I get very nervous watching sporting events, especially ones like the Canada-US Olympic hockey game yesterday afternoon. I can barely stand to watch at times. Making matters worse in yesterday’s game, there were no commercial breaks during the periods, which meant that the play continued on from end to end relentlessly. There weren’t even that many penalties to break up the action. I don’t know what that felt like for the players, but for me watching the game it was tough.
With about two minutes left in the game, I called upstairs to my wife, who was working on her doctoral research data, to ask her if she happened to have one of those portable defibrillators kicking around. When she heard how close the game was, she came down and within a couple of minutes the U.S. scored the tying goal with 24.4 seconds left in regulation play. Oh, the agony. The sheer, relentless tension. I was sure that Canada was going to lose it on a sudden death goal after they’d played such a terrific game. They dominated the third period–with the exception of that one small moment when the puck went into their net.
Fortunately, my prediction did not come true and Canada prevailed, with Sid the Kid Crosby’s goal catapulting him into the stratospheric realms of the likes of Paul Henderson, who scored the winning goal in the famous Canada-Russia summit series of 1972. And lo there was much joy north of the 49th.
I’m working on reviews of Black Hills (Simmons) and The Inheritance (Tolkien). I started reading Solar by Ian McEwan last night. I’m not sure what the book’s going to be about yet, because I haven’t read the cover copy. So far it’s about a rather self-absorbed man, a Nobel Laureate who has been resting on his laurels since winning the prize. Working on his fifth wife, a woman who seems to have been delighted to discover that he was being unfaithful, which gave her free rein to start her own affair, which, inexplicably, makes her much more desirable to him. I also received a galley of Innocent by Scott Turow, the sequel to Presumed Innocent.
I’m trying to keep track of all the new fiction I have coming out. Over the course of the next month there will be a lot of it. I have four stories in When the Night Comes Down from Dark Arts Books (pre-order). My story “The Fingernail Test” is in Close Encounters of the Urban Kind from Apex Books (pre-order). My story “A Murder of Vampires” is in Evolve from Edge Publishing (pre-order). Finally, my story “Zombies on a Plane” is in the 23 House anthology Dead Set (pre-order). I think that covers it.
The undercover detectives actually came up with a good strategy during the buried treasure competition on this week’s Amazing Race. Instead of pacing out all the instructions, they figured out where the end should be relative to the starting point. However, I guess they must have done the math wrong. Anyhow, they ended up with their usual second-to-last place finish. The cowboys have been impressive. Jordan and Jeff are still in the middle of the pack after one first-place finish.
Cold Case was fun this week. The touch of levity–working on an unsolved murder while attending the wedding of a colleague–worked well and breathed a little new life into the show. TV is getting back to normal a little this week. There’s a two-hour Law and Order special. Guess they’re making up for lost time.
