102

Nope, 102 is not the temperature. Today's high is expected to be 105. I realized last night that today is my 102nd day in Vegas. Which means I missed my 100th day. Oh well. Times are tough all over.

I had another successful night of writing, about 1300 words. I need a mere 650 words to hit my 4000 word goal for the week. This may be tough. I have been merrily writing the last two days after my supposed bout of two day writer's block, but I am once again at an impasse. I need to write a scene and I don't know what it should be. It's truly a shame because I know exactly what's going to happen in the scene after that!

I know your first thought. Just write the next scene and come back and finish the current scene later. It sounds good in theory, but I just can't write like that. Now my success for the week depends on whether or not I can finish off my current scene or not.

Stay tuned!

I stayed at the Hilton for a while this morning to watch a soccer match between Spain and Sweden. I was planning on parlaying the spread with the over, but they wouldn't let me for some reason. I won't get into any explanations as to why I liked the bet. I have bigger gripes, but I'll get to that in a moment. I really liked the over, but when I wasn't allowed to play the parlay, I just didn't bet. I should have played my instincts because the Spaniards won 2-1. My over would have hit and the spread would have been a push. Regardless, I placed no bets and sat down to enjoy the game.

Unfortunately, the game was a perfect example of why this sport will never be overly popular in North America. The two worst things about soccer happened in this game:

1) Sweden ties the game 1-1 in the 34th minute and then proceeds to play to "not lose". Rather than try to carry some momentum to a possible win, they set themselves to play defense the rest of the game. There was almost 60 minutes left for crying out loud! I'm glad they were unsuccessful and Spain won. They did nothing to even deserve a tie after the they scored. It was an absolute snooze fest after an excellent start to the game.

2) The complete unwillingness of the referees to call a foul in the box. For those that don't remember their gym classes, any defensive fouls in the goalie box is an automatic penalty kick. At the end of the first half, a Swedish player OBVIOUSLY fouled a Spanish player in the box and there was no call. The guy didn't even make a play for the ball, in fact, his back was to the ball. He just threw himself into the guy and laid him out.

What has to happen to get a foul in there? Decapitation?

It was a ridiculous game and painful to watch. There are other reasons that Americans won't embrace the sport, like how all the players are a bunch of flopping pansies. Women's soccer is far more interesting to watch because they play tough. The men play like wimps. And of course, there is the fact that a game can, and often does, end in a tie. Americans hate the idea of a tie so much they've long since forced the NHL to decide games by penalty shots. They may as well flip a coin.