Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Work, a lost Eagles season, a lost indoor soccer season? a lost blog?

It's been a busy week. The lack of posts sort of bear that out, but it really has been a busy week. Work is getting busy preparing for the holidays and my personal life has had me more or less running around in circles the past week or so.

Sadly, one thing I am not doing right now in this cool beautiful Indianapolis afternoon is actual physical running. This is in large part because I am unable to run, or even walk at a decent pace. About 15 minutes into our indoor soccer game Sunday evening I was chasing a much quicker player from behind. Through sheer determination and will, I wound up equal with him, but as I planted my left leg for an akward challenge that would have surely resulted in a foul anyway, I collapsed. My knee just entirely gave out. I lay on the ground for a good 3-4 minutes before being helped off the field. I swallowed some field turf after screaming into the ground, which was about as disgusting as it sounds. I have since been to IU Med Group. They could not do anything to really help me and the refferal process apparently takes a week from them. With the holidays, it will really be two weeks. So, next week, if my limp, which has only gotten slightly better, doesn't improve I may be building my own MRI machine to see what damage I may or may not have done. At any rate it's a foregone conclusion that I will not be able to play this Sunday outside of a miracle which is depressing as can be to me. I hate being injured, I hate feeling old. I hate typing this while housitting right next to a treadmill at a house I am houseitting and knowing I won't even be able to take advantage of that. Bullshit, says I.

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Earlier that very Sunday I was at Moe and Johnny's to watch the Philadelphia Eagles. I was feeling pretty confident about the situation. They were coming off a 27-3 victory and playing at home against a Titans team they should beat. But, then it all inexplicably came crashing down, like almost every season in Eagles memory as long as I can remember being a fan of this team. Donovan McNabb went down to a torn ACL and is gone for the season. The play didn't even look like anything significant. Less than one minute after McNabb was carted off the field I recieved a text from another long suffering Eagles fan that simply said, "We're done." He also gave me a ring Monday evening and we talked for 30 minutes about how this team has been on the precipice for half a decade and now just seem ready to fall into another decade of mediocrity. I don't want to sound like a Red Sox or a Cubs fan, cause I find them much more obnoxious and ridiculous than Philadelphia fans, and because they had other teams in their city win numerous championships during the Eagles drought, blunting the pain a bit. But, my word, the shit that happens to this team is ridiculous.

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As if to underscore the point about ridiculousness that same Monday that my friend and I were talking on the phone word came that ex Eagles safety Andre Waters had committed suicide. Andre Waters was the one of the mostr memorable players of the most memorable Eagles teams in history. Buddy Ryan's Eagles teams were always built on defense and an in your face attitude. And Andre "Dirty" Waters played and hit harder than nearly any of them. I look back at those teams now. I remember coming up from a canoe trip in the Pine Barens to see Reggie White speak at the Billy Graham crusade at the Vet one summer day, but only seeing him sob as he told the thousands there about his teamate Jerome Brown's death. I remember hearing that Reggie White died, and now Andre Waters. And I can't help but think, what the hell? And I can't be any more eloquent than that either. It's awful, its strange, and thats it.

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This is the first post I have had with the new Blogger beta. Actually this would have came two days ago, but I was unable to log in after upgrading. Thanks, blogger! But they have it fixed now, so now posts will be labeled at the bottom, even if I don't really understand what the labels do.

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