Go Tarheels!

I want you to have the image of what happens in our house in the middle of the night during March Madness. Kirk is a loyal, diehard basketball fan. While our beloved Davidson Wildcats were still playing he would stay up for every one of their games - all season long. Remember we have a 6 hour time zone difference. He would either stay up til 3 AM or wake up at 3 AM to watch the game and then go right into work. Talk about devotion. It is one of the more endearing and baffling habits Kirk has ever had. I don't know how he keeps going on such a small amount of sleep. Unfortunately Davidson didn't quite make the NCAA tournament this year after their amazing run to the Elite Eight in 2008. They were eliminated in the second round of the NIT tournament earlier this week.

Last night the UNC Tarheels played in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. It was at 3 AM our time. Kirk went to bed, got up, watched the game, and is now tucked back into bed and sleeping again. We are pretty loyal to the Tarheels when Davidson isn't playing; I went to UNC for my masters degree and both of us grew up cheering for them. But honestly. Is it really worth losing half a night's sleep? Congrats to Roy Williams and his Tarheels for winning the game by 22 points! Not exactly a nail biter.

So you may be wondering how we are able to watch these games an ocean away? Gotta love technology! We have this awesome invention called a Slingbox. It is perfectly legal. We bought the machine that attaches to a cable box back in the States - in our case at brother Ryan's house. It literally lets us take control of the Atlanta cable box via a remote control on the computer. We downloaded the software on our computer and via satellite waves the cable signal "slings" from Atlanta to our computer in Belgium. We haven't missed too much of Oprah, Grey's Anatomy, and Lost thanks to Slingbox. We can DVR shows and watch them back at our leisure. Which makes me wonder why we can't just record the basketball games and watch at a more normal time - like not smack in the middle of the night?!? Oh well, Kirk doesn't want to miss out on anything - so "live" it must be. Thank you Slingbox technology. It helps us to not feel quite so far away from home.

Kirk's edit: Although the Slingbox is great for enabling us to watch most TV shows when we want, there are actually other resources for watching athletic events online, which often provide a higher quality viewing experience. Davidsonwildcats.com or soconsports.com was the source for most Davidson basketball games, justin.tv or channelsurfing.net was the source for games when the Slingbox wasn't working, and cbssports.com is the source for NCAA tournament games. CBS Sports shows all NCAA tournament games online for free and it is actually very high quality - much better than the Slingbox. It's amazing how technology can help keep us in touch with what is going on at home!