Catching Up - L

L is for La Quinta Inn, a hideous rat-trap slum of a motel that almost ruined our trip to the Kohl's tournament in Naples. Just about all of the families on the team made reservations with this particular La Quinta in Naples due to a great deal they were offering on their website. Long story short, the hotel was an absolute pit and was extremely overbooked to boot. So we found ourselves wandering around Naples on Friday night at 10pm (on a holiday weekend, no less) without a place to stay. Fortunately, I had for some reason remembered the directions to the hotel at which I had originally planned to stay and they took great care of us when we showed up on their doorstep in the middle of the night. So yay Inn at Pelican Bay, boo La Quinta.

Catching Up - K

K is for the Kohl's All-American Tournament, an annual Florida state-wide all-star tournament for recreational soccer players that was held in Naples this past February. I coached the CPUSA girls U-10 all-star team in the tournament. We took eleven girls total, six of whom played for me in the regular season (including Zoe). The other five girls were taken from two of the other three girls U-10 regular season teams. Unfortunately, we were both outclassed and out of gas as a team, so we finished last. But the weather was great, the facilities were incredible and we ended up staying at a beautiful hotel that almost made the whole trip worth it, so no complaints. Zoe was one of a small handful of girls who played well throughout the tournament, and it was nice to see her get her first traveling tournament under her belt.

Catching Up - J

J is for Joe Gross, my neighbor. As I'll discuss later in the entries for P and S, I had some major landscaping issues to address over the winter and Joe provided invaluable assistance in dealing with those problems. This is par for the course for Joe, who is an exemplary neighbor in every sense of the word. If you can imagine a friendly, helpful, generous neighbor character in a setting like Leave It To Beaver, that's Joe. Awesome guy.

Catching Up - I

I is for the Inn at Pelican Bay, a very nice Naples hotel that figures into events that will be described later in the list. Suffice to say, this place turned what could have been a disaster into something almost resembling a vacation.

Catching Up - H

H is for Hollywood, whose output I've been consuming in copious quantities lately via DVD. A few thoughts:

• Life Is Beautiful is a great movie.
• I've long been torn between Cary Grant and Gregory Peck. Who would I rather be? I've finally decided. I'm a Gregory Peck man.
• I can now officially say I just don't get the whole Audrey Hepburn thing. I've seen My Fair Lady, Roman Holiday, Love In The Afternoon, Breakfast At Tiffany's and Charade. Am I missing something? I just don't see why she's considered to be such a big deal. Lovely and charming, sure, but no more so that a few dozen other actresses.
• Hey, who would have guessed Cybill Shepherd doesn't completely suck? She was very good in Taxi Driver, meaning she only mostly sucks.
• See (4) above, but replace Cybill Shepherd with Shirley MacLaine and Taxi Driver with The Apartment.
• Liz Taylor. Yeah, I know. Ick, ick, ick. But man she was smoking hot in Suddenly Last Summer.
• Want to know the definition of anticlimax? Putting in the Alien DVD and realizing you actually have Alien Resurrection. Ouch.
• A John Malkovich sighting! He was in The Killing Fields. I defy anyone reading this post to name off the top of their head three other movies featuring the Malk. And if you're a chick, Dangerous Liasons doesn't count. Before this sighting, the only thing I had known John Malkovich for was actually being John Malkovich. And Being John Malkovich, of course. Turns out he's an actor or something.
• V for Vendetta. Let's see. Wachowski brothers? Check. Hugo Weaving? Check. Natalie Portman in all her hotness? Check. You have all of that going for you and you still end up with one of the worst movies in recent memory? That takes some doin' folks. And Natalie, please stop trying to do accents. You're terrible.
• I watched Woody Allen's Manhattan the other night and I still feel like I need a shower. Can't say he didn't warn us on the whole pedophilia thing, though.
• Not even mediocrities like Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon can undo the greatness that is Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind still kicks much ass.
• As does Dr. Strangelove.
• One line summary of Woman Of The Year: "Get your ass back in the kitchen and fix me a sammich, beyotch."
• A Clockwork Orange sucks long and hard, my droogies.
• After long and careful consideration, and having just watched Good Night, and Good Luck (which was only so-so, as movies go), I have to say I would totally consider going gay for George Clooney. What a strikingly attractive man. Sure he's only a pale imitation of Cary Grant, but Clooney's still alive, which has to count for something if you're going to consider going gay.

