Football Epilogue

Finally! A weekend as I enjoy them...almost. Let's say I'm 85% full relaxed and peaceful. Coffee, morning soccer and getting back to some writing. The 15% is due to the muffler on my car having rusted out. I'm pretty sure I just redid most of the exhaust within the last couple of years so I'm a little perplexed that this muffler (well really where the pipe attaches) went so fast. Oh well.  The car has 260k miles on it so in reality I've been looking for the next. I'm rather stubborn though. I really enjoy not having a car payment as well as a vehicle I know how to work on and gets better than 30 mpg. I also enjoy driving a stick shift :). Similar to writing in cursive, the manual transmission has become something of a novelty these days. This is too bad as they are fun to drive; with the exception of when sitting in traffic (the key is to leave lots of space). The stick "perk" is that, due to their rarity, no one really learns to drive them anymore; ma...

 I think I have a new addition to my favorite words list: faff. It could serve as shorthand for the title of a Shakespeare comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing"  It's running on the advertisement bar during today's Manchester United/Tottenham soccer match. It is a good short word with a context of being inconvenienced; unnecessarily being subjected to worry, strife or extra work to achieve a simple result. Faff tickles my love of efficient words. I clearly see the irony in this as I tend to write in a longer-winded prose; often having to edit for faff.  Such a word adds colloquial flavor while not being overpowering.  That said, I'll not burden this post with more faff, but y'all should try it out!

About the only time of year I don't mind the mess in my living room is the week between Christmas and New Years. I like to let the kids and I bask in the holiday afterglow. The tree is still up and shedding needles (damn balasm) and doing well. The gifts are out for people to look at and tinker with. There are still some cookies, there's definitely good coffee (I got a couple cans of illy from my son). There's Premier League soccer on boxing day and over the weekend. The college football and bowl games are just getting underway. There's a nice reprieve from work and school. It seems that a lot of people like to set up the tree and decorate right after Thanksgiving and take everything down as soon as it's done. To me that seems to make the holiday more about the shopping season and as soon as everything is opened and handed out, it's time to move on without even taking time to enjoy what was just given. In a way it's a statement as to how...

One of my relaxing-based life pleasures is getting to sit in my recliner with a cup of coffee, reading the paper, or The Economist or working on one writing project or another. A recent addition to this having the TV on in the background. I'm not a big fan of watching the talking heads (not to be confused with The Talking Heads ) on the networks and cable news. College and NFL "gameday" shows are just as annoying. Still, I like something live and light. Also, this fall my daughter played a lot of soccer. She was on two teams, so I've been attending a lot of her matches. Enter Premier League (PL) socce r, i.e. English professional soccer (football). England is six hours ahead of the US Central (my) timezone (CST). So 9:00 am CST is 3:00 pm in the UK. This is just in time for live broadcasting of the matches that correlates well with quiet weekend mornings. NBC is championing the PL broadcasts with at least four games on NBC-sports network (NBCSN) and the ma...

The days are getting noticeably shorter and the temperatures are starting to cool. That said, my daughter's soccer season is winding down. So let me ask: