Better Days

Just back from a good evening sharing the UEFA Champions League final with our friends B and J. Good meal, fun game, great sharing a bit of their lives. Both very excited about their upcoming hike of the Pacific Crest Trail this summer, and J has passed all of her high-stakes tests and is on track to take her MS in statistics this fall. Get some, guys!

Note that, once again, fucking Blogger refuses to accept my paragraph breaks. Wassupwitdat? So here goes the infamous text color change thing...


The game itself was Inzaghi and the Reds: the boys from Liverpool came to play, and showed that not all English football is dour clogging defenders and hopeless crosses into the 18-yard box. Much of the attractive play came from the lads from Anfield. But that didn't matter.

In the end, it came down to one player, Filippo Inzaghi. First with a horrible, deflected "goal" scored by deflecting a free kick off his arm while turning away, his eyes screwed shut like a toddler getting a vaccination. For this he was dubbed "Italy's premier goal-poacher" by one of the announcers. Oh, puh-leeze. As soccer goes, that barely qualified as poaching an egg...

But, in a wierd way like the famous "Hand of God" game in 1986, the scorer of the first, ridiculous goal also scored the second, and a lovely run it was, too, with a precise finish. And that was it.

So the first part of the week was much better than the start. Little Peep has really been enjoying his visit from the Grands - who disappeared yesterday and did I not know better
I would suspect of having checked into the Jupiter Hotel for a bit of funky urban pleasure (and please, God, do NOT let me keep that image in my head...) - and has been generally a happier and loving-er Pea.

So now it's Holiday Time! The grands are coming to stay with the Peeper and Deb and I are off for a vaction trip in our slick little rented Ford "Freestyle". It all sounds very cool and hip and I'll post the pictures when we get back.

One thing that has happened in our world - in a very odd, under-the-radar sort of way - is that the China adoption "alternative" newsgroup we belong to has erupted in a very odd (and, to my mind, silly) controversy.

It seems that some of the members wanted to add some friends. The group moderators, having posted quite plainly that the group was closed to new members, said no. Rather than accepting this like grown-ups, the disappointed members made quite a fuss to the point where it broke out on the board itself. Now many of the people there are angry, or unhappy, or both; one member posted that she was sad because the group was her "refuge" from the sad-bad-madness of the outside world, her support and her tonic in the hard times waiting for the CCAA to get off its' collective dead ass and refer us some kinder.

And all I could think of is: isn't this just like people? From the first screaming australopithecene fight down at the waterhole to the cybersquabbles of a bunch of the unchurched, when you get people together in groups the first thing they seem to do is make a big group hug against the "others" and the second is to start bashing each other across the base of the skull for some bizarre reasons incomprehensible to the same outsiders.

My take on this was, frankly, a shrug. What else did we expect? Some perfect world where we are all loving and understanding and forgiving? That we'd all stand at the waterhole and sing Kumbaya?

But that would mean that the Beatles, the Cowsills and the Bay City Rollers would all still be together.

I'm not sure if that would be a Good Thing...or a Bad Thing.