Category Archives: Life and Stuff

The Perils of Public Transportation Busses

Leave a reply

When I was in Albania I rode the train exactly once. It took nearly two hours to cover the 38 kilometers (23.6 miles) from Tirana to Durres. Basically, it moved slowly and stopped frequently.

As result, if you wanted to go somewhere in Albania you either splurged for a taxi (which would deliver you to another town for the right price) or you took a bus. Taking a bus was fraught with its own perils.

First, the buses assembled in fields and it took a while to figure out which bus was going where and which was leaving first. After figuring out which bus was leaving next in your direction. You acquired a seat and waited. The bus would only leave when the bus was full, and by “full” I mean every seat had to have a butt in it as did every “jump” seat between the regular seats. If even one “jump” seat was empty, the bus would wait. This filling process could take a few minutes or it could take over an hour.

I remember one bus taking so long that I and another passenger started a revolt. We said we’d go to the next bus and I would pay double my fare. A bunch of passengers started agreeing with us and the next bus driver climbed on and started counting passengers with one of the largest grins I’ve ever seen on a bus driver. Finally, our bus driver huffed and got going and did exactly what we all new he would do: he stopped to pick people up on the side of the road. One person was carrying a goat. (Don’t know if the goat had to pay full fare.)

On another bus ride, from Tirana to Shkoder I nearly had a fight with the ticket taker. Usually, I tryied to sit at the back of the bus but every now and then one of the staff offered me the “honor” seat up behind the driver. This would have been fine, especially as it had more legroom, but every now and then someone wanted to talk when I wanted to read. On this day, the ticket taker wanted to talk in a bad way. Even though I said I had work to do and actively started ignoring him by reading, he kept tapping my leg. After one tap too many I grabbed his hand and twisted it around and we about came to blows. Finally a cop intervened and I got a different seat and learned several new colorful Albanian phrases for describing unreasonable people.

On another trip from Berat back to Tirana, our bus suddenly stopped in the middle of nowhere and we were apparently supposed to change busses but nobody seemed to be moving. I walked up and went into “don’t understand if it’s not convenient mode” and pretended I couldn’t speak much Albanian to find out if the bus was going to Tirana (yes) and get my way onto the bus. Of course, I got the “honor” seat, but since I’d established I couldn’t speak much Albanian I didn’t have to talk.

However, about half way back to Tirana, the bus stopped again, this time for lunch. The bus driver bought me lunch and beer and suddenly I could remember a few phrases in Albanian and hold a decent conversation.

 

 

Beer Pizza Sports and Instruments

Leave a reply

Today’s is random memories and I’m not even sure how many of them are accurate, but one of the best things about growing up in the ’70s was political correctness and “if you do this you will end up deadness” and the precautionary principle hadn’t yet ruined discourse and the ability to have fun. The worst thing that could happen to you was putting an eye out someday. We brought knives to school to show off and playing shooting games didn’t yet result in therapy and lock downs. You could even bring BB guns on school grounds in the summer without involving SWAT teams and suspension.

The other thing you could do was take overnight school trips and, while you were on the trip you could visit breweries. I do not remember why we went there, and I don’t remember what grade we were, but I remember visiting the Coors Brewery in Golden, Colorado on one school trip. The thing that stands out the most was hearing that the hops room (or the grain room) was kept at a high temperature and 100% humidity. I remember my friend Shawn and I pondering what that meant. Was the room full of liquid? (Now that I live in a humid region I can tell you that the room was #@%&ing nasty inside, that’s what it was.)

I also seem to remember that the teachers were able to sample some of the, um, local produce, although they did it whilst we students were on the tour. None of them, to my knowledge, were ever fired, although I may have just revealed a major secret.

The other trips I remember were some sort of band trip that involved eating apple crepes somewhere downtown, sleeping during a classical music performance and a trip to Celebrity Sports Center, which seemed like one of the largest places in the world at the time. I bowled a little and played some games. I wasn’t good at any of it but I had fun. (This was before the days when everybody had to be good at something or you weren’t allowed to do it.)

I also remember eating at the Organ Grinder pizza parlor which featured a two story pipe organ and a couple professional pipe organists (if that’s an actual phrase). I don’t remember the food at all, but I remember the show. I also remember the performers hitting a mechanical monkey every now and then when it wouldn’t stop playing the cymbals.

