Mehserle got off light. He doesn’t need a rally.

ETA: I hope this house-buying works out so I can leave Walnut Creek. The house is back in El Cerrito, where I used to live.

I’m currently lost somewhere near the self-doubt signs on my current project. Time to refuel and head for the expressway.

Thanks for the link, anghara.

I mostly watch rather than play. I’m pretty good at sports that don’t involve a ball (i.e. swimming, dancing, wrestling). I’m an okay sprinter and a poor long-distance runner, or at least I was last time I tried.

When it comes to sports with balls (heh heh heh), it’s a completely different story. I was okay at basketball. I couldn’t shoot worth anything, but I was fantastic on defense. In middle school basketball, I’d yank the ball from other players’ hands. Perfectly legal if I don’t touch the player, just the ball. And if I couldn’t yank, I’d drag us both to the ground and wrestle until the ref whistled a jump ball. Totally fun.

But basketballs are big and pretty slow-moving (comparatively). I have always struggled with any sport that involves a fast-moving ball. Especially when it’s headed for me. Softball terrified me because I was afraid of getting hit by a pitch–or worse, someone’s line drive. I played catcher so I felt safer (slow-pitch softball, no base-stealing).

Tennis–I had a killer serve. I just couldn’t hit anything back. So I aced my serves and couldn’t do anything else. I did better in doubles. Volleyball–also aced many of my serves, served some perfect games, was reduced to gibbering mess if a volleyball came at me.

I think it’s because I needed glasses at a very young age, and had bad eyesight before that–so I never developed that sense of “where the ball is” when I’m not touching it. (Contact juggling: fun and not too hard. Toss juggling: I never could learn it.)

Long ramble, made short: I was in the Persian coffeeshop today and got distracted by the penalty kicks in the World Cup. Being a soccer goalie is somewhere near the bottom on my list of “things I’d enjoy and be good at.”

Sometimes it doesn’t matter a lot what they look like, and sometimes I’m fussy about the details.

So I’ve gotten most of the pics for the important characters in my novel. I’ve got one picture right now that’s close to what I want, but his coloration is all wrong. I need to photoshop it at Kinko’s, but I’m kinda rusty on my skills (not that I ever had many with this). I’m willing to try it, but I thought I’d ask here first–maybe someone would find it easy and fun to do.

Anyone want to help me alter the colors in the photo? If not, I’ll just go to Kinko’s and try it myself.

Since they’re new, I’d like to speak up and say that so far, they’ve treated me very well. Good response time for one thing. Also, when I had a small issue with the contract, Redstone fixed it and emailed me a new contract within 30 minutes. They even thanked me for pointing it out.