Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has forced people to stay at home (for the most part) for the foreseeable future. I've been working at home for the past week and it will continue for at least a couple more weeks if not longer. My daughter was off school last week, the upcoming week is spring break, and then she'll be at home for at least a week and a half after that. Instead of working in the office in the basement, I've moved everything upstairs into the dining room. The setup isn't too bad, and I'm not locked away from everything like I would be in the basement. We can go out for groceries and to do drive through (or curbside pickup) food, but a lot of the town is shut down. It's just a very strange time that will last a few more weeks at least. As of today, there have been 6 confirmed cases in my county, 753 cases in the state (along with 6 deaths), nearly 27,000 in the United States (354 deaths), and over 322,000 world wide (13,829 deaths). It appears that Ch...

I understand the decision, but it still stinks. I've taken the first days of the NCAA basketball tournament off for at least the last 20 years and have made several posts about  my NCAA basketball trips over the years. I really don't know how to respond to this news. It's really sad that some of these players, especially seniors on teams who would be making their first NCAA tournament (Illinois, Rutgers, Penn State, countless others), won't get a chance to play in the NCAA tournament. My wife and daughter are supposed to be going to the Billie Eilish concert during spring break in a couple of weeks. So far, she has not canceled any tour dates, but I'm not confident about that concert still happening. We'll just wait and see I guess. COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on the entire world right now.

I love college basketball and love betting on college basketball. With sports betting coming to more and more states, trips just to bet on March Madness are becoming less necessary. But I still have my entire history of March Madness trips here in one place: https://mattholthe.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-march-madness-trips.html  2001 through 2009 https://mattholthe.blogspot.com/2012/07/march-madness-since-2009.html  2010 through 2012 https://mattholthe.blogspot.com/2014/03/march-madness-trips-2013-2014.html  2013 and 2014 In 2015, I attended the Final Four games in Indianapolis. I saw Wisconsin beat an undefeated Kentucky team and then Duke destroy Michigan State in the semi-finals, and then was back two days later to watch Duke beat Wisconsin in the final. In 2016, we went to Wisconsin Dells over Spring Break. Very close timing-wise to the NCAA tournament, so hard to justify anything other than staying around town for the games.  https://mattholthe.blogspot.com...