More Olympic stuff

Congratulations are in order to several US teams. Women's Soccer won their semifinal against Japan to advance to the Gold Medal Game on the 21st against Brazil. Also playing a Gold Medal Game on the 21st will be Women's Water Polo, who downed Australia for the right to face the Netherlands in the final. That Soccer wound up against Brazil is not suprising - both teams are powerhouses, but that Water Polo got the Netherlands in the final was - the Dutch went just 1-2 in pool play, if you'll pardon the unintentional pun, but pulled off suprise upsets in the first two rounds. This kind of reminds me of when the Maryland basketball team made it to the finals and played an Indiana team that came out of nowhere to get to the championship. Of course, we all know what happened then...

Also having a gold medal match on the 21st in the women's beach volleyball pair extraordinaire of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, who swept Brazil to play the winner of the other semi, which pits the two Chinese pairs against each other.

On the other side of the coin, the Men's Beach Volleyball pair of Gibb and Rosenthal were bumped out of medal contention, as well as Women's Field Hockey. So, for those of you keeping track at home:

Still alive: Baseball, Softball, Men's & Women's Basketball, Men's & Women's Beach Volleyball (1 team each), Women's Soccer, Men's & Women's Indoor Volleyball, Men's & Women's Water Polo.
Eliminated: Men's & Women's Beach Volleyball (1 team each), Women's Field Hockey, Men's Soccer

No team: Men's Field Hockey, Men's & Women's Handball

Later on this morning, Baseball looks to lock up a spot in the semifinals with a win over Taiwan (7 AM Eastern); Women's Basketball plays their quarterfinal against South Korea (8), which should not be competitive; and finally, Women's Indoor Volleyball has their quarterfinal against Italy (10).

In the sports where the US is not active: Men's Field Hockey wraps up the preliminaries this morning. The Netherlands and Australia appear to be the two teams to beat; they have played each other, and the game ended in a 2-2 draw, the only game either team failed to win outright. Women's Field Hockey goes straight to the semifinals, where Germany will play China and Argentina will play the Netherlands. The Krauts and the Dutch are apparently the two powerhouses there (the US women do have one more game remaining - the 7th place game against Spain at 11 PM Eastern tonight). The Men's Soccer Semis are taking place this morning. Nigeria and Belgium are playing now, Nigeria is up 1-0 as I write this, and Argentina will play Brazil in a game with a lot more than just a shot at Olympic Gold on the line. The Handball quarterfinals are just getting underway: Women's this morning, Men's tomorrow. France was the only unbeaten team in pool play on the Men's side, for the Women, Norway and Russia appear to be the powerhouses. In fact, Norway has already beaten Sweden comfortably and advanced to the semis.

Ok, that's all for now. I'm going to watch the Baseball game for as long as I can.

Monday Morning Olympic Games

By the time I'm done this entry, the Taiwan and Korea game will be over. Taiwan is about to come up in the bottom of the 9th down 9-8.

Here is a run down of all the team sport games being played this morning.

In baseball, in addition to the Taiwan/Korea game, Japan has already shut out Canada 1-0. Cuba will play the Netherlands at 6:00 AM Eastern, and the US will play China starting at 7:00. Huge game for the United States.

Korea gets the first out of the inning.

In softball, the Netherlands, who had been winless in the tournament, spoiled Taiwan's medal chances with a 4-2 win. The US blanked China, 9-0, to finish 7-0 in prelim play. China's medal hopes are also shot. Later this morning, Japan will play Canada, whose spot in the medal round is not safe, and then Venezuela will play Australia. If Canada loses and Venezuela wins, Venezuela will play the US in the semifinals, and Canada will be done. If Canada wins or if Venezuela loses, then the US will play Canada, and Venezuela is out. Either way, the other semi is set between Australia and Japan.

Korea holds on to win, 9-8. Good news for the US.

In men's hoops, Croatia dismantled winless Iran to secure a spot in the quarterfinals. The Aussies pounded former Maryland Terp Sarunas Jasikevicius's Lithuanian team to earn themselves a trip to the quarters. Lithuana already had clinched the top seed coming out of their group. Greece is currently beating the tar out of China, but both teams are already in the quarters. Angola will take on Spain at quarter of 5, the US will play Germany at 8, and Argentina vs. Russia starts at 10:15. Assuming Greece does not collapse epically, here is the way the quarterfinal round will look: US vs. Australia, Spain vs. Croatia, Argentina vs. Greece, and Lithuana vs. China.

