Heart-stopping Finale

We watched today’s game, Seahawks @ St. Louis, at our friend’s apartment in Seattle. What a game it was! Seahawks played a terrible first half, but came back in an unusually well-played second half. In the last 2 minutes of the game, St. Louis scored a touchdown with the extra point and was ahead by one point. We ran the ball without a huddle and with 17 seconds left we tried to run the ball again and received a 5-yard penalty against us. With 4 seconds left, we had to kick the field goal from 59 yards away…

 

Earlier that game another field goal attempt failed – rather miraculously – as the ball hit one goal post, bounced over to the other, then bound out – almost as if watching a ball bouncing out of the basket in basketball. In the kicker’s defense, the laces were down.

 

…so the ball was kicked, it went up, and as everyone held their breath, the ball approached the goals but from the angle it was hard to tell if the ball split the posts. Then the refs’ hands went up. GOAL!

 

A fun-filled day of great food, friends, and football. And quite a football game it was.

Seahawks beat the Giants…Again

Today was projected to be one heck of a game, so by invitation Tracy and I went to our friend Kevin’s condo in Belltown, Seattle. He rented out one of the event rooms with a grill outdoors and it was certainly a perfect day for grilling – an unusually sunny day in Seattle.

 

The first few plays of the game was spectacular after we recovered the ball. After the first couple of touchdowns Kevin wanted to say we would definitely win, but that would’ve jinxed us so we wouldn’t let him…until after the 4 touchdown toward the end of the first half! That was our mistake, because during the second half their offense stepped up to the challenge and it appeared our defense got a little sloppy. We still won by 12 points: Seahawks 42, Giants 30. After last year’s win against the Giants in overtime I expected a little more of a fight from the Giants, but it was still a fairly decent game.

 

After we helped clean up, Tracy and I drove to Queen Anne, Seattle, to Kerry Park. It is a wonderful viewpoint for seeing both the Seattle cityscape and Mt. Rainier, as you can see below by a couple of sample photographs I took.

 

It was truly a great day.

Interesting Fight

Tracy and I took Suzie to Marrymoore Park today for the first time in a few weeks since she was recently spayed. We took her for a walk first to wear her out a little so she doesn’t dart off. We stopped along one of many of the waterfronts where dogs like to play fetch in the water. She was reluctant to go in since when she was a pup she dove off unexpectedly into Lake Washington in the deep water. We slowely pushed her in (didn’t toss her out there, which I read was not a good idea) and she got more and more used to it, almost to the point of jumping in herself. After a while we let her off the leash and had to put her back on again because she just darts off. If the park had gates I wouldn’t mind so much but we don’t want her to run out into the parking lot and get run over.

 

Anyway, back to the subject. On the way out of the park, I saw off in the distance a little bunny and what appeared to have been a ferret (based on its short hair, shape, and apparent many wild, once-captive ferret population). They were play fighting, chasing each other back and forth. It was very cute and entertaining to stand back and watch them play.

Super Bowl XL – Extra Large Disappointment

I would say that the Seahawks are my favorite team. Maybe enough time with more seasons like this year will sway me. I mean, I’ve never lived in a state before Washington that had an NFL team so I basically latched onto a team that was close.

 

But last night during Super Bowl XL was a disappointment. Yes, I’m happy our team won the NFC championship, but things seem to fall apart – especially in the last half – and our team started playing like last season’s team. We dropped the ball numerous times and our placekicker missed two field goal attempts that could’ve won us the game if we hadn’t let Steeler’s Parker through like a hot knife through butter, or if our last drive in the 4th quarter would’ve landed us a touchdown.

 

To add insult to injury the calls seemed very one-sided. Save the false start call against the Steelers in the first quarter I don’t remember another call against them. No one’s that squeaky clean. And I don’t care if there isn’t a foul for it or not, Steeler’s quarterback Roethlisberger was dirty cheater when the bawl landed short of the end zone and he moved it into the end zone after it was down thinking he wouldn’t get caught. After review he still caught it but it was difficult to tell if the ball broke the end zone line or not. Being that Roethlisberger’s arm was masking the end of the ball I don’t see how the ref could’ve given it to them. He seemed to have it out for us (not that every call was bad, but certainly a couple were).

 

It was just a night of disappointment. Congratulations for winning the NFC championship, though, Seahawks’s. Do it again next year.

 

On the plus side many of us at our friends’ house in Kenmore were enjoying the non-stop playful (most times) fighting between Suzie and their little beagle Charlie. It’s a good thing they were just playing – Suzie’s not a very good fighter and spent more time on her back (even by her own action).