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We had all these ideas for what to do today, but in the end our plans were dashed--not by the weather (which was actually quite icky), not by my allergies (which were also pretty miserable), but by two men named Roger and Rafael. First I have to explain that I usually don't like watching sports--in fact, I practically guarantee that this will be my first and last sports-centred post--and moving from one sports-obsessed country to another, the sport itself has changed (from hockey to football), but the maniacal nature of fandom has not. Having said that, there's something about BBC coverage of Wimbledon that succeeds in drawing me into tennis. It's already just about the only sport I can watch without getting extremely bored, but in Vancouver I usually only catch clips from the championship games. In London, it's practically impossible not to see bits of games from every round of play; if coverage is over on BBC1, it's probably just starting on BBC2. For the entire Wimbledon fortnight (ha, "fortnight" . . . that and "stone" as a unit of weight still make me feel like I should be donning 17th-century garb, even though they are everyday words around here, as normal as "weeks" and "pounds"), TV seems to become about tennis, and on no day was that more true than today. Since we were still home when the match started, we thought we'd watch a bit before going out, but the game was just too good, and the thought of Nadal winning in straight sets too shocking to leave the house. Then there was the first rain delay, but we stayed put. And then Federer came back and suddenly it was the fifth set! Luckily a second rain delay gave us just enough time to make dinner and then we oohed and aahed through the end of that final set, looking out the window as the sun went down, wondering if they'd have enough light to finish, until that final ball hit the net and Nadal dropped to the ground in joy. We celebrated the end of the game by digging into some dessert we bought for last night's supper, but didn't end up having room for:

Delicious chewy rice cakes filled with sweet red beans are a favourite childhood treat of mine, and, happily, Bob shares my appreciation of the gooey desserts that we relished while Nadal posed with his teeth on something a tad more solid: his extremely hard-won Wimbledon trophy.