Football Has-Beens

I recorded Man Utd versus Arsenal, and watched it when I got home tonight.  I say watched, when what I really mean is fast-forwarded because it was an awful game.  I mean, truly dreadful and totally devoid of any quality.  It just goes to show how far apart Liverpool and Man City are from everyone else.  I frankly think both Man Utd and Arsenal might even struggle to make the top 6.  It was shockingly poor for 2 teams that used to be real giants of the game.  They have both got a long, long way to go if they think they can challenge for the title again.  How the mighty have fallen.  And because I hate both clubs, this brings me great joy.

More rugby

So, what matches did the ingenious folks in charge of NBC Sports decide to air this weekend from the Rugby World Cup?  Japan vs Ireland?  Nope.  Australia vs Wales?  Nope.  We got Argentina vs Tonga on Friday, and Scotland vs Samoa tonight.  And that's it.  Great.  And I don't see any more England games being aired as I do a quick search of the TV listings in the weeks ahead.  Really great.  I might have to consider alternative means to watch the games (VPN?).  It's not helping that the official extended highlights of the games provided by NBC Sports are absolutely dreadful - half the time taken up by conversions, kick attempts, replays and pre-match stuff and very little actual "rugby", not good when the highlights are only 10 minutes long.  I despair.   

Consumerism

I was in Walmart this morning and they already have aisles with Christmas stuff in them.  In September.  That is profoundly depressing.

Blur vs Oasis

It's been what nearly 25 years since the Britpop war between Blur and Oasis peaked.  Let's cut to the chase - there was, and is, only one winner.  By a country mile (not a country house - because that was their only serious misstep), Blur won.  Their music is better, more varied and stands the test of time.  I still listen to Blur now - There's No Other Way is great, and Coffee & TV is one of my favorite tunes ever (and the album that is from - 13 - is great as well) - whereas I don't listen to Oasis at all, and am totally indifferent to any of their stuff now.  Oasis may have won karaoke with Wonderwall, but Blur won sports stadiums with Song 2. 

Forecast

Well, this is depressing:

Apparently an “unusually early and intense Arctic express” is arriving this weekend.  I’ve already retired my air conditioning unit for the year – but now I might have to check that my heating is working and replace my fans with heaters.  It seems that over the mountains and the Eastern part of the state and beyond, there is going to be a lot of snow.  And it’s not even October yet (so you have been warned if you want to visit me at this time of year!).  Not expecting snow where I am, nor will it really get that close to freezing, just much colder temperatures than normal and it might get quite windy – so I expect my leaf blower will be getting a lot of use if it isn’t raining.  It looks like there is going to be snow at Crater Lake – so that probably ends my chances of going there when I can eventually take a few days off work in October.  I really hope we don’t have a winter like the last, where I spent all those days snowed in and working from home.  The early indications are not good.

Commuting Patterns

This is the order of commuting days, from worst to best:

Thursday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Monday
Friday

Yes, Tuesday has come from nowhere to be the 2nd worst day of the week.  And actually, for the last 2 weeks it has been the worst.  I made the mistake of leaving at 8.30 am yesterday rather than my normal time of closer to 9.15 am, and it took me over double the time to get into work - I didn't get into the office until about 9.45 am.  If I'd left any later, I would have missed an important 10 am meeting I had.  If it gets any worse - perfectly possible as the weather deteriorates, the days get shorter, and the university classes begin (which I think was today) - then I might have to give serious consideration to working from home for either a morning or a day once or twice a week.  I don't want to, but neither do I want to endure a ridiculously horrific commute.  This is definitely something that has got noticeably worse over the years.  They've started building a light rail line on part of my commute route - so although that might eventually help with the congestion, it's probably not going to be finished for at least another 5 years.  And just like most of the bus transit centers round here, there will probably be nowhere near enough parking at any of these stops to warrant considering them as a commute option.

