My November 2015 Running Report

In November I found myself getting sick a couple of times...nothing serious...but they both happened when I thought I might participate in local running races.  So my running this month was strictly on my own, a solitary venture as the nature of this activity inevitably is, anyway.  Still, I do have a desire to get out in public among other runners and test my endurance in a more social setting.  December should present several opportunities for me to do this...

My November totals: Total mileage was 228.  My longest accumulated distance during a day was 14 miles, spread over the day with several shorter runs.  My longest single run during the month was 4.6 miles.  In spite of feeling under the weather for a few days in November (not to mention my right knee hurting for a time in the middle of the month), I managed to run on every day...even if it was for a negligible amount for some of them...

The weather is turning cooler, albeit very grudgingly.  I'd still like to be able to run the Ocala and Gainesville (Five Points) half-marathon events next January and February, respectively.  I'm in pretty good shape to accomplish this, but I'd like to get through a December race...a shorter one...to give me some more confidence in getting back on the road...

Gator Football Fans Jolted Back to Reality with Tough Loss

The 2015 University of Florida football team under first-year head coach Jim McElwain had modest expectations, with much of the team left over from the previous coach's mediocre efforts.  They were known to have a strong returning defense, but the offense...mainly due to a historically weak offensive line...had been erratic at best and embarrassing at worst.  With redshirt freshman quarterback Will Grier set to start this season, prospects were hopeful.  Still, one early season poll had them ranked #40 and no one picked them to win the Southeastern Conference's Eastern Division.  But instead...and I believe this had a lot to do with Coach McElwain putting discipline and teamwork as high priorities...they overachieved and won that divisional title, the first one for the Gators since 2009 during the Urban Meyer era.  Some of their wins were exciting, some ugly...and some, like the ones over Mississippi, Missouri, and Georgia, impressive.  But after that Mississippi victory, Grier tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and was immediately suspended for a year...bringing in second-stringer Treon Harris to step up as starter.  Harris, who has a proven big-play capability, nevertheless tends to panic when pursued out of the pocket and sometimes has difficulty making needed quick decisions when standing in the pocket on passing plays.  Grier had more of a quick release, which was needed with a deficient line that could not hold back a normal defensive rush, much less safety blitzes.  What little UF had on their offensive line got worse when they suffered multiple injuries to their starters. Still, until last night's game against Florida State, Florida was 10-1 and could have made the national championship playoffs had they won that game and the following one, the SEC championship game.  But after stumbling through three tough games against markedly inferior opponents, the Gators could not get by a better Seminole team and lost 27-2.

I feel a little sorry for Coach McElwain in that he originally saw this season as one of rebuilding and putting his imprint on the team.  When Florida kept winning and winning, this put them into a championship run and correspondingly may have unfairly raised their fans' expectations of them.  So, with this loss, as deflating as it may have been, McElwain can now just focus on preparing his team to play their best against heavily-favored Alabama in the SEC title game without the unrealistic pressure to win.  I am happy with his performance this season and what he did with what was available.  Ultimately, of course, Jim McElwain will be judged not only by how well he did this first year, but also how well (or poorly) he and his staff do in the next couple of years as they compete against other colleges for top recruits (especially with regard to rebuilding that tattered offensive line)...and of course how well he develops the talent of the players once they are on the team. Oh, and a halfway-decent placekicker would do nicely, too, thank you...

This Blog's Search Engine and Labels

One of the interesting features about writing a blog using Google's Blogger is that you or I can search past articles for any references I have used in any of them by entering the information into the search engine box on the upper left corner of the blog.  With this search, only the contents of my blog will be combed over, giving me a way to go back to any time in my seven and a half years-worth of 2,700+ articles and find a topic or reference that I know I had written about before but can't pinpoint the exact time I did it...

Another way of gathering together similarly-themed blog articles is to look at the bottom of any article where you can find labels identifying areas that pertain to the particular article.  For example, at the end of yesterday's article, which I titled "Soccer and Football Contrasted", I inserted the labels SOCIETY, SPORTS, and TELEVISION...sports as a label was obvious, but in the context of watching them on TV...and I made a social commentary at the end. If I click on any of these labels, I will then get a series of blog articles also featuring that word as a label.  This article I'm writing today naturally uses BLOG as a label.  So labels can also function as way to create a more coherent picture of my blog topics...which on a day-to-day basis can be quite disparate...although in a more general way than if I were to use its search engine...

Keep in mind, though, that the search engine and labels are only available on the web version of Blogger...if you use the mobile app, then you would need to change to the appropriate format by clicking on "web version" at the bottom of the article to use these helpful searching and organizing devices...

Soccer and Football Contrasted

Yesterday I was going back and forth on my TV between soccer and football games.  The action in soccer was continuous, with only small pauses in the case of injury or a foul.  No official replays, no commercial breaks other than at halftime.  With the football contest, on the other hand, the great majority of the time was spent between plays, with many of those plays painfully scrutinized for prolonged periods of time by officials.  Time-outs abounded, and with each change of possession came an added opportunity to squeeze in another commercial or two...at times it seemed that I was watching more commercials than football.  But even without all the timeouts, official replays, and commercial breaks, for most of the time in the football game nothing was happening.  This gave me plenty of time to go to the kitchen and get more food or to take bathroom breaks at my convenience.  That was not possible during the soccer match, for just a few seconds away from the television carried the risk of missing a crucial play...even a goal (this has happened to me a number of times).  Soccer requires riveted, sustained attention, while (American) football can be on the boob tube and ignored half the time without missing anything substantial.  I wonder if this difference reveals anything significant about the way we tend to think in our culture, with our ever-shorter attention spans and ever-increasing distractions.  You can watch a sport like football and dally in other activities at the same time...

Happy Thanksgiving, At Home With Family

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!  The family's all together here and we're about to feast on a wonderful meal that Melissa created.  I'm off from work today...which turns out well in more than one way: I'm recovering from a cold that was pretty severe late last night.  I had been planning to run this morning in a 10K race here in Gainesville, called the Turkey Trot...I ran it last year and in 2012...but I decided a lot of sleep would be a better strategy.  And I do feel much better right now, although I recognize that I'm still going to need some more rest later on...

There are a lot of soccer matches being shown on TV today, with Europa League games on the Fox Sports channels and Mexican Liga MX playoff games on one or more of the Spanish-language stations.  Not that I plan to just sit there the whole time watching soccer...but the one on FS1 (Channel 62 in Gainesville on Cox Cable) between Qarabag of Azerbaijan and England's Tottenham is turning out to be a really good contest...

Mexican Premier Liga MX Soccer Regular Season Ends, Playoffs to Start

The Mexican premier league in professional soccer, called Liga MX, has completed its Fall 2015 regular season, which they call "Apertura".  Now it's time for the playoffs, which involve the top eight finishers out of the eighteen teams.  This past 2015 Spring, or "Clausura",  champions Santos Laguna narrowly avoided finishing in last place with a win in their final regular season game and won't be participating.  The top finisher was UNAM, a university-based team based in Mexico City and more commonly known as "Pumas".  The other Mexico City team and by far the more popular...like the Yankees over here in baseball...is Club America and, as usual, once again made the playoffs.  As did UANL Tigres of Monterrey, my favorite in this league.  Toluca had an unusually good season, and Puebla, Leon, Chiapas "Jaguares", and Vera Cruz round out the playoff picture.  Puebla's achievement is noteworthy in that, at the close of the 2015 Clausura regular season, they barely avoided relegation (aka demotion) to the next lower league (called Ascenso)...

Here is the schedule for the opening matches in the first round.  Each round consists of two games between the contending teams, with the team winning the aggregate total of goals advancing to the next round...

Wednesday, November 25
Leon @ Club America
Chiapas @ Tigres

Thursday, November 26
Toluca @ Puebla
Pumas @ Vera Cruz

I'm not sure if any English-language TV channels will be showing any of the games...probably not.  And I'll have to wait until later to see how the Spanish-language channels cover them...I'm hoping that I'll get to watch at least some of them...

JFK Assassinated 52 Years Ago This Date

On this date 52 years ago, our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated while on an early Friday afternoon motorcade down the streets of downtown Dallas, Texas as crowds of well-wishers welcomed and cheered him and his beautiful wife Jackie.  The event forever changed the politics and history of this country...and condemned to death more than 58,000 Americans in the ensuing Vietnamese "police action"...many of them draftees forced by the government to serve in the succeeding Commander-in-Chief Lyndon Johnson's war...a war that he knew in advance he couldn't win, as his own recorded words attest...Nixon then dragged it out four more years after he was elected.  As ill-advised as I believe George W. Bush's 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was, it pales in terms of the callousness and dishonesty of Johnson's actions.  This hindsight alone is enough to make me grieve Kennedy's death, but back then in November, 1963 people in general just knew that they had lost a good man and a leader whom they respected, admired, and liked.  I myself at the time didn't even know that: I had just turned seven and was in the second grade...

On that fateful day in 1963, I was a student at West Hollywood, Florida's Boulevard Heights Elementary School, in Miss Etling's second grade class, which included future Nova High classmates James Azar and Clint Morris.  In subsequent days, we would all have to go sit in the back of the cafeteria/auditorium while she would, as the director, rehearse the school's upcoming Christmas program ad nauseam.  But this day, we had just eaten our lunch there and returned to our room when a kid from a classroom across the hall came over to tell our teacher the horrible news:  President Kennedy had just been shot.  No one knew at that point if he was still alive, and a debate started floating among us as to whether he had been shot in the back or the eye.  It wasn't until after school, when I got home, that I received the full news of his death: my mother had the TV tuned continually in to Channel 4, which then was the CBS affiliate in Miami.

At the time of John Kennedy's death, I remember recognizing that our president was a man named Kennedy...but I had known nothing more about him.  Nevertheless, in my personal memory this is the earliest ongoing news story about which, as a little kid, I was aware.  Many years later, though, I recalled an event from a year earlier, while I was in the first grade.  As a class, we'd had fire drills before, but one day we were all lined up and exited the classroom and made to walk down the interior hall of the building.  The teacher then had each of us get on our knees next to the wall...and then put our hands over our bowed-down heads.  Having established that we knew the procedure should the real need to do this happened, we were marched back into the classroom...with no explanation ever given.  This certainly was no fire drill.  It was only much later, looking back, that I realized that this must have occurred in October of 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis when a real danger existed of a nuclear attack against the U.S., especially on South Florida.  The tough, but ultimately peaceful way that President Kennedy had managed this crisis is another reason to grieve his untimely passing...  

Just Finished Reading Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train

Usually, each Sunday morning while I'm perusing the "Life" section of my Gainesville Sun newspaper in search of the Sunday Jumble puzzle, I browse through the weekly New York Times bestseller list. For several months ongoing, Paula Hawkins has had her novel The Girl on the Train on it...it occurred to me that this would be a book worth looking into.  So I checked it out from the library and just finished reading it: I'm glad I did...

The Girl on the Train is a mystery "whodunit" set in the present time in London.  Rachel, an embittered divorcee whose ex-husband Tom had left her for another woman, Anna, is heavily dependent on alcohol as she makes her daily train rides from her apartment to and from downtown London.  Along the way at a special point in the route, she can look out the train window and see the street where she and Tom used to live.  Four doors down the street from her old home, there is another couple that she becomes accustomed to observing...she dubs them "Jason" and "Jesse" and imagines that they have an idyllic, perfect marriage.  The story takes off into a suspenseful mystery when she discovers their true identities, Scott and Megan...as well as their troubled lives...

If you ever saw the old early 1950s Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, you might get a feel for this novel.  The protagonist in each case is something of a vicarious voyeur, peering into the lives of others who are...at least initially...unaware that they are being watched.  And in each story, there is a disappearance, with the hero/heroine struggling to convince others that there is something wrong going on.  I assure you that the ending of The Girl on the Train, like Rear Window, is very exciting and climactic...

Reading The Girl on the Train, because of its setting in England and its depiction of life there, reminds me of another book I've recently undertaken: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's venture into more "adult" literature, titled The Casual Vacancy.  But whereas Rowling, in my opinion, muddled up her story by introducing too many characters early on, Hawkins kept the numbers of players in her drama to a minimum...very smart.  Instead, she examined the events through the eyes of three people: Rachel, Megan, and Anna.  By doing this, the author was able to probe more deeply into their feelings and motivations, making The Girl on the Train a good psychological mystery...