In men's beach volleyball, the US put a team in the semifinals when Rogers and Dalhausser advanced over a German team. Georgia has a team in the semis after they got past a Netherlands duo. Later, one of the two Brazilian teams will take on a couple of Austrians, and finally, the other US team of Gibb and Rosenthal will take one the other Brazilian pair. Could we be headed towards an all-US final?

In women's field hockey, Germany got a free pass to the semis by beating Japan to win their group. Korea topped South Africa in a meaningless game between two previously winless teams. Later this morning the US will play Great Britain at 6:00, Spain and the Netherlands starts a half-hour later, Argentina will play New Zealand at 8:30, and China will play Australia at 9:00. The US has to win to have a chance at medaling.

The big game for US fans should be the women's soccer semi-final against Japan, which starts at 9:00, after the other women's semi between Brazil and Germany - a 6:00 start.

Men's indoor volleyball has quite a few matches of importance going on. Bulgaria, Brazil, and Poland all won, over Venezuela, Germany, and Russia, respectively. Egypt and Serbia are playing right now, China will be playing Italy later, and the US will take on Japan at 10:00. Regardless of what happens, the US will play Serbia in round one of the quarters. The China vs. Italy match is important for the other seeds.

Finally, it's a big morning in men's water polo. Italy slipped past Serbia, Hungary crushed Canada, Australia and Montenegro tied, and the US beat the Germans, 8-7. With their win and the Serbian loss, the US has won their group and gotten a free pass to the semifinals. Spain is currently up 5-0 over Greece, and China will play Croatia later on. Hungary has the other free pass for winning Group A. The quarters are set: Spain will play Serbia, for the right to face the US, and Croatia will play Montenegro, with the winner facing Hungary.

Greece held on against China in basketball. I'm going to bed.

Exciting news

My blog is back. I'm not going to do the personal, politics, sports thing anymore, though. This is going to be whatever I feel like writing about, whenever I feel like writing about it. You know, kind of like an actual blog.

Right now, I'm watching the Olympics. Only our cable box is busted, so I've been watching over the internet. NBCOlympics is a really awesome place to watch a bunch of the events that you don't really get to see on TV, such as team sport games not involving the US, and archery and sailing and all that. They also broadcast USA basketball games on there, even though they are broadcast over the air, so that's pretty cool.

Anyway, right now I'm watching Korea play Taiwan in baseball. And my God, Korea's uniforms are absolutely hideous. I think they wear them to distract the other team.

Team USA baseball should be made up of minor league stars. How could that not be a good idea? It would be great for MLB - the team would be like a showcase of tomorrow's talent, rather than just a collection of college players who may or may not succeed in their professional careers. I'd love to watch Matt Wieters, for instance, tearing it up right now in Beijing.

Softball looked really good earlier today. I hope all of the Nationalists obsessing over the medal count remember that the US pulls in a ton of gold medals in women's events because of the man-hating, feminazi bitches and their damned Title IX that they love railing about.

The Korean centerfielder almost had a ball bounce off his head, like Jose Canseco. How did the US lose to these guys???

Speaking of man-hating lesbians, Ellen Degeneres has to be pumped. Her wife has to be on the short list of world's hottest lesbians. I've got her right behind Jennie Finch (it's only a matter of time before she comes out). Do you think the reason Jennie Finch is such a great pitcher is because all of her opponents are distracted by how much they want to have sex with her? I say it's a solid theory.

Korea is leading 9-8 in the 7th inning, by the way.

Korea's uniform pants have a horizontal blue stripe running across their ass for no reason. It's almost like those short shorts girls wear that have something written across their ass, which really ought to just say "hey, look at my ass" - I mean, who are you trying to fool? - except that these are dudes. Playing baseball. And if you're going for sex appeal, the rest of the unifrom can't be as distractingly hideous as the Korean one is. I think it was just a horrible idea, which is pretty much what the whole costume is. Horrible.

Taiwan, on the other hand, looks really sharp. 30 points to whoever designed that one.

Korea was up 8-1 in this game. Taowan came back to tie it, and now Korea is winning again. Taiwan is at bat, with the guy who hit the ball who which almost killed the centerfielder at 3rd, and 2 out.

