Troubles McSteans

Oh. My. God. The Arizona Cardinals, who have been the joke of the NFL for as long as I can remember, are going to Superbowl 43. Way to go, Cards! It's been 60 years since they played in a national championship and slipped into this year's playoff season as a Wild Card with a 9-7 regular season record. Basically no one expected them to make it this far. I actually have a good Kurt Warner (the Cardinals quarterback) story. When we lived in Phoenix, we took a vacation with my parents in northern Minnesota. Ryan and I were sitting in a Starbucks at Sky Harbor Airport before our flight and noticed Warner with one of his little girls standing in line for a coffee. We mouthed 'Kurt Warner!' to each other excitedly. Then we watched him board our flight with his family and sit two rows in front of us. We giggled to each other. After meeting up with the Dug and Kristen at the Minneapolis airport, we hopped in a rental car and drove four hours north into th...

My friend Rebecca made a return appearance in Austin this week, changing her travel plans to spend the last three days of her trip here instead of in Houston. I was thrilled she decided to come back as I rarely get to see her. She was the closest thing I had to a sister growing up (I have one brother and she has three) and it was wonderful to get reacquainted. Rebecca's mom, Dr. Kinslow, drove down from Oklahoma and the three of us, plus my mom, went shopping at the San Marcos outlet mall on Thursday. The trip harkened back to our annual back to school outings when the four of us would pile in the Kinslow's van and venture north to the malls of Oklahoma City to buy Guess overalls and Outback Red shirts. We were stylin'. Thursday we failed to purchase any Guess gear, but Rebecca and I did duck into the Converse store. Good times. Anyway, it was great having Rebecca and her mom here and I hope we can continue doing a better job of keeping in touch. Yesterday we had som...

The Chicago Cubs. It's been 63 years since they went to the World Series and 100 years exactly since they won. They've made a good run of it in recent years, though usually by looking promising in the first half of the season and flaming out like Snoopy's WWI Sopwith Camel as they neared the playoffs. The few times they have made it into the playoffs things didn't go so well. I think this poor schmo is now under federal protection My heart goes out to my dad this morning. He was born and raised in northern Chicago and I don't know if the man has missed listening to or watching a Cubs game in his life. (That's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea). Every year the beginning of the season brings a new wave of optimism for him, even though he's perfectly aware of the likelihood of self destruction. This year his hope was high, and with good reason. They started strong and finished strong, with the best record in the National League. Their 100 ...

So I'm back from my high school reunion weekend. Yes I've been back since Sunday, but I needed a few of days to recover and flew to Houston today for an appointment. I'm also incredibly lazy. I can sum up the weekend by saying it was at the same time overwhelming and a lot of fun. I also discovered I have some blog readers I didn't know about and may have some new ones thanks to the reunion. Hi guys! It was great seeing you! Julie, or Juliana if that is your real name, I'm sorry if my blog material fails to live up to the awesome play we wrote in 6th grade. I don't have my talented writing partner to help me. My best friend from way back when, Rebecca, was nice enough to fly into Austin Wednesday. We spent a couple of days catching up and then drove up to Lawton together Friday morning. I got to meet her husband Juan (we'd met once before but very briefly), who we picked up from the Lawton airport, and see her parents and brother Philip. It was so ...

Well, this is more than a little late, so I hope I'm not beating a dead horse with more Olympics comments, but I wrote most of this yesterday morning at dialysis so bear with me. The Olympics are finally over and that makes me a little sad, but maybe now we can get to the Mad Men Season 1 DVDs from Netflix that have been sitting on the coffee table for 2 weeks. Olympics came at a good time for me as I've been laid a little low recently and haven't felt like doing more than flopping on the couch with the dogs and taking in hours of competition. I'm much better now, after my surgery on Friday, so I do have to say thanks to everyone for all the good wishes over the weekend! First some notes I took for a post that never was last week. Did anyone see Shawn Johnson win the balance beam gold? Yay for Shawn, but I was disturbed at how closely the camera framed her face from the time she won until the end of the medal ceremony. They barely showed the other two medalists an...

Anyone remember this post of mine where I posted the dressage picture? Thanks to Doug for this follow up: (You can skip to 1:30)

I'm probably doing overkill on the Olympics, but I've been pretty under the weather this week and watching a lot of games coverage. Did you hear about this ? Apparently during the opening ceremonies, China pulled a Singing in the Rain and had a little girl lip-synching over the singing of another little girl who was not deemed 'cute' enough for TV. Nice, China. They are seriously creeping me out, what with their militaristic opening ceremonies, child athlete factories, and 'women' gymnasts who now have passports that claim they are miraculously 2 years older than the last time their ages were posted. Nevertheless, China is doing tremendously well at these games and I was kicking myself for not recording the men's team gymnastics final last night before I went to bed. China took the gold, as expected, after performing a number of flawless routines. Team USA actually pulled off a bronze (yay!). I did see recaps online this morning, including team leader...

Perhaps it is Olympics: Day 1? It's the first day of competition, second day of Olympics. We watched the opening ceremonies from Beijing last night and almost made it through the entire event. The performance portion was amazing, with thousands of Chinese citizens participating. Things slowed down when they got to the parade of athletes. While it was interesting to see all the countries, many of which I'm embarrassed to admit I'd never heard of, that part took about 2 hours. It was amusing to note the slow decrease in enthusiasm of the bouncing girls whose job it was to line the marching path and cheer on the athletes. Also hilarious was the shot of George Bush checking his watch. We sadly didn't make it to the torch lighting, but it was impressive: That's alotta fireworks This morning I'm switching channels between NBC, MSNBC, and USA. NBC is showing women's volleyball, with team USA doing unsurprisingly well against Japan (sorry, Japan). We have a...

I'm a sucker for the Olympics and am looking forward to what has traditionally been exciting television. The games have admittedly had a rocky history, with politics occasionally interfering, but the idealist in me loves watching the world attempt to set aside differences for two weeks every two years. I was lucky enough when I was 12 to be able to attend the 88 Winter Olympics in Alberta, Canada. My Aunt and Uncle (hi Helen and Hans!) at the time lived in the host city, Calgary, and were gracious enough to invite the McBrides up for a visit. We went to a couple of hockey games, attempted to see skiing (which was postponed that day due to weather, but my brother and cousin and I still had fun sliding down the snowy mountain), and attended pairs and men's figure skating. The highlight for me was seeing the much advertised " Battle of the Brians " between Brian Boitano and Canadian Brian Orser from our nosebleed seats. What would Brian Boitano do? I will watch pre...