Catching Up - G

G is for Girl Scouts. Zoe and I had our first troop father/daughter camping trip in October and had a great time. We (OK, I) were very thorough in our preparations, believing that if we were going to do this thing, we were going to do it right. So we had the trip planned down to the most minute detail. Of maybe eight or so father/daughter pairs, we were alone in carrying everything we needed (food, cooking equipment, tent, bedding, clothing, etc.) in with us on our backs. Everyone else relied on large carts and multiple trips from the cars to the camp. And I was the only one to sleep in a tent, with everyone else opting for the cabins. So yeah, we kicked ass with our hardcore camping style.

Activities-wise, not much happened. We hiked a lot, mostly. We did spent one afternoon shooting stuff on the archery range, which we both loved and which lead me to give Zoe the Christmas gift mentioned earlier. But the real fun was just spending time together alone doing something we don't normally do. She's asked a few times since then if we can go camping again, so hopefully we'll be able to get back out there sometime soon.

Catching Up - F

F is for flag football, Ian's newest interest. He's wanted to play football for the last couple of years, and he finally got his chance this spring in the local youth flag football league. The coaching was pretty poor (as much as I like one of the guys, whose daughter I coached in soccer last season), so he didn't learn much about the game during his practices and games, but he and I covered quite a bit of ground on our own outside of scheduled practices and he made good progress. He enjoyed it and is talking about doing it again in the fall, so we'll see if it sticks. It seems like he might be looking for something that can be his own. With his sister and me so into soccer, it sometimes seems like he wants to do something else despite the promise he's shown. That's fine with me; whatever makes him happy is what I want him doing. It that's soccer, great. If not, that's OK too. I just hope we can find the right coaching situation for him if he does decide to pursue football.

Catching Up - E

E is for emusic.com. For reasons that will become clear when I get to M, I was in the market for MP3s shortly after last Christmas. Long story short, I went on a three month long emusic.com bender. Emusic is the perfect (for me) combination of outstanding indie selection, DRM-free/platform-independent downloads, legality and affordability. You have to pay by the month and your monthly allottment of downloads doesn't carry over from month to month, but if you use your full allottment each month, you end up paying around 30 cents per track, which blows services like iTunes out of the water. And they have a truly outstanding selection of indie music. My MP3 player is currently completely filled with stuff I have no intention of losing, so I've allowed my subscription to expire. But I'll be back. Oh, yes. I'll be back.

Catching Up - D

D is for the Decemberists and their outstanding album The Crane Wife. I'm not sure what to say about this except "Buy it!" What a great album. I received this as a Christmas gift from Ian, who is a fan of Picaresque. Why yes, my children do have fantastic taste in music. Thanks for noticing! I also picked up The Tain shortly after Christmas and it's equally brilliant. You just can't go wrong with this band.

Catching Up - C

C is for CPUSA (Central Pasco United Soccer Association). CPUSA is the soccer club within which Ian and Zoe play and I coach.

This past season I coached Zoe's U10 girls rec team. We went 8-2 in the regular season and then made it to the final of the league tournament, where we lost 2-1. We ended the season with eight players (U10 is played six-on-six), and all eight did a great job. The priorities in rec are player development and fun. Everyone made significant progress and we all had a good time, so I consider it to have been a very successful season. Zoe in particular really developed. Although she and I have been playing soccer together since she was three, this was her first season of organized soccer. She did very well all-around, but showed flashes of absolute brilliance as a defender. I'll be coaching her again in the same age group next season so it will be interesting to see her continue to develop.

I coached Ian the season before last, but this season his age group (U6) was organized into a clinic-like format so I wasn't able to coach him. That sucked hard. The clinic format was a complete waste of time, in my opinion, as there was virtually no instruction, just barely-organized free play. He moves up to U8 next season where I hope to get another opportunity to coach him.