My R01 preparations continue ... i had a meeting with our new division director Paul on Friday morning, during which we dissected the proposal for an hour. He had a number of good criticisms that i think really shore up some of the weaker aspects of the grant. Of course said criticisms involve a considerable amount of rewriting for me, but all for good. I had to get Sam Gambhir's comments back this week, and have my collaborator Amato give it the once over from the radiation biology perspective. Ever forward. At least i know that by May 23rd i will have bid farewell to it and can relax. Although i have an R21 resubmission due by late June, so the relaxation had better be quick.

I skipped my Friday workout with Fred to decompress at home. Veronica arrived around 8pm, and we hashed out a quick plan to grab dinner at the ever-delectable Bombay Garden, followed by a movie in downtown San Mateo. We settled on the newly-released and horribly titled Goal! The Dream Begins, the fictional tale of Santiago Munez, a Mexican kid who immigrates illegally to Los Angeles with his family. He works various menial jobs but lives to play soccer with a loosely organized local team. After being spotted by a former scout for English giants Newcastle United, he's invited to come to England for a trial. Defying his father and the odds, Santiago makes it across the Atlantic and begins a meteoric rise to prominence. The film is painted in hugely broad strokes, and succumbs to every sports film cliché ever conceived. But its heart is in the right place, and it does a wonderful job of capturing the ups and downs of the sport from the perspective of both the fan and the player. If you like soccer then it may be for you, but if not you might be rolling your eyes before the halfway mark. Veronica found it particularly hard to swallow that Santiago's grandmother spoke English. Hrm ... everyone's got their hotbutton topics, i suppose. The film is actually the first of a trilogy, with Goal! 2: Living the Dream (another dreadful moniker) coming out later this year. Having seen the first, it's no secret what will develop in the second ... expect a heavy dose of the temptations of celebrity and money. According to IMDB Munez gets sold to Real Madrid in the sequel ... not sure whether that gives me hope or dread.

A trailer for an upcoming documentary on the New York Cosmos was shown before the movie ... apparently the purveyors of U.S. soccer are attempting to spike interest in the sport with the upcoming World Cup. I'm a bit suspicious of the claim in the trailer that the Cosmos were up there with Studio 54 in the New York scene. I stick to my verdict that the quality of the MLS and the American national team needs to rise to international levels before the public will pay much attention. The Galaxy losing 3-nil to Real Madrid last summer impressed only the American commentators, who offered feeble excuses like "they played the Spaniards hard".

Veronica had to work on Saturday for a second consecutive week, but as luck would have it so did i. My colleague's biannual course on image-guided radiation therapy was going on, and my Friday talk had been rescheduled to Saturday afternoon. I gave my 45 minute shpiel and drove back home to Tara. Our house has descended into disarray, and i felt compelled to rectify the situation. I began by tidying the bedroom, dusting the desk and TV and organizing the assorted papers and clothes littering the room. I moved on to the living room, and by 4pm had these two areas in order. I also had sinuses full of dust and mucus. My evening was spent in and out of sleep, while V came home and left again for a night at New Wave City vs. Popscene in the city. I awoke for a while and set about watching the epic Ben Hur. I never come into this movie at the beginning, and i have yet to watch the entire thing. Not because i'm bored, quite the opposite ... it just seems circumstances are always against a full viewing. This particular instance i was fairly dazed from sinus congestion and medicine. Amazingly, i still haven't witnessed the chariot scene. I love the scenes on the Roman warship though. I tivoed Oliver Stone's Platoon on Friday night, winner of the 1986 best picture Oscar and another renowned flick i've yet to see. Hopefully i'll get a chance to give that a viewing this week.

Mostly recovered on Sunday morning, V and i arose and headed over to Fremont for a Mother's Day lunch with my folks. I had bought two gift certificates to Teatro ZinZanni for mom (Mother's Day) and dad (birthday on May 15th), a cabaret-style dinner and show experience in San Francisco. Those had arrived in the mail earlier in the week, but my dad hadn't noticed there were two certificates. I thought my order had gotten screwed up, but luckily i found the two pieces of paper were just stuck together. That's right up their alley, and with dad retired and mom's summer vacation approaching, they'll be able to go enjoy it. I had thought we were going out for lunch, but arriving in Fremont i found my parents had made a lunch of barbecued carne asada and rotisserie chicken for Veronica and i and my sister Hilary and boyfriend Jeff. Unfortunately, this meant my fragile sinuses were exposed to my parents' cats for a few hours. I made it through lunch, but had to escape shortly afterward. Their senior cat Milenko is now allowed outside (years ago he was an outside cat, but had his hip crushed slumbering under a parked car and crawled home after several days awol, and after recovering was kept inside from then on). He loves it in the great outdoors, and seemed to delight in stalking Veronica from his cover in the bushes as we walked up to the house.

I needed more sleep to alleviate my congested head when we got home, and that took most of the rest of Sunday. I watched the new episode of Family Guy ... still not sold on its most recent efforts. This last episode was a blatant Simpsons knock-off, something the show has been prone to in recent episodes (Peter's stint at the New England Patriots smacked of Homer's boxing days). Worse, clips of next week's season finale revealed it to be nothing more than the 90 minute DVD i bought a few months back. And that wasn't particularly good either. American Dad was better, featuring Francine's crazed attempts to destroy George Clooney.

This morning it was made official, Michael Ballack is now officially a Chelsea player. I've always liked Ballack, but i'm still unsure of how his addition will improve our squad. José Mourinho has declared Ballack to be the first of "not many but few" summer signings for the Blues. We'll see. Andriy Shevchenko has announced his intention to move to England from AC Milan, all but paving the way for a deluge of Chelsea bids. It's ominous that i added him to my Winning Eleven squad over the weekend, and he's so far been a big letdown. Whether that's a statement on his value to the Blues or my crappy WE skills, i dunno. The pessimistic portion of me is awaiting the massive on- or off-pitch player meltdown where our expanding stable of superstars breaks ranks and demands playing time or formations, or simply devolves into a mass internal brawl during a match. It's up to John Terry and Frank Lampard to set the tone and keep the troops in line and moving forward. But that's getting to be a taller order every day.

Today is dad's birthday, for which the local family will be convening at Bucca di Beppo in Palo Alto. V's been given two tickets for Wednesday's A's game in Oakland, courtesy of her boss. As he's a season ticket holder, the seats are right behind home plate. That'll be a nice diversion from the endless working and reworking of the R01. Eight days to go.