I've been reading a fantastic book the last couple weeks titled, "All About Love: New Visions" by bell hooks. It's a deeply insightful look at love on an interpersonal and societal level, what it is, what it means. It's written by a prominent feminist author. I read it many years ago, but picked it up again.

There are so many things in it that are inspiring, thought provoking, eye opening...

A family I know, whose daughters I coached in soccer for a year, recently sent out a couple of group emails to friends/family. She has an older daughter, 18/19 ish, who just had a baby out of marriage. This family is very conservative Christian. So I was honestly surprised to see the openness, compassion, love, and lack of judgmentalism in her emails. To some degree, I judged her wrong, and I suppose I was the judgmental one. It was a beautiful thing to find out though, that she was sharing such love and acceptance of her daughter to her friends and family, in a less than ideal situation. I was touched...

I just found out someone I know died in Iraq last week. I met him in college, talked to him at a few get togethers for the military fraternity I was a member of. He graduated several years before me, was a Captain in the Marine Corps and flew helicopters back then. The helicopter he was flying in Iraq last week crashed and he died.

I never knew him well, but I definitely remember him from college.

The main thing I feel is anger at our fucking government and leaders.

Summer soccer coaching was good. I coached a team with one of my good friends Jerome. We had a group of 19 girls, a few were really good, could easily play in college right now, as sophomores. I learned a lot, good experience.

I actually have a week off from soccer, with nothing to do. Hmm, I'm a bit bored with my evenings.

I went to this sweet place today where they have all the equipment and all the ingredients to brew your own beer. You show up, pick a beer type and recipe, and you make it! It takes about 2 hours of mixing all the stuff together, boiling it, etc. Then it goes into this big plastic bin with the yeast for a while, they filter it all, it conditions, and you come back in 2 weeks and bottle it. You don't have to worry about the mess, buying random stuff, etc. And, it works out to about $5 for a 6-pack of beer, so that's not bad at all. I went with 5 people from work, and we each brewed 14 gallons of beer each, plus extra, so I'm going to be walking away with like 20+ gallons of beer in two weeks. Should last a while!

It was fun... Assuming it turns out good, I'm going to have to do this again...

New hottest chic ever... Nicole Schelzinger, lead singer for the Pussycat Dolls. She's Filipino/Hawaiian/Russian. Unbelievable...

One of my girls broke her wrist in practice this week. It's a bit of a distressing experience (for me)! I'm getting all these parenting experiences without having kids. I guess that's a good thing. :)

I watched Michael Moore's new film "Sicko." I didn't really learn anything new, but it was heart-wrenching to hear all the stories of American's getting bent over by the American health care system. It's disgusting and utterly pathetic that we do such a shit worthless job of providing health care for all our citizens. It's the best example of what is fucked up about our nation. In this singular example of the American horror show, you can see dozens of underlying issues that plague our nation.

If we don't fix this stuff we are going to destroy ourselves.