What do you do at the end of a long break? Do you scramble to do everything you didn’t accomplish during the break? Do you take it easy and soak up the last bit of freedom before returning to work? Is it steady as it goes? For me, it’s usually the former. I look at everything I didn’t do or procrastinated about and try to cram as much as possible into the last few hours before heading to bed. Do I work on move logistics? Study Korean? Spend time with my family? I usually end up completing a potpourri of tasks on my last day of break. The night before I took time out to watch "Shrek 2", one of the best animated films of all time (in my humble opinion). Of course, I also own some DreamWorks Animation stock so I’m a bit biased. On the second-to-last day of a long break I usually play around and then spend the last day catching up. I’m just thankful to have had the opportunity for a breather before work starts again.
New Year’s Day and the day after are usually given to College Bowls and the end of the NFL season. I usually don’t watch college bowl games unless my alma mater, the University of Washington is one of the participants. This year they had a lousy season and were out of the bowl sweepstakes. I didn’t even know who was in the BCS final until I surfed to ESPN.com and saw that USC (1) and Oklahoma (2) will duke it out for the championship in the Orange Bowl on January 4th. As a Washington Husky I cannot root for the Trojans, even if they represent the Pac-10 for the championship. It’s a matter of pride. In addition, one of their former alumni, Rick Neuheisel, absolutely decimated the Husky football program as head football coach and was fired for illegally a couple of years ago for participating in a college betting pool. His assistant Keith Gilbertson did even worse and was fired after 1 1/2 years on the job. The Huskies hired former Notre Dame coach Tyrone Willingham to coach the football; we’ll have to see how he does. Interestingly, the Huskies basketball team is fabulous, now ranked #13 in the most recent AP poll. It may be a long time before the Huskies regain their dominance in football because very few colleges and universities excel at both basketball and football. Unless you’re a Florida team, that is. It must be the water.