The word is out that filming is underway for a film adaptation to The Girl on the Train and that it is scheduled for release some time late in 2016.  But I would recommend reading the book first: because of the extensive introspection of the main characters, I suspect that a lot may be lost in the translation of this interesting story to the screen...

My Blog Writing Sparse of Late

I haven't felt like writing on this blog for the past few days...I think it's due to a number of reasons.  For one, I don't have a regular time and place set aside for reflection and writing.  I've never written very much at home: sitting out in public has served the function of adding just enough stress for me, a reclusive introvert by nature, to rivet my thoughts to the task at hand...much of my blog writing has come out of this kind of setting.  I wonder whether going out after my work shift ends at midnight and sitting in a cafe or coffee shop might provide a venue for writing, but most places have closed by then.  There's a Starbucks here in Gainesville on Archer Road that doesn't close until 1 AM, and it's conveniently close enough to my workplace to at least give it a try.  Unfortunately, though, in the past I've gone there and it was too packed with customers taking up all of the seating.  Maybe after midnight, however, it might lighten up a bit...

Another reason for me not having written recently is that the news I've been hearing of late has been depressing, to say the least.  People I know are getting sick and dying around me...and one of them was an apparently healthy young man, a freshman at the University of Florida, who collapsed on the track and died.  And then there are the numerous terrorist attacks around the world...all committed by people claiming to be Muslim but whom other Muslims disavow as not acting in the name of Islam...although the perpetrators are clearly making the opposite claim.  What can I say about all of this, except that people need to get their heads on straight and begin to see things for what they really are...

And possibly the greatest reason for my recent absence from the blogosphere is that I feel a sense of disconnect between my writings and those reading them.  I like the open, public access nature of this blog, but at the same time often feel that I could accomplish the same thing for myself by just writing everything and saving it all to a file without ever posting.  In a world and time when so many of us are despairing of a lack of privacy, I wonder whether an opposite kind of despair is also rising: the creeping feeling of our own transitory lives and that what most of us have to say carries little value to others, many of whom openly express interest in our lives and welfare but are disinterested in taking even just a couple of minutes to discover our own opinions and feelings...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "V" is for Vengeance

Sue Grafton has completed through the letter "X" in her Kinsey Millhone alphabet mystery series (with a letter in each title)...going through this series in alphabetical order, I just finished reading "V" is for Vengeance, published in 2011 but set back in 1988.  The time compression for this series, begun in 1982, is due to the fact that the books are published a few years apart but the stories are spaced only a few months apart.  In this last one I just read, California private eye Kinsey gets herself involved uncovering an organized retail theft ring, complete with the genre's angles of a "noble" mob boss type with his own set of "values",  a violent, out-of-control figure in the crime family, a possibly corrupt cop, a mystery informant, an overaggressive, annoying news reporter, and a good dose of romantic intrigue between the key players in this drama.  And yes, there is a murder to solve...actually, more than one...and Kinsey once again has to contend with a client who first hires her as a private investigator but then continually meddles and undermines her work with his own ongoing theories, criticisms, and attacks on her personality and motives...

As stories go, "V" is for Vengeance ranks right up there with Sue Grafton's better efforts.  Still, I don't exactly care for her recent trend in taking the story's narrative and perspective out of Kinsey Millhone's hands and sometimes showing things from the viewpoint of other characters.  As far as I am concerned, the chief attraction for me with this series is Kinsey's personality and way of handling things...especially the numerous difficulties that crop up in her investigations, as well as in her personal life: she should always be the originating point in the narrative.  That having been said, "V" is for Vengeance is a worthwhile venture, and I recommend it...

