiculous of a method.

OK, fine, I admit it. It's pretty darn ridiculous, but I had a colicky newborn who thought that 2 am was a really awesome time to wake up and scream. And 3 am. And 4 am. And pretty much every hour of the day... So you have to forgive me in my sleep-deprived state for not making a lot of sense.

Except that it did make sense.

You see, the first weekend last year was plagued by Bracket Busters, games in which Nobodies beat the Somebodies. All across the country people were lamenting the state of their brackets, but not my baby. Sure, she can't talk, but if she could, I bet she'd be talking some serious smack right about now because her picks were ABSOLUTELY PERFECT for the first two rounds!

Ohio over Georgetown? Oh yeah. She picked it. Cornell over Temple? Old Dominion over Notre Dame? St. Mary's over Villanova? University of Northern Iowa over Kansas? Check, check, check, and check.

I think there were like 5 people in the entire US that picked UNI to even make it to that game, let alone beat the #1 seed Kansas, and my infant was one of them.

She didn't end the tourney with a perfect bracket, but she still scored in like the top 2% of entrants in the ESPN.com contest.

So what do you think? Should I take her to Vegas this year and get a jumpstart on her college fund?



In honor of March Madness, I'm giving away an e-book copy of my upcoming YA mystery "Codename: Dancer" to one lucky commenter. Leave a comment and I'll let my toddler choose one of the names at random on Sunday night. She's pretty good at picking winners. (Of course, you'll have to wait until it's released in April to read it. I'll just let you get giddy with anticipation in the meantime.)