Why, hello! How are you?
Yesterday, Victor was pestering me about not posting. I haven't really had a chance to post from work, and a little thing called the FIFA World Cup has been taking up most of my free time. For those of you Americans that aren't married to Victor, this is the world's biggest sporting event, where countries from around the globe come together to compete in a game called soccer (or football). The US even has a team competing this year.

I know, I know... most people at least know what the World Cup is, and I sometimes get mad about the jokes that Americans don't care about soccer, but the fact of the matter is that most people really don't give a hoot. Our friend Dylan, on the other hand, has been in Germany for a week and a half, going to the US games. Victor had a ticket to tomorrow's US vs. Ghana game, but he wasn't able to get out on a flight (see: recent whiny posts about traveling non-rev). I hope Dylan is able to sell the extra ticket.

We have been DVRing all of the games during the week and watching them when we get home. We were in Dallas for the last two weekends and watched several games at the Trinity Hall Pub. It's fun to watch with other diehard fans. It was packed for the US game last Saturday!

In other news...

I work about 20 miles north of Dallas in Plano. As I was driving home today, just as the Dallas skyline was coming into view, I noticed some smoke over the city. I was on the phone to Victor at the time, and I said "Hey, it looks like Dallas is on fire. Hope it's not our apartment." About 20 minutes later, as I was exiting the expressway, I noticed the smoke off to my left... kind of in our neighborhood. I called him again. "You know that fire I was telling you about? It looks like it's right by our house! Maybe in the M Streets area." We talked a little about how we hoped it wasn't our place and hung up. I noticed several news helicopters in the air and started to get worried. The closer I got to my house, the closer the fire got.

Eventually I took a shortcut heading toward the smoke and came up to Greenville Ave. For those of you not from Dallas, Lower Greenville is a long stretch of Greenville Avenue lined with shops, restaurants, and bars, and we live right around the corner from the last stretch of it. Well anyway, as I came up to Greenville, I saw the police. Then I saw the fire trucks. There must have been 8 or 10. The entire street was closed off, so I crossed and drove parallel to Greenville until I could see what was happening. As the Dallas Morning News reports, almost an entire block of Greenville was on fire. The old Arcadia theater, plus two restaurants, a bar, a condom shop (yes, we have those), and probably some other businesses were utterly destroyed. I'm pretty sure the old theater was empty, but the building was historic and pretty. It's pretty sad that everything was destroyed like this, but it sounds like all of the people there got out in time.

In other other news, my parents arrive tomorrow night for a one-night stay so that my dad can visit a back doctor here (he has a really bad back), and Saturday we are having a garage sale with one of our downstairs neighbors. So if any of you Dallas people want to come to a garage sale, email me or otherwise get in touch with me for more info!