Strange Things from this Saturday

This is how the end of my Saturday got a bit weirder than I really wanted it to. It starts with work (as always, it seems) But I got off and instead of going straight home I hung out at Comic Box for a stretch (which was fine just for the sake of BloodBowl watching) and I head home. This is where the true strangeness begins.

Earlier, when I was leaving for work first thing in the morning, I debated turning on my outside light. it's one of those philosophical questions that I sometimes toy with. Do I leave a light on for the entire day on the possibility that I won't be home again before the sun goes down? In this case, I wasn't sure that I was going anywhere after work, and even if I got home late it wouldn't be that late, so I left it off.

So I'm pulling up into my driveway at around 7ish, and I'm thinking about unloading my gear from the trunk of my car, when I see a shadow moving along the right side of the car. No big deal. It's not a human sized "you're about to get jacked" shadow, so no threat there. It is, as I eventually notice as it wanders to the front of my car and into my headlights, a stray cat. I've learned over the course of time that stray cats tend to wander into my yard sometimes, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. Until I see another cat wander in fron of my car as well.

"Ah, he's got a friend today," I think to myself as I get ready to put the car into park. Then I see another cat wander by. And another. That's four cats in the course of a matter of about twenty seconds all wandering not just in my yard but in front of my car (which requires them to squeeze between my now parked car and a shrub, I should note). At this point, I have a few thoughts:

1. I didn't think cats traveled in packs like dogs.
2. That's one heck of a glitch in the Matrix.
3. This is just how those Stephen King movies start.
4. This has to be the most tail that's ever been at my house at any one point in time.
5. I wonder if I'm like Teen Wolf (and yes, I realize that's not how Teen Wolf happened at all, but I can't be bothered to think of the right movie that would fit here).

So I end up getting out of my car and attempting to shoo these cats, which turns out to be harder than I thought. Because not only did I have to run them the entire distance to my back yard, I then had to taunt the last two all the way over the back fence. Don't ask me why I was worried about there being cats in my backyard, and most certainly do not ask me why I thought they wouldn't just come back as soon as I went inside. I just don't know.

So I drift inside the house and I go to turn on some football. As a long time Falcons fan (or Falcons survivor, as I like to say), I have to show my team a little support. I turn on the TV, and I try to play catch up with the game. Only I can't, because I'm forced to answer a much more important question: who in the **** is Matty Ice?

There's a brief period where I think that maybe Arizona has some player I just never accounted for. Or maybe even that the Falcons have some new player. But no, what's happened is that, for reasons I can't fully assess, the commentating staff either heard or discovered that Atlanta QB Matt Ryan was either calling himself (or most likely was called by someone else) "Matty Ice". And again, for an inexplicable reason, said crew (which included Chris Collinsworth, who I'm all but positive is disliked by virtually everyone) decided to call Ryan "Matty Ice" for at least the fourth quarter but most likely the entire game.

And while many people may argue that it just wasn't Atlanta's game to win (they did overacheive for this year just making the playoffs), I can guarantee it wasn't meant to be based on one simple fact: they acquired a stupid nickname. For long following fans/survivors, you'll note that the first stage of a Falcons collapse is acquiring some type of moniker that the general public will find repulsive and/or stupid. The next most valid example of this would be the year the Falcons made the Super Bowl, a season highlighted by the team deciding they would refer to themselves as "The Dirty Birds". Fortunately, a Super Bowl defeat and a run of mediocre seasons all but obliterated that one. But now, we apparently have "Matty Ice"? Did I anger the football gods at some point?

Fortunately though, that's the pinnacle of oddity for my weekend. So I can't really complain that much. I know some folks that were doing far worse, so I've gotta say that for the most part, life's being pretty good to me. Now if I can just not hold feline conventions in my yard...