A quick take on today's events

Boris Johnson – unlawfully suspending Parliament, lying to the Queen, absolutely zero chance of “fixing” Brexit

Donald Trump – bullying a foreign country to dig up dirt on a political revival, facing impeachment, numerous other questionable and unethical behaviors

Vladimir Putin – gleefully rubbing his hands at the chaos he has started, exercising the kind of control over his country that the Prime Minister/President can only dream of

Sports Coverage

Sorry, yet another sports entry...

Well, this sucks.  So Fox Sports 2 have been showing Australian-Rules Football games regularly – one game a week during the regular season, and then all the knockout games in the playoffs so far.  And now this week it’s the Grand Final.  And they are not showing it.  Which is just ridiculous.  It would be like BBC having all the Wimbledon games, and then not showing the final.  Who makes these decisions?  I’m sure there’s probably money involved – trying to make me shell out for something that I don’t want to, in much the same way that NBC Sports are trying to do with the Rugby World Cup.  I’m sure there are other “means” to watch the game live – but I’m not sure how strongly I feel about just this one game to do that, and it might also be on in the very early hours.  So I’ll stick to the few Rugby World Cup games that are actually being aired here and are worth watching (I’ll wear my England rugby top on the day we play the US this week, which is definitely on – but I don’t think anyone here knows that there is a rugby world cup going on and that the US are in it, or indeed that they are playing England and what I’m wearing is an England rugby top).  Their loss.

RWC

Some early thoughts on the Rugby World Cup:
- A northern hemisphere team is definitely not going to win.  It'll probably be the All Blacks again.
- Love the haka.  Love the other Pacific Island equivalents of the haka.  Sent me on a YouTube dive of looking at the best hakas ever, not necessarily all in rugby and not necessarily male.
- Already missed a load of good games that didn't air here - a finals preview in New Zealand vs South Africa, and a key game in England's group France vs Argentina.  Since I am extremely unlikely to watch a lot of games live since they are on at ungodly hours, I might be relying a lot on YouTube highlights
- I am extremely tempted to try to make plans to watch some games in person in France in the 2023 World Cup.  Anyone else interested?
- Very confused by the US coverage - some games have had their own commentary, some have had what seems to be an Australian feed.  And choice of games they are airing is perplexing to say the least.  For sure, doesn't look as though they will broadcast any mid-week games - without paying for the inordinately expensive online sports package, which I'm not going to do. 
- Rugby is, apparently, the fastest growing sport in the US - though I haven't seen much evidence of this.  Mind you, the TV coverage of internationals and the English domestic league is noticeably better than it ever used to be.  I think the presence of rugby as an Olympic sport has been invaluable - especially as the US is one of the better teams at sevens.  Hope they host a World Cup here in the near future.  I know nothing about "Major League Rugby" - the professional club league here.  But apparently the Seattle Seawolves are a team in it - wonder if I should try to see a game of theirs?
   

Wrestling

I'm nowhere near as much of a "professional wrestling" fan as I used to be - it was a long time ago since I went to see a live WWE show.  But I do still keep an eye on the wrestling industry news and developments.  And it is an interesting and good time to be a wrestling fan.  WWE has had a monopoly on wrestling for a long time, for better or for worse (mainly for worse) - but it is about to have it's first proper challenger for years.  An upstart wrestling promotion - AEW - is about to begin airing weekly shows on TV.  And their live shows and pay-per-views have been quite critically acclaimed so far, so I hope they do well.  And I welcome the challenge because it means that WWE has to raise their game - especially because one of their flagship shows, Smackdown, is about to move to one of the main broadcast networks - Fox.  WWE has got increasingly complacent and increasingly mediocre over the years, so perhaps this will be the kick up the ass it needs to bring it back to it's glory days.  They are definitely not taking the challenger lightly - they've already started airing their developmental brand NXT directly against AEW (and NXT itself has a good reputation for their matches).  When exactly the WWE/WWF glory days were is very open to debate - but for me it was the post-peak Hulk Hogan era with the likes of The Rock, The Undertaker and Stone-Cold Steve Austin, and this was also the era of the Monday Night Wars, which was a great time for wrestling with 2 competing promotions.  Here's hoping for more of the same now.

