My Sunday

 As soon as I get on my laptop, the cat is immediately fascinated with what I'm doing and must rub my face and claw at me. And as soon as I finish that sentence, she jumps down and finds something else to occupy her time. 

I also find myself "refereeing disagreements" between the dog and cat(s). The dog becomes very possessive of his little Greenie bones, which he always thinks the cats have designs on stealing. I don't think they give a damn about his Greenies. Still, he insists on barking at them, which they casually dismiss. Sometimes, he will leap off the couch and get in their faces, and their response is a cross between mild annoyance and mystification. 

We seem to be at peace for the moment.

This morning, we watched the World Cup final between Argentina and France. I really did not care who won. Maybe I was kinda sorta rooting for France? However, seeing as how Argentina had not won the Cup since 1986, I was happy for them. Regardless, it was an incredibly exciting and intense match that demonstrates why football (soccer) is the most popular sport in the world.

Do you know when there is a musician or band that you don't think about that much, and you don't own any of their albums, but whenever you hear their music you enjoy it and wonder why you DON'T own anything by them? That's how I feel about soccer. I'm far from an expert, I don't read about soccer, I barely played it, coached it very badly at the kindergarten level, and I don't necessarily seek out soccer games (except for the MSU women's team this autumn and a handful of World Cup games this year), but when I DO watch the game, I love it. I don't know that I've ever seen a competitive soccer game that was not exciting and/or tense. 

Between having the Detroit Lions' football game on mute, I spent most of the afternoon troubleshooting my persistently annoying stereo system. After unplugging, plugging, unplugging, unhooking, hooking, unhooking various wires and components, I determined that the problem I was having with sound only coming out of one channel had to do with the CD player being plugged into a problematic input--all of which I'm sure sounds boring as hell. The upshot is that I have the bare bones CD player I bought for $6 at the thrift store plugged into the stereo, and I think I'll just leave it that way until after Christmas. There's no point in wreaking any more havoc in the living room during the holiday season.

This CD player from the thrift store is actually quite good and I have Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night playing right now. (Earlier, I had the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Live at the L.A. Forum 1969 playing). So, yes, the Fleetwood Mac/Hendrix jag continues. Tango in the Night was released in 1987, a time when I thought I was waaaaayyyy too cool to give a fuck what Fleetwood Mac was doing. As it turns out, this is a damned good album. Sure, the sound is a little dated--as is the case with almost every album from the mid to late '80s--but it's adventurous and the songwriting is excellent as usual with this band. 

Well, once again, life beckons me--or, at the very least, "other stuff" beckons me--so I shall leave you until tomorrow when I'll have more mundanities to share.