Monday in Paradise

Doh!

Well, so much for the NFC pulling a rabbit out of it's... hat. I stole a photo off the Internet that pretty much explains how the Chicago Bears lost to the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl yesterday. That would be a picture of Bears quarterback Rex Grossman fumbling the ball. Ah well...

It was a good game, all told. They always hold the Super Bowl in domes or somewhere in the tropics so the rich and famous people who actually GO to the Super Bowl won't be bothered by the weather. Personally, I've always thought the Super Bowl should be held in a neutral location, preferably in an outdoor stadium somewhere in Alaska. (It's always more fun to watch football when they're trudging through mud and snow and ice. That's the only time I ever get to see 22 millionaires suffering at the same time, and I sort of enjoy that... And I think the NFL should realize that approximately 1.3 trillion football fans want to see the game played outdoors as they're watching it on TV anyway, as opposed to the 50,000 people who can actually attend the game and want to sit in a warm sunny spot.) So I really enjoyed the fact that it was raining cats and dogs in southern Florida during the game, making the field muddy and the ball slippery...

The game was enjoyable for me this year as both coaches are classy people. I hope this is a trend! Both Lovie Smith and his friend and former mentor Tony Dungy are known for keeping their cool, teaching players rather than berating them, and leading by example rather than by the whip. Quality will rise to the top, and it was enjoyable to see these two in the biggest game of the year.

The first three quarters were great! Lots of turnovers, much excitement... But then Grossman started falling apart - more aparter than usual, actually (he's never been accused of being a "together" kind of quarterback). I was hoping for the underdog Bears to win, but alas and alackaday, it wasn't to be. The Colts emerged victorious, and that's fine with me.


Concentration

There's not much going on at work lately, so I've been sitting at my desk for the past few weeks trying vainly to look busy so no one will hand me a broom or (worse) send me home without pay... This is hard to do 'cause the owners offices are right next to mine. Both bosses lurk past me every three or four minutes. They lurk a lot. They lurk in corners, they lurk in the pressroom, they lurk over my shoulder... So I keep a "fake" postcard design as a panic button; when the bosses walk by I pull that screen up and pretend to be working on it. In the times they're not lurking at me, I'm perusing the Internet or (as today) blogging.

This is all fine and dandy, but it makes it hard to concentrate on writing anything meaningful or even passably funny - I can get about a third of a sentence done at a time. (Now you know why my posts have been so boring lately.)

So for the past week or two, I've sat here for eight hours a day, trying to get my 40 hours in 'cause who can afford a short check, staring at a computer, flicking manically from web site to web site, looking over my shoulder, trying to keep a consistent line of thought going, looking over my shoulder, pretending to work... It's driving me barking mad! I'd much rather be busy. (And trust me, I've filed everything I can think of to file, I've cleaned my desk three times... I've fiddled. I'm beyond fiddling.)

I wish I could be spending this time productively - I've completely dropped my dream of learning Esperanto this winter, I could be writing a nice book or something, I have lots of photos to sort through at home...

Oh well.