Super Bowl Sunday

Before Friday I worked seven full days that were long and difficult. As I mentioned on the moderately insidious Facebook, I'm officially tired of working every third weekend. Landstuhl currently has seven internists, with only 3 permanent party, and only 3 of us currently do the primary ward attending. As such our call on day shifts for the wards, which runs seven days at a time, is precisely every third week. And though on the weekdays we use a much needed second hospitalist, the weekends are all our own.

That means every third weekend (on average; occasionally it's every other, occasionally every fourth, depending) I'm on call all weekend, taking admissions from 7:30 to 4:30 and also rounding on all the current inpatients. Our census is in the double digits, averaging about 12 these days I would guess, and has steadily increased in my time at Landstuhl.

Last week was very busy, and excluding Sunday where I got out of the hospital at a reasonable 5:30 pm (and saw 'Valkyrie' - see last post), I never left before 7 pm and on two nights I think I was there until after 9 pm. In those seven days of 'wards' I easily put in 85 hours. Lame. Doing this kind of thing every three weeks? Very lame.

This sort of schedule gets fatiguing and so while I enjoy working at Landstuhl in many respects I'm also looking forward to a new thing, presumably with a slightly better lifestyle.

Only five months left.

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

Today is a national holiday, of course - Super Bowl Sunday. A year ago on this day I was lucky enough to watch my G-men dismantle the vaunted (and up until then undeafeated) New England Patriots in what was personally the best Super Bowl I've ever seen. Today I'm a little sad that the Giants won't be defending their title, but what can you do?

Gwen got me a nice Giants Super Bowl DVD for Christmas which has 612 minutes of footage including the season finale against the Patriots, all the playoff games, and of course the Super Bowl of Super Bowls.

Today, I rewatched the Giants victory with a cup of coffee in my hand and a big grin on my face. Last year I watched the game in Man Room with a ridiculous combination of stress and exhiliration, and it was cool rewatching the game today thinking back on both the game itself and my reaction to certain plays.

When Tyree made the "Helmet Catch" I was jumping up and down so wildly that I landed on a PS3 controller and crushed it. I'm pretty sure I'll be framing that thing and hanging it someday - in a future Man Room in California perhaps - beneath a glossy 8x11 photo of said catch.

Eli Manning was selected the Super Bowl MVP, but aside from his never-say-die fourth quarter antics (which were not as impressive as I recalled), his performance was actually not that great. As typical for Eli, he missed some key passes, forced some balls into tight coverage, and actual passes which even resemble spirals are few and far between. He was aided by great line play, some tough grabs by the receivers, some dropped picks from Pats defenders, and most of all by a defense that played out of its mind.

It's tough to award the MVP to a defensive player but in watching that game again I think they should have, at least to symbolically reflect the defensive's performance. Justin Tuck would have been a fine choice - in the first half alone he had six tackles, two sacks, and a forced fumble. By the early second half Brady was starting to throw erratically even when there wasn't pressure, and by the end of the fourth quarter I'm pretty sure he was tired of wearing his helmet sideways.

Thinking back, the Giant defense somehow held the Best Offense in History to just 14 points, a remarkable feat and I think the MVP should have awarded in that general direction. Perhaps a generic D-line MVP would have been most appropriate, since those boys were constantly up in Brady's smug grill.

This year the big game will feature the Steelers and the Cardinals. Most years when the Giants aren't involved I have an interesting choice to make as to who to root for. I get no such luxury this year, and even though Gwendolyn isn't near me as I type this, I can feel her glaring eye from afar, an eye which would begin to pulsate with rage should I even consider rooting for the Cardinals.

In seeking to find good reason to root against the Cardinals, I'm finding it is a difficult thing to do. They don't have annoying players, I love Larry Fitzgerald's game, and I'm a Kurt Warner fan from way back - he's a good man and the guy won me a couple of fantasy titles in years past, and that's not something I'll easily forget.

If there's one reason to root against Kurt and his boys today, it's because if he wins he will launch into his horrifically tacky "This is all thanks to Jesus" speech which is something I cannot stand in the venue of sports. I know it is probably intended to be a "selfless" act of thanks, but I actually find it on the contrary to be incredibly selfish.

If Kurt is a religious man that is fine with me, and if he receives joy from that or acts on Christian principles to enrich himself and others, hey great. But to invoke the Almighty in the setting of a football game just makes me shake my head. Whenever someone does it, I just see it as so ridiculously shallow. When "This is all thanks to Jesus" comes out, here is what else I hear in that phrase:

-"Jesus wanted US to win, not them"

-"Thank Jesus that Ben Roethlisberger missed his open receivers"

-"Thank Jesus that Hines Ward has a knee injury and isn't 100 percent"

-"Thank Jesus that James Harrison missed that tackle - I guess that guy isn't a good person like me, who deserves this."

And so on. It drives me nuts. Something tells me that Kurt's savior Jesus has far more important tasks in front of Him than helping Anquan Boldin break downfield tackles and propelling the Cardinals to a Super Bowl title.

If Kurt finds strength in his faith - great. But don't trivialize such a thing by assuming it to be important in the outcome of what is essentially just a damn football game, especially when the tone of any such "thanks" statement is so "If the other team believed in Jesus just a little more, they would be holding this trophy but since I'm such a big Jesus guy - it's mine". I just think that's ridiculous.

You might as well call for a Jihaad on the other team at that point (like I do on a weekly basis with the Cowboys).

In any event, go Steelers.