Fancy Bracket: (1) Simon and Seafort's vs. (8) Ginger

Today we have the first round matchup between 1 seed Simon and Seafort's and 8 seed Ginger in the Fancy bracket, and I'm not going to lie, Vegas has put the odds way in the favor of Simon and Seafort's. Let's go to the tale of the tape and check out our matchup.

Simon and Seafort's: This restaurant has long been a favorite of the classier diners in Alaska, providing a beautiful view of Cook Inlet, quality service, excellent food, and for those that are so inclined, a phenomenal Happy Hour. This is the 2009-2010 Kansas Jayhawks of the tourney - sure, it's the same ol', same ol', but when it works, it works. Just like that team and its pick and roll featuring Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich, Simon's rolls out their perpetual special of macademia encrusted, crab stuffed halibut to constant success. We know it's coming, but we just can't stop it.

Ginger: Ginger is relatively new to the scene, so they're the perfect contender to be a Cinderella story like Gonzaga always is. Buzz was thunderous upon opening, but since has worked its way into the every day conversation of high quality Anchorage restaurants with their fusion menu and pseudo hip design. While a lot of visitors have labeled it with the dreaded "inconsistent" label, in my experiences I've found it to be delightful, particularly the Baked Sea Scallops Mac and Cheese and the Tom Kha soup. They are like the lineage of effective points that have come out of the Zags, with the Tom Kha soup being the John Stockton of the bunch and the Mac and Cheese being the Dan Dickau.

The Showdown: As much as you want to see the underdog take the win here, when you get down to it good point guard play can never take down a balanced team like the one Simon and Seafort's rolls out. Sorry Ginger, you just happened to get in the way of Alaska's proverbial freight train.

The Weekend Edition

To keep with tradition, this evening I present to you the weekend edition of A Slice of Fried Gold, also known as "Why the previous weekend rocked." However, once again due to my forgetful nature there was no camera present (others did have cameras though, so we'll see what I come up with later) and sadly I have absolutely no pictures. My bad! In standard fashion, I'll break it down in a Cliff's Notes format, and then go into details about a one or two specific happenings.

• First dinner ever at Ginger
• Cirque Dreams at the Performing Arts Center with Colver, Lorna, and Kim
• Palmer Open House for GCI
• Being recruited to be a mascot performer
• Dancing at a busy intersection in Palmer with a coworker
• Making sushi for the first time with Amy
• Jason's Bday BBQ
• Rocking killer vocal/guitar duets on Rock Band with Amy
• King's Cup again
• Wrestling and rap battling
• Tragedy striking Battlestar Galactica
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall with the crew
• Finally watching my How I Met Your Mother DVD's and falling in love

So yeah, busy weekend as per usual. Fueled by coffee and tons of delicious food, it all went really well and I had a ton of fun. Plus the weekend was gorgeous, with blue skies and sunlight in every direction along with 55 (!!) degree weather - leave us alone lower 48, we're Alaska, that's as good as we get. I really do think that nothing beats Alaskan summers, and I'm already getting that feeling even though the snow hasn't even left us quite yet.

What stood out this weekend? Well, in particular the GCI open house was a huge success, and I had a ton of fun joking around with coworkers, high fiving Bob the Builder, dancing at intersections to attract traffic, and being amazed at various networks ability to only hire attractive girls to work for them (at our open house there were two PBS Sprout reps, and they were both very nice and very cute).

In particular, I was pretty jazzed and my energy apparently stood out to a lot of people around me, including one of the people involved with the "talent" - aka the guys in the Bob the Builder outfit - who asked me to send in a resume to do mascot work in Alaska. Obviously, I won't do this, but if I'm ever in need of a third revenue stream (along with my primary job at GCI and my side business with Amy) I can always act as an Eagle or Tony the Tiger for a few hours and make bank. Seriously funny though, and I'm glad I seem to have the skill set necessary to run around in an oversized character costume.

Also standing out this weekend was the performance of Cirque Dreams that Kim, Lorna, Colver, and I attended, which was spectacular and very entertaining. My good friend Sobo always raved about the Cirque events, but I was never really interested in it. Now? Pretty impressed, as the show we went to was extremely well performed and visually arresting in a way I didn't really think it would be. Sure, it was still cheesy like I thought it would be, but it was a lot of fun and I love trying new things. This was definitely new, and I'm glad I had another weekend with so many new and exciting experiences.