12870 Sundance Ave. - We Hardly Knew Thee

My last post was on October 8, but seriously, cut me some slack, people. This has been a busy time for us. Here is a short history.

October 13 - I take teachers quorum boys on a campout to the beach. This campout is roughly 100 times better than the one the boys planned last spring, where we went to the sand dunes. On that campout (if you will recall) we left way too late, arrived at the dunes at about 10pm, played on the dunes for about 30 minutes, went to sleep, woke up, ate raw bread because nobody had brought a stove to cook the french toast, decided it was too hot to play any more, and went home. The reason the campout is so good is that we did not allow the boys to play any aspect of it. After getting to the beach and pitching tents, I make a nice dinner for me and another leader of sirloin steak fajitas, and we chat amiably around the camp fire while the boys tire themselves out running around. At about 11:30 it begins to rain (this is the first time it has rained in the last 6 months), but this convinces the boys that they have nothing better to do than to go to sleep. The next morning is bright and crisp, and I get in a nice daybreak surf session with another leader who has brought his board. We return to the camp and have a tasty french toast and bacon breakfast (not raw), and get in some more surfing and body boarding (the waves were quite nice). Then we play an enjoyable game of beach football, strike camp, and go home.

October 18 - We leave for Pullman to go to Gillian's wedding. The whole weekend, while kind of hectic, turns out to be great. Staying at Karine and Bryan's house really makes our time there enjoyable, and our kids can't get enough of all the fun things to do there. The reception and wedding come off nicely, and everybody seems pretty sane. It's gratifying to be in the temple with my whole family. Saturday turns out to be an amazing fall day (bright and warm), and the Cougs whip Oregon to put the icing on the cake.


October 28 - Knowing that we have to move the following weekend, we begin to pack all of our belongings. The packing is what really takes a lot of time. We make good progress, but moving is truly an unpleasant undertaking. The realization that our tenure at each successive location for the past 7 years of our lives is trending downward makes us even more uncomfortable. Please refer to the graph at the right. Under current projections, we will only spend 4 months at our current address, and can expect to live at the next location for negative 54 days.

November 2 - The moving process begins in earnest, complicated by the fact that Asha and then Kai become sick with hand, foot, and mouth disease. I rent a Uhaul in Escondido (they are the only shop with one available because it's the beginning of the month). I soon realize why they have a truck available (it is a really bad part of town). I realize that it is a bad part of town when a sketchy dude walks into the convenience store while I am waiting and buys a single cigarette. The lady tells me that if I leave my car in the surrounding neighborhood, it will probably get stolen. I have no option, though. Stu is super nice, and helps me move some things on Friday that we don't necessarily want the Elder's Quorum to (man)handle. The Relief Society had moved our kitchen on Thursday, and that was really helpful. On Saturday, only 3 guys show up from EQ to help, but I had done most of it already with Stu and on my own, so we were done in a couple of hours. Marie and I clean our old house, and are finally done. Oh, by the way, Marie got super sick on the preceeding Wednesday. On Sunday, I teach Marie's class so she can stay home with Kai. On Monday, I plan to come home after a half day of work to help get the house set up. Marie's throat is hurting really bad, so she goes to the doctor, where he tells her she has strep. I am feeling crummy, too, and can't help with anything because I'm sick, too (strep). I stay home from work for 3 days, and finally return to work on Friday. We basically dig out on the following weekend, and only start to feel like we are getting our heads above water in the past week.

That's all for now.

It's been almost exactly a year since I came to San Diego for a conference my old company asked me to attend. It's wierd to think back to that time - I was excited to see Stu and his family, but thought the recruiting at the conference would just be a waste of time. San Diego seemed to be something of a dream: crisp, crystal clear mornings gave way to sun-drenched days in the low 70's, as if Mother Nature woke up every morning, wandered over to the thermostat, and bumped it up to room temperature. Just the fact that I was in San Diego was a fluke. The conference was supposed to be in New Orleans, but plans obviously changed after Katrina. I had been looking at a job in San Diego, and on a whim, dropped my contact at the company an email before flying out. I said that I'd be in the area, so why not try and meet. It all worked out in the end, and I met the guy that would eventually hire me, as well as 3 others at my current company.

In the year that's passed since then, I can't help but think that we've been blessed. The reason I wanted to leave Pittsburgh was just that I didn't enjoy going to work every day. I thought that if I were to build a career in the healthcare industry, I'd feel like what I did meant something, and I'd enjoy the market dynamics more. It was an admittedly simplistic view of life. However, I'm 9 months into it, and it's turned out to be mostly true. A lot of the same dynamics exist here as with my old job: extreme cost pressures, the company's inability to execute, complacency, and a huge corporate beast with tens of thousands of employees. Still, the industry is fascinating, and I love being a part of it. That's the difference. For me, the bottom line is that tomorrow's Monday morning, and I'm looking forward to going in to work. Things can change quickly, though, but for the time being I'm thankful for last October and my trip to sunny San Diego.

Near the end of last week, I was putting the finishing touches on a presentation that my boss's boss would give on Tuesday of this week. When I emailed it to him, his reply confused me, since it suggested that I was actually the one who would give the presentation. A short conversation I had with him later on that day (when I ran into him in the hall) confirmed that I was indeed on the hook for this one. Said turn of events was somewhat disconcerting. The presentation was to be given to a group headed by a pretty important person, (she runs the $2 billion business unit I work for). I knew the material, but that wasn't nearly enough to insure that I wouldn't make a fool of myself in front of these folks. I spent the weekend worrying about it (but not enough to put in a lot of work), and devoted Monday to writing out almost every word I would say and memorizing it. Incidentally, my boss was taken aback when he found out that I had been given the task, perhaps thinking I had been needlessly thrown to the wolves too soon. He was really supportive, though, and gave me some useful advice.

In the end, the presentation went much better than I could've hoped for. It was intimidating to stand there in front of 10 people (most of whom I didn't know, and all of whom are at least 15 years older than me) and go through my slides. At the same time, it was a great adrenaline rush to have prepared well enough to know the material, and answer questions adequately. The mood wasn't aggressive at all, but I could see how the wheels might fall off if something were to go wrong. The most surprising thing was how much people had to say. I was talking less than half the time, and the lively discussion definitely helped things go better. In the end, I was glad it was over, but it's the kind of experience I need if I'm going to make progress.

Organizationally, things are still up in the air. I will know more in a couple of weeks, but chances are that I will become part of a new group that's being formed with pieces from both businesses that are being combined. That would mean a new boss, and mostly new co-workers. I'd prefer to stay with my current boss for various reasons, but I've talked to him about it, and I think it will work out ok either way.

The day of the presentation, we signed a new lease for a house 5 minutes north of where we live right now. It's a great home, and will be better than where we live right now for about the same money. Mari did a great job of finding it. That's all for now.

Asha and her friend Kayla

 

We went in to check on Asha, and saw only this - an empty bed. She decided that the baby bed (which we had retrieved from the garage for her baby doll) was more "cozy".


 

 

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to use Labor Day to visit the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that's been turned into a museum near downtown SD. The Midway was in use from 1945 to 1992 or so, and (among other exploits) took in about 7000 evacuees during the fall of Saigon. The self-guided tour was absolutely fascinating - a definite don't-miss if you're ever in San Diego. I have to say, though, that life aboard the Midway looked pretty rough. The highlight of everyday life appears to have been fruit loops in the mess. I work with a guy that used to be in the Navy. He said the hardest thing about the long deployements was living in a confined space with guys for whom personal hygiene was an oxymoron. On the ship, they had lots of different eating spaces - one for elisted men, two for officers (clean shirt and dirty shirt wardrooms), etc. The audio tour explained that the pilots tended to hang out in the dirty shirt wardroom so that they could sprint off to the flight deck if need be. I was talking with Jerome this week about our visit to the Midway, and asked if he remembered who was likely to be found in the dirty shirt wardroom. He replied - "the dirty shirt wardroom was usually used by pirates. Wait, wait - I mean PILOTS". We all had a good laugh.



On Friday, we went to the Sock Hop - a PTA fundraiser . We thought it would be a drag, but the kids had a blast. The kids just had a free for all in the middle of the room, bouncing around to Oldies, while the parents hung out on the edges and talked. Kai caused problems, though, since he seemed drawn, as if by tractor beam, toward the mosh pit at the center of the floor, where 5th graders 10 times his size were making merry with inflatable guitars and hula hoops. Oh, and he made numerous attempts to eat flattened pieces of popcorn off the floor.

On Monday we signed a new lease with our landlord. It will enable us to move somewhere else with 10 days notice, but will allow the landlord to show the home to potential buyers, and ask us to leave with proper notice if someone buys the house. For this, we negotiated $600 off our rent, so the longer we're here, the better. The reason our landlord has to sell the house is that he paid $690k for a $575k or so house in a shady real estate deal. Interestingly enough, the guy that sold our landlord this house was featured prominently on national newscasts a couple of weeks ago when he attacked an investigative reporter who was trying to expose his scams. Anyway, the mortgage is now upside down, and he can't make the payments anymore. A bad deal all around, because we would have been happy living here for a long time.

That's all for now.

Ok, so the Cougs took a beating. It was obvious that Auburn was the better team, and that our defense was overmatched. I kind of expected it. I see the game as a positive, though. Point one is that we're better than last year, especially in the defensive secondary. True, Auburn broke off 10+ yard running plays at will, but that was true last year, too. Unlike last year, though, the cornerbacks didn't give up an embarrassing number of big play touchdown passes (their longest pass play came on a coverage mix-up). Also, I don't think most PAC-10 teams will have offensive lines as talented as Auburn's. On the offensive side, Brink still showed no ability to go over the middle for more than 10 yards. He did, however, rediscover his penchant for throwing long E-W passes that are intercepted at inopportune times. Will the Cougs win the PAC-10? No. Can they give any team in the PAC-10 a run for their money? I think so. Can they beat a resurgent, Dennis Erickson-led Idaho? Only time will tell.

Upon discovering that Kai had taken a 1/4 full container of Krispy Rice and spread it over the living room floor, I was left to ponder the various categories of messes that can and do exist in our house:

1. The easy mess - the Krispy Rice falls into this category. It looks kinda bad, but just grabbing the vacuum and wheeling it around in the general area does the trick. It's so easy, it feels like a vacuum cleaner demo. It takes longer to wind up the cord than it does to clean up the mess.

2. The kid-ok mess - this is one where, for some reason, the kid who made the mess is able to clean it up when commanded to do so. An example from our house would be the play-dough set or the duplos. Having a container specific to the items creating the mess is obviously key.

3. The 1hr 15min mess - When we have people over to our house, it is always in an unpresentable state until we give it a thorough clean-up. This will always take us about 1hr and 15 minutes. We pick up all the stuff, vacuum the floors, and clean the bathrooms (chief among all social faux pas is allowing guests to use a bathroom which shows any signs of having ever been used for activities that bathrooms normally accomodate). This usually takes about 75 min. After the guests leave, the house usually still looks nice - a fringe benefit of having people over.

4. The "Rome wasn't cleaned in a day" mess - This is a type of mess that can't be tackled in one or two attempts. It must be gradually beaten into submission by 10 or 15 sessions. Because of this, such messes are best housed in non-public, low-traffic areas. For us, this area would be the garage. Our garage is actually doing ok at this point, and we are glad we saved the cardboard boxes from our move here because we're gonna be moving again.

5. The "I will never forget this mess" mess - This kind of mess will forever be burned into our psyches, and cannot be revisited without groans of digust. One such mess would be the time when we spilled a 2 gallon container of Kirkland liquid laundry detergent in the kid's bathroom of our Philadelphia apartment. Somehow the jug, which had been sitting on the sink, fell to the floor, cracking the cap on one of its spouts. The stickly liquid oozed and spread over the entire bathroom floor. In its super-concentrated form, the detergent was nearly impossible to clean up. Washing the detergent-soaked towels out in the sink just made huge mounds of suds, and they didn't pick up much of the stuff to begin with. I finally fashioned a makeshift squeegee out of a flexible plastic folder-cover, and scraped the offending material off the floor. The bathroom did always smell good after that. For mom, a certain honey container in the grinder room comes to mind.

