I can't watch baseball during the summer. Not even on Sportscenter. Sure, i'll go to a few games a year, but that's going for the atmosphere ... eating hot dogs and chocolate malts in the stands, listening to the hecklers let the opposing outfielders have it, always hoping a foul ball might come your way. But the boys of summer just don't do it for me on tv. It must be related to the length of the season, the fact that the game you're watching is one of 162 such contests. Despite the fact that pennant races are often decided by a few games, it's hard to attach a lot of importance to one of the 26 games played by your team in June.

That said, i've come to the realization that the baseball postseason is bar none the most riveting tournament in sports. The same factors that make you yawn during the regular season ... the thirty seconds between pitches, the endless delays ... somehow enthrall when the game is played in September or October. Probably because now every at bat, every play is critical and can determine whether your team takes the glory or has to go back to the drawing board to prepare for another 162 game season. Case in point: the epic triumph of the Red Sox in this year, vanquishing the 86 year old curse of the Bambino. A perfect script: making the greatest postseason comeback in history against their arch-enemies and frequent tormentors the Yankees, followed by a dominant performance against another great team in the Cardinals. And being Boston, every moment was cast under the ominous cloud of "how are they going to screw it up this time?". Yesterday's final innings, despite the Sox's comfortable three games to none lead and 3-0 advantage in the game, were pure drama. The Sox's failure to get insurance runs in the 8th despite loading the bases with no outs. Bronson Arroyo's walk to Reggie Sanders causing Terry Francona to bring in southpaw Alan Embree to prevent the Cards getting any foothold in the game. Albert Pujols singling to lead off the ninth. Keith Foulke then gets Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds, and finally Edgar Renteria to seal the deal. Watching Foulke jog towards first after fielding Renteria's bouncing grounder back to the mound, preparing to underhand the ball to Doug Mientkiewicz to end the game, thinking "throw him the damn ball already!". Somehow neither soccer, football, basketball, nor hockey manage to capture this kind of prolonged tension.

can't you come up with something better than that? oh, i think i'd be more angry if your answers weren't so daft

If you've popped into the photos page recently, you've noticed the multitude of new pics under the heading Our new house (hopefully). Well, as of this Friday that hopefully can be removed. Veronica and i decided to place a bid on the 1930's craftsman in Redwood City. As Joe found out we would be the only bidders, we proposed a price $10k less than the asking price. The day after placing the bid, while fishing with Matthew in L.A. prior to the SMFA Cup, i got a call from Joe telling me that the sellers had countered with a price $6k higher than we had suggested, and were asking to remain in the house rent-free for a month after closing. We could live with that, so we accepted the counter and BANG! We're in escrow. One of Joe's strategies to make our bid attractive was to include a quick two week escrow, so things moved rapid-fire thereafter. The next week i drove down to San Jose to drop off our deposit check with the title company. I then made several trips to the house (just off El Camino Real and Woodside in Redwood City), and got to tag along during a general home inspection as well as a pest inspection. Those guys, in addition to charging me on the order of $300/hour, seem to take odd pleasure in poking rotted wood with a screwdriver or, the pest guy's instrument of choice, a ski pole. We learned the house had relatively minor foundation and pest problems, especially when you consider that it is 74 years old ... easily solvable. Meanwhile, i provided our mortgage broker with countless pay stubs, W-2s, bank statements, blood samples, permanent records, etc etc, and waited nervously for the word on whether the lender would approve our loan. After a few stomach-dropping bumps, we got word last Friday that the loan had gone through. Therefore this week we just have to sign what i hear is a War and Peace-sized pile of papers, and the house is ours.