Either that, or I had sampled some of the local produce without realizing it.

Reckless Self Behavior Destruction Vices

1 Reply

When I was in Albania, one of the things I noticed was a propensity for volunteers, myself included, to suddenly engage in self-destructive behavior of one sort or another. Some of them involved basic vices while some of them involved automobiles.

Partly as a result of culture shock, and partly as a form of self-defense, volunteers who’d never smoked before they came to Albania suddenly became smokers. Volunteers who had smoked before they came to Albania became chain smokers. Granted, when you’re surround by groups of locals chain smoking, and science says secondhand smoke is more dangerous than smoking, it is actually safer for you to start smoking cigarettes. (Something like that.)

Alcohol consumption sky-rocketed (one of my favorite vices at first) especially because the prices were relatively low. Skenderbeg Cognac was especially popular, but I tended to stick to beer, raki and cheap vodka (I think it was 15 cents a bottle but it might have been cheaper).

My other vices were
1) Chasing the wrong woman and ignoring the right one (a novel would be required to explain more) which is something I was prone to do before (another novel) and it got worse in Albania.
2) Being cheap. The latter involved always managing to let other people pay for things and never volunteering to pay for the group when a bunch of us met for coffee (total cost for everyone, 50 cents to 1 dollar). As you might imagine, that didn’t win me many friends, especially among the Albanians with us.
3) Blather and Gossip. Not only can I talk a lot without seeming to breathe, but for a brief time I was the guy you told things to when you wanted everyone to know (but God help you if you told me and you didn’t want people to know).

The other thing that happened, especially in our second year was we started to get reckless. Albanian traffic was a remarkable thing as it was made up of people who’d just earned their licenses and were finally able to acquire cars. This made them a group of teenagers who believed the rules, in so far as they understand them, were mere suggestions. Despite this, it was normal for groups of us to suddenly cross the street without looking, often to the horror of newcomers who’d made the mistake of trying to follow us. (It was their own fault for not looking.)

We used to talk about why, and I’m not sure we reached any conclusions. I always joked (constantly that I did it because if they killed me I’d go to a better place (most likely although this blog may be held against me) and if they didn’t I’d still get to go to  a better place when I was airlifted to Germany.

I think, though, it was an odd symptom of culture shock. Albania was an exhausting and frustrating place to work and overtime that frustration built to a low level anger and everything around us. I suspect we were playing chicken with the country. Daring it to try to knock us out if it could. We wanted to go home but we didn’t want to quit.

Eventually it would knock me out temporarily, but I did get to go to a better place for three weeks.

A Container Full of Stark Raving Jerks and the Mad

1 Reply

Autumn term starts tomorrow which means I’ll once again be riding the train. Riding the train means I’ll once again be thrown in the mix with the normal train riders and the train jerks.

First you have to understand that, for all their seeming politeness, the Japanese, especially those in the Tokyo area, are in fact seething with a surprising level of selfishness that gets turned loose as soon as the train doors open. The ugliest fights are for the seats on the ends of the benches and for the last seat on the train. Granted, I don’t mean a fight in the literal sense, instead it’s more of a “#@$% women and children first; I’m getting mine” attitude, Which leads us to:

Jerks Inside the Train:
Once in their seats, the occupants will immediately become train jerks and enter what I call the “Tokyo Doze” which is a form of sleep that allows the seat occupants to ignore the senior citizen, pregnant woman and/or man with crutches standing in front of them. This is especially true if the Dozers have occupied the “silver seats” reserved for senior citizens, pregnant women and/or men with crutches. (Not a joke. I’ve seen that happen, even with She Who Must Be Obeyed. More about that in a minute.)

Anyone who doesn’t get a seat then enters a battle for space. It’s important to plant your feet securely and grab hold of the cross bar. At this point, you encounter the Oozers. Oozers start to ooze over into your space in order to make more room for themselves. They use a combination of hips and carry bags to push you over. The secret to defeating the Oozers is, if you’ve remembered to grab the cross bar, a well placed elbow right next to their faces. They’ll stop oozing.

The next form of train jerk is the Readers. The Readers open up their newspapers full, especially if their seated, and it rubs and annoys you the whole ride. Or they are standing and they open it up to that it’s over your head or in your hair (if you’re tall). Or, the Readers pull out books and use you as a book stand. I’ve been knows to fold up the tops of newspapers and remind people I’m not a book stand. (More on that later.)

