Summer has arrived in Abu Dhabi. As I have mentioned, this is a region of the world where autumn is about one month (November), winter is about two (December and January) and spring is about two more (February and March). The rest? Summer. Just varieties of summer. The unpleasant bits, the really unpleasant bits and […]

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Stumbled across this today, and I’m glad I did. I was reading a story on Clint Dempsey in the New York Times and I followed a link to his clever goal for Fulham against Juventus … and off on the side of the youtube home page I noticed a clip that has all 17 of […]

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The last time I saw Floyd Landis was at a bike shop in the city of Rialto, California. Might have been late 2007, early 2008. He was the star of a one-man event to tell “his side” of the Tour de France drug-test story. He had been stripped of his 2006 championship after he failed […]

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Groceries here are not markedly cheaper than they are in the United States or Europe. Cheaper, but not off-the-charts cheaper. Perhaps because nearly everything here has to be imported. We live in a desert, after all, and eating dates all the time is not really a nutritional strategy. Can ruin your teeth, too. But there […]

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Did I mention this the other day? We have reached the time of year when we don’t really look at the weather report anymore. It’s just going to be degrees of “really hot.” Don’t need some national weather service for that. Hey, the high today, 104. Down from 106. That changes how I will approach […]

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So much for the invincible Orlando Magic. Eight-and-oh in the playoffs … but against whom? Overmatched Charlotte, which is built around … Steven Jackson? Gerald Wallace? A sweep of those guys, but so what? (And one game was decided by four points and two by nine. Yeah, a butt-kicking.) Then the Atlanta Hawks, nice team […]

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We had heard of this phenomenon even before we got here. It sounded a bit apocryphal. The sort of story that gets passed around by people trying to emphasize Just How Hot It Is here. But now we have lived it.

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It’s Friday. Metrics of this blog indicate that readership on Friday tails off and stays down for the weekend, then comes back on Monday. What? Are you cheeky monkeys reading this while on company time? How can you live with yourself? Just fine? Hmm. OK. So, today I’m going to ramble a bit on two […]

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Landon Donovan is clever enough to have done this on purpose. He might not be devious enough, though. Anyway, whatever went through his head … pretty much count on it getting into England’s. Landon today was quoted by yahoo.com as saying that 1) England superstar forward Wayne Rooney seems tired and that 2) all the […]

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So, roll out of bed on the other side of the world, and there is the final score: Boston 120, Cleveland 88? Boston 120, Cleveland 88! One of the bigger surprises in sports since I got here, in October. Absolutely did not see this coming. Even after the Celtics won Game 4 to even the […]

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