Dave Kean

This is the Memorial Day weekend, the first public holiday for most in the US since New Years Day. It’s sort of seen as the start of summer, in Everett on Memorial Day weekend is the annual “Cruzin to Colby” car show. It is a classic piece of Americana that’s not seen elsewhere in the world, they were expecting over 600 cars to take part today and tomorrow. It is rather spectacular with some very modified cars along side some beautifully restored classics.

Friday turned into a very long and rather brutal day. It ended on a high note and I’ll get to that. First was another visit to the doctors to run a few tests, I keep getting told nothing to be concerned with, but it’s my third visit this week and I believe James when he tells me that, but three times?

Then to the chaos of work which has led to some short notice travel next week, while I enjoy the site visits and production audits, there is so much else that needs to be sorted over the next month or so.

To the fun, an evening in Fred’s Alehouse in Snohomish with my friend Lisa and a really good IPA, some great food and no talk about doctors visits. Actually it was rather fun and even though I was not in a great mood I got a few laughs out of it and the cats got treats. Tonights discovery was that the Boulevard Brewing Single Wide IPA was almost as good as the Ninkasi Total Domination (my current gold standard IPA).

Today largely writes itself. I got to spend an hour or so in the Department of Motor Vehicles licencing (DMV) office in Everett. It was time to renew my driving license, and for a number of reasons I had to do it in person this time.

For my non-American friends a Washington State drivers licence expires every five years. At that time I have to go in person, take an eye test and have a new photo taken. This compares to my British drivers license that expires in 2039, it was issued in 1987 and does not expire until I’m 70. It did make life very interesting when I once tried to cash travellers checks with it many years ago and the guy looked for the expiration date on my license.

I think it’s one of those things we all dread, but is a necessary evil that has to be taken care of every five years. I can think of other things the initials DMV can stand for, Dark Mindless Void comes immediately to mind, it’s a government office and typically not some where one typically goes for fun.

Before heading over I checked the queue times on the web, it said 8 minutes. It will come as no surprise that when I got there 15 minutes later I was number 37 in the queue. They were serving number 9 in the renewal line…

It’s a busy place, there were a lot of people in there, and being Everett there was some great people watching.

I did not have a book so pulled out my phone and started playing Angry Birds to pass the time (Number 10…). I’ve yet to find anything that passes time like Angry Birds, it’s scary how many times I say “Just one more then I’ll roll over and go to sleep.”

There was a low hum of activity and background noise in the room when suddenly there is a kid screaming, with the dial turned up to 11. There is a rather unhappy looking mother trying to get the kid to quieten down, The screamer (Kid-1) turns to his little bother and wallops him (as an older brother I understand this). Now Kid-2 is adding to the noise.

Mum momentarily forgets where she is and yells “Stop it now or I will hit you!”.

For a moment the entire room is silent (Number 11…”), then mum suddenly understands where she is, and that there are 100 people staring at her. She goes bright red, and starts staring at the floor.

There are moments when I love living here, Everett has all sorts. To end my story, I got what I needed, it took a lot longer than 8 minutes and I look like a total knuckle dragger in my new photo.

I went to the Irishman to watch the Sounders play Colorado tonight. It looked like a fascinating game, both team need the points and Colorado are the champions. It’s always nice to beat the champions.

Four minutes in Steve Zakuani had his leg broken by a reckless tackle by Brian Mullin. There was little attempt to play the ball and Mullen crashed into Zakuani’s planted right leg. The prognosis is bad and I can’t see Zakuani playing again this year.

There is a tradition where the crowd applauds as a player is stretchered off. The entire bar went silent when the tackle went in, stayed that way through the replay and until Zakuani was moved off the field. The entire bar stood and clapped as he left the field.

The tackle was bad enough, but it looked to me to be in retaliation for a hard, but clean tackle a minute or two earlier on Mullen. This is league that’s historically allowed players to get away with a certain level of retaliation. I’ve played contact sports and get that the red-mist can take over, but it’s the lack of punishment that needs to change.

Mullen does not reputation as a dirty player, but it does not matter. It needs to be a lengthy ban from the league. A few minutes of research shows the toughest ban handed out by the league was a 10 game ban to Ricardo Clark for taking a kick at Carlos Ruiz in a Houston/Dallas game a couple of seasons ago. Ten games seems light punishment for what is at best a season ending tackle. The league needs to make a statement that retaliation and playing the player rather than the ball is not acceptable.

