Monday, June 18, 2012

Soccer Hulligan

  I’m not a soccer fan by any means; at least I wasn’t until last Wednesday when I caught a glimpse of Denmark playing against Portugal.  Denmark was one of the last sixteen teams in the euro 2012 championship soccer tournament. And as always with Denmark I have to cheer them on.  Well, my cheering didn’t help and they lost but not with out a fight.  Shortly after that game Germany played and defeated Netherlands or Holland or the Dutch, the commentators weren’t very consistent when it came to talking about the Netherlands.  I grew more interested in it when I did a little research about the tournament. So basically there were four groups of four teams that play each other for two spots in the quarter finals against other group winners then the semi-finals then the final game.  I made a friendly wager with Nick (whom you’ve seen in previous post).  We both took eight teams and with each win the winner receives a beer.  I took Denmark, of course, hoping that there luck would turn around after losing to Portugal. I also took Netherlands, Czech Republic, Greece, and Croatia, with a few others. He took England, Spain, Russia, and Germany just to name a few.  I didn’t start off good losing the first 5 out of six games and one of the six was a draw.  But I finally got on the board with two wins on Saturday.  Another disappointment came yesterday when Netherlands was beat by Portugal, no not the whole team of Portugal just Christiano Ronaldo, and my Denmark was beat by “zee” Germans, giving Nick two more.  With four more games until the quarter finals, I already have Greece and Czech Republic playing Germany and Portugal Ronaldo in the quarters.  Go Ukraine (my next team I need to win).
            Speaking of Saturday, it was another hot day in Columbus and amber says, “I wish we had a pool,” but with all the public pools overly crowded with kids and parents yelling at them, we decided to get a kiddies’ pool.  Not that we had plans to swim laps but just lay in cold water soaking up the sun and drinking cocktails. Off to target we went. We found a pool, filled it up, and we settled in for an afternoon of cold water and hot sun.  Now, this is the point of the story that I want to paint you a picture of how it looked.  First, the setting obviously a blistering hot day, a backyard, let me rephrase that, a yard of about five feet that fades into a gravel parking spot for about twenty feet then into an alley.  The houses are about an arms reach from each other and if I wanted I could hit the house behind ours with a rock thrown with my left hand (I’m right handed).  Did I mention that the houses surrounding ours are duplexes?  So you could say I live on a crowded street.  However, none of this stopped us from cooling down in an inflatable pool.  Some people would call it a little redneck I call it, we were f**king hot. So there we sat beer in my hand a cocktail in hers, sunglasses, and smiles on our faces.  A neighbor pops out of his back door and after locking it he turns towards us and freezes for a second and without hesitation we smile at him and wave.  He just semi-waves and gives us this look like we were the biggest hillbillies he had ever seen. Since we were so close to him we could see the absolute expression of, “what the hell,” on his face.  It was priceless.  He went on his way and there we sat all afternoon soaking in alcohol, sun, and pool water.  After dinner we sat on the front porch until complete darkness then headed in for the evening. It was an awesome day.
            That’s what I have for you this post.  So my challenges haven’t been the best in the world lately so I’ve decided to make another cooking/drinking challenge.  Since the soccer bug hit me, I’ve been thinking of someday travelling over to Europe, something me and Amber hope to do sometime in the future.  So I decided to make some traditional dishes from other countries and pair it with a traditional drink.  Denmark is an obvious choice, I’ll try an English and Scottish dish, because those are were my family first came from.  And for some odd balls I’ll attempt a Finland, Iceland, and Romania dish.  I think this is a repeat challenge that I never finished so lets give it another shot.  So until next time, explore the world anyway you can whether it’s plate by plate, page by page, or plane by plane. 

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”  -Edmund Hillary