Waiting to Exhale

That pretty much describes my day. Or, really, the last 5 days. Until about 1:50 this afternoon. When I was standing at my coworker's desk and the internet page, after what seemed like an eternity, finally loaded.

AZZURRI WIN 2-0 OVER CZECHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was so overjoyed watching the Ghana beat the Czechs on Saturday. The classic underdogs coming up strong story (and I'm not usually a "cheer for the underdogs" person). They played such an amazing game and their goalie is now one of my favourite players in the whole tournament.

However, it really threw the Group E rankings into a hailstorm. Especially with Italy just tieing the US. Suddenly no one was guaranteed entry into the next round. And, while I cheer for them, I can't/don't count on Italy to ever actually deliver.

So all week I've been anxiously awaiting Thursday. If I hadn't had a customer visit *and* a visitor in for training, I would've seriously considered taking the morning off. Instead I sat through an all-day meeting wondering, every minute between 10:00 and 11:45, how everyone was doing.

The meeting ran long. Finally escaped for a couple minutes at 1:45. Went to see a coworker about another project. Couldn't take it anymore and asked him to check the score.

I stopped breathing as he loaded Internet Explorer. I asked him to wait one minute. Could I really take knowing? Not knowing was even worse. I told him to go ahead. He loaded the sports webpage.

That's when I saw the headline. And squealed. And tried to quietly cheer.

And finally exhaled.

Ghana and Italy advance. I couldn't have asked for a better result.