Career ... check. Marriage ... check. Mortgage ... check. Now i just need a kid and all ties with my childhood will be irrevocably severed. That last rite of passage is going to be a while yet. Thankfully. One interesting aspect of the house is the detached garage, to which the sellers added a decent size office. Veronica and i have agreed that will be the music room. We're going to soundproof it, and i'll have my guitars and amp in there, along with all of our CDs, my four track, and perhaps a computer. Time to get a garage band going ... who says i'm all grown up? The four track hasn't been used in forever, and i'm very excited to get my guitar and recording skills back, and to bring them into the digital age. The last (and best, and nearly only) song i ever recorded was for my ex-girlfriend, featuring two guitar tracks, bass, and (yikes!) vocals. We need to get Veronica a Moog so she can get in on the action. And get old Kingsley bandmate and charismatic frontman Michael in the fold.

Other than obsessing over property, i've been racking up miles on my car. As i mentioned before, two weekends ago V and i drove down to LA for this year's SMFA cup. No offense to host Matthew, but that weekend royally sucked. For me, at any rate. First Matthew and i return from our fishing expedition ... well, fishless. That wasn't all bad, i had a lot of fun out on the ocean off Malibu, watching seals swim around the boat, seeing a school of dolphins frolicking on our way home, and grabbing live mackerel out of a small tank to use as bait (okay, that makes me shudder just writing it). We got home around 5pm, both rather sunburned, and hurried off to Kinko's to fax our acceptance of the house counteroffer (see? I can't get away from the damn house!). I then had to watch Chelsea play a friggin awful match against Manchester City, losing 1-nil on a penalty and getting ribbed by Matthew and City-masochist Gary the whole time. Saturday came to a close as i surrendered the SMFA Cup to Matthew. Strike three.

After not getting home until 12:30am Monday morning, i then had to rise at 5:30am to come to work to wrap up a presentation, due to be delivered to the radiobiology faculty at 8am. That went surprisingly well, making me wonder if i should give all my talks in a state of extreme sleep deprivation (4 hours Thursday, 4 hours Friday, 8 hours Saturday, 4 hours Sunday). I even managed to make it through a whole day of work, although the 5:30-6:30pm molecular imaging seminar had my brain coming dangerously close to complete shutdown. During the week i thoroughly enjoyed the climax of the Red Sox comeback against the hated New York Yankees in the ALCS. I'm very cautiously optimistic of their chances to reverse the curse of the Bambino in the World Series now that they're up two games to none on the St. Louis Cardinals. It makes me a bit upset that V convinced me to leave Boston though, because that's going to be one insane party. It was crazy when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl in 2002, but this is the friggin Red Sox we're talking about ... the source of endless grief and heartache in New England since 1918. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Boston is burnt to the ground within 24 hours of a Red Sox series victory.

This past weekend V and i headed up to Tahoe (with a fresh few feet of powder from Tuesday's storm), where i spoke at the annual UCB/UCSF Bioengineering Retreat as a "distinguished alumnus" (ha!). It was fun to see all the familiar faces from grad school, and to see how the group has expanded in the three years since i moved on to ... well, not greener, but different pastures. V and i made a Friday night excursion around the lake to the casinos in Nevada, as well as a Saturday afternoon trip to the outlet stores at the Y. Returning to the bay on Sunday, we stopped by the Oakland Museum to see Marcus at the Dias de los Muertos celebration. There was a very interesting exhibit on the intersection of Spanish and indigenous cultures ... it's amazing how the indigenous religious and cultural practices were reworked and modified during colonialism to place the focus on Catholicism, while retaining elements of the original culture. We're going back next weekend when Marcus will be presenting an ofrenda (an altar welcoming the spirits of departed friends and family during Dias de los Muertos).