Ok, that's enough. Work is still great, but my company is constantly reorganizing and changing itself. To that end, 2 businesses (one of which I work for) are being combined, and I'm not sure I'll be able to keep working for the boss I have now. That would be really disappointing - he's the kind of guy I love working for, and I have a lot to learn from him. We'll see how it goes.

Stu and Asha at our picnic at La Jolla Shores.








Jerome plays catch














Proof that my ear wax drops and eye drops really do look about the same










From about a month ago- We went to see the sand castles in Imperial Beach w/ Stu and Adrianne.

Jerome took off shirt (too hot) and donned goggles (soda-can chicken BBQ was too smoky)




















We found Asha sleeping in the Tee-Pee on Saturday night















Our first attempt at beer-can chicken (with a soda can) - the can is what's keeping the chicken upright.















Kai at La Jolla Shores

Asha warms up after body boarding.















































Kai insists on getting the corn off the cob himself.

I just read Nigel's zoo post, and I have the exact same feelings about the museums in Europe. Invariably, there are 50,000 people pressed up against the usher's rope in front of the Mona Lisa contorting their bodies to try to fit themselves and the painting into a snapshot. They all have the same attitude: "I've flown 5,000 miles to get here, and I'll be damned if I'm going home without proof that I set foot in front of the world's most famous painting". It is comical to enter places like the Sistine Chapel, and see the anguish on the tourist's faces when they're confronted the "no photographs" sign. Going through their minds: "Sheesh. If I had known I couldn't take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, I wouldn't have booked this vacation in the first place". As Marie just reminded me, Derek Harris reserved his place in the Pantheon of Needless Picture-Taking years ago when he took a picture of every single Rose Parade float on January 1, 1998. Adding to this feat is the fact that it required tons of film - the digial camera really hadn't been invented yet. If you're reading this Derek, you're a great guy - just a little shutter-happy.

This week, I heard 2 radio commercials back-to-back that caught my attention. One was from the California Assiciation of Realtors, and the other was from the Yellow Pages. Both industries attempt to make potential customers so afraid of not using their services that they will pay arbitrary sums of money for benefits that are debatable. Both are industries that are hopelessly inefficient, and may be completely undermined in the near future (or so I hope). The Yellow Pages are just silly. First, most people don't even use them anymore. Second, there are a few different companies out there that spend millions of dollars proclaiming that they are superior to the "other" phone book outfits. Then, they pepper my house with all manner of thick, ambulance-chaser-laden phone books. I will either toss them into the recycle, or use as booster seats. BTW - the only reason they advertise is so that they can comfort the unlucky businesses who purchased advertising in their pages. Consumers absolutely do not care, but if an advertiser hears "yellow book" and that's who they happen to use, it can certainly trigger warm fuzzies.

If the yellow pages are a minor annoyance, Realtors are like a disturbing infectious disease that has run totally out of control. Last year, Realtors hauled in $60 billion in commissions, while delivering only a fraction of that amount in value. They do this by preying on the fears of buyers and sellers, and operating a virtual cartel (I didn't arbitrarily apply that word "cartel" - it was used by the Consumer Federation of America). It is about this point in an anti-realtor rant that most people admit "there are some good realtors". While that may be true, it doesn't excuse the fact that on a (let's say) $500,000 deal, no 2 realtors in the world could contribute $30,000 in value, but that's how much they get paid. I'm rooting heavily for companies like Redfin, BuySide Realty, and BuySelf Realty. They may not do it, but somebody will surely visit creative destruction on this industry during the next 10-20 years.

