I Heart Tennis

I guess I haven’t been up to too much the last few days, other than avoiding homework most evenings. Back on Sunday I went to church in the morning with Daniel, watched Pittsburgh clinch a Super Bowl berth in the afternoon (Steelers nation out here is loving it), and co-led the PSCG Bible study discussion on John 13 with Tim in the evening. During the course of conversation, Tim & I were also surprised to find out that we both knew about tiny and little-known St Andrew’s College out in Moscow, Idaho. My parents tried to get me to consider going there for a year before starting at Gustavus (but I was frightened away by the prospect of oral exams in every subject multiple times a semester in front of the entire faculty, and a reading list the size of a large bookcase…), and I guess several of Tim’s friends actually went there. Small world.
Monday was a typical Monday, ’nuff said. Though in the evening I watched another new episode of “24” (once I remembered that it wasn’t on at 8pm here in Eastern time zone, but rather at 9pm – I hate Eastern time, everything’s on so late…). After “24” I went over to Daniel’s where we watched my recently-purchased “unrated, uncut & uncalled for” edition of “Anchorman.” We both love that movie, it’s so funny, especially the part with the rival news teams having a gang war.
On Tuesday Daniel & I continued our weekly tradition of getting some 25c wings at the Sports Cafe for lunch, definitely the highlight of just about every Tuesday. After I got done teaching my lab in the afternoon, I went to the info session about careers in TV Meteorology that Marisa was putting on. It was pretty interesting, with a lot of good info and food for thought, as I ponder whether that’s something I actually wanna do with my life. I’m looking forward to getting a chance to get on-air a bit this summer for CWS (Campus Weather Service) and C-NET, so I can see if I like doing that sort of thing. And because I was busy in the afternoon, I had Daniel tape ESPN2 while they aired the Australian Open men’s quarterfinal match between Cyprus’ Marco Baghdatis and Croatia’s Ivan Ljubicic. Mario, being originally from Croatia and all, wanted to see it too, so in the evening we both went over to Amber’s place where we all watched the last couple hours of the match that ESPN2 had chosen to air on tape delay. And what a match! For starters, both the Croats and Greeks/Cypriots had very rowdy cheering sections, and somehow both groups were seated practically next to each other, though there were plenty of security guards and cops separating the two sections. The atmosphere was pretty much like a soccer match, with the red and white-clad Croatians and the Cypriots decked out in blue and white having dueling cheers/chants/songs between basically every point, while the Australians filling the rest of the stadium just sat there quietly, amused by the entire spectacle. And then the tennis itself was exciting too, with Baghdatis taking the first two sets, Ljubicic storming back to take the third and fourth sets, before the upstart Baghdatis pulled away in the fifth set to win the match, putting him in the semifinals vs Nalbandian. Baghdatis is so fun to watch, and the incredible crowd support he gets is amazing too. I hope he gets to the final with a crack at Federer.
Today for lunch Daniel & I discovered the joy otherwise known as Pita Pit. Mmmm, souvlaki pita… I can’t believe we hadn’t tried that place out before. Then this evening a bunch of the guys from PSCG came over to my apartment for a movie night, and the film of choice was “Dodgeball,” which several of the guys apparently hadn’t seen. That movie’s great too, so funny. And then while I’ve been typing this, I’ve been watching another very entertaining Aussie Open match, a women’s semifinal between Justine Henin-Hardenne and Maria Sharapova, which is going the distance in the third set. I love tennis!
Oh, and with it being Australia Day (similar to Independence Day here in the US), the ESPN2 announcers had an Aussie reporter layout a typical Aussie summertime feast for the announcers to sample, including a good cold beer, some kangaroo tail soup (which I unfortunately never had), shrimp grilled on the barbie, some vegemite (which Dan McEnroe proclaimed tasted like roadkill, and they were both making awful faces after tasting it, after the Aussie woman claimed it was the Aussie equivalent to peanut butter, lol), lamingtons and some pavlova. All that just made me hungry for some fair dinkum Aussie tucker!