Chelsea made amends for putting me through Gary and Matthew hell by thumping CSKA Moscow 2-nil in the Champions League midweek (their third straight CL victory, all but assuring them of a place in the knockout stages). This despite the usual media claims that we played badly and won by a flattering margin. However, i didn't hear that accusation after we blasted Blackburn 4-nil on Saturday, featuring Eidur Gudjohnsen's first career hat trick. Even though Mateja Kezman still hasn't managed to exorcise his Premiership goalscoring demons, many bright points can be drawn from the match: Scott Parker made up for time on the bench with a solid display in relief of the ill (and not the good ill) Claude Makelele, while Damien Duff played like the Duff of last season and got on the score sheet with a great left footed top-of-the-box strike. Also, Arjen Robben came back from his season-long ankle injury (damn you, Olivier Dacourt!) to make his Chelsea Premiership debut. He looked very dangerous, almost scoring himself and setting up former PSV Eindhoven teammate Kezman for an easy tap-in that the latter somehow managed to put off the crossbar. If we can keep playing like this, we'll do just fine while waiting for the return of injured striker Didier Drogba.

One last Chelsea note: Adrian Mutu is a s@$thead. First he calls out manager José Mourinho, accusing him of falsely claiming Mutu was injured to prevent him from playing with the Romanian national team in World Cup qualifiers. We've already seen Mourinho's no-b.s. approach to management, and Mutu must have known saying something like this would all but end his career at Chelsea. Was he pissed that his summer loan move to Juventus fell apart? Maybe so, but this move aint going to force Chelsea to bow to his whims. Then it comes out that he tested positive for a banned substance, originally thought to be cocaine. His response? "It wasn't cocaine. It was something, i'll tell you what later." Pardon? You're inviting the British media to speculate on what drugs you've been enjoying during your time in London? It's now come out that he tried something a friend told him would "enhance his sex life". Oh god, Adrian, where is your freakin' brain? He'll most likely be banned from football for six to twelve months, after which Chelsea will almost certainly unload him. Probably for significantly less than the £15 million they paid for him, but good friggin riddance. He impressed early but then disappeared without a trace. I'll take Drogba and Gudjohnsen up front anyday.

I'm eagerly waiting for a call from my local EB, telling me my preorder for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is ready for pickup. I can choose the cornrows and tats of my gang banger, the hydraulics and mods of his ride, and drive all over California and Nevada? Ahem, i mean Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas? Sign me up! Goodbye, free time! ... As if it wasn't already devoted to the new house and work.

Thanks to Kevin and few shiny new copies of FIFA 2005 straight from EA, we held our second annual SMFA Cup competition in LA last weekend. The competition began at 9pm Saturday evening in Matthew's living room in LA, while the ladies (Veronica, Michelle, and Dionne headed out for a movie and dessert. Matthew (Middlesbrough) and i (Chelsea, of course) had returned from a day of ocean fishing, sunburned and empty handed, at 5pm. Gary (Manchester City) arrived shortly thereafter, and Sean (Manchester United) not long after that. We watched a tape of the earlier 1-nil victory of Chelsea (Gary with many comments about Chelsea's "Portuguese mafia", me worried about the continued inability of our team to gel, and Matthew incessantly reminding me how many goals JFH has scored for Boro this season). We then launched into the cup, taking advantage of FIFA 2005's new customizable tournament features.

After completing the league portion of the tourney around 1am, the table shaped up like this:

		OVERALL							HOME						AWAY
		P	W	L	D	F	A		W	L	D	F	A		W	L	D	F	A		Pts		GD
Chelsea		6	4	1	1	12	4		2	1	0	6	2		2	0	1	6	2		13		8
Manchester United		6	3	2	1	9	7		0	1	2	3	4		3	0	0	6	3		11		2
Middlesbrough		6	1	2	3	8	8		0	2	1	2	4		1	1	1	6	4		8		0
Manchester City		6	1	1	4	6	16		0	3	0	3	11		1	1	1	3	5		6		-10

Jimmy Floyd of Boro finished in the lead for the golden boot with 7 goals, thanks in large part to a 5 goal performance against Gary and City. He was followed by former Chelsea strike partner Eidur Gudjohnsen with 6, new Chelsea hitman Didier Drogba and United poacher Ruud van Nistelrooy with 5 apiece, and City's French dynamo Nicolas Anelka with 4. Interestingly Frank Lampard was the only non-striker to get on the scoresheet, with a free kick strike against Boro.

