I'm not the first Sparkle

The yo-yo weather continues. We get a great weekend - two straight days (Sunday and Monday) that ranged from mid-70s to low-80s, and the scheduled storms managed only to come overnight, leaving enough time for things to dry out by the time I'd be awake enough to go outside, thus enabling Alma and me to squeeze in another round of mini golf on Monday afternoon - and then I wake up today and it's 43 degrees with a wind chill dropping it to nearly freezing. This delightful meteorological anomaly is known as a "pneumonia front," and apparently this was only the seventh time it's happened in recorded weather history. It's supposed to warm back up by the end of the week, and then rain for much of next week while maintaining high temperatures on the warm side - but then I won't be here next week, and hopefully the weather in San Diego will be what the weather in San Diego is known for being. Of course the ten-day for San Diego lists temperatures for next week like "high 67, low 61" and "high 65, low 61," which isn't bad, but probably could have been a little warmer. I suppose this is what I get for scheduling a vacation during the June Gloom.

Cold snapped

While it's not 2001 - the year that set the record for "most late-season days without hitting 70," by not reaching that mark until June 7 - this spring has been pretty miserable so far. It's only cracked 70 on a handful of occasions, then only barely, and usually it's timed that to coincide with rain, making the warmer temperatures impossible to enjoy. With that in mind, today was probably the first truly nice day of the year, getting all the way up to 77 and only delivering a sprinkle of rain around 1:30 or so. It was a bit windy, but I like wind in the right conditions anyway. Alma and I, along with Justin and Margie, made the first mini golf trip of the year (to Par King) as a result. You can find the results on the Mini Golf page if you want to. Which you don't.

We stopped by Cold Stone afterwards and I had some of their Oatmeal Cookie Batter ice cream, which I hadn't seen before. Pretty good.

Speaking of hopefully enjoying better weather, I'm off to San Diego in a week. Maybe the Cubs can stop sucking ridiculous amounts of ass on the road while I'm there. We can only hope. I'll try to take pictures (or have Alma take pictures/video, since her camera is better and can take videos with sound) and then post them when I get back, although no promises. I may also have some updates from San Diego if Alma brings the laptop, since I'll actually have things to update about (unlike the usual week).

Other exciting (?) developments: the Lost finale is on Thursday, and I will spending three hours re-watching the first part and then watching parts two and three. I've got high hopes for it - last year's finale ruled, and while it seems unlikely that this year's can do anything quite so head-spinning, there's a lot more going on plot-wise right now. I briefly considered doing a Simmons-esque running diary for it, but that seems like more work than I need to put into the eventual blog entry for it considering I know like three people who actually watch the show.

Soc-cer?

Alma and I went to the Fire game on Saturday. As someone who is on record as saying that he "just can't get into the MLS," I have to say it was a pretty good time, in spite of the rain, the fact that the Fire lost, and the difficulty in locating the car in what seemed like more of an impromptu parking lot. I probably haven't given the MLS enough of a shot, though it's kind of hard to do so when it's basically as easy to see English Premiership games on TV as it is the MLS (it's not like the Fire are on WGN every weekend, for example). For something that's still a pretty niche sport, it draws a solid audience - more than 17,000 were at Toyota Park on Saturday - and I was pleasantly surprised by how into the game most people were (and how boisterous and vocal those in the Firehouse section were - it's not exactly the Kop end, but it's a start). On the other hand, it wasn't even a sellout in spite of the fact that the defending champions (Houston) were in town, and there was a sizable Latino contingent in the crowd that might not have been as strong if not for the presence of Mexican legend Cuauhtemoc Blanco. I liked that there were several names I recognized from the US team - Justin Mapp and Chris Rolfe for Chicago, Brian Ching and Ricardo Clark for Houston - although both Mapp and Rolfe ended up being substituted off and only Clark figured in a goal.

I got us pretty good seats, so we had a nice view of the field, although the Fire scored their only goal at the other end from where we were and proceeded to have pretty much no really good scoring chances in the second half when they were attacking the goal closest to us. But I dare you to sit that close to the field at pretty much any sporting event and not be engrossed. And of course I love soccer - I might call it my #2 overall sport behind baseball, though I'm sure most of you will think that's crazy talk. The difference, of course, is that it's so much harder to be a soccer fan in this country. I can't avoid football if I want to, for example (and during the offseason, I usually do), but you won't even get MLS updates on ESPN 1000's SportsCenter when the Fire have played. I had the 2005 Champions League final result spoiled for me because I was listening to ESPN 1000 in the car, not thinking they would ever bother reporting a soccer result. To this day I think that's the only one they've ever broadcast (aside from something involving David Beckham, perhaps), which makes me think it was just done to fuck with people who were at work and had TiVoed the game, as I had.

Anyway, I suspect we'll make another game sometime this summer (it would be neat to see them face the Galaxy in September, although I think those tickets might actually already be sold out, which should tell you something about how we prioritize things in this country as regards soccer). I'd like to be able to get into the Fire (even though I can't really pull off wearing red), especially with Manchester City on the verge of driving me away thanks to the aggressively manipulative ownership of George Thainbrenner (aka Thaksin Shinawatra), although making Europe will hopefully settle things; it's hard if the only way I can do it is to keep going to Fire games, though. I'm not made of money. We'll see.

Happy Mother's Day

A happy Mother's Day to all the mothers I know, including my mom, my sister, Grandma Flaxman, Aunt Joan, Aunt Denise, Aunt Ginny, Sheilah, and anyone I may be stupidly forgetting.

EDIT: As noted in the comments, I did end up stupidly forgetting Alma's mother, which is particularly embarrassing. So a happy belated Mother's Day, and my endless thanks, to her as well.

In more me-oriented news - since I know that's why you're all here - I'm trying yet another attempt at self-betterment. I've been lagging on exercise lately, in part because of acid-related issues and in part because I've been pretty busy between school and work (and moving, more recently). I hope to get back into that soon, but another thing I'm going to try is calling a moratorium on frozen dinners, which until this point had pretty much formed the backbone of my eating habits. Calorie-wise they were healthy enough, but of course those things are loaded with sodium, and while they're convenient and require no dish washing, I'm sure I can do better. For example: frozen chicken breasts and a George Foreman grill. My new place didn't come with a microwave, so that gives me a pretty good excuse to break the habit. Also, it's kind of pathetic of me to be so reliant on frozen dinners anyway. I've already made some lifestyle changes, so might as well work at another one.

I don't think I have too many readers at this point who live alone, but do any of you have general suggestions as far as things you did or do to sustain yourself that weren't microwave-related?

That's... weird

I was watching the Cubs/Cardinals game this afternoon. In the Cubs' big fourth inning, Mike Fontenot came up with two men on and the Cubs leading 3-0. Kyle Lohse threw a pitch that went for a ball. Suddenly, in the top of the screen, the graphic flashed "Home Run Cubs" and the score changed to 6-0. After a couple seconds, "Home Run Cubs" vanished and the score returned to 3-0.

Five seconds later, Lohse threw another pitch; Fontenot hit a home run.

I'm sure someone had just hit a wrong button, but is that weird or what?