The saga of our street under construction is almost over. They laid the blacktop today and should be covering it with concrete by early next week. All it cost was some cosmetic damage to the house when they ripped out the power line, some electrical work needed after the surge blew out our lights in the kitchen, the complete destruction of our lawn, the inconvenience of not being able to park on our street for a month, being blocked in our driveway the days we could get in it, dirt and dust blowing through the house, and house-rattling construction work starting most days at 7:00 am every weekday (and some weekends) since July.

Oh, and about a $6000 bill to boot. Looking back, was it so worth it. As if we had a say.

Woo hoo! The Chicago Fire upset league-leading DC United in the MLS play-offs. Last week they won 1-0 at home and plugged in two first-half goals last night in the second leg. DC roared back to level it at 2-2 but couldn’t find the go-ahead goal.

I don’t understand the resistance in MLS to the “away goals” rule. Had DC managed to win 3-2, the score on aggregate would have been 3-3 and they’d have played overtime to decide the winner. Everywhere else in the world, Chicago would have gone through on the away goals rule, which apparently is too hard for the American sports/soccer fan to understand. So let me try to explain it in a single sentence.

Away goals rule: if the scores of the games added together are equal after two games, the team that scored more goals away from home wins.

Not so hard, is it?

I used to like Matt Hughes. One of the first UFC shows I watched was a Matt Hughes special that showed him body slamming all sorts of dudes. Then he made a blatantly racist comment to Din Thomas on The Ultimate Fighter a few seasons back and all respect bottomed out. Matt Serra has described Hughes as a jock meat head egomaniac and, after watching this season of The Ulimate Fighter, that’s pretty much my impression too.

Serra is up 6 wins to 1. The single fight Hughes’ guys won was when he chose his best guy against Serra’s weakest. Yet after six consecutive losses, Hughes continually blames his team—the team he chose. He has taken zero responsibility for why they might be unprepared, and Serra has hit the nail on the head—Hughes’ only response is to work them harder and physically beat them up in training. Anyone else notice Serra’s fighters haven’t had any injuries while two of Hughes’ guys have been hurt in training? But Hughes did tell a guy whose cousin had just died that he “expected a win out of him” before he left for the funeral. Nice.

I take my Spanish competency exam on Monday. Part of me says it should be a piece of cake. Part of me is worried that I’m overconfident. You can keep taking it until you pass and I have another two years to do so, so it’s a low-pressure situation.

Having said that, I dreamed last night that I took a placement exam and wound up in first semester Spanish class where I was complaining to the teacher—in Spanish—about how that couldn’t be right.

I’m learning a lot more about customizing WordPress. I’m moving our program’s literary magazine from a static site to a dynamic one managed solely by WordPress. I haven’t worked out all the kinks yet but I’m damn close and feeling pretty good about it. When I get the time, I’ll probably switch my whole site over to WordPress too. It’s pretty nifty.

If you’re interested in installing WordPress and customizing the default Kubrick theme, I highly recommend the Hacking Kubrick tutorials over at solostream.com Developer Michael Pollock has put together some great AVI movies to show you step-by-step how to customize the Kubrick theme. They were a godsend for me.

Current Mood: Fine |
Currently Listening To – Oasis – “Be Here Now”