Monthly Archives: August 2009

Checking In

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Obviously, I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been really busy at work lately and haven’t had a ton of time to write for the blog. By the time I get home from work, I spend a couple of hours relaxing and eating and then I go to bed.

Despite my busy-ness, there are some very exciting things going on right now.

College football is back. I love college football and I’m giddy like a school girl. If you haven’t spent a Saturday in a good college town on game day then you haven’t really lived. And let me be clear, when I say a good college town I mean a SEC or ACC town like Athens, GA, Auburn, AL or Charlottesville, VA. A place where the town is partly built around the school. Okay, I’m going to have to stop talking about it because I don’t live in a town like that anymore and its making me sad.

Second exciting thing going right now is that EPL is back. I think as I’ve been less and less capable of dealing with the rigors of playing soccer, I’ve become more more interested in watching it on TV. This is not something that makes Cris happy. The best part about the new EPL season is that ESPN is playing an EPL game each weekend in high-def. Mmmmmm, soccer in hi-def. And scheduling wise, at least some of the EPL matches will be over before College Gameday starts.

And the biggy of biggies? In exactly two weeks I’ll be married. A year and a half is way too long to be engaged. Planning, at times, has been worse than I thought it would be, but its almost over and it will totally be worth it in the end.

The light at the end of the tunnel, in addition to being married, is a plane from St. Louis, MO to Florence, Italy. What I expect to be almost two of the most glorious weeks ever in Florence, Tuscany, Venice, and the Lake Geneva area of Switzerland. I. Can’t. Wait.

So that’s the news right now. I’m going to try to post more often than I have been lately, but we’ll just have to see how busy everything is.

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Why I Loathe Mexican Soccer

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The below excerpt from this Yahoo article is why I loathe Mexican soccer.

The man with the tri-colored mohawk took a swig of beer, stuck his fingers down his throat and vomited the mixture back into his cup. In the next seat another man, who was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon drawing of the decapitated heads of Barack Obama and Landon Donovan, poured out what remained of the Corona beer he had been chugging and urinated into his cardboard drinks container.

Then, according to a neutral bystander who witnessed these disgusting acts, the pair stood on their seats, high-fived and hurled their vile concoctions in the direction of Donovan, the United States men’s national team star who was preparing to take a corner kick 15 yards away.

I knew they’re players were dirty hacks who would rather score a goal off a free-kick awarded from a simulated foul than from the run of play, but I didn’t realize their fans were cut from the same or worse cloth.

Late addition: A quote I can’t take credit for.  ”This is why no one takes Mexico seriuosly as a country.”  That made me laugh.

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The Loudest Neighbors I’ve Ever Had

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The Asian seinor citizens that live upstairs from us.

I always thought I would have to deal with some knucklehead college aged or just out of college aged kid that parties all the time and plays loud music.  Nope, 75 year old asian folks that never seem to sleep, rearrange their furniture at least three times a week, and are running a carpentry shop out of their condo.

Last night, it sounds like they were having a wrestling match up there and someone was going to come through our ceiling.  This morning I wake up hearing the wife making some sort of strange wailing noise…again.  Its really fun when their granddaughter comes over on the weekends and, literally, runs back and forth in their apartment for hours at a time with her shoes on.  I don’t know what she’s running back and forth doing.  It sort of sounds like their playing fetch with her.

The thing I don’t get is that they make all this noise despite the fact they don’t get around that well.  The husband has to use a walker and the wife is a tiny lady.  I wouldn’t think it would be physically possible for them to make as much noise as they do.

The added bonus to the whole thing is they don’t speak any English and they’re half deaf.  So when they’re flooding our apartment by running their water for a long time while washing dishes and something is backing up the pipes (two times), they can’t hear me knocking on the door over the TV and when I finally get them to the door they look at me like I’m stupid when I ask them to turn the water off.  At least now we have their son’s phone number to call to inform them of a problem.  Except the last time Cris went up to ask them to try to keep the noise down their daughter or daughter-in-law yelled at Cris for being rude.

