You Can’t Miss This! Although, Um, I Have To Miss It

If you live in or even near western Mass, this is a must-do event. Yes, the Patriots vs. the Giants, live at the Brass Cat on Tuesday night. Seriously, I would so go to this if I didn’t have something to do. It’s interesting, though, because what I have to do is watch people play pool at a bar in Chicopee. And that’s interesting to me because my original justification for not going to the Giants-Patriots was that I had something “real” to do. Yes, that is, until I realized that watching a competitive game of pool in a bar and watching a competitive video game in a bar really aren’t all that different in the scale of “real” things to do.

Nevertheless, Chicopee here I come.

“London Girl”

From 2/28/07

For the past week or so I’ve had the Pogue’s song “London Girl” stuck in my head. It has been especially popping up in moments of happiness (which have been on the increase as of late) and moments of exhilaration. For example, today I was walking across campus feeling all happy and suddenly found myself singing the song. Didn’t even realize I had started doing it. Luckily no one was around. And just yesterday as I was correcting some papers while students did their writing I started to hum it. A student laughed at me. But that’s okay. I get a lot of that.

But I first noticed it last week at the Snowy Owl Resort (formerly Brodie–yes, where people named Kelly skiied for free on St. Patrick’s Day) where I was snow tubing. First of all, if like me you haven’t been to many ski-type resorts you’re probably not used to cute signs everywhere that say things like: Snow tubing involves risks and dangers. These may include but are not limited to collisions that are man made or natural, within lanes or other areas of snow tubing. Injury or death may result. And to top that off, I had to sign a waiver that said essentially that if I died it wasn’t their damned fault. I’m the frickin idiot who went snow tubing.

So, you can see where I was ready for anything. On my first run down the hill, as I was picking up more and more speed than I had anticipated (ahh, that’s why they made me sign the waiver!) and as I was going down the hill backwards wondering if a small child had wandered across my path (ahh, that’s why they had their parents sign a waiver too!!), suddenly the song burst into my head louder than bombs. This could be our final dance. This could be our very last chance… and yet it all felt so good. The sun in my eyes, the spray of the snow. The 80% chance I would survive. Great stuff.