that other guy’s thoughts

Your friendly neighborhood TOG officially put in an offer on a house this morning, and the feeling around the campfire is one of mild disconcertion and general butterfly-ness.

It’s an odd feeling, having a significant event in my life hang in the balance. I mean, it’s just some papers in a folder getting shuffled from place to place, but to me it’s huge. I’ve signed and initialed way more places than should be allowed at one time, now it’s entirely up to somebody else’s judgment. There is a better word to describe it all but I’m too wound up to tight to really let expression come forth from my own mind.

There are plenty of other instances in life where this anticipation dynamic comes into play, but most have to do with asking out girls. A decent analogy might be applying to colleges. Lots of toil, trouble, research, and paperwork go into making a choice, but then you put it all on paper and it’s up to someone else. The college analogy works well too because it’s really more about the build up in the mind than the actual consequences.

Being ‘out there’ or getting into the game has never been my comfortable suit. I’m more at ease championing abstract theories and providing comic relief. It’s the openness and exposure that brings on the buggy stomach, and something I try to avoid.

I don’t know when I’ll get an answer back about the offer, but even then I don’t imagine the anxiety is going to end. There are still inspections and appraisals, negotiations and even more paper work. The stress of moving, of living, and of change will take much longer to calm. The stress of owning, I imagine never will. I suppose it’s apt to think of this as the deep breath before the plunge. Instead I’ll leave the parting words to TOG’s official posthumously honored Poet Laureate:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

All tasks on my weekend list have been completed. The drive to and from H-town is crazy long. I’ll have more details about the house-hunt later, but I wanted make a few comments on the recent World Cup developments:

Soccer is such a fickle beast. Like any good sport, the better playing team will win more often than their opponent, but unlike other sports you can’t tell jack from the score. 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, 2-0, and 2-1 That’s the gambit from absolute domination to hard-fought blood-draw. There is just such capacity for difference between the game and the score that even with such small range of scores, you can’t trust what the final line says. There aren’t any appreciable stats to peruse. It’s the anti-baseball in that sense. There could be part of the clue to soccer’s very slow acceptance into the American sports lexicon.

It’s difficult to paint a picture around the water cooler with soccer: “…and then Trabidino ran really hard and kicked the ball towards to goal, but he missed, then the game ended in a 0-0 tie and everybody exchanged jerseys”

But with baseball you can rely on the numbers to convey the suspense: “Bottom of the 8th down by 1, no outs. Williams is pitching a 1-hitter but has walked the last 2 batters he faced this inning. Hernandez fouls off 7 different pitches to work himself a 3-2 count. Williams tries the back door slider but hangs it, Hernandez laces it down the 3rd baseline and all the way to the wall. Jones gets on his horse and scores from first on the double, but barely. He has to beat out an excellent relay throw from the shortstop, it was a bang-bang play. That new young closer came in for the 9th and struck out the side.”

See, there is a difference. With soccer you really have to be there. In baseball you already feel like you were.

I’m going running with my trainee from work at 8:30 in the morning,
after which I will begin cleaning the apartment,
after which I will have lunch with my pal Val,
after which I will go grocery shopping,
after which I will continue cleaning my apartment,
after which I will go to work,
after which I will go out to dinner with the guys from work in celebration of my newly acquired signing authority,
after which I will resume work,
after which I will leave work and come home early to allow my family and one/two of my brothers friends crash at my apartment,
after which I will sleep for a small amount of time,
after which everyone at my apartment will get up early,
after which I shall show the parents a totally promising house that I may consider putting an offer on,
after which we will all drive down for 12 hours or until we reach Houston,
after which will we watch my brother graduate from UTI,
after which I will help him back all his early belongings into a jeep and a U-haul trailer,
after which I will drive another 12 hours or until I reach Wichita,
after which I will likely call my Realtor(tm) and begin the process of making an offer on a house,
after which I will have a brain aneurysm because of the psychological weight of the debt which I had just signed up for.
after which I will be buried somewhere and I expect you all to attend to funeral…dammit.

The only question that remains, what the hell am I doing up at 2:45 in the a.m.?

A few notes from Saturday’s game:

Should’ve been 3-1 or 4-1, the way both teams played. But this is soccer and you can’t tell squat about the game from the score. We played 30 times better than in the game against the artist formerly known as Czechoslovakia.

That referee sucks balls. Toss him, he never gets to call an international soccer game again. 3 freaking red cards? 3? Sure you’ve got to throw one for that intentional class-5 elbow shiver to McBride’s eye socket, but 2 more on marginal late tackles. The guy must be a fan of soap operas and high school swim meets, because the way he called that game just encourages more bad acting and haphazad dives.

The only real beef I’ve got against Soccer is the insistent diving. I can deal with wide open spaces and 0-0 ties, but the over-the-top diving on every tackle drives me nuts. Call me what you want, but this is purely an international thing. Foreign athletes are pansies. They are the most notorious floppers in the NBA, and they absolutely refuse to charge the mound after getting plunked by a pitch in baseball. This is probably why there aren’t many foreign NFL players, you’ve got to suck it up and hit somebody in the mouth. Damn Ninnies.

How the hell did Ghana beat the Czechs? and by 2-0? Up is down, right is wrong, Mizzou isn’t a cloaked institution of Satan? Oh well, that’s futbal for you.

