Maybe this is why people move towards management as they get older. The spark is faded, replaced by an inexplicable need to hold too many multi-hour meetings (something I have thus far avoided), and create an endless array of spreadsheets that explain your yearly activity in excruciating, cent-by-cent detail. And maybe the spark isn’t gone, it’s just focused on other things. The weird part is, I find myself liking it. There’s a deep underlying sense of stability there…can I make solid decisions that will benefit myself and my employer? Chances are yes. Can I consistently dream up awesome, kick ass designs while working in a creative vacuum? Spock is telling the Captain there’s low statistical chances of success on that one.

The Olympics has embraced team sports more and more — but, even with celebrity Dream Teams, the games remain more of a variety show.

By contrast, like it or not, the World Cup is pure, raw, down-and-dirty unadulterated sport at its best. There are no World Cup hymns. There are no podiums for the runners-up. Losers walk.

Last night while eating dinner at the Whole Foods Pasta Bar, we were seated next to a brit, and struck up an amiable dinner conversation between us, him and the chef. “I’m actually a US citizen now,” he said with  a noticeable amount of chagrin. “Oh so, Saturday,” I replied, “I guess that’s going to be interesting for you with England vs US?”

“Well on Saturday, respectfully you and your country can get fucked as far as that’s concerned.”

Ah sports, the great unifier. I plan to take the higher ground than our dinner friend: Saturday will find us at Fado or some equally worthy beer-serving establishment, beverage in hand at too early a time in the day, possibly in colonial garb, screaming obscenities at our cousins, the Brits.

The big idea here is that they’ve retrofitted not buildings but the typical pattern of development: The existing agricultural land is clustered into a 1,400-acre plot, while the rest of the community is preserved open lands, habitat preservation, and a village of 400 homes at the center. A land conservancy, partially funded by a percentage of home sales, would provide a mechanism with which to manage and monitor the land. As MacPhee explains, “Agriculture is an amenity. You can’t just wish for it, you have to support it.”

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The birds of downtown either ate something that didn’t agree with them, or quite litterally saw something that scared the crap out of them. Maybe Sarah Palin’s in town (wait this isn’t real america, she wouldn’t come here, would she?), who knows. Regardless, it looks like the zoo’s worth of avian life has had their way with my poor Subaru, and despite the late hour, the inclimate conditons, this will not wait till tomorrow, when it going to be sunny and a normal, sane person would go tend to the chore at hand. This affrontery towards my my vehicle’s honor shell not stand.

It then occurs to me that i could quite possibly have an unhealthy relationship with my car.

No, I find myself wrapped up in things that the wade of living-in-the-Jeep times would scoff at. Concerns of things like career and responsibility. Hippy Wade meets Yuppie wade. It’s like a narcotics market-model…first it’s just a flat screen TV, just to watch movies on…suddenly you turn around and there’s a townhouse and a personal trainer in your midst…and it turns out you really like it.

It’s fine, we killed of hippy wade a long time ago, after the organic toilet paper incident, and we even still regularly frequent the hotel subaru in the summer times road warrior reenactments (plus coffee, minus the post-apocalyptic bits). Still though this time of year especially, i do miss the prospect of getting the hell-out-of-town and heading out to the desert for a few days, whether it be to climb, ride a bike or just stare off at the naked expanse of West Texas. Something.

No flying cars or jet packs. No utopian, or even non-utopian space colonies. Ok, we got the iPhone, but it drops calls like a bad habit and it doesn’t fly. The Internet was cool for a while, but ever since Facebook became popular the threat of being contacted by random people from high school makes firing up the old web browser an exercise laced with fear and despair.

About the only technological bright-spot of this decade was in Nerf guns. Enter the Raider CS-35 which appeared under the Christmas tree last Saturday, With drum loading cartridges, pump action semi-automatic fire capabilities, and a collapsible stock, for the close in work. And, yes you can be damn sure I’m buying the tactical scope and light addons. Welcome to your bright future.

Really, this is just fantastic. Where does one go about renting a tank for such purposes?

I saw a fella going down the street on a tractor. So, being a farmer, I flagged him down and said, “Man, what do you do with a tractor in the city?” And he said, “Well, I make $100,000 mowing weeds on vacant lots.” And I got to thinking, “Man, if we take that money and turn it into growing food on vacant lots….”

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• I came to the conclusion this week that I’ve been suffering form Heat Stroke since mid July or there abouts. Not trying to sound like a broken record but I went running last night, and still haven’t recovered. I normally dig the heat, but  it’s been pretty unbearable this summer.
• From the sub-department of Geekery, this MyAlltop thing that folks have been plugging on twitter for the past few days is actually pretty damn cool. Kind of like what RSS feeds always should have been, if someone had actually considered usability as being an important feature.
• On Wednesday, I hopped on my bike hoping for, if not a good ride, then at least one without injury or broken bike parts. Not so much. Two miles in, the front fork – normally designed to compress up to 100mm, decides it’s not going to do that anymore and turns completely rigid. It then starts making noises one normally associates with airline crashes, Las Vegas and animals dying on the Discovery channel. All this four days before the big Colorado riding fiesta. I have clearly pissed off the bike gods somehow.
• Back the geekery department, apparently yesterdays’ social networking outages (twitter, facebook, etc) were caused by one crazy bastard at the helm of a large network of zombified windows computers. Yes, you should be afraid.
• I resoundingly disagree that Texas (as quoted here) is “…as Red a Red State as they come.” The Texas Democratic Party used to be a force to be reckoned with until they allowed themselves to be neutered by Tom Delay’s Gerrymandering of 2003, however it’s interesting to see foreigners start to realize we’re not so homogeneous as they might think.
• Speaking of Texas politics, the new non-profit journalistic venture the Texas Tribune is getting of the ground wiht the soon to-be-former Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith at the helm. Should be interesting to watch.
• Monday I leave to see what trouble I can get into in Crested Butte, Breckenridge and eventually Northern New Mexico. I have no specific plans, just a general string of destinations and activities (ride bike in non 100º weather, drink beer, etc.).

Look for the forthcoming post from the Hotel Subaru.