Basketball

I haven't played basketball in a very long time. So when I was asked to referee a youth game this morning, I just laughed. And then, because I had a lapse in good judgment, I agreed.

It was actually pretty fun. I mean, the jokes being thrown at me were pretty good and, well, true. One person said that it was too bad I couldn't make it to the game. Another teased me every time I blew the whistle. Probably because I didn't blow it much. The girls took care of most of the refing for me.

In my defense, I was the only ref for the game. It's really hard to see what's happening on the other side of the court, and I apparently didn't inherit from my mother the ability to see out of the back of my head. Or maybe that's just because I'm not a mother yet.

Truthfully, I was just pretty impressed with myself that I could run that much. Up and down the court. Over and over. For three 6-minute "quarters." Whew! Eighteen minutes. I think I need a nap.

Newsworthy

My sister-in-law accused me not too long ago about being “as bad as my brother” because I don’t blog as often as I should. I have a good reason for this. Well, okay, I have a reason for it. Probably not a good one.

I love to write, and I like blogging. But I have a tendency to want to “wow” my audience with something spectacular. Therefore, until I have a great idea of something to write about, it tends to remain undone. Not that I neglect it. I write about once a week. My sister-in-law just happens to blog approximately three times a day.

Anyway, I was at the gym yesterday (which is pretty newsworthy in and of itself), watching the news on the TVs they have set up for the cardio machines. Or, more accurately, trying to avoid watching the news on the TVs they have set up for the cardio machines. I’m not a big fan of the news. Especially at the gym. I’m sweating and I’m in pain, and you want me to watch commercials about food, interspersed with depressing news about how the world has gone to seed? Come on, people! Give me something that’s going to keep my mind off of my aching muscles!

There are seven or eight TV’s in front of the cardio machines, and they are all inevitably turned to the news. Because apparently when you’re working out, you need to know what every single station considers newsworthy. Doesn’t seem like it should be that big of a deal to change one of them to a TV show or a cable channel, but they rarely do.

It was for this reason that I wanted an IPod, so that I could download audio books and ignore the screens in front of me. Thing is, though, you apparently have to sync the books to the IPod. There’s always something.

So I’m stuck watching the news for now.

Without sound and without subtitles.

When it comes to current events, I prefer to get my information from newspaper headlines or from more reliable sources like, you know, my brothers. That way they can sort through all the crap and let me know what’s really important.

At least the weather’s interesting. The best part of watching the weather at the gym is seeing the discrepancies in the forecasts of the different stations. Either it’s going to be cloudy and 45 this weekend, or it’s going to be sunny and over 60.

Classics - Moby Dick

When I was in high school, we used to say that a novel was a "classic" if it ended badly, or if it's depressing. That's what it always seemed like, judging by the classics they were having us read. If I hadn't grown up loving books, high school would have made me hate reading.

Now that I'm a bit older (just a little bit, of course), I'm reading more and more classics. I've found some that I completely love and others that are worthy of being assigned to high school students.

For instance, high schoolers should have to read Moby Dick. Now there's a classic. It's boring and everybody dies in the end (well, almost everybody).

I've seen a couple of shows lately that had a character whose favorite book was Moby Dick. All I can say is WHATEVER! Give me a break! My apologies to anyone out there that loves the book, but I just don't see it. Maybe if it's an abridged version....no, not even then.

The book has chapter upon chapter about whales - their anatomy, the way you kill them, the reasons that they're fish and not mammals (apparently that was a hot topic in 1850). There's a story in there as well, but it seemed to be about a fourth of the book. Not that I mind informational chapters. Les Miserables had a lot of those, but I enjoyed that one. They were interesting, and they were interspersed amongst the plot, unlike Moby Dick, where the plot was interspersed among the informational chapters.

Yep, it's a good one for high school English. Right up there with the Grapes of Wrath.