i don't think i want to think about it how the fall is coming down the light is leaving and it's hard to breathe buried in a pile of leaves we don't want to make mistakes we don't want to be the same i hand the finger to my fate he doesn't know and he cannot see that far

Last Saturday we had a belated birthday party for Naomi's man Phil and his twin brother Tom (and me) at Go Kart Racer in Burlingame. Gary, Veronica, and i showed up a bit late and met up with the scooter crew, who were just checking in. I was expecting something akin to the casual racing atmosphere of Malibu Gran Prix. I was not expecting having to put on a racing jumpsuit, head sock, helmet, and getting a crash course in race administration. Our group of 10 opted for the "Grand Prix" package, consisting of a 10 minute practice race, and a 5 minute qualifying session followed by the official 15 minute race. Having sat through our briefing session, we headed out to the indoor track and entered our karts. I got lucky number 7, but had to get the assistance of the race official to help me move the seat to a comfortable position. The karts were streamlined vehicles, riding maybe a couple of inches off the ground. You sit just to the left of the engine, and have a brake and gas pedal (no clutch or gear shifter). The wheel rotates perhaps 120°. During our practice run i quickly learned that the kart doesn't like to accelerate from a dead stop when the wheels are turned. This was important for the racing situation because our track contained a nasty S curve early on. If you took the wrong line, you came to a dead stop and had to slowly accelerate into a turn. However, i soon found the trick to avoiding this problem: power slides. Just as in Mario Kart, if you take a turn at high speed and spin the wheel sharply, you lose traction and slide/spin around the curve. After a few trial laps i began to become comfortable in my kart, and finished the practice race in 6th, ahead of Gary, Veronica, Naomi, and Phil.

We had a half hour downtime to compare experiences with our fellow racers before our formal race began. Qualifying consisted of a brief five minute race in which everyone vied for the best lap time. I managed one great lap before spinning out and having to wait for the race official to extricate Veronica, Naomi, and i from a wall. Luckily my lap time put me in fourth position, just behind Gary and scooter boys Andrew and Oscar. The trick in the race proper however turned out to be escaping the pack at the start. Andrew and Gary took off while i got stuck amidst the crowd. After getting some distance, i was able to see on the trackside leaderboard that i was in fourth, behind the three who had been seeded ahead of me. Andrew was the only racer wearing a red jumpsuit, so i kept my eye out for him and soon enough spotted him ... about 50 feet behind me. I was in fourth and about to be lapped. I managed to hold off the leaders for the majority of the race, but with about five minutes left i made a series of bad turns and was overtaken not only by the leaders but also by Phil, who'd been trailing me the entire race. I finished in 5th, a bit disappointed but thoroughly pleased with the experience. Gary managed to lap me twice and beat the pack to take the race honors.

Naomi came off the track breathing fire about having been bumped repeatedly by other racers, a practice that was condemned by the race officials but not strenuously enforced during the competition. I did my fair share of bumping during the race. Because everyone has more or less the same kart with the same acceleration and top speed, turns become the place where you can use your skills to pass. And because the track is only so wide, you generally have to identify a hole and commit to surging through it to pass your opponents. By midway through the race, my offensive driving skills had taken hold and when i saw an opening, i was seizing it. Even though this generally involved bumping my foes in the process and occasionally causing them to spin out. All part of the fun ... i took a few bumps of my own in the process. We all collected in the lobby and shared stories, analyzing the race reports printed for us by the race officials. Each car is monitored (by some wireless system, presumably), so at the end of the race you can examine your lap times and statistics. As you have to clench the steering wheel to control the kart as you power slide through turns, at the end of the race my arms were jelly. When we were pricing the affair i thought $60 for a half hour of racing sounded like a lousy deal, however now i don't think i could handle more than 30 minutes. Especially when you factor in that i was getting decidedly carsick by the end.

I friggin' love the new Editors record, especially their evolution on the single "Smokers Outside the Hospital". Although the use of piano by any brit indie band will incur the requisite comparisons to Keane and of course Coldplay, i think Tom Smith and co. incorporate the instrument quite well within their mopey aesthetic. My only rankle is the lyric "you came on your own, that's how you'll leave" on the otherwise vibrant title track "An End Has a Start", which falls a little too close to the Verve classic "On Your Own" and its chorus "you come in on your own, and you leave on your own".

Wow ... what a mindbending pair of tunes. Listening to them back to back has got me all misty.

someone hit the light, 'cause there's more here to be seen
when you caught my eye i saw everywhere i'd been
and wanna go to
you came on your own, that's how you'll leave
with hope in your hands and air to breathe

you come in on your own, and you leave on your own
forget the lovers you've known, and the friends on the road

V and i spent roughly a week breathing in stain and subsequently varnish fumes, which put first her and then me out of commission with nasty coughs and colds. She's still trying to shed her cough, while i've been nurturing mine by refusing to stop doing home improvements. Pacing around crouched over in the crawl space is no recipe for recovery.

V's illness didn't stop her from hosting our good friend Danny and his girlfriend Maribel on their visit north from La-La-Land. After i spent my early evening two Fridays ago at a UCB/UCSF bioengineering alumni reception, in which my pro-academia comments during the panel discussion apparently irked some of my industry colleagues, i met up with V, D, and M as they finished dinner at old favorite Thailand Restaurant in the Castro. We then headed down into the "Dogpatch" district south of the ballpark (that moniker is new to me) to attend Club Something at the Retox Bar. A fun evening catching up with friends old and new, even if the place was a bit empty. Good music and good pals make everything ok. They stayed with us that night in our garage rumpus room, while V and i slept on the pullout couch as our new bedroom floor was still drying. We caught up with Danny the following Thursday after Maribel had flown back to LA. V and him headed up to Popscene after dinner, but the home improvement-induced cold that had afflicted Veronica had finally got me as well, so i slept.

Having put God of War II to rest (a fabulous game, although i was a bit peeved that the ending was essentially a trailer for the next episode), i've given the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess some time recently. Back in my formative NES days i finished the seminal original Legend of Zelda as well as its oft-forgotten but no less entertaining sequel the Adventure of Link. As i never owned a Super NES, i missed the much acclaimed Link to the Past, and didn't revisit the series until the N64's Ocarina of Time. I liked that title, but only got halfway through before growing weary of slogging endlessly through dungeon after dungeon. Flashing forward to Twilight Princess, i'm a bit amazed at how some of the original gameplay elements from the NES have made it into the next-next-next-next gen version, like the mechanics of dungeon exploration (compass, map, warp, etc). Some of these feel added on for no other reason than history. I'm enjoying the game, although a bit of the boredom incurred by hunting around for 20 orbs or finding a particular key is beginning to set in. I don't want to get off on an anti-Nintendo rant as it really is a good game ... however, the visuals are awful and the Wii controls aren't particularly engrossing. Swordfighting in particular is an exercise in randomly flailing the Wii-mote. Anyhoo, i'm still playing so that tells you something about whether the game succeeds or not.

On Saturday despite my crappy health Veronica convinced me to go with her to the mall ... there's never a "quick" or "brief" trip to the mall with V, it's always an all-or-nothing affair. Anyhoo, we did some returns then picked up a new shirt for me as well as a few Father's Day gifts for my dad. We drove over to Fremont on Sunday for the Father's Day festivities, including a barbecue lunch and some new tales of my little nephew Camden. We were scheduled to celebrate Phil's birthday with in the city, but i was thoroughly pooped so we headed home instead.

