A.C.L.

Rather than stuff our money under our mattresses, Julie, Melissa & Crew and I decided to blow our wads in Austin, TX at the famed Austin City Limits music festival. Julie couldn't get her camera in the 3-day extravaganza so I'll just sum it up in words: 10 stages, 3 days, 120 bands, two clouds, 92 degrees, Barton Springs waterin' hole, Lone Star beer, funk, alt country, indie rock, bluegrass, Alison Kraus/Robert Plant 'Black Dog'gin' it, gently rolling Texas Hill Country brush kicked up into tiny dust-grass particles. It was lots of fun. I will give my Best-in-Show award as a tie: Antibalas, Band of Horses, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and Kraus/Plant with Del the Funky Homosapien , Neko Case and the South Austin Jug Band not far behind .

(We got O some cowboy boots here. He wants to wear them to school -- this is OK as O says Kate wears 'cowgirl boots' all the time)

Soccer Bust

It was another tough Saturday out on the soccer fields. Initially, O was kicking the ball around enthusiastically w/ me and a teammate; things looked promising. But when the actual practice/game came around, O turned into rubber chicken -- the same rubber chicken I used to turn into when I went shopping with my mom -- and tears started to well up. We walked away for a while to see if he would give it a go without an easy out, but that didn't work.

Seems like that will be it for the season. I'll be sad if that's it for his soccer career but you never know.

There is joy in Owen's life, don't worry. He loves the Garden State Discovery Museum, for instance. We went last Sunday (click on newspaper to enlarge):

human on cat violence

A couple disturbing stories in the media, one of a former Met who may have kicked Norman the cat to death. I'm wondering if the picture of Norman has been doctored b/c he appears to be wearing an enormous red bow. Cat owners worldwide know that each phase of this: tying the bow, having the cat keep the bow on and keeping a bow-tied cat still for a photograph defies the laws of physics. Anyway, R.I.P. Norman...

Then another story of a mountain lion that was accosted by some hikers, but this cat made it out alive.

Pigskin Madness

You can't get much more entertaining than that Dallas-Philly game last night. In a semi-reasonable amount of football watching this weekend, I saw 2 amazing things:
Mike Shanahan and the Broncos going for two at home, down by 1 against a division rival and pulling it off. I hope we see more of this.
DeSean Jackson dropping the ball before crossing the goal line last night on a long pass play. DJ then proceeded to do a victory dance in the end zone while Dallas was throwing the challenge flag. Rookie mistake? C'mon... Hard to imagine Ditka or Landry or Noll not benching this kid but I guess since the Eagles have 2 injured starters it won't happen.

Pot luck

Steve -- please give us the broad view of what the heck is going on w/ Freddie/Fannie/Lehman/Bernanke etc....preferrably no graphs.

SNL debut was a little slack I thought. The opener w/ Palin/Clinton was hilarious and I definitely liked 'home schooled vs public school quiz bowl' but the rest seemed a little lifeless. The swimming coach pep talk skit was directly lifted from the Peyton Manning SNL and there were also one too many recurring characters for this early in the season.

Phils are TIED for the wildcard lead and one behind the Mets in the East. wow.

Bears could've/SHOULD'VE started 2-0 on the road. Of course I didn't get to see the game b/c 93 miles from NYC is not nearly enough to escape the Giants' market saturation.

Evaluate my trade....

I drafted Tom Brady with the eighth overall pick. Our league gives 6 pts for passing TDs so this was a no-brainer -- I was surprised he lasted that long. Anyway, as we know, his season lasted 8 minutes so I was left w/Trent Edwards at QB. I think Edwards will put up decent numbers at home but he struggles on the road.

I traded DeSean Jackon for Eli Manning to shore up the QB spot. (It's a 16 team league so there are no starting QB-free agents ). I don't know....I think DJ may have already had his best game of the season and it helped me get a week-1 win. When was the last breakout rookie WR season? OK a 5'10" rookie WR who's also a return man? Manning will be a top 10 QB some weeks ; the key will be picking which weeks those are. I'm betting this is one of them. Could I have gotten more for Jackson at QB? Dwight might have given me K. Warner but I give Eli the edge there.

Back to school

First grade is officially underway. Here's O on day one sans back-pack but w/ some wicked argyles. (Of note: 96% humidity or not, no shorts to school we found out, surely for the same reason orange shirts are banned.)

