Life's little absurditiies

A bumper sticker read "Hang up and drive!" with a illustration of a cellphone surrounded by the international 'do not' symbol. This was on a car parked outside my son's school. Obviously this person deeply cared about the welfare of others on the road. Which makes it all the more absurd when I tell you that this car was parked in the middle of a crosswalk outside the school!

Overheard somewhere...

Dedicated to my son....


Adult: Are you my son?
Little Boy: Yes!
Adult: That makes me what?
Little Boy: Proud!

Now THIS is the way to see EPCOT!

Segway Tour

Podcast

Don't forget to check out my podcast here!

Hair.....

Okay, it has been nearly a week since I have written here, so there is a lot to catch up on. This week has been all about hair, in one form or the other. Hair you say? Yes...good old human hair. Here is what I mean.

Let's go back to last week. Last Thursday I told the boys on Bullets that if they won every game this season (no loses, no ties) that I would shave my head. That seemed to breathe new life into them as they crushed their opponent that night 5-0. On Sunday we played that team again, but this time missing 3 of our top offensive players. We still were able to keep the pressure on and won 1-0. We were now 4-0 and I started to think it was possible I'd be bald before school vacation started!

Our next 'hair' story has to do with "The Amazing Race". This week was the two hour finale of the season that my aunt and I had applied for. I was sickened all season watching that disgusting "Sawks" fan "Boston Rob" of Survivor fame cheating and coniving his way around the globe. Talk about an ugly American! My family were all rooting for the husband and wife team of Uchenna and Joyce. Uchenna had started the race bald, but along the way Joyce had to have all her hair cut off when she took part in an Indian ritual in order to win a "Fast Forward". These two struggled with bad luck constantly but never quit trying. They nearly missed winning because at the very end of the race they were begging for money to pay their cab fare to the finish line! Suzie was in tears as the made it to the final carpet in time to hear Phil declare them the winners. It's great to see honest, caring, hard working people win over lazy, manipulating, slackards like "Boston Rob".

Now we move onto Wednesday night. I had dinner plans with my football buddies (Bill, Bob and Eugene) and decided to trim my beard before I left. I started with the normal quarter inch setting that I usually used. For some reason it didn't seem to be trimming the way I liked it, so I moved down to the eighth inch setting. Now that was doing that job! I made quick work of the beard and moved onto my mustache. Well, I guess using the eigth inch setting wasn't the smartest thing to do on my mustache as on the first swipe it took away nearly my whole mustache. As I stared at myself in the mirror and said "Oops!", I realized that I would now need to take off all my facial hair and proceeded to do so.

Now we come full circle, back to the soccer team. As the boys arrived last night for their game, they all noticed my missing 'hair'. "Coach Bichler, I thought you weren't going to shave until after we won ALL of our games?" I explained to them that I had meant the hair on top of my head and we went on with the game. It turned into a very close game in which we had possesion of the ball nearly 65-70 percent of the time. Each side had some great opportunities with us having the best one. One of our players had the ball, all to himself, standing directly in front of the goal, with no one including the goalkeeper within 5 yards of him. He slowly, calmly kicked the ball and watched it sail wide right, completely missing the open net. We had several other chances last night but none as open as that. Even with the referee constanly making illogical calls and often not making any calls in dangerous situations, we managed to hold on for a scoreless tie. As one of our players made his way off the field, he came over to me and said, "Well Coach Bichler, I guess you won't have to shave your hair off".

Testing new Blogger client

I know I haven't posted in awhile, but I promise I'll try to catch up tomorrow.

Boy, do I feel old....

Pac Man celebrates his 25th birthday - May. 10, 2005

Odd Jobs

The last two days have been a chance to catch up on a lot of little things that have been neglected in the last week. Got the grocery order finished (we use Peapod), do two weeks worth of laundry, have the roomba vacuum, wash some dishes, along with a million other little things. I've even managed to find time for the kids to have play dates with some of there friends and help them get together things for Mothers Day. Of course soccer has to encroach too, fields to open and close, games to plan for. As lazy as I can be most of the time, I amaze myself about how much I can accomplish when I am motivated. Of course now matter how much I do get done there still seems to be a huge list of things that don't get done. Oh well, life has never been boring!

I hope to be able to find some time tonight to create another podcast. Earlier this week I listed it on the various directories online in hopes of getting noticed. It seems to have attracted a few more listeners, but I'll probably need to work a lot harder to keep them and expand that base. I just wish I would get some kind of feedback about either that or these blogs. I know people are reading/listening to them, but I don't know what they like/dislike about it.