Ouch. Taiwan just took a called strike 3 that was ridiculous. At least 6 inches outside.

If Korea holds on, they move to 5-0, and Taiwan falls to 1-4. Japan already beat Canada to send them to 1-4. Assuming Cuba beats the Netherlands later on this morning - and that's a fair assumption - that will mean that the US will almost assuredly have a spot in the quarterfinals if they beat China in the game after that. If Taiwan came back to win the US would then have to win their next game, which would be against Taiwan, to secure the final spot. That would be some pretty good drama. So, I'm split on who to cheer for. Korea does need to be punished for these uniforms, as well. I can't overstate how awful they are.

10/30/07

Dear blog,

I was going to write a post on the Redskins game from last weekend on my sports blog, but I recalled that I hadn't updated this blog in a long time. So, that's my task for tonight.

The two biggest events in my life in the last couple of months have been a) my purchase of the two-year old remake of the 1986 classic computer game, Sid Meir's Pirates! and the airing of the forst two seasons of The Wire on HBO On Demand.

Pirates! recently came in at number 3 on IGN's list of the greatest computer games of all time. It's a combination RPG, action/adventure game, with elements of turn-based strategy and some fun mini-games. Oh, and like the Grand Theft Auto series, it's entirely open-ended. There are plenty of quests to go on if that's what you want to do, but if you want to ignore all of that and just concentrate on the pirating, that's an option, too. It was a terrific game back when I first played it as a boy, and now it's even better as an updated version. Pure fun.

The Wire, on the other hand, that's some heavy shit. If you haven't seen this series, dude, you gotta get on it. Buy, don't rent, the first season on DVD. If it's not the best shit you've ever seen, let me know so I can cross you off my list of friends. Consider it a cross between Law and Order and The Sopranos, only set in Baltimore and about 50x better than either of those shows.

And not that those aren't high-quality shows, as they are, but The Wire blows them away. It's a joke that this show hasn't even gotten an Emmy nomination yet, but the inferior Sopranos wins the award consistently. I don't know, nor know of, anybody who has ever watched The Wire and not been instantly converted. Join in the fun - I swear you will thank me.

Well, I'm a bit tired, so I'm going to get to bed. I have a lot of stuff on my plate right now. More frequent updates for a while - I promise!

Later...

8/7/07

Dear blog,

I haven't written in so long, so very much to say.

It's been a whirlwind of a summer for me, and I've never been so sorry to see a season come to an end. As excited about the coming of football season (first meaningful games in 23 short days! Georgia Tech/Notre Dame! Wake Forest/Boston College! Oklahoma State/Georgia! Kansas State/Auburn! Tennessee/California! Florida State/Clemson - the Bowden Bowl! All on the first weekend!) as I am, this summer was such a bounty of good times that I'll be very sad to see it go. First, all of the baseball. I didn't get quite as many games in as I planned, I went to no shortage of them, and I still have a few to go to. But Cape Cod, AAA, Single A, and I will make a double A trip this year, as well. It was all so much fun. If you want to feel like an American (liberal as I am, I love being an American and being in America - primarily because we have such wonderful traditions as going out to a ball game on a warm summer's night), there is no better place to get that feeling than an evening in Chatham, or Cotuit, or Wareham, or Lowell, or Pawtucket, or Bowie, or Durham, or whatever minor-league or college town you can get to and taking in a ball game, not to cheer or boo, or live and die with each pitch - although the locals in these towns do just that, which makes the proceedings all the more entertaining for the rest of us - but just to watch the game being played. And knowing that some day some of these players are going to be big stars and you'll always be able to tell everyone that you saw "Player X" play back when he was a nobody on little more than a sandlot. And you saw that kid play and you said, "damn, this kid is going to be someone" (my exact words by the way, and I want you guys to take note of this so you know how dead on I was about these guys, when saw Orioles' first round draft pick Matt Weiters last summer in Orleans, and when I saw soon to be 2008 first round pick Connor Gillespie this summer in Falmouth).

Anyway, that was a alot of fun. But that's hardly all. July 4th was, as always, a great time. Nothing beat making up the barbeque sauce and marinade for the pork ribs we grilled for the cousins/aunts/uncles. I came across these recipies on the Internets a while ago, and it absolutely is remarkable. I think I might tinker with it a little next time, but so far the recipie works extremely well. The whole day was a grand spectacle, including wrapping it up by watching the Boston fireworks display on the folks' brand new High Defintion TV.

