December 17, 2001

o any of you watch football? I've been noticing with increasing frequency this year a penalty that I don't quite understand the explanation for. It happens when someone on the offensive teams moves before the ball is snapped. The referee crosses his arms a few inches above one another, and then revolves them around each other, as if rolling up a skein of wool. The call is "Before the snap, false start on number X" where X is the player's number who jumped the gun. Seems pretty self evident, doesn't it? My question is, why do they comment about "before the snap"? I mean, is there a false start possible after the snap? Just what is the deal here?

I hope you saw the news article about the woman boarding a plane here in San Diego. She apparently saw a bag at the end of the X-ray machine that had a sweater she liked, so she picked it up and boarded her plane. Of course, she didn't realize it was a package they use to train those people who scan bags with X-ray/Fluoroscopes.... until a fake hand grenade rolled out of it. The flight was delayed three hours while they hustled her and her sister off the plane into police custody. Wonder who she was planning on giving the hand grenade to for Christmas?

Had a mostly relaxing weekend by myself. Napped a bit, did a majority of the shopping I'm choosing to do (man, I miss those Christmas bonuses!), made a roast which Suz kindly sliced for me. The only thing I didn't get done was make sugar cookies, which probably isn't a bad thing, as I think I need to lose a few pounds already. Unfortunately, my Redskins didn't win, but I'm still proud of them. They've done a ton better than I expected after a miserable start. And the same goes for the Chargers. After winning only one game last year, they've done respectably well this year. Not going to the Superbowl, but they are rebuilding.

Happy Birthday, Jeff! Sorry I can't be there to celebrate with you.

The hype for Lord of the Rings continues... I saw a nifty show on the Sci Fi channel (recently purchased by Vivendi of all people!) and this morning was a fascinating piece on NPR's Morning Edition, which included a snippet of Tolkien reading his work on tape which was fascinating. I wonder if anyone has ever published that tape! I enjoyed listening to the way he pronounced the words. So much of the joy of that book is in the language he crafted so carefully.

Finally, a big cheer to my brother-in-law who received his PhD on Friday around noon. It's been a long time coming, and we're all just pleased as punch for you!