missed, but not

Any book that can have a hunk of 80 pages missing after page 50 and still be readable (I finished the book) is not that great a book. Trust me on this.

The funniest part was the review tag line on the front. 'Only a Henry Sutton could bring this kind of intensity to the table!' The unwitting insult still makes me laugh.

the futbol game

So we went to our first futbol game here, finally. Futbol (or football, or soccer, depending on where you are) is a part of the national psyche to a very large degree here. Every male child who plays dreams of succeeding like Diego Maradona (Argentina's Pele, or Wayne Gretzky, for an example closer to home), it's played in the parks and on the street year round, and kids go round kicking a ball soon after they learn to walk. Almost everyone has a favourite team, and even those who don't have one know how Boca (one of the two biggest teams) did last night or what Maradona is in the news for now (most recently, stomach-stapling surgery and his return to the hospital following his return to his old diet of meat, meat, and more meat). It does have a darker side here, though.

We were supposed to go to a different game in a big fancy stadium, but it was suspended due to the fact that one of the team's (River Plate, one of the two biggest teams in the country) hooligans was murdered last week. He had been the head of on of the factions vying for control of the hooligan club (they're organized down here, part of the problem) and was gunned down in the street. Deaths related to futbol, unfortunately, are not unique (though, luckily, they are rare) - earlier this year, when an important game was won (or lost, depending on who you were cheering for), there was a riot that spilled out onto a highway and resulted in the death of a man. No one was ever charged.

Though security is usually pretty tight (I was searched twice going into the game), I think it may have been especially high this weekend after the murder. Hooliganism is so bad that they have entry and exit rules for the popular sections (one for each team, we ended up in the home (and winning) team's section for this game). The popular sections are enclosed by 20-foot tall fences with two rows of barbed wire, one halfway up and the other at the top. The hooligans (or barra brava as they're known here) for the opposition are not allowed to enter the stadium until 10 minutes after the game starts, and they must leave first after the game ends. The home team fans (all of them, as far as I saw) are not allowed out of the stadium until 15 minutes after the game ends, so as to prevent mixing and fights. Even so, there were dozens upon dozens of cops, many in riot gear, present before, after, and during the game, directing fans to certain gates and in certain directions afterwards. It was quite the experience.

That all said, it was a terrific game. We watched the Argentino Juniors pull ahead of the Boca Juniors (the other big team in the country with a very fanatical following - you can even get Boca caskets and get buried in a Boca cemetery!) and were in the popular section for the win. The people around us were friendly and talked with us and were generally happy to have someone foreign take interest in their club (though they warned us to be careful many times), and there was the electricity that I had heard so much about bouncing around between fans, that indescribable energy that comes despite the cold and the hard concrete seats. People cheering and jeering (many shouts about prostitutes (fun fact, because Spanish has masculine and feminine adjectives, prostitute can be made to be male or female by only changing one word!) and various parts of other peoples mothers' body parts. Oddly enough, the debate at the beginning was who the new mayor had paid off to sit in the expensive, non-'popular section' seats); coffee and peanut guys plying their wares, trying to make a peso here and there; flags, flare smoke, and even ice cubes at one point flying through the air (the police came for the ice cube guy). There was little kid standing by his dad who still makes me laugh - just as Chris leaned over to comment on how cute the kid was, all bundled up in a jacket and scarf, the kid turned over to the opposition team and started flipping them off. Team loyalty very definitely runs in the family here. All of it combined made for a wonderful evening and an experience I will not soon forget.

moon over broadway. and buenos aires. and saskatchewan. and so on

When my family was down in April, my dad mentioned that his brother had asked him a few months before about the moon. My uncle lives in Mexico right now, and having lived outside working the field for most of his life, he noticed that the moon was different when it appeared in quarters: the orientation was different. Courtesy of my uncle's interest and my dad's request and camera, I'd like to share with you three different quarter moons at three different levels of tilt.

[Buenos Aires, Argentina | Puerto Vallarta, Mexico]
[Regina, Saskatchewan]

Pretty neat, huh? I'd like to know why but have been too busy and lazy to research. When I find out, I promise I'll share.

What's the quarter moon like where you are?

expanding vocabulary horizons

I subscribe to two daily word services that I find greatly enhance my enjoyment of the language - A Word A Day (AWAD) and The Urban Word of the Day. In fact, they sometimes come in handy - the Urban Word keeps me hip to the streets (*snicker*) and AWAD gives me useful words (Chris thinks they're a little archaic, but she's wrong) that pop up at the strangest, and most useful, times.

Sometimes, they go together like ramma lamma lamma... I mean... In fact, it can make it easier to remember both by creating a sentence like the one for today:

He knew his wife was a bedswerver, but finally confirmed it when her phone butt dialed him during her 'night out'.

Fun and educational!