Thursday, October 17, 2024
I opened a package that arrived today courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service. What could possibly be in it?
It was a book!
At lunch a week ago, Michael D'Antuono mentioned that he was sending me a book that he had just enjoyed reading.
The historical tome fits right into my recently stirred interest into the Civil War after our trip to the battle sites in West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
This book's plot deals with the chaos in the months after Abraham Lincoln's election to the U.S. Presidency and the Confederates shelling of Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor.
As soon as I finish the historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, I'm about a third through it, I will move on to this new interesting read.
We have shared history with
Erik Larson's work
Both Michael and I have read this magnificent book by Larson years ago that was a historical review of the amazing events during the Chicago World's Fair while a serial killer of women roamed the Windy City's streets. Based on that read, I can't wait to dig into this new one.
I do have one issue with literary gifts from Michael, they are ADDICTIVE!
But in a positive way. About 15 years ago he gave me a popular book by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
It was my first dip into what I would soon find to be the ever so deep pool of the Nordic Noir genre of extremely dark crime novels.
Michael's seemingly innocent gift all those years ago led me to first reading all three of Stieg Larsson's crime novels.
After that I was hooked. What followed was my digging into a staggering total of 65 additional depressing but scintillating Nordic Noir thrillers by authors Mari Jungstedt, Mons Kallenfort, Lars Keplar, Camilla Läckberg, David Lagercrantz, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Håkam Nesser and Stefan Tegenfalk.
THANK YOU, Michael but how many more historical books has Erik Larson written over the years?
The saga of the global American football World Football Championship Qualifying Tournaments continued today.
The governing body for all American
football outside of the NFL and CFL
IFAF attempts to put on these World Championships for tackle and flag football for men and women's teams of various age groups.
Needless to say, IFAF faces a ton of logistical issues trying to coordinate the actions of an entire world.
One of those issues was the recent news that the South American Qualifying Tournament scheduled to be contested in São Paulo, Brazil with national teams from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Panama all vying for the one guaranteed slot in next Summer's World Championship Tournament to be played in Germany was cancelled. The reason was purely financial as Argentina, Chile and Panama all declared a lack of funds necessary to pay for their teams to come to Brazil.
I will circle back to more about another financial burden caused by this situation a bit later in this post.
This coming Saturday, IFAF will see four European World Championship Qualifying games take place with eight national teams involved.
Team Ireland vs. Team Netherlands
in Dublin, Ireland
We had already mentioned this one in an earlier post this week.
Team Great Britain vs. Team Germany
in Coventry, England
Team Denmark vs. Team Switzerland
in Copenhagen, Denmark
Team Serbia vs. Team Hungary
in Zrenjanin, Serbia
Now, while all of these teams will be having fun playing American football games this weekend, let's go back to that cancelled South American IFAF tournament.
Months ago I had been selected as the
Brasil Onças National Team's
Special Teams Coach
It was a great honor and I was excited about working again with the excellent coaches and players who make up the Team Brasil Onças.
The South American Tournament's cancellation caused me a financial issue. I had bought a roundtrip ticket from LAX to São Paulo via Santiago de Chile back in August for an 11 night stay in Brazil's biggest city, population 12,400,232!
I had purchased the cheapest ticket that I could find and it included the phrase "non-refundable" on it.
What to do?
This problem would take some
deep, insightful thinking
The original plan was to be with the team in our training facility and hotel with all of my room and board issues taken care of by the Brazilian American Football Federation.
Now that source of funding was gone.
"Laurie, do you want to come with me to São Paulo?"
"No."
It should be noted, I enjoy traveling by myself.
Thus, I had to reconnect with my airline as I had another idea. I could not cancel my flights without losing all of the money I had paid for the tickets so I inquired if it was possible to change the dates of my trip.
Their answer was YES, I could and it would be done for FREE!
I opted to cut the trip down from 11 nights to just six. I also got a good rate at a nice hotel in São Paulo's Central District thus cutting down on the travel times needed to reach the city's most important sights.
Now, all I need is to find a good Brazilian churrascaria or two and all of their wondrous barbecued meat dishes to make this trip a good one.
Adapt and survive.
On to NCAA football . . .
Now that would make for a novel
College Playoff Championship Game
An honor for Army's QB
The same honor was afforded
to Navy's QB
Navy's outstanding LB is also in
line for possible post-season honors
A quick NFL side note . . .
Los Angeles Rams fans are
getting ready for Halloween
Today's MLB playoff results were of interest . . .
The Cleveland Guardians were
resilient tonight in the ALCS
The Guardians trailed the New York Yankees 5-3 in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs when Jhonkensy Noel hit a two run home run blast to tie the game at 5-5 and send it into extra innings.
In the bottom of the tenth inning, Cleveland's designated hitter, David Fry, hit another two run, walk off home run to give the Guardians a much needed 7-5 victory!
The Yankees still lead the best-of-seven series two games to one.
But for this gutsy, stirring win the Guardians would have been down three game to none, a deep hole to dig out from to be sure.
There is hope still in Cleveland.
As for the NLCS . . .
The Los Angeles Dodgers
dominated again tonight
In New York, Right Fielder Mookie Betts had four hits including a home run and drove in four runs, Shortstop Tommy Edman knocked in three RBIs and Shohei Ohtani hit a first inning home run to lead the way offensively.
The Dodgers starting pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, pitched 4 1/3 solid innings and then relievers Evan Phillips, Blake Treinen and Edgardo Henriquez were magnificent in shutting out the Mets the rest of the game.
Los Angeles now holds a commanding three game to one lead over New York's National League club. One more win is all the Dodgers need to punch their ticket to the World Series.
GO BLUE!
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