Missed Lack of League Soccer Action This Past Weekend

As many of my readers would agree, much of the initial footage of Friday's Muslim-extremist terrorist attacks in Paris centered around an exhibition (or "Friendly") soccer match going on between the French and German national teams.  Now, for most of the time, national teams aren't playing each other, as the various leagues are in the middle of their regular seasons.  I had been looking forward to watching more league play this past weekend, wanting to see "my" English Premier favorites Arsenal and Leicester City play their games, along with some German Bundesliga and Mexican Liga MX action.  But when I saw that a France-Germany game was going on Friday... well, besides the horrendous nature of the news of the terrorism...I sadly realized that the leagues would all be taking a break until the following weekend.  So instead of finding a lot of soccer on TV as I am accustomed (especially on Saturday morning and early afternoon), I instead ended up watching more (American) football then usual.  I did see a soccer match between Hungary and Norway, but I much prefer the league play.

North America's Major League Soccer, the premier league here, is in the middle of their playoffs, currently at the conference championship stage.  Round Two of the series between Dallas and Portland in the West, and Columbus and the New York Red Bulls in the East, are upcoming...either this coming weekend or the next.  I've found the playoffs this year in MLS to be very exciting.  I'm pulling for Portland to win it all, but I admit they're probably not the strongest team left...

A Rarity: All Three NFL Florida Teams Win Today

If you're a Floridian who supports your National Football Team based on where you live, today has to be something special: all three in-state teams won their games today.  Tampa Bay beat Dallas 10-6, Jacksonville beat Baltimore 22-20, and Miami beat Philadelphia 20-19.  Not exactly blowouts, any of them...but I'll take the victories these days any way I can.  Consider the last five seasons...

Including this ongoing 2015 regular season, here are the regular season win-loss records for the three Florida NFL teams:

TAMPA BAY
2011  4-12
2012  7-9
2013  4-12
2014  2-14
2015  4-5
TOTAL:  21-52

JACKSONVILLE
2011  5-11
2012  2-14
2013  4-12
2014  3-13
2015  3-6
TOTAL:  17-56

MIAMI
2011  6-10
2012  7-9
2013  8-8
2014  8-8
2015  4-5
TOTAL:  33-40

Note from the above that, in the last five years, NONE of the Florida teams have enjoyed a winning season.  Sure, the Dolphins finished at .500 in 2013 and 2014, but they choked at the end of each season when they were in a good position to make the playoffs.  Will any of them have a winning season this year?  I rather doubt it.  But it was still sweet to see them all manage to win today...

Thoughts on Health, Paris, Football, Reading

As I sit here in my living room, enjoying the fragrance of one of the autumn-scented candles that Melissa picked up the other day at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, along with the open-windowed cool breeze finally blessing us on this mid-November Saturday afternoon, I realize that it's been a while since I wrote on my blog.  Ever since the 11th, I have been feeling out of sorts physically, as if some sort of general inflammation has been affecting my entire body, causing headaches, localized pains, and a feeling of "blah".  Whatever the cause, the problem seems to have packed up and left...possibly aided by my having slept a good deal last night...

The big news story is the ISIS terrorist attack on Paris, France yesterday.  After the coordinated attacks by at least eight thugs on civilian targets like a roadside cafe and a music concert, more than 120 people have been killed...and there is concern that more trouble may be upcoming.  I find this focus on France, and recently even Russia with that Egyptian airplane bombing, extremely ironic since it was these two countries back in early 2003 that were in the forefront of international opposition to the U.S. invading Sunni-governed Iraq...the sect of Islam that ISIS claims to follow.  But this terror organization appears to be ultimately founded on hate, evil, and bloodlust...they just clothe themselves with their outward signs of religion to disguise their base nature.  And despite yesterday's attack in France, their biggest victims by far have been peaceful members of the Muslim faith that they pretend to follow...

On a lighter note, today is college football Saturday and the Gators are right now playing South Carolina in Columbia.  Steve Spurrier's no longer their coach, having walked off the team in mid-season because they weren't having a good year...that just doesn't sound right to me.  If Florida wins today against the Gamecocks, they'll still be in the hunt for one of those four post-season national championship playoff spots...but their recently-sputtering offense had better pick up if they want to have any chance of reaching that level of football glory this 2015 season...

I did manage to finish reading a book recently: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, the final book in the His Dark Materials fantasy/science fiction trilogy.  I had read it before a few years ago and had then come to the conclusion that the author had left room for further spin-off novels from this series.  Having just reread it, I have to revise that opinion: Pullman sealed things up quite well with this final volume...

