I am pleased with my hair

Excellent.

megan, are many people following the soccer games in the USA?

megan, are many people following the soccer games in the USA?

I really couldn't say. I love the World Cup so I'm watching everything I can. Soccer has come a long way here in the last few years, but I think that the average American is probably only really interested in how the US does. For example, I had to explaining basic rules (offsides, etc.) to my neighbor, who in general is a big sports fan; however, he is excited to watch the US matches.

In my area, where Brazilian immigrants are a big influence, the World Cup is at least familiar. I've seen placards for the game schedule outside of bars, and I know that a couple years ago, when Brazil won, there was a big street party out by Revere Beach.

I can't think of any other sport that so much of the world is mad for but the US doesn't much care about. Like, Dominican/Caribbean baseball enthusiasm kind of blends in, in baseball-mad Boston. But if not for vocal immigrant communities, I'm not sure pro soccer would make it to network television as much as it does.

(Thanks to the NPR show Only a Game, I know there are also local hurley leagues -- Irish -- and rugby and cricket leagues -- Commonwealth. But none of them are professional, or make it to national television. No word as yet on badminton or pingpong.)

Now I'm kind of surprised that, sitting outside in my garden for a couple of hours yesterday, that I didn't hear any of my foreignish neighbors with one or another of the games on.

erikaj - you say "wirefiend" and I think you mean Wire. The very excellent band.

Ah well.

Oh! Didn't know there was a band...although there is an incredibly famous blues musician whose name I'm not retrieving who's a junkie in season three somewhere...

There is all this crap going on with local electricity rates. Apparently, we are below market due to an earlier arrangement, and that's about to expire. On July 1. Maybe. The politicians and all are being crazy (granted, for a lot of people, an instant 70% increase might very well break the bank.)

Now all other issues aside, what's screwed up? BGE has set up a plan where basically you spread out the rate increase over a couple of years. And of course, there is an extra fee involved. They flat out state it will not save money. The kicker? It's an opt- out plan. Everyone is automatically signed up. That's just evil.

At some point it was opt-in, and that's pretty much when I quit paying attention, probably like a lot of people who got sick of the spinning and decided they'd just deal with whatever was happening July 1.

Grrr.

Timelies,

Skipped over 1,000 posts.

Looks like I need to replace my alarm clock. I hit snooze this morning and then woke up again on my own an hour later, meaning I was late to work. The alarm was still set and turned on, so I know I didn't accidently turn it off instead of hitting snooze. Very strange.

Weekend went entirely too fast and it doesn't even feel like I did anything.

Has anyone linked this yet? Diet Coke and Mentos ETA: It's a video with sound (music).

Now all other issues aside, what's screwed up? BGE has set up a plan where basically you spread out the rate increase over a couple of years. And of course, there is an extra fee involved. They flat out state it will not save money. The kicker? It's an opt- out plan. Everyone is automatically signed up. That's just evil.

Oooh, thanks for the heads up, I did not realize that it was opt-out.

Oooh, thanks for the heads up, I did not realize that it was opt-out.

See!! I only noticed when I went to check out some outage info on their website. I was rather startled. As recently as May, it was opt-in and I'm not sure exactly when it flipped. You can opt-out on the website.