f2f2s |

As promised.  Again, please excuse the mess.  I left out the other bedrooms because that’s just downright creepy.

From the outside

The main room (getting a new couch for the seating)

Kitchen

Back Room

Dining Room (taken from the back room)

Porch

My bedroom’s kinda big

From one side towards the bed

From the bed side towards the huge mess

And yes, I have my own bathroom and a door to the outside underneath the porch.

I hate moving.  Not as much as some people I know, but I doubt I will ever move myself again.  It’s just too much time and effort; you don’t want to burden any of your friends by asking them to help, but when you do they always “help” with like one load and then suddenly disappear.  And you can’t be mad because why would anyone want to voluntarily move someone else?

But in the end you end up in a sweet new townhome.

Pete, Mike, Els and I are living over by Agnes Scott now in a 4 bedroom townhome.  I’m pretty much dead right now so I’m going to sleep, but I’ll put up some pictures of the place tomorrow or the next day.

Please don’t judge the messiness, it won’t be close to set up yet.

Also, I’d say running the Peachtree Road Race this Friday is a 50/50 proposition right now.  I hurt my left heel about a week ago, and any time I bend my foot up and put pressure on it (think calf stretch) it has a sudden sharp burning pain.  Not enough to make running impossible, but enough for me to think it’s probably not the best idea.

We’ll see how it goes I guess.

Katie will be following in both our parents’ and grandfather’s footsteps and go to Tulane.  Dad got his undergrad there, Mom her Masters (and first 2 years of undergrad) and Ben taught.  Katie will be doing a Masters in, I believe, Psychology.

So yeah, just when our parents think they’ve got the first 2 kids out of school, we go right back.

You can find the round 1 write-up here.

I semi-saw two of the games on USLlive.com while paying more attention to Fresno State’s relentless beatdown of UGA in the College World Series.  I watched the second half of the Carolina/Real Maryland game that saw Carolina go through thanks to a late game penalty, and then caught a bit of the first half of the Seattle/Hollywood United game.

Portland should be embarrassed.  Like, “spend the next few years trying to invent a mind-erasing device so no one remembers you lost to this team” embarrased.  Seattle put it on Hollywood something fierce, going up in the 3rd minute, and being up 4-0 by halftime.  Seattle’s star (and first MLS signee) Sebastien Le Toux put up 4 goals by himself, including his last two in a span of about 75 seconds.

Here are the full results.  A link on the team takes you to a local paper/team website write-up and the score link takes you to the USOpenCup.com page.

Harrisburg (USL-2) 2(1)-2(3) CP Baltimore (USL-2)
Western Mass (USL-2) 1-2 Richmond (USL-2)
Rochester (USL-1) 3-0 Pittsburgh (USL-2)
Charleston (USL-1) 2-1 Charlotte (USL-2)
Carolina (USL-1) 1-0 Real Maryland (USL-2)
Minnesota (USL-1) 0-2 Cleveland (USL-2)
Miami (USL-1) 1-0 Atlanta (USL-1)
Seattle (USL-1) 6-0 Hollywood United (USASA)

Round 3 is July 1st, and that’s when the 8 MLS teams will start play.  They’ll be joined by 5 USL-1 teams (Rochester, Charleston, Carolina, Miami, Seattle) and 3 USL-2 teams (CP Baltimore, Richmond, Cleveland).  You can see the full bracket here.

I see two interesting matchups.  First is DC United/Rochester which will pit the proudest USL squad against the most succesful squad in MLS history.  Rochester is also the only team to reach the finals since MLS was established, losing to DC in 1996, and beating Colorado in 1999.  The other is Chivas/Seattle.  Since they’re moving on up next year (although with mostly different players, I really want to see how Seattle does against an MLS side, and hopefully we’ll get to see Le Toux go up against Guzan.

There’s been some talk lately on the soccer forums blogs I read about playing more younger players as the constants aren’t going to grow in to better players.  I’m not here to argue that one way or the other, but I will say that I lean more towards the usage of current experienced players over a continued experimentation of young talent.

