Necessary Roughness

New car… my wife’s high school alma mater going to State in soccer… Watkins Memorial actually winning (link dead) the Ohio Division II state crown. Congratulations, Warriors.

I might not have liked watching the game on TV, but I had fun attending the game at Columbus Crew stadium. Watkins and their competition from Youngstown, Cardinal Mooney, played to a 0-0 tie in the 60 minutes of regulation. When the game went into sudden death (they call it sudden victory) overtime, Watkins won the coin toss and chose to defend the goal with the wind to their backs. This proved crucial: a Watkins corner kick was kicked high into the Cardinal penalty area, and the wind blew it past the goalie. The goalie was able to get a fist on the ball, but he was unable to hit the ball hard enough to prevent it from going into the goal, one minute 56 seconds into overtime. Pandemonium for the kids in black. The Cardinals, dressed in yellow with red lettering, laid out on the field like the end of a Civil War reenactment; I found it hard not to take pity on them.

Crew Stadium is the only facility dedicated to soccer that I have seen a game in. It is rather nice, but despite being able to hold 20,000+ people, the seating was handled by metal bleachers. Wisely we took fleece and other material to sit on instead of risking our posteriors.

We picked up our 2005 Buick Terraza today, turning in the 2002 Rendezvous. We are initally impressed with it, with its DVD player, power sliding door, and most importantly, seating capacity for 7 adults plus luggage space in the back, all standard. Its seating configuration is 2 captain’s chairs in the front, another 2 in the middle, and a 50/50 split folding bench in the rear. Two interesting things, though; if the brake is barely held while at a complete stop, the transmission tries to catch, like the standard transmission on the F350 I used to drive for Halliburton on occasion. Also, the vehicle is long enough to where we may not be able to completely open the top-hinged hatch of the vehicle while the vehicle is parked in the garage with the door closed. I’ll have to figure out how close I can get to the back wall of my garage before hitting it. There is enough room in the back for my luggage even when the 50/50 bench is sitting up; a good thing. Buick has a financial deal where one doesn’t have to wait until the end of a lease to turn the car in and get a new lease; we were able to do this and get the new minivan with nothing down and only a slight increase per month.

Our Buick representative didn’t know how Terraza was actually pronounced. I told him that it looked Spanish, the word for terrace, so I pronounced it Tay-R_(rolling)AH-zah. My Spanish is old; corrections are welcome. He wanted to pronounce it TAIR-aht-za (like the zza in pizza).

Tomorrow I will land in Airport No. 31 (or is it 32, I’ve lost count) in Tyler, TX. Tyler is only a half hour from Longview, yet the ticket there was $400 cheaper on Continental than the $1000 to get to Longview on American. If I had known about this for my other flights, I would have flown to Tyler all this time. I get free upgrades on Continental, and my flights count for more miles.