Three Years

Three years ago today I married the most wonderful woman in the world.

When I think of my life with Elizabeth, a few songs come to my mind. You can listen to them below, but I'll give you a brief description here:

Then by Brad Paisley: Goes through a couple of milestones in the life of the singer and his wife, and how during each one he thought he couldn't possibly ever love her any more deeply, but looking back he can see how much his love for her continues to grow.

Little Moments by Brad Paisley: About the "little moments" of imperfection in life that are shared between the singer and his wife. My favorite part is the bridge because it hits very close to home: "When she's laying on my shoulder on the sofa in the dark, and about the time she falls asleep so does my right arm, and I want so bad to move it, cuz it's tingling and it's numb, but she looks so much like an angel that I don't want to wake her up -- yeah, I live for little moments like that."

The Good Stuff by Kenny Chesney: After the "first big fight" between the singer and his gal he heads to a bar where, instead of alcohol, he gets some wise advice from the bartender. The "good stuff" includes, once again, all of the shared moments with the woman you love.

I know this list makes me sound like some gun-totin' redneck backwoods hick, but the truth is I grew up on country music, and it still happens to be my genre of choice most of the time... and these songs have really great lyrics (from what I know of my audience, I'm sure Emily will appreciate my song choices the most!). Don't judge me. Listen to the songs.

Anyway, all of this is basically to say, Elizabeth, I love you, and my favorite part of being married to you is all of the little moments we share together that no one else will ever know about (like this one: "What? He played racquetball in his room with a tornado?"). :)

*If you're viewing this in a reader you might have to click through to be able to listen to the songs in the widget below.

I'll admit it: I have a fetish.

Last month I asked the West Wing lovers who read my blog if they'd be interested in reading a WW blog. I got enough "yeah"s and no real "nay"s, so I've started to do it! I'm going to blog through the whole series (or at least that's the current plan).

I've got an introductory post and a post on the Pilot episode. CLICK HERE to check out the blog. The Pilot post is pretty long. I will try to make a better effort at brevity in the future. Please leave comments and interact. Otherwise it'll be boring for me.

weird woman

I have the World Cup championship game on the TV, not because I really care, but because I like to say "Go Dutch!"

Anyway, my wife just said to me, "Whenever I hear 'FIFA' all I can think is Fee-fa Fi-fa Fo-fa Fum-fa."

Unanswered questions

I watched this when my sister-in-law first posted it on my facebook wall shortly after the LOST series finale. I just watched it again this morning and remembered how incredibly hilarious and fantastic it is.

(If you've never watched LOST it won't make any sense to you.)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Futbol

I tried to enjoy soccer last month. I really did.

To be honest, it was the ESPN commercials advertising for the FIFA World Cup throughout the spring that really got me interested. I decided to really give it a shot and try to get into the World Cup a little bit. So a few weeks ago when the US team played their tournament opener against England, I settled in to watch it. Over the next couple of hours I learned exactly why soccer is not and will never be as big in the US as the NFL, NBA, or MLB.

1. The game ends whenever the official decides it ends. Soccer is comprised of two 45-minute halves, but at the end of each half the game continues after those 45 minutes have ended. Why? Because during the 45-minute half the clock never stops, so when a goal is scored or a penalty is called a few seconds or even a minute ticks away on the clock while the teams aren't really playing. At the end of each half it is up to the official to rectify the problem, so he approximates how much of the 45 minutes was spent NOT playing and adds that much time to the end. But if he adds 4 minutes at the end, then a portion of that 4 minutes is also spent NOT playing, so after those 4 minutes the official might add another 1 (if he feels like it). It's not an exact science, so the players just have to keep running around until the official has finally had enough and blows his whistle.

This method apparently works just fine throughout most of the world, but Americans need finality. In our sports we have a clock that counts down, and when it hits zero a very loud buzzer sounds. The game is over. It's not arbitrary, and it's not up to one official's whims. Or, in the case of baseball, there's a 9th inning, and when the defense gets its third out, the game is over. The home plate umpire can't just decide to the give the offense another batter or two. It's over. Americans have to have the build-up and the suspense, and the finality of the end of the game. If you score a goal in soccer in the 89th minute, that's awesome... but it's not exactly last-minute (probably). There are probably still a few minutes left (though no one knows for sure except the official). But when Kobe Bryant throws up a 3-pointer with 1 second left, it's a buzzer-beater. It would lose all its pizzazz if he sank a 3 at the buzzer and then the refs said, "Let's play for a couple more minutes... see if Boston can come back and win or not." It's ridiculous.

