Sports of All Sorts

Let me say a little something not related to the main subject of my post just to clear off some residue from the last post. I just want to say that if you are unaccustomed to how people act when under the influence of drugs, even those taken exactly as prescribed, the whole thing can be unnerving, particularly when your first experience with this is in the middle of the night, and the person under the influence of said drug is unable, due to said drug usage, to explain what is happening and why and provide some reassurance as to everything being okay. Also, when the person under the influence of said drug tries to make a funny, but you aren’t sure if the person is joking or serious and can’t really get a coherent response from him, again due to said drug usage, it can get a little unnerving, or perhaps as things often seem worse in the middle of the night than in the light of day, it can seem downright scary. I don’t do well in those kinds of situations. I’m a wimp. So when the “fight of flight” reflex kicks in I opt for flight, and did, in the wee early hours of Saturday morning, around 5:00 a.m. leaving a somewhat out of it, somewhat bewildered, somewhat scary BJ back at his place while I hightailed it home.

While I love BJ a lot, I can’t say that I much care for the drugged up BJ. It has always been a priority for me to stay in my right mind, to be as alert as possible, and I find a certain amount of discomfort with being around pharmaceutically enhanced individuals. Now I am not talking about medications like, oh say, blood pressure meds or allergy meds, but I am talking about the kind of meds that would alter your personality like his sleeping pills seem to do. Normally when BJ takes a sleeping pill around me it is at bedtime, and he goes to sleep, and sleeps soundly, and isn’t scary at all. After all, how scary can a big sleeping lump be? But seeing him teetering on the edge of consciousness, sitting in his living room, incoherent and unable to respond intelligibly to me, freaked me out. I wasn’t even entirely sure he knew who I was or why I was there, and that was the scariest part because if he didn’t realize that then how safe was I? That’s when I decided to bug out. Now I did find out later that he did know who I was and why I was there and he was fine with me being there. It’s just that he didn’t/couldn’t communicate that in his drug-altered state. So we talked it all out later in the day, and maybe I’m a little clearer on things, and maybe he’s a little clearer on things, and maybe it’ll all be okay.

Thus ends my post length prologue to my real post.

And now, on with the real post:

This weekend was not great, but then again not horrible, for sports fan Trueself. I’ll do bad news first and then the good news.

As one of the many long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans of the world, I watched as my beloved Cubbies folded under the pressure of their World Series centennial year and tanked in the playoffs to the Dodgers (the Dodgers for pity sakes!) losing three in a row to go home once again with heads hung low and the ever present cry of “Well, there’s always next year.” Yeah, I’m still a Cubbies fan. I suppose I always will be. I would love to see them make the World Series once in my lifetime, but I think of the number of diehard Cubs fans for whom that hasn’t happened and I see this year’s performance, and I can’t help but think that it may not happen for me either. Sigh. . .

Oh well, at least we had the “Big Soccer Tournament” to attend. Alas, N’s team lost both of their games on Saturday, putting them in the Consolation Game on Sunday. His team played well in both of Saturday’s games. They just met up with some really tough teams, teams that were much better than any they’d seen before. They didn’t lose horribly either time, only by two goals in each game. Nevertheless, they lost. . . both games. . . and they were nothing if not a little down trodden by the end of the second game. I was a little worried that they would let their losses get them down so much they wouldn’t play well on Sunday. However, they were going up against a team that had also suffered two losses on Saturday so morale-wise the two teams should be pretty evenly matched. N’s team took an early lead on Sunday and although the other team fought back hard in the second half and nearly tied the game at one point when all was said and done N’s team won. . . a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy tournament.

The big bright spot in my weekend sports-wise though was the Illini performance against Michigan. The Illini won big, and not only did they win big they did it on Michigan’s turf. Now I know there are a couple of readers who will not be as excited at the outcome of this game as I was, but all I can say to that is to quote one of my favorite Illini t-shirts: Muck Fichigan! Yes, we beat Michigan. I can’t wait to watch the game on Tivo. I had to miss it due to N’s soccer tournament, but I made sure to set the Tivo to record it just in case we won. If we had lost, I would’ve just deleted it, but given that we won I’ll be having my own version of Monday Night Football tonight. I just need a little Papa Del’s and Bud Light, and I’m good to hunker down on the sofa for an evening of fine football, and because it’s Tivoed I can skip all the commercials. Perfect!