Soccer Connections Renewed

 On an alternatively foggy and sunny day out at Crocker-Amazon, Julia's new team, Athena White, played their arch-rival, the Chivas.

 Julia, as one of the younger members of the team, subbed in partway through the first half, when the score was 0-1. By the end of the half, her team was ahead 2-1.

She started the second half and left when the score was 3-1. In the end Athena won, 4-2! A nice outcome for a kid who's soccer teams have often lost and rarely won. She's in white, in the cenetr of the photo above.

At the pitch I ran into Shani, Aidan's old coach. he asked after Aidan, always one of his favorite players and we had a good catchup chat. When I went to take his photo, coaching one his (12!) current teams, a U-8 girls team, he spotted me and told the girls to turn toward me. "I used to coach that man's son Aidan. He can play soccer. Say 'hi' to Aidan!"

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Orange Friday

Here in San Francisco, the place to be on a Friday night if you love baseball, or even if you just want to have some fun, is AT&T Park. Tonight, it was the best of September baseball. The great old rivalry between the Giants and the Dodgers was renewed.

Going into this game, LA was in first place by two games over San Francisco. But tonight it was all Giants, as they scored four runs in the first inning enroute to a 9-0 victory. The final five runs were via home runs right next to where we were sitting in right field, one magnificent fly into the Bay.

My companions were my 15-year-old daughter, one of her best friends from elementary school, and her friend's Dad.

We had a blast. Thanks, Giants.

Inside the Fog Line

I battled the sun from my office to the Haight, but by the time I reached Kezar Stadium, where my daughter and her teammates were working out with their conditioning coach, we were under the cover of San Francisco's famous fog.

Afterwards, she and I got Chinese food from a nearby dive we discovered over the past year or so. We're both getting used to it just being the two of us now, with the boys out in Missoula. She gets to make all the choices (like what for dinner, what's on TV, etc.) where she used to have to contend with two older brothers.

Tonight she had a math question -- how to illustrate a real-life use of the concept (and formula) for a midpoint. I reminded her of our first trips up to Portland, when her sisters lived up there, and explained that when planning our first trip, I took the distance between SF and Portland, I found the nearest town to the midpoint in order to determine where we would stop the first night.

(I wanted us to make the drive in two days.)

She nodded and filled in her answer.

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Telling Our Kids Who We Are/Were

Now I have only one child at home, our shopping routine has changed. The things *she* likes dominate my shopping list.

One of those is goat cheese. "I *love* goat cheese," she told me yesterday.

The thing about a long life is that almost everything that comes up has a precedent, but you are not sure whether to mention it to your children or grandchildren, because it dates you so terribly.

The first time I ever tasted goat cheese was 40 years before it became a cool Northern California thing. It was in Camdesh, 2,000 feet straight up a mountain I never thought I could climb, while in the Peace Corps, in eastern Afghanistan. You can see the place in the book and the movie called "The Man Who Would be King," not that anyone keeps track of these kinds of details anymore.

The people in the village at the top of that mountain served us goat cheese (warm) for breakfast. Maybe I should suggest that to some of the cool chefs around here. Goat cheese is good cold (just had some) but oh so much better warm.

Just a thought.

But how do I tell my daughter things like this without sounding impossibly ancient, which I already am in her eyes?

Suggestions welcome. This blog feels like a dead place to me. No one ever communicates anything. Maybe it is time to close it down.

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Happy Birthday!

Aidan and Zaira in Missoula tonight...Happy 20th, son!

Back to Mill Valley

First time in years I was back out there to watch Julia's soccer game. Afterwards, I called Missoula to wish Aidan happy birthday. Can't believe the guy is now 20!

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