The Iceman cometh

I feel guilty because I know the result of the France-NZ World Cup rugby game and the three men watching it in the next room do not. I don’t actually care except for the fact that this will plunge a small nation into a period of mourning, which is so counterproductive and lame I can’t bear it. Also, it will plunge my husband into a period of mourning which I would rather do without. At least he and the others had the joy of watching the Aussies get defeated first. There was fist-pumping and joy-jumping when that happened. Also lots of “shut up Gregans” and the delicious schadenfraude of knowing that was Georgie’s last game and, bum, it was dreadful.
This is Fleet Week in San Frantastic and there were air shows today and yesterday to celebrate. I felt quite sick yesterday watching four little biplanes puttering around the bay, barrel rolling and diving and tipping their wings. They would shoot straight up into the ether and keep going until it looked as if they were still and would surely stall, then barrel roll and head back down to earth. Amazing. Especially cool with the backdrop of Alcatraz, the TransAmerica building, Coit Tower, and a Bay full of sailboats. We sat at Inspiration Point, in the Presidio, with a bunch of neighbors, munching cashews and marveling. Today we went up on the apartment roof to watch the Blue Angels, a Navy sextuplet of Top Gun-style pilots who whizzed over downtown for 30 minutes or so. It was quite thrilling, and it was me who jumped up and down and clapped a few times—especially when they sliced through the sky just above our building. It was almost enough to make me feel patriotic. I have never been a particularly patriotic person—for NZ or the US—because, I think, of the shifting sands of my childhood. But seeing clever citizens doing cool stuff only made possible by the dedication of their government to building big, noisy, expensive stuff, well it makes a girl flutter.