lumière des étoiles

Uh oh, are WE the Man?
2006-06-23 10:47 a.m.

Our home was a little divided yesterday: I couldn’t help but pull for Ghana in their match against the US team, while Steve really wanted to see the US team advance into these second rounds of games. But beyond that, after I said I wanted Ghana to advance because we’re The Man and Ghana is a struggling country full of democratic hope for a more stable economy and government, and that winning would help build their esteem and gain some more international recognition, Steve – while agreeing with that – also tried to argue that we, the US team – are so not The Man. In the world of soccer, he said, the US is totally the underdog, even within our own country. It’s a team of athletes, he said, who are discounted and disregarded by the American public, and who aren’t ever expected to succeed. I see (and saw) his point. But then one of the announcers, in a moment of downtime/filler conversation, explained that the Ghanaian government asked the local mines to shut down early for the day, so the country would have enough power to keep people’s TV sets going through the whole game. I turned to Steve, and totally didn’t even have to say anything. “Well OK,” he said, after hearing that, “they’re not exactly The Man in this match either.” Yeah. I can’t imagine around here that we’d have the same issue.

So thanks to a totally unwarranted and unfair penalty kick (these have been some of the worst calls I’ve ever seen in sporting events) awarded them, Ghana beat the US 2-1 and now they’re advancing into the second round as the only (sub-Saharan) African team left in the World Cup. (Not that the US can blame one unfair call for their loss; they played ok for a few and then just sucked all around in the second half.)
Ghana will play Brazil soon, which should be an interesting match. While Brazil is arguably poorer and more problematic than Ghana as a nation, they’re definitely The Man when it comes to soccer; they have some legacy behind them and tend to dominate. Can’t wait to see what happens – I’ve enjoyed watching the games in any case, and it’s nice to have Steve home with me to watch them.

I’m really glad he didn’t take a summer grad course or a second job. He needs the rest from all that kept his day full from this past school year, and all that will keep him just as busy next year. I don’t accept the notion or m.o. that drives and characterizes this part of the world – that if there’s money to be made and you don’t go out and make it, you’re lazy and/or a fool. I think rest is totally underrated, and an inability to just veg as time passes for a bit is why so many people get cancer or whatever.

Poop. The mechanic just called to tell me that my car is making odd noises and running a bit rough. He knows I just brought it in for an oil change, but do I want him to see what the problem might be with the odd noises? This is painfully funny, since I’ve been trying to point that odd noise/running rough thing out to several mechanics over the last two years, but none ever really diagnosed or treated the problem accurately, it just kept coming back after a while. I guess not pursuing it beyond that, only having energy to drag it back in every now and then, wasn’t the best idea. I just hope this doesn’t turn into a thousand dollar problem.

Our state of financial affairs is very odd indeed. Thanks to some very good investments, we’re in a new tax bracket and have joined the ranks of those who must pay a quarterly (or more?) estimated tax installment, to be refunded by the end of the year if we wind up over-paying. So we shell money out every other month or something to pay for profits on investments that are all tied up in the market – it’s not as if we have this money in our hands to oh, pay for a new engine or something should the Saturn need one. So we pay lots of money in taxes for money we have on paper, but not that we have in the bank. “That’s not the point, though,” my brother said the other day when I was trying to wrap my head around this peculiar position. “What you’re worth on paper is the point.” Is it? And what does that mean? Lord knows Steve has tried to explain this to me as well, but I still think of money in terms of what my salary is, how much I will get paid per extra class I teach at Rutgers, how much I owe AmEx or my Car Insurance carrier, or how much it costs for some new mascara or to get to Mali on BritishAir. According to everyone, that is the “wrong” way to think of it.

How cliché – I’m confused about how our finances work and letting my husband sort through most of it. He’s good at it and used to this sort of money-wrangling, and I am not. That’s shameful, really - I should be devoting myself to spending more time understanding our investments and profits and losses, not to mention those pie charts that TIAA-CREFF sends me all the time since the Uni I work for full-time now has me enrolled in some sort of pension-investment thing. That, actually, I understand a bit better, but it’s not as if I didn’t have major help in planning all of that too. Gah, I have to take a doctorate level economics class in the Fall. Can I do this? Here's where I shut off my brain and pretend that being an adult is just about voting and buying beer.

xoxo

Esase, Ghana - in the hizouse!