On boredom

I've been sitting around nursing a flu for a few days now. 

It's one of the clingy viruses that started in my throat and radiated to other places. Usually chest and nose. I trudged to work for four days last week, in progressively declining health. By Wednesday night I was left essentially voiceless, a problem for a radio editor. 

So I've been sitting around a fair bit.

I've been one to lament not being sick on days when I didn't want to be at the office. But when the "gift" comes along, the problem is that you're sick. You don't feel like doing anything. It is hard to enjoy ill health when you're ill. I've read a bit, but concentration is a hassle. Watched some TV, but there isn't a whole lot worth watching (although Holmes on Homes never disappoints with its parade of renovation horrors and heroic rescues). I dozed through a baseball game yesterday and ended up watching a fair bit of a CFL game on Friday night when a  coughing jag wouldn't let up and I decided to spare Q the periodic bedquakes. As it was she slept through it all, but I wasn't sure at the time. I just kept coughing until I couldn't cough anymore and went back to bed. Cheaper than Benalyn, but it takes more time to work.

I'm trying to count the blessings. It's warm out, so I can wear shorts and a T-shirt rather than having to bundle up against a winter chill. It's moist, so my sore throat is not made worse by low humidity. If I want to test my legs, I can walk five minutes to the grocery store. I've also been able to listen to the radio a fair bit. Gordon Pinsent is a perfect host for the extended audio obit called The Late Show. I heard it this morning. I'm not sure if it has a late-evening broadcast too, but it ought to. There is nothing like hearing about the truncated lives of others to put your own woes into perspective. 

On that theme, I read an amazing piece in the NYT Magazine this morning by the paper's media writer David Carr. It turns out he was once a crackhead and drunk too. His memoir of life in the gutter is another "but for the grace of God go I" moment that makes me feel a bit less sorry for myself as hack up another lungful of ick.

I'm full of caffeine and a bit of energy at the moment. It will soon give way to the afternoon dead-zone, which is exacerbated by the virus. That cotton-headed feeling where you can't decide whether or not to flake out on the couch or retire to the bedroom or stay upright in a chair.

The world is a lot smaller right now. 

With the Mexicans

We took in another TFC game a couple of weeks ago, Pachuca the opponents.

I've seen Pachuca play three times now and they've never lost. Beat Pumas 1-0 in the Liguilla in 2006, then Chivas 1-0 in 2007 Clausura, now TFC on penalties.

It was an interesting game. For once the home team had more fans than the visitors, although the visitors were in full voice. We had a knot of lads sitting near us in green, red and white and they were in full voice, delightfully quick and self-deprecating. True charmers as Mexicans are. An interesting contrast to the blunderbuss humour of the increasingly-drunk Canadians who they bested time and again in the rhetorical sweeps. 

The football was fair to middling. FC played an experimental squad. Pachuca had some of its stars on display. Bruno Marioni and Christian Gimenez were the guys I was watching (both Argentine) and Marioni missed a couple of sitters in the first half.

What struck me most in the first 45 was how the visitor played the ground game. Short, quick passes, constant ball support, seldom playing themselves into blind alleys and corners where possession was given away cheaply. It could have been 4-0 at the half.

TFC was less fluid. Robert missed Amado Guevera's support. Attacks fizzled on the flanks as the midfielders were unable to support the forwards, the backs not backing up the middies. Ball support, the essence of the modern game just as puck support is what makes a good hockey team sing. 

It struck me afterward that a full-up FC would have had its hands full with a side like Pachuca, the gap between the best Mexican teams and the middle-of-the-pack MLS sides is still visible. 

Give it time. We'll get there.