Climate Change

Wait, what?  There was a global climate change strike today?  I saw zero evidence of that in Seattle  – and considering we are one of the more progressive cities in the USA, that doesn’t bode well for the rest of the country – though I guess there might have been more activity downtown.  I do remember seeing a homemade banner about it on one of the overpasses as I was driving home this week – but frankly didn’t pay it much attention, because I was more preoccupied with the traffic (this week has been one of the worst commuting for a while – I don’t know if this is the new norm, or just because we had some rain).  Now I am definitely concerned about climate change, and even more concerned about the Trump government’s denial/opposition/indifference to it (it appears that Trump is more preoccupied on getting dirt on Biden).  But a strike – really?  Perhaps it was more of a kids thing so that they can get out of school for a day or whatever.  But some of us have to work for a living, and some of us (i.e. me) had deadlines today.  I saw that the strike was the main article on the BBC website today.  It wasn’t even mentioned on one of the American news website I go to.  That says so much.

Never

As I just found out that this is being offered at work now – I can assure you that there is one thing that I will NEVER do.  Yoga.  I have zero desire to do it.  I have zero sense of balance to do it.  And I honestly don’t like it.  It crosses that line into holistic medicine that I am very uncomfortable with and very wary of.  Yoga is meant to relax you – yet I find the prospect of continuously losing my balance and/or farting loads in a room full of strangers and/or sweating profusely under hot and humid conditions to be exceedingly unrelaxing.  I do confess that it would be nice to have a bit more flexibility in my body as I get older, and I do think that some level of meditation can be very good for you – but not if I have to endure a load of spiritual nonsense to achieve “transcendence”.  I’ve listened to a podcast recently about the cult-like Bikram yoga, and it just confirmed by skepticism.  It is not for me.

Ken Burns

Another one of Ken Burn’s million hour long documentary series is currently airing.  This one is on country music.  These documentaries are good, but my god they are exhausting – and totally unsuited to binge-watching.  And neither are they particularly memorable – perhaps because they are so long it makes them very unfocused.  I’m trying to think of the word I’ve used before that best describes them -  I think it was “twee”.  They are definitely over-sentimentalized, which can be disappointingly off-putting.  I haven’t seen them all – I can only think of Prohibition and The Vietnam War more recently, and I think I might also have seen some of his Baseball one.  But country music, really?  Not a topic whose history particularly interests me.  I am recording this series but haven’t watched any of it yet.  And honestly don’t know whether I will – because of the length (I think this one is something like 16 hours long total) it is quickly filling up my DVR, and I have only just recently purged my DVR of some programs/films because it was getting too full.  So this might also get sacrificed – especially with the fall TV season about to start (though TV seasons are an increasingly quaint relic of the pre-streaming/pre-on-demand era).

Diet

When I saw the headline:

Mum blames NHS after teenage son goes blind from only eating crisps, chips and chocolate for 16 years

My first thought was – would I sacrifice my sight for 16 years of that kind of diet?  Tempting, but no.  Though the diet sounds great.  Maybe for just a year or two?!  And of course the Mum blames the NHS, and not herself.  Makes me appreciate my Mum for doing her best to force a better diet on me growing up – despite my major reluctance.  Though I still have nightmares of the mounds upon mounds of runner beans we used to get with every meal that has ensured that I will never ever eat them again.    

Immigration

Recommend you check out John Oliver's most recent episode of Last Week Tonight - which covered legal immigration to the US, a system I know very well and I have obviously been through.  Although I don't necessarily agree with him on everything (chain migration is a problem that needs to be fixed), it does make me thankful and grateful that I have obtained permanent residency, and perhaps one day citizenship, and I don't have to deal with the stress and bureaucracy of the legal immigration process any more - which I imagine is a lot worse under Trump.  And my path as a "specialty worker" was perhaps a lot more straightforward than many other paths - including apparently John Oliver himself if his mention of having to renew his visa every year is true, which I don't remember having to do.

