I think if there are any awards for World Cup devotion, I should at least be a nominee. This morning I got up at 4am to watch the Third Place game live and the only station showing it live was Univision. About 5 minutes after I got up I was like, "what am I doing?" but by then there was a score on the board and I was too awake to go back to bed. The upside is that it's only 8:30a and I've already done my exercise, read the paper, wrote in my notebook, finished my coffee and caught up on email.

We're getting close to the High Sierra Music Festival. When I bought Bob the tickets, I was pretty optimistic about it -- I mean about me enjoying this experience of several days of camping and music. But as we get closer to the actual event I am dreading it. Walker called yesterday and we were chatting and she's telling me about the line up early Thursday for the key camping places and how we can jockey with cars closer up who can throw down our tarps for us and I say, "I hate it already." Walker assures me I can stay at the motel until this part is over. "So I'm just the window dressing?" I ask. "You are our Vanna White," she tells me.

The Wisconsin Report
We flew into Madison on Saturday night and picked up our fun rental car, a Pontiac Bonneville. As Luke Skywalker once said, "What a piece of junk." I think it's supposed to be a luxury car but it rode bumpy and seemed noisy. We drove up to Baraboo to the Ho-Chunk Casino and Convention Center where my event was being held.

Sunday was a free during the day so we went to the Circus World Musuem which was fabulously cheesy. My family is, among other things, circus people and I went to Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus pretty much every year from tot to teen. We parked the car and could see the park across the river and the "big top" and I thought it was the coolest sight ever. There is a museum with endless historical artifacts and the out buildings from where the circus wintered way back at the turn of the century (1900) and then the park has a parade and various shows like the juggling workshop and then we saw the big top show. We ended up spending almost the whole day there.

In the evening the Ho-Chunks hosted a welcome feast and we tasted traditional foods and enjoyed traditional dancing. Monday the convention began. Bob went back to Circus World to visit the research library and pull up some stuff on Circus Renz and I attended rah-rah sessions on Tribal Employment. Bob got the slot machine fever -- he needed some change to buy a paper and I suggested he put a few bills in a machine and he came back upstairs a half hour later and said, "I won $18." I, of course, lost everything I put in the machines in about 2 seconds.

Meanwhile, the World Cup Soccer freak was hoping to see the USA v. Mexico game in an ideal setting, hopefully in the bar on one of the numerous screens they had devoted to sports. "What game?" was the reply to my inquiry. They didn't know about the game -- they were planning on being closed. The Casino main floor wasn't much help either, "The TVs stay on the channel they're on," I was told. "But it's the World Cup," I repeated several times. No World Cup Fever in Wisconsin. I ended up waking up at 1:40am courtesy of the unusual traditional feast foods and thought "well, I'll just check the score," and USA was up 1-0 and I was glued to the screen until 3:40am. Then I had to try to sleep after the win.

Tuesday I attended more sessions while Bob went off to the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin all day tour. He could not stop talking about this tour. "We put on little booties and walked around the house!" he gushed. Tuesday night there was social dance in the bar in the casino and we ended up sitting next to these ladies. "Where are you from?" one of them asked. "Washington," I said. "Oh, we're from a little town in Northern California on the Klamath River," she told me. "Um, I'm Karuk," I said. We were sitting with three members of the Karuk tribe. We had a fun time partying with them.

Wednesday I left the convention early and we headed into Wisconsin Dells which, unless you're from around there, must be seen to be believed. It's an endless strip of gigantic water parks, indoor and out, go-karts, miniature golf, upper River tours, lower River tours, water shows, salt water taffy outlets -- it goes on and on. We were driving along and I kept saying, "I can't friggin believe this place." We ended up visiting the H.H. Bennett Historical Museum -- he was a photographer in the late 1800's. We talked about going to a water park but those places cost $30 for day pass and I wasn't up for it.

From there we drove back to Madison and wandered around the University district with shops and some atmosphere and also the State Capitol. Our flight home left at 6am Thursday which means a 4am wake up call which means 2am Pacific Time -- it took me two days to get my clock back on schedule. But overall, I can't say enough nice things about Wisconsin. It is pretty with lots of green and nice people and easy to get around. And lots of cheese.

