things take a turn
Big changes since yesterday: the Patriots lost a game that looked eminently winable at the time I last posted, and the temperature took a precipitious drop. 17 degrees (farenheit, natch) might not be that cold in absolute terms--we saw far colder last year, I believe--but when it comes eight or nine hours after a 55 degree evening, it feels like Siberia's dropped right on top of us. The wind which naturally accompanies such a shift in temperature was also a factor, I think. So far our house is still standing.
fight night
Leah went to a Girl Scout meeting tonight, so I was left to my own devices... which mostly involve watching CSI reruns. Unfortunately, she left at 5:00 and the CSIs don't start til 7:00, so I was forced to do useful and productive things for a couple hours. But after all that productivity (relatively), imagine my surprise when I turned on the tv a couple minutes before the hour to see an episode of CSI wrapping up! Ah yes... I did recall them mentioning something about a marathon of my program of choice, this afternoon. Oh well, so I missed a few episodes; there were more where that came from. It was not to be, however; it turns out the 6:00 episode was the last of the evening! Instead, the channel in question was going to be showing highlights from the year's Ultimate Fighting Champion matches.
So I watched a little of that. It's kind of like boxing was in the early part of the 19th century, what with the bare knuckles and the kneeing people in the nose. For a few moments I was impressed, and wondered if the young men competing were showing a toughness which put more traditional modern boxers to shame (a point of view suggested transparently by the announcers). After a little consideration, though, I realized that it wasn't the fighters' toughness that let them stand up to the bare-knuckled blows, it was their lack of any great punching skill. Put them in the ring with a journeyman proper boxer, was the impression I got, and it'd be over in one punch. Still, some people like to watch the blood get spattered around so I guess this sort of fighting is for them. I noticed a considerable number of the Ultimate Fighters were from Massachusetts; I wonder what that says about us?