Blue Sky Saturday Playing Soccer While Hiking At Sikes Lake

On this second Saturday of the New Year of 2024, at my North Texas location, snow clouds have totally left the sky, leaving bright blue behind.

In shady areas, some snow remains, but, for the most part, the snow has melted into oblivion. No further such nonsense is in the near-term forecast, though there are a few days of such, predicted in the not so near-term forecast.

Judging by the number of people I saw today on my hike around Sikes Lake, I would have thought today was the first day of the New Year, with people out making good on their New Year's Resolution to get more exercise.

But, I think today's large number of people was likely due to the relief at the end of being housebound the past couple days. I know that is how I felt.

There was also some sort of soccer tournament going on today on the Sikes Lake soccer field. I saw three Fort Worth school buses which had transported soccer players to Wichita Falls. It seems a long way to go to play soccer on a field with no viewing stands, with soccer match viewers viewing from their perch on folding chairs on the sidelines.

I think of few things sounding more boring than watching a soccer game from field level with the temperature barely above freezing, with a strong wind blowing.

By some means snow had been removed from the soccer field's artificial grass, leaving a short wall of snow all around the perimeter of the field.

Is it considered normal to play soccer in Winter?

The temperature was in the 40s when I visited Sikes Lake today. As you can see via the photo documentation, a steady wind was making waves on the lake. That and making those 40 some degrees feel much colder...

Christmas Decorating While Theo Snow Soccers With Poodles

This morning someone who shall remain nameless made reference to my Christmas decorations saying...

 "I'll spend the day getting all my decorations up inside and outside.  I'll send you pictures tonight.  You and your little Christmas hanky are just sad!  haha."

I replied asking "What you talking about?"

To which this unconscionably rude person compounded the rudeness saying, "I thought the only decoration you put out was a crocheted hanky?"

With the mention of the crocheted work I knew what this rude person was talking about, that being the red crocheted Christmas stocking my Grandma Slotemaker Jones gave me decades ago.

Now that I knew what the rude person was talking about I set out trying to find the crocheted Christmas stocking. I looked in every drawer, every cabinet, everywhere, to no avail. 

And then when I went to the multi-level table on which my TV sits, to get a screwdriver, I looked up and saw where the red crocheted Christmas stocking was hiding, in plain sight, sitting on a camel my Grandma Vera gave me decades ago.

Which makes that what you see above in the photo documentation, my one and only Christmas decoration.

Also in the Christmas spirt are a couple incoming photos from Tacoma, showing the latest snow to fall weeks before winter arrives.

Those are two of David, Theo and Ruby's poodles you see above, trying to gain admittance back into the house after dodging snowflakes in the backyard.

And here we see my Favorite Theo Nephew getting ready to play some slippery soccer.

Mama Michele is the coach of Theo's soccer team. I don't recollect Mama Michele being a soccer player. I do recollect Mama Michele being a softball player.

Tomorrow I Am Not Watching The World Cup Match Between Belgium & The USA On The World's Biggest TV Screen With Ann Coulter

Tomorrow, on the first day of July, around two in the afternoon, I will be on my way to Arlington, to a location about five miles east of my abode, known as Jerry World, by some, but known by more as the Dallas Cowboy Stadium.

Tomorrow will be the first time I've been inside this notorious stadium.

The stadium's PR department explains why I'm going inside for the first time...

AT&T Stadium will host a World Cup watch party for Team USA’s Round of 16 match against Belgium on Tuesday, July 1, 2014.  This will be a unique opportunity for all Team USA supporters to come together in one location to watch the biggest match of the year to date on the largest video board structure in the world.

Parking and admission are FREE, so fans of USA soccer can join together in the comfort of climate controlled AT&T Stadium, to cheer on their team together.  What better way to experience the thrill of World Cup soccer, an opportunity that comes just once every four years.

The match starts at 3:00 pm.  Doors to AT&T Stadium will open at 1:30 pm and parking lots will open at 12:30 pm.  Fans can enter the stadium through Entry A, C, H and K.

The current AT&T Stadium bag policy will be in effect for this event.  No large bags or purses will be allowed into the stadium. Only small, single-compartment clutch purses are permitted.

Where am I going to find myself a single-compartment clutch purse by tomorrow? And what would I put in it?

I think I've mentioned before that I find it bewildering that watching soccer games is so popular with so many. To my limited imagination the World Cup seems to be an awful lot of ado about very little to get in much of an ado mode over.

Others beg to differ on my soccer-perplexed point of view. Others, like Mr. Galtex, who waxed poetically about the wonders of World Cup Futbol in a blogging he wrote back during the 2010 version of the World Cup titled Dance for Space.

The regularly provocative Ann Coulter, she of right-wing nut commentator fame, wrote a column about soccer and the World Cup recently which many found to be aggravating, but I found to be mostly amusing, and a bit appalling, what with finding myself sort of in agreement with a few of the things Ann Coulter opined about soccer.

The AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER title of Ann Coulter's soccer column pretty much sets the tone for the rest of what she had to say.

I will glean a few of the Ann Coulter hating soccer gems....

I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay. 

I'm impressed Ms. Coulter was able to hold off for a decade sharing her thoughts about soccer.

Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep. 

I don't quite get the MVP point in the above paragraph, but I find myself in agreeance with the second and third sentence.

Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.
 
Okay, the above Coulter assertion seems a bit rude, but also sort of has a grain of truth to it.

No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.

I've long said if soccer got rid of having a goalie the game would become much more entertaining. Along with having basketball game-like scores.

The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.

Well, if Lady Thatcher really said that, well that's sort of amusing.

Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box. 

What is wrong with me that I'm finding this Coulter lady to be funny?

You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them! 

The above, in addition to the no timeouts, and the low to no scoring, is what I've always found oddest about soccer.

Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine. 

The metric system emerged from the French Revolution? This I did not know. Or forgot that I knew.

Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared. 

I thought that Beckham guy got paid a few hundred million dollars to play soccer on some California team, so someone must have cared. Or been very foolish with their money.

I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time. 

I really think Ms. Coulter may have erred with her above assertion. Mr. Galtex is an American. I'm almost 100% certain the great-grandfather of Mr. Galtex was born in America, likely in the Texas part of America. And Mr. Galtex seems to be totally addicted to watching soccer, I mean, futbol.......

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....