So far, there hasn't been a flood of reports coming back but we do know that O lost the baby tooth that was in front of the adult tooth coming in on the bottom. And when I say lost, I mean, it came out at school and he couldn't find it. We believe that it did not end up in his GI tract. Since the tooth fairy's visit was much anticipated, Mom came up with the brilliant plan to have O draw a picture of the tooth and put it under his pillow. This picture, which featured a tooth shaped much like Connecticut colored gray with an eye as backdrop ("I'm looking at it"), was inscribed with the following: "Dear Tooth Fairy: please bring me a present even though I left my tooth in the cafeteria. Love, Owen." And in case anyone questions whether O intended to color it gray, he labeled it 'kitten gray.'

Old-fashioned beat down

The Colts had their fancy new retractable roof and 7 billion megapixel jumbotron going for them but not their A game; the Bears took 'em apart on both ends of the ball. Prince Peyton made all kinds of faces: angry, petulant, frustrated, but not so many throws.

I'm trying not to get carried away but it's safe to say the Bears' performance makes a playoff run more realistic. Esp if the Lions' run defense is really that bad.

Pennant race...

I have shamelessly adopted the Phillies as my pennant race team. They're in NYC tonight for a crucial 3-game series against the Mets. It's 1-0 Phills, top of the fourth. Brett Myers, on the hill tonight, has been the Phils MVP down the stretch. If that's not enough excitement: espn.com mlb gamecast is now sponsored by Grape Nuts, thereby combining my loves of real-time game updates and high fiber cereal.

Football season begins in earnest this weekend. I have no idea what to make of Da Bears but my gut tells me: mostly staunch defense, electric Devin Hester, Orton/Forte better than predicted, shaky division -- 9-7 with a shot at the wildcard.

Disaster preparedness...

I got this message in my email inbox this a.m. ('All users' is everyone in the medical center):

"All users there is a very strong smell of gas coming from the refinery. Please call the Safety office for any other issues or emergencies"

Palin unleashed

Yikes -- I change my mind, I think McCain hired Palin on to do his dirty work. It started out all all shucks but then all heck broke loose. She did all but call Obama a communist. I had a feeling she was going to take out an effigy doll and start sticking pins in it. The gauntlet has been thrown; well played to her/them for using the second convention to its fullest potential for vitriol.

As per the policy plans -- we got some on drilling, which was sort of specific but everything else had a lot of 'reduce big government', 'root out corruption/waste' and 'John McCain has done a lot of amazing things for you' glittering generality feel to it. I know the top of the ticket is supposed to give us more specifics and I'm sure he will, but I would've like to have heard more from her, see previous posts.

Those kids are truly amazing and I'm not being sarcastic. The young daughter licking her hand and smoothing the baby's hair probably netted the ticket more points in a general election than the previous speakers combined. Maybe Track was just scared about being on national tv but with his baby face and that look of utter terror on it as his mom talked about shipping him off to war, my heart actually sank.

Lieberman unleashed

wow ... that was something else. Was that the longest passive aggressive semi-rant in history or a guy speaking from the heart? (And is there a speaker from either party whose bottom teeth are more visible that Joe Lieberman's?) I can't help but think something terrible must've gone down behind the scenes with party leaders when Liebs lost the CT democratic senatorial primary in '06 to Ned what's his face. And...applause for Bill....?!?! The whole thing went bizarro-world for a moment. In the end, Joe's message didn't go very far: we need a leader who can cooperate, build consensus, etc. Sure, great, but you're still left with having to decide which side of the issues you want that consensus to be built around.

And props to Fred Thompson...if he had put as much effort into his campaign as he did that speech, his appearance at the convention may have been a little later in the week.

Sports update

There were no soccer camp pics b/c camp ended in kind of a bust...It was probably a combination of the heat, some kid that was picking on O and the fact that he doesn't like soccer all that much but O left early the last day.  The good news is he's still OK about doing fall soccer league and we went out today and had a semi-successful practice.  Tricky this whole business -- I don't want to force him but he does say of his own free will that he wants to be in the league so I figure he'll like it more if he has some skills.  True, forcing him to do push ups til he pukes is a bit extreme considering the game is mostly lower body but it's more of a core work-out really.

The O's are in free-fall mode.  They've been in last place for a few weeks now so it's not so bad.  The bottom line is, they're on pace to equal the 70 win prediction I made early on.  Vegas was saying 62.  They still showed more fight this year than most were expecting; the two big offseason trades paid off handsomely and Matt Wieters, last year's number 1 pick, is looking like the second coming of Johnny Bench.  Check out the numbers from A and AA ball this season.