Tournament honors

A young man tried to kill Trump but only wounded him slightly. Bystanders were hurt; one was shot dead. The attacker himself was killed. Investigators say his motive remains unclear.

Of course this tragedy is more important than soccer, but I don’t know what else to say about it.

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Congrats to Spain and Argentina for winning their respective tournaments.

Congrats to the Colombians for playing so well. They collapsed in the end. Their semifinal had been the more tiring one, and they’d rested a day less than the Argentinians.

Here is my Copa América “team of the tournament” (with honorable mentions in parentheses):

Martínez, ARG (Vargas, COL);

Nández, URU; Romero, ARG; Martínez, ARG; Mojica, COL (Sánchez, COL; Hincapié, ECU);

Ríos, COL; De Paul, ARG; Caicedo, ECU (Valverde, URU; Koné, CAN; Lerma, COL);

Rodríguez, COL; Martínez, ARG; Díaz, COL (Córdoba, COL; Rondón, VEN).

The Euros’ official “tournament team” is here. I mostly agree: I’d choose Mamardashvili (GEO) over Maignan (FRA), and maybe Carvajal (ESP) over Walker (ENG); and I wish I could make room for Çalhanoglu (TÜR), but not at the expense of any of the tremendous Spaniards.

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I finished reading the First Movement (novels 1–3) of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. The pace is 20 pp./day, no more than 1 novel/month, for 12 months. Repetitious though much of it is – the narrator has to keep reminding us what his dozens of characters have been up to – its soap-operatic tidal wave swamps the intricacies of E. M. Forster, whose novels I’m also reading.

Sméagol has appeared in LOTR and is, in his way, delightful – a grotesque busybee. He, Sam, and Frodo have reached Mordor’s Black Gate. Two towers flank it. Are these the titular towers? I thought Orthanc was one, and also the Dark Tower. Is the question ever settled?

I finished reading the longest appendix (A).

A medical test

The last few days, we’ve had an arctic chill – and, suddenly, it’s mid-winter. Snow covers fields; frozen slush obstinately sticks to parking lots; ice daggers dangle over doorways; temperatures touch the lowest (positive) Fahrenheit integers. It’s indistinguishable from January. It looks lovely from indoors.

Tonight, I’m sleeping at my grandparents’ house. A vacation from Samuel’s squalling!

No, not just that. I have tubes in my nostrils and belts and wires and boxes strapped around my chest. They’re to measure my breathing and help the doctors decide if I have a sleep disorder.

If results are positive, they’ll account for:

• my constant sleepiness during the day;
• my inability to read an article or watch an hour of TV without dozing off;
• my weight gain the last seven years;
• my athletic and intellectual decline;
• my general lack of success.

The idea to get tested arose because, when I was in the hospital with Karin and Samuel, various medical professionals observed me sleeping and, independently, said I should.

Actually, I’d thought of it before, and Karin had thought of it (as a joke?), but the hospital stay definitely was the catalyst.

Irritating noises

The fount of college teaching jobs for this year has pretty well dried up – as it should, since most colleges will begin instruction in two, three, or four weeks.

I continue to apply for some full-time jobs that trickle out. (I can’t move my family across the continent to take up a part-time post.)

I’ve tried advertising myself as a hybrid laborer who could do some full-time combination of clerical work and adjunct teaching. No dice. Colleges want specialists, and they don’t want to pay benefits.

I’ve also been applying for college advising jobs and jobs with the public library. I’m having trouble imagining how to go about finding any other sort of job, except the kind you do in a grocery store.

(But wouldn’t a job like that also be part-time, and, therefore, inadequate?)

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Half Price Books is opening a store in Mishawaka. I love Half Price Books.

I think I’d be delighted to work there, even on a half-week schedule.

Unfortunately, the store won’t open until after my son is due to be born, by which time I’ll need to be collecting paychecks.

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I was about to post another YouTube video of a techno song – there was almost no time left to write today’s entry – but I dug deep and found things to complain about.

Here is the song, nonetheless.