A National Holiday

We haven’t had much chance to get out for adventures recently. Money is tight and now that I’m a student and employed I am much busier than I was before. We’d made tentative plans to visit a museum on Saturday but in the end we didn’t go. I had too much work to do to get away in the afternoon. Our one family outing of the weekend was a visit on Sunday to the home of our good friends the Tittlers. The occasion was a party to celebrate a major, if unofficial, national holiday.

The holiday was Superbowl Sunday, of course. My year is not complete without watching the game. I’ll watch it alone in my living room if none of my friends are interested in watching it with me but the Superbowl is the one football game during the year that is more fun with a crowd, even though few of my close friends are big football fans. The Superbowl can be fun even for people who don’t much care about the game. I’ve known non-football fans to leave the room during play and come back in during commercial breaks to see the ads, which are unusually entertaining for TV ads.

Finger food and the half-time show were big hits with the kids. It’s great to see children eagerly devouring strips of red bell pepper and baby carrots. As always this year’s half-time show was a big-budget spectacle. I often wonder about the choice of performers for the show but the production values are always high and the music upbeat. The children at the party enjoyed the show Madonna put on even though they don’t really know her music the way their parents do, whether they want to or not. It is amazing how quickly they set up and tear down the stage.

This year’s Superbowl was certainly exciting. Though Tom Brady’s final throw wasn’t likely to result in a score it wasn’t impossible so the outcome was in doubt until the end. As a New Englander and a Patriots’ fan I was disappointed by the outcome but I think the Giants deserved their victory. I’m looking forward to next season. Unless Tom Brady unexpectedly decides to retire in the off-season the team should be better next year than it was this year. Nothing is certain in football and it’s impossible to predict the next season's outcome at the end of the last one but I expect the Patriots to be back in the playoffs next year.