Monday, December 05, 2005
welcome welcome
welcome to the world Alaina Kelsey Crossett. So nice to have you. We’re glad that you and your Mom are healthy and we can’t wait to meet you.
We took the plunge and painted the wall around the fireplace this weekend. With some excellent guidance from Pete and my brother I felt like I had a passing idea of how to proceed and what to expect. I taped in and got the coat of tinted primer down on Saturday afternoon. And on Sunday I was able to get up 3 coats of the topcoat itself. Cutting in and then rolling out took about 2 hours total and then an hour or so to dry. It looks great from up to 3 feet away but any closer and you start to perceive the differences in shading in certain places. This may drive me to a 4th coat but we’ll wait a few days to see how we feel about that. If it’s any indication, I didn’t take up the masking tape yet…
Saturday afternoon found us in Plymouth for some venison carving and then dinner. Dad had come back from the Vineyard with some deer parts in the cooler which we broke down into sausage meat and steaks for the freezer. Trying to carve out the more complicated joints like the shoulders and hips is akin to those 3-D tavern puzzles that have to fit together just right and in the proper order. Except the butchering is in reverse, where you’re trying to take it apart in just the right order. A few beers and some sharp knives helped us through it and we did alright.
The draw for the 2006 WC will take place this Friday and will be shown live on ESPN2 at 3pm, so set your VCR/TiVo. There’s a tiny slim miniscule iota of a chance that the US could earn one of the 8 seeds. If this happened eurosnob fans across the US and most fans from across the footballing world would simultaneously soil themselves. So I think it’s worth tuning in for that reason alone. Aside from that, at the end of the day each of the 32 teams will know which 3 teams they will face in the round robin opening groups of the tourney. Because of how the seeds are assigned and how the draw proceeds, there is usually a “group of death” which contains one of the seeded teams and also one of the top teams who just missed out on a seed (Holland for example). In addition, the other 2 teams in this group will be above average and thus round out a group of 4 teams who each have a clear chance at advancing out of group play. Such a group is bad news for all four teams involved. The perfect scenario is that you are drawn into a group with the seeded team, you and then 2 other relative minnows from say Africa or Asia. It should be noted however that just making the final 32 team field is a major achievement and there are no easy games. Seeing the 2002 Cup should drive that point home when defending champs France as well as Argentina and Portugal each failed to advance from the group stage. Check out this riveting interview with world class hottie Heidi Klum as she discusses her roll as hostess for the event.
welcome to the world Alaina Kelsey Crossett. So nice to have you. We’re glad that you and your Mom are healthy and we can’t wait to meet you.
We took the plunge and painted the wall around the fireplace this weekend. With some excellent guidance from Pete and my brother I felt like I had a passing idea of how to proceed and what to expect. I taped in and got the coat of tinted primer down on Saturday afternoon. And on Sunday I was able to get up 3 coats of the topcoat itself. Cutting in and then rolling out took about 2 hours total and then an hour or so to dry. It looks great from up to 3 feet away but any closer and you start to perceive the differences in shading in certain places. This may drive me to a 4th coat but we’ll wait a few days to see how we feel about that. If it’s any indication, I didn’t take up the masking tape yet…
Saturday afternoon found us in Plymouth for some venison carving and then dinner. Dad had come back from the Vineyard with some deer parts in the cooler which we broke down into sausage meat and steaks for the freezer. Trying to carve out the more complicated joints like the shoulders and hips is akin to those 3-D tavern puzzles that have to fit together just right and in the proper order. Except the butchering is in reverse, where you’re trying to take it apart in just the right order. A few beers and some sharp knives helped us through it and we did alright.
The draw for the 2006 WC will take place this Friday and will be shown live on ESPN2 at 3pm, so set your VCR/TiVo. There’s a tiny slim miniscule iota of a chance that the US could earn one of the 8 seeds. If this happened eurosnob fans across the US and most fans from across the footballing world would simultaneously soil themselves. So I think it’s worth tuning in for that reason alone. Aside from that, at the end of the day each of the 32 teams will know which 3 teams they will face in the round robin opening groups of the tourney. Because of how the seeds are assigned and how the draw proceeds, there is usually a “group of death” which contains one of the seeded teams and also one of the top teams who just missed out on a seed (Holland for example). In addition, the other 2 teams in this group will be above average and thus round out a group of 4 teams who each have a clear chance at advancing out of group play. Such a group is bad news for all four teams involved. The perfect scenario is that you are drawn into a group with the seeded team, you and then 2 other relative minnows from say Africa or Asia. It should be noted however that just making the final 32 team field is a major achievement and there are no easy games. Seeing the 2002 Cup should drive that point home when defending champs France as well as Argentina and Portugal each failed to advance from the group stage. Check out this riveting interview with world class hottie Heidi Klum as she discusses her roll as hostess for the event.