We bit the bullet and got California licenses this week. We were supposed to do this within 10 days of moving to the state, and let's just say it may have been a little longer than that. Our reason for procrastinating is obvious - going to the DMV is slightly less enjoyable than being fitted for orthodontia. At least the orthodontist give you straight teeth. The DMV gives you nothing but brusque, middle-aged ladies who have been jaded by centuries of working at the DMV. They seem to come from a parallel universe, and (recalling Dave Barry's opinion of lumberyard employees) probably scurry back out of the light at 5pm, only emerging from their underground abode when the building opens at 9 the next morning. I shouldn't say such things - one lady actually changed one of the answers on Marie's written driving exam so she could get a passing score (she didn't study), and we emerged from the building after 2 hours as the proud owners of 2 California licenses and a new registration for our van. In order to secure said items, we had to bring:

1. Checks (NO CREDIT CARDS!)
2. Old car registration
3. Proof of insurance
4. Old car title
5. Old Pennsylvania licenses
6. Marie's green card
7. My passport
8. Our marriage license
9. Smog testing certificate for the car
10. Acceptable eyesight

It probably would have been easier to just wheel our Ikea filing cabinet in the front door. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't ask for my entire dossier from Mom's computer room desk. You know - the one that has our 7th grade report cards in it. Now, we can never leave California - the switching costs are just too high.

Tuesday night was Mormon night at our hometown San Diego Padres' Petco Park. We saw the flyer at the church building, and thought "wow - what could be more fun than that?". So I bought tickets ($10 each) and we even got Stu and Adrianne to come with us. All was good until we actually sat down in the seats. Kai was a holy terror - just like he is at sacrament meeting, but worse since at sacrament meeting there are no pistacio shells to pick up off the ground and eat. Asha insisted on sitting on our laps, reminding us that she is a powerful 40lb. package of pain. Jerome, accustomed to a certain standard of luxury at Aunt-T baseball games, brokedown over the strict "no snacks" regime we implemented. To make matters worse, the game was a 1-0 pitchers duel lost by the Padres. I have successfully weaned myself off of baseball over the past 3 years, so I guess it was good not to even feel any stirrings of interest during the 5.5 innings of our baseball odyssey. Oh well - you live and learn. Next year we will not be fooled so easily.

Last night I went into the bathroom to administer some allergy eye drops because my eyes were itchy. Unfortunately, I confused the eyedrops with another identically-sized squeeze bottle. I am happy to report that my right eye is now totally free of ear wax. I put the drops in, and immediately noticed something was wrong. My eye was burning, well, like I had put Muriene in it. I flushed it out in the sink just like they taught me in chemistry class, and all was fine. I guess I'll be checking the label a little more carefully next time.

Below: baseball game, and Asha helps cut cucumbers in the kitchen.



 

We have now gone from being a 4 computer family to 3. One of the computers left standing is the one I'm using now (Marie's). It was purchased for $400 about 4 years ago when we realized that one desktop wasn't big enough for the both of us. We also have the Fujitsu laptop, which my father-in-law bought me for b-school. It has miraculously survived various trips, and is barely hanging on to life, given its overmatched Crusoe processor. I also have my work computer, which is always around. It works well on our wireless network around the house. Marie is using it right now, since it's easier for me to blog on her computer.

My desktop, which was purchased in 2000, and was quite the machine at that point, finally died two weeks ago. Actually, I accidentally killed it with my can-do (read: ill-advised) approach to computer maintenance. It all started a couple of months ago when the computer started making this loud, annoying, repeditive beeping noise in the middle of computing sessions. I have no idea why it did this, and after restarting failed to remedy the problem, I ripped off the cover and searched the motherboard for the offending buzzer. I thought I found it, and after shutting down, I drilled a hole in one of the places in the motherboard where I thought the buzzer was soldered in. No dice. I tried to just ignore the beeping for another two weeks, but I couldn't take it, and drilled 2 more holes in the motherboard just to try to kill the buzzer. Well after that, (surprise, surprise) the computer wouldn't boot up any more. It's not a big deal, though. I just slapped all the useful components (hard drive, DVD-RW drive) into Marie's computer, and use my work computer a lot more than I used to.

The heat wave finally broke this week, and we are enjoying a run of 75-78 degree days.