Well, I don't have time to write any more right now, still things to finish.

Until next time,

Ho Hum...another game another win....

Well, we finally got to play another game last night. This was the game for week G, but was only our third game. It almost didn't happen! Two days ago the opposing coach, who had agreed to moving this game to a weeknight, called our head coach to say that he probably wouldn't have enough players. Our coach convinced him that we'd rather play shorthanded too than to have to schedule yet another make up game. He said he would be able to bring 10, so we agreed to play with 10. When he showed up he only had 9 players and while we could have dropped down to 9, we felt it wasn't fair for our kids to have to sit more due to the poor planning of the other coach, so we stuck to our word and played 10. We started out slowly as we shook the rust off and adjusted to playing with one less player. The other team had a few opportunities until our kids realized that these guys were for real and weren't gonna just roll over and play dead.

We finally broke through for a goal about 10 minutes or so into the game. North Hunterdon kept it close for the rest of the first half. We finally broke through for a second goal just before the end of the half which helped ease a lot of tension on our sideline. In the second half we really began to pull away as the other team wore down from their lack of players, the thickness of our grass and the size of our field. We kept rolling players in and out so that no one was too tired. When the final whistle blew we had a 5-0 victory and our second clean sheet of the season.

The biggest news happened on the parents side of the field however. Our goalkeeper's mom had a severe asthamtic attack. The fast action of a few of the parents (who included doctors, nurses, fellow asthma sufferers and other health care professionals) prevented an even worse situation. The local rescue squad was called out to make sure she was okay, but she refused treatment and spent the rest of the game in her car. The parents were also smart enough to screen most of the happenings from our goalkeeper so he didn't see what was going on while he played.

We play this same team on Sunday and warned our kids that it likely won't go the same way, since they will have their full squad and we will be missing two of our key players.

Until next time,

Hoy es el Cinco de Mayo!

Funny how the independence day for one country is celebrated in another. I mean, it's not like Canada celebrates the Fourth of July! Oh well, time for us crazy Americans to celebrate with tacos, nachos and Margaritas!

I hope to be doing my 'celebrating' a bit later this evening, as the Bullets have a game at 7:30 tonight. We finally take on North Hunterdon in a game that has postponed once and nearly postponed again. The team we are playing is currently mired in the bottom of our flight, not having won yet and only scoring two goals so far. I'm hoping our boys can really open up and work off the rust since we haven't had any practices in awhile and only played in 2 games so far this season. Whatever we do tonight, we have to remember that we are playing this same team again on Sunday at their place, so we don't want to rub it in if we do get ahead early. We should have a full squad for tonight, since there are no baseball games to drag away our kids. There is a possibility that the other team won't have a full squad and we may have to play down a few men to accommodate that. I just hope that we can find enough playing time to keep everyone happy. I also hope that our 'favorite' weeknight referee (Paul Baldassare) isn't working the game. While I respect what Paul does as a fellow coach and board member, the games he officiates always degenerates into a brawl which does nothing for the kids and incites the parents and coaches.

In other soccer news, I spoke to our club president last night and he would like me to be the primary club evaluator for my son's team during the tryouts at the end of the month. I wouldn't have to structure the drills etc, as there would be a trainer from United Soccer Academy there doing that and making the primary evaluations. While I'm glad that Al is confident in my abilities to make judgments that affect our team, I'm concerned that I'll be able to keep up and be totally objective when judging kids I know both on and off the field all year long. I'm sure I'll manage.

In other news, things at home are changing day by day. For whatever reason Suzie has been snoring a whole lot less. It is almost non existent now, sometimes to the degree that I have to make sure she is really there! Of course, just after I told her this yesterday, last night was a snore-a-palooza! Must be allergies etc. She has also been in a very chipper mood lately. I think the fact that things at work have finally calmed down for her now that they have an extra staffer and her boss is back full time just make things that much easier for her. It also means she doesn't come home from the office all stressed out. Now if I could just get the kids to stop their incessant whining, crying and back talk things might actually be enjoyable at home!


I heard from my parents within the last week. It sounds like Mom and Dad are enjoying all there new found wealth and leisure time. Dad bought a new digital camera that he hopes to be able to take extreme closeups with and mom finally got the Murphy bed she has been longing for. The have also planned a trip to see 'us' and while they are here, all their dancing friends and their favorite slots in Atlantic City. ;-)

I also heard from my sister. She is dropping her unlimited long distance since it is costing them more than they can afford right now. I know what they are going through with Mike being out of work along with all the expenses of a newborn. It's hard with them being so far away, there is so much we could do to help them if they were closer but that just isn't the case. Oh well, C'est la vie!