The stage for the knockout round was set, and the bracket wound up as:

Chelsea (1)	5						2	Manchester United (2)
		Chelsea (1)	1		2	Middlesbrough (3)
Manchester City (4)	0						3	Middlesbrough (3)

Yup, Matthew earned the honors: the original plastic/tin foil SMFA Cup, the ceramic soccer ball cup obtained by Gary in Mexico (now inscribed with the first two winners of the cup), an EA t-shirt and frisbee, and two "SMFA Champ: Best of the Best" license plate holders made by Dionne's brother. With a two goal performance in the semifinal and a late consolation goal in the final, Eidur Gudjohnsen wound up with the consolation prize of the golden boot with 9 goals. JFH and Ruud shared second place with 8 goals, and Didier Drogba ended in fourth with 7. Sean won the third place match, held just before the final while Matthew and i fought sleep, with a 3-1 victory over Gary and City.

Call me USA Basketball ... the competition is getting tougher and this year i just didn't step up.

i don't need to fight to prove i'm right i don't need to be forgiven don't cry don't raise your eye it's only teenage wasteland

While waiting for Gary and Leah on Friday night, V and i passed the time before dinner shopping on Irving St. While meandering through Wishbone, the source of much of Veronica's Paul Frank paraphernelia, she found a set of cockney rhyming slang flash cards. As i've mentioned before in this journal, right up my alley. I annoyed everyone a bit over our dinner at Pomelo, trying to work "noah" (Noah's Ark = shark) and "porkie" (pork pie = lie) into conversation. Unfortunately a lot of the terms in the cards refer to jail, the legal system, or crime (hmm, whyever is that?), but there are some gems in there. Keep your eyes peeled for my newfound vocabulary.

For starters, i'm gonna be using these for donkey's, even if i am a sherman.

Seeing as i just got a new 250 GB Lacie external firewire hard drive, my mp3 collection (at 110 GB pushing the limits of my old 120 GB Iomega firewire/USB drive) is now free to expand at will again. To celebrate this event, last weekend i ripped another 60-70 albums from V and my CD collection. This represents basically whatever was left that i hadn't yet mp3ified and was even remotely interested in. Dunno how often i'm going to be listening to 70's female punks X-Ray Spex or Scottish pop star Lulu, but there's a sense of comfort in knowing they're only a click away. I'm up to 24476 songs and 119.96 GB now, with room to grow even further. Yay for technology.

By the way, if anyone knows where i can find the out of print 1987 Etienne Daho singles compilation, aptly titled Collection, please let me know. I'm out of ideas.

No excuses: just haven't been in a posting mood lately. From trying to get up regularly at 7am or earlier to get an early start at work, to dealing with more political b.s. at Stanford, to coming home to resume the disheartening process of finding and buying a house, i just haven't been compelled to sit down and record my travails. But now that a wave of inclination to write has hit me, let me summarize the last ten days or so.

After finishing my grant, i didn't get to relax immediately as i had to prepare a two hour lecture on 3D fluorescence imaging for the following Monday. The lecture was one of two for me in a team-taught course on molecular imaging. My first teaching role ... again, the authority doesn't seem to go with me. Anyhow, after sleeping in and playing some Burnout 3: Takedown, i headed down to Stanford at churned out 56 slides from 3pm until 8:30pm. Not the Saturday i'd hoped for. When i got home, Veronica had left to meet Marcus and Javier in the city for dinner and drinks, so i occuppied myself with more Burnout before falling asleep. What a brilliant game. I just finished the race and crash modes yesterday, and was a bit saddened that no further challenges awaited me. I could try accomplishing all the signature takedowns, but that might take a very long time and be very frustrating so i think i'll pass. Great game though ... definitely the funnest driving game i've ever played. And that's saying a lot, because for years i was in love with San Francisco Rush 2049 on the Dreamcast.

