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Monthly Archives: June 2010
FIFA World Cup Games 55 and 56
Look what snuck out since I was out in the garden on Sunday.
Round of 16 is finished. Only 8 more games. And two days off. Quarter-finals don’t start until Friday.
Paraguay v. Japan
The Paraguay kits look like they came from Santa’s workshop. I want red-striped socks like that.
Japan is so cute and so much fun to watch.
Is there anything more heartbreaking that losing in penalty kicks? I didn’t see the entire game but loved the 90 minutes I watched. Sorry to see you go Japan.
Portugal v. Spain
I really like both these teams and hate to see one go home early. Portugal seemed to have it together for the first half and made tons of great shots that didn’t go in. But then Spain took over. Later they substituted with dreamboat Fernando Llorente who had the misfortune of getting his shirt torn and then he had to go change it which ESPN cut away from. What the hell ESPN?
These last phases of the World Cup are so much knuckle-biting. Can’t wait to see Germany and Argentina this weekend and grow another 50 grey hairs.
Bus Accident this morning
This morning my bus got in a fender bender.
I’m too lazy to look for the cite but I’m positive that state law in OR and WA says cars must yield to the bus. Where the commuter bus gets on the freeway two lanes merge into one. Mr. Crazy-Guy seemed to think the bus should yield to him. From what I could see, he invented a 3rd lane in the middle, honked his horn for about 3 minutes and bent his side mirror.
The bus lets him go ahead and he stopped in front of bus, parked and a guy looking the lost Carradine brother jumped out and ran for the bus.
The bus driver opened the door. I thought we were all going to die. Crazy guy started yelling why didn’t the bus yield. Why did he break the mirror. Stop! No one was going to go anywhere.
The bus driver agreed, we’re stopped and he initiated his procedure. He phoned the transit people, made arrangements to get us on another bus and then passed out passenger witness cards.
All the passengers looked at each other and said: “Uh, wasn’t he trying to cut off the bus?”
Meanwhile crazy guy got out his camera out and took photos. Then came back and argued some more.
Our bus driver is cute, sorta like Kal Penn, remained completely calm the entire time. He said, “We have video cameras all over this bus, I’m not going to argue with you.”Â
Crazy guy examined the damage further and decided his side mirror wasn’t really broken and he needed to get going because, you know, “He had things to do.”
The bus driver was like, “Hard cheese pal. We’re in the process now. You can’t run off.”
Meanwhile, the passengers on the bus are seething because they’re going to be late for work. Not me, although I was also seething, it was because I was going to miss the kick off for the Paraguay v. Japan game.
The next bus arrived to pick us up and one of the passengers went over to say something to crazy guy. I almost followed with my camera.
What was he thinking? Don’t pick a fight with the bus. Even if the bus driver is wrong, which I don’t think he was this time, just take your foot off the gas. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he finds out he’s responsible for the damage to the bus.
– – –
I’m going to be offline for about a week. When I return, more soccer updates and Clarion West Write-a-Thon Week #2 Update.
FIFA World Cup Games 53 and 54
This is the hallway between the restroom and our office. It’s always kinda awkward if someone else is coming down the hall. Do you say hello? Do you ignore them? And it’s awkward to follow or be followed. But it’s awesome for me to practice my tumbling passes like my round-off flip-flop flip-flop whip-back flip-flop double-twisting layout. You gotta be careful at that dog-leg though.
I’m taking actual leave time later this week so I don’t really want to burn through a lot of leave time watching the games. Ionly watched the first half of the Netherlands v Slovakia. I decided to watch the second half of the Brazil v. Chile game which was a bummer because they were up by 2 at the 2nd half when I started and got another goal in the 58th. No point in watching when Brazil is up 3-0. So I tried to get a bunch of work done in anticipation of Spain v. Portugal tomorrow. The other game is Paraguay and Japan and that should be good, too.
There was one point during the Netherlands game that sounded like a parody of Dutch soccer commentary. “Van Hooten to Van Spooner. Van Cucumber picks it up then to Van Harken. Passes to Van Wicket.” Where was Van Halen?
Slovakia needs a new hair-stylist. I’m all for daring hair but those mohawk things aren’t working for me.
This is me at the yoga studio. That tiger means business. No slacking. My arms are about to fall off right now from class tonight.
I didn’t phone my old webhosts today because I was hoping beyond hope that it would be taken care of magically behind the scenes. That’s on the list for tomorrow. Also I ordered an item online that I desperately need before the end of the week. I actually paid the ridiculous charges for 2-day shipping.
Never do this. This is the second time I’ve done it and the item wasn’t delivered in 2-days. It’s not like they give you your money back. I have my fingers crossed for 3-day shipping tomorrow otherwise yet another hysterical phone call I have to make.
