Under A Bumbershoot Hunting Tomatoes While Pondering The Sad Fate Of The TCU Froggies

If you looked at this picture and guessed I was in the outer world under a bumbershoot you would have guessed correctly.

This morning I was in the hot tub before the dawn of the new day. At that point in time only a fine mist was precipitating.

But, when the sun arrived to illuminate the darkness that fine mist turned into big drops of cold wetness.

When the noon time frame I arrived I  felt the need to be vertical. I also felt the need to acquire some Ro-Tel diced tomatoes with green chiles to add to the pot of chili I brewed this morning.

A bowl of hot chili is quite salubrious on a cold day like today.

I had to make my way through several flooding zones to make it to Albertsons to get the aforementioned diced tomatoes.

Checking in on Facebook today I noted a lot of concern about college football bowl games which took place on New Years Day.

Many of the locals seem to think the local team known as the TCU Froggies was robbed somehow by not getting to play in some special game where winning that special game would have meant, I guess, that the TCU Froggies are very special.

Some seem to think the Froggies are owed some sort of apology. Others go to the extreme of thinking an investigation needs to take place into what some apparently think has been a gross miscarriage of justice.

I confess I pay little attention to football, for the most part. I do know that this year there is some sort of championship deal between four teams and that it was not being included as one of those four teams which has the Froggies all bumpuzzled.

Yesterday the Froggies gave a sound thrashing to a school called Old Miss, which greatly fueled the fires of feeling the Froggies should have been one of the Final Four.

I don't quite get why beating a team known as Old Miss would be considered a big deal.

I don't know by what complex criteria this Final Four for the championship is determined. It may have something to do with the size of a school.

TCU, also known as Texas Christian University, is a very small school. I am talking about the size of the campus. You can walk from one end to the other in five minutes. I have been to major universities where you can not drive from one end to the other in five minutes, such as the University of Washington, and others.

Does TCU play in a big league? I have no idea. Like I said, I don't pay much attention beyond the chatter and noise.

However, I do know that both the Dallas Cowboys and the Seattle Seahawks are in the NFL playoffs. I have heard it said that once again the road to the Super Bowl goes through Seattle. This has something to do with home field advantage in the playoff games. I do not know if Dallas has a similar advantage.

Is is possible that Dallas might play Seattle in this year's Super Bowl? I think Dallas already beat Seattle once this year. I really do not know who I might root for if Dallas and Seattle are in this year's Super Bowl. Will Cowboy Stadium be open so fans can watch on the big screen like was done for a boring World Cup soccer game last summer?

If so, I think I shall be there......

It Took 30 Seconds Of Watching Germany Beating U.S. In World Cup For My Attention Deficit Disorder To Kick In

This morning was consumed by a new computer hunt which took me as far north as North Richland Hills before finally finding a computer in Hurst, at a Walmart of all places.

By the time I got back to my abode it was well before my regularly scheduled lunch time, but I was hungry, so I made an early lunch.

When I turned on the TV to entertain myself whilst nutrifying myself I remembered that the U.S. was World Cupping with Germany today.

I've been hearing mention made of this World Cup thing much more than I remember hearing during World Cups of the past. But this had not caused me to watch any of it.

Til today.

I think I have only made it all the way through a soccer game once, and that was way back in the last century, when I watched the first game of the original Seattle Sounders, played in Memorial Stadium in the Seattle Center. The only thing I remember about that soccer game was what a great view of Mount Rainier my seat provided.

So, today I turned on the TV and channel chased til I came to mention of the World Cup. It was on ESPN. I was about 30 seconds in before I started wondering what I have wondered before, as in what in the world do people find entertaining about watching this?

Now, I am not much of a sports spectator type. Never have been. I can take watching a football game, of the American style football game, a few times during the year. I still find baseball boring, but the up close way TV covers baseball, in our modern times, makes it a lot more watchable.

I've always found watching basketball or tennis capable of holding my attention, at times, particularly basketball, though it has been years since I've watched a basketball game. Way back in the last century I used to attend many Seattle Supersonic games in person.

But soccer? Or what the rest of the world calls football?

Yes, I used a question mark even though those two sentences above are not questions.

I imagine in person World Cup football might be entertaining. But, watching it on TV? Most of the time the camera view is pulled way back, covering the bulk of the field. I guess this is how it has to be filmed due to that ball being kicked back and forth over and over and over and over again.

By the time I turned on the World Cup Germany had scored 1 goal with the U.S. goalless. The game ended with that same score. At some point the play by play talkers started repeating over and over again that if the score in a game being played at the same time ended with Portugal beating Ghana, which was what was happening, why then the U.S. losing to Germany was not really losing because the U.S. still advances to something called the Knockout Rounds of 16.

Or something like that.

I remember my dad at some point in time saying something about soccer which stuck in my memory, that being that it is such an odd sport, it being a game where one can not use ones hands, for the most part, but you can hit the ball with your head.

I remember myself a long time ago wondering if the reason soccer is so popular with the rest of the world, but historically not so popular in America, is because way back when sports like baseball, football and basketball became popular in America the rest of the world could not afford the stadiums, ballparks, basketball courts and uniforms and equipment that baseball, football and basketball require.

While the most desolate location on the planet could manage to come up with a ball suitable for kicking, and a flat piece of land on which to kick the ball.

And so that peculiar foot kicking game became popular.

And known worldwide, except for America, as football.

Which has me wondering now, what with most all of the world wired to TV, watching events like the Olympics, exposed to all sorts of entertainment, how in the world is something as boring as watching these World Cup soccer games holding the attention of so much of the world?

Perplexing....

Dallas Cowbabies

I was told the above has something to do with Dallas Cowboy football.

But.

Since I am neither a Cowboy or a Cowboy fan, it does not compute for me.

Scantily Clad Females Marching In Protest In Texas

One of my blogging fodder providers sent me the above picture, along with a couple more this morning. The pictures were sent without explanation. The above photo appears to be a large group of scantily clad females in some sort of protest march following a nice looking convertible car through what appears to be a residential neighborhood. I did not read anything about a protest clogging up traffic anywhere in the local paper, online, this morning.

In the above picture it appears the protesters have moved in doors, with some more scantily clad females joined by what looks to be noisemakers pounding on drums. This looks like a basketball court. I am almost certain it is football season, not basketball season. But, things are done different here in Texas, so maybe they are playing basketball now. For all I know, football is a spring sport here.