Melyssa-with-a-Y

Sigh. Another year, another Rose Bowl . (don't I sound ungrateful?!) After beating the Bruins in their home stadium (which is in fact the Rose Bowl) a respectable 28-7, and with Oregon beating Oregon State, USC was awarded the traditional Pac-10 berth at the Rose Bowl game on January 1. Four years running. It's not quite the national championship... The sports writers are not terribly excited about this one, given how well USC did against Ohio State, but we'll see. I'm still hoping for a good game! (and I love the countdown clock on the Rose Bowl website!) But the funniest news from the day had to be the ad that UCLA put in the LA Times, with Coach Neuheisel, with the headline 'The football monopoly in Los Angeles is officially over.'" Um. Not so much. The USC folks took that and made a t-shirt with the same text, except it says, "The football monopoly in Los Angeles is officially over THERE" (in cardinal and gold, of course). :) You can get...

Last night was the USC-Notre Dame game in LA. This is the first time in six years that I haven't been there! (it's not so bad really, they only play at Thanksgiving every other year) At 1am, we brought up the online game-tracker and watched the beginnings of what we hoped would be a massacre by the Trojans. And it was! I went to bed after the first touchdown, but the final score was 38-3. Fight On! (and, Oregon State lost to Oregon, so SC might get to go to the Rose Bowl after all!) I thought about sleeping late, but decided to get up and go to the British Museum with Mom and Bryan. I mean, I'm only in London once a year -- if I'm lucky -- and the last time I was here was 3 years ago. I could spare an hour or two of sleep for the British Museum! of course, it was cold and rainy and gross outside, but it was worth it to go back and see the sarcophagus of Cleopatra and the Mesopotamian sculptures and Egyptian hieroglyphics. I love that stuff. :) I also love the a...

(SI is calling it the "house of horrors" - but I think it's a curse, plain and simple.) *Sigh.* The Trojans went back to Corvallis, and got their a$$es handed to them on a silver platter. Again. Freshman Jacquizz Rodgers (the 5-foot-7, 193-pound tailback) became the bane of their existence, running through blocks and streaking down the field like he was covered in Crisco. Couldn't stop him! Wasn't hard to see what he was doing, he was just so "wiry" (my favorite line from Rhys Ifans in " The Replacements ") that they couldn't grab him. And the team's trademark ball-stripping moves wouldn't work, because he was so much smaller than the defense. *sigh* Two touchdowns in the third quarter, one in the fourth (in 1:20, no less!) -- flashes of "the real USC" muted by their inability to stop the Beavers from running all over them. And Rey Maualuga's knee injury didn't help. It was a long night. I'm sure it was a l...

How many parts of this quote make my blood boil? Hugh Hewitt on OSU-USC football game: "[I]t's probably the last football game we'll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama" Leaving aside his contention that the Buckeyes are going to "slaughter" the Trojans (HAH!), the Obama thing just infuriates me. What is wrong with these people?!?! In much happier news, it's being reported that former Secretary of State Colin Powell is going to endorse Senator Obama. Woohooo!!! When I was working for America's Promise in the spring of '97, there was buzz about Powell running for President. He didn't (his wife Alma didn't like the idea, among other reasons), but things are different now. It'll be very "in your face" to the Bush Administration, but they made him a scapegoat, so I don't think he owes them anything.

Sorry I'm a day late, but it wasn't officially a Happy New Year until the Rose Bowl game ended. :) And boy, it couldn't end soon enough for the Illini. Final score, 49-17. (The Trojans could have gone over 50 pts if Pete had called a time out with 10 seconds to go so we could set up, but that would have been adding insult to injury, so the game just ended.) It did sort of irk me that the cameras kept showing closeups of the Illinois fans, making it look like they had taken over far more than the 1/4 of the stadium that they actually got. And there was a bit of taunting, sure -- the Trojan players didn't really need to be dancing on the sidelines when the game started, and Desmond Reed didn't need to do a front flip into the end zone on a TD (which resulted in a penalty), but to have unsportsmanlike conduct called at the end of every other play in the fourth quarter... that was a bit much. Of course, by that point, it was just as often called on the Illini as it...