On Again, Off Again Classical Music Radio Station Back On Again

Back in June, I reported that WUFT-FM was planning to begin broadcasting its classical music station, formerly only available on HD radio and the Internet, on the FM band.  Then, last month I heard it on the radio, on 102.7.  After noting this on my October 8th blog entry, the station then promptly went off the air...making me wonder whether it wasn't just a mistake on their part.  But this afternoon it was once again back on the air...

Sometimes when I'm driving, I like to hear classical music as a soothing background sound...the "new" station is a blessing.  This time around, I'm hoping that it will remain on the air...

Asimov Misses Kindle's Advent by Some 26,000 Years

Sometimes I am amazed at how on-target science fiction writers from the past have been able to predict future developments in technology...and sometimes I'm just as amazed when they are terribly far off-the-mark.  Take, for example, the late Isaac Asimov's 1982 novel Foundation's Edge.  It is set some 26 thousand years into the future, when faster-than-light space travel (through "hyperspace") has been available for humanity for almost all of that time...and nuclear technology has developed on a "micro" scale.  The story's main characters of councilman Golan Trevize and historian Janov Pelorat are about to embark in space on a ship that is mentally driven, with their quest being the rediscovery of the planet Earth.  Pelorat is a rather stuffy old academician, and he wants to take his materials with him on the trip.  In italics, I have provided a short excerpt from the book at this point:

Golan Trevize asked Professor Pelorat, "Are you ready?"

"With this I am", Pelorat said and held up a square wafer about twenty centimeters to the side and encased in a jacket of silvery plastic.  Trevize was suddenly aware that Pelorat had been holding it since they had left his home, shifting it from hand to hand and never putting it down, even when they had stopped for a quick breakfast.

"What's that, Professor?"

"My library.  It's indexed by subject matter and origin and I've gotten it all into one wafer.  If you think this ship is a marvel, how about this wafer?  A whole library!  Everything I have collected!  Wonderful!  Wonderful!"

The "wafer"? I don't know how you would call it, but to me it's nothing less than a Kindle, which came out in 2007...only 25 years after the publication of Foundation's Edge.  Yet the good professor compares its level of technology favorable to the hyperspace-capable spaceship...something that in our own present minds has to be thought of as next-to-impossible.  I don't think that Isaac Asimov, not to mention other science fiction futurist writers of his era, understood the upcoming information technology revolution and how quickly and pervasively it would affect the world.  On the other hand, almost all of them had humankind traveling widely in space by our time and establishing settlements on the moon and other planets...

Rooting Against the Unbeatens in College and NFL Football

It's at about the midpoint in the 2015 National Football League regular season...and about three fourths of the way through the NCAA college football season.  At this point, depending on how my "main" teams, the NFL's Miami Dolphins and the NCAA's University of Florida Gators, are doing, my emphasis on the various games I watch changes.  In both the professional and college leagues, I have my favorites besides the Dolphins and Gators.  But if either team is doing well in a particular year and could use a "boost" by another team losing...even one I usually support...then my loyalties can change.  This year the Miami Dolphins are suffering a mediocre season (so... what's new), destined to go nowhere except home at the end of the regular season.  But the Florida Gators, having clinched the Eastern Division of their Southeastern Conference for the first time since the Urban Meyer/Tim Tebow team of 2009, have a real shot at making the four-team national championship playoffs.  Just winning the rest of the regular season games and the SEC playoff game might accomplish this outright, but there are still some undefeated teams left out there...and I have been rooting for them to lose in order to enhance Florida's prospects for selection.  Even to the point of going against Michigan State, which I have supported over the last few years...so I was delighted to see them upset yesterday 39-38 to Nebraska and becoming a one-loss team (which I can once again support).  I wanted Florida State, a one-loss team and future Gator opponent, to defeat unbeaten and top-ranked Clemson (a school I usually like)...but to no avail.  And the game played between two undefeated teams in the Big 12, TCU and Oklahoma State, was a win for me regardless of the result...but I leaned toward the lower-ranked Cowboys (who prevailed 49-29).  I remember taking an interest in seeing teams ranked ahead of the Gators losing in late-season games back in 2006 and 2008, years that they eventually won the national championship.  It's happening again this year.  But Florida has got to keep on winning, too...that last performance against Vanderbilt had better not be repeated against South Carolina or Florida State, much less the eventual winner (probably Alabama) of the SEC Western Division...

