by S has contacted me today from Prague, so that’s nice. She told me (in Romanian, yay!) about her technological woes and the wet weather there.
We’ve finally reached the end of the regular Major League Baseball season, only we haven’t, because not one but two of the divisions finished in a tie for first place, both in the National League. That’s after 162 games and roughly 500 hours of playing time for each team. Rather than use some sort of tie-breaker method, like head-to-head, run differential or number of ejections, the four teams involved will sort it out on the field. Two bonus 163rd games, that kick off (!) at 8pm and 11pm tonight, my time. The losers of these extra games don’t go home; instead they play each other in the wild card game tomorrow. For the loser of that game, it really is all over. This crazy turn of events is unprecedented, and productivity is likely to plummet in certain parts of the US. I’ll tune in to the first of the bonus games, between the Cubs and the Brewers at Wrigley Field, after my lesson. For the Red Sox over in the American League, things were much more clear cut. Maybe they eased off the gas just a fraction in September, but they still finished with 108 wins, or exactly two-thirds of their games. That’s the best record in the major leagues. Whether they’re the best team is another matter. Boston are very good and a heap of fun to watch, but I’d say the Yankees are about as good and Houston Astros (last season’s champions) are marginally better.
Only two lessons today. The first was on the verb “to get” and most (certainly not all) of its many, many uses. Tonight it’s likely to be either business English or an article on funky modern offices (the sort of places that I’d hate to work in). I’m getting a fair volume of phone calls now, so my hours should eventually increase from last week’s 22½.
