Result of the year for Caley Thistle

I promise, this blog is NOT just about my soccer teams. But today, the Caley Thistle went into the toughest house in Scottish football and won. Dundee United had six wins and one draw from their first seven matches at home. They beat Rangers in that span. Today's 1-0 win by the Caley makes us the first team this year to get a result at Tannadice. It's been a tough start to the season, but things are starting to shape up a bit. Wee Ian Black's 20th minute strike was enough to take this one, for our second 1-0 win in as many weeks. When a team is struggling, a good manager (like Caley's Craig Brewster) shores up the defense and does his best to grind out results, and that's just what we've done. Mon the Caley!

Return from OryCon

I made my triumphant return to The Valley of Corn today, after a weekend in Portland for OryCon. It was ... hmmm ... Well, let me say what it wasn't. It was not a writers' conference. Not really. There were writers there, some of them very good and established writers. There were editors and other industry types too, but it was overwhelmingly a fan conference. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I just wasn't so into costume time with the furries. It says much more about me than them - they were all having a hell of a good time, and it really was their scene more than mine, so things were pretty much as they should have been. I really went to hang out with Camille anyway, and that was super cool. Tomorrow, a slush pile which is really more accurately described as a slush hill or even mountain awaits. Much editing will be done. Writing? Probably not so much for the next week or so.

The other news of the weekend, of course, is the end of Scotland's hopes in the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. The team accomplished some truly incredible things this past year and a half, and though this was a sad note to go out on, it has set us up for a much better shot than before at World Cup qualifying. And when it comes down to it, that's the big show, the one that matters. South Africa 2010 is now the focus. Alba Gu Brath.

Link Insanity

Okay, maybe not insanity, but Miss Camille's blogroll post has inspired me (if you can call it inspiration when what you end up doing is kind of lazy) to post a linky-post. I have resigned myself to spending this lovely Oregon day writing, not blogging, and so the internets will have to step in and do the entertaining.

First and foremost, that's THREE in a row for my beloved Caley Thistle, thank you very much.

Also, it appears that Joey Fatone has lost 95 pounds and married a senior citizen.

If Kiefer Sutherland goes to jail, will he escape like he always does on 24?

If you still haven't seen Brazilian women play soccer, you need to take a look at this. Marta is on fire.

I always knew that when zombies finally came, they'd come from Philly.

Republicans skip out of having to talk about minorities, and Hilary wants to pay me $5000 to impregnate people.

That is all. Enjoy the weather. Unless you're in Utah or Tokyo, where the internet tells me it is currently raining.

Two in a row for Caley

These are tough days for the fans of my beloved Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club. The season in Scotland has started dismally for Caley Thistle (which we call them so we don't have to say that whole long thing very often), with 6 losses in the first 6 games, which left us, before this weekend, one point below Gretna, the newest top-level pro side in Scotland. But things are looking up. We won our first league match of the season on Saturday, defeating Hearts, which is sort of like two wins for me, since I despise Hearts so much. More on that some other time, but sufficed to say, they are all that is wrong in the world. Anyway, today, more good news from the Caley front, as we beat none other than Gretna in the league cup, 3-0. Finally, something to convince the 6,000 or so that can fit into Inverness' Caledonian Stadium to actually come out in the rain and watch some football. Even if we do still sit in last place in the league, we are through to the quarterfinals of the league cup, which at least five of the eleven other SPL teams are not. We have a bad history in cup competitions of blowing it at exactly this point, but it feels good to be two matches away from a cup final.

And for all the football fans that have to yell and scream in their apartments because they can't live close to the teams they love, here's me yelling and screaming in mine: