Hey there,
'Twas Super Bowl this week. We had a handful of folks over for the 7:30am kickoff. Decent game and commercials, and the food was good. Not sure if I've ever had a photo taken of me in my chair.
One thing I've become expert at is identifying knee injuries instantly. In real time, called OBJ's ACL tear and Joe Burrow's MCL sprain. Obviously this power is due to watching 10's of thousands of hours of sports and having all of the knee injuries myself, but a totally useless skill to have.
Today is the coldest day of the year so far...low forties last night and as cold as it's been in all our time here. Not complaining, but the relentless gray cold this winter has been odd. The appeal of this dump is that you get some 70 degree runs in January/March and there just hasn't been one.
That kinda sucks for baseball cause we've been rained out a bunch and we're only a couple weeks in. Here is our team photo...first is combined Varsity/JV, and the Varsity only is below. A decent batch of players this year...by far the best since the school started baseball 5 (6?) years ago.
Time for the "Why baseball is great" story of the week. After the above team photo, all of us were warming up. I like to get in there too as playing catch is half the reason I go out. Since it was a combined practice, the warm-up line was long and I'm down at one end. In local baseball custom, you will hear a guy shout out "Oy", and then the rest of the team will respond in unison with "OY!". It sounds OK and our boys have tried to adopt the practice, but it feels forced and to me we are different and should have a chant that reflects our culture and spirit.
At this warm-up, we're chatting as we do, and one of the fellas mentions that another player has a Spotify playlist he made for his girlfriend. The mixtape of this generation...how great they still have the same practice and even better they can make one so fast and also edit it as the relationship ebbs and flows. Anyhoo, the kid tells me that not only does he have a playlist for his girlfriend, but she made one back for him. The playlists are called 'I Love You Baby (ILY Baby)' and 'I Love You More'. Such an obvious call and response and that has caught on as one for us. Pretty perfect as it rolls off the tongue easily and sounds great, is unique to us and is funny in that baseball sort of way. What I like the most about it is that it gets teenage boys to utter the phrase "I love you" so that hopefully makes it easier to say for them down the line.
Brief local covid update...the local continue to fight the battle in a quest for zero cases. They were scared lately by the high transmissibility of the current variant and the Chinese New Year holiday where people travel and congregate. Throughout the two week CNY break and to today, cases have been in the teens and 20's with yesterday going down to 8 and 4 today. Seems impossible, right? Their vaccination rates are similar to most countries...pretty high but too many unwilling to get it. They aren't claiming they have a right not to take it, but are fearful of whatever cause they hear rumors...and they love themselves some rumors here. But they still mask religiously and contact trace with a passion. Most all the folks I talk to, local and expat, think that they should let go of their zealousness and let this wave wash over them, and there are hints they will reduce the inbound quarantine, but the bulk of the people and government are very conservative. No way I'm doing 14 days again, but who would be willing to predict what it'll be like in October.
Finally for today, a local public service news item to share. A human rights group took a look at the 20 major bubble tea brands and rated them on how they "kowtow" to China. Kowtow sounds like a word of Chinese origin, no? See the rankings for yourself here and never get your bubble tea from the Comebuy again.
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