“College basketball fans have been waiting for this week, working on theatrical little coughs and performing Method actor-y massages of their temples in preparation to catch ‘the thing that’s going around’ in time for Thursday’s tip-off of the NCAA tournament’s first round. The first two rounds of the tournament remain one of the greatest and most sustained fan-rushes in sports.”
When I was working I often took Thursday and Friday afternoons of March Madness off — but vacation-time, of course, not “sick” leave.