In the event, Salah preoccupied himself with changing his boots at the side of the pitch while the two teams went through their Uefa-prescribed pre-match handshakes.
And the President himself, on a weekend when he could have been preoccupying himself with the deepening humanitarian catastrophe in Puerto Rico, became obsessed with this crisis of his own making, tweeting about it through the night.
Zak is pretty preoccupied himself and forgets he has the thing until he has occasion to whip it out one day and discovers he can make everybody and everything stand still.
"It is not possible that the head of government goes to Genoa four times, and preoccupies himself only with flower pots, dirty laundry and building facades," Domenico Fisichella, a senator of the far-right Alleanza Nazionale, said in a radio interview on Monday, referring to Mr. Berlusconi's comments before the meeting that the city was unsightly.
Like Audun's father, who lives rough in the pine forests surrounding Oslo, these moments constantly threaten to invade Audun's everyday existence; he responds with silence, preoccupying himself with books and walking the dismal confines of the city's concrete suburbs.
However, after his return, he lived a feckless life, preoccupying himself with drinking, gambling and hunting, and being a leading supporter of cockfighting.
For months now on the campaign trail, Donald Trump has preoccupied himself with mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass) identification with Native American lineage.
At times, Brautigan appears so preoccupied with himself that he threatens to neglect his daughter; she sometimes seems to have more of a parental instinct than he does himself.
Early in 1798 Coleridge had again found himself preoccupied with political issues.
Andrée wrote that he was preoccupied with observing himself to determine whether he was afraid.