There are dirtier players than Mullen, far dirtier, but that makes no difference tonight. He retaliated, that is unacceptable and it needs to be a significant ban. In the post game show Eric Wynalda stood up for Mullen, repeated what’s been said a few times tonight, that he is not a dirty player. He retaliated, it’s simple, even in a physical league like the MLS there is no place for that sort of play.

The result tonight seems far less important. It was a good Seattle performance against a team that was playing very tight, disciplined football. “Workman like” would be a good description for the first half. Montero scored on the overlap on the left hand side, it was a well-created chance and Seattle did a good job of stretching the defence.

The second half was very poor for Seattle, they were lucky to hang on for the win.

Again Mario Rosales created the goal, he is a player that has a really good understanding of the game. However he seems to be struggling to play with Montero, he was less effective over all tonight when compared to the last couple of games when he was in the Montero role playing off Brian O’White. Sigi needs to work out how the two of them are going to make this work. Two very good players, but just don’t seem to be clicking together, despite the goal tonight.

Update-1

“I’m sorry for Steve. It was never my intention to injure him in the least. It’s a tackle that I’ve done hundreds of times and would probably do again. I had no intention of hurting him. It’s a freak, freak thing, and I apologize and wish Steve a speedy recovery.”

This is the quote from Brian Mullen after the game. It’s the “would probably do again” part that’s disturbing; there should be no league where a tackle like this, whatever the outcome of the contact, is acceptable.

A couple of hours after he broke the tibia and fibula in Zakuani’s leg he said he’d do exactly the same thing again. This is one of the WTF was he thinking moments. I feel surer than ever that the league needs to show that there are consequences for crossing the line between hard and reckless.

Colorado come to Qwest in July, we are is not going to forget this one.

Last night had quite incredible light, there was a huge storm rolling in the trees were thrashing and the sky was almost yellow at one point. It was a short, but very spectacular storm and quite something to watch through the patio doors.

The storm blew itself out and left today another wet spring day. I’m ready for the rain to stop, but it was spectacular last night.

A quick trip into Everett after work to deal with a couple of things. I do love living in this part of the world, but there are so many other places to live yet.

Compared to yesterday I felt so much better today, it’s amazing how good not being hungover felt. Not quite good enough to actually buy beer, but well enough to at least peruse the beer aisle in Top Food in Snohomish. I had to drop some paperwork off with my lawyer and then stopped by the post office to pick up some mail certified mail.

It turns out the mail came from the credit union. I’ll leave you to guess who has not provided proof of insurance on the car she drives her kids around in. Another WTF moment that just reinforces why I left.

Last night was a full moon, and I swear the cats were a little more restless at night than usual. For rather elderly animals they seems to have found reserves of energy from somewhere. A lot of the pictures over the last three months have been taken with my iPhone, and while this picture taken yesterday evneing of the moon is not that spectacular, it’s done a decent job overall.

I had to quickly run into Everett today to sign a couple of legal things, very entertaining story that I’ll share soon. I parked up on Whetmore and wandered in to see my lawyer, I noticed a couple of pieces of art I’ve not seen before. I am a big fan of public art, I think it does much to enhance Seattle and with the huge changes for the better in downtown Everett it makes sense to have it here. There is more about the Everett Art installations here.

On the corner of Wall and Colby was this piece by James Madison

So to the quote of the day, I was on the phone with a friend tonight and she said “I’ve need to go, I’ll call you back I have to call the jail”. My life if so full of wonderful moments and quotes like this. I love my life.

Finished work a little early to get a chance to burn through a little of my “to do” list before doing something fun. As soon as I got out of the car to head into the courthouse it started heaving down with rain, I mean windscreen wipers on full coming down.

So another grey day in Everett, but it was a productive afternoon.

After that I went and played a game of tennis, my first few a little while, and I sucked. With my new knee brace I looked like robo-cop, but it seems to have held up just fine.

I don’t have much of a forehand, my backhand is atrocious, we won’t even talk about my “so called” serve and certainly let my partner down on the court. But I had fun, swore a lot and it did feel good to sweat that much.

I’m going to be stiff in the morning, but so worth it. Time to take some lessons I think, I managed to find many, many ways to miss a tennis ball or put it out of play. It was fun though and appreciate the patience of those around me.

…it feels like the first time I’ve seen the sun at home since I got back from London.

I came out of work this evening and the sky was clear, the was sun out and I had to rummage around in the car looking for my sunnies. Last weekend, and again today, I was reminded how much I miss the sun.