Tempting Fate

I shouldn't have written about hurting my fingers, because that was just an invitation for the fates to hurt my fingers some more, which happened tonight. The same finger that I hurt playing basketball 2 weeks ago started to hurt again while I was playing volleyball with a bunch of the teachers, and one of my thumbs was added to the mix too. But then again, every other part of my body hurts after an ultimate frisbee workout last night and multiple hours of sports with the teachers tonight, so I hardly notice the pain in my fingers. That's good...right?

Those gym teachers in Germany really know how to train. I mean, every Thursday night we warm up and do various stretching and exercises, then we play three different sports, each for about an hour. I'm usually dead after the first round of exercising. It's really quite embarrassing to be the youngest guy out there, a former athlete, and yet feel like I'm about to pass out from exhaustion the whole time. My only consolation is that, since most of them are gym teachers, there's a reason they've kept in some kind of shape and are pretty versatile when it comes to all the different sports. I had a good reason for getting out of shape my last year of college: exercising cut into my drinking time. Anyway, getting back into the realm of things I know, we had some beer at the end of the night, and that helped to ease the pain. So does the prospect of falling into bed in a few minutes and not having any school tomorrow.

Before I go, you should check out this article, about "melody roads" in Japan which play music when you drive over them. My initial reaction: I really hope one of them will play "Jive Talkin'" by the Bee Gees -- since the inspiration for the beat of that song came when the group was driving over some bridge in Miami and heard the thudding of the car going over the gaps in the road, it would be utterly appropriate. Plus "Jive Talkin'" is a sweet song. Talkin' 'bout jive, turkey.

My second reaction: that's gonna get annoying reeeeally quickly unless you can come up with an alternate route to work. Maybe this will finally be the catalyst that sparks Japan's love affair with the off-road vehicle.