i am a shattered shell of a man

illinois lost in the national championship game last night, to north carolina.

f#*king north carolina.

it's not like they don't have enough championship banners hanging from their rafters. this was illinois' magical season! a 37-2 record. a brand of team basketball that is almost extinct in today's environment of high-schoolers skipping college and going straight to the nba. only 3 other teams have ever won that many games in a season!

we just couldn't get to 38.

rather than throwing myself off of a mountain, which i contemplated for a brief moment, i decided to snowboard down one instead. though the gods decided not to bless my beloved illini with a national championship, they did bless steamboat ski area with 9 inches of fresh powder overnight. it's the last week of the season, and the mountain was virtually empty of annoying texan tourists. and, consequently, since i didn't have to share 9 inches of powder with the aforementioned tourists...

i had a damn good time before work this morning.

that's life, isn't it? highs and lows. within 12 hours my heart was ripped out by a sporting event, and then i was hooting and hollering through calf-high powder in a perfectly spaced aspen grove.

my dad said a funny thing last night. it's the 100th year of illinois basketball, and he said "well, it only took us a hundred years to get to the championship game." implying, of course, that it might take 100 more.

illinois is an elite program. and i believe we'll be back much sooner than that.