rubbing my hands in giddy anticipation

if fall is the most wonderful time of the year,
then this Saturday is its ground zero, its epicenter

kick-off is at 4:30... figure we'll leave Hueneme by 9, set up our tailgate before 11, lunch it until 2:30 or 3, then walk the outskirts of the Rose Bowl and drink it all in...

yesterday, I went through the tailgate kit, and we're good to go for this weekend...

there is NOTHING like the first home game of the season... I usually cannot wipe the smile off my face until after kickoff (and if we play well, then much later than that)...

despite the fact that my DBA at work has done something to the data server that renders my project dead on arrival, all I have to do is think about Saturday, and the edges of my mouth curl upward slightly...

fall

there's so much to love about this time of year

school starting
the beginning of football season
(back when I was a kid, the beginning of a television season)
the beginning of water polo season
did I mention the start of football season?

but here in SoCal, it's also the beginning of the hot, dry, Santa Ana wind season

and that can mean only one thing:

fires

our thoughts to all our friends (and Bruin Brethren) out there... hang in there

football... 9 days

Read the Times this morning... after its usual slobbering over $Cum, this was interesting.

by Chris Erskine

Across town, meanwhile, UCLA is having its big fall scrimmage, two hours later, in the cool shadows of Drake Stadium. The good-looking Bruins fans all look like extras for "Gossip Girl." California, I swear. . . .

Anyway, the UCLA scrimmage is more wide open, partly due to some arm tackling on defense, partly due to the squirrel rifle that resides atop the shoulder of Kevin Prince. Quarterbacks are royalty in football, and Coach Rick Neuheisel has finally found Alfred the Great. That kid Nick Crissman looked pretty good too.

Wow, can this team fly. Tailback Johnathan Franklin rips off a 60-yard run, then Damien Thigpen returns a punt 70 yards. Or was it a kickoff? By gawd, it was both.

Trying to tackle Thigpen is like trying to tackle ghosts. What a thing to do to your defense on the 15th day of a grueling camp. A couple of the linebackers looked as if they were practicing breathing exercises from Lamaze.

UCLA doesn't start classes till, what, Halloween? The Bruins schedule isn't exactly full of puff pastries, but neither does it seem stacked against them. Were I a student, I might be tempted to come back early, for this is an explosive team. Games will resemble sprint-car races, and if that scary-young offensive line can protect Prince's blind side, there's no telling what kind of damage the Bruins will do to Cal.

After the scrimmage is over, Neuheisel grabs the microphone the way he used to throttle quarterbacks. He still has that John Denver face, round as a dinner plate and full of sun -- the happy mug of someone who eeks out a living in the great outdoors.

"With your help, we're going to get there sooner rather than later," he tells the crowd.

At UCLA, sooner could be sooner than you think.

I don't want to get too excited...

too late

bruce

why can't he play a SoCal show on this leg of the tour?

check out some of the songs he's sung in only the first FOUR nights of the second US leg of the tour:

Murder Incorporated
Something in the Night
Raise Your Hand
Mountain of Love
Sha La La
My Love Will Not Let You Down
Jackson Cage
Point Blank
Raise Your Hand
Burning Love
For You
Backstreets
Heat Wave (instrumental)
I'm Goin' Down
You Never Can Tell
Janey Don't You Lose Heart
Hang on Sloopy
Growin' Up
Spirit in the Night
Rendezvous
Summertime Blues
Two Hearts
Because the Night


And the third show was a whopper: 29 songs, and 2 hours and 55 minutes...

We need another SoCal show!!!

school

yesterday was the first day of school for Jack and Lisa

Kyle's Hell Week hits midstride (classes begin next Tuesday)

and I've been looking at online Masters of English programs...

nothin' like learnin'...

11 days

till football...

The O-Line is the big question mark... TWO true frosh, a JuCo transfer, and a kid from Colorado are all slated to start... hope the can open holes and stop Prince from ending up on his ass.

But what's exciting is the young (and I mean YOUNG) speedsters...

This could be cool (and it could also mean a hefty learning curve this season).

football, you bet

great story on our new QB, Kevin Prince in the LA Times today...

The thought of Chow down on the sidelines.... yeah, baby...

I
CANNOT
WAIT
UNTIL
SEPT 5

can't believe

A couple of years back, I read "The Blind Side" which is this great non-fiction book that cross-cuts between the evolution of the offensive left tackle position and the story of Michael Ohre, a kid from Tennessee. It's a great read (and the story is turning out really well, as Ohre was a first-round draft pick this spring).

A couple of weeks back, I saw in the Entertainment Weekly fall movie preview that there's a film version coming out this November. Instantly, I began worrying.

Then I started to watch the trailer...



and I got really worried as the first part of it is all about Sandra Bullock's character (his "adopted" mom)... but then as the trailer progressed, I was more and more impressed by what I saw.

And knowing how good the book was, and how good it made me feel, I even got a little misty-eyed over the damn thing.

