Argentina to win the World Cup

Argentina just beat Serbia and Montenegro 6-0 and I just wanna say that my money is on Argentina to win the World Cup. Forget England. I've given up on them. There's too much expectation and pressure and they're no good. The weather is just too hot for them.

Venga Argentina!

Lily this is Goldie, Goldie this is Lily

Lily and I were just enjoying the arrival of Wayne Rooney on the pitch against Trinidad & Tobago when I saw someone familiar lingering outside the pub. I stared at him for a moment unable to decide if it really was him or not but when he caught my eye, winked, and came over I knew it was Goldie. I introduced Lily and Goldie and we chatted about her age and the game and so on. Goldie said he was in Chicago because that's where his girlfriend lived.

Fortunately, England were spared a humilating scoreline thanks to some late goals by Crouch and Gerrard. T&T played extremely well and had enough chances to have secured a very different scoreline. I think that for once it seemed that Errikson's substitutions made all the difference. Hopefully now that we're through to the quarter finals we can expect to see Walcott come on against Sweden at some point.

Lily did not like all the shouting during the game and it made her cry. It was the shouting following near misses that upset her but interestingly the cheers of joy after our goals did not affect her at all. She is a true England fan; it was not the noise that annoyed her but England's missed opportunities.

A Groovy Kind of Lily

In her latest adventure Lily finds her groove and learns that you've gotta get up before you can get down.

Watch A Groovy Kind of Lily

England, football, lager!

If you hadn't noticed, the World Cup has begun. In what many Americans are describing as "anamolous and slightly confusing", and unlike the World Series in Baseball, this competition actually includes teams from all over the world. England, this year, are destined to win. It is impossible not to conceive, however, being beaten by teams such as Trinidad and Tobago and losing on penalties to either Germany or Argentina (our traditional foes) in an agonising quarter final. They key to our success will be in conceading early goals in big games. It may seem counter intuititive but the alternative, as shown by games against Argentina and Brazil in 2002 and France and Portugal in 2004, clearly does not work.

And not to make too much fun of Americans it must be noted that in the last World Cup the USA equalled England's performance by reaching the quarter finals.

God will not save you.

Recent research adds to the growing body of evidence which suggests that God will not save you, in any event.

But, we don't need God anyway. Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. Like war. Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

Read it.

On McSweeney's:
SHORT ESSAYS ON FAVORITE SONGS,
INSPIRED BY NICK HORNBY'S SONGBOOK.

"Inner Meet Me" by The Beta Band

Return of the Lily

Two new videos of Lily are available for viewing. One where Lily goes on adventure to Damen and another of her playing in her jungle gym.

Damen: A guy, a girl and a baby find out the true meaning of friendship.

Baby Genius: The baby that knew too much.

Fun Game!

Can you decipher the hidden message?!








History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Wiki article
Salon article

Viral Lily

Check out the hottest viral video since David Elsewhere...

see Adventures of Lily.

Streetwars.

Check this out:
http://www.streetwars.net/

What?

I am deaf....or maybe Oli mumbles....or maybe it's our differing accents and dialects. In whichever case, I frequently can't understand him and reply to to him with, "What?"

Two cases from the last 5 minutes:

[Refering to a previous conversation about videos]
Oli: Yeah, we'd need two versions.
Me: What? Two virgins?! Which one of your friends did that?

[Regarding the morning news]
Oli: Did you read the article on Al Gore?
Me: What? About Aragó?
Oli: You are DEAF!
(Note: Aragó is a street in Barcelona)

We'll have to stop speaking to one another or this marriage won't last long.

Stephen "Giant Balls" Colbert

WOW. Stephen Colbert is my new hero.

Read this.

~ Angela

She's a big kid now

Amazing how they grow. Twelve weeks ago Lily was in my belly and soon thereafter she was a new wrinkly little pink thing. Today she is a social independent-minded creature that can smile and say "a-goo". *Sigh* A few more weeks and she'll be president.

Wedding photos!

To view our wedding photos visit http://www.fredfox.com/scripts/albums/index.php . Click on 'online ordering', username: FAROS and password SEELEY. Enjoy.

By the way, thank you everyone who attended the wedding and thank you kindly for your gifts (particularly to Mike and his stripey thing). We had a fucking great time and we owe it all to you. It was heart-warming to know that you were so touched by our union and moved by our beautiful little girl.

If you are all genuinly feeling more disposed to marriage and babies then please have them in exciting and exotic locations so we can all enjoy more adventures abroad.

Huzzaahh!

Do you have Mr T on YOUR wedding video?

We do.

My friends were downtown about to board a boat for an architectural tour of the city when they saw Mr T and Conan O'Brien canoing down the river. British people don't know who Conan is so they only had eyes for Mr T.

When he came ashore my friends persuaded him to do a short tribute to Angela and I on Ben's wedding video.

Links to the wedding video will be posted when it is completed. Follow the 'fotos de boda...' link on the right to see photos of the wedding taken by friends and family.

baby adventure

Lliy had her first adventure last weekend. She sat comfortably in her baby carrier and held her trusty staff as her father transported her along the paths and canyons of starved rock state park. On one occasion she demanded to be taken off the beaten trail into the unknown wilderness. Unafraid of what may have lurked there and unperturbed by the mangled corpse of a half-eaten skunk she continued wide-eyed until her diaper exploded onto her mother whilst resting on a fallen tree.

We are expecting big things from Lily and a trip to starved rock is but the first in a series of adventures that'll no doubt prove increasingly more audacious.

sucking me dry

The title says it all. Note the contrast in our expressions, one of contentment, the other of exhaustion, and our appearances, one fat and well-fed, the other scrawny and mal-nourished.

These are the lives of baby and mother.

Relax! Don't do it!

Here's our life in a MasterCard commercial:

9-week-old baby
10 stress dollars
Oliver's torn ligament (see blog entry that is to follow)
10 stress dollars +
10 stress dollars more for the baby/house work this adds to my load
Final wedding-day touches
5 stress dollars
Pending arrival of 27 out-of-town guests
20 stress dollars
One rental apartment meant for our guests turning out to be uninhabitable
10 stress dollars
Extreme lane closures on Dan Ryan expressway
5 stress dollars
Lily's first vaccinations
5 stress dollars
Getting telemarket scammed and having to open a new bank account
5 stress dollars
The bank messing up the opening of the new account giving me $2000 that don't exist...which sounds good but yields many phone calls
5 stress dollars

A beautiful inoculated baby and sweet crippled fiancé with whom to share a sunny spring wedding day
Priceless

***

By the way, thinking up that title made me look up the lyrics to Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I had NO idea that the song was like that. I never listened too closely.

It smiles

Dude, my parents' house got hit by lightning.

Dude, my parents' house got hit by lightning.

Initial reports indicate that the event was the loudest the Ruiters have ever heard and that a burn mark remains on the ceiling of the guest bathroom.

This strike occured within an hour of Oli, Lily and me leaving their house. Man am I glad we got out of there because it would have been horribly unamusing for one of us to die on the toilet and worse still for the survivor to have to explain to an older Lily what happened to her absent parent. It's the stuff that playground ridicule is made of.

~ Angela