Dazed and Confused

Well, after 5 days, I'm finally starting to feel settled in Denver. It's still a bit disconcerting to be living in a furnished sublet. I feel like I have to be on my best behavior since it's someone else's stuff (although given the state this place was in when I arrived, I don't think that's much of a worry), and despite being completely unpacked, I still don't feel like I live here yet. My life for the past few days has been a blur of wandering around downtown, searching maps to find nearby stores for cleaning supplies and things I forgot, trying to learn the ropes at work, and catching World Cup highlights whenever I can. All of this is made more difficult by the fact that I'm heavily jet-lagged due to the switch to Mountain Time. I keep nodding off around 9:30, and I wake up at the crack of dawn every morning raring to go. I did finally start to catch up a little this afternoon when I came home from work and grabbed a quick nap by the rooftop pool.

Overall, the decision to move out here seems to be a good one. Once I get