Oh, I don't think I've mentioned this beauty. My dad finally saw that the HD TV that all of his extensive research has concluded is the best buy happened to be on sale at BJs earlier this summer, so he went and got himself a 42' flat panel HDTV with a wall mount. It is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Comcast's On Demand has a HD channel called "Gallery Works", which is just still images - photographs of nature, or tourist attractions, or pets, or works of art by a famous painter, or by a not-so-famous painter - and you just sit there and stare, open-mouthed, at what is essentially a slideshow. Even more distressing, I now find that every single sport - except bowling, and that's probably because I won't let myself have a chance to watch it - is enjoyable, on some level, to watch. Even soccer, tennis, golf, and *gulp*, NASCAR. Of course, football and baseball are always on another level, basketball at a second, and hockey and MMA are also on the second-tier now that HDTV has drastically improved the enjoyment level of those two sports. Not to mention movies, which are so cool it's preposterous.

So, there is also that.

But that's not it, either. The Lowell Folk Fest was a couple of weekends ago (July 27-29). Musical acts from around the country - and a few international acts - got together for a three day concert/jam session. The highlights of the show for us were the Cajun bandfrom Louisiana (no suprise there), the Irish fiddler (actually from "County Bronx", as she said) from Riverdance (again, no suprise), and (suprise!) the bluegrass band from Fuckknowswhere, Virginia. That last act featured a powerhouse female lead with a glorious set of pipes.

And the food! Lowell folk fest is also an opportunity for the ethnic restaurants around the town to showcase items from their menu to entice potential customers, as well as for local ethnic groups, like the Hellenic-American PTA, or the NAACP (swear to God, I bought a slice of watermelon from them; by the way, is there a dumber stereotype than "black people love watermelon"? Of course they do! EVERYONE loves watermelon!), or, the fan favorites in the food category, the Phillipino congregation.

There is nothing quite like a Phillipino cooking party. And every party, by the way, is a cooking party, when your ethnicity has hit cooking the right way. Like the French, the Italians, the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Phillipinos. I went to a Phillipino birthday party once - and when I say a Phillipino Party, I mean it. Dan, Mark, and I came as guests of one of the hosts, our friend Kristine. And, along with Kristine's boyfriend, we were the only white people there. It was awesome. They made so much food you didn't feel like a pig going in for seconds, which is important, when the entres are this good. Phillipino food is a mixture of Spanish food and Asian food, and it works perfectly.

Anyway, the local Phillipino church group up here makes it out to the Folk Fest every summer to cook to raise money, and every year the line outside of their booth gets bigger and bigger. It is the worst-kept secret in Lowell. People don't mind the lines - they have literally been waiting all year for this opportunity to come again. That they don't have a restaurant is a crime. The day after the folk fest must be like Christmas to those kids.

And if it is, they deserve it. These kids are worked by the adults. Everyone pitches in, doing exactly what they are old enough to do. The operation is so huge, and so animated - everywhere somebody doing something, some little kid running around with food or with an important message - that standing in line watching all of the commotion makes the wait worthwhile.

So, that was a lot of fun.

If all of that weren't enough, the book and movie world through out some of the real heavy hitters. As you'll recall, the last time I went to a theater was when I saw Pirates 3. It wasn't a particularly fantastic movie, but I gave it a passing grade anyway, in large part because it compared favorably with the absolute stinker of a movie that Spiderman 3 was.

But I haven't been dissapointed since. First, Harry Potter 5 came out, and I gotta tell you kids, this is easily the best movie so far (heh, at least until they get to movie 7...) in the series. This is not the Harry Potter you saw go after the Sorcerer's Stone. This cat is older, he is wiser, he's very pissed off, and he's about to explode with sexual tension. And he's dealing with some grown-up problems. Voldemort isn't just some phantom out there, waiting to reappear. He has reappeared, and he's coming - coming for Harry, but really after the whole population. And the government, which is supposed to protect him, is instead pretending he doesn't exist, and charging anyone with treason who doesn't toe their line. So Harry needs to form an underground society to prepare to take on the Big Badass, but he'd better not get caught. If that sounds to you anything like a kid's movie, then I seriously want to know exactly what it is that you watched when you were a kid. 3 1/2 stars.

