I had trouble getting out of bed this morning, mainly due to getting to bed pretty late last night. I suppose I should think of it as practice for next weekend, except for the being-able-to-sleep-in part ( Read more... )

Today has dawned with a brilliant blue sky and bright sun. But there's still a whole lot of moisture in the air, and since so much of what we need to do involves the grass and stuff covered with dew, Lisa said we'll wait until this afternoon when things have dried out a bit before we get to work. The days are nice and long, which gives us plenty ( Read more... )

And so another World Cup comes to an end. I had no dog in this fight, having no ethnic background from either France or Italy. (Well, "Standlee" and "Reynolds," my paternal and maternal family names, are probably both Norman French, but I don't identify with the French ethnically. To the best of my knowledge -- my family history gets cloudy ( Read more... )

Oh, no, not "sick" as in "never want to attend one again," but "sick" as in "I seem to get ill almost every time I attend one." I thought I'd managed to avoid it this time. I washed my hands regularly. I drank a lot of water. I even got nearly enough sleep. All this seems to have done was postponed the inevitable, as I woke up this morning ( Read more... )

I am working from home again today (and it's legitimate, for reasons discussed in a friend-locked post), so once again I get to see (sort of; it's on in the background while I hunch over the computer responding to analysis requests) World Cup matches. This morning it was Cinderella team Ghana against Brazil. While Ghana seemed to actually play ( Read more... )

(Because they "Dive, Dive, Dive ( Read more... )

Before the workload roof caved in on me (I'll write about that separately later), I got to watch the USA's final game in this year's World Cup this morning. Things have been too busy for me to comment on the results until now. While I think the referee was wrong on calling that penalty kick, it wouldn't have mattered that much, as the USA had to ( Read more... )

Because we needed to get over to the Seaside Convention Center (about 50 meters from the hotel) this morning, I only saw the first part of the Ghana-Czech Republic match this morning, but I saw Ghana score the first goal. Lisa was bemused by me whooping and hollering over it. I was even more excited when we came back just before noon and I saw ( Read more... )

Italy and Ghana did not oblige the USA by playing to a draw, which puts the Americans in an even deeper hole going into their second match. It's not impossible -- Turkey lost their first match in the last World Cup and came back to eventually finish third in the tournament -- but it's not going to be easy ( Read more... )

Especially after the remarkable come-from-behind victory of Australia over Japan in the early game (congrats to the Socceroos), I thought the USA might be able to break the dismal record they have when the opponents first score against them (0-13-1), but it was not to be, and worse, the Czech Republic got extra goals for that likely-to-be-crucial ( Read more... )