Fascination Place

The fact that I don’t have have a Football category in my journal should tell you that I wasn’t too broken up about the Patriots losing the Super Bowl yesterday. I am sad they lost it to a Noo Yawk team rather than to a team I like such as the Packers, but that’s sports.

The Giants’ defensive line played the game of their lives, and their offense exposed the Patriots’ linebackers as a bunch of old guys who could be outrun if you set up the right plays. Despite all that, the Patriots almost pulled out a win, but the Giants earned the win mainly thanks to that amazing pass from Eli Manning to David Tyree during the winning drive.

The weirdest moment was when Pats coach Bill Belichick challenged the Giants having too many men on the field during a Patriots punt, and winning the challenge. Subrata and I looked at each other and said, “I didn’t even know you could challenge that!”

It’s too bad that that we (as fans collectively) missed out on seeing something which happens less than once a generation (I heard that there have been only 3 teams in NFL history to win all their games, two from before 1940, and the 1972 Dolphins), because seeing those rare feats is part of what makes sports fun. This is not to imply that the Giants should have thrown the game (what fun would that be?) and of course fans who love the Giants or hate the Patriots won’t care about that. But it still would have been really cool.

In any event, it’s still been a hell of a decade for Boston sports: Two World Series championships, three Super Bowl titles, and the Celtics are having a great year (or so I hear, since I’m no sort of basketball fan!). So really I’m not complaining! It’s so hard to win a title in professional sports, I’m perfectly happy with this run of success.

And hey, there are still a few more years left in the decade…

A sad article in the San Jose Mercury News today: foreclosed homeowners who abandon their pets when they move out. Some pets are released outside, while others are left to starve inside the house, and animal shelters are getting overwhelmed in places with high foreclosure rates:

“[The pets'] best shot is for the owners to plan ahead some,” [Traci] Jennings [president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in northern California] said. “But they didn’t plan when they bought their house. I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

Tragic as some of the stories in the article are, for me as a cat owner the saddest bit was about some domestic cats released into the wild:

In one such colony in Modesto, two obviously tame cats watched alone from a distance as a group of feral cats devoured a pile of dry food Jennings offered.

“These are obviously abandoned cats,” Jennings said. “They’re not afraid of people, and they stay away from the feral cats because they’re ostracized by them.”

I hope the domesticated cats at least find company in each other. Cats may have a reputation as aloof and superior, but I think they love the company of their friends just like most other animals.

In the wake of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis-St. Paul collapsing this afternoon, I wonder: Is this the fate other parts of our infrastructure will experience over the next few decades? Many states under-invest in infrastructure maintenance, and we may be seeing more such accidents as time goes on because of that.

Minneapolis’ WCCO has very good coverage of the collapse. This video is especially fascinating, particularly the wide-angle view starting about 2m 15s in. Then there’s the blog’s eye view (via T.S.).

A few of my friends from Minneapolis-St. Paul have posted that they’re okay. I’m not sure I have current contact information for everyone. Coincidentally, one friend from that area just wrote today about a car accident she was in a few weeks ago. I hope she wasn’t anywhere near this incident.