It wasn't just Harry making a triumphant return to the big screen. For the second straight summer, Matt Damon finds himself in the best movie of the season. This year, it's The Bourne Ultimatum, a thriller that rivals, if not tops, its first two counterparts. I was worried about this one; the Spiderman movies had also given us a second movie that topped the first one, but they had crapped the bed with the third movie in the trilogy. Of course, that is a tradition that goes all the way back to the Godfather series, and even pokes its head into the Star Wars movies - for Jedi, which was not a bad movie, by any means, was certainly the weakest of the three and somewhat of a let down after Empire managed to improve on the original.

Anyway, with the Bourne series, the rarest thing in film has occured - the series acutally has improved with each installment. And that is certainly saying something, given how incredible the first one was. I really don't want to tell you what happens, because there is so little exposition involved that any discussion of the plot would basically reveal the whole movie, but I wil tell you it is a high-suspense thrill ride that doesn't let off the gas for one second. A powerhouse of a movie. 4 stars.

And, of course, it wasn't just movies. The Harry Potter book came out - the final one, ever. I felt sad as I completed the book, knowing that we won't be returning to Rowling's mythical land to observe any more new adventures for these characters - who were so roundly-developed you practically knew them. But what a powerhouse of a finish - and yes, I know I'm using the word powerhouse over and over again this post. That's what kind of a summer it was. This book took you on a roller-coaster from page 1. And when you get to the end, you feel like a dumbass for not making the connections that seem so obvious in hindsight (for the sake of tradition, I won't talk about what those connections are, although I have to figure that, if you want to read the book, you've probably read it by now). The Harry Potter series has reached a level that only occurs when the public sees a true work of art for what it is. JK Rowling is as big as the Beatles were right now, and you know what? She fucking deserves it. Never heard of someone who deserves it more, in fact.

Ok, that'll do for now. Tomorrow I'll be writing on the Bill Maher's brilliant recent special from Boston in the politics blog. Till then...

6/14/07

Dear Blog,

It's been a while since I've checked in, so there is much to report.

First of all, last weekend I did not get to go down to Connecticut, as I had been hoping I would be able to. Instead, I went back down to the Cape. The Cape League season begins tomorrow night, but last weekend a team of baseball players from around the US Military was in town for a two game set, one game in Chatham and the other in Orleans. Unfortunately, I didn't get in until very late Saturday night, so I missed the first game, but the folks and I were able to take in the second game (write up in the sports blog tomorrow).

The Friday before last weekend, my Aunt Martha threw a baby shower for my cousin (her son) Eric and his wife Adriana. It was unusual for a baby shower in that the whole family came, men and women. The fact is, the Fadden's just can't resist an opportunity to get everyone together. We used to make fun of our next-door neighbors for always being involved in extensive family get-togethers, but now I realize that the main reason we weren't always involved in these things is because we were geographically seperated from our family for the first 24 years of my life. Anyway, there was a lot of great food, and fun was had by all, and we almost didn't notice that the parents who we were celebrating hadn't shown up over an hour into the proceedings. When they were finally called and asked where they were, we found out that they didn't know that the party was that day - they thought it was on Saturday. But they drove up from Boston and, even though they were about 2 hours late, the party was considered a success by all in attendance.

After I got out of work the next morning, I went with Andy, Jason, and Anthony to a lake by Jason's house in Haverhill to do some fishing. Well, actually, they fished while I pretty much just stood around and watched. Honestly, fishing is something I've never really gotten into. If I didn't get such a kick out of the three of them I wouldn't have gone at all, but because they are such an amusing group I had to at least watch and see what happened. Even though they didn't catch anything, I wasn't dissapointed. I like going to breakfast better, because there is more talking involved, but it was a nice change to break up the routine.

On Saturday evening Kait and I went to see Pirates of the Carribean 3, bummed out in advance because the reviews had been so searing and because we hadn't heard much good about it from anyone else, either. Honestly, we didn't find it nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be. It was a good deal better than Pirates 2, which, for some reason, was not slammed as unanimously, and much, much better than Spiderman 3. I'm not saying it was anything near as good as the first movie - they obviously rushed these last two movies - but we went in expecting a total bomb and what we got instead was a movie with more than a few plot holes but which had a high production value. I give it 2.5 stars.

