I don’t get sick very often these days, but with the combination of working a lot of stressful hours and the weather jumping around lately, I picked up a cold a couple weeks ago.  I got over it once, then last weekend it came back stronger.  It’s been really miserable this time.  I’m so stuffed up it’s hard to breathe, especially at night.  For some reason, it doesn’t occur to me to do something smart like have some chicken broth, so I just sit around sniffling and breathing through my mouth waiting for it to go away.

I got to do one of my favorite things Sunday night.  I played pool against a guy who was drunk enough that he kept getting distracted by the stuff his friends were doing over in the corner, and yet he could still shoot about as well as me.  Fortunately, once I realized he was having a hard time focusing on long shots, I was able to leave him those when I had to, and pull out a 4-3 win.  I suppose I should be glad he gave me an advantage, but it’s always annoying to play someone with a built-in excuse, who comes over to tell you how trashed he is when you get a couple games ahead.

Most people in our league are pretty honest.  They’ll admit it if they foul, so you don’t have to stand close to the table and watch them like a hawk.  So I was a little surprised when the other team claimed a pretty blatant foul was a clean shot.  I didn’t argue it because I was standing 20 feet away at the time, and I had a decent shot on the 8-ball without taking the ball in hand anyway, but another guy on the team saw it and said they pulled that in another game too.  That’s too bad; it’s just pool league—class B at that.  None of us are going pro from this, and I hope no one needs the $3 from a win that badly.  It’d be a lot less fun if we had to constantly monitor each other for cheating.

We got another of my not-so-favorite things that night: a very loud jukebox.  I looked around at one point and there were probably two dozen people in the bar, and every one was in a conversation, which means every person was having to yell over the music.  I’ve never understood why people do that and seem to enjoy it, but Angel cleared it up for me: they’re there to be stimulated, and loud music is part of that.  Even the yelling might be part of the stimulation for them.  Too bad it makes the more introverted among us miserable.

Oh well.  I won and we took three matches out of five, so it was good night overall.  We should be about four games out of first place with five weeks to go, so there’s still a chance we could qualify for the next city tournament.  Regardless, I’ll be taking the summer off and spending as many Sunday evenings as possible sitting in our backyard, bird-watching and playing with the dog, grilling supper and pulling a weed or two out of the garden.  Spring needs to get here soon.