Jerks Outside the Train:
For the most part, the people boarding the train let the people on the train deboard. For the most part. But there is always a form of train jerk called the Barger. The Bargers come in two flavors, those who barge directly through the people trying to exit and those who wait until the main wave exits and then pushes through the slow moving little old ladies to get an open seat.

Before the doors open though, you encounter the Dashers and the Drifters. The Dashers stand in front of a door, then as soon as that door opens, they Dash down to a different door because they see more space or an open seat. If they bump into you, well, you should watch where they are going. The Drifters float between doors. (Important note: Unlike the USA and the UK, trains in Japan actually stop with the doors next to the numbered marks on the platforms.) When the doors open, Drifters suddenly choose sides and push into a line.

Hybrid Jerks:
Pushers wait until everyone else has boarded a crowded train and then use a combination of leverage and Judo to force their way onto the train, even if it’s so crowded that even the air has been pushed out of it. It doesn’t matter to a Pusher if a little old lady or a child is in the way, all that matters is that they are in the way the Pusher wants more space.

Cutters are an especially vile form of train jerk. Outside the train they may be a Drifter or a Dasher or may seem like normal people. When they door opens they walk in carefully and then abruptly change directions. For example, you enter on the right, the Cutter enters on the left. Suddenly, the Cutter decides he should have gone right and cuts in front of/through you. It’s like someone on an expressway suddenly realizing they’re in the wrong lane and about to miss their exit.

This takes us to our final category of jerk, the Foreign Asshole. The FA comes in a couple forms, most of them loud. If they are not talking loudly and disturbing the wa, they are being unpleasant to other train jerks.

Guess which category I’m in?

I’ve been known to, how shall we say, get vocal with Dozers pretending they are asleep, especially when She Who Must Be Obeyed was several months pregnant and had been cut off and forced to stand by a Cutter. I’m also pretty good at leg sweeps and can perform world class soccer dives that bring both me and the Cutters down. I’ve stood close to Cutters once they got a seat and pretty much had a “chat” with them about their rudeness. I once gave a man three warnings about resting his book on my shoulder, then snatched the book and put it on the luggage rack.

Oddly, I’ve never been a physical fight. Mind you, I don’t intend to, I’m just an FA when it comes to dealing with train jerks.

The Casual Business of Waiting Your Turn

Leave a reply

Classes start this Friday at the school where I work and that means I’ve had to drag myself in a few times to get ready. Today, especially, was important because I had to proctor a make-up test for a student who managed to fail seven different classes.

What’s odd about the week before school starts is how much it reminds me of a track meet.

My only experience with track and field occurred, if I remember correctly, in 8th grade. I was trying to get the Sports merit badge in Boy Scouts which required I play a full season in two approved sports. I’d already played basketball–and that was the only sport I played for more than one season–and that left track and field. Now, technically, track and field was not an approved sport but it was Hayden, Colorado so lacrosse, soccer and water polo were right out and the powers what are in the Boy Scouts were lenient.

This left the problem of deciding which events I should join. I was capable of short bursts of speed, but not 100 yards worth. I wasn’t coordinated enough to do high jump. I couldn’t even clear a bar set at waist level. (My Fosbury Flops were, well, you can finish the rest of that pun.) For the record, I admire high jumpers probably more than any other athletes as I do not understand how they do what they do.

I ended up running the mile and doing triple jump and, for at least one tournament, throwing discus. I was, at best, an average miler; a below average triple jumper; and an absolute disgrace as a discus thrower. I was also, clearly, not worth the coaches’ time. I don’t remember getting any specific help on getting better from any of the three coaches at any time during the season. I learned the basics of triple jump by watching other jumpers.

Having come from basketball, though, what surprised me about track practice was the way it seemed disorganized. People wandered about practicing various events and occasionally being told to run to some location out in the middle of nowhere and then return. It didn’t feel like a team practice.

The same was true of track meets. It was very strange to be told “be over there in an hour” and then be more or less left on my own. There was no sense of being on the same team and no particular cheering section. No one seemed to care if you made it to your event or not. I remember how odd and scattered it all felt.

The same is true of the week before school. Teachers wander in and prepare lessons (most of them dressed in shorts and  t-shirts as if it really were a track meet) and no one seems to care that anyone else is there. With make up tests we’re not even sure if the students will be there. (My student showed up, by the way, which means I lost a bet.)