Last week my sister wanted to eat healthy, and since we missed Monday's dinner, I decided it was time to do some experimenting, to see if I could find another meal or two to add into the rotation. I did not expect everything to be as succesful as it was. With the successes of Spanish-style baked fish, the fajita pizza, and crab delight, as well as last week's successful cowboy spaghetti, I now have a five-week rotation of meals. I'm pretty pumped about that, honestly.

This week has been plodding by rather uneventfully, so far. Work has been lighter than it has been in recent weeks, which unfortunately will show up in my check next week, but that's something I'll have to deal with then. The most exciting thing to happen this week, in fact, happened just a few minutes ago when I opened up the mailbox. The Barack Obama bumper sticker which, reader of my political blog know, I ordered some time ago, finally arrived today. Now I finally get to replace the Barbara Mikulski bumper sticker that has been on my car since '04 and has undoubtedly been confusing my fellow Bay State motorists ever since I had my liscense plates switched over.

Ok, this weekend I should be going back down to the Cape on Saturday, and hopefully catching a baseball game that evening, and then the family, along with our close family friend JoAnn and her parents, will be driving up to Lake Winnepausakee where she has a house that will be in between renters this coming week.

And exciting news for later this month: I'll be going back down to Maryland on the weekend of June 23rd, flying back on the 25th.

Ok, that's plenty for now. Check in tomorrow and read all about the baseball adventure I had Sunday evening. Till then...

6/4/07

Dear Blog,

It's been an interesting few days. I'll start with Thursday:

Last week I hadn't been cooking as much, so I decided to do a little experimentation on Thursday evening. I found a recipie in Rachael Ray's cookbook for something she called "Cowboy Spaghetti". I really enjoyed it, and will be adding to the rotation. Cowboy Spaghetti is really just a combination of spaghetti and chili, which follows Rachael's M.O. So far, I've added four recipies of hers into the rotation, and all of them combine two dishes into one in some way. The "Messy Guiseppe" is a combination of a sloppy Joe and spaghetti sauce, Thai Chicken Pizza is exactly what the name suggests, and the "Inside-out Margherita Pizza-dilla" is, again kind of obviously, a combination of a margharita pizza and a quesadilla.

After dinner, we went to catch some of the softball game between my sister's high school and a Catholic school. It was the first round of the state playoffs, and my sister's friend Kelly is a coach of the high school team. When we got there it was already 3-0 in Dracut's favor, when I left for trivia night - Kait stayed - it was 4-1. Later, Kait would tell me that they would win 8-1 to move into round 2.

Trivia night was just me and Geoff, but we had plenty of answers. Once again, a lot of questions from Tuesday night were repeated, but they were all ones that we would have answered already. We ended up winning the game by 6 points. We think we might be skipping out on one of the games in the future; my vote is we skip the Ground Round and play at the Old Court on Tuesdays, since the food is better, the gift certificate is for twice as much, and, most importantly, the place is within walking distance of my apartment. Also, Tuesday is pretty much a sucky day, anyway, so it'd be nice to have something to which to look forward.

Late Friday night my sister's best friend/hairdresser Megan arrived with her husband Brian after I had gone to work. I didn't get a chance to see them until Saturday afternoon, after I woke up and made my way down to Cape Cod. Kait had taken the two of them to Boston while I was asleep, so we arrived at about the same time. We went down to Falmouth and walked around downtown for awhile, and then went back to Mashpee for dinner at Cooke's. I got a chance to purchase some Buzzard's Bay beer, which I'd never had before. It was more bitter than I'm used to, but quite enjoyable.

Sunday was more of a rest day. After lunch at Dino's, I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, while everyone else pretty much napped. Then we loaded the four remaining chairs from the set Kait bought at a consignment goods store into her car and brought everyone and everything back to our apartment. From there we quickly brought up the chairs and got all of Meg and Brian's things into Kait's car and got them down to the airport, stopping at On the Border for dinner on the way back. All in all, a very successful weekend.

Today I have to make my way down to the grocery store to pick up this week's meals, and I also want to schedule an apointment with Mr. Al to get my hair cut sometime this week. I'll let you know how it all goes on Thursday. Till then...