Coming back soon

Double entendré? Yes please!

Sadly, my soccer team is mathematically eliminated from playoff contention – unless it turns out that another league team did something illegal earlier in the year to disqualify themselves – which means that our season will be over after our game next Tuesday. I would love to make the playoffs, but I'm also excited to have a little more time to prepare for school and make sure that I'm taking care of all the school things that I've been letting slide a little bit. In addition, I'll be able to start posting more again, which is exciting. In fact one of the reason's it is exciting is that...

The NBA season is soooooo close now. Some more things that are coming back soon... ...Channing Frye at full strength
...Steve Blake at full strength
...Blazermania in absolutely full force
...Brandon Roy's habit of making other players (and executives) in this league look foolish
...Kevin Pritchard's habit of making everyone believe in his superiority as a GM to anyone else in pro sports
...the Larry O'Brien trophy to Portland (as I said back on November 2, 2008).

Roseburg Soccer Highlights

Please enjoy the song during this video, and the poor editing. Well, and enjoy the fact that someone in my community cares enough to post video "highlights" of games online. This was from our first game, which happened Tuesday. The girls played well again yesterday, but were a little unlucky and failed to finish a few times. We walked away with a 1-0 loss.

Girls Soccer: Summit at Roseburg (9/2/08)
Uploaded by DouglasCountySportsOnline

It has been quite some time

Yeah, I haven't blogged since I got up to Oregon and started working on finishing my M.Ed. Today marks the end of two of my three classes, though, and the two that are ending are the ones that required a ton of effort, energy, and e-focus. I have been able to pay attention to some things going on in the sports world, but not as many things as I would like. For instance: I haven't watched hardly any of the Blazers' summer league games. I think summer league is really fun, and this year might have been even more fun because of the way Jerryd Bayless has destroyed the opposition and Petteri Koponen has shown his abilities as a guard at this level. Something else I haven't talked about at all? How about NBA free agency or a few of the crazy trades (and trade ideas) that have been going on. Elton Brand? Baron Davis? Cory Maggette? Marcus Camby? (Not) Zach Randolph? Topics that interest me but that I haven't put any time into on this blog. Or I could have been talking about the fall of Jeff Francoeur. Or Chipper Jones' attempt to hit .400. Or Lofa Tatupu still being a great guy despite being charged with a DUI. Yeah, that one's pretty old, but it's still relevant and I haven't mentioned it until now. What's that? I failed to mention the University of Oregon football player who drowned earlier this week, when I've been on campus? Yep, until today. I was attending classes at the sight of the U.S. track and field Olympic Trials and didn't talk about the crazy atmosphere? True again. A guy who graduated from my high school became the first catcher to be charged with a loss as a pitcher in a game since 1901. (Thanks Jayson Stark.) How about the best swimming event in a long time, one that included three people from my high school – and could have had two more – competing against one of the best fields in the history of the sport, and I didn't mention it except on my other, non-sports blog? I did that too. Did I even mention the way Kevin Pritchard destroyed the rest of the association in the draft again this year? I don't think so.

All of that as a big way of apologizing and saying that I'm back. With a much lighter load for the rest of the term, and with the arrival of my iPhone, I plan on keeping things alive at this site for a good while to come.

And I'm putting in a new countdown. This one will tick off the days until the Blazers report to pre-camp camp. I'm giddy already.