A win over Ghana and an Italian smoking of the Czech Republic will put the US into the the next round. It’s good for the US, it’s good for ABC/ESPN, it’s good for FIFA, it’s good for FIFA. Soccer’s got it’s fut in the door in the states, it needs a good showing by the US national team to guarantee a fight with the NHL for the 4th big sport. This needs to happen and a little nudge would hurt, it’s too bad Dick Bavetta will be working game 7 of the NBA finals on Thursday.

Kasey Keller is pretty much the Shiz-nit. He’s no Friedel, but he is a stellar keeper and partially balding, so we’ll take him.

As today is my 1-year workiversary, I am now officially responsible for authorizing repairs on real life airplanes. So if Citations start dropping from the sky, you can totally blame me. But you should also bow down and worship my magnificence if they don’t.

Behold the great and powerful TOG, protector of public safety and fixer of the magical flying machines!

With the U.S. about open its first game of the World Cup, I thought I’d hearken back to the last World Cup and a where it fell with me in my life at that time.

In the summer of 2002 I had just finished my freshman year of college. Classes were still easy and I wasn’t desperately trying to salvage my GPA, though that’s not the whole story. It was really more that I hadn’t foolishly attempted to take 18 hours of engineering classes with zero support structure yet. That unfortunate episode of my life was still 3 months away.

At the time I was sharing a room with Juby, it seemed dumb for two guys in a house of 18 empty rooms to be roommates, but I was moving in, he was moving out, and it didn’t really bother either of us. Because of the massive time difference between here and Japan/Korea, most of the matches ended up airing at 3 in the morning or something. Many a college student with summer classes and work at 8 in the morning would of abandoned all support of the red white and blue. But seeing as how this was also the summer when my fits of diagnosed insomnia showed up, I was all about the futbal.

Being very new to the televised soccer scene, I don’t have that many specific memories of matches or moments. Half the time I was just trying to keep track of which single-named soccer star out-booted which partially balding goalie, and just where the hell Tunisia was. The thing I remember most was the odd shock I felt about the surprise US success. This was soccer, and try as we might, we just weren’t that successful as a nation. The best and brightest athletes of the nation were playing one of our other six or eight sports that payed better. The player I remember most was Brad Friedel.

When you don’t know the strategy, and the game is inherently slow like soccer is you look for anything to keep your attention, and Friedel had mine. Its hard to tell individuals from one another when you’re looking at such a big playing field, but a 6′4″ goaltender doesn’t easily blend in. Though branded with the corniest goalkeeper nickname ever, “the human wall”, I was able to see past the lack of imagination and root for the guy just the same. His penchant for big-game play and ridiculous penalty shot stops won me over. In what has got to be one of the hardest jobs in professional sports, the man played with gusto.

It was an interesting time for me. While a pretty bright fellow, I hadn’t quite put it all together by that point. I was inexplicably chasing girls out of my league and still assumed I was the smartest person I had ever met (very wrongly). It was a summer of frustration at my sleeping habits and personal ineptitude. It was the first time I was responsible for the aerospace department’s computer system, and when I first started really getting into IT. I eventually was good at it, I think. I shared a room with a friend and didn’t spend my waking hours studying my brain into the consistency of tapioca. It was also the first time I lived away from home without the massive schoolwork.

None of that has an outward tangible link to soccer, but the World Cup is irrevocably linked to that time in my life. It was that point right before you really ‘get it’ as a human being, the moment right before who you become who you will be for the rest of your life. It’s odd how things stay with you from the memorable times of your life; a person, a thought, a smell, or a 2 am soccer match on Univision.

For a month that summer Juby and I shared more than a room, we shared an odd obsession with a sport neither of us truly understood, and a partially balding guy known simply as “Friedel.”

Meet Goleo VI, the official 2006 World Cup Mascot.

Hurray Futbal!

He’s a pantless talking lion with an undefined crotchular region. He hangs out with a soccer ball name Pille. He loves long walks on the beach and apparently disco too. And what the hell kind of animal wears a jersey and cleats but nothing to cover his hairy unmentionables? He does have some redeeming qualities though:

“GOLEO VI is a lion of the world but not a cynic. He is warmly witty which appeals to his many female fans.”

Much like myself.

Now lets be honest. You weren’t intending to click on any those links until I used the phrases “undefined crotchular region” and “hairy unmentionables”. The power of my vocabulary compels you!

I’m having a party and you’re invited!

Between July 1-4 I will be hold’n down the fort and my childhood home whilst the rest of the family Euro-trips. Any and all are welcome to stop by the bustling metropolis of Wamego and say hi. Semi-organized stuff will probably be going down Monday Evening through Tuesday night. There will be fire, grilled food, Frisbees, futbal (in honor of the World Cup), and even a reasonable chance of death by explosive if you’re in to that kind of thing. Hell, if you just want a place to get wiggity-wasted and pass out in a field, I can help you out there.

There are plenty of beds and couches, for those that venture from far-off lands and don’t want to return home at 5 in the morning.

Everyone is welcome, even if I don’t know you. I’m providing most foods, but we’re strictly BYOB in the W-town.

Give me a holla and I’ll give you the address.

Mutton Busting Rules!

Well, it’s bulls and blood
It’s dust and mud
It’s the roar of the Sunday crowd
It’s the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He’ll win in the next go ’round
It’s boots and chaps
It’s cowboy hats
It’s spurs and latigo
It’s the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing Rodeo

-Garth Brooks, Rodeo

I lieu of my habitual boozing and clubbing entertainment this weekend. I’m spending the evening checking out the Conway Springs Fall Fest Rodeo. Sure I’ll miss the great smell of tweener puke, cigarette smoke, and spilt rum. But I will smell like farm animals, so it’s not all bad.