In the last few weeks our satellite reception has gone way south. We get the local channels fine, but many of the cable and premium channels cut in and out, dropping audio and video to the point where they're unwatchable. For some reason, all the HD channels come in fine (coming into a different transponder, perhaps?), so i've been surfing those lately. I've discovered the HDNet movies channel, which shows a lot of older films in high definition. On Sunday night i tuned in just as 1976 best picture nominee All the President's Men was starting, so V and i watched that until just after midnight. A great film, although i was put off a bit by its abrupt ending. This past week i've had trouble sleeping because of my cough, so i've tuned into this channel again in the wee hours to pass the time. The other night i watched the Blue Lagoon, a film i'd missed in my youth despite it being frequently discussed as a chance to see rampant nudity and sex. Perhaps i should've seen it back then, because watching it at age 33 at 2 in the morning, i found it was totally awful. Barely watchable for long enough to see Brooke Shields cavorting around naked.

I spent all of the next Monday playing Zelda as i was stayed home from work with my illness. While giving the Wii the occasional rest, i also watched a Tivoed copy of Martin Scorsese's the Last Temptation of Christ. A very interesting take on the saga of Jesus, taking creative liberties here and there but offering a fresh interpretation of Christ's work. The movie, based on a 1951 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, begins with Willem Dafoe as Jesus working as a carpenter to make crosses for the Romans to crucify Jewish rebels. He does this work because he is conflicted by and afraid of the mission God has laid out for him, and casts himself as a traitor against his Jewish brethren so as to convince God to give up on him and leave him alone. His realization of his purpose comes with the help of revolutionary Judas (a redheaded Harvey Keitel) and a retreat in the desert where in his meditation he is tempted by Satan. He gradually understands, accepts, and fulfills his role as messiah, but while on the cross he is again tempted, this time with visions of his life had he forgone God's plans for him and lived as a normal man. This last half hour of the film contains scenes that infuriated the Christian community on its release, including Jesus consummating his marriage to Mary Magdalene, marrying again after her death, and becoming an adulterer. It's an interesting speculation however on the humanity of Jesus, instead of depicting him as someone who knew from day 1 the what, why, and how of his purpose on Earth. I greatly enjoyed the movie, although there are two rather gory crucifixition scenes as well as one unsettling sequence in which Jesus waits all day in Mary Magdalene's brothel as she serves a crowd of waiting clients. After seeing the Last Temptation of Christ, i'm not sure i'm cut out for the undoubtedly more disturbing Passion of the Christ.

I also Tivoed the critically applauded Mystic River this week, but after watching the first five minutes in which a boy is kidnapped and molested, i'm not sure i'm cut out for that either.

Having spent my Monday alternately in bed, depressing the shit out of myself watching the Last Temptation of Christ, or playing the not-quite-as-big-a-downer-but-definitely-not-cheery Twilight Princess, come evening i was thoroughly blue. V came home and got me some dinner, and we whiled away the evening watching Gordon Ramsey's hilarious cooking competition Hell's Kitchen, featuring a lazy Asian cowboy whose credentials for becoming a top chef focus on cooking at a retirement home. He probably wasn't great at that either. Just before going to bed, i pulled out my laptop to check if the reviews for my NIH R01 had become available. Logging onto the NIH ERA Commons site, i pulled up the link to my February R01 and saw my score. 141? 6.3 percentile? This is a mistake, right? In this era of cutthroat competition for shrinking federal research funds, my application was better than 93.7% of its competitors? On its first try? I was hooting and hollering. While not certain, this score puts my grant in fantastic standing to be funded when the committee meets in October.

I spent much of the rest of the week in somewhat of a haze, bouncing between disbelief and ecstasy. It's difficult to fathom that in the span of a month and a half, i've gone from having no NIH grants and serious financial problems running my lab to having TWO federal grants and plenty of money to grow my operation. It's given me a chance to think in a relaxed, non-desperate manner about how i want to grow my academic efforts and where i want to be in five years. Things are looking up for my little group. Way up.

