A SHOT AT THE TITLE
. . . . . This week brought good news. For the past few years I've been looking for a good team to play on and find the next five to seven years of my soccer career and play with a team that wanted me and utilized my skills. My New Year's resolution was to drop 10lbs and get back to a manageable weight. I felt like this would allow me to get my quickness and agility back that I'd been missing for so long. This indoor season has been forgettable. Playing for the Thomson team has been terrible. I never got a spot on my Harveys team and quite frankly I don't care anymore. they sucked it too. I was hoping to catch on with the Hurricanses team, but Dennis, the manager, already had enough guys -s so I thought a bold move was in order.
I posted a note ont he MRSL (minnesota recreational soccer league) messga board that I was looking for a team to play for. Sure enough, I got picked up by a new team forming called the Northland Wolves (I love that name). Tony, the guy running it is doing everything right. We have a website, someone video taping the games, and a great field and a horde of young talent. We're starting out in the Bronze league, but I'm confident we'll move up fast.
The other bit of good news came earlier this week when I had another manager email me about possibly playing for them. They're a first division team and thought I would be a natural fit for them. After several emails back and forth, they invited me to play with them on Monday night at Augsburg. If all goes well - which I know it will, I'll probably get asked to play with them. this would be a dream come true. Finally playing withs ome great talent and pushing my fitness and soccer skills to the next level. Its a challenge I'm willing to take on. My only concern is my game fitness. I've already dropped several pounds after a diet change, and hopefully will continue to drop pounds till I get back to 160-165. I just have a good feeling about this. It made me feel even better knowing the team I was "trying out" for is 5-0 in the league, and we're playing a 1-3-1 team. Exactly the circumstances I need to excel. Oh yea, and they don't play in the competitive league - they play in the rec league so I know I have the skills to take guys on and make things happen - should be fun!!!
UPDATE 10-17/07
The game on Tuesday went well. I scored once and got a two assists. The manager said he had already committed to another guy, but this other guy won't be playing outdoor with them and he'd much rather have someone who will play through indoor and outdoor with them instead and find a permenant replacement for the outside midfielder they lost.
My son's birthday was this week and he was happy to get all the gifts he did. Lots of gift certificates and other stuff. He got an i-pod for Christmas but his Mom can't make sense of the I-Tunes site so he hasn't been able to download any more songs to his i-pod shuffle. I guess his step Dad doesn't have time to show either one of them how to use it - pretty funny stuff if you ask me.
Anyways, besides the new Northland Wolves site, not much is going on at work. Our FindLaw CEO just got snatched up by the Inside Sales organization - which is funny. Hopefully
He can turn that place around - God knows is a STEEP nose dive right now.
Some more good news I got last week was there will an opening for a Premier AM position after they fill the current Senior position and the senior in my group told me he'd like to see me apply for the position. This is good news for me - at least I can move up a bit faster than I had previously thought. I do enjoy my current job - the customers are pretty low maintenance to begin with and its fairly easy for me to keep up with them. The only kink in the plan I'm expecting is when our new system "FUEGO" fires up next week. This system will start shooting through accounts which are due for renewal and are eligible for refreshes. I'm wondering how this will affect my mundane day-to-day tasks.
The other HUGe news is David Beckham is finally coming to play in the US. He signed a 5 year $250 million contract to play for the LA Galaxy. Too bad for him, he still has 6 months remaining on his old contract at Real Madrid. This led the GM at Real to start running his mouth and taking pot shots at Becks. The coach also benched him for the rest of the season as well. The Galaxy are now looking to try and get h im out of his contract and bring him here early so he's here for the start of the new season.
Read all about here. . . .
http://www.alaskareport.com/reu77277.htm
http://msn.foxsports.com/soccer/story/6358544
So in lieu of Becks coming here - here's some pictures for the day. . .
And see plenty of goals like this. . .
http://youtube.com/watch?v=a9G_aT43rrU
All in all - its good news.
JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT. .
Another year, another set of big changes in my life. Hopefully this year will see more stability and less dramatic change, but who knows - right?
In case you missed it, here's a timeline from 2006.
This year ended pretty messy. The Vikes went down in flames, the T-Wolves are .500 at best, and Michigan lost to USC - I HATE USC and Pete Carroll!!! On the bright side, Texas won their bowl game so that was good news.
My son left early, early yesterday morning. Getting up at 5am to take him to the airport was hard. After staying up well past midnight we all had to peel ourselves off our beds to get up - it was brutal. And of course we got lit up (finally) with some snow and freezing rain, so the roads were less than perfect. It was cold, it was dark, and the airport was jammed thick with people heading home. Afterwards I went home and crashed HARD. We had friends come over at 1pm for the two bowl games, so I woke up at 10:30am and had to snowblow out the driveway and then get cleaned up before everybody shoed up. They stayed till almost 8pm (the end of the USC/Michigan game) which is a long long day for me.
I played some SoCom II for an hour then watched the news and then fell asleep shortly thereafter. If was a long weekend, and was sad to see my son go home, but I'm pretty sure he got all the presents he wanted for X-Mas. New shoes, a Texas jersey, and I-Pod (so his freaky Mom can control his life just that much more) and some cool stuff like an I-Pod jukebox that pulses when you put your I-pod in its dock.
Sunday night (new years eve) was hard for my son. We couldn't stay late to see the ball in NYC drop because we all had to get up early, and then he got pissy with me so we sat down and spoke about a lot of things. I felt better after we spoke, I hope he did too.
What else is going on? Been at my job almost a year and am loving it - big time. This time last year, I was hating life being in inside sales on the West side of the building. Life kicks ass here at FindLaw.
Soccer was been a dud. I though it would turn out better in terms of indoor teams. I thought my summer team was going to pick me up (Hurricanes) but after telling me they wanted me to play for them, they trun around and tell me the team is full. Then, my Sunday night team (Harvey's) totally blew me off and I'm gald I'm done with them because they suck anyways. They only won as many games as they did because I was averaging about 3 goals a game when I was playing for them. Instead of being one of the top three teams, they're back down in the gutter. This will set up an interesting situation when summer starts becuase I joined a new team which just got started up by a guy who's going to do things right. I've waited so long to find a team and a manager that's going in the right direction. We're going to start in the Bronze division (same as Harvey's) and see what happens. I think we'll do well, and I'll look forward to kicking their asses when we play. Playing with the Hurricanes again will be great as well. It should be an awesome summer. My son coming back will be great as well.
The other big news is my parents are buying a new house and actually moving out of Edina to Minnetonka. It's only a few miles from where they live now, but all the same, it's a big move for them. Of course my Mom's going to do her bit and completely remodel the house - but it sounds like its going to be pretty nice when they get it done.
More calls to make - I'll try and be a bit more prompt on my writing this year and keeping this thing up to date. Not too many stories to tell right now.
Photo of the day. . . 
Paul Scholes - "He scores goals."
Best news of the weekend. United up 7 points at the top of the Premiership. I'm hoping they can hold on and usurp Chelsea this year. It will give me plenty of bragging rights with one of my co-workers who's an ardent Blues fan.
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