Women's World Cup
I've been trying to ignore the World Cup and focus on my writing class but last night we had tickets to the games at PGE park and I am hooked for the rest of the tournament. The first game was Ghana and Australia and I don't know what was going on but the stretcher came out about 10 times. Ghana played a pretty loose game but fun to watch and they've been training in Portland so they had a sort-of home crowd love fest going on and it was fun to see them win. I would have liked to see Australia do a little better -- at one point I thought it was their strategy to pass the ball to the other team. There was a huge group of Ghana fans with drums and when the them scored they went nuts -- it was hard not to cheer for the team.

The second game was Russia v. China came out with completely opposite warm up styles. China had synchronized warm up while Russia was all over the place. The game was a completely different level of playing compared to the first game. Great game. And a huge group of Chinese there cheering their team on. We had a group behind us going nuts, singing and waving flags. They also had some kids with screechy whistles and if it didn't have the potential for starting an international incident I would have ripped those things out of those cute little kids' hands.

Last comment -- is there some cosmic rule that Bob and I at these big crowd events must always be seated adjacent to the ADD people? Why would you buy tickets for a pair of soccer games if you weren't going to sit in your seat and enjoy the game? This guy had his feet ON MY CHAIR when we went in to sit down -- thanks buddy, I have to put my ass there now.

Very insanely busy week. I have class tonight, Arts & Lectures tomorrow night, U.S. Women play on Weds, PGE park games (Germany, Canada, Russia and China) on Thurs, trying to catch up for writing class Fri and Sat and then PGE park semi-final games on Sunday. Plus Alias started last night and Angel starts on Weds. night.

I've been doing tons of online research lately related to my new writing project and in addition to finding a lot of great information I'm also finding a lot to be annoyed about. What is this thing where the search engine links you to another search engine which is just a big fat commercial -- sussing out what you want to *buy* based on your query? Does everything have to be about buying something? And I end up deleting about 50 cookies after each session -- and popup ads are stupid and about.com is generally good information but gets skipped due to egregious popup ads.

Big Brother finally finished. It ended up with the two loathsome people in the finals but I had to see how it ended. Glad it's over. Alias starts Sunday and I watched the first Brotherhood of Poland N.H. -- not sure if I'll stick with it. Too many things to remember to tape.

Some random URLs:

Hilarious Manly Tips for Bachelor Living

Scary Bad plastic surgery pictures.

Pandacam -- live video of the giant pandas.

And here's Chuck Palahniuk because he's local and he's been everywhere lately.

Life isn't THAT hectic but I'm feeling unorganized (or would that be disorganized?) and spun out. I'm tired too and I got a good night's sleep. I don't know what the story is but I ate a lot of sugar and fatty crap yesterday so perhaps that's a contributing factor.

Over the weekend I ordered this book I was looking for that I couldn't get at the library and I found it super cheap - only $5. I didn't want to do a whole book order for just $5 so I browsed their other books to see if there was anything remotely interesting and decided to buy a collection of Ring Lardner stories and a collection of Jack London stories. I remember being totally into Jack London as a kid and I haven't read him since so I'm curious to revisit his writings. But back to the book order, this brought it up to a whopping $10. I put the order in and got a confirmation that the book I actually wanted was already sold but they were sending the $5 of books I tacked on just trying to make the order worthwhile. They did not respond to my request to cancel.

I saw the calendar yesterday and discovered it was the equinox. I knew summer was over but I didn't realize it was official. Looks like the rest of the week will be great weather so I have high hopes for my tomato patch. I might get enough for a pasta sauce after all.

Another thing -- my three month vacation from doing laundry is over. Bob is back in school. I did four loads this weekend and I'd like to know how ALL of his clothes manages to come out inside out.

