Sounders vs. Earthquakes at Kezar

My brother called me last Monday and asked if I wanted to go to the Sounders vs. Earthquakes U.S. Open Cup match that was happening Tuesday. He kicked in some of his miles to make the trip happen. Dan lives about 8 blocks from Kezar stadium where the contest was to be performed. Flew down Tuesday morning on Southwest, which was an experience so much better than any other flying experience I’ve had in years. I picked up a Sounders jersey for my nephew Victor and also brought him one of my old season ticket holder scarves.

I tried to explain to Dan and Brenda about Seattle fans, particularly E.C.S., who made up the bulk of those supporting the Sounders side at the game. I don’t think she believed me when I said our fans have some mean chants. Her face contorted in different directions when E.C.S. started up a let him die! chant in response to an Earthquakes player who went down particularly easily. The you’re a bastard referee chant brought up some wide eyes too.

But the drama came when we sat down in the section next to E.C.S. instead of in the E.C.S. section. All the seats were G.A., but the stadium staff really didn’t want Sounders supporters spreading out. Three or four times the staff came up to us and asked or told us to move in with E.C.S. I refused because we had a 6 year old with us. He wouldn’t be able to see or hear the game in the midst of the jumping E.C.S faithful.

Eventually the guy gave me the line that it’s just that his supervisor told him and he was just following directions. I told him he needed to get his supervisor to come down and explain to the 6 year old that he’d have to stand behind the loud jumping people. Then about 30 other people (most with young kids) saw we weren’t budging and moved over themselves. About then the supervisor must have given up, because the staff guy just waved us into the section we were already in at that point.

crossposted from King Rat.

heart attack-ack-ack!

Also last Monday, my aunt had a heart attack. I posted something about it, but locked it down to friends at the time. The situation was not good for a bit. However, the latest email update was from her instead of my uncle. And she gets released from the hospital tomorrow! Which is most excellent news! Likely to be no permanent damage even. I am thrilled because we’ve had enough crappy news in my family the last few years. We could stand to go a decade or two without more.

crossposted from King Rat.

Teaching web building

And in one other bit of news, I started this afternoon on a temporary part time job teaching a group of 8 high school students how to create and build web sites. So for the next two months I will not have the free time I have had. Instead of a flexible half-time schedule that I’ve been doing for my one client, I will be doing that work in the mornings and heading to South Park Community Centery in the afternoon for the class. A lot less flexibility and I’ll need to be way more organized to get my personal stuff done.

Also, this is the first time I’ll have taught in many many years. My previous teaching experience was as an assistant to someone else, or when someone else already prepared the material to be covered (when I worked at the Department of Employment). This time I have to come up with the lesson plans and activities myself, as well as hold high schoolers attention for 4 hours a day. Oh, and I had all of 2½ days to come up with the first day’s plan. I did a lot of breaking the ice activities today. Thought getting them talking would be good before we dived into HTML. Which will be the next few days. Once they have the hang of basic HTML and CSS we’ll move into WordPress and also cover “social marketing” and some basic web design.

Oh, and the cool thing about the program. If the students do well, they get paid for this.

crossposted from King Rat.