more recent effort

the fruit of a creative fit last night--enjoy:   

a recent effort:

EPL fantasy league

now I have 4 teams (I guess there was a two for one special).  Yeah!  Now I can really sink some time into it! 

Mrs. 8 is going to love that. 

premier league begins!

The english premiere league starts up again tomorrow!  My preseason picks: 

1 chelsea

2 manchester united

3 arsenal

4 liverpool

5 everton

6 aston villa

7 manchester city

8 portsmouth

9 sunderland (keane managing above his pay grade)

10 tottenham (sans berbatov)

11 newcastle

12 blackburn

13 west ham

14 bolton (my team--slight improvement over last season)

15 wigan (read it and weep, aldis)

16 fulham

17 middlesbrough

18 hull

19 west brom

20 stoke

I've got two fantasy teams, and I have spent the last 3 hours geeking out over stats etc to pick players.  

chelsea looks good, man u is going to fall back a bit, sunderland is going to move up, and the three new teams are headed straight down.  

chatauqua

One of the highlights our little vacation was visiting the Big Top Chatauqua. Granted much of the show was about fishing, but the quality of the house band (tent band?) just charmed my socks off.

And you could get a Leinenkugel during intermission....

busy week

On Monday, I was in a wee crash that nonetheless totaled our old Corolla, which since the truck's clutch is out left us with exactly zero vehicles.

The upside is that it accelerated our decision to buy another new car by 6 months. On Saturday, we bought a 08 subaru outback (barely used).

We're already putting our distinctive touches on it. Mrs. 8 scuffed a curb while parking it.

Perhaps there is a little irony in that I just was kidding her about wreaking the car below.

things I've tried to convince my wife of recently:

That I was in a plane crash, however it was an ultralight plane was trying to land on a road and hit my car. Everyone was fine but I had a hell of a time explaining it to the insurance adjuster.

world book tour

As is typical for vacation, I spend an inordinate amount of time reading. And as is typical of me, my path--the world tour--has been backtracking, meandering, ambling along in fits and starts. I read three books last week, What is the What (eggers), Popular Music of Vittula (niemi) and Into Thin Air (krakauer). I'd recommend all three, but won't bother with the book report. On the last day of vacation, I started the Life of Pi, but it is rubbing me the wrong way right now.

i'm back

I'll do my best to measure out the posts over the next week covering the last month. Most of it was spend either on vacation or preparing for it.