Barbie has made the exciting, sometimes dreaded, trip to Europe. She left yesterday evening on a United Airlines direct flight from SFO to London. The ticket attendant offered us (Barbie’s mom, sister and myself) a $400 roundtrip ticket if we wanted to join her. Unfortunately for us, we did not have our passports handy so Barbie had to make the trip alone. She let me know this morning that our apartment is definitely not as large as we would prefer, but it will be suitable for the time being. Thank goodness for us that we get to pick our own place in Munich. Remember…all of our pictures from this trip will be in the International Gallery.

Well FSU has done better in the past, but what can you expect when your team is 17-9 over the past two seasons, and two of your best coaches (Richt and Amato) both left. FSU did get a couple big time recruits from Tallahassee, but they ranked only 32nd in the recruiting poll according to the following links. Below are a few links detailing who they got, where they ranked, and a brief article on FSU. Enjoy:

• FSU Recruiting Class
• Article on top two recruits for FSU
• Team recruiting rankings

You gotta love lawyers. They are able to make the most guilty people in the world seem innocent. As reported earlier, Lebron was ruled ineligible to play because he accepted jerseys in exchange for a photograph that would be hung in a sports store. However, his lawyer claims the jerseys were for his academics, and not his basketball ability…thus making the exchange legal (sort of). Now he is cleared to play again,a nd his high school team may not have to forfeit an earlier win…which will keep them at #1 in the USA Today poll. Here is the link to the article, along with some of his old movies:

• Lebron Cleared
• Past Lebron post (with movie links)

Last night my girls JV team played against Mercy-SF. The last time we played them they beat us by about 30 points, so needless to say I didn’t know what to expect. The good news is that I had put in a new offense, and two of our better players were healthy again and could play. At the end of the 1st quarter we were up by 1, end of the 2nd quarter we’re up by 3, and end of the 3rd quarter we’re up by 3 also. Then with one minute to go, we are up by 3 with the ball and our player is dribbling up the sideline and there is a collision. Both refs call fouls, but the one ref (lady) that is closest to the table decides to call an illegal pick/push on one of our players, however the other ref comes over and says his foul (a block on the other team) happened before the push. Here I am thinking everything is going to work itself out (just as everything else in life does), but the one ref who called the push is insistent about not letting her call be overidden even though it happened after the blocking foul. She even started looking at the scorebook to see how many fouls were on each team, as if she wanted to make things fair…so her call stuck. If the right call had been made we would have had a one and one because we were in the bonus.

Mercy-SF proceeded to take the ball in and score, then we turned it over, and they scored again to go up by 1 point. We immediately drove down the court (15 seconds left) and missed a shot, so they now have the ball out of bounds with about 7 seconds left. On their inbounds play Amanda steals the ball and is going in for the winning shot but misses, and it goes out on them…our ball (5 seconds left). After a timeout by me, we run a play but the shot gets blocked out of bounds…timeout again (3 seconds left). We run another play, but again the shot gets partially blocked and the other teams wins. The girls played great, especially since they lost by 30 the time before, and should have won this one. One bad call by a stubborn ref, and a couple of missed shots sealed our doom in the final minute of the game. It would of, could of, and should of been a great win.

Just when I starting to feel good about myself, it all comes crashing down because of Nick. He sends me an email to check out a website…SEI UN IDIOTA!. Hence I am now feeling pretty bad about things again. However, I think EJ is getting the last laugh on him … he was seen getting it “on” with Audra just last week: EJ and Audra Photo.

Once again FSU took down the Duke Blue Devils in basketball. Last year, FSU snapped Duke’s 22 game win streak…this year they didn’t get to snap any streaks, but they did manage to extend Duke’s road losing streak to 3. Not since 1996 has Duke lost 3 straight road games. FSU basically had the lead the entire game, but gave up an 11 point 2nd half lead before holding on for the victory. Unfortunately I haven’t been paying too much attention the basketball program this year, but they seem to be doing what they do every other year…win all the early games and get smoked in conference. With the win, FSU is now 2-6 in the ACC, but have an overall 11-8 record. Let’s just hope this sparks some sort of basketball fire so they can make it to the NCAA tournament. Below is a link for more on the game:

• FSU beats Duke 75-70

Well yesterday was a very tragic day for the United States with the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those families. On a lighter note, Barbie has added a new photo album which will have all of our pictures from our European adventure. Right now there are only going away parties…but there will be plenty more to look at as the months go on. Here is the link:

• European adventure Album