Soccer, Week 8

A great weekend for Soccer. After an abscence of nearly a month, Zoe was back on the field, and helped her team to something like a 5-1 win over the Papa John's team, whose uniforms were very Italian, despite the fact that their pizza is not. Zoe insists she was playing with a hurt foot from an injury the week before.


The Strikers winning streak has come to an end. Bryce, their standout player, was sidelined with a basketball injury that required stitches in his knee. The over-zealous referees (who are anal about things like not wearing baseball cleats and not having even the tiniest bit of metal in a girl's hair band) wouldn't let him play. Since the Striker's whole playing style and strategy pretty much revolves around Bryce, they were out of luck. They lost 3-2 in the final seconds of the Friday game, and something like 5-1 in the Saturday game. They finished the season tied for 2nd place.

The post-season tournament starts Saturday, May 6th, and if Bryce can play again, look for an excellent showing by the Strikers.

Soccer, Week 7(?)

Today was a make-up game from two weeks ago, and even though yesterday's scheduled game was rained-out, today's weather was perfect. Especially if you're a Striker. Tristan's team defeated the Hot Shots 5-1. I think this puts them solely in first place, but I'm not certain. The Strikers are very good in their own right, but probably the biggest key to their success is a kid on their team named Bryce. He is phenomenal, and easily the best player in the entire U8 division. Mark my words, you'll be hearing about him again. 

Rainout and the Next Few Weeks

Plenty of rain today in Mebane, so no soccer. Tristan has a game tomorrow, and the weather is predicted to be lovely.

This week, I (Dave) have rehearsals and performances of Eastern Alamance High School's production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, where I'm playing in the pit orchestra. I'm not familiar with the music at all, but fortunately, one of my best skills as a musician (if I do say so myself) is sight reading. I'm also pretty good at covering my mistakes and making them look intentional. Now if I could only not laugh when I do it. My chops are pretty rusty, but I also performed with the Mebane Acting Company back in December in their production of A Christmas Carol, and that went swimmingly, so I'm not terribly concerned. It'll be fun. It's amazing how walking into a high school auditorium for musical rehearsal can take you back to 1985 when you were practicing My Fair Lady at Owen J. Roberts High School.

Next week, I'll be down in Greenville, South Carolina for the worldwide users conference for a piece of software I spend most of my workday dealing with. You've never heard of it. That should be fun, and a change of pace, which is always welcome.

The week after that, all of the Traveling Roths are going to Lake Tahoe, Nevada to see Jennifer's youngest brother Jonas graduate from Sierra Nevada College. It'll be our first big vacation in about three years, when we went to Jennifer's oldest brother Jared's wedding in Albuquerque, so needless to say, we're all excited.

So thanks for visiting, and stay tuned for more adventures of The Traveling Roths

Playing Jesus

Mebane Presbyterian Church had a Last Supper play during its Thursday night Holy Week services. Guess who played Jesus? I'm looking for another picture because, if you notice, there are only 11 disciples in this picture, and none of us are in our correct poses. My part in the play involved sitting perfectly still for 15-20 minutes. I think I'll be scoring a Tony Award.

FlickrMap

Thanks to Andy, I found Flickrmap, which is a Flash-based mapping application that connects my pictures stored at Flickr to a map. I'm not sure how well it'll work here, but if it does, there will be a map below. If not, I've posted the same code on my Mebtel homepage, the link to which can be found here. (BTW, The dots that represent pictures seem to be a little off on the full-scale map, putting most of our North Carolina locations in the Atlantic, but if you zoom in on either the US or North Africa, the dots will be in the correct locations. The scaling appears correctly on the Mebtel page though.)



Get your own Flickrmap!

Spring Break, in Summary

Jennifer and the kids spent Spring Break week in Georgia and at the North Carolina Coast. Here are a few highlights from these Traveling Roth's travels

Tristan and Zoe at the office of Grandpa Joe, Public Defender, Fayette County, Georgia

Jennifer with her long time friend Gavin Holmes, at my long time favorite taqueria, Taqueria Sundown on Lennox-Cheshire Bridge in Atlanta

Zoe and Tristan doing what they do at the beach; getting wet. Not surprisingly, these are far from the only pictures of these two in their street clothes in the Atlantic Ocean in March. At least it wasn't winter this time. This is in Emerald Isle, if you're curious.

Soccer, Week 5, in absentia

No soccer results or pictures this week as the two Roth athletes missed their games due to being on Spring Break.

Hopefully, we'll get some pictures from that (Georgia and the NC coast) when Jennifer and the kids get back with my camera and computer.