Can't wait for this movie now...

slight worries

I'm not digging the string of O-line injury reports coming out of the Bruins' summer camp... man, if we can't open holes for the running game, our QB (a frosh!) will be running, too... and we know that's a bad thing from last year (20 int, anyone?)

like I have enough time for three blogs

this one

The Bill / Shakespeare Project (which is taking more and more time, as it's one of the things going down now that I'm neither hating nor dreading)

and....


wait for it




wait





for






it

















the return of the Home Addition Adventure (fuckin' Fred....)


AND football season's about to begin... like I have time to sleep, let alone to work out...

sigh.

wouldn't it be nice

if we could send our teens away, and then have them come back only when they aren't insuffereable little brats?

I'm sure they could survive on their own, since they already know everything, right?

Not looking forward to this school year because I don't think our new sophomore has got the "wise" part of "wise fool" moniker down...

UFUCFB

While it's always nice to NOT see $CUM on the cover of the Sports Silly-strated college football preview issue, we're subjected to this?



repeat after me

Ugliest
Fucking
Unis
in
College
Football

Can't wait to see my Bruin Blue on the cover... I give it another year... near the end of next season, when we bump the mustard and ketchup out of the Pac-10 AND BCS races...

----

at least the centers got some cover photo love (my HS position)...

no news

Allen from Coastline just called again. He says that he's got a request to their supplier to see their order records, because they don't order M type pipes. But--fancy this--their supplier is on vacation until "around the end of the month."

He's also sending Frank to pick up the blueprints; I reiterated that he can look at the blueprints, and he may take a copy of the salient page, but I will not be relinquishing the plans.

He repeats over and over how much Fred and they want to make this right... but they need to see the order info.

I say that while I appreciate their due diligence, the fact of the matter remains that there is still type M pipe down there. He responds by saying that that may be the case, but if they didn't order the type M, how could they have installed it.

I respond by reminding him (or rather since he is new, MINDING him) that this was a complete rebuild, save for a wall, and that they had to have installed it. He returns to the "I'm new" excuse and repeats again that Fred wants to make this problem go away.

Whatever. The fuckers are slippery, again....

It my be time to re-open the Home Addition Adventure blog...

contractor

just got a call from a guy at Coastline, saying they just now received the letter (riiiiiight).

They intend to send out a plumber this week to take a look at the pipes to see about the type used.

great

------------------------------

Update: "Allen" called back... they're sending Frank out today to look at blueprints. We have only one copy. I'm making a copy of the section on page 2-0 that discusses L type pipe. I'll let him take a look at the full plan, and he can take the partial copy, but there's no way in hell he's taking any more than that...

more updates later...

UPDATE:
It's now near 8 at night and Fred's plumber just left (he only arrived around 7)... he sees both L and M under the house. More disturbingly, he's found not only copper but galvanized steel as well. He's going to return that info to Fred, and he says that we'll need to "work it out" and then he gave me a salute that I could only read as "good fucking luck"...

Frank never showed.

joy

The morning started off with my usual posting to Facebook, a song lyric from Lone Justice, which got me going to YouTube for some old LJ and Maria McKee videos... but on one of the page was a link to this one... a performance that hasn't left my mind since I first saw it...



"a woman can be tough" ... no freakin' lie

I'm teary-eyed now, thinking not only about my mom, but also the mom of a friend of ours--recently diagnosed with Stage IV, and not expected to last more than a year--and another family friend--another mother who passed away last week.

Be tough, indeed.

contactors and plumbers and lawyers, oh my

just talked to a "lawyer acquaintance" of mine...

she's given me the lowdown.

since Fred did not respond to our certified letter requesting a response to our request that he do something about the type M pipe, she wants me to do the following:

check the engineering plans, see what they specify
contact the engineer and have him check under the house to see if it matches the plans

have the plumber come down and document the changes he's made and the type of pipe used

the lawyer can then turn these documents into a legal declaration

check the permits to see who the plumber was

FILE CLAIMS against both bonds, both contractor and plumber

FILE COMPLAINT through CSLB

looks like we have work to do...

I sit around getting older...

oh my freaking god...



on the cover of freaking AARP Magazine

the hurt locked

Lisa and Jack are out of town. I took Pa to see "The Hurt Locker" last night (Kyle went to see "I Love You, Beth Cooper" with a water polo team-mate instead, but I think it was more the girls they hugged goodbye to when we picked them up...

Anyway...

Magnificent. Incredible. Suspenseful. It is very very good.

It does hit some narrative issues in the Act Three, but the bomb sequences were as suspenseful as any I've seen.

HIGHLY recommended.

bw

I did not go to med school

and thus my experimental self-weening off the Wellbutrin did not go as successfully as I hoped... I reigned in my usage from 1xAM/2xPM to 1/1 on Wednesday, and by yesterday Lisa had noticed a change (I thought I was just grumpy, but she saw the detachment ... so I'm back to 1/2 again...

on the plus side: Dead Snow (even in a badly dubbed version) rocked...



NOTHING like Nazi Zombies!