The Daily News

1  Annnnnnnd...time to get real. Or real time. Or something.

2  Warriors put Portland away.

3  Annnnnnnd...can we now speak the unspeakable?

4  For a millisecond I thought it possible that Portland could have been in the middle of one of the greatest turnarounds in history. I thought that. Aloud. Publicly. 

5  Annnnnnnd...I wasn't drinking. Or smoking. Or on any form of drug. 

6  I decided to start all that up this morning. 

7  JUST kidding. Yeesh. Way to go Warriors, and WAY to go Steph and company. Klay. Bogut. And congrats to Portland for arriving. Just a GREAT series. Glad we came out on top.

8  Moving On, Part One: Yesterday I had an absurd thing happen. 

9  I heard Joni Mitchell singing through my headphones, only it was distant. She was singing Both Sides Now. For the eight-hundredth time.

10  I woke up in Le Luge, my chair. I looked over at my laptop and sure enough, not only was Joni Mitchell finishing her eight-hundredth version of Both Sides Now, she was receiving a standing ovation from peers.

11  I looked at my iPhone and saw that it was a little after six.

12  "What time is it?" I asked Helene. She was tacking away at her laptop. 

13  "It's around six," she said.

14  "Holy sh!t!" I said "Holy sh!t!" 

15  I grabbed my phone and hit the health app. I had walked a little over four miles. "I slept right through the basketball game! I walked only four miles yesterday. My daily average is RUINED. And I slept right through the night!"

16  In my mind, I felt I had been attacked by brutally by Daniel Tiger. I was enraged. I wanted to kill. I wanted to kick the walls down. She calmed me with rolling eyes and kind words. "You've only been asleep for about an hour. Relax."

17  I didn't believe her. "We missed The Middle," I said. Second night in a row. My favorite TV character of all time is Sue Heck, because she is SUCH a perfect nerd. And nobody on the planet does nerd better than actress Eden Sher.

Eden Sher as the inimitable Sue Heck in The Middle.

18  Helene didn't respond, just looked back down at her laptop.

19  I got up and tried walking. My feet burned in pain. 

20  I looked around. It was then I realized I had simply fallen into a deep afternoon nap. I hadn't missed the Warriors, and I had yet to watch the Giants' game, which I recorded so we could spend the afternoon buying a bunch of flowers and plants for the backyard. It was all coming back to me. 

21  "You want to watch the Giants?" she asked.

22  "I want to watch The Middle," I said. 

23  This wasn't even a topic worthy of discussion. There was a perfectly normal documentary of the Unabomber on. Sue Heck didn't have a prayer, nor did Brick nor Axl. 

24  I finally smiled. I had no idea of anything, was just glad that a) I hadn't missed the Warriors, and that b) I hadn't listened to Joni Mitchell sing Both Sides Now eight hundred times. 

25  It was then that the Universe started to right itself.

26  Finally. 

27  Nice to know that change can go back and right itself.

28  Eventually everything moved to normal. The game, of course, sent me to the moon and back, to cop a phrase.

29  And because I obsessed over the four miles, I over- compensated late at night, eventually walking walking over seven miles, and logging over 18,000 steps.

30  That was a form of bragging, I suppose, but it really was more along the lines of the Maren's chase and Daniel Tiger.

31  This morning settled, but still found me up and walking, almost as though someone had put a chip in my stupid. 

32  Midway through some ad for Kitchen Aid blenders came on. It was hosted by a guy named Alex Hidell. At least it SOUNDED like the guy's name.

33  Alex Hidell was an alias Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly used in assassination-lore. 

34  I decided immediately to throw that one over my shoulder. No point dancing with the dame on that dance card.

35  I crumbled the concept up and tossed it off into the recycling. 

36  I looked out, heard some birds chirp.

37  Life had indeed righted itself, at least for the moment.

38  That was confirmed when The Philadelphia Story appeared on TCM this morning. 

39   "I thought all writers drank to excess, and beat their wives."
                     ---Cary Grant as C. K. Dexter Haven in George                                            Cukor's The Philadelphia Story

Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James

Stewart in The Philadelphia Story.

40  That line just jumped off the TV. Half a second ago. Gotta love it.

41  Annnnnnnd the Warriors put Portland away last night.

42  Annnnnnnd I didn't listen to Joni Mitchell re-sing Both Sides Now eight hundred times this morning. 

43  Life has simple ways, at times, of righting itself.

44  Gottago.

45  Have a GREAT day.

46  Go Sharks.

47  See you again.

48  Peace.

~H~

fin.