PTSD

Women's Football and modern architecture

I bet you thought I’d forgotten about this…

So we’ve covered the bathmat, the cat, the new car, the weird apartment complex and the pathos of a deformed Krispy Kreme doughnut.

What’s left?

Oh, right. The football game and the new girlfriend. Nothing like leaving the most difficult bit for last.

First things first—downtown Charlotte has possibly the ugliest building that I’ve ever had the misfortune to photograph. It’s pink (Bright pink. Fuchsia, even. No wishy-washy pale cotton candy pink for them. If you’re going to cover a building in pink glass, go all the way and make it a color that makes passersby search for a pencil to poke their own eyes out) and made even more striking by the total lack of skyscrapers within ten blocks of it. Almost as if none of the other buildings want to admit that it exists.

The hideously pink building has a sad, squatty little friend (S.O.?) with the same pink windows right next door. Truly hideous, and this is coming from someone living in DC, where the buildings are required by law to be either monuments or monumentally unattractive.

The local tire store had a “the manager’s out of town” sale. I guess that’s better than a “we’re afraid the pink building is going to deconstruct itself and take us along for the ride” sale.

Other highlights: the dancing magnetic glove and flatulence exhibits at the science museum, the stifling and not-to-be-believed heat, a misquoted F. Scott Fitzgerald line on a plaque outside the downtown library and a disturbing but funny story about my wedding reception.

And we’re pretty sure (based on an oddly typical conversation that would only make sense to people who were there) that the Litigating Geologist writes his name in his underwear. He didn’t say why.

The comments are open for suggestions from the peanut gallery.

Yeah, that’s about it. Or at least the parts I still remember after three weeks.

Da Big Game:

The football stadium was attached to some sort of minimum-security library and vocational school complex. Only one set of stands was open, so the twenty people cheering on the visiting team were forced to take their lives in hand with every touchdown. Ordinarily I’m perfectly willing to get my ass kicked for the sake of team loyalty, but in this case I figured the odds were a little too stacked. Two to one is risky; fifty to one is just stupid.

Besides, the middle-aged woman screaming obscenities and smoking a cigar next to me definitely had a short fuse and a posse. Luckily, she did most of her screaming at the local team. It was a bit like sitting in the owner’s box at a Reds game. Or so I assume; I’m not a baseball fan.

Then again, maybe no one would have noticed us cheering for Toledo, which was introduced as the Toronto Reign. Playing the Charlotte Queens. An NFL fan’s worst nightmare: “And it’s the Queens at the ten yard line. First and eight for the Queens. Touchdown, Queens!” You get the idea.

The Queens, however, were defeated by the Reign. (Please, the puns are not my fault. Don’t flame me. Go bother the league instead.) Defeated by some very high score I can’t remember that can be translated to “Toledo won by a lot.” I have pictures, but I didn’t take a zoom lens and it was an evening game, so they aren’t really very illustrative. Dan has better ones from a different game, so go bug him for copies. The one of the Footballer completely missing the ball is particularly entertaining.

The Footballer may have been called for unnecessary roughness during the NC game. She says she wasn’t, but we didn’t notice anyone else knocking people over at the time. If it were me, I’d put it on my resume.

Finally, TLG’s new girlfriend is clearly more easily affected by pharmaceuticals than I am. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying that her resulting happy mood was not entirely my fault.

TBC (eventually. Don’t you just love the way I’m dragging out the whole girlfriend thing? You’d almost think I’d been waiting for this situation in order to comment on TLG’s dating habits.)

posted by Elizabeth @ 4:50 PM