Since Miami doesn't seem interested in making the NFL playoffs this year, regardless who they put in as their head coach, I have a different emphasis affecting the teams I root for late in the season.  Besides supporting secondary teams I like (that seem to have a shot at the playoffs) such as the New York Giants, Seattle, and Green Bay, I am also pulling against any remaining undefeated teams...until they lose at least one game, that is.  This is because I remember the perfect 1972 Miami Dolphins season, a feat that hasn't been matched since (although New England very nearly pulled it off in 2007)...and I don't want any other team to match their accomplishment.  At this writing, Carolina is the only undefeated team left in the National Conference, while three others are without a loss in the American: Denver, Cincinnati, and New England.  Ultimately, at worst we could end up with just one perfect season, but I want everybody to have stumbled at least once.  But should any of the teams manage this near-impossible feat, I'm pulling for Cam Newton's Panthers to do it.  And once again, I'm hoping against hope that the Giants might be able to pull it all together at the end of the year and advance in the playoffs: they seem to be the only ones not intimidated by the Patriots.  Let's see...2007: Giants barely make the playoffs but beat favored Patriots in Super Bowl...2011: Giants barely make the playoffs but beat favored Patriots in Super Bowl...2015: will this be a continuation of the four-year cycle?

Books I'm Currently Reading

I am currently rereading Philip Pullman's fantasy series His Dark Materials.  The first book, The Golden Compass, I read again just recently.  I just finished book number two, titled The Subtle Knife, and am now a little more than halfway through the final one, The Amber Spyglass.  I find Pullman's writing style and presentation a joy to read, and wish others would write stories the way he does.  I am also nearing the end of Sue Grafton's series of short novels based on letters of the alphabet.  My next book, which I'm about to start, is "V" is for Vengeance.  After that, it's "W" and "X"...and then my reading will have caught up with Grafton's writing.  I am also planning to take on a popular 2015 novel: Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list for months...

That's the positive side of my reading right now.  On the negative side, I seem to be stuck in a number of books, a couple of them not so good...and a couple of them worthy classics.  The books are Disclosure by Michael Crichton, The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  The problem with Disclosure is that I am not only completely out of touch with its main character, with whose developing plight I'm expected to sympathize, but the cutting edge sci-fi aspect to it is outdated...by twenty years.  With The Casual Vacancy, Rowling introduced way too many characters at the very beginning and she hops around in a confusing manner from one of the many subplots to another.  Les Miserables is a good book as I see it, but it is very, very long...and I already know some things that happen to the main characters, not a good inducement to read further.  Melvilles' Moby Dick seems to be the most promising of the lot...I just need to take the time to read it...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "U" is for Undertow

"U" is for Undertow is novelist Sue Grafton's 21st book (out of presumably 26) in her "alphabet mystery" series, set in the late 1980s in southern California and featuring Kinsey Millhone, a private eye in her late thirties.  I enjoyed the previous "T" book and was looking forward to reading this one.  I wasn't disappointed.  Grafton seems to be fully back into her writing, and this story of a little girl's disappearance back in 1967 from a fenced-in back yard of an upscale neighborhood...and how Kinsey solves it...provides the necessary elements in terms of character development and suspense as to what happened.  This story, unlike many of the others, has Kinsey pretty much staying in her hometown of Santa Teresa; the fact that she recognizes some of the players in her investigation from her old high school years is important.  Along with the mystery of the missing girl, Kinsey uncovers some old mysteries from her childhood past...and discovers a new perspective on her estranged, domineering grandmother...

In "U" is for Undertow, as well as in many of her other books in this series, Sue Grafton seems to take great pleasure in exposing the decadence and feeling of privilege of many people living affluent lifestyles...many if not most of them enjoying the fruits of other people's ideas and labor.  In the hoity-toity Horton Ravine subdivision, where the story is focused, alcoholism, negligence, drug peddling and abuse, and burglary among its residents are presented as almost normal aspects of life...while they take great pains to make themselves look better than everyone else.  I like that about Grafton and have felt, from my childhood school days around snobbish, self-important classmates with rich parents, that many in the "upper" classes are nothing better than leeches on the hard work of others...