We rung in both my 33rd birthday and my grant success on Tuesday. I was still mesmerized that my wish for a good R01 review had been fulfilled in such dramatic fashion, i didn't actually realize it was my birthday until a mid-morning meeting where i glanced at the date on the agenda and the significance of the date struck me. I caltrained to the city to meet V and my sister Hilary downtown, and we then drove to Betelnut for a celebratory dinner with my parents. After ordering way too much food but somehow managing to consume almost all of it, V and i said goodbye to my family and skitted over to 330 Ritch for a Tuesday night Popscene/Shutter installment featuring the Bay Area debut of English garage goths the Horrors. A great show, although when they exited the stage at 12:15am i was more than happy to run back to the car and get home to sleep.

Naturally, to complement my academic successes i had to blend in a bit of domestic frustration. With the refinishing of our bedroom floor coming to a spectacular conclusion, Veronica and i have been picking our next home battles. With the bedroom empty, we've decided to paint, and have begun that process by patching assorted cracks in the wall plaster. Meanwhile, V suggested we relocate the coaxial cable supplying our cable modem as well as the phone line from our VoIP from the bedroom to a dedicated wall jack in the living room, where we could stash the cable modem, wireless router, and VoIP adapter. Sounds simple enough. We identified an unused jack in the corner of the living room and i set to de-wiring it. Turns out the existing jack was a radio port, something probably dating from the 30's or 40's. It allowed an antenna line to run up to the ceiling, and was grounded into the crawl space. Bizarre. Getting that out was easy enough, so the next task was to drill a hole from the crawl space into the wall to run the new coax and phone lines. Ignoring sage advice from my dad that you should always drill down rather than up in these situations, i took some measurements and crawled under the house to drill. After making my hole and inserting a dowel up through it, i heard Veronica upstairs ask "is that where you meant to drill?" Uh oh. Turns out i'd drilled through the floor and into the baseboard. Wonderful. I tried drilling some new holes from the crawl space using my erroneous hole as a landmark, but couldn't get up into the wall. Hrm.

Regrouping a few days later, i resolved to remove the ground wire from the old jack and run the cables through that hole. As i probably should've done from the start. But something inside the wall was preventing me from pulling the wire, so i had to remove the electrical box. Again, easier said than done ... i wound up having to excavate a fair bit of plaster and ultimately use a hacksaw the cut the box from where it was nailed into an adjacent wall stud. After that, things went smoothly ... i pulled up the two new cables, wired the new jack, and plastered and painted over my destruction of the wall around the jack. I should've tested my handiwork first though, as while the coax cable worked fine, the phone line did not. It took me another day of fiddling and cursing until i learned the jack wiring didn't work exactly as advertised. A simple fix and all is now well.

On Wednesday while fighting with the outlet i took receipt of our new bed frame and mattress from Room and Board. We splurged on a queen size firm memory foam mattress, which felt all the better after sleeping on our thin and worn sofabed. V's in the bedroom enjoying it right now, unwinding after a busy week at work as her new responsibilities as a buyer are coming into play.

With the return of one of my favorite music sites, my mp3 library has resumed its growth. Which means that on Thursday its volume passed the 50k mark. The song that put it past this milestone was the fourth track on Editors' new album An End Has A Start, "Bones". A song wholly worthy of this meager honor. I've also picked up the rest of the Sound's backcatalog, an oldie but goodie Rogue Wave album, the new White Stripes, a couple of interesting old records by campy goth icon and British politician Screaming Lord Sutch, and assorted other tidbits. When i'll get a chance to listen to them is questionable seeing as all of the sudden i'm incredibly successful at work, but hopefully as in the past the wisdom of random play will serve me well.

We had some tree trimmers come to our house this morning to cut back one of the large trees in front of our house, which as i mentioned above had grown in front of our satellite dish and seriously reduced our signal quality. The boys did a great job cutting back and thinning out the tree, but when they finished and i went back inside, i found our satellite woes continue. Our dish must be out of alignment, perhaps perturbed during a storm ... just like in those anti-satellite cable ads. We've got a DirecTV technician coming Monday to see if that's the case.