Oh. Also, we received a check from the government for approximately half of the ginormous sum we paid for our federal taxes. Seems I missed out on a deduction we were eligible for because we earn our money from working. I’m not making that up.
I love paying less taxes as much as the next person but offering a deduction for earning money “from work” sounds spectacularly stupid. But, we’ll take it.
Clarion West Write-A-Thon Week #1
The reason I took this photo is to show Thighs. See the guy with his shorts pulled up? I’m not sure what’s up with that. The people on our left call him Mr. Funny Pants. The people on our right call him Diaper Boy. I shouted: “Pull down your pants!”
4200 words for the Write-A-Thon this week.
I’ll be honest, they aren’t great words. But I put something new down every day this week.
Thanks to all my sponsors so far. I’m still a bit short of my goal so if you’ve like to donate there’s more about the Write-A-Thon here and my donation sponsor page here.
And if you’re not sure what to do, just drop me an email.
Oh yeah, and if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s my tuckerization by Michael Swanwick.
Timber Joey — would you like to touch his wood?
FIFA World Cup Games 51 and 52
Germany looked FANTASTIC this morning. I’d like to take Podolski’s ’32 goal out for drinks some time. A really fun game. Oh yeah, bad call against England. That was a black mark. But 4-1 England it’s not like they were looking so great until that moment.
I talked to my Mom after the game and she said she saw the last 10 minutes and “it was a really good game.”
“Mom,” I said. “Germany was up 4-1 at that point. The game was over.”
“I know,” Mom said. “But I get so nervous that was the only part I could watch.”
During the Germany game I started making up a Tiger Beat profile for Phillipp Lahm.
Favorite color: blue
Favorite food: schnitzel
Favorite Twilight character: Bella
In the next game Germany is up against my mullet-licious boyfriends from Argentina which is really a bummer because I like both these teams so much. I’ll be rooting for Germany.
I watched the first half of the Argentina v. Mexico game. In this game, Argentina won a goal that they didn’t really earn because of another bad call. They won 3-1 so I think they proved themselves. I decided to stop watching after goal #3 because I had some other things that needed to get done before I went downtown to watch another soccer game.
Timbers v. Tampa Bay
Finally, the Timbers win one. Warm sunny day. Cold beer.
There’s a guy in our section a few rows back who’s a screamer who seems to enjoy screaming more than paying attention to the details of the game. One of his favorite things to scream is, “Both ways, ref. Both ways.”
I have no idea what that means but the kids sitting behind us took this up — in a hilarious way — and started saying at completely random times: “Both ways ref, both ways.” Which made us laugh every time.
FIFA World Cup Games 49 and 50
There is is. Twenty year anniversary of Concrete Blonde: Bloodletting.
I didn’t go to shows at the Palace in Hollywood a lot. I can probably tell you every show I saw there (based on my ancient memories so could be wrong): The Bangles, Mr. Big, Concrete Blonde and a benefit show for Lee Selwyn that included Concrete Blonde. I remember there was a vacant lot on the walk to the venue and there was graffiti that said: Agnes Moorehead is Dead.
Last night we were at the Roseland. I loved every minute of the show except the talkers and that loud drunk girl that’s in front of us at every show we go to. This time she whistled through her fingers every three minutes. We paid for reserved seats upstairs. It was mostly all people our age in those seats. I used to love general admission even though I’m severely height challenged but now spending a couple hours of pushing and shoving and looking at the back of other peoples’ heads is not appealing. I liked the seats.
Everyone there seemed to have some sort of mobile device that they could check every three seconds or else hold up to record? Take photos? Twenty years ago, everybody smoked. The room was full and it was a diverse crowd. A little bit of everything including tons of young people who bopped around and sang every word. It was a slavishly devoted crowd. I’m glad we went.
In other non-soccer news, guess what showed up on my credit card? Yes, a charge from my old webhosting. You remember, the one that I phoned and sent two cancelations notices to plus responded to all their repeated billing notices with heated hysteria about I canceled the account only to be reassured again and again that my account was canceled and I would not be billed?
OChosting. Tell your friends. OChosting = LAME and INCOMPETENT.
Meanwhile, their system is burping so they’ve sent me (so far) 28 notices that I’ve been billed in the last 12 hours. I dropped a love note to support and they responded by telling me that I needed to discuss this issue with billing.
OChosting – webhost loserville of the galaxy. Let’s see how long it takes to get this straightened out.
Okay soccer.
Enough with the crowd shots. I could very happily live my entire life without seeing large groups of grown-ups with flags painted on their faces.
Damn you USA for getting my hopes up. I should know better. It was a good game but it would have been better if the US had won. Ghana was relentless. They were good.
