The Worst Year EVER

Well, Happy Flappin’ New Year.

MY WIFE has been sick all year. She has some sort of a bug and it’s a particularly nasty one. She's pale, weak, puking, can’t eat, has a headache, and just about any other nastiness you can imagine, she’s suffering from it.

What with her being in bed and not wanting to do anything except sleep until she feels better, I have lots of time to write. However, with her being in bed and not wanting to do anything except sleep until she feels better, I have no great desire to write. I’m just not in the mood when I feel as though there should be something I can do to make her feel better.

There isn’t anything I can do, of course. I’ve asked often and her answer is always “no”. As a matter of fact, I get the feeling that my asking the question as often as I have is aggravating her, so I’m going to lay off.

If she weren’t feeling so bad, I’d probably feel worse than I do. What I mean is that I don’t feel all that well, myself, but compared to her I’m the picture of health. I feel a bit of what might be the flu coming on, but nothing more than an occasional chill and a general feeling of having my skull stuffed with ripped up brown paper bags rather than actual brain.

And I don’t care if that makes a lick of sense. That’s how I feel.

I ordered a green curry last night, from our local Thai restaurant, and ate as much of it as I could stand. Not that it didn’t taste good – it did – but I ordered it specifically for its curative effects. It made me sweat like a pig and that was the idea behind getting it. I’ve found that eating extremely spicy foods makes me feel better when I’m on the cusp of a cold or flu or whatever; the endorphin rush and all that, I suppose. I also like to think I’m setting fire to whatever vermin has invaded my body. It works for me. I’m going to go have the leftovers as soon as I finish writing. I hope I sweat buckets.

There are a whole bunch of “bowl” games on today, of course, but they're generally boring matchups. It used to be that January 1st was THE day for college football, but now they’ve moved the so-called national championship game to next week and what we’re stuck with today is a bunch of mostly second-tier games that only die-hard fans and compulsive gamblers give a damn about.

The only game I care about today isn’t happening until 8pm or so. In that one, Boise State is playing Oklahoma. Boise State should be playing Ohio State for the real national championship. They are the only two undefeated teams. Ohio State, instead, is playing Florida, next week, in a game that means absolutely nothing if Ohio State wins. Florida is a good team, but nothing special. They were the recipients of a number of fortunate events and scheduling flukes. The only game that would have answered every question was Ohio State against Boise State, the two remaining undefeated teams, but college football is much like the American political process, in that it’s almost wholly driven by money and media, so the pundits and experts and other assorted fakers decreed early on that Boise State wouldn’t get a shot, no matter if they went undefeated – which they did, of course.

In other news you probably don’t care about, Boston College beat Navy in the I Don’t Care Who The Sponsor Was Bowl. Steve Aponavicious kicked a game-winning field goal as time ran out. The best part about the game was that not a single one of the announcers for ESPN knew how to pronounce his name. Each one of them tried a different way, and they thought they had it right, but none of them did. Oh, well. Great story anyway. Aponavicious was a fan in the stands last year. He never played a single game of football until the first one he kicked in this season and the only reason he got a chance is because Ryan Ohliger, the BC kicker to start the year, was less than competent. Aponavicious got to kick about halfway through the season and has been a hero ever since.

Steve doesn’t have a scholarship - yet. It is safe to assume he’ll get one next year.

Well, nothing much has changed since I started writing this. I still feel sort of punk, the games that are on don’t interest me too much, MY WIFE is sick as a dog, and it’s pouring rain outside. Joy abounds here at the Suldog house. I’m going to go heat up the curry.

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It is now about 5:30 on this New Years Day. MY WIFE seems to be a bit better. She is talking, which is a good sign. Before she was only moaning a bit between the times when she was upchucking.

The Rose Bowl is on and I honestly don’t care at all. I put it on for a couple of minutes and I saw a tackle for a loss by a Michigan safety. He got up and danced around and shook his head at the offense and folded his arms like a rapper and all sorts of other ridiculous boobery. The same low-rent histrionics and Neanderthal posing populate every football game I see these days. I truly can’t stand to watch any more of it right now, so I’ll pass on watching anything else until that Boise State game later tonight.

I’ve got GUNSMOKE on in the background. The great thing about this show – about any good western, really – is the tactile value. A well shot western makes you feel the breeze and the cool skies on the open prairie, taste the dust of the trail as they ride, smell the coffee and bacon cooking on the campfire, and give you the sense, after all that, that the beds and clean sheets in the frontier hotel are 400-thread-count and as comfortable as anything you’d find at The Plaza. Unless you’re the bad guy. Then the blanket you get on your cot in the jail cell is the scratchiest thing on earth and explains why the bad guys in their cells always sleep in their clothes, because if they let that blanket touch their bare bodies it would strip the skin away like a scouring pad.

Back to MY WIFE in this disjointed non-tale. She just got up and tried to eat something for the first time in two days. She took two saltines and sat down in the living room. She couldn’t finish the second one. She just went back to bed.

I’ve got a feeling like my gums are swollen. I don’t know if it’s some sort of flu symptom or it’s a result of having force fed myself hot peppers earlier. Just took two aspirin because I’ve got a headache.

This is the worst year ever.

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Man, this seriously sucks. I feel like poop. And I can’t take tomorrow off, either. One of the hazards of working in a small office is that when the other guy in your department takes vacation, you can’t afford to stay out of work for any reason, including sickness. And my buddy, Dan, has this week off, so it’s work for me, no matter what.

MY WIFE, by virtue of working for a larger organization (The State Of Massachusetts) is able to stay home. Good for her.

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It's not all bad.

The Celtics just beat Portland, breaking a six game losing streak.

Better, Boise State beat Oklahoma in the most exciting football game I've ever had the pleasure to watch.

If I had the money to do so, I’d rent out The Superdome in New Orleans for Sunday, January 28th. I’d then tell Ohio State that if they beat Florida – which they will – that I’m offering both Boise State and Ohio State $2,000,000 to play each other for the REAL national championship. Then I'd start selling tickets.

I’d charge an average of $200 a ticket and donate 50% of the profits to flood relief. In that way, if Ohio State wanted to beg off, they’d be painted as slimeballs for denying New Orleans such a great economic opportunity. Boise State would accept in a heartbeat, so no problem there. Unfortunately, I haven’t got enough working capital to buy a ticket to a game like that, let alone pull off the entire thing. I'll just have to mark it down as another time when opportunity came knocking at my door while I was taking a bath.

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So, let's recount what we have here.

Spouse sick with unknown upchuck causing virus. Me not quite as sick but still not feeling great and my gums are swollen. If it cost ten bucks to go to Paris, I couldn't afford the carfare to Chelsea. The highlight of my year so far is a win by a college football team from Idaho.

2007 pretty much sucks. Can we start over?