2. Games end in ties?!?!?!? This one is even more ridiculous. Even though the World Cup is the biggest possible global sporting event, its games (in the early rounds) ended in a tie (or "draw") as often as not! What?!?! The whole foundation of sports is that there are winners and there are losers -- except, apparently, in soccer where there are tie-ers. I'd be even more miffed if I was a player (and not just someone who almost never watches the sport). Imagine running around on a huge field for more than an hour and a half, spilling blood and sweat all over the place and practically killing yourself with effort... and then having the game end in a tie. It feels like the effort shouldn't have even been spent.

When I was watching the end of the US/England game a few weeks ago I didn't know that it was okay to just end a game at a tie, so when the game drew to a close and the score was tied, I began to get excited. Here comes overtime! I was curious as to what overtime looked like in soccer. Is it just sudden death? Do they have a shootout? Who gets the ball first? Overtime nailbiters can be some of the most exciting times in sports. So imagine my surprise when the official blew his whistle to end the game (at whatever arbitrary point he had decided to do so), and that's exactly what happened. The game ended. Tied. No overtime. No sudden death. No shootout. No winner, no loser. Just a tie. And a waste of my Friday morning.

A brief comparison for effect: I could spend $35 for a pretty good seat at a Rockies game. I know that at the end of the night, my team will have either won or lost. It's also possible, though not probable, that I'll get to see significantly more baseball than the 9 innings I paid for. I attended a Rockies game last season that went 14 innings. That's more than 50% more baseball for free. Not only is it fun and exciting, but at the end of the night, it felt like it was worth being there (win OR lose, it's fun to be among the fans at the stadium that have stuck around this long and cheered on their team). Now, the soccer tickets we had for the other night were about that same price: $35. We had pretty good seats, but there's no way I'm getting any more soccer than what I paid for (90 minutes plus a few minutes of Arbitrary Time or whatever the stuff at the end is called). But what's worse than that is that when the game ended, it felt like the entire effort was for nothing. Everyone who paid for a ticket got gipped. Everyone who had to work at a concession stand on a holiday got gipped. Every police officer who directed traffic before and after the game got gipped. All the money spent on flying the New York Red Bulls to Denver was absolutely worthless. Because nothing was determined.

3. The last thing I'll mention is how the low-scoring nature of the game probably doesn't do the game any favors in trying to attract more American fans. Now, I'm not against low scores in sports just on principle. I think a defensive battle in the NFL can be a thing of beauty. A game in the NFL that ends 10-7 is considered very low-scoring, but I can appreciate watching the game anyway. A pitcher's duel in a Major League Baseball game can be the most suspenseful kind of sport. Every pitch is important; a struggle for both hitter and hurler to out-perform the other.

But in soccer it doesn't seem like anything special has to happen at all for it to be low-scoring. There doesn't necessarily have to be fabulous defense, and the goalie doesn't have to make 10 or 15 saves to keep the other team from scoring. It seems to me that the vast majority of the time in soccer, no one's even coming close to being in a good position to score a goal. It also seems that for every goal I see scored, I see another one called off for some penalty or other (and in the case of the World Cup, we don't even always get to know what the penalty was).

So there you have it. Three (of the probably hundreds of) reasons why soccer isn't and will never be a huge sport in this country. Anybody have more?

Happy 4th (kinda long... sorry)

We think we kind of have a little tradition-type thingy on Independence Day. For two years in a row now we've hung out with our friend Alisa to celebrate the 4th (and also, for two years in a row now we've had plans in the evening that make it impossible for us to watch 4th of July fireworks with her... so our hanging out tradition is apparently limited to the daylight). So yesterday, the 4th of July, we drove up to Alisa and Alex (her husband)'s place. We basically just hung out and chatted with them and with Leah (who, as you know because you read my last post, was visiting from Chicago) and had a fabulous time. Alisa and Alex have a dog named Asher who's just wonderful. He's fun to play with and he's oh-so cute.

We were having so much fun with our friends that we truly didn't want to leave, but we sorta had to for a really weird reason.

We had tickets to a Major League Soccer game.

Neither Elizabeth nor I know anything about soccer, but a month ago we were given free tickets to a Colorado Rapids soccer game for the 4th of July. The main reason we were going was because we had heard that the fireworks show following the game was one of the best in the state. So, we reluctantly left our wonderful friends and headed home to get ready for our night at the soccer stadium. It was supposed to rain, so we tried to dress for it. Elizabeth did a better job. She wore a coat. I put on a sweatshirt. I figured that it might rain, but it's been 90+ degrees here for over three weeks, so I wasn't terribly worried about the temperature.

We pulled into the stadium parking lot, which isn't a lot so much as a grass and dirt field that appears to stretch for at least 50 miles in every direction (the stadium is seriously in the middle of nowhere). We brought our little umbrella in with us, just in case.

We got to our seats (really good seats!) about 15 minutes into the game. It didn't take us long to realize that watching soccer live at the stadium is about 1000% better than trying to watch it on tv. We had only been there a couple of minutes when the home team scored a goal right in front of our seats. It was pretty exciting for a few minutes.

