Soccer, local edition

Victor's latest nightmare ended well: he played the first half of last night's game as goalkeeper, and the world didn't end. To be more precise, although he did get scored on, only one was remotely his fault, unlike the last time a coach was foolhardy enough to hand him the keeper jersey, where we had to reach for scientific notation to record the score. Victor credited Ian, the team's sweeper, for making him look much better in net than he really was (although Ian had the same thing happen to him that Paraguay's team suffered in the game against England . . . a misdirected header for an own-goal).

In the second half, Victor scored on a penalty shot, which certainly made up for some of the agony of the first half. Final score, 3-2 for the opposition, but it was a very well-matched game and could easily have gone either way (Victor's team got in lots of shots, but couldn't get the aim quite right).