London & Sports Weekend

So this weekend I flew over to London to do a little work in the National Archives. They're located in Kew, which is in southwest outer London. To cut down on my travel time, I arranged to stay with a family in Kew that rents out rooms in their house for researchers. I chose this particular place specifically because it proffered wireless internet - a rare luxury in these islands.
I had a late flight out on Thursday night that was pretty uneventful. I got the airport earlier than expected so I chose the Ted Kennedy option and went to the bar and started drinking. By this point in the day I had ingested no less than 3 packaged sandwiches and I needed to deaden the impact of forcing down another one to keep my body running. I got to Heathrow and had enough Sterling on my person from previous visits to Britain to buy myself a Tube ticket - this would prove unnecessary later when I realized that no Cossacks would be around that late at night to see me breeze through the turnstiles. Apart from being accosted by a band of Senegalese who were muttering something about "a bus station" and "a bag of drugs" at me, I got out ok.
I met a friendly British guy on my way to Kew station who helped me figure out why the directions of the lines didn't make sense. He seemed nice and well-dressed, but he didn't have a good enough explanation for why a man of his age was returning from central London at midnight on a Thursday. Usually I see these lone, older, affluent-looking guys in clubs. It has to be assumed that all of them have some massive tragic flaw - like one of their legs is made of fiberglass or something.
Anyway, I felt bad about barging in to the Lees residence at 12:30, but I wasn't about to sleep on a bench. My room was quite clean and well-furnished, and my first night was a good one. I wanted to be at the Archives as soon as it opened, so I rose early. I was informed that eating downstairs would be "unacceptable" because of something to do with "the children," so my marmalade toast and cornflakes were brought to my room. Breakfast was actually quite good though, and as I've developed a morbid appetite for tea, that was welcome as well.
The British National Archives are a massive complex of two main buildings with a big reservoir in between. One looks like the Chinese Imperial Palace and the other looks like a spaceship. The main reading room is located in the spaceship. I had to get photographed and registered and all before I could begin, which was simple enough. There were plenty of English-speaking Anglo-Saxons who were very informative so I learned the system fairly quickly...it's not too different than the Irish National Archives.
The only negative thing was the preponderance of Indians and Jamaicans that prowled around making sure people followed protocol. Make no mistake - these people are expressly necessary in the building to make sure people don't mess things up. The problem is they have the lower-rung jobs and they don't speak English. I brought one-two-many boxes back to my table the first day (because I was an assclown and didn't read the signs), and I got violated by an older Jamacian woman with really bad fake hair. She couldn't understand my questions or apologies, so every time I opened my mouth she cut me off and pointed to a placard nearby, and commenced to read it. This continued to occur until she finished reading me the placard. A major scene later, I was back down to an acceptable number of boxes.
As my time there was limited, I did zero critical reading of the materials I called up, I just took document photos for eight hours straight to use later to maximize my time. It's depressing to discover how much better pensmanship was back in the 1890s. It was pretty cool to handle tons of documents stamped "Secret" (nevermind that they've been declassified since the 70s). I also got to read the biggest book I've ever seen.
For scale, the blue sticker is about the size of a quarter. This monster is a register of illegal organizations. I'd show you a page from it but I'm pretty sure uploading images of them is a massive violation of copyright or some other laws.









The canteen in the Archives had some decent fish and chips, but for supper I was left to my own devices. There was a Marks and Spenser nearby, which is kind of like a Target with groceries, so I went there. The rest of Kew is a labyrinth of houses. After stocking up on cheese and yet more packaged sandwiches, I headed home.
Nights I spent locked up in my room, watching some Slingbox and doing homework. It was kind of depressing the number of hours I spent doing work those two days...because I had nothing else to do. On the upside, the weekend was a great one for sports -

Arsenal 2 - 2 Birmingham City
It's great to see Arsenal drop points. The fact that the final equalizer was a late penalty makes it even better. However, I had to feel sorry for Arsenal after this game. In one of the most horrific sports injuries I've ever seen, or even heard of, Birmingham's Martin Taylor performed an ill-timed, ill-placed tackle on Arsenal's Eduardo, snapping his shinbone like a twig. Double compound fracture. Seriously don't watch this if you just ate.

Manchester United 5 - 1 Newcastle United
A great win especially on a day when Arsenal drew. Ronaldo had 2 again racking up muchos fantasy points for me.

Ireland 34 - 13 Scotland
Ireland moved into second in the table with this convincing win. Scotland have yet to win a match, making this a national catastrophe for the Caledonians. The ice may be thawing for the majority of Irish rugby fans on the current regime, that is until their showdown next round with red-hot Wales.

Wales 47 - 8 Italy
Undefeated Wales are playing the kind of rugby that is fun to watch even if you don't remotely understand rugby. They intercepted passes and ran them in for tries, generally making the Italians look like fools. At this point they're clear favorites to take the 6-Nations crown.

England 24 - 13 France
A tactical grind that was closer than it looked. England are the kind of team that grind out results. 'Nuff said.

and finally...


Tennessee 66 - 62 Memphis
The Vols, for the first time in school history, are the #1 team in men's college basketball. I had ruminated and brooded over this game for over a week, sometimes nervously taking out my wallet-schedule and staring at the date. I had to go to sleep early and wake up to watch it as I had an early flight the following morning. Before I went to sleep I was nauseous and jittery.
Part of it was knowing that we were at an unprecedented level of success. Part of it was hatred for that grease-ball John Calipari and those over-rated thugs on Memphis's team. Part of it was the hype leading up to the game, arguably the biggest in either school's history and only the 5th in-state 1 versus 2 showdown, and the price of tickets (up to five digits).
As luck would have it, when I woke and turned the Slingbox on, our internet in Franklin was down. Words cannot express the level of my rage and frustration at this. After talking to dad on the phone for a bit we got it sorted out about 7 minutes into the game.
The game unfolded in a bizarro sort of way. Memphis, the bigger and more tenacious team down low, was shamefully outrebounded by a smaller UT frontcourt. Memphis bombed the lights out in the early stages of the game from 3-pt range, while UT's stellar guards made little impact from outside the entire game. Lofton only had 7 or so. Wayne Chism, a bigger down-low player for us, actually had three 3s, I think.
Ultimately I think the decider was that Memphis was worse at foul shooting than we are. That isn't easy, as foul shooting isn't our strength. At the end of the day, neither team ran its characteristic style of play, which probably would have resulted in a 100-110 game rather than in the 60s.
After bouts of extreme nerves halfway through the second half, I was strangely calm at the close. At times, as I lay there in a dark, quiet, strange house, my abdominal and leg muscles simply spasmed uncontrollably with anxiety and pent-up aggression. But I never doubted Lofton would hit his foul shots.
Finally, we can't expect to retain our top billing forever. Unlike Memphis, who gets handed their wins by embarrassingly poor opposition week to week, we have a tough schedule and a conference tournament ahead of us. Nevertheless I think its realistic for us to retain a 1-seed going into the tournament, which is more important.

Overall, a great weekend. One of the best in sports for awhile, and I got a lot of work done.
Cheers.