Mortification of the Flesh and other Party Tricks:

Thought for the Day:
Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.
Bill Shankly

A Long and Stormy Weekend:
Friday, I at last completed the grant(s) from hell. After 28 revisions, many of which brought us right back to my original proposal. I then promptly when home and slept (without the benefits of dangerous over-the-counter drugs) for 14 hours.

Yes, dear reader, I needed to not only to recoup from weeks of long hours and due'-or-die job stress, I needed to look and feel my best for Saturday, for Game Day.

The next day, I found myself at the Rugby Bar, surrounded by men who had seen to much, veterans of one to many football games and Kiss concerts. These men (and not a few women) had come with one heart felt purpose on this cold bitter Indiana day, to watch, to watch, some football.

People had traveled from as far away as Ossian and Indianapolis, drawn to the palatable smell of adrenalin in the air. I was as if Stanley Kubrick had risen from the grave and started directing Miller High Life commercials.

…and dear reader, that’s when it happened.

The Gods and fate both conspired against myself and my merry band of brigadoons.

The only thing left for me to do was drown my pain, my sorrow in large amounts of distilled grains. My team lost, my alums and I, still in a state of abject shock and dismay.

Where did that bright sunshiny world we once knew go?

A loss through and through, we were weighed, measured and found wanting, as the score board recorded our defeat. Those bright-eyed youth who just moments before had walked onto the battlefield of football history, now looking at each other with blank stares, 1000 yard stares.

The of musket fire from Shiloh five miles away, shown hard in their faces this Tennessee day. We knew their pain, the sweat, the blood that had to be spilled.

After the game Saturday, I once again was able to make an ass out of myself at my loving wife’s bosses Holiday party. When will these people learn, it is not wise to insist that I attend such functions, after a day of drinking with fellow fans of small college Catholic football? Let just say, both my self-editor and table manners were temporally disabled.

Sunday, it was off to an early Mass, after which I spent the rest of the day engaging in certain rites of Opus Dei, much to my loving wife’s approval. A penance, to be done, a bill to be settled, a pound of flesh, served cold as ice.

Which takes me to today, I was going to take this week off, but after looking at both the days I have left for the year and the schedule, I opted for a little (key word, being little) work time. I am currently planning to take my loving and simply beautiful wife down to the cradle of democracy, South Carolina, for the week after Christmas, up to and including the New Years.

Family and friends throughout the South were over joy’d at this news, even more so in that we are getting a ocean front condo, vs. staying with them.

I Count my Blessings this Morning:
Notre Dame is still playing in a Bowl game and Ohio is going down.
I am still both rakish and an accomplished vocalist.
My wife did not carry through with her threats of burning me alive in my sleep.
I received a gift of pickled Brussel Sprouts (very tasty my babushka).
If I close my eyes, and concentrate I can hear the ocean and smell the sea, I love winter at the beach.
I didn’t get into a knife fight after all.

In the Talking Shit Department:
Please feel free to stop by:
http://roblyer7.blogspot.com/

Your Bill for the Day:
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."
--From Hamlet (II, ii, 206)

Quote for the Day:
For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks-not that you won or lost-
But how you played the game.
Grantland Rice, "Alumunus Football,"

I remain, the small angry dog that hides under the sofa of your self-esteem:

JQP esq.