Starting Friday, everything will be more regimented and some of us will start working as if we were on the same team.

 

Special Things and Unspecial Things

Leave a reply

Tonight’s topic is based on this probably apocryphal conversation:
Isadora Duncan to Anatole France: Imagine a child with my beauty and your brains!
Anatole France to Isadora Duncan: Yes, but imagine a child with my beauty and your brains!

I think it’s a truism that if you want to know what you love about your spouse, imagine what features of theirs you hope your children inherit. If you want to know what you hate about yourself, imagine what features of yours you hope your children don’t inherit.

Since we already have kids, I spend a lot of my time watching them and going: lucky, lucky, lucky, push, damn sorry about that, and well, it could be worse.

Luckily for the girls they inherited most of She Who Must Be Obeyed’s face. Especially important is they actually have lips, which is something I was pretty much denied which makes me look pensive even when I’m not, um, pensed. They both did, more or less, inherit a version of my nose, but that could be worse. They also inherited my creased eyelids which will save them a lot of make up and/or plastic surgery in the future.

The push is that they both seem to have inherited my height. Our oldest is already taller than her mother and the youngest is getting closer and closer. The oldest has big feet, which makes this a push. Being tall is a mixed blessing in Japan, especially when you try to buy shoes.

Unfortunately our oldest inherited my oily skin and the youngest at least some of my allergies. The odds are more or less against their hair. She Who Must Be Obeyed’s hair went completely white at a young age and white hair runs in my family. Mine waited a while, but is getting there slowly. My Dad’s hair was completely white by the time he was my age.

They both have good eyesight, which comes from me, but have inherited She Who Must Be Obeyed’s inner ear disturbance which makes it difficult for them to hear and understand the male voice.

Our oldest has inherited my propensity for putting off until tomorrow what is due the day after tomorrow. She’s already pulled her first almost-all-nighter and is, as I write this, finishing up the homework she had all summer to finish. (It’s 11:45 Japan time.) The youngest inherited She Who Must Be Obeyed’s work ethic, mostly. She likes to help out, but mainly on her own terms and she distracts easily, which she got from both of her parents.

Our oldest has a well developed back-talking skill, which she got from me, and she frustrates easily, which she also got from me. These are things of mine I really wish she hadn’t inherited.

Our youngest has a remarkable ability to make a small mess into a big mess when she doesn’t want to clean something. She didn’t get that from me as my skill is stretching a small five minute project into a seven day project, which means she must have got that from She Who Must Be Obeyed.

They are both much more aggressive about getting out and making friends than I am. They aren’t exactly extroverts, but they seem to enjoy people. They also aren’t easy to push around. I’m glad they inherited all that from She Who Must Be Obeyed. What they would have got from me wouldn’t have been as helpful to them.

Business Dreams and Breaking Down

1 Reply

Because I tend to dabble in writing, put off doing a lot of stuff while I over think it and, until recently, had way too many hobbies, the handful of business ideas I’ve had usually end up filed away somewhere until someone else does them. However back in the early aughts, a year or so after I moved to Tokyo, I attempted to start a small side business. This is miraculous enough, but that I attempted to exploit connections to do it is also a small miracle.

Not much else about the endeavor was miraculous.

What happened is I learned that teachers in Tokyo were going to be forced to attend “Four Skills” training. (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening) and the company I work for was planning on competing for the contract. My mad idea was that such things would probably happen in other prefectures and if I could get organized enough, I might be able to get similar courses started in Niigata. The teachers could then tell the government: see, we already did that.

I contacted a friend from Niigata who besides being a good Japanese English Teacher, was also very well connected in the prefectural education department. I pitched the idea to her and we started working on the preliminaries. I put together fliers and the curriculum (in my free time, of course, not on company time) and she was going to contact her contacts in both the prefectural and regional education departments and get back to me.

She didn’t get back to me. I sent her a copy of the fliers and information and waited. I didn’t want to be too pushy partly because I knew she was usually rather busy.  After a few weeks I received a letter dripping with, well, nervous breakdown.

I won’t get into details but let’s just say, as a rule, it’s a bad omen when your future business partner begins decrying money and materialism in what is supposed to be commentary on future business propaganda materials. I called her and it’s the second time in my life I’ve spoken to a person who was so upset her voice had changed. (The first was a good friend who wasn’t having a good time in her first year of teaching in my hometown.)

