Get Back Again

Busy times. Lily started preschool today, if only for a few hours. She seemed to enjoy herself. I've gotten into a good routine with Hannah's drop-off; I get to the office by 8:20 pretty much every day, which is fine by me.

Tropical storm Hanna made itself known on Saturday, dousing us with some rain in the morning before really letting us have it in the evening. Lily's morning soccer game was rained out. I ran some errands and then booked it over to Holliston for my buddy Bob's party celebrating his recent wedding, purchase of a house, and new baby girl. Yeah, he's been busy, too. It was a good time, but I could only stay for a few hours because Hannah's soccer game was at 3. I wolfed down some of the Redbones food they had procured for lunch and then hauled ass back to Beverly, got changed and then headed over for Hannah's game. As it turned out, we did two split-squad games simultaneously against our opponent. The head coach handled one team while I coached the other, both 4-on-4. The other team had the upper hand early, but my squad came back and made it interesting. We definitely need to work on basic stuff like passing, positioning and defensive coverage, but considering the girls are 6-8 years old, they did pretty well and seemed to have fun. In the end, we lost by a few goals. About a half hour after the game, it got really dark and started pouring. The winds picked up overnight.

I headed out for an extremely humid 18-mile run Sunday morning, but I felt good. It was a struggle at times, but nothing compared to a few weeks ago. We went to a friend's house to watch the Patriots-Chiefs game; alas, the Pats' hopes for another shot at the Super Bowl went down with Tom Brady, who was victimized by a late hit to the knee. The team announced today that Brady was done for the season; he'll have to undergo surgery for what is believed to be a torn ACL. They won the game Sunday behind backup QB Matt Cassell, but he ain't Brady. And I thought I couldn't get more depressed after that Super Bowl loss.

Fall colors...

• In typical late season fashion, the Jays are winning games now that they're virtually guaranteed to miss the playoffs. They swept the Rays over the weekend and have won eight in a row. They still have a lot of games against contenders, but they're so far behind they'd need a lot of help to get in as the wild card.
• Meanwhile, VeloNews is reporting that Lance Armstrong plans to make a comeback and ride in the 2009 Tour de France. I hope he doesn't, just because you hate to see great athletes who don't know when to call it quits(Michael Jordan, Guy Lafleur, Steve Carlton, and more recently Brett Favre, although he looked pretty good yesterday).