If we were to take a top flight, 23 man roster like they do to the Euro Cup, this is who I would like to see, with the starters in bold:

GK: Tim Howard(29), Brad Guzan(23), Matt Reis(33)
DF: Carlos Bocanegra(29), Oguchi Onyewu(26), Steve Cherundolo(29), Heath Pearce(23), Frankie Hejduk(33), Dan Califf(28), Jay DeMerit(28)
MF: Landon Donovan(26), Clint Dempsey(25), Eddie Lewis(34), Freddy Adu(19), Demarcus Beasley(26), Micheal Bradley(20), Maurice Edu(22), Sacha Kljestan(22), Pablo Mastroeni(31)
FW: Jozy Altidore(18), Eddie Johnson(24), Brian Ching(30), Kenny Cooper(23)

My starting lineup has an average age of about 25.8 give or take.  Actually, I didn’t take into account actual birthday, so let’s add 6 months (since they could anywhere from just after to just before a birthday) and make it 26.3.  Actually, I’m going to do that with all of the numbers going forward, so that’s why the math doesn’t seem to add up.

The overall average is 26.6

The position breakdown (starters/total) is:
GK: 29.5/28.8
DF: 27.3/28.5
MF: 26.5/25.5
FW: 18.5/24.3

Now, here are some numbers from the Euro Cup tournament:

Based entirely off the birthdates and rosters from wikipedia, and the group stage match report from ESPN for the Euro 2008.  Note, this one DOES take in to account each player’s actual birthdate, and is accurate as of June 22, 2008.

Total Average Age
27.60

Average Age of Captains
31.12

Average Age by Position (full roster)
GK – 29.56
DF – 27.87
MF – 27.04
FW – 26.86

Average Age by Position (starters)
GK – 30.29
DF – 28.24
MF – 27.65
FW – 27.30

Average Age by Position (weighted by minutes played)
GK – 30.29
DF – 28.19
MF – 27.52
FW – 27.13

Average Age by Team (full roster)
Austria – 26.54
Croatia – 27.61
Czech Republic – 28.85
France – 28.06
Germany – 27.26
Greece – 29.15
Italy – 29.23
Netherlands – 28.29
Poland – 27.33
Portugal – 27.02
Romania – 26.91
Russia – 26.14
Spain – 26.54
Sweden – 29.27
Switzerland – 26.49
Turkey – 26.90

Average Age by Team (starters)
Austria – 25.82
Croatia – 27.59
Czech Republic – 29.44
France – 29.51
Germany – 27.84
Greece – 29.71
Italy – 30.28
Netherlands – 28.17
Poland – 28.80
Portugal – 27.72
Romania – 27.79
Russia – 26.90
Spain – 26.45
Sweden – 30.22
Switzerland – 25.65
Turkey – 26.64

Average Age by Team (weighted by minutes played)
Austria – 25.81
Croatia – 27.46
Czech Republic – 29.43
France – 29.48
Germany – 27.84
Greece – 29.64
Italy – 30.15
Netherlands – 28.11
Poland – 28.50
Portugal – 27.57
Romania – 27.73
Russia – 26.86
Spain – 26.17
Sweden – 30.06
Switzerland – 25.70
Turkey – 26.60

It’s interesting to note that the trend is for starters to be older than the total roster, but that only happens for the US team in the midfield (which changes if Bradley or Adu get a start) and in goal, where US has one of the top 5 keepers in the world.

I just reactivated my email account for Georgia Tech since I’ll be using it again.  Right after I did that I started wondering, did they keep accepting emails even though I was no longer able to access it?

Well, yes.

Thanks guys.

Some of the most depressing things to ever read are the comments sections of the sports blogs on ajc.com whenever UGA or Tech is being discussed.  I swear, somehow, someway, the 15 stupidest fans from each fanbase are the only ones who know how to operate a computer, and waste their entire days re-hashing the same tired arguments.

Here’s the most recent example, which started with news of a recruit deciding against Tech because he didn’t want to live in a big city.

Please please please tell me other fan bases are this pathetic.

Someone opened their door, saw this, and decided to take a picture rather than run away crying.

[NYT link]

I want to watch the second half of the Colorado/Toronto FC game.

Picture from Philly sports blog the700level (via Deadspin) in a post about Freddie Mitchell popping up in Vegas with a group of 10 girls.

Can anyone confirm or deny that Katie Taylor is in Vegas and/or is the girl in purple on the far right?

I’m giving it a solid 85% chance based on photo evidence alone, and around 50% after taking into account the ridiculousness of her a) being in Vegas and b) ending up in a picture with FredEx.