"Let us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good"

I was going through the archives of the blog last night looking for something and noticed that I used to post a little bit more than just a song every Monday-Wednesday-Friday. I got away from it once I started wedding blogging, but I don't have an excuse now.

Sometimes I wrote a little bit about sports. During the first couple of months of this year, when Arsenal were playing really well, there were quite a few posts. Then Arsenal lost the Carling Cup final, Henry and Van Persie got hurt, the season petered out, so that stopped. But now, well, now we've never had it so good! Apart from winning a trophy, have we ever had such a good week? We crushed three teams, including Spurs, quite convincingly, and went top of the league for the first time since 2004. Cesc Fabregas has come of age much like Ronaldo did last year. We announced that we are now the "richest" club in England and have loads of money in the bank. Not to mention the oft-predicted and much-anticipated Chelsea implosion may have finally begun! Beauty!

Things change quickly, so the saying goes, and that's true, but who cares about tomorrow, let's enjoy it while it lasts, etc etc.

The other football team is ticking over nicely too, coping pretty well with a tricky Tulsa team and solidifying its place as the best of the "other" undefeated teams after USC and LSU. As a bonus, OSU's coach has made himself an international Youtube laughingstock by losing his cool over some stupid newspaper article. (Personally, I think "laughingstock" is a little generous. Yes, he looks completely ludicrous stalking the podium like he's Howard Beale. But it's no surprise, and a little creepy, that the target of his mad as hell grandstanding happens to be a childless woman. That'll show her, eh Mike?)

Anyway, another thing we were doing on the blog is noting births among our crew. As many of you know, Nick, a very-pregnant Kim, and Sabina were at the wedding last month, and now it's Nick, Kim, Sabina... and Ramona! Here's Ramona and her sister. Too cute!

I'm heading home for a little bit next week so I picked out the next series of tunes last night. I like them, but they aren't too hip. So enjoy this week's hipness while it lasts, don't worry about tomorrow, etc. etc.

The wheels came off but they're finding their way back

There hasn't been a non-music post here in a week or two which is probably good. Went up to Maine, so I haven't seen the last few Arsenal matches, which is definitely good. Read a couple more books, but they're about Maine so we'll be using them at the other place--no need to blog them twice! And that's about that. I did see a somewhat disjointed and unswaggering (?) win over Bolton yesterday. Take the three points any way we can. Which is what Liverpool usually do, but not yesterday. Going down to DC again tomorrow for work, and also to visit Grandma and Mom, Mark, & the girls. Should be fun...

Photo: Crane gone bad in Waco.

Weekend roundup: Oklahoma excursion/Carling Cup final

An eventful weekend. Since I'm stalling for picking next week's songs, I'll summarize the goings on below the fold:

Amy and I made it Newark International in plenty of time Friday afternoon for our flight to Oklahoma City. Especially since it ended up being delayed for two hours. Fortunately I had a couple of Presidents' Club passes handy, so we got to snack on free beer and Fritos for awhile. We made it down to Oklahoma on an extremely tedious flight--no amount of dirty looks or turbulence could deter two strangers behind us (who had only met because they were both late getting on the plane in the first place!) from chatting inanely at full volume the duration of the flight.

Saturday morning Amy and I and Mom and Grandma went out to the Cowboy Hall Of Fame for a couple of hours, and then to the County Line for lunch. Then it was time for the main event, Katie and Chris's wedding shower.

Having never attended one of these things, I wasn't really sure what to do, but it was basically a nice little joint family reunion. We got encouraging feedback about our own wedding--that so many family members are even considering hauling themselves up to Maine is really gratifying! Fingers crossed it works out for them!

The night wrapped up with some American Idol Karaoke Revolution. I'm proud to report that I earned a double platinum record for Let's Stay Together (years of Al Green singalongs finally pay off!), and even better, on my next turn I became the only person booed off the stage all night for a truly shocking David Brent-style If You Don't Know Me By Now.

This morning was an early start straight to the airport. The flight home was quick, but I managed to finish up a couple of books (I was thinking that perhaps I would use this blog for book reports, but not today. For the record, I finished "When Affirmative Action Was White" and "Vietnam, Jews, and The Middle East: Unintended Consequences." The former explored the fact that all of our most progressive social programs (The G.I. Bill, social security, etc) were enacted when Jim Crow was in full effect, and how the postwar middle class was built, among other things, on the backs of Black America. The latter book is an account of the Middle East (particularly the events leading up to the Six Day War) viewed through the prism of LBJ's preoccupation with Vietnam. This one took awhile to gather momentum, but the last 40 pages were filled with interesting facts and observations that have a resonate (positively and negatively) today.)

Anyways, as I said, the flight landed 35 minutes early, early enough that I decided to check on the Carling Cup final, which was at halftime. Amy and I decided to try to make it to a bar to catch the end with Ned and Marcio. John Terry obliged by having his face nearly kicked off by Abou Diaby, so we got to see the last fifteen minutes of normal time and eleven-odd minutes of extra time. Unfortunately, and as could have been and in fact was predicted, we got there just in time to see Chelsea go in front. We never looked like equalizing, especially after a comedy brawl that had Toure and Adebayor sent off (with Eboue sure to follow). But fair enough, we played really well the first half, and it's clear to everyone we're going to have a ridiculously good team in a year or two.

So then it was off to pick up Martin, nap, and then wonder if either this rapidly approaching cold or already-arrived snowstorm will be enough to keep me at home tomorrow!