I think I have the archives almost fixed. Still a few snafus but I can live with this for now.

I'm starting to get the archive fixed. Not quite all there yet.

This afternoon I started dividing my irises. I thought this would be an easy job -- I'm working on the big patch next to the rhodie. I barely made a dent in it and it took a couple of hours. I was hoping to get that job done so I could tackle the other side of the yard which is badly neglected. Oh well. I just keep chipping away at it.

We saw Minority Report tonight and while I didn't hate it, I didn't love it either. I should probably give a better review but I don't have the energy at the moment. There is a lot of great visual stuff and the story is mildly interesting -- but at the end of the day it's pretty typical Hollywood fare.

Stay tuned for the Wisconsin story.

World Cup World Cup World Cup

I am pretty much watching a game before work and a game after work. This first round is really sucking up every second of my spare time. Last night there was a bridge lift so I didn't get home until 7pm. Then I had a tape of Sweden v. Argentina to watch (aiee! I can't believe Argentina is going home, I am so bummed) plus I had to eat and it's been hotter than hot so I had to water the yard -- and cram all this in and then to bed early so I could get up at 4:30a to watch the Italy v. Mexico game. This is a fulltime job.

Meanwhile check out this really cool book read and release program.

Where have I been? A little low energy this week, we don't need to go into that, but then the World Cup started so I've been caught up in that. I have been taping usually 2 games a night and I'm already behind but, you know, the weekend is coming. I feel like I am disconnected from everyone. Also I had a completely aggravating situation related to work which leads me to ask: does anyone care about doing a good job anymore? In this case "anyone" being a person employed by a government entity? Do people want to be helpful and competent? Because if they do, I've never met them. But aside from all that, things are decent. I got a shave ice (watermelon and green apple) at the Rose Festival yesterday and then a 25 ¢ foot massage -- which is this plastic easy chair where you put in a quarter and set your feet on this metal platform and it vibrates like a jack hammer for a couple of minutes. I wouldn't call it relaxing. I, of course, wondered if anyone would mind if I sat on it.

Meanwhile, read this hilarious story: Star Wars II Cereal: General Mills Gets It All Wrong. My favorite quote: "I realize it's not always easy to produce a reasonable facsimile of a person or object when you're reducing them to a tiny morsel of corn starch and gelatin, but it doesn't look like General Mills was even trying."

Last night I kept talking about Star Wars because I'm still trying to figure it all out and I remembered there was something I wanted to look at in one of my Star Wars books with the annotated screenplays. It answered my question but I also found a bunch of information that I wasn't looking for and I decided I'd better read this entire book again. So I say to Bob "Star Wars is a full-time job." And Bob replies, "Yeah and so is the Dead and Cheese."

Also last night I was looking for a CD and I started pawing through my CD collection which is unfortunately still displayed in a very college dorm type set up of several boxes side by side in this entertainment cabinet thing that looks nice but is not designed to be especially useful. (I have decided that before my 40th bday I will come up with a more elegant solution.) Anyway, as I start to look I see some goofy Bob book and I'm like, "why is there a book in my area?" and then I see the Sopranos season one box set also crammed down there and then I realize all the boxes are out of order (I put my CDs in general, not militant, alphabetical order but also group by artist so Paul Westerberg solo CDs are grouped together with Replacements in the "R" area; Bob Mould solo CDs are grouped together with a Hüsker Dü under "S" for Sugar {not a completely logical choice to anyone but me.} You get the idea ...) Another part of my "system" is when I take discs out to put in the car I leave the jewel boxes piled in a stack and I notice that the stack has been crammed in with the rest of the CDs. "REM doesn't go by Def Leppard," I said. Meanwhile, Bob is laughing. When Debbie cleaned last time I guess she got super organized in a manner which is in conflict with my super organization leading to the above amusing scene.

Last story of today. When we were in Orleans, Fred was talking about living in Corvallis and wondering if this was going to be a good place to meet a future wife and mother of his children and Joey and Curt started in with "whoa, what do you want to do that for?" meaning why would you want to get married when you're young and can have a good time. I pointed out that Bob liked being married and Joey said, "Bob has it fat. I'd marry a girl too if she let me have my own room."