I wrote the following after I wrote about Ma Mary, but before I read about the latest trial news – I offer it now because I am at a loss to write about anything connected to these new developments in the investigation.

Dinner with Angela’s family was fine. I met her father for the first time. Firm handshake patriarch who is warm and loving with his family, all of whom call him Buddy. Frank Pappa’s is a great restaurant – very traditional Italian. I had Calamari and Brochette on my plate within two minutes of sitting down at the table. Half the family was observing Lent and had fish, the other half, including us, had Carpaccio and Pinot Noir. I had a simple Linguini Con Polo which was excellent. I spent a fair amount of the meal talking about fish tanks with Angela’s nephews (they both each just got one to use as night lights in their rooms). Her brother-in-law Tim is a sports guy so there was a great deal of Rams speculation – trade Bulger, put Warner back in, we have the youngest team in the league and it shows. Angela and I went to the playoff game with the Panthers as her dad was in China and her mother wouldn’t go alone. We sat in the southwest corner of the stadium about twenty rows up from the field. That was quite a game and quite an experience. It deserves it’s own blog of the future.

I was less of a sports guy when I was expected to play them, and I know the whole Chomsky argument about irrational submission to authority, jingoism, the wasted intelligence devoted to statistical arcana, and the bread and circus and the military flyovers and all that – still, as I get older I find myself enjoying professional sports more and more – there I’ve said it. Part of my resistance to sports came from my father’s tendency to ignore me when they were on. I have these childhood memories of trying to spend time with him by watching boxing matches, but the only thing that held my interest was trying to count along with the fight clock in my head.

The fight clock would only show up occasionally in the lower right hand corner of our black and white television during the classic Muhammad Ali fights of the mid to late seventies. I would start counting with the clock and if I was within a second or two with my internal clock when the numbers reappeared then that was a victory, or I was somehow participating with my father in a way that was meaningful to me. Perhaps this was the beginning of my odd relationship with clocks – I currently use the timer on my microwave as part of cooking on the stove, but my internal clock will off and I’ll walk into the kitchen just as the microwave beeper goes off, I wake up generally one minute before my alarm would have gone off, so I can turn it off. That fight clock is still running in my head.

Later in life sports became a thing I could do with dad. We went to Cardinals games regularly as family outings. I learned to love it and still do. I probably went to ten Cardinal’s games at least last year. But for me it’s always about much more than the competition, it’s about the participatory spectacle – there’s only one vender in that whole place where you can get a turkey leg and my seventh inning stretch involves a walk down to the outfield bleachers for my tryptophan fix.

Beth jokes with Karen about a super bowl a few years ago when I was cooking in the kitchen and actually wearing a white apron. Karen and Beth both hollered from the living room for me to bring them a beer. Now I have a super bowl party every year. I have old banners from Ryan’s that I sometimes hang up. We watched the first half in Kirksville this year – on our Ground Hog Day weekend from hell. It was great to spend time with friends, but the dreaded gasoline spill (see earlier blog) still haunts me. I have not yet reinstalled my backseat. And my coat, fresh from the drycleaners, still smells like gas.

Reign in that tangent! We finished dinner with cake and Sambuca served in a snifter with three coffee beans floating in it. You eat one of them for luck. Angela tells me later that her father turned to her mother and said, “Karl seems like a nice guy.” This is apparently high praise coming from a man of few words. I tell Angela, “I give good family.”