The final score today: USC 24-UCLA 7. :) Yes, the Trojans won their last four games (Booty's finger seems to have healed ok) and are the Pac-10 champs for the sixth year in a row. It's also our 32nd appearance in the Rose Bowl , and our sixth straight BCS bowl appearance. Not too shabby! Coach Pete is 24-0 in November! Someday, I will get to go to the Rose Bowl. For now, I'll have to settle for watching it with the Austin USC club on January 1. FIGHT ON!

October is (was) Breast Cancer Awareness Month . And as you all know, breast cancer research is my crusade, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation is my pet charity. So I got organized, and had all of the people at work wear pink and give $5 on the last Friday of the month. In fact, we asked everyone to wear pink every Friday, but only collected money and had a pink party on the 26th. [And in an organization that is 75% men, I offered them the option to pay $10 to not wear pink. It worked!] We had pink cupcakes, pink rice krispie treats, chocolate chip cookies with pink m&m's, and pink ribbon prizes! And we raised over $250! It was very exciting. Then I left work and went to the gym (and wore a pink t-shirt, natch), and my trainer made me do an hour of squats and lunges and frog-jumps and crunches... needless to say, I couldn't walk much on Saturday! But I still went to the UT-Nebraska football game with Janie. And now I can say I've seen the " Godzillatron! " ...

In the past, USC has been a strong second half team. This year, we've been a passable team, waking up in the 4th Qtr with a few flashes of brilliance. Until this week. Benching John David Booty in favor of backup QB Mark Sanchez, the Trojans were able to (as CNN-SI put it ) "Spank" Notre Dame 38-0 this weekend. Awesome! I was a little worried before the game with the story of the Trojans' bumpy flight into South Bend , but the jostling they got seems to have toughened them up a bit. :) Another part of the improvement is definitely Sanchez. Booty was pushing as hard as he could, trying to live up to the legacy of Palmer and Leinart, throwing passes that would have been miracles even for those two stellar QBs. Sanchez, on the other hand, is playing with what he has -- he's completing passes to the whole stable of RBs, who are making sometimes incredible catches that make him look good. It seems to be working. The stats from yesterday's game are shocking -...

It was a looong week. I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Santa Fe, NM, for work. I gave a quick presentation, and managed to get an invitation to Singapore out of it! (Have to figure out how to fund that one...) Caught up with my former boss, learned a lot about the energy industry and where we need to go, and played hooky for about an hour (part of our lunch hour) to go shopping. :) I could have bought kokopelli EVERYTHING , but I was very well behaved -- I only bought a kokopelli necklace (sort of like this) for myself, and some pistachios to bring back to the office. Came home to a busy Friday at work, got killed by my trainer at the gym, and had dinner and drinks with the girls, which was fun. Saturday was spent making Mediterranean munchies for supper club. I made regular hummus (with extra garlic), roasted red pepper - chipotle hummus, and falafel. (chick peas galore!) I used the box of falafel mix - I'm never sure what that special spice is that makes falafel tast...

Yay! It's college football season again! And the Trojans are #1 again! The game two weeks ago against Idaho (at the Coliseum) was sort of lame, although USC won 38-10. The talk was that the team was holding back to keep Nebraska from seeing what they were capable of. And apparently even the fans in the stands were so bored with the blowout that they started leaving in the 3rd quarter. Then we had a week off. That was really weird, a week 2 bye? I didn't know what to do last Saturday night. [ok, that's just sad.] Yesterday, the Trojans traveled to Nebraska. I have to say, I'm thankful that our team doesn't have the kind of mascot where we (the fans) feel the need to wear goofy things like corn cobs on our heads (or cheese wedges, or any of those other midwestern oddities). ;) I kept thinking I saw cardinal and gold in the stands, when it was actually those giant corn cob hats. Funny. Booty's passing wasn't getting us anywhere (one receiver dropped thr...