Football

There is only one kind of football I'm watching religiously at the moment.  It's certainly not American Football, it's not so much Association Football - which I am prone to fast-forwarding through just to catch the halftime and end of game highlights (or maybe ignoring entire 2nd halves totally if you're 4-0 down at halftime) unless the game is particularly noteworthy (think Norwich and Man City).  No, the football that I am watching all 3 hours of each game is Australian Rules Football.  I've really developed a taste for it - I like like the competitiveness, and perhaps it is a good substitute for rugby until the Rugby World Cup starts next weekend.  But the American coverage of the world cup is going to be spotty at best - and I suspect and fear that the more interesting games will not be aired.  So therefore I am going to enjoy the few remaining Australian Rules Football games until the Grand Final, which are being aired.

Cama Beach Historical State Park

It's been far too long, but today I went somewhere new for a hike.  I went to Camano Island - about an hour's drive north of me (by road, no ferry necessary) - which is somewhere I've never been to before.  It's the smaller, poorer cousin to the much more developed and tourist-friendly Whidbey Island, but it has a couple of state parks of it's own and this is one of them.  And it was a perfectly acceptable destination for a hike - nothing flashy, no spectacular views, but some well-maintained trails which I pretty much had to myself this morning, maybe due to the very overcast and occasionally rainy conditions.  3 of the photos below represent the main 3 trails - one that follows the bluff overlooking the water, one going down to the beach, and one that goes inland to the poorly named Cranberry Lake - which was more of a smelly pond.  I wish I hadn't had some breakfast before I headed out, since there was a breakfast cafe in the park which seemed a lot more popular than the hiking trails.

Whoops

Did I forget to post an entry yesterday?  I guess so.  Sorry about that.  It was a momentary day of relief after an intense week - I had left work early, and so my routine was all out of whack.  It's not like I have a lot to say at the moment - my mind is too consumed by work.

Golden Gun

I pre-ordered a Golden Gun replica recently, thinking I would get it before Christmas.  The estimated time of delivery?  I just checked, and it's September next year.  Yikes.  It better be damn worth it for that wait.  It looks good on paper anyway - 18ct gold-plated, 1:1 scale, wooden display case, and can be assembled/disassembled just like in the movie.  And limited to 500.  I think this is a good investment.   

Interior Design

If or when I ever get the time, energy and help, I would like nothing more than to redesign the layout of the ground floor of my abode.  Dump the pool table, which I hardly use any more because it's become a little bit warped over time.  Buy a new sofa and a bigger TV and move them into the room where the pool table is.  Buy a decent dining table set and put that where the TV currently is.  Move my desk and computer into their own room, which is currently used for storage.  And move all my boxes and stuff currently in that room upstairs - there's room in the roof space to put all that junk.  The sacrifice would be the pool table - which makes me sad, but my advice is if you're going to get a pool table then get a decent full-sized one and make sure you have good space for it that isn't one of your main rooms - think a basement or garage.  But I have no regrets for having one over the last few years, though I suspect it hasn't made me a particularly better player.   

Politics

Apparently there is another Democratic debate this week.  I mean really, who cares.  Talk about a protracted and self-destructive process to choose somebody who will somehow still lose to Trump - no matter how utterly contemptible Trump is.  It's been much more interesting watching the train wreck that is Boris and the various shenanigans in the Houses of Parliament.  A joy twinged with sadness at how embarrassing the whole Brexit debacle has been handled throughout, from it's ill thought out origins to it's seemingly never-ending conclusion.  Though with the ridiculously timed recess, now we won't even be able to enjoy that for a while.

Opening Weekend

So, the NFL regular season started this weekend.  And I have to admit to feeling the most amount of apathy and disinterest in American Football than ever before.  For all sorts of reasons, though I suspect my hatred of all the team owners, the NFL management and the New England Patriots are all up there.  This is good - this means I have no reason not to go out on Sundays instead of staying in to watch a game or two.  Mind you, the only thing I seem to be doing at weekends at the moment is going into the office to get more work done.  Not good.