All-in-all, good times.

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WC Qualifying: USA 1-2 Mexico

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Expected but still disappointing result.

We didn’t look like the same team that played in the last couple of games of the Confed Cup.  We weren’t terrible, but we definitely weren’t at our best.  Just a couple of quick thoughts on the game.

We lost this game in the midfield.  Our lack of ability to possess the ball in midfield, particularly when transitioning from defense to attack was our downfall.  There were way too many simple giveaways when we passed it straight to them instead of moving the ball methodically down the field.  Too often, we cleared the ball from defense, they reset their attack and came back at us.  If you chase the ball on defense that much for that long of a stretch, you’re going to tire and  defensive breakdowns will happen.  Bradley’s substitutions to bring on Holden and Feilhaber to try to maintain some possession were smart and Holden changed the composure of things in the middle of the park a little, but not enough to invigorate our attack or simply allow us to really hold on to the ball.

We were also missing performances from some players that we had to have if we were going to come away with points.  Dempsey was definitely off his game, Donovan showed flashes but wasn’t consistent throughout, Clark didn’t have a great deal of impact in the middle and Bradley was very quiet until the second half.

I guess the good that I saw was that we didn’t give up a goal early even in a ridiculously hostile environment and we didn’t give up.  We battled for the entire game.  I also have to say that I like Charlie Davies more and more every time I watch him play.  I think its sort of ironic that Freddy Adu and Jozy have gotten so much attention, but I see Charlie Davies as the young striker that’s come in and had the greatest impact on the national team.  His goal looked like a true finisher’s goal and I finally have confidence in someone that if they get through on goal he’s going to put it away a majority of the time.

Our next qualifying test comes against El Salvador in Salt Lake City on Sept. 5.  El Salvador currently sits tied for last in qualifying with five points from six games.  That being said, if yesterdays results from other qualifying matches are any indication noone should be taken lightly; all of the lower placed teams won yesterday.

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Degree in Business, Minor in Being Delusional

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This chick got a degree in business administration in information technology and a minor in being delusional.

When I went to college, my diploma didn’t come with a guarantee on the pretty little folder that it came in.  Just because you get a degree doesn’t mean you’re going to get a job, in any economy.  Now with this economy and job market, you’re definitely not guaranteed to get a job.  Kind of makes you wonder how much she was studying macro- and micro-economics during her schooling years.  That whole supply and demand thing will jump up and bite you in the butt.

And I hate to be a jerk, but she has a GPA that she says herself is just “alright” from a college with less than overwhelming name recognition.  Nobody just gets a job handed to them with any GPA and having a GPA that’s just alright is going to make the job hunting task harder.

And regarding her complaints about the placement office not helping her enough.  Maybe I’m too cynical, but just like everything else, higher education is a numbers game and the number that matters most is the bottom line.  Schools want to place as many graduates as they can as quickly as they can so when they go to their alumni asking for money or to the government seeking grants they can say, “look how awesome we are.  We placed X number of students in a job within six months of graduation.”  Frankly, placing students with higher GPAs is easier and so that’s where the placement office is going to focus their energy.  That’s probably not the way it should be, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

They’ll also use those job placement figures when recruiting new students, and they like to make it sound as though they did everything in getting a new student placed.  What people have to realize is that there’s an unspoken portion of the new student recruitment sales pitch which goes something like this.  ”If you come to our school we’ll give you the best education we can.  If you work hard, get good grades, interview well, and find a job you like that wants to hire you, we’ll help you get placed.”  When it comes down to it, its your responsibility.

The last thing I’d like to bring up is that I don’t think Ms. Thompson is doing herself any favors by filing a crazy lawsuit like this.  If I’m a potential employer I’m now going to look at her as a lawsuit waiting to happen.  She gets disciplined or fired for any reason, I should expect a lawsuit coming.  Not a savvy move in my mind.

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