EXCHANGE INTERFACE

It was kind of amusing.

I watch the game of the Superb Owls but once a year - if that. Skipped the last few, tbh. Finally decided to take a day off and go to the watch-party with the guys at church, and, yeah, that game was... "interesting".

I've seen Kelce at videos of TS concerts and he seems a decent sort but didn't really get much chance to shine in this game. I guess he's usually better that this? The team is usually better than this? I never glimpsed (or recognised) Mahomes before, though. I can't say that I was particularly impressed by him in this game. Not the bad play, not the mouthguard chewing smirk... Was he paid to throw it? The game, that is. Not the ball. He's paid to throw that and he did what appears to be a pretty bad job of it - at least from my pretty comfy chair.

The friends I go to the watch-party with are funny as. They know I watch it once a year - there's another friend who turns up to watch once a year and doesn't follow the rest of the time - and they recognise that I don't need it explained to me, but they answer my questions without condescension. It's great.

It always turns out men-only, I'm the only woman who's ever turned up. It's never been explicitly gendered, just 'superb owl party', time/date/place, and the first year I was in the area and a regular churchgoer here I turned up (I think it was 2017) because it didn't specify that only men could attend, and I've never been one to let the lack of an invitation stop me: at least not the first time.

If the guys had cold-shouldered me, I wouldn't have gone back. But they were welcoming and even friendly, and - as I said before - neither exclusionary nor condescending. I went back at least two more times before COVID hit, and this is the first time I've been since COVID. In pre-COVID years there were maybe 20, possibly even 30 guys. In the years since COVID, there's been considerably fewer. There were four of us (including me) watching at the start - three guys that I'm familiar and friendly with. A fourth friend turned up after an hour or two - he had some work to do - and we pretty much watched the entire game. The fourth friend (the friend who grew the mustache in when I suggested we go 'incognito' to trivia) also needed reminding of how the game was played and the rules. So it's not just me who turns up for the enjoyment of watching the game and commenting with friends.

Anyway, the KCC were completely missing from the game until that last quarter. At time it felt like Mahomes wasn't even trying. And most of the time during it all, the asshole wore a slight smirk.

Purely from that, I can't say I think particularly high of him.

We were lucky that the ESPN Australia transmission didn't show us any famous people at all. Not a one. So, uh, if you want to watch the Superb Owl in the next four years, then you might like to get a VPN and fake an Aussie accent VPN.

Please don't fake the Aussie accent. Don't do that to me. PLEASE.

I made a cake to take along, because we were instructed to bring a dish to share, but...these are guys. You know the joke about the reason nothing happens on International Men's Day is because the men have to actually organise it? This is both a little bit like that, but also very much not like that.

The 'dishes to share' were two chip packets brought by the two other guys, hotdogs organised and cooked by the guy who organised the thing (American national married to an Aussie), and me with a slightly experimental upside-down cake.

It's fine. I enjoy baking, and I also enjoy inflicting it on other people. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it; simple as that.

Also at the end, organiser guy collected the dishes and everything and did the washing up. No leaving it for someone else to do.

--

A small note, in the middle of the game, I was thinking "golly they've got some loud drums at the game".

Uh, no. That was the storm cell dumping about 30mm of water on us in the space of an hour. OOF.

The gutters at church were not coping, neither was the smoke detector in the women's bathrooms... I opened the door and was met with a wet floor and a steady drip. A bucket/bin under it stemmed the tide while I informed one of the guys watching the Superb Owl with me - he's pretty much the church treasurer (we also had two of the three church wardens at the viewing party, and the third turned up for about half an hour just to chat).

Hope they got that cleaned up for the thing that was on this evening.

--

Back in 2020, John Green said he didn't have any stories on the boil, because the stories he would tell for outcome of the 2020 election would be different from the stories he would tell for the other result.

I sort of got what he meant back then.

I'm really getting it now.

Reading through some of the stuff I've been writing over the last eight years - fannish WIPs - I feel almost like they depicted a world that seems like a fading dream.

Sorry, I know that's not cheerful. *big hugs to you all*

--

I still have to write up the brief on the Independent candidate. Better do it tonight or I'll lose all incentive.