Storms

Wow, we got blitzed with some unusual weather last night.  A big storm passed through, with really heavy rain mixed with some hail, booming thunder and lightning strikes lighting up the dark skies ever few seconds.  It was a crazy few hours - reminded me of something similar I experienced when I was living in Texas.  But that kind of thunderstorm doesn't happen very often in the Pacific NW.   Other than a few fallen tree limbs, didn't see much damage out today - though apparently some big trees were hit and split in half.  Naturally, loads of power outages.  My power flickered a few times but fortunately never went out.  Apparently there were about 200 lightning strikes in Seattle alone over a 45 minute period, and about 2,200 across Western Washington for the duration of the storm.  I can't remember anything like that here before.  Lots of good photos of the lightning over the Seattle skyline to be found on the internet if interested.     

Still no rabbits ...

... but saw some other wildlife from my kitchen window at dusk yesterday

I also found some mysterious "scat" on the driveway today - don't think it was the deer, suspect either one of the neighborhood cats or some coyotes.  Lovely.

Disaster

Disaster at work this afternoon - our entire computer network went down.  No e-mail, no internet, no network drives, probably lost whatever I was working on that I hadn't saved, absolutely impossible to get any work done.  Really shows you how reliant we are on this technology and how useless we are without it.  Couldn't have come at a worse time - so much to do.  Hopefully it will be fixed tomorrow as I really need to get a load of stuff done over the weekend, but we're still getting alerts and automated phone calls about the outage and without a resolution time.  I think this is the first time I've ever got a non-weather-related alert to my personal phone from work - so this was a big deal. 

Missing

I haven't seen any rabbits for a while.  I can't remember if they hung around last summer - maybe there is nothing here for them with the dry grass in my yard.  Or maybe one of the neighborhood cats has frightened them off or even killed them - I've seen the cats skulking around closer to my abode than normal recently.  Or maybe they were frightened off by me - I certainly spent a lot of time outside inspecting molehills in the inglorious mole wars this year.  I find the rabbits presence somewhat comforting, so I hope they come back soon.

Ego

To protect his fragile ego, someone hastily altered an old map to indicate that Alabama would be affected by Hurricane Dorian – something he had incorrectly stated in a speech or a tweet or something.

Of course, this is the news and not the devastation in the Bahamas.  Impeach the mother*cker.  His ignorance on hurricanes and how to act presidentially in the face of a natural disaster is even worse than W’s after Hurricane Katrina.

Busy

Jeez, what a nightmare day.  So much work - worse after a long weekend (it was Labor Day yesterday).  I'm just about on top of things - but tired, irritable, and stressed.  I need a break - but it'll have to wait until next month as I just can't take any time off before then.  At least I've been promised some comp time.  Tomorrow could be worse - schools start back up again, and the traffic could be an absolute nightmare.  Fun times.

Best Current TV Show ...

... is, by far, Succession.  It's a shame nobody else watches it - or at least nobody talks about it.  They should - it's a very darkly funny show with some hilariously awful characters absolutely not based on the Murdoch family.  And it's the only show I have to absolutely read the recaps and discussion online immediately afterwards.  I also have to immediately look up things to see if they are real - such as hyperdecanting wine.  It is real, apparently.  I'm going to suggest "Boar on the Floor" as our next team-building event at work. 

Grand Prix

I was channel-hopping today, and happened to come across an Indy Car race.  Now I don't care much for Indy Car - holds about as much interest to me as Formula 1.  But I noticed that it was the Grand Prix of Portland.  And I thought to myself - that must be Portland, Maine because it can't be Portland, Oregon because they don't really do motor racing in the Pacific Northwest because it rains so much.  But a quick look on Wikipedia reveals that I'm wrong - it was held in Portland, Oregon.  Interesting.  I might have to check that out one year, because that is by far the nearest top level motor-racing event to here.  I have fond memories of going to Silverstone with my Grandpa when I was a young - and if my memory is right, I think I might also have gone to Brands Hatch with my Dad and my French exchange student one year!  But that was a long time ago, and I've never been to see a race in the US.  Something else to add to the bucket list.