I was able to determine that my future former business partner had encountered some direct verbal bullying and had suffered a whisper campaign that had pretty much freaked her out and more or less caused her to burn her bridges with her prefectural connections.

The business never happened, as I suddenly found myself without any contacts in the prefecture. Luckily it only cost me some postage, a couple phone calls, some time and some printer ink. I realize that I should have immediately gone to Niigata and said “take me to its leaders” rather than letting things get put off. Although I have my moments, I don’t know if I could have pulled that off, but at least it would have been an active mistake and perhaps left me with a few contacts of my own. (If that makes sense.) I also realize that I needed to be more aggressive in pushing my business partner.

I did end up teaching a lot of the four skills classes when my company got the contract. (Those will require another post to describe. Preview: huffing and sighing, “Fuck you,” and “I’m sorry you misunderstood.”)

Also, for the record, my curriculum was better.

 

Responsibility the Oldest Boy and Quiet Desperation

1 Reply

My in-laws and She Who Must Be Obeyed are currently engaging in negotiations that can only happen in families in ways that can only happen in Japan. As Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed undergoes a second surgery, this one for a hip replacement, it’s clear that someone is going to have to be close by to take care of her and Father of She Who Must Be Obeyed.

They’ve asked my sister in-law to watch over them and, if possible. to move into the house. The problem is that her husband is the oldest in his family and they may someday be expected to move into his family’s house to care for his father or mother. My brother-in-law lives in Yokohama and it would normally be his responsibility to move back but he can’t drive, which makes him less useful if he moves back. That leaves She Who Must Be Obeyed, who is the second oldest child, but she’s also the only one with kids and the only one married to someone with familial responsibilities in another country.

It’s all very complicated and I personally suspect there’s less to worry about than everyone thinks, but how it works out is how it works out.

However, it has reminded me two of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard that didn’t involve death.

When I was in Niigata, after my first year, my Japanese English teachers switched out and I started working with Mr. Oguma. He told me that he originally went to Tokyo and became a punk rock musician (I’ve got his CD somewhere in the Variety Closet. It’s okay.) But when his father died it was his responsibility to come home and take care of the family.

In his case, he may have actually found a calling. Not only did he improve the crappy boys rock band that all junior high’s in Japan have, but he was also one of the few JTEs I worked with who was concerned that everything he put on the board was correct. For all his energy, though, he did seem to be rather sad and on a lot of pills as I think he lost his second love as well. I’ve mentioned before, that he seemed to want to work in crappy schools. Being in a school where he was dealing with pettiness and family conflict was clearly eating away at him.

The other sad story involved Mr. I, one of my JTEs at my other junior high. He was in every stereotypical way imaginable the cliche Japanese English teacher: old, male, always in a suit, bad English, conducted class mostly in Japanese and didn’t seem to care about anything other than the book which made my classes, to him, useless distractions. He was one of the few teachers I ever got angry with in the teachers’ office.

Then, at his retirement party, out of the blue, he came up to me and said with a wistful laugh “I never wanted to be an English teacher.” He explained how after university he’d gone to Tokyo to work in a major company as a “salary man” (office worker). Then, after his father died, he moved back to Niigata to take care of the family and about all that was available was teaching. He then said that he’d told the officials involved in his hiring that he wanted to teach social studies. They told him there were too many social studies teachers and he had to teach English even though he didn’t speak it. He then spent the next 35 years or so doing a job he wasn’t trained for and never wanted to do.

It was one of the few times in my life I was so deeply moved that I was speechless and to this day the story makes me sad. Mr. I and Mr. Oguma are the few true examples of Thoreau’s “lives of quiet desperation” I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know where they are now. I hope they’re doing well.

Quite Comically Droll Really

Leave a reply

I have a couple hundred things I could and should have done today but rather than waste time playing World of Tanks or other games, I decided to waste it binge watching Inspector Morse and that has me thinking about British television and the odd influence it’s had on my life.

When I was growing up, I would occasionally catch snippets of British TV on PBS. Please remember, we only had four channels at the time, one of which was “educational” The first show I remember seeing and being freaked out by was The Tomorrow People. which is basically the X-Men with annoyingly perfect people and lots of 70’s hair and clothing.

