Sports

A really hectic day

As expect, today was very hectic for me (it still is). It was my first day back to work this year, and I had to accomplish a number of tasks related to our move to Korea. I received my official travel authorization, giving me the authority to apply for Korean visas, prepare for our pack out, and apply for some travel allowances. I don’t have much time to write today, so I’ll keep this entry short. Needless to say, with all the Korean I need to learn I had a very busy day today.

The Seattle Sonics beat the Miami Heat tonight 98-96, breaking the Heat’s 14-game win streak. The Sonics are now 23-6. They were a bit shaky early last week with losses to the sub-.500 Celtics and Sixers, and they lost to the red-hot Suns. Their win over Miami tonight might mean they’re back on track. Go Sonics!

The end of the break

What do you do at the end of a long break?  Do you scramble to do everything you didn’t accomplish during the break?  Do you take it easy and soak up the last bit of freedom before returning to work?  Is it steady as it goes?  For me, it’s usually the former.  I look at everything I didn’t do or procrastinated about and try to cram as much as possible into the last few hours before heading to bed.  Do I work on move logistics?  Study Korean?  Spend time with my family?  I usually end up completing a potpourri of tasks on my last day of break.  The night before I took time out to watch "Shrek 2", one of the best animated films of all time (in my humble opinion).  Of course, I also own some DreamWorks Animation stock so I’m a bit biased.  On the second-to-last day of a long break I usually play around and then spend the last day catching up.  I’m just thankful to have had the opportunity for a breather before work starts again.

New Year’s Day and the day after are usually given to College Bowls and the end of the NFL season.  I usually don’t watch college bowl games unless my alma mater, the University of Washington is one of the participants.  This year they had a lousy season and were out of the bowl sweepstakes.  I didn’t even know who was in the BCS final until I surfed to ESPN.com and saw that USC (1) and Oklahoma (2) will duke it out for the championship in the Orange Bowl on January 4th.  As a Washington Husky I cannot root for the Trojans, even if they represent the Pac-10 for the championship.  It’s a matter of pride.  In addition, one of their former alumni, Rick Neuheisel, absolutely decimated the Husky football program as head football coach and was fired for illegally a couple of years ago for participating in a college betting pool.  His assistant Keith Gilbertson did even worse and was fired after 1 1/2 years on the job.  The Huskies hired former Notre Dame coach Tyrone Willingham to coach the football; we’ll have to see how he does.  Interestingly, the Huskies basketball team is fabulous, now ranked #13 in the most recent AP poll.  It may be a long time before the Huskies regain their dominance in football because very few colleges and universities excel at both basketball and football.  Unless you’re a Florida team, that is.  It must be the water.

The end of D.C. baseball?

My wife passed her Korean exam with flying colors!  She passed 2/2 in Korean in just 24 weeks (level 2 speaking, level 2 reading).  Congratulations!  She is a language learning star.  It’s extremely rare for someone to reach that level in such a short period of time.  Me, I’m stuck at the 1+ level with over 1 1/2 months left to go in training.  She definitely leveraged her mastery of Chinese and might not have been so lucky in a completely unrelated language like Pashto or Finnish, but it’s still an amazing accomplishment.  Hats off to her.  I can only hope to be at about 2/1 in Korean by February.  Maybe next time I can study German!

Is this the end of professional baseball in Washington, D.C.?  I even went out and bought my new Washington Nationals baseball cap to support bringing back to D.C. after the announcement was made in late November that the Montreal Expos were moving to the Nation’s Capitol.  Last night though the D.C. Council approved funding for a stadium with the condition that about half of it would be paid for by Major League Baseball.  Three months ago D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams had negotiated a deal with MLB to pay for a new stadium for the Nationals, but now MLB will re-open the deal and possibly cancel it unless the D.C. Council agrees to pay for funding.  I would really like to see baseball in D.C.  I love baseball and miss watching the Mariners at Safeco.  Rooting for the Nationals would let me jump on the bandwagon early while they’re still terrible.  I’m personally critical of public funding for ballparks, but in this case if Williams had been given the authority to make a deal to bring the Expos to D.C. the issue of funding should have been sounded out months ago.  If the Council was opposed to public funding then Williams could have changed the terms of the deal during negotiations.  A deal breaker after the team move has been announced is a lousy way of doing business and gives the city a huge black eye.  The 2004 election changed the Council’s composition, but the main instigator Linda Cropp is a holdover from the previous council and has been pulling strings behind the scenes to change the terms of the deal.  Now it looks as if the team will remain the Expos and could move elsewhere.  Oh well, I guess that Nationals’ hat will be a collector item.

I dropped off some food and clothing today for the marine guards and families of Foreign Service nationals at the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Consulate.  A few of us worked together to put together a care package to send to them in the wake of the recent bombings.  It’s the least we can do sitting here thousands of miles away from the Consulate.  It should arrive before Christmas.