I was talking to Annette the other day about various family plans and such, and I floated the idea of going camping not this weekend but next, you know, before I was off to this conference. She thought it was a potentially good idea. Then, the next day, she pointed out to me that the conference I’m going to be road-tripping to is next weekend.
Somewhere in there, I lost a week. Yikes.
So, nose back to grindstone. I’ll look up eventually, I think.
It’s been a couple of long seasons/years on Will’s soccer team. Last spring, they didn’t win any games. Last fall (I was an assistant coach of sorts on this team), we didn’t win any games. And we started this year (again, I’m an assistant of sorts) by getting crushed by like nine or ten goals.
But losers we are no more.
Today, Will’s team (hey, my team too, right?) finally won one, I believe 3 to 1. Here’s a link to a few pictures of what was a perfectly beautiful spring day, soccer or otherwise.
If you ever doubted that newspaper editors ran letters from readers that were goofy just because they (the editors, that is) found them funny, then look no further than this wisdom from today’s Ann Arbor News “letters to the editor” page:
Hangover medicines should be banned
I believe that hangover medicine should be banned. I think that they shouldn’t have medicine for someone who doesn’t do the right thing, and drink too much. Having hangover medicine may encourage people to drink more.
To prevent hangovers in the first place: Don’t drink more than one drink a night.
Your liver breaks down alcohol at the rate of a beer an hour.
Alternate alcohol with
nonalcohol.
It’ll help keep your body hydrated.
Choose your drink selectively.
Congeners are dangerous poisons that appear most in darker drinks.
Been too busy around here lately, what with planning classes for spring, Estabrook Science Olympiad (that’s tomorrow), kiddie soccer practice, general cleaning/preparing for the in-laws to visit, and the various fireworks on that other blog I maintain. But I do have some other things I want to try to post about in the next day or two here.
In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video of the “show-stopper” number from the documentary Young At Heart, a very moving rendition of the Coldplay song “Fix You:”
As I understand it, this movie was actually made a couple years ago for British TV and is just now being released in the US. We saw it tonight at the Michigan theater, thanks to our friend/all-around good person Rachel and this fine organization, www.BlueprintForAging.org. Go check this movie out if you can– you’ll be glad you did.
Annette watched this video on Facebook this morning and said “you know, this is the kind of thing that Sophie could do if we trained her:
Yeah, right. Maybe if we both quit our jobs so we could both do it full-time. As it is, I think Sophie’s main trick will remain barking at people and licking the window in the living room.
Much of Will’s weekend (and some of Annette’s and a very little bit of mine) was spent building a lovely model of a fort typical of the French and Indian War. At least according to Will. I am sure that they did not have forts built out of painted popsicle sticks, felt, sticks, and little pegs for guys.
Anyway, it turned out pretty cool. Here’s a link to a Flickr set of pictures. Be sure to look at the pictures individually because Will and I put in some notes to explain what different parts of the fort are and what the different guys in the fort are doing.
The last time Will did a project like this, he ended up getting what I think we all here thought was an artificially low grade. He better do well on this one….
Oh, and I am rather surprised to know almost nothing about the French and Indian War. Other than I think there was some unit on this when I was in about fifth or sixth grade.
From boing-boing.net comes this post on craigslist, which I will reproduce in its entirety, about the pizza business in Ann Arbor:
To The Stoner Who Works At Cottage Inn Pizza
Date: 2007-09-18, 11:30AM EDT
You: the guy who answers the phone at cottage inn pizza
Me: Hungry and stoned out of my gourd
I called you from my cell phone but had completely forgot who I was calling by the time you answered the phone. Of course, you were also baked to bajeezus and forgot to tell me that I had called Cottage Inn.
When you answered and said, “Whatsup?” I thought about it, and after a 20 second pause I told you that was hungry. You suggested I try a pizza, and I agreed that it was probably a good idea.
Then I asked you if you sold pizza and you said that you could make me one. I said I wanted anchovies and something else on my pizza. You asked me what that something else was.
We spent five minutes listing toppings until we figured out that I was trying to remember how to say: “Sun dried Tomatoes.” When you said: “We’ll bake that right up for you,” we both started laughing uncontrollably.
It was the best pizza I ever had; I just wanted to thank you for helping me out.
Least you think that there has been no fun around here while the mice play at the CCCCs, I was lucky enough to attend a Detroit Tigers baseball game yesterday with Will and his fellow safety patrol members from Estabrook Elementary. It’s almost a game we missed– Will didn’t bring home the permission slip initially because, as he put it, he just doesn’t care much about baseball. “Neither do I, Will. But going to the ball game is fun!” So I talked him into it and he was glad.
I got to go along as a parental chaperone, though as far as I could tell, there were at least as many grown-ups supervising as there was children. It might have had something to do with the free tickets. It was also the first trip I’ve had on a school bus in years. Most amusing to me was that both on the way there and the way back, the kids were pretty successful at getting passing semis to blow their horn at us.
Anyway, it was safety patrol day in general at the park so there were many different youth groups on a clear but chilly day. I think it’s fair to say that the highlight for Will was hanging out with friends and eating a $5.50 hot dog. The highlight for me was shopping for but not buying and Tiger merchandise ($25 for a T-shirt I can get at Target for half that price? Thanks, no…), resisting temptation and staying on diet, hanging out with fellow parents, and discovering with my iPod that there was a wifi network in the stadium.
As to the game: like I said, I don’t really follow baseball much. But as far as I can tell, all this hype about the Tigers this year is perhaps ill-placed. This was their third loss, and as far as I could tell, they got spanked in this game.
Anyway, a pretty fun way to spend the day. I can’t very well complain about free tickets, but I think I’ll wait until the temperature is about 60 the next time I go see a game. For the curious, there’s a few pictures here.
This is the blog, homepage, and/or portal for one Steven D. Krause, aka Professor Steven D. Krause, aka Steve, aka sitedad, aka a host of names not repeatable here. It used to be two different blogs, but now it is one.
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It’s been a couple of long seasons/years on Will’s soccer team. Last spring, they didn’t win any games. Last fall (I was an assistant coach of sorts on this team), we didn’t win any games. And we started this year (again, I’m an assistant of sorts) by getting crushed by like nine or ten goals.
Much of Will’s weekend (and some of Annette’s and a very little bit of mine) was spent building a lovely model of a fort typical of the French and Indian War. At least according to Will. I am sure that they did not have forts built out of painted popsicle sticks, felt, sticks, and little pegs for guys.
Least you think that there has been no fun around here while the mice play at the CCCCs, I was lucky enough to attend a Detroit Tigers baseball game yesterday with Will and his fellow safety patrol members from Estabrook Elementary. It’s almost a game we missed– Will didn’t bring home the permission slip initially because, as he put it, he just doesn’t care much about baseball. “Neither do I, Will. But going to the ball game is fun!” So I talked him into it and he was glad.