Monday, Jan. 24, 2005
Snow football, posted at 10:40 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com School was cancelled today - actually, it was cancelled last night - and I have no idea why. The roads have been fine for over a day. If this means we go another day in June, I'll be especially disappointed. As it is, I'm disappointed that a snow day is being used on a day when no students were coming, anyway, and this will make my life all the much harder tomorrow because I have so much work to do grading. I had made some tentative plans to go with colleagues to see a 4:15 showing of Hotel Rwanda after school on Tuesday, before heading over to the Happy Hour, but now I'm worried about getting out of my classroom in time for the Happy Hour. I have a ton of work that just has to be done in my classroom - specifically, 120 textmarked copies of The Odyssey that I wasn't about to carry home and running the multiple choice portion of the midterms through the scantron.Oh well. It's not that bad. My friend Jesse has made it a tradition that on every snow day, a bunch of teachers get together for a game of snow football at Patterson Park. I've found (legitimate) reasons not to go every other time, so I don't feel like I should skip out this time even though I have plenty of grading to do at home. It should be fun, anyway. I'm heading over there at noon.
Despite the cancellation of school, I decided to keep my car on the side where I had to move at 7:30am, in hopes it would make me get up in time to head to the gym and still have all day free. It worked, the workout is completed, and now I've got an hour to kill before heading to Patterson Park.
Nothing else is new. I'm disappointed the Steelers didn't win, but it's for girly reasons. The city of Pittsburgh is more my kind of city - the industrial midwest model of city, like Baltimore (even though it's not in the midwest) or Detroit. Plus, a couple co-workers are from Pittsburgh and it's fun to see them into the games so much, and I was hoping the Steelers would win after not winning in a couple decades. New England needs no more championships this year after the Red Sox victory; those fans just can't get any more smug. I'll definitely be rooting for the Eagles during the Super Bowl, even though I can't name a player from their team.
I'm a sad, sad NFL fan. I remember three years ago I decided to make a concerted effort to get into the NFL so I would have something to talk about with new co-workers, as I really wanted to make friends. I tried it, even got into a few games. But it just didn't stick. I don't know if anything will ever be able to make up for my lack of fandom during my formative years. Maybe sports fandom is like language aquisition or learning music - if it's not acquired at a young age, you really have to work at it. I live and breathe baseball, but never football. Oh well.
Twenty-four days, one hour, and one minute until pitchers and catchers report, by the way. And I really, really hope the Orioles sign Delgado. And the Tigers sign Ordonez. That would make me very happy.