This week I sat through 4 days of meetings, and was taken aback at the prolific number of truly bad doodlers there are in this world. I happened to see a few of the pads people left after the meetings, and they definitely should have disposed of their artwork before leaving to catch their flights. Come up with a system, people! Get with the program! Draw a series of squares and make little patterns in the squares (for example) - it's really not that hard. I know Tamsin to be an excellent doodler. Maybe she could give lessons.

Here are a few pics from this week.






 

A couple of Stu notes - first, he was exceedingly happy to see me produce the Colin-towel from my trunk after our Saturday morning body board session. Although he asked me how I got it, I really don't know.

Also, he invented a really good word on the spot - "Pseudity" to describe the kind of nudity that is disguised in the cloak of artistic expression but is nonetheless embarrassing and lame. He was describing the time when he took a date to see "titanic".  

Out of the frying pan and into Poway

Poway is a nice little community on the other side of I-15 from us. Its downtown is maybe 5 miles from our house. On Saturday, I noticed that our car needed some gas, so we ventured over to their Costco instead of the Carmel Mountain one (w/no gas pumps) that's a little closer. We knew it would be hot over there, but were rather dismayed to be driving down the main drag and see a bank thermometer proclaim that it was 120 degrees F. When we got to Costco, I stepped out of the car to fill 'er up, and felt like I was in the Costco rotisserie chicken roaster. Inside the store, Marie overheard one woman telling another that it was 111 at her house, and she was going to hang at Costco for the next 4 hours until it closed. When we had finally purchased our groceries and breached the air curtain to go outside, I recall feeling like we had just been hit with a huge wall of car exhaust. This turned out to be rather humorous since, as I was loading our pile into the van, I actually felt the exhaust on my shin, and it was cooler than the ambient temperature. Back at our house, it was a 'comfortable' 90 degrees, although combined with our current 70% humidity and no AC, it's pretty bad. We're told that it's almost never this hot or humid. The temperature gradient is very real, though, and San Diego County has lots of microclimates. The coast is nearly always in the 70's, with the temperature variation increasing by the mile as you go inland. The nightly ritual of getting air to circulate through the house has made me pine for Dad's fan-on-steroids device that we used at 800 Fisk. Remember how that thing could slam the sewing room door? It's a wonder the door didn't get ripped off its hinges and sucked into the air intake.

On Monday of this week, I tested the limits of the Costco return policy, and came away considering a Costco ankle tattoo. It will surprise none of my non-Tato-skin-eating family members to know that I make questionable purchase decisions. For some reason, on the drive home from work on Monday, serious buyer's remorse hit after owning a $1200 Vizio 37" LCD flat screen TV for about 2 months. I just decided that for the time being, the TV might be considered riotous living. Many of you may be wondering "what made Scott buy it in the first place?". The answer is that 2 months ago, we had just finished a rather difficult english-japanese translation for my dad-in-law, which made me feel like we had some extra dough. Oh yeah - the world cup was about to start, too (we had just gotten digital cable for the occasion, which we then canceled last week). So we loaded up the TV into the car, and with no receipt, successfully returned it to Costco. The employees weren't exactly overjoyed to see it being wheeled in, but they took it anyway, and in the end, were nice about it. It is sometimes a humiliating experience to return stuff, and this was no exception. I'm kind of getting the hang of it, though. In the last 6 months, I've returned a prepaid cell-phone, a juicer, DVDs, a DVD burner, and a color printer. I know I may be a marked man, now, but Costco is basically the only place we shop, so I think they still make money on us.

Here are some random pictures from the beach last week. Kai is eating sand (as usual), and Jerome is making the obligatory 'tunnel'. Mari used an innovative technique for removing sand from the kids which involves talcum powder (see pic where Asha's crossing her eyes.

So it's been a while since my last post (have I said that before?). I hasten to add that my last post was on June 4, a mere 5 days before the World Cup. I still feel it is one of the few events that it worth turning your life upside down for. I have a few observations that I'm going to share, whether you like it or not.

