8 for 8 (+1)
so I head home for lunch on Friday, just to watch the first half of the fist game of the WC live and am shocked to see no red light shining on the bottom of the TiVo. It's not recording! I get the TV on and start recording. It turns out I missed the first 13 minutes of the game which happened to include the first goal. Looking at the upcoming recording schedule, it looks fine. So I have no idea why the first game got missed. A timely lesson to double check the To Do List each night to make sure I'll have the games waiting for me at home after work.

Finished watching that game on Friday night. And in all honesty I was going to skip the 2nd game from Friday (Poland v. Ecuador..zzzzz) because I was tired and there were 3 more games ahead on Saturday. But at Reen's urging I flipped on the Poland Ecuador match Friday night after finishing the 1st game. Reen proceeded to fall asleep right away but I am glad to have watched it. Saturday brought 3 more games and then 3 again on Sunday, two of which we watched at Mom and Dad's. Soccer is HD is really nice to watch.

So that makes 8 games (minus 13 minutes) plus the Revs game Sunday night for a grand total of 13.3 hours of soccer so far.

Kickoff for the US v. Czech game is in less than 2 hours. The plan has been to just TiVo it and watch after work with Reen. But I'd go crazy. The odds of a mishap are just too great. I'd read or hear the score somewhere, TiVo might get eaten by vultures...anything could happen. So I'll be taking an extended lunch break today.

And I arrived at work today to see this mail from the guy in Denmark I worked with many years ago. We have continued to be in touch maybe once a year.

Hi Mark,

A big day for you today ?!?

Good luck with your team !

Kind regards

Peter

And then when I wrote back saying that I wasn't sure about sneaking away for a long lunch.

Have a nice lunch (you have to go for the extended lunch ! – there is 4 years to the next world cup !).

And he's exactly right.