Wasn’t it weird seeing President Clinton and Mick Jagger hanging out?
The S. Korea v. Uruguay game was also pretty good. I like seeing an underdog team do well but I like Uruguay, too.
Fourteen games left plus two Timbers games this week plus Eclipse. Never a dull moment.
FIFA World Cup Games 45, 46, 47 and 48
Co-worker returned from vacation a couple of months ago and announced: I’m making a rubberband ball. Here’s the progress so far.
None of these games knocked my socks off.
I watched Portugal play Brazil. Boring.
How come the players argue with the ref? I’ve never seen a ref change his mind. I’ve never seen a decision changed. It seems like challenging a guy with a fistful of yellow cards is a bad idea. But they still do it.
The Spain v. Chile game was slightly more interesting until the last 10 minutes when they realized they were both going through and they just kicked the ball to each other.
That’s not what the fans came to see.
The minute the game was finished I ran outside. Due to the endless bad weather the yard had been severely neglected and needs a firm hand in every corner.
Today I worked on the berry area.
This is my second bowl of raspberry harvest. I’m not sure what to think. We’ve had the same raspberry patch since we moved in. We’ve never gotten more than enough berries to eat as a snack when working out there. I neglected it no more than usual. It’s a miracle.
In the background are the asparagus and baby broccoli I’m roasting tonight. The asparagus has been neglected in the fridge for almost a week. A bunch of unexpected stuff came up and we didn’t eat dinner at home as much as we thought.
Tonight I get to see Concrete Blonde – yay. Last time I saw them the show didn’t go too late. I think we were back in the car driving home by 10:45. I hope it’s the same tonight.
FIFA World Cup Games 41, 42, 43, and 44
Oregon Coast near North Bend, April 2007
Are you tired of hearing about Landon Donovan’s goal yet? Even if you are I think you should check out this link.
It’s clips of crowd shots watching the final moments of the game. Remember the set up? We’d watched 90 minutes of the US unable to score. I’ve watch the US in a number of World Cups. I’ve learned to keep my expectations cautious.
Then the US makes the run and they strike and goalkeeper blocks it but the ball is loose and Donovan comes in and hits it.
So in these clips you see every one in despair, then watching the run hopeful, then ARGH! But then AHHHH!!!!
Seriously if you’re going to waste 60 more seconds online, just watch one or two of the first clips. It made me every bit as happy as seeing the actual goal in real time.
Today’s Games
I was a slacker today. I had to get some work stuff done.
The Italian diving team got sent home. I love this team and the idea that I’m never going to get to see Cannavaro taking his shirt off after a game again makes me weepy but they didn’t do anything to impress me until they were down by 2 to Slovakia. Good-bye! But Slovakia gets a marked down a few points for blatant time wasting.
I foolishly fired up the Cameroon v. Netherlands game when I should have been watching Denmark v. Japan. I only watched the first half. Cameroon’s goalkeeper is named Soulymanou and he was wearing purple. I love the purple goalie outfits.
Non-Soccer Item
Every once in awhile I find myself frantically looking for something I don’t need.
Like today. I have two hair clips in my desk. I wanted to put my hair up and I only need one clip but I wanted to know where the second one was. I kept searching the different drawers trying to find the second one. Why? I had the one I needed. But I had to know where the other one was. I don’t get it.
FIFA World Cup Games 37, 38, 39 & 40
Highway 96, Humboldt County, California
Tonight we went out to dinner and my breath was a tad fishy so on the way out of the restaurant I grabbed a mint. When we were walking to the car I was in the middle of a big story and I opened my mouth and inhaled and swallowed the entire huge mint.
For a second I panicked but I could still breathe and you read stories all the time about people swallowing anvils and mayonnaise jars and this was actually food so I figured I’d probably survive. But now, an hour later, I’m burping spearmint.
Soccer Coverage
I’ve figured out that if I take one bus earlier (6:18a) I can be in the office at about 5 minutes to 7:00 in time to see the kick off.
I had switched from Univision to watching ESPN on my computer. But this morning the computer said I needed a login.
USA game – login — coincidence? I’ve never needed a login before. A pox on you ESPN!
I only had 5 minutes and no time to troubleshoot so I watched the first half on Univision. At the half I was able to log on using info from co-worker. I like to stream one game on ESPN and then do Match Cast on FIFA which is like a live blog for the other game.
Whew. What a game. US v. Ghana
That game tripled my grey hair supply. At one point the announcer said that the US was looking really dangerous. (This was barely into the 2nd half.) I said: No they don’t. They aren’t making any goals.
But then, 90+1
I couldn’t scream because I was at the office but I did jump around a lot. Super awesome game that made me really happy. And isn’t Cherundolo (#6) fun to say?
Here are some moments of pure manlove from the USA game.
