Here it is, April 2nd already. So why haven't I put away my winter coat, hat and gloves? Two shovels and a 50 pound bag of rock salt still sit on my front steps. Global warming, my eye.

I know why I get in the March Madness basketball pool every year. It just reinforces how dumb I am when it comes to picking teams. Calling up the standings in the pool, I can't even find my name I'm so far down the list. That's what I get for selecting a Pennsylvania team (Pittsburgh) to win the NCAA tournament. And they got knocked out in the second round.I won't hear the end of it until next March as my wife, Mary, is way ahead of me in her bracket. She won't win the pool, but she'll win bragging rights in the Urban household.But I'm not alone. The pool I'm in has 565 entries. None of the 565 has Virginia Commonwealth (VCU) winning the big prize or even going to the Final Four.How rare is this year's Final Four of VCU, Butler, Connecticut and Kentucky? In the Associated Press bracket, in which 5.9 million people enrolled, only two entries had the correct teams in the Final Four. That's approximately one out of three million. Now, doesn't that make you feel better after you picked Kansas, Ohio State or Duke to go all the way?Who do I want to win it all? I'm thinking Kentucky, because my son, Mike has a shot at winning the pool he's in where he works. I also like Butler, because my friend, Jake Szczecina has been a Butler fan for several years. And no, he didn't jump on the bandwagon last season when the Bulldogs made it to the national championship game. His loyalty goes back more years than that.While we're so wrapped up in the March Madness, did anyone notice that baseball season began this week? I did. Green grass, blue skies, the sound of bat hitting ball. Should be a great season. Of course, Phillies fans are already thinking about October and the World Series. We'll see.In some ways, the old ways were the best. The milkman has gone the way of the dinosaur. It's been years since dairies have sent delivery men door-to-door with fresh milk, cream, and eggs. The grocery stores have just made it too convenient, and soaring costs, including gas prices, have made home delivery obselete.But here's something to think about, while more emphasis is put on us recycling containers we use.Back when milk was delivered in glass bottles to our doorstep, the average bottle was used 60 times before it expired. Today's plastic containers are good for only one trip before most of them end up in a landfill, to lie there, undisturbed for at least the rest of our lifetime.Bring back the milkman.A recent study shows that white people live about four years longer than blacks. And women live about five years longer than males (80 1/2 to 75 1/2). So, if you're a white female, the odds are you'll be around a lot longer than your male counterpart.President Obama came out on television this week and defended his decision to take military action in Libya. What else did you expect him to do?If the NFL lockout disrupts the 2011 football season, maybe we can get our contact sport fix by watching Rugby matches - you know, it's football without pads. And as far as I know, no one gets paid millions of dollars to play it.More on Obama. He came out this week and said school kids take too many standardized tests and that makes education boring to them. But how else would a school district's performance be evaluated without standardized tests?You have less than two weeks if you have procrastinated and haven't done your income tax yet.Here's one of the Animal Rights groups worst nightmares. Sharpshooters have killed 600 deer recently in Valley Forge National Historical Park. That's half the deer population of the park. Officials said the park was becoming overrun with the animals and they were destroying a lot of the landscape. On a positive note, from the kill, nearly nine tons of meat was made available for food pantries throughout the state.More on the NCAA basketball tournament. I enjoyed watching BYU's Jimmer Fredette play on the big stage, and I miss him not being in the Final Four. But comparing him to the late Pete Maravich is a real stretch. While Fredette is a scoring machine, no one ever matched the numbers Pistol Pete put up during his collegiate days.And who said it's a young man's game? Uconn Coach Jim Calhoun, who's 68, is a year older than the combined ages of the Butler and VCU coaches.