After Burnout, my Gamefly subscription has served up a few duds ... Max Payne 2 is a pretty ho-hum first person shooter (albeit with a stylish film noir, comic book storytelling style), while Deus Ex: Invisible War just didn't do anything for me. Lousy controls, unimpressive visuals, and a silly intro ... three strikes and you're out. Currently i'm working on Second Sight, a third person shooter about a paranormal researcher who gets sucked into an international plot to develop telekinetic soldiers. It's not mind blowing, but it's decent and the story is developing nicely. Just yesterday i received X-Men Legends, for which i have high hopes. Of course all these will be tossed aside on October 25 when i can claim my preorder for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Back to the title of this post, over the weekend i saw an ad for the new Ren & Stimpy - The Complete First and Second Seasons DVD set. When Ren Hoek and Stimpson J. Cat premiered on MTV and Nickeloden i loved them, so this week i kept an eye on the online inventory of our local Borders, and yesterday picked up the set. It's great to see the unique animation style and offbeat humor of John Kricfalusi again, even if certain reviewers on Amazon have noticed that the set isn't really "uncut" as it claims. I made Veronica watch "Sven Hoek" ("So, you whizzed on the electric fence?"), then let her fall into a disinterested nap while i watched "Space Madness" ("You coveted my ice cream bar!").

More of the same in the housing market lately. Our realtor Joe did find a beautiful two bedroom house in Redwood City that was listed for $549k. As bids were due imminently, we put one together and Joe presented it the next day. Unfortunately somebody else came in with a "no contingency" bid ... as i understand it meaning they essentially said "here's $X, we'll take it now. No wait to see if our loan gets approved, no wait while we inspect the house, just give us the keys". Can't compete with that. Such is that brutal Bay Area housing market. Two weekends ago Joe took us to four houses, each of which was crap. Then last weekend we saw four houses that were all very nice. We're debating putting in an offer on one in Redwood City. It's a craftsman home from the 1930's, only one bedroom but a good size and very well kept. I'm not sold on the neighborhood or the amount of storage space but the house has been on the market for a few weeks, which suggests that the seller may be willing to negotiate (an extreme rarity in this market). Alternately, we saw a beautiful completely detached townhouse in Foster City that has Veronica second guessing her anti-townhouse stance. I really don't want to submit 100 bids knowing that eventually the law of averages will prevail, but i think that's the way it's going to work. But that means i'm going to end up becoming totally pessimistic about each bid we submit. No fun, this Bay Area house hunting.

Last Friday V and i met up with Gary and Leah for dinner at Pomelo, followed by a few rounds of Donkey Konga on Gary's GameCube. Donkey Konga follows in the footsteps of Dance Dance Revolution in being a physical, rhythm-oriented game. You bang and clap on a pair of conga drums according to the rhythm of the selected song. The game scores you according to how well you keep the rhythm. A lot like Samba de Amigo, which did the same thing but with a pair of maracas. The next day while V took me clothes shopping, we took a slight detour to EB. We then returned home not only with three new shirts, some nice jeans, and a black harrington jacket for me, but also with Donkey Konga and two pairs of drums. The game is great, but your hands hurt after a few of the speed clapping segments.

We've now had konga battles with Gary and Leah and also Naomi and Geoff, who came over to try it out after we had dinner with them and Naomi's family at Gordon Biersch on Embarcadero in San Francisco. While waiting for a table i got to take Naomi's new Vespa for a spin. And much to Veronica's disbelief both the scooter and i made it around the block no worse for the wear. The last time i rode a Vespa, i crashed into a curb and went over the handlebars into a bush. I then had to push the scooter five blocks home since i'd knocked the front wheel out of alignment. With no clutch to worry about, Naomi's ride was much less stressful to operate. Hrm ...

Off to LA tomorrow for this year's installment of the SMFA Cup with Matthew, Gary, and Sean. Matthew and i are gonna do a bit of open sea fishing beforehand, hopefully catching a nice fish fry dinner. Look Monday for pictures of the boat-sized fish i expect to catch.