20 to 17

I have spent many a Jet game glued to my TV, ready to break everything in the room but yesterday as the Jets took on the Chargers in n AFC playoff game I found myself in a hotel room in the city of Antwerp. I was able to see the first half at a local bar and for the fist time in a long time did I know how my soccer or rugby loving foreign buddies feel like on an average day. I was watching a major NFL game on some 24" tube TV in the back of a smoke-filled bar. Everybody in the bar looked at me like I was watching Cricket and even my waiter didn't feel like I should be afforded the respect of his time.
But as only a few people know, it just doesn't matter when the team you follow is on TV and the fact you are at a bar after Midnight with a meeting scheduled less than 8 hours later and a game only half over.
As this bar closed and allowed me to escape the smoke filled bar I felt like Kurt Russell in Escape from LA, a free man but tied to a power stronger than anything a man can be asked for. I run back to the hotel and within minutes I'm searching the internet for some kind of free streaming video of the live NFL action.
I think about asking a buddy stateside for his access code for his Slingbox but can already imagine his wife switching the game off to watch an episode of Mad About You somewhere around the two-minute warning.
I finally get a link that worked (after 10 tries) and there I find myself, sitting alone at 1AM, glued to my puny NETBOOK screen which displays an 2x2 box with a guy 'streaming' the game using his webcam pointed at his own TV, but I don't dare touch the computer as I can't risk messing up this very sophisticated and very sensitive connection.

At the end of the night I find myself in a very familiar position; with my laptop streaming video while I'm sitting in a dark room in my boxers.........but at 20-17 I've never been happier
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry