What's outside blowing in

The reason Roger Federer is unstoppable, it seems to me having watched him very few times, but the last two times fight his away out of what seemed like inevitable losses against very strong opponents, the reason he's unstoppable is that he never flags. He never seems to surge, he just never really weakens. When an opponent breaks his serve or when he's down, it never seems to be because he's weak but because the opponent is playing out of his mind. That happened in the final at Wimbledon and today, and neither Rafa nor Djokovic could seal the deal because Federer wasn't weakened when he was down. His rhythm is almost inhuman. Lendl and Sampras also seemed to be almost machine-like, but they had downs and ups in their games, and Federer doesn't really seem to have that: he just moves and moves and moves on, leveling the best efforts of his opponents.

I like writing about sports as if I have the faintest idea what I'm writing about. Of course, it's apparent listening to some of the commentators today that one needn't have that faintest clue in order to be well compensated for making the inanest of inane comments during a game. I watched some football today, too, and it always blows me away how varied the quality in game calling can be. Joe Buck seems to be doing better than last year, Aiken is still weak and CBS has some winners and some losers, but there's absolutely no match for the expertise and enthusiasm of Michaels and Madden. They can make watching a boring game exciting, whereas with Buck and Aiken you just hope they don't ruin an exciting game (they did well with today's fierce matchup between the Bears and Chargers).

Anyhoo.

Today is a day I'd be out biking if it weren't for the ass surgery and it feels bad to know that all this glorious food my wife has been cooking for me will just go to my gut and I can't work it off. But with the windows open, the lovely air is blowing in and that makes the sick room much nicer. I absolutely adore cool air, particularly cool night air. The fall has some of my favorite weather by miles, most likely because I grew up in Massachusetts where the falls are crisp and colorful. A cliche, but a truth nonetheless.

Tomorrow the bandages are changed, the tube comes out, and I start a new regimen. I'm not looking forward to changing the bandages every morning, but I am looking forward to taking a real shower. I'm struggling with the false sense that once the tube comes out of the crack, I'll be able to sit and do work, but I know that's not true, I just want it to be. So I'm looking forward to tomorrow as if I'll be able to work tomorrow evening, when in fact, I'll just be bandaged differently, still unable to work and will still need to wait until Tuesday to shower. I'm guessing tomorrow will be a frustrating day also because we have an 11 o'clock appointment but we know Dr. Brand is scheduled to be in surgery all day and so we don't know how long we'll have to wait. The last time that happened, which was actually about a year ago, I waited two hours. I was reading The Brothers Karamazov and was in the middle of "Ivan's Nightmare" and thought I was going crazy with him. At least this time I'll have company and we'll come prepared with travel Scrabble. Anyway, I'm pulling the typical move of preparing to be frustrated so when we only wait an hour, it feels good, not bad. So even though tomorrow isn't likely to go how I want it to, I'm looking forward to some movement anyway.