There was also bits of The Benny Hill Show, which I’m still not actually sure I was supposed to watch. I mostly remember him not speaking very much and him being surrounded by lots of occasionally clad women. I also learned the many meanings of “crumpet” from that show.

The other comedy show was Monty Python’s Flying Circus which I mostly remember for the Spam sketch and people getting hit with fish. Later I would see all the Python movies. Yes, I can recite them all word for word, and no, I’m not going to do it now. The best part about Python was revisiting the shows years later and finally getting the jokes.

I also remember, a late 70’s series called Blake’s 7 which was gruelingly pessimistic, full of moral ambiguity, didn’t have seven people, got rid of Blake for a while and wasn’t afraid to kill off main characters. That said, it’s the kind of show that I suspect I’d hate if I watched it again. (Which means I have a moral obligation to watch it again. I’ll add it to the procrastination viewing list.)

The biggest show, though, was and remains Doctor Who. It was another show that I’d watch in fits and starts because, in those days, a week was a long time to have to remember the time something was on. It was also the first show I remember triggering a “What the hell is that?” when I saw a version with a different Doctor. (I didn’t yet know yet that Time Lords regenerate as a new person when they die/ask for more money per episode.)

The first Doctor I saw was Tom Baker and, quite frankly, he’s still the best Doctor. David Tennant did a great impersonation of him as did Matt Smith, but only Tom Baker could properly deliver a line like “I say, what a wonderful butler. He’s so violent.” He was also good at being the clown and then suddenly getting dark and moody. The worst Doctor was Colin Baker followed closely by the guy who had celery on his jacket.

Since then I’ve seen, I think, every available episode of Doctor Who and a couple webisodes. I’ve even watched bits of The Sarah Jane Adventures, based around former Doctor Who Companion Sarah Jane Smith after Elisabeth Sladen’s dazzling return to Doctor Who.

I’m not sure why I liked British TV. I think it was just different enough to count as vaguely exotic and I tended to latch on to things most other people didn’t like or didn’t yet get (Styx; dark beer; sci fi; mustard on French fries; potato chips on sandwiches; peanut butter on celery; Christopher Eccleston as Doctor Who).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got more Inspector Morse to watch. I just wish I had a pint of real ale nearby.

 

Hard Work With Mere Fantasy

Leave a reply

One of the things I’ve generally tried to avoid, partly because it seems too much effort for the pay off, is participation in fantasy sports leagues. That said, I have participated in two leagues before and have been recently been persuaded to join another one.

One of the things that’s kept me from taking part in fantasy leagues is how serious some of the participants take it. The first time I remember meeting a serious player was when an acquaintance of mine used paid holidays to fly back the USA from Japan for the fantasy baseball draft.To me this seems like something you don’t do unless lots of money, drugs or hookers are involved. Whatever was involved, the most surprising part was it made perfectly good sense to him to spend real money to fly back for a fantasy draft and his wife was supportive of it, in a kind of “you boys” sort of way.

A few years later I would be coaxed into joining a fantasy hockey league with a few Canadians and a couple Scotsmen. It is important to understand that despite their reputation for being nice, when it come to Hockey (they always capitalize it) they are as ruthless as the most bloodthirsty people you can imagine, even in a fantasy league. When they discus teams like the Leafs (Leaves?), Canadiens (Canadians?) and the Senators (Crooks?) which are the only teams I’ve heard them discuss, they lose all sense of humor but retain all their snark.

In the league, they started by stacking the rules to favor them: you select a team and you are only a allowed a few trades. (The game we joined allowed unlimited trades.) This hampered those of us who’d been on skates only once, thought you dribbled the puck and actually thought the highlighted puck on US sports channels was a good idea. Despite this, I managed to finish second in the pool. I was first for a while but a trip to dial-up land (my in-laws) prevented me from making an important substitution.

The next year we played again, but allowed unlimited trades. Once again I was first towards the end and once again was sabotaged by my in-laws (who I suspect were bribed by Canadians). Once again I finished second. Both years I had the Canadians (Canadiens? Habs?) worried but in the end one of them prevailed which is why I am still alive to write these posts.

Now, for the first time, I’m part of an NFL fantasy league and actually had to participate in the draft. Proving, once again, that I’d rather be lucky than good, my team is picked to win our league.

This means I won’t even finish in the top five in our league of four teams. I’m optimistic that way–and not that good at math.