Emma at the Oregon Blog points us to an article describing how beer and beverage distributors are trying to circumvent the successful, 30+ year-old bottle bill. The article describes a generally cynical Salem that is willing to tear down a hallmark of Oregon legislature. Look forward to OSPIRG showing up at your doors about this. The most interesting bit in this article is in a quote from Paul Romain, a lobbyist:

Bohemian Mama has a nice shit happens rundown of some current events. Permanent link broke for me, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find, it’s the most recent at the time of this writing.

It’s been a rough week of soccer…last night was the third game in a row, and those were preceded by a night of broomball insanity. I was feeling pretty sore and even a bit fatigued before the game. No time to stretch, out on the field, about ten minutes in I stretch for a high ball, make contact for the shot, and <pop !>, I feel my hamstring go. On the side, my thoughts migrated from pulled muscle (annoying) to torn tendon (pretty bad) as I found that the back of my knee was smooth where I expected stuff to be.

This beer has a nice medium body, and is a crisp clear pale gold in color. It is fairly bitter, but the flavor rounds it out nicely. The aroma is fitting for this beer, advertising its hoppiness. Warsteiner retains its carbonation well, offering a consistently pleasurable experience, ideal for viewing sports (Canada vs Sweden for the world hockey championship, 2-2 in overtime at the time of drinking…final was Canada wins) or for tilting down at the watering hole.

(10May03) Flo was working filming this game and was able to get us press passes to catch the game for free. We arrived early with Flo so that he could setup his equipment. He gave us our passes and introduced us to the fellow who would show us to our seats, then turned us loose for a couple hours until the game started. We wandered about and had a warm Holsten. Not too tasty that one. Nedra wanted gummy bears (only German ones would do) so we looked for a store, but there were none around.

Fans started to arrive in large numbers an hour and a half early, wearing scarves, singing songs, drinking beers, arms on shoulders. The scarves are special team scarves, and many of the fans donned several scarves. Jean jackets with sewn team patches were popular too, as well as the usual team jerseys. Personally, I don’t care for the newest HSV jersey nearly so much as some of them from the recent past.

I coach a boys U-9 soccer team with a friend of mine. While in Germany, the following conversation went down. Marcus: “Where’s the other coach?” Coach Jim: “He’s visiting Germany!” Marcus: “Oh…I thought you said he was in jail!” So of course when I got back today, they asked me questions like, “why were you in jail?” and, “how did you get out so soon?” The little darlings won today though.

okay…I’m getting close to done putting the fotos onto internetland which means that there’ll be something to link to for the little stories I’ll be posting, so those’ll be appearing soonish. It should all be in the gallery though. phew!

for dinner, you’ve gotta have this for dessert.

Hello! I’m back from Germany, so now begins the process of transcribing notes to blogland and getting hundreds (including a few good ones!) of photos online. Well soon. I have to work first though. The quesion in my mind before I begin is, should I timestamp them as they’re posted, or as they happened, is there a precedent on that for blogging?