I'm a bit excited as tomorrow we're further celebrating Phil's birthday with a few rounds of go-kart racing at a track off the 101 in Burlingame. I haven't go-karted since attending a birthday party at Malibu Grand Prix circa 1985. And as i recall, back then i was chastised by my friends for going too slow. Not a good omen for my competitive chances tomorrow. But let them challenge me at Mario Kart. Hrm ... perhaps nerdy comebacks don't carry enough weight.

Day 0. A fairly cheap, certainly dirty carpet that we've suffered along with for two and a half years. It collects Tara hair like mad.
After our handymen ripped up the carpet and scraped off the decaying carpet pad, we were left with a rough, dark hardwood. No damage was evident, but i just hoped that a good sanding would show the wood was the same as in the rest of the house.
And voilà. Later that afternoon the floor was sanded to a beautiful light, unfinished texture.
Then the slow process of finishing begun. First up, our handymen applied a coat of stain to the wood. On their first try, they picked a stain that matched almost seamlessly with the flooring the rest of the house.
One coat of varnish ...
... and two. We've spent the last five days smelling polyurethane fumes throughout the house, but our sleeping chamber has been magically transformed into a classy room. Now just to paint the walls ...

There's something oddly disconcerting about this whole Paris Hilton probation/jail fiasco. While i'm all for a long overdue lesson in consequences for the pampered heiress, i find it strange that high-priced lawyers and legal maneuverings haven't yet enabled her to return to a life of red carpets and nightclubs. Isn't this America?

Ann Coulter is now raving that the judge in the case has fallen victim to the same hunger for attention that plagued Judge Ito and that bozo in the Dannielynn Smith custody hearings. Which may be true. But she also claims Paris is getting treated more severely than a normal person would, at which i have to take umbrage. A normal person who had their license revoked and then violated three separate terms of their probation as well as drove under the influence would still be in jail. The only thing different in Paris's case is that she was accidentally released for a day. So maybe her celebrity earned her a vacation day in the middle of her sentence. It's probably best if i leave it at that, because if i start delving further into Coulter's bullshit then there goes my afternoon.

That was undoubtedly the best baseball game i've been to in ... well ... ever. Dave and i arrived at the Oakland Coliseum (screw you, McAfee!) ten minutes before the game's scheduled 7:05pm start, and fought the crowds to reach our seats just as Dustin Pedroia of the Sox was taking the first pitch from Dan Harren. I privately decided my allegiance was with the A's, but didn't pick up a hat until late in the game and kept a relatively low-profile amongst my pro-Sox seat neighbors. Boston fielded a weird lineup, inserting Alex Cora in place of starting shortstop Julio Lugo and Kevin Youkilis in place of on-fire third baseman Mike Lowell. This was ostensibly because the Sox's Sunday game against the Yanks in Boston didn't end until midnight east coast time, and they then flew cross-country for the Monday game and were probably pooped.

Big Papi David Ortiz lived up to his rep, hitting a solo homer in the first inning. Oakland responded in the bottom of the second as Mark Ellis tripled to score Bobby Crosby and Mark Kotsay, giving the home team a 2-1 lead. Ellis one-upped himself in the fourth with a solo shot off the left field foul pole for a home run and a two run advantage, then doubled in the sixth as part of a fruitless rally. I then realized that all he needed was a single to hit for the cycle, a fairly rare feat in baseball. Meanwhile, the tired Sox got within 3-2 with a towering Wily Mo Pena shot. Ellis's bid for the cycle in the 8th produced a dribbler to short that wound up a fielder's choice and an error, which let down the crowd who wanted the play (which produced no outs) to be scored a single. The A's did get an insurance run in the inning, and they would need it as reliever and former Boston pitcher Alan Embree proceeded to give up a double to David Ortiz, a Jason Varitek single to score Big Papi, and a Pena single to score pinch runner Coco Crisp to tie the game.

