8.27.2008

attention diverted

I'd apologize for my long absence and the sudden interruption of the Tourney, but I imagine just about everyone reading is aware of the reason behind all that.

I'll admit to being plenty spooked by Krysta's hospital stay. I know its cliche, but I guess we're at that point where any ideas of invincibility start to fall away and mortality becomes slightly less abstract. The sudden shift in perspective, the narrowing of focus on your own life, that can accompany medical emergencies is extremely valuable, however. Certainly this is not how Krysta and I would have preferred to spend the weeks leading up to our first anniversary, but I believe its added a resonance to the celebration that we welcome.

Also welcome is the total outpouring of love and support from our families. It feels silly to separate friends and family in an instance like this, because so many of our friends here in L.A. have acted in ways just as loving as our parents and extended families would, if they were not so far away. We were excited about my sister moving out here, we just had no idea how fortuitous the timing would be, as she has been amazingly helpful in all of this. That, along with the parade of Krysta's family that has come through over the past couple of weeks has made this whole process a lot easier. We are really blessed in so many ways.

I'll try to get back to semi-regular blogging soon, although the Fictional President Tourney will probably get put on hold until later in the fall. Fair warning, my next post will almost certainly be about baseball.

8.12.2008

let the games begin

Despite not being that excited about them beforehand, I got sucked into watching rather a lot of the Olympics this past weekend. The opening ceremonies were, of course, spectacular and there have been plenty of superlatives bandied about to describe them. Thanks to ESPN I got turned onto handball, which is an interesting hybrid of basketball and soccer. Its a lot of fun to watch and I can't believe that not only is it not popular in this country, but the US doesn't even have a team competing! Watch that sport for a bit and tell me we couldn't field a pretty awesome team with some Division II tight ends or tall forwards.

The groundwork is very nearly finished for the Greatest Fictional President Tournament. Head over and check out the write-ups for the 1-5 seeds. I'm hoping to get the 6 seeds up soon and start posting results. I've had some great help from friends getting this going, and I think it will be a lot of fun (and wasted time!) to see this all play out.

UPDATE: All the candidate write-ups are now up, and I've updated the above link to point to the new version of that blog. Results coming tomorrow!

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8.08.2008

greatest (fictional) president ever

I'm not talking about Al Gore, but rather referring to my previous desire to create a single-elimination style tournament bracket to determine the Greatest Fictional President of TV and Film. Efforts to get it going are well underway, but for now you can check out the full bracket, and feel free to make predictions or complain about seedings. That's half the fun of having a tournament. More than half, probably. Anyway, I'll have candidate profiles up hopefully on Monday, and then we'll try to get in the first round 4/5 and 3/6 matchups in next week.

Happy 08/08/08, everyone, whatever that means. Go Cardinals!

8.04.2008

news?

I had the pleasure of helping my little sister move into her first LA apartment this weekend. We're excited about having family so close to us!

Today must be what's known in the biz as a "slow news day." The following are currently headlines on CNN.com:

"Kids' fast food high in calories, study says" Really?
"Bill Clinton: 'I'm not a racist'" Whew.
"First pics of 'Brangelina' twins published" OMGreally!?!? Since when did we automatically combine celebrity couples names? When did that start? Its like adding "-gate" to any sort of scandal. I can't wait for "Brangelinagate"
"Lohan's sis, 14, auditions for porn director" And its a VIDEO link. No sensationalism here.
"Whats with Batman's voice in The Dark Knight" A valid questions...but for the front news page?

Happy Monday!