Sports Headlines....

This qualifies as big news people. forget the super bowl, or even the cubs convention. The Bulls are over .500! I've got to say i'm pretty excited about this team and where it's headed. They still need a go-to scorer, but i like the way they play.
In other news, i'm also psyched to read about little bit of the agassi-federer match. I say read because there's little or no chance i'll see the thing in it's entirety (have no cable). But 12:30 pacific isn't too late, so maybe i'll catch a streaming broadcast of it somewhere.
until later

Funny How things work...

The french students in my classes never participated in class - and i always felt bad for the professor. Now, in the US classes, i'm exhausted by all of the participation. Sometimes, you'd hope that people would just shut up. Anyway.

Why I love LA

For those of you wondering why i like LA, despite it's flaws, i think this column sums it up nicely....

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%257E21377%257E,00.html

two things...
For the first time that i can remember, i spent my entire drive up to campus not staring at the ocean (which was a putrid brown), but at the cliffs. The whole way up there rockslides, andmudslides and flooding. Amazing. It was one lane throughout malibu. Crazy. I think we may be pushing the limits of development. Today is beautiful and sunny - and people are still complaining about the rain. Wusses.
Number two...
HUGE news from Macworld. The Mac Mini, iPod Shuffle, iWork, and iLife programs and and products debuted today. I love them! the Mac mini looks great, and is at a tremendous price (499). Hopefully this encourages more people to switch over to Mac - as it is a wonderful place to be. While i'm excited about the iPod shuffle, the bigger news is that Apple sold over 4.5 million iPods during the holiday season - up from 733,000 a year ago. If that's not market demand for cool, quality products, i don't know what is. Anyway, check it all out at www.apple.com

A Rain Day!
Today, class was cancelled at pepperdine because of RAIN! How funny. Of all the things to happen here over the last couple years - fires, grocery strikes, etc., it's the Rain that finally brings down ol' pepp. Hilarity. Not so funny were the three, count em three, phone calls i received before 7 am to inform me of the rainout. I have email, people.
Argh.

Stupid Rain!
So it's basically rained nonstop since i've returned to LA. Except for one shining afternoon where i got to put the top down in the car, it's been watery. I even had to buy new wipers - which i installed myself, thank you very much. Not that it's difficult, but anytime i do anything manual-labor related, i feel proud.
In other news, i now have my first week of classes at pepperdine under my belt (if you can count three courses in three days as a week). Felt good. While they may not be the most interesting of classes, it'll definitely be nice. I also got some momentum in my job search. Went to a career fair on thursday, and I feel energized for the upcoming weeks. if i can stay busy, and continue to have events and chances to network, i think that I should have things come my way.
In other (baseball) news, The Mets appear to be signing Beltran. I'm kind of disappointed in the cubs this year. They just didn't make the offseason impact i hoped for - no signings and no real effort ot improve the team. it seems like every club acquired a marquee free agent - but not us. Hopefully we're not just standing still, and these prospects we have start to pan out.

So i was reading today about the end of the 'cocktail wars' between the EU and Cuba. In essence, in exchange for normalized relations between the EU and Cuba, the EU countries agree not to recognize any dissidents or members of Cuban government other than Fidel Castro. Is it just me, or does it seem like the EU is acting more and more like America - pursuing relations when economically profitable - human rights be damned. I'm concerned as there seems to be no real counterweight to the capitalist machine. Don't get me wrong, i love capitalism as much as anybody else - but it occurs to me that capitalism cannot function unless democracy and transparency are ideals. Supporting Castro at the expense of his detractors seems to do the opposite.
Hopefully Chirac and his Gaullist world are listening - and act as a counterweight to not just America - but the United States of Europe as well...They might need it.

Rain...grrr.
So i'm back in LA - today being my first day of classes. It's raining, which is depressing - but i did get to see many old faces that i hadn't seen in months - very exciting. And, it was trippy to be in a class where students paid attention, and the class wasn't completely out of control.
Although, there has been just a tremendous amount of change in my life in the last several weeks. From jetsetting around europe, to taking care of my dad, and now back to focusing on school and work and stuff. My head is still spinning. I think the next few months will be goood for me however, as it gives me a chance to work on my things, and get life back on track. Now if the rain would just stop.
more to come