At this point i expected the old deceive-to-impress A's to blow it. However they loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth with no outs, leading me to hope for a game winning rally. Unfortunately Eric Chavez struck out, and Bobby Crosby hit a bouncer to third that produced a force out at the plate and a double play to first. And all we needed was a sacrifice fly with no outs! The A's came within a foot of going down by two runs in the top of the tenth, when with two outs and Dustin Pedroia at first, David Ortiz hit a powerful ball that rebounded off the top of the fence. Pedroia attempted to score, but thanks to an excellent throw by Mark Kotsay and relay by Bobby Crosby he was thrown out comfortably at home plate. The A's rallied again in the bottom of the tenth but failed to produce. Mark Ellis completed his cycle with a blooper to left center, and earned a standing ovation from the crowd. After putting down the Sox in the top of the 11th, with the hour having past 11pm, Eric Chavez hit a two out solo homer to right field off Boston reliever Kyle Snyder to give the team a walk-off victory.

Four home runs, only the 17th cycle in A's history, squandered chances, a great defensive play at home plate, and a walk off homer. A fantastic game all around, even if Dave was exhausted and exasperated by how close his beloved Sox came to winning. The A's have got a fantastic blue-collar, workmanlike ethic these days. They're a low brow team. Many of them look like they just came from the trailer park, and team's payroll is half of Boston's. But general manager Billy Beane is an excellent chemist and has consistently produced something from nothing.

I'm not going to go into the usual excuses for not posting as frequently. It's all been said before.

I met my new nephew Camden a few weeks back when my sister visited from Texas for a week and a half. He's a little character. As any baby should, he sleeps most of the time, and when he's not sleeping he's expecting food. In between meals and naps he's very playful ... auntie Hil has a knack for calming him down and getting him to goof around (whoda thunk?). Over Sunday dinner she and i were teaching him to throw a split-finger fastball. Between that training, Hilary and Jeff's gift of an A's jersey, my competing present of a full Chelsea kit, and dad Jared's penchant for the Cowboys, Cam has a bright sports future. V and i will be heading off to Texas in the next month or two to see him and his parents at their home in Dallas. For those wanting more pics of my cute first nephew, have a look at my dad's site.

V and i are now the proud owners of a Wii after Kevin secured us one in SoCal and fedexed it up north to us. And i'm sad to report that no fancy glowing or other Temple of Doom-esque magical phenomena were to be seen when i installed the console next to the PS3 and Xbox 360. We picked up a slew of games to put the fledgling system through its paces, including Cooking Mama Cook Off, Rayman: Raving Rabbids, and Bust-A-Move Bash! for Veronica, plus Wii Play to snag an extra controller. Cooking Mama is amusing, although at first glance not quite as engrossing as the DS version. The most memorable aspect of the game is the ridiculous broken English of the female narrator, in which the game almost revels. When doing a good job on a recipe, you're treated to a gleeful voice exclaiming "Waaandefurrr!". Raving Rabbids is downright insane, in the mental illness sense as opposed to the manic fun definition which best describes the multiplayer Bust-A-Move. I also bought The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to give Nintendo's killer app a whirl. I haven't gotten to that yet however since i've been engrossed in slaughtering mythical beasts and dismembering zombified Greek warriors in God of War II on the PlayStation. We did have a couple of Wii gaming sessions with Phil and Naomi over the long Memorial Day weekend. That was mostly spent with Wii Sports, where i have yet to reacquire my knack for using ball spin to get strike after strike on the bowling lanes. My tennis chops are mostly intact, however. V had some fun designing Miis, figuring out how to manipulate eyebrows to make it look like the character has horns. This technique resulted in the most colorful character in our little village, the green-eyed, goateed, horned devil Beelzebub. With that inspiration, i went on a spree to create Jesus, Hitler, a piss-poor version of George Dubya, a skeleton, a petite bug lady, and a bald Princess that looks somewhat like the Empress from The Neverending Story. Quite the rogue's gallery.