I have a zillion scrawled notes here for blogging. I spent the entire weekend working on writing. I'm starting Cynthia's class again tomorrow and I volunteered to go at the first class. I still hadn't finished my last project -- I just put it in the mail last week. I knew I could do it and I've been working on notes and mini-outlines for a couple of weeks. I finalized my outline yesterday morning and today I fixed up the first 13 pages I wrote last weekend and added another 12. A productive day. It seems 100x easier this time and I'm not sure if it's an easier idea or I have more practice. Probably a combination of both. My first act is a little thin but I like having room to add more later.

I am a week behind on my New York Times magazine. I just read last week's and there's a recipe for grilled chocolate sandwiches. It sounded so unnecessary -- I saved it. We'll be trying that this winter.

Bob got Krakatoa: The Day the Earth Exploded. by Simon Winchester unabridged on tape from the library and I kind of groaned because I didn't know how we'd get through it. I read the review of the book in the NYT and the review scared the crap out of me -- I wanted to read the book. We listened to half of the tapes on the way home from Orleans. Over Labor Day we unexpectedly went to the coast for a wedding so we listened to most of the rest and I finished the last couple of tapes last week. It's an amazing, terrifying story and well written. Winchester is coming to Portland this Fall and I don't want to miss him.

My last topic is on clothing. I think I say this about every 6 months but I hate everything in my closet. I also hate buying clothes. I'd rather do other things with my money. If I have 4 outfits I have enough for each day of my work week and I can wear any junky outfit at home on the weekends and I do. And of the few clothes I buy, there are a few things that I never wear. Does everyone do this? Buy things they never wear? It's so embarassing.

You can't reheat refried beans in the microwave. It doesn't work. I try all kinds of tricks like spreading them really thin on the tortilla -- but by the time you get them hot enough through and through (you know, not cold in the middle) the tortilla is tough and chewy in the parts where it's not hard and crispy. I've also tried heating them in the plastic container I've stored them in (since they are leftovers) and by the time you get them hot enough the plastic container become scarily soft and bendy and is no doubt leaching carcinogenic plastic into your food. Also the beans pop and spray making crusty bits all over the inside that smell like the food center at a mini-mart and are really gross. Generally, I will just go ahead and use a pan on the stovetop but it's so tempting to keep it easy -- I think maybe this time the microwave won't be so bad.

On Wednesday night Bob went to a club to see some funkateer music guy, Bernie. He got home after 2am so he went and slept downstairs. (It's also about 10 degrees cooler down there so it's a much better choice.) Yesterday morning I went down to say "bye" before I left for work and he's on the bed in this crossways, crunched up position because the bed is covered with cds. I started laughing and said, "sleeping with your cds?" and he was still mostly asleep and said, "yah." I think we're both going to sleep down there tonight since it's going to be yet another hot one and Bob said he would clear the cds off the bed.

While I was sick I watched Searching for Debra Winger a documentary by Rosanna Arquette. We just watched our tape of Ebert & Roeper from the weekend and Roeper was reminding viewers that the documentary was going to be shown one more time.

The reason I bring this up is because Roeper's take on the film was that it was about how Hollywood treats actresses over 40. And sure that was part of it. But what I thought it was about was how difficult it is for women to balance their creative and/or professional life with their domestic life. Interesting because this is not generally an issue for men. And no one had a solution -- the answer was: it's hard. Sure, women can have it all but at the sacrifice of something. A lot of the women with kids said they did only one film a year. Some of the older women said they felt guilty about not doing more for their kids because they were working. I suppose a third option would be to never sleep and spread yourself too thin and drag ass through your life.

I don't have to worry about the mother piece -- but I struggle with the balancing act myself. I constantly feel like I have to negotiate for extended time to focus on my writing projects. Like I'm fighting to assert that I need this time to get focused and concentrate on my work and I want to skip doing things I'd normally do. And I feel like often, when it comes time for someone to put down what he or she is doing and take care of shopping, or meals or some other chore, that that person is me.

It's not like Bob is blind to all this or doesn't care. He's supportive. But I just wish it didn't feel like a struggle sometimes.