One more note about my relatives, I got an e-mail from my Aunt Lynn in Michigan. It seems that she left a pot of wax on the stove (don't ask me why) and forgot about it. By the time she had realized it a small fire had broken out. Foolishly she tried to pour water on it...which just made it worse. But even more dangerously and foolishly she then proceeded to get her menagerie of pets out of the house and call her husband BEFORE she called 911! I'm sure my fathers head was exploding when he heard about that!

Ok, enough babbling for now.


Till next time,

In other news

You may have noticed advertisements have appeared on the right hand side of my blog. That is not by accident nor is it put there by the company that allows me to do these blogs. I've put them there in an attempt to make a little (I can't stress the word little enough) money. They are run by Google and are supposed to be keyed to the information in my blogs. For example, if I talk about baseball or soccer, you might see some sporting goods ads. If you should find any of the advertisements in an area of your interest, I would possibly make a few pennies when you click on them. So far I have already made a whopping thirteen cents! Woooohoooo!

What I want to stress here is that you only click on the links you really have an interest in seeing, any money I get from this is not going to be much anyway, so don't feel you need to click on things just to make me wealthy! :-)

Since the last episode...

I seem to be falling further and further behind with my blog and with my podcasts. I'm gonna try and force myself to do at least one of them each day. Today is the blogs turn. Here in a nutshell is what has happened since I last posted.

Thursday: Steven visited the nurse at school, trying to get out early. We nipped that in the bud. When I picked up the kids, Sara was actually in much worse shape. They both had colds and hacked the rest of the evening.

Thursday night was a soccer club meeting. This one proceeded as the most others do, with the normal nonsense at every turn. I did my best to keep quiet and not raise a ruckus, in fact I succeeded! One of the interesting things I found out that night was that Al (our president) had scheduled the tryouts for the same days (May 23-26) that my parents would be visiting. With Sara also trying out this season we will be there everynight with at least one of the kids. Oh well, so much for spending time with my parents! It will probably be okay anyway since they have lots of other things to do while they are here.

Friday: Today's call came from the nurse at Sara's school. Honestly I was happy she even tried to go to school, since she sounded so bad in the morning. I left work around noon, ran home to pick up some documents for work then went to Sara's school to pick her up. On the way to my office to drop off those papers, Sara said she was hungry and asked if we could go to IHOP. Oh well, I guess she wasn't as sick as we thought!

Friday evening we had our pizza by the TV while we caught up on The Amazing Race. I am stilled awed and amazed by the older couple, Gretchen and Meredith. They have such spunk and even when all seems lost they keep plugging away. They have now survived several legs without their possessions, along with all the other problems they have faced. They have now gone 2 weeks longer than any other team their age and are in the final four with a reasonable chance to make the final 3 since the team that finished last this past week (The Ex-POW and the beauty queen) will have to start the next leg with no money or possessions. Speaking of the beauty queen, I am still in amazement at her statement to Ron, the former POW in Iraq, that he purposely was captured in order to get out of his commitment to the military! I think she will rue those words as she goes thru life.

Saturday: Today brought us another chapter in the wonderfully wacky world of the Webers. My in-laws truly do put the 'fun' in dysfunctional. Another family wedding, that my children the cousins of the groom, were not invited to even though there were other children there of an even younger age. What really galled me about this was the other people who were invited. Why does the father in law of the grooms uncle need to be there? Why does he need to bring a date? Wait, why do TWO father in laws of uncles of the groom need to be there! I'm so sick of the nonsense this family pulls, whether it be with the trust funds, family photos or just the lack of respect shown to eachother.

Sunday: Steven barely slept due to his cold which presented us with a big problem. The soccer team was scheduled to play at 11:30 that morning and it was a cool, foggy, misty morning and we only had 12 players who could make the game. If I kept Steven home they would have had to play the entire game with no substitutes. So I got him dressed and told him and the head coach that he would be an emergency substitute, only going in if someone got hurt, etc. He wasn't too happy about that, he wanted to start! So anyway, we get packed and just start pulling out of the driveway to head down to our opponents field when my cell phone rings. It's our head coach saying that the other team had cancelled due to poor field conditions. They were about 1 1/2 late in doing so, which has us thinking of asking for a foreit. At least Steven didn't have to play in the mist. By the end of the day both kids sounded much better.

Okay, enough for now...


Until next time,