Apart from helping P+N load some spare furniture into our garage, i spent a significant portion of our long weekend in front of my grill. I made some kebabs from Whole Foods, then got ambitious for Memorial Day and made more kebabs as well as burgers and sausages, plus Gardenburgers for Naomi. I also tried out a recipe from my parents, mixing sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus, artichoke hearts, and onions in olive oil and wrapping them in aluminum foil to be cooked on the grill. That turned out scrumdiddlyumptious. Throw in some salad and new potatoes fried in olive oil and rosemary, beer, and ice cream courtesy of P+N and we had quite a holiday feast. It was so good Veronica convinced me to grill again the next day after i returned from work and my softball game.

That's right, the Rays season has begun with the Memorial Day one-pitch tournament. The tourney is a bit different than our regular league ... you pitch to your own team, and each batter gets one pitch and only one pitch. So if your pitcher throws you a lousy ball or you foul it off, or do anything other than put your one ball in play, you're out. Makes for a quick game. We won our first game of the tournament by forfeit, and then put in an admirable performance in our second match, going down 7-3. We were leading 3-0 early on, but some defensive miscues put us in a hole. I was responsible for two gaffes, first getting ambitious trying to throw out a runner at third and lobbing the ball out of play, then dropping a ball at first that would've ended an inning in which we went on to give up 2 runs. I did well at the plate though, having regained a semblance of the hitting form i took for granted in childhood. All in all i'm proud of how our team played, and look forward to improving upon our rookie campaign last season.

We also hung out some more with new friends Frank and Jennifer on the Sunday evening just prior to Memorial Day. Following our joint interest in culinary adventures, we went to Tarboosh in downtown Redwood City for some Lebanese delicacies. Instead of catching a movie at the theater down the street, we instead opted to head back to our place for some coffee, Beard Papa cream puffs, and the end of V for Vendetta on HBO. I selected the latter and sincerely hope it didn't depress the hell out of everyone.

Somehow i remained completely ignorant of the fact that Chelsea's summer US tour would take them to my doorstep at Stanford Stadium in July until last week, when asked whether i wanted to get tickets with some of my Stanford chums. Shocked, i organized my own collective to attend and splurged on tickets in row D near the midline. Matthew rightly commented that he was surprised i was going given my recent distaste for the Blues' management. But i would have to swear off the team for good in order to miss them when they're playing a scant five miles from my house and just down the street from my office. I haven't exactly been impressed with Chelsea's purchases early in the offseason, including another questionable impact striker in Claudio Pizarro and a few projects in Steve Sidwell and Danny Philliskirk. However, perhaps these low key acquisitions speak to a new adherence towards establishing continuity and chemistry within the squad. Yeah, and maybe monkeys might fly out of my butt. Quiet, Wayne. We still need help in defense, so hopefully some quality back line signings are forthcoming. V and i also looked into checking out Chelsea against David Beckham and the LA Galaxy, but the crafty American side have made it so you can only get those tickets by buying them as part of a larger bundle including several crappy MLS games. Seeing as it's also Beckham's first match with his new club, it looks like we won't come by those tix without paying through the nose. Oh well. To be honest, i'm a bit perplexed why Beckham is currently being touted for knighthood. As i recall, members of the '66 World Cup squad were knighted for finally bringing the cup to England. What has Beckham done? Fuck all with the England squad. He did win titles and a treble with Manchester United in the 90's, but those days seem long gone now. Is he being knighted for being an omnipresent nasally-voiced pretty boy socialite? Ooookay.

