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20-Apr-99

Well, my travails with the kids' PC are almost over. I managed to find some drivers on the Internet for the CD, so we've at least got Windows back up again. Getting the sound card to work again was a different matter. It's a Packard Bell system (what an admission, I'll go hang my head in shame now...) and the AZT card is on the motherboard. Windows can see it, but can I get drivers to recognize it? Can I ... No, is the polite answer.

However, after getting back this evening, Colin says that Civ2 is working fine and playing music, so something's working. If I could only figure out what I'd be home and dry...

Soccer wise, it's been another busy week. Both Graham's and Colin's team are undefeated in their respective groups. Colin scored another two goal today, although I didn't see it because they played early. Graham's games have been at 1900 the past couple of times, so I've had the chance to watch him. They're both enjoying it, so long may it continue. They're both signed up for Fall soccer, Colin for Classic try-outs so we'll see how he gets on.

For myself, I actually headed down to the Junior High School on Saturday to see if there was any pickup soccer being played. Was there ever! One game was already under way and the second was just forming. I recognized a few faces from last year, including Ian, another Celtic supporting Scot, from Glasgow. We had a good game, although I had to stop for a short while because my legs were getting sore again. This is something I've had ever since my uni days, and it's only a couple of years ago that I ever did anything serious about trying to get it looked at. I went along to the physio in Aberdeen (Scotland!) who took one look at my feet and diagnosed me as having low arches. Not quite fallen, but certainly not in the right position. This in turn causes my ankles to not bend properly, but at an angle, which manifests itself as a pain in the muscles in the outside front of the lower leg. After soccer on Saturday this was so bad that I was just ready to start screaming. Banging my head on the wall seemed like a good idea to take my mind off the pain. It's now Tuesday and I'm still recovering. Of course, it didn't stop me trying to play on the Sunday...

Which was fun in a way. We actually had a team, and substitutes! (Shock, horror! Hold the front page!) As it turns out, a couple of the guys I was playing with on the Saturday were also playing for the other team, so there was some good natured banter. I managed to play for a small bit, and almost scored a cracker. I picked the ball up midway and drove towards their goal. I drifted to the right a little and as no-one was closing me down I had a go from about 25 yards. Just at the last second their goalkeeper managed to get a hand to it and push it round the post, but it looked real close. Anyway, we were beaten in the end, and I only played outfield for about 10 minutes before my legs started aching again, so I played the second half in goal. I would like to be able to say that I didn't let any by me and played a blinder, but I'd be lying. Through my back teeth. I let in three softish goals and generally played rubbish. Still, it was good fun. I've now got to decide whether to play pickup or co-ed. I'm not sure if my legs are up to both. I'll do some more of my exercises and give it another go over the next couple of weeks.

Another thing I did over the weekend was watch the Wales vs. England rugby match from last week. What a superb performance from Wales, and a superlative one from Neil Jenkins. The man is just a kicking machine! It reminded me very much of the 1990 Scotland grand slam game against England - they (England) thought they just had to appear on the field to win and take the grand slam, but both Scotland and Wales had other plans, and so it was England who ended up on the losing side. That all meant that Scotland won the Five Nations this year, the very last of all, on points differential. A surprising, but certainly not unpleasant. state of affairs.

Catriona has decided that she wants to go into the painting and drawing class coming up. Great! It's good to see her want to get involved with something organized. She's also getting on better at school, after the recent concern from her teacher about her suffering from ADD. The main cause was that she wasn't doing any of her story that had to be submitted as part of her evaluation. She's always been a bit of a toot, but this was something else. She'd do about 2 lines in the space of a few hours. She was given several different topics for her story and she picked a plane crash/survival story. The trouble was that she couldn't make up her mind which of the many things running through her head to use. She'd barely written a single page in the whole week. Once she switched to a story about getting the cats back in Scotland she wrote more than 2 pages in the space of a few recess periods. Aye, Catriona and her animals, what a toot!

We've also been progres sing on the house front. Our agent has come back from vacation (Italy, he must be doing alright!) and has presented us with about 40+ properties to evaluate. Cathy and Mitzi when touring today and have seen a couple of places in West Linn that look like definite possibilities. West Linn is the city just bordering Lake Oswego to the south, and we're almost right on the boundary. However, these places are on the far side of WL, so it's about 15 minutes from here. We'll follow these up and see what happens.

We also spent some time the past couple of weeks looking at cars. Oldsmobile are doing a special lease on their Intrigue GX sedan, $299 a month with $0 down. Worth a look. We had a test drive of the Intrigue last weekend and it's pretty nice. The GX is just the base model, but it's pretty well specced. We were also interested in the Oldsmobile Silhouette mini-van, especially the one with the in-car video, TV and games machine hook-up! Well worth getting to keep the kids quiet on journeys. However, the trade-ins offered for our cars don't yet cover the outstanding finance settlement figures so no deal. Also the dealer tried to charge full MSRP on the Silhouette, which worked out to $550 a month on a 36 month lease. We might try to sell the cars privately - anyone fancy a loaded Chevy Malibu LS in either Sandrift (Gold) or Dark Jade?

That's enough for just now, I'll try to increase the frequency of these entries. All I need to do is find the time...