Record High Temperatures in Gainesville Today

Saturday afternoon I went outside here in Gainesville to run a little...it was 83 degrees with 53% humidity.  Not all that pleasant and a little hot and muggy for this time of year, but I could take it. Then on Sunday I repeated my run...it was also 83, but the humidity had climbed to 68%. Ugh.  Yesterday I went out to run and the temperature had climbed to 86, with the humidity still in those unpleasant-but-tolerable sixties.  Today I stood outside and was astounded at the heat.  I check my weather app on my phone and discovered that it was 91.  Then I checked that against the record high for Gainesville, Florida on November 3: 88 degrees in 1972!  The average high for this date is only 78!

I had been looking forward to a cooler, dryer November after this past extended hot and wet summer...but it looks as if I'm going to be looking forward a little longer...

K.C. Beats Mets to Win World Series as Harvey Falters in Ninth

I was realistic while watching last night's fifth game in this year's World Series, with Kansas City leading the New York Mets three games to one, with just one more victory needed to capture the 2015 title.  It would be nice for "my" Mets to win at least this game, but I felt that the Royals would eventually win out in the long run.  New York had their ace pitcher Matt Harvey and he was in top form, throwing a four-hit (all singles) shutout through eight innings with just one base-on-balls. With a 2-0 lead to protect, Mets manager Terry Collins had decided to let their closing reliever Jeurys Familia cover the top of the ninth to finish the home win and extend the series to a sixth game in Kansas City.  But upon hearing that he wouldn't be finishing the game, Harvey pitched a minor fit in the dugout and pushed Collins to change his mind.  Collins relented and let Harvey pitch...and disaster ensued. First, he walked the lead-off hitter and then gave up a double, which drove in a run to make it 2-1.  Then, with the damage already done, Collins brought in Familia to protect a one-run lead with no outs and a runner on second.  The second run scored on a throwing error at the plate by the Mets first baseman Duda, and it was 2-2...destined for extra innings.  The Royals went on to score five runs in the twelfth inning and took the World Series, four games to one.

A lot of people are criticizing Collins' decision to let Harvey pitch, but I beg to differ.  His pitch count per inning had remained consistent throughout the game and he had demonstrated continuing control over his placement.  Had Collins put in Familia, who had not exactly been consistent on the mound of late, that might have backfired as well and folks would be saying that he erred in not keeping Harvey in there for the ninth.  It was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't type of situation, and I sympathize with the Mets manager.  Besides, I think that the Kansas City batters had more than a little bit to do with the outcome, regardless which pitcher the Mets ended up using...

Just Finished Reading Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale

From time to time I read the New York Times fiction books bestseller list in my Sunday newspaper, looking for good reading prospects.  I filter out those books that look like parts of series and focus on self-contained stories...as well as books that remain on the list for several weeks.  Until just recently, Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale has been on the bestsellers list for many weeks, and I decided it was time to give it a look.  Besides, by doing it this way before, I got another "bird" book, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, and that one turned out to be a winner as well...

The Nightingale, the title referring to a nickname given to one of the characters, is a historical fiction drama set in France during its Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1945.  The protagonists, from whose perspectives the author presents the story's narrative, alternating one with the other, are sisters Isabelle and Vianne.  Isabelle is bold and lives her life on the edge, by her emotions...while Vianne is cautious and deliberative.  They are conflicted with each other by their actions, as well as by mutual grievances from the past.  But war has come to France, despite all guarantees to the contrary, and the two sisters must deal with the German occupation, each in her own way...

That's about as far as I can go about the story itself without giving away too much, but I can say that Kristin Hannah did a remarkable job with the intensity and depth of her characters, as well as demonstrating that, in times of conflict like war, moral decisions are often not only difficult to make...in some circumstances, they are nearly impossible.  This book was so good that it did something books rarely do...it made me cry.  And that's about all I need to recommend The Nightingale for anyone interested in a good story with memorable characters...and you'll also learn quite a bit about history in the process...