A Day of Sport
June 14, 2006 – 10:49 pmI’m really getting into the World Cup. Two of my lab mates put together a World Cup pool before the tournament began, so I came up with my picks of who would make it out of each group, who would win the tournament, and who the top goal scorer would be. Generating these picks forced me to learn a little bit about soccer. I knew absolutely nothing before, but I’m slowly piecing things together.
The past couple of days, we’ve borrowed our department’s projector, and we’ve projected the World Cup games onto the whiteboard in our lab. What a setup. One of the people in my lab has a TV box for their laptop which allows you to connect a television antenna to the computer. You can then pick up any channels which are broadcast over the air. Fortunately, Univision, one of the local Spanish language channels, broadcasts all the games over the air, and thus we can watch each game via the projector.
This evening our softball team had its first game. It’s an underhand slow pick softball league, and the games can run for either seven innings or ninety minutes, whichever comes first. It was clear after two innings we were going to finish seven before the time limit. We were the “home” team, and we were down 7-5 entering the bottom of the seventh. We were down to our last out, in fact, with runners on second and third base. One swing of the bat later, the game was tied. One more swing of the bat, and we had won. A rally from two runs down with one out to go to win our first game. Pretty cool stuff.
Then Ariele and I came home and warmed up some leftovers for dinner. Game five of the Stanley Cup Finals was going into overtime as we sat down. I convinced Ariele to let me watch a portion of the rest of the game, and three and a half minutes into overtime, the Oilers score a shorthanded goal to beat the Hurricanes. The Stanley Cup Finals continue. I actually find myself rooting for the Canadians here.
A day full of sport. It’s nice to have that kind of day every now and again.
4 Responses to “A Day of Sport”
Oh the jealousy. Not only is there no World Cup watching in my lab, we had to miss the first Brazil match for a group meeting.
By Dixie on Jun 15, 2006 at 8:20 am
You didn’t have to miss the game for group meeting. The only people who had to be there were the people giving talks. I think it would’ve been okay if you’d skipped the meeting.
By Adam on Jun 15, 2006 at 9:07 am
I have to say my lab went all out. One guy is French, and another is Swiss. When France played Switzerland the other day, they came in early to help get everything set up, and they brought donuts with them. Yesterday, we all opened our lunches and ate during the game.
Word is quickly spreading around the building, though. Yesterday we had three non-lab members join us for the Germany-Poland game. We might have to start charging admission to keep out the riff-raff.
By jjk on Jun 15, 2006 at 9:08 am
Well, I get nasty mails when I skip meetings. Maybe it’s because WAG misses my pretty face, but I’ve found I have to have a damn good reason (death in the family doesn’t cut it, so I suppose popping out to watch some footie doesn’t count) to miss meetings, whether I’m presenting or not.
By Dixie on Jun 15, 2006 at 1:31 pm