Sorry for the light posting. After a couple of pretty slow months at work it seemed like this was Everyone Call At Once week. And a short one at that. I’ve got a couple of original posts I’m working on that I’ll put up over the weekend.

Other than that, I’ve basked the last two days in some soccer love. Wednesday was the European Champions League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United, the defending champions. Pretty much the final everyone wanted to see. Man U had played well all year, and they had to to defend their English League title with Liverpool nipping at their heels the whole way. Barcelona had been on a different plane of existence altogether, winning the Spanish League going a way and putting the capper on it with a 6-1 demolition of their arch rivals Real Madrid in Madrid three weeks ago.

But Manchester did not bring their A game and Barca did. What transpired was a 2-0 win for the Catalonians that was as comprehensive an ass-kicking as I’ve ever seen. Barca didn’t score more because they didn’t have to. They just stroked the ball around all night and never let Manchester into the game. Gorgeous football and great fun to watch.

Last night we got the top of the table clash here in the US with the unbeaten Chicago Fire travelling to L.A. to take on the league leading Chivas USA. Not a pretty game at all, although there was lots of end-to-end play and lots of shots. There were also 11 yellow cards and one red card. Chivas led 2-1 when they had Captain Jesse Marsh (ex Fire) sent off for a pretty silly foul on Chautemoc Blanco. It was all Fire after that. They equalized in the 80th minute and then won the game on a penalty kick in the 94th. The Fire are still 3 points behind Chivas but remain unbeaten and are five points clear of second place DC in the Eastern Division.

So, good times for the beautiful game. The summer will be full of Team USA action with World Cup qualifiers in Costa Rica and home to Honduras next week. Then off to South Africa for the World Cup warm-up tournament the Confederations Cup. We play in a group with Italy, Brazil and African Champs, Egypt. That’s a tough draw and it will give us an idea if team USA is finally ready to take its place as a true Top Ten team globally.

Back to work. Big post on politics and local businesses coming up. Then work on a big web project which I’ll be talking about here as well.