At halftime Elizabeth and I were chatting, and realizing that we were enjoying the game more than we had anticipated, and then I looked up and saw it. The Big Black Cloud of Certain Death. The cloud that was rolling in (very quickly, by the way) overhead was not dark blue or dark gray. It didn't look like any actual cloud I'd ever seen before. It looked like a cross between the Smoke Monster from Lost and The Nothing from The Never Ending Story. It was big, it was black, and it looked like it was carrying certain death (hence its name).

A few minutes before the game was set to resume that cloud placed itself right over the stadium and blew itself open. It poured on us. We headed up to the concourse, which was roofed, to get ourselves out of the rain a little bit (our cheap little umbrella did what it could, but it couldn't do much). Everyone else at the game had the same idea we did. We watched the first 15 minutes of the second half jam-packed in a huge crowd of people huddled under the only roof at the stadium.

Soon the rain started to die down a little. It kept raining, but it wasn't pouring anymore. At some point when the Big Black Cloud of Certain Death descended on us, the temperature had apparently gone from the 75-80 range to the 35-40 range. It was COLD.

We made it through the rest of the game, but we were very wet. I was soaked to the bone, pretty much. Elizabeth was probably doing a little better, because her coat was better than my sweatshirt, but her jeans were soaked, so it wasn't comfortable at all. After the game ended the announcer reassured everyone that the fireworks would go on as planned despite the rain. They opened up the field to spectators because there are a lot of seats in the stadium where you can't see the fireworks very well. Ours, we were told, were some of them. So we headed down to the field. It was still raining, and our umbrella was still not great at its job, so we figured we could probably find some empty seats high enough that they were under part of the overhang, but where the fireworks could still be seen. We asked one of the stadium workers where the fireworks would be launched from. She told us, and we headed up and found some great seats that weren't being rained on because they were under the stadium's overhang.

We sat there, feeling good about our choice... but then the wind shifted and we were being rained on again. Shortly thereafter the fireworks began, but they weren't being launched from where we were told they would be. So the roof was in our way and we couldn't see. So we got up and headed down to the field so we could see them. The wind was apparently blowing directly from the fireworks to our faces, because there was no possible way to position the umbrella to stop the rain AND for us to see the fireworks. The rain was coming straight out of the fireworks. So we watched most of the show before we realized that we were kind of miserable. We headed out of the stadium and toward the car, keeping an eye on the fireworks show. As we were walking to the car we stopped for the fireworks finale. The smoke was so thick from so many fireworks that you couldn't even see some of the big ones exploding. It was crazy. It would have been an awesome show if we weren't freezing and wet.

Then we remembered that the parking lot, which used to be grass and dirt, was now a swamp of mud. Getting back to our car was an adventure in itself, and trying not to get stuck in the mud as we drove out of the parking lot was another one.

In the end we decided three things:
1. The game would have been really fun if it hadn't rained.
2. The fireworks would have been really fun if it hadn't rained.
3. We should have blown off the game and hung out with our friends all night long.

A great house guest, and Independence Day Eve

Our friend Matt came to visit the other day. He arrived really late (like, a little after 1 a.m.) on Thursday night and left around lunch time on Saturday. On Friday we hung out in the morning and grilled some brats. Saturday we went for our run -- and he did too. Matt's training for the Air Force marathon (which takes place the day before our race) and he's on a crazy training program. He ran 18 miles on Saturday.

Matt's a great guest to host. We loved having him around. I was especially interested in having him stay with us because I got to hear about what he's doing. He's an Air Force lawyer, and when he talks about his job he makes me think he's a character straight out of A Few Good Men.

Saturday night we went to watch fireworks. We met up with our friend Alisa and her husband, and another friend, Leah, was visiting from Chicago! We had a really great time with them... but the fireworks were kinda weird. After a while they just stopped (no obligatory "finale" at all). We weren't sure whether or not they were over. We waited a solid five minutes. Many of the people sitting around us had packed up and started to head out... but then the finale started. But then the finale stopped. It lasted 10 or 15 seconds. It was weird. We didn't know if it was over again. But we waited a good 10 minutes this time, and no more fireworks were seen. The show was a little disappointing, but the friendship was certainly worth the time spent.

Recipe

THIS is a recipe for "chili beans and turkey sausage" that Elizabeth and I have had twice. We love it. It's really good. And really easy. We don't do the tomato and cucumber salad that it mentions at the end. Also, it has you prepare rice, but it doesn't instruct you on how to serve the rice (I assume it means to pour the chili over the rice on your plate), but we've actually found that eating the chili out of a bowl works best (it's thinner than a real "chili" -- more like a soup), and we add the cooked rice to the bowl. The rice thickens it up and adds some flavor.

Good stuff!

That's all.