Randomisms

I'm at a firm retreat near Dulles Airport with no Braves game to discuss, so here are the odds and ends going through my mind right now:

1. On the plane ride up here yesterday, it seemed as if half the men onboard were either wearing Nationals caps or were discussing the team. Their season must be like what the Braves' '91 season was like for us...except for the fact that we had lived through seven years of terrible baseball, whereas DC is getting a winner in their first season. I know that deserve's got nothing to do with it, but does a city really deserve a winner in their first year of having a team? It was bad enough that the Marlins won in year seven and the D-Backs won in year four, but what about a team winning in year one?

1a. On the other hand, I prefer the Nats to the obnoxious Mets, the unsupported Marlins, or the Phillies and their "abuse makes us good fans" support.

2. More signs of my decline as a sports fan: last night, I could have watched the Finals, but I preferred to drink and schmooze. (About what? I'm a little hazy on those details. I think I made fun of transactional lawyers.) I was also talking to a couple Texas grads and when the topic of the Rose Bowl came up, I changed the subject so the woman sitting with us could talk about her high school sorority in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. What the hell happened to me? I used to revel in Michigan's losses as something fun to complain about. Now, I change the subject. I liked the old me better.

3. We just had a seminar on visualizations to use at cocktail parties to aid in interacting with new people. I'm apparently supposed to think of a house with kids and pets and a palm tree and remember what they represent. In my own mind, I just think about one thing: a football helmet. At cocktail parties, my sole motivation is to turn the topic to sports (except when painful Michigan losses are involved) and talk about that until I decide that the talkee doesn't like the subject. Then, I sputter around like the T-1000 in the vat of molten metal at the end of Terminator 2. I am figuring out that most people like to talk about their kids, but is marketing success really worth constant boredom on my part?