This is the time of the year I look forward to least. It's cold, March Madness is still weeks away, and the NHL and NBA are slugging through their mid-season doldrums. That is when I start to get the full effects of football withdrawal.
Football withdrawal's symptoms include watching the boredom known as the Pro Bowl, analyzing the top prospects coming out for the draft, and starting to actually be interested in the Parcells/Kraft battle (which I'm glad is finally over). Some addicts pick up substitute fillers like hockey and basketball, but those games don't quite fill the week-to week excitement of the NFL. There's only so many times you want to see Ottawa battle it out with the Bruins. Some temporarily take off their football maniac exterior for that of a normal human being, only to store it until the players suit up again for preseason.
Me, I guess I'm more of the former. I start filling up on useless bits of sports knowledge like who's on top of the Nascar circuit and just how well so and so is doing on the Nike Tour. When the withdrawal gets to its worst, I admit that I have resorted to the bottom of all sporting events: the X-Games. Don't even get me started on that one.
Soon I'll figure just what exactly is happening in the NHL and NBA. I'll find out just how good a job Harry Sinden has done in destroying the Bruins. I'm looking forward to watching how Barkley and Drexler survive the age factor as their season winds down and the playoffs heat up. Then baseball rolls in with the spring, and I'll enjoy ripping the Red Sox rightfully apart.
But that's weeks and weeks away. For now, I'll let myself wallow in football withdrawal. After all, it's only a once-in-a-year moment. I better enjoy it.
Speaking of once a year moments, Winter Carnival marches closer and closer. Carnival is perhaps the only thing that makes Winter term tolerable. For a little while, we get to pretend that slush and snow really are cool. It seems to me that the weather seems more appropriate for sitting around a warm fireplace with a cup of coffee rather than running up and down Webster Avenue and getting frostbite on practically every extremity.
Then again, there is apparently a large community who is immune to the effects of winter. I cannot explain what drives people to jump into a freezing pond in the dead of winter. I just hope that the experience is worth it. We have the Psi-U keg jumpers. That's how I know that it's winter. Only when it's as dreary as winter would watching people compete in such a nonsensical competition be so much fun.
It's Carnival: a time to forget everything and go crazy. Enjoy the outdoors for once without caring that you wouldn't do these things on any other weekend. You only get four of them. Before you know it, you're going to be dealing with the winter in the real world. That's the world where there is no such thing as Winter Carnival.
