(this is) durkin.org

Our little boy split his little lip last week. He was trying to stand up, and did not make it. I wasn’t home at the time, but MR was calm and he was fine and it was all good.

Last night, a bee stung him as I was putting him in his highchair for dinner. He screamed, and we were a bit less than calm, but overall pretty good. We cleaned his leg, looked for stingers (didn’t find any), and killed the hell out of a flying thing in the kitchen that may or may not have been the culprit. Minutes later, he had forgotten the entire incident.

Lately, he has protested his night-time bottle: he hollers and rolls until I place him in the crib for bed, where he falls asleep almost imediately. Last night though, he took the bottle without complaint. I rocked him and sang to him as he ate, and tried to savor every detail.

Just a small announcment, to be followed with details later: I am tired of not being in shape, and I am going to fix that.

Talk, as my wife says, is cheap. I tend to agree, especially in matters such as this, so I’ll just let you know that I have lost 12 pounds in the past few weeks. I hope to lose another 30 or so, and to get under 200 pounds total.

Look for the “WW” in the title of the posts for updates on this little intitative of mine.

People who weigh with shoes on are braggarts.

Whether or not you believe the Administration’s claims about the war on terror, or their efforts to refute Dick Clarke’s claims and generally bash the hell out of him, you have to think they could be doing a better job of not admitting what we all suspected all along - W had every intention of hitting Iraq, well before September 11th. The articles, interviews and news releases from the White House are littered with comments like the following:

“When the president learned from CIA Director [George] Tenet that there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11, he put Iraq aside,” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Fox News on Monday. “This was now an issue of how to deal with Afghanistan.” (Emphasis added)

He put Iraq aside? No shit, and then he stomped it into the ground, all in the name of Patriotism, Terror and Daddy.

Condi - at least lie about it a bit better… make it look like there was a logical progression of thought - like we actually had a reason, a valid, legal reason and right, to do what we did to Iraq.

Don’t get me wrong - the world is probably better off without Saddam Hussein in power. But is Iraq better off today? What about the Middle East?

The ends, my dear W, do not justify the means, and I fear that we have done a terrible disservice to the peoples of the Middle East, and to the honor of the US. We acted alone, we coerced other nations to act with us, we lied about our motivations, we are now lying about the fact that we knew lied about our motivations, we weilded, and continue to weild, the same sword of terror over the world and our country that Saddam, Osama and others have weilded, and we believe that we are always right.

And Man U is out of the Champions League quarterfinals!

Real Madrid v. Bayer Munich: Is Real’s tide turning?

I bought shoes today: boots, as they say in England; or soccer cleats here in the States. Copa Mundial - the greatest soccer shoe ever.

Spring, and buying new shoes, always gets me pumped up for a new season of soccer. Even though this is just an adult rec league, and even though the spring season is less competitive, and even though we only play one day a week - I love this game.

Speaking of the beautiful game, some online resources:

Soccernet.com - really the only news site you need.
SI’s soccer site
blogfc - informed soccer news from a (Liverpool) fan’s point of view
Yahoo! Sports
and both SportsFilter and The Sports Frog have excellent soccer coverage.

It was only a matter of time - Passion: Blooper Reel

I went to the courthouse the other day with my boss to register his latest vehicular purchase. In my department, we kinda take turns going with him over there, not because he needs help, but because he likes the company. And he goes over there often, by the way: the guy owns five cars right now, and turns one over every five to six weeks. Some people say he has problems.

As we were waiting at the counter for his paperwork, a young girl, maybe six or seven years old, approached me and asked me a question. Her voice was so low, I could not understand her, and I asked her to repeat herself. “Do you wanna see…” was all I got the second time. I asked again. And again. “My cheer,” she said, “Do you want to see my cheer?”

I thought about it. While I certainly have no problem watching her perform a cheerleading routine and applauding her talent and effort, I wasn’t quite sure I knew what was going on. I mean, could “cheer” be some new euphamism for body parts that I know nothing about? Does someone in the courthouse think I am a pedophile, and this is all part of some elaborate sting operation to get me? Am I about to be arrested and drug off to jail (which, conveniently, would only be about three hundred yards away)? Or beaten down by her mother as some kind of freak?

I thought about it, and panicked. I said yes, and flinched.

She smiled and backed away, to give herself room to cheer, not to allow the cops to tackle me, and performed her cheer. I applauded her talent and effort, and left quickly.

My boss asked me what that was all about as we left the building. I told him the story, as well as my internal monologue, and he cracked up. “You,” he said, “have too much free time.”

Guatemala goalkeeper dies after collision with opponent, and they say soccer is not a contact sport?