Whereas the weekend before was occupied with grilling, this past weekend was decidedly arty. On Friday night i caltrained up to the city to have dinner with Jenz and Veronica prior to Jenz's showing at Polk Street gallery Ktizo. We inspected her photos and other pieces on display before absconding with her friend Kristen to Berkeley for the Arcade Fire's performance at the Greek Theater. A majestic show, recounted in full on my concerts page. On Saturday after i got in several morning hours with GoWII, we took the typically overjoyed doggie over to Foster City to the dog park. At this point when we get off the 101 at Hillsdale she knows where we're going, and gets very excited and impatient. Because of a festival we were forced to alter our route their slightly, which got Tara worried as from her viewpoint it looked like she was getting shafted out of her dog park visit. All's well that ends well, though. Returning home, we readied to go out clubbing at Leisure and New Wave City, but i just wasn't in the mood and opted instead to relax at home. V made a good remark on Sunday that i have trouble committing at clubs. If i don't make up my mind to dance (or get silly drunk, à la the picture at right ... i honestly have no recollection of when or where Jenz took this), then i end up being a wallflower. Good analysis, although i'm not sure how to translate that into increased enjoyment at clubs. V slept late on Sunday while i watched some TV. Unfortunately one of our trees is growing into the receiving path of our satellite dish, meaning our cable reception is getting more and more spotty. I'll have to call our gardener to trim back the offending foliage. In the afternoon we drove up to Somarts in the city for V's old friend Marcus's showing at the Queer Latino Arts Festival. He was showing a very interesting shellacked pair of jeans and boots that he had decorated. Afterwards, we had a lovely tapas dinner in the Mission at Andalu, before returning home once again to lonely Tara and whiling away the rest of our evening.

I finished watching the last 1.5 hours of the second Pirates of the Carribean movie, the hopelessly convoluted Dead Man's Chest, yesterday afternoon. Phil and Naomi correctly commented that it appears this film was written as it was filmed, the only feasible explanation why a new symbol, key, treasure, villain, or ship is introduced every five minutes, each with less relevance to the plot than the last. V came in halfway and i futilely attempted to bring her up to speed ... what a joke. I loved the first installment of the series, and would've been fine if that had been the end of it. But of course, the conventional corporate filmmaking wisdom is that if one movie made money, then keep milking the cash cow until it's dead. Never mind that the followup stories make absolutely no sense. Despite my dissatisfaction, i'm halfway inclined to go see the third installment At World's End, to try to glean some much-needed but probably absent closure from the story.

We contracted a handyman recommended by V's friend Stephanie to finally decarpet our bedroom and refinish the underlying hardwood. That's scheduled to begin this Thursday, meaning sometime before then we'll have to remove all the furniture and assorted crap from in there. Our new handyman Salvador asked if there was any wood damage to be repaired, to which i pleaded ignorance. We'll find out on Thursday. V's already drawing up a list of future projects for Salvador pending successful completion of this chore, including redoing our bathroom floor and remodeling the front porch.

Tonight i'm off with my Radiation Physics partner-in-crime Dave to see the A's take on the Boston Red Sox at the Oakland Coliseum (technically "McAfee Coliseum", but that sounds so retarded i refuse to follow the naming rights). I haven't been to an A's game in years, so i'm curious to see how the stadium has evolved. Dave is a Connecticut import and as such is a big Sox fan, and we're sitting with a group of his friends who are also Sox devotees. I'm torn whether to wear my Sox hat and suffer the inevitable abuse from the Oakland faithful, or get an A's cap and support my childhood team, alternately being abused by my pro-Sox group. My penance for taking in an A's game is missing the next-to-last show by Pacific Northwest indie punk outfit Pretty Girls Make Graves, a brilliant band who have decided to call it quits after three evolving albums and a number of great performances. V is going and will get to see the finale of the innovative and tragically short-lived group.

You'll notice that i reworked the front page of the site, in an attempt to put a more useful synopsis of current posts to all different areas of fac13, including the journal, concerts, album reviews, and photos. I also added a link to my RSS feed at the top, another effort to get the word out regarding recent posts. Take them as you will.