2007-11-30
"Bring in the kid!"
I had a blast last night. After working until 6:15 on my dissertation, Birgit finally made it home from work and took over dog duty. Mette has cabin fever these days; so dog duty ain't no small thing! It is really tiring trying to entertain a dog inside by running up and down stairs and throwing tennis balls off of walls. The little critter has boundless energy. It is unbelievable. Plus, she seems to really like the freezing cold. So when she goes out, she wants you to be out to play fetch with her. But at least it gets me away from my computer in spurts. The fresh air does the brain some good. Still, after four or five fetch-session interruptions, I finally had to lock her up in her kennel to get three straight hours of solid work in.
Birgit got home and I took off to Jim Senson's (or something like that) Sports Bar in Plymouth or Wayzata... whatever. It was far away. A colleague from work found out I like watching football, and had invited me to hang with his Packer friends to see "the game of the season." It was only being shown in bars, because no one in the country owns the channel the game is on.
Caveat: I'm not a Packer fan. I grew up despising Brett Favre as a pain-killer addict Mississippi redneck with a Jesus complex. So I didn't exactly fit in. And it was difficult for me to hide my pleasure when Favre played probably the worst game I have ever seen him play. Two interceptions in 10 minutes! After the first one, I started shouting "Bring in the Kid!" Aaron Rodgers was drafted two or three years ago to replace Favre. Favre refuses to retire, so Aaron has sat on the bench for three years getting paid millions to style his hair. He is supposed to be good, though. He just never gets a chance to play. I wanted to see him play. I told everyone at the table that Favre was history and Rodgers was the future. (I just like to get under Packers fans' skins. It worked. One dude grabbed the bill of his baseball cap and thrusted the hat into my face saying, "I worship this man!" The hat had a number 4 and the word FAVRE etched onto it. Freak!
My dream came true. Down 24-10, the kid came in when someone finally took that overrated redneck out of the game by crashing their helmet into his throwing elbow. And...
The kid rocked. His first series he looked scared, but the next two series he completed 10 passes in a row -- Favre completed 3 of 12 with two interceptions or something ridiculous like that. He scored two touchdowns on two drives in a row. He scrambled for a couple of first downs. He drove the team for two more fieldgoals. He had no interceptions and passed for 200 yards. He brought the team back only to lose, because the Packers defense is the worst I have ever seen! (That Harris guy should be dumped off in Lake Michigan and told to swim to another team -- he cost them 60-some yards in personal foul penalties! That's giving a team starting at their own one yard line a handicap and placing the ball in field goal range. Ridiculous!
Anyway, if they keep playing Rodgers, I will cheer for the Packers. But if they bring in that over glorified, Trent Lott loving, gun-toting, stubble styling, pain-killer addict again... I'm going to stick with Tavaris Jackson and the Vikes. Not that anyone cares, but... so there!
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In other news, I have never seen so many big screen televisions in one place. It was incredible. I was getting vertigo! Even more surreal was the cowboy sitting in a booth by himself, staring everyone who walked past his table down, and throwing popcorn at Packers fans -- just itching for a fight.
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Today is a wild day. I'm sitting here during office hours right now, and then I have to run to Macalester to meet a professor and sit in on his lecture on the Post-Soviet Sphere. That should be really cool, as he looks like an interesting guy. Then, I am turning around and heading back to the University to see my adviser give a coffee hour talk.
More importantly, I think he finds out today if he gets another job or not, which would mean he leaves here to become vice provost of undergraduate education or something wild like that. I hope he gets it, just because I feel like he has taken enough crap from this department. It's time for him to move on to better things. But I am probably biased.
Then it is back home to finish this online map project I've been working on. It's coming along. After putting it off for years, I have finally learned Flash ActionScript. I don't know why I waited so long. You can do such cool stuff via coding that I could have never done before. So of course, now I want to totally revamp my site, the Muehlenhaus Studios site, and any site I can get my hands on to mess about with. But Birgit has gently reminded me that dissertation first, teaching second, messing about with websites third... She's like the voice of reason to my tendency to be compulsive about things -- like selling EVERYTHING on eBay for example. She reminded me that we may want to keep our car. But I digress...
I have nothing more to say. No spy stories. No Twins trade tirades. Nothing. I can only hope something big happens this weekend -- like the Twins ditch Johan to the Red Sox. Santana is the most overrated pitcher in baseball. He gives up more homeruns than he is worth. If we can get good young pitching and Liriano back, we will be fine. It would help to get an infield that can hit too, of course. Yeah, an infield. But those thoughts are for another day's entry. I've got to grade some map tests here.
