Happy Mamacita's Day

Against my better judgement, I am going to use a few minutes of my precious beauty sleep to jot some thoughts down, since that's been rather lacking of late. First of all, Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, especially mine :) . Yes, I did call her and say that! My mom is easy enough to shop for for Mother's Day, I get her the same thing every year (manicure and/or pedicure from a spa) because I know she loves it and it's easy for me to get it to her! I wish my dad were so easy for Father's Day. Then again, with the recent relevation that he had his eyebrows done recently, I might take that into consideration!

I just finished watching the award winning movie "Crash" a few minutes ago and found it somehow disturbing, deep, rewarding, and thrilling all in an hour and a half or two. It definitely changed my perspective on the remainder of my lazy day - all one hour of it that was left. I highly recommend seeing it, just brace yourself for some depressing stories. I guess I can see how that would win some awards, great acting there for sure.

Cathy was in town this weekend, back from Cyprus for a week in the center of the universe. She left Paul back in Limassol to work on his artistic rendition of Michelangelo in his mosaic studio. He sure lives the life, spending his days at the beach and in an art studio with an occassional trip to harvest honey on a ranch and cooking for his wife. I wish I was as productive when I was projectless at EY a few years ago!! Anyway, Sean and I took her downtown on Friday night for some good old LES exploration and beverage exploitation. We came across a couple new places down there that I hadn't been to before that were definitely proving the point that I need to move down there, including a very nice little bookwalled cafe that served real German beer and looked like a place to have a conversation on Plato's Republic on a sunny summer morning.

Saturday morning was rough because Liverpool was playing the final game of the year - they had reached the finals of the FA Cup, which is a tournament for all of the professional teams in England (at all levels) and had a chance to take their second significant trophy in two years. And what a thrilling game it was. Seriously, this was one of the best matches I've seen in my life. Liverpool was third place in the league and had won 11 games in a row coming into this and were hands-down the favorite to beat a mid-table team they had just beaten a few weeks back. In the last minute of the game, their team captain scored an absolutely amazing goal from 35-yards away from the goal. Do you realize how amazing it is to hit the corner of a goal from that kind of distance? As an example of the strength that goes into these kinds of kicks, take a look at this picture of him right after making contact with the ball (the guy in red facing the camera):

Amazing. That tied the score up, which sent the game into overtime and after half of both teams were limping around the field for thirty more minutes from leg cramps, Liverpool went on to win on penalty kicks. Simply astonishing in my opinion.

J. Riley, But maybe you had to be there :-/