This is it.

2006.

Here we go.

A new hope.
I heard a wonderful lyric today.
“In the end, I wanna be standing at the beginning with you.”

I love new beginnings.

Here is something I would like to blog about.

New Years Party
World Cup Soccer
English Professional Soccer
Chaos Soccer
Isaiah loving Finding Nemo
Custom embroidery
A new Bass
Little Women
Peace
Ann Arbor Tri training

New Years
The party was at Jon and Dana’s house this year. It rocked 80’s style. Drank Mike’s. Karaoked. Dressed up in shell adidas, rolled my socks down, wore leg warmers, Umbros, Thundercats, white glove, Karate Kid bandana. Played poker. Played Quarters. No Irwin, Lose, or Tran. I know I’m buzzed when I’m hovering endlessly over the bean dip wondering how it could be so incredibly delicious.

World Cup Soccer
Holy crap it’s here. It’s 2006 and the world will come to Germany to war. Blood will be spilt. Ethnic slurs will abound. Heroes will conquer. I hope the US does well. They seem to have a decent draw. They were one of thirty-two teams that qualified for the
World Cup. These thirty two teams were placed in to 8 groups of 4. Groups A-H. The US is in Group E with Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic. Usually there is a “group of Death”…. This time around the US is not in it. I think the toughest group is Group A. It has Germany and Poland in it.

English Professional Soccer
The English Premier League is a league competition for English Football clubs located at the top of the English football league system making it England's main football competition. The Premier League is the most lucrative football league in the world, with total club revenues of over £1.3 billion in 2003–04 according to Deloitte, more than 50 percent above its nearest competitor, Italy's Serie A [1]. It is currently second in the UEFA rankings of European leagues based on their performances in European competitions over a five year period, behind Spain's La Liga, and was the best performing league in 2004–05[2
The four top leagues in the English Premier League from best to worst are:

Premiership (20 teams)
Championship (24 teams)
League 1 (24 teams)
League 2 (24 teams)

So a total of 92 teams.

There is a promotion/relegation (demotion) system for these leagues. That is, you can be promoted up or relegated down depending on your record for the season. The rules are as follows:
Premiership (level 1): Bottom three teams relegated.
Championship (level 2): Top two automatically promoted; next four teams play off, with the winner gaining the third promotion spot. Bottom three relegated.
League One (level 3): Top two automatically promoted; next four teams play off, with the winner gaining the third promotion spot. Bottom four relegated.
League Two (level 4): Top three automatically promoted; next four teams play off, with the winner gaining the fourth promotion spot. Bottom two relegated.
There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season each club plays the others twice, once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents for a total of 38 games for each club.
Chaos Soccer
We got our asses handed to us this session. Unbelievable how good some of the teams we played are. They were just amazing. We have so much room to grow and we are definitely trying. It’s actually incredibly frustrating. But a good kind of frustrating. If we weren’t frustrated that would mean we didn’t care.

Finding Nemo
Isaiah is throwing a tantrum right now because Annalisa won’t let him stand on the piano stool. Isaiah LOVES Finding Nemo. It’s crazy. He’ll sit up in the morning and the first thing he says is, “Uh-Oh.” It’s hilarious. But the next thing out of his mouth is, “Ma-mo?” and then, “Go.” Ma-mo means Nemo. He used to say Nemo but just switched to Ma-mo because… well I don’t know why but he did. I’m not sick of it yet….

Custom Embroidery
Here are things that we have purchased lately to do our own custom embroidery.
Brother SE270D Embroidery and Sewing machine- $400 - Walmart
Vikant Ultimate Box Plus and Ultimate Card - $150 – eBay
Embird embroidery software ($99) with Embird Studio ($150) – Free Trial versions for now http://www.embird.com/

A New Bass
I’ve been thinking for about a year now and I’m gonna try. Bought a bass from a place nearby and we’ll see how it goes. I really want to learn and I hope I don’t give up.

Little Women
Saw Little Women at the Fisher Theater in Detroit. Very cool. I wanna see Three Mo Tenors now. McGovern was amazing. I cried four times. I get so sad when I think of all the sacrifices that have been made across the country for me and my family and our freedom. I was so happy the other night just dancing and playing with Isaiah and Annalisa and I can’t believe that there are fathers and husbands out there that have been away from there families for so long in another country fighting for what they believe in.
The play reminded me of that and how much I miss writing. The main character Jo thinks she can be an amazing writer. Sometimes I think I can be an amazing writer too. She made real sacrifices to be a good writer. I don’t think I can make those sacrifices. But I still really enjoy writing. Sometimes I think I could write lyrics to a musical.

Peace
I told Annalisa yesterday that this was the first time in a long time that I’ve actually felt peaceful inside. It felt fantastic.

Ann Arbor Tri-training
Today is the first day of 2006 and anything is possible.