1. As a US fan, I watched the team for 270+ minutes, and was actually happy for 3 of them. Those 3 minutes occurred after Clint Dempsey put one in on Ghana, and before the referee whistled Oguchi Onyewu for a foul on a shameless dive in the box, awarding Ghana a penalty that essentially sealed the US's fate.
2. It was nice to see the teams that were actually good at soccer playing deep into the cup. None of this Senegal, South Korea, Turkey, Greece (see Euro 2004) stuff. If I'm watching the world cup, I want to see the Italys and Brazils of the world in the quarters, and we did.
3. Can we please get instant replay into world cup football? Before all the purists erupt into violent spasms of protest, let me say that I too see game 'flow' as sacred to the sport, so lets only consider options that won't interrupt flow. For example, if a penalty is awarded, play has already been stopped. We at home already get to see the foul from 3 or 4 angles in less than 30 seconds, so why can't a ref? Check quickly for a dive, and then let play resume. Another option that wouldn't interrupt flow at all would be to let play continue after fouls, but have a 5th referee review replays of fouls to award yellow cards after the fact for obvious dives. I would estimate that perhaps 10% of fouls in this cup could be termed as blatant play acting, and were clearly so upon review of the tape. Same thing in offside non-calls resulting in goals. Play has stopped because a goal has been scored. Just take 10 or 20 seconds while the celebration's happening to confirm that everyone really was onside.
4. Everyone has to have an opinion on Zidane, and I guess I do, too. My take is that his exit didn't hurt the French at all. Barthez is a spaz in goal, and kind of short to boot. The French probably weren't going to score in the game's final 10 minutes anyway, so even if Zidane makes the penalty that Trezeguet missed, there's no way that Italy misses before France does (remember that Roberto Baggio has not been with the Azzurri for some time now). Zidane's head butt is inconsequential, but useful for giving Zidane more noteriety than he had, if that's possible.
5. Why fire Arena? He's gone anyway, but let's be realistic and say that there's no way anyone else will do better. The only thing a Klinsmann will do is produce a mirror image of what happened in Germany this last world cup, where vast hoardes of Klinsmann skeptics were instantly transformed into true believers when he won (and made a soccer team that was fun to watch). These people then bawled like they had been forced to eat Schneeballen when Klinsi up and quit last week. The mirror image refers to my prediction that everything will happen in reverse - a small band of soccer fanatics will be giddy upon the hire of Klinsmann. Gradually, the team will fail to produce results and Klinsi will turn giddy supporters into skeptics who cry when they realize that Sunil Gulati gave truckloads of money to Klinsmann and now can't fire him for fear of hurting his own credibility. Oh, and don't get me started on how bad it will be if Gulati picks an MLS coach to head the team. That's what Areana was, too, but Arena is Arena.

Well, I got through soccer and nothing else. This is sad, since I really don't know anything about the sport, but have strong Campbell-style opinions anyway.

For some time now, I've felt that what the world really needs is a new commute car. Why does the world still not have a car that:

- Seats only one person
- Is only 1 person wide
- Is battery powered with a range of maybe 80 miles
- Costs less than $20,000
- Is as safe as your standard SUV

I kid you not - I would buy that car today (if it existed and I had any money). Instead I am forced to look at dog ugly wonders of the design world such as:


The Hyundai Santa Fe - very ugly


The Acura MDX - non-descript blob of a car




Lexus RX300 - Who allowed this car to be made?

There are a number of very cool cars in this world. Most of them happen to be little cars made in Germany. They include:


Plenty of muscle in a tiny car - truly beautiful. Great commercials, too ("sometimes my fast and my girlfriend don't get along", and "un-pimp your ride").


Audi A3 - has just recently started showing up on US roads.


Smart ForTwo - All over Europe, tiny, great gas mileage, what's not to like? Who cares if Smart is a hopelessly doomed money-losing venture by Daimler. As long as they're making cars, export them to the US and let me buy one. Oh yeah, make it run on diesel, too, please.

I hasten to add that there is a company that claims that they have a solution. I would buy this car if it didn't cost $100,000. (click here to see why George Clooney likes this car)


Enough car ranting. Some random pics from this week below.