After a brief interlude, i'm back with my nose to the grant grindstone. My twice-rejected R21 project on imaging hypoxia-inducible reporter genes is currently getting a thorough makeover, one that will hopefully quiet the reviewers' criticisms on its third and final attempt. It's tough to get back in the saddle after the horror of preparing the R01 ... my brain sees what i'm doing and shouts "oh no, not this again!" It's a continuing battle against procrastination.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter isn't helping in that battle. Nor is Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, despite its useful-sounding title. V heard about this Nintendo DS game and was curious, so we picked it up at Best Buy a week ago. It was inspired by the research of Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima, who claims that our brains peak at age 20 and decline thereafter. With his training, a set of games and puzzles designed to activate your prefrontal cortex, he proposes that you can slow your brain's aging and make it perform as if you were younger. Ignoring the semi-believable self-help aspects, it is a fun puzzle game.

Okay, this really isn't right, but i could't help but giggle a bit when i read that the son of the defendant in a murder trial described his mother in his testimony as "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs". From Orinda, no less.

The World Cup grinds on ... i'm fairly pissed that the one match i forgot to Tivo, today's group of death match between Argentina and Serbia & Montenegro, resulted in a 6-nil South American romp. Between that and their defeat of the Ivory Coast, as well as Brazil's less-than-stellar 1-nil victory over Croatia, the Argentines have installed themselves as the team to beat. Next Wednesday's showdown between group C leaders Argentina and the Netherlands should be a cracker. I'm a bit saddened that the Ivory Coast is out after successive losses to those teams, but they certainly played each team tough and were unlucky to be drawn in such a brutal group. Meanwhile, i maintain a silly optimism that the United States can pull themselves together to give Italy a run for its money. But on the evidence of last Monday, i have to believe they're going to get embarassed again. It's not good when the media is touting the Ukraine's 4-nil defeat at the hands of Spain because it means the U.S. is no longer in last place in the World Cup. Eek. A few days of reflection on the Czech debacle hasn't really produced any answers ... coach Bruce Arena singled out poor performances by Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, while Beasley and Bobby Convey suggested that the team was not properly prepared ... something i mentioned immediately after the match. In retrospect, i would now believe that both parties are probably correct. Meanwhile, England are through to the knockout stages on the strength of victories over Paraguay and Trinidad & Tobago. The problem is the team didn't look particularly convincing in either win, basically floundering after getting an early goal against the South Americans, and then looking useless for 80 minutes against the Caribbeans. As much as i hate to badmouth my Chelsea hero, Frank Lampard has been shite. This whole Peter Crouch experiment has failed against lesser oppositions ... mainly because of horrible service ... so why does anyone think it will succeed against an Argentina or a Brazil? The English defense looks sound, but on the attack Joe Cole is to my eye the only English player willing to run at an opponent's defense. The Brits should be thanking their lucky stars that they didn't get drawn in a tougher group ... put them in Serbia's place and they don't make it out of the group phase. Call it a poor showing from the English-speaking nations (Australia being a moderate exception). Karmic retribution for Iraq, perhaps?

On the slate for the weekend is an as-yet unplanned Father's Day/Ted's birthday get-together with my parents, a second visit from our newly-hired gardeners to remove a set of trees along one of our fences and lay down sod on our freshly deweeded lawn, and a barbecue dinner with my friend Fred and his family down in Santa Clara. And that grant. @#%*$!