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So the past week or so have been semi-interesting on a couple of different levels. First off, I have been dealing with a sore throat for about 2 weeks now, and after battling long and hard, have now succumbed to defeat versus the all-mighty common cold. Now I can live with a cold, but the one thing that I find continuously annoying is that no matter how hard you try to sleep at night, you just CAN'T. It's like that cold employs a specific germ to push the cough button every time you close your eyes and start nodding off.

Now normally in this case, when talking with people I would ask "do you want the good news first or the bad?", but seeing as how I am president, vice president, speaker of the house, and pretty much anybody else with a vote I will give the bad news first. As of this point in time the chances of me being in Dublin for St. Patrick's Day are slim to none, thanks to the wisdom of Retail Management in making sure that study abroad students are not able to sign up for tutorial sections until pretty much everyone else has, thus leaving them with the least desirable time slots. That means that on March 17th at 9am, instead of arriving in Dublin for a day of celebrating Irish heritage, I will instead be in the Colville building on the 7th floor turning in a paper and giving a presentation on the electronics sector and how my specific company (to which I still don't even know what companies exist) are dealing with the current credit crunch and what my recommendations for them are. If anyone has any ideas or wants to plan a way for me to get to Dublin after this is done for relatively cheap, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

Now for the good news, I have recently started playing some pick-up basketball at the gym on the weekends (see Mom I knew I needed to bring my Kobe's), and am now also going to begin training with the university's football team. Having not touched a football in over a month now, I am looking to get my legs back underneath and am grateful for the fact that I will begin training with the 3rd team (and then hopefully moving up). While one might have expected a longer paragraph for the good news, I find that it is always easier to vent and write about the bad news than try to find creative and loquacious ways to write good news.

Oh, and I have introduced some of my friends over here to lexulous and lets just say that at this point in time the word creation genes still reside on the correct side of the Atlantic.

Stick to the Plan!

So I was introduced to this video by my friend Sam. For those that do not know the seriousness of World of Warcraft, and how the people who play the game devote their lives to it. Well one dude, decided to have a little fun with all of the other gamers and this video is the result of what happens.

Fitness Centre strikes again!

Just another little tidbit about the fitness centre. I went to play basketball for the first time last night with a buddy from the hall. Now we were playing a nice full court game in the gym for probably half an hour or so, when our game got interrupted by a staff member of the "centre" (which by the way is completely the wrong spelling and I think the American way of "center" is much better but that is besides the point) because we were not members of the sports club union we would have to stop. Apparently, from what I understood was that even though there was nobody using the gym, and the time and space was set aside for basketball, you had to be a member of this "union" to play. Now you might be thinking, what is the sports union, which is exactly what I thought, and it pretty much is a way for the university to take another 20 or so pounds off of you so that you can use the gym whenever you want. To make a long story short, I argued with the lady in a typical American way, and she let us use the gym for the rest of the night. So DUMB

This past weekend I got the chance to go to a little town outside of Glasgow called Stirling. While most of you have never heard of it, Stirling is the "Gateway to the Highlands", as well as the site of Stirling Castle and the national William Wallace Monument. I pretty much spent all day running around looking at the various sites, and then the group I was with decided that it would be a good idea to hike a mountain starting at 4pm when it gets dark around 5pm. It ended up actually being quite the hike and the view from the top was completely worth it.

Rangers vs. Milan

Last night I was fortunate enough to attend the football friendly Rangers versus AC Milan. On top of that here is where things get real interesting and exciting. Walking up to the stadium (in the snow) with a couple of guys from my hall who were also going there seemed to be this air of excitement about the match, and the general buzz was that people wanted to see the stars of the Rosseneri. Upon picking up my ticket and being asked to tell them my address for proof, the lady chuckled a little bit and said "Arizona huh" when she handed me my ticket, we found our way to our respective gates and entered. Being by myself now, I wandered around looking for seat 0218 in area SW2, thinking that it must be in the upper deck. However following the signs that showed where my seat number is, I ended up standing at the top of the lower section and knowing that I had row C, looked down at the steps to see just how high up I would be. At this point, a revelation of sorts came over me, and I suddenly realized that I was be going to be very, very, very close to the action down on the pitch. As it turns out, that very, very, very close was the SECOND ROW in the entire stadium!

Now for the action on the field, Milan trotted out some of their stars in the first half, aka Ronaldinho, Beckham, Shevchenko, etc. Seeing these guys up close is unbelievable, first off, Beckham's passing is a thing of beauty, every ball goes exactly where he wants it to and during his time playing I cannot remember him losing the ball once. Ronaldinho has the quickest feet that I have ever seen in person, and watching him dance over the ball right in front of me made my jaw drop. The first half came and went with nothing really exciting happening (except that I got a couple of great shots on my camera of Clarence Seedorf warming up, since he decided to do on the sideline right in front of me). At halftime, Milan had all of their substitutes out on the field running around getting loosened up, and the lady next to me kept taking pictures of one guy in general. Now, having never seen Kaka in person, I figured that he was not very tall and very big, because he does not look that way on TV. I kept thinking to myself, "why is she taking pictures of one guy? He runs goofy, looks uncoordinated" and then kind of laughed it off as maybe he played for Rangers before joining Milan. How dumb did I feel when he peels off his warm-ups to go into the game and it turns out to be Kaka, only one of the top 3 footballers (yes, that is what it is called) in the world. Made me eat my own words. So in the second half, Kaka, Pato (more on him later), Seedorf all check in for Milan within the first 10-15 minutes and DaMarcus Beasley checks in for Rangers. Nothing brings more national pride to a US soccer fan than seeing a homegrown talent such as Beasley score a goal against a great team (Milan). This was the best thing for the match, since Milan now decided to wake up and actually play some inspiring football. 

Pato and Kaka are amazing. Period, end of discussion. Pato does not run on the field, it seems like he just kind of hops around and floats to wherever he needs to go and does something amazing along the way. Well soon after Beasley scores, Kaka gets the ball in front of me and just absolutely terrorizes the poor right back for Rangers and breaks in for goal, lays it back across the middle where it hits a Rangers defender, bounces off of another Rangers defender, and goes right to Pato who taps it into the net in less than 5 minutes after coming onto the pitch. The entire second half I was treated to Kaka, Pato, and Seedorf deciding to strut their stuff against a vastly overmatched right side of the field for Rangers. Rangers scored again off of a nice combination, but the real highlight of the match was an absolute laser by Kaka in roughly the 80th minute. Now I am going to try and put myself in the Rangers defender's position: 

"oh look Kaka is dribbling the ball at goal from about 30 yards out,  maybe I should step up to him and make him pass the ball off... nah its Kaka he wont do anything, he is not that good... oh look he is only 20 yards out now, should I step to him now? Nah, its Kaka, he's not that..."

and just like that the match was tied 2-2 which is where it ended. All in all, it was an amazing experience, and getting the chance to watch these guys up close really shows how TV does not do justice for the beautiful sport.