Do you think players ever hurt themselves during goal celebrations? It looks like an injury just waiting to happen.
Then my other team Germany played Ghana. This game wasn’t as nail-biting in terms of the outcome but they still made me wait until the 60th minute for a goal and then basically shut down. Isn’t Phillipp Lahm dreamy? Plus I love the 3 “p’s” in his name.
It was a good soccer day.
Non-soccer related item #1
Bob got Up In The Air from netflix this weekend. That’s the one with George Clooney where he flies around firing people. I really wanted to see this movie and was a little miffed that it was at the house during World Cup when I’m already watching a million hours of TV per day. But I really wanted to see it and here’s my review: see it. I expected to like it and I liked it more than I expected. It’s also a good study for story-telling. Everything happens because of decisions the characters make. I’m glad I took the time to see it.
Non-soccer related item #2
So remember I had to change from blogger to turdpress because google didn’t want to let people ftp any more and blah-blah as part of this whole switch I changed webhosts?
I pay my webhosting a year at a time and I canceled the old host 2 months before my year expired. I knew they weren’t going to give me any money back and I didn’t ask. But I phoned and the guy on the phone said okay you’re canceled – send a note to this email. I sent a note asking for confirmation. Got no confirmation and then and I got a notice that I would be billed. I had a conniption, sent more emails and was assured if I sent a cancelation notice, I was canceled. No worries.
They’ve sent me three billing notices now. If they have a process for terminating your account shouldn’t they have a process to stop sending you bills? What a way to leave your departing customers with a bad taste in their mouths. They should all get a giant mint.
My Story is Out Now
Here’s what the cover looks like.
I’ve been so wrapped up in World Cup I forgot to post this yesterday.
This is the last announcement on this so if you wish I’d stop talking about it your wish is about to come true.
My story “The Battle of Little Big Science” is in the August issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.
The actual magazine is for sale right now in places that have lots of magazines like Borders and Barnes & Noble and Rich’s in Portland.
For reasons not clear to me, it’s not at Powell’s. I know I said it was before but I was wrong.
It’s available for all E-readers and you can buy a single issue PDF from Fictionwise.
Updated to add: I completely forgot to mention that this was my week #3 story at Clarion West 2008. What a great time to remind everyone about CW’s current fundraiser.
FIFA World Cup Games 33, 34, 35 and 36
View from 1000 SW Broadway, Portland
I somehow left my notes on today’s games at the office. Dang, because I’m sure I had some real nuggets in there. I’m loving all the soccer comment spam I’ve been getting. Like I really believe they find these articles interesting. How about this: did you hear Messi and Tevez want to reform Oasis? Maybe I can run my fingers through their hair with a little Wonderwall playing in the background.
(Oh, and resist the urge to tell me about Turdpress’s Whosit that will deal with spam, that’s not the point here.)
I did get manage to get home with this ad I tore out of the AAA magazine for “quality tools at ridiculously low prices.” Even if there were tools I needed I would never get around to figuring out how to use them but these coupons are so awesome — a reciprocating saw with rotating handle for $19.99 — I don’t even know what that is but how can I pass that up? I don’t think that’s proper sentence but I’d really like to watch the highlights show before I go to bed so we’re going to let it stand.
Plus I still need to do my words for the beg-a-thon and take care of some other household stuff.
Here’s another thighlights gallery this time featuring Portugal.
Non-Soccer Item
Also here’s an NPR story about Orleans and the Karuk Tribe: FCC Eyes Broadband For Indian Reservations
Many tribal communities around the United States are in remote, rural areas. Humboldt County, Calif., is home to several tribes — among them the Karuk.
In the small community of Orleans, Calif., the Karuk make up a quarter of the population of just under 1,000 people.
The tribe’s IT officer, Chris Kleeman, says they even have a hard time getting phone service. “We lose our regular telephones, including 911, hundreds of times each year,” Kleeman says. Last July alone, they lost phone service about 250 times, he says.
Bari Talley in the story is my cousin. <3
FIFA World Cup Games 30 31 and 32
Klamath River Rocks
I don’t have time for a proper wrap up today.
Here: enjoy the weekend thighlights
I got up early to watch Portugal destroy N. Korea. At last a European team has done something I expected. I left after the fourth goal and drove to work so I could be there in time to see the start of the Chile v. Switzerland game. Switzerland has a guy on their team named Gelson Fernandes. When we lived in California we shopped at market called Gelson’s and for the first time I realized the market must be named after a guy, Gelson. I watched most of that game and most of Spain v. Honduras. When Spain was up by 2 I turned it off and went back to work.
No more 4:30a games. Now we start 4 games a day but since two are played concurrently I’ll only watch two and the highlights show. In most cases it’s easy to pick.