There are perks to having George Lucas serve as the Grand Marshall of the Tournament of Roses Parade . :) Not only were there two Star Wars-related floats ( Endor , the Ewok planet, and Naboo , Princess Amidala's planet)... there was also a platoon of Storm Troopers (the 501st Legion )! Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO and R2-D2, Boba Fett, and Anakin Skywalker walked or rode along with the floats. There's some great video on YouTube of the whole thing. Ok, so the members of the 501st Legion are a little bit nutty with their Star Wars affinity... it was still cool to see them all marching down the street. Of course, the most exciting part of New Year's Day is "The Granddaddy of Them All" -- the Rose Bowl Game! USC showed convincingly that the game against UCLA last month was really a fluke, and may in fact start next year at #1 again!

5 Best Things about being in DC this week: 1) Hanging out with the fam. Yes, they're a little bit nutty, but we have had a good time. Although for future reference, a week may be a little bit too long for family bonding. 2) Seeing all my pals. I managed to get together with most of the people I wanted to see this week, with one notable exception ( she knows who she is, she was off getting tan in Florida !) I also missed seeing some of the new mommies and their wee ones, but I'll be back in either March or June - or both! 3) Driving mom's car. My car is just going to seem like a sluggish tin can when I get back. Oh well. I still love my Cruiser. 4) The food! I had sushi, Indian food (twice), dim sum, bison, and even some Mexican food this week. urp. (Have to find a dim sum place in Austin.) 5) Staying an extra day to watch USC in the Rose Bowl! As long as UT is closed for the President Ford remembrance day, Dad offered to pay for me to stay an extra day, and this wa...

The USC Trojans, after effectively squashing the Fighting Irish like bugs, felt good. No, they felt Grrreat! They were going to the BCS national championship to prove their mettle against Ohio State -- in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year at SC -- *if* they could win the last game of the season against crosstown rivals UCLA. Piece of cake! That turned out to be a big IF. We're perfectly content to play in the Rose Bowl, mind you. But the boys I saw on the field at the Coliseum last weekend were not the same boys that came out to play this weekend. UCLA is not that good. The Bruins were 6-5, fourth in the PAC-10. They just out-played us, plain and simple . It sucked. And somebody, please put Brent Musberger out of his misery. I know it wouldn't have felt as bad if we had been winning, but his commentary was really horrific. Maybe he was just being snotty because USC sent a nasty letter to the network after Musberger revealed Booty's hand signals on national televi...

That's it. That's all I need to write. Well, ok, I'll write about the rest of Saturday. :) Bry and I got up and got out of the hotel at 9am, as planned. We made great time getting to LA, pulling up at Marc's at about 11:15am. We drove up to the hills behind the Getty to pick up one of Marc's Band buddies -- they looked so cute in their matching band jackets! I should have taken a picture -- and then we were off to lunch and campus. We went to the Two Nine for lunch - the boys all had the Trojan Double Bacon Cheeseburger. (urp.) Then we walked down to campus. The place was hopping! Bry and I immediately headed for the bookstore, where we had to stand in line to get inside! The line moved quickly, and soon we were among the hordes of people upstairs digging through shirts, sweatshirts and other Trojan paraphernalia for the perfect item. I got a t-shirt, a sweatshirt (my old one is getting pretty ragged) and a pair of USC earrings! Had to put those on right away. The k...

If you read this blog, you know that I am a big USC football fan. Ain't nothin' but a family thing. :) But when forced back to reality, I will admit that my undergrad degree is from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey . Rutgers has a proud history in football: RU and Princeton played the first college football game EVER in 1869. [ Rutgers won, 6-4] Up til now (since the time that I was there, in nineteen- ninety- mumble ), the RU football team hasn't been much of a threat to anyone but themselves... they went 1-11 in 2002. But things are looking up. They did well enough last year to make it to a Bowl game, and this year are 8-0 and the #15 team in the nation! Last night, they made it 9-0 ( I can't get used to this Thursday night football thing... my dad had to call me and tell me it was on ) by beating Louisville, the #3 team! Go Scarlet Knights!! They will undoubtedly move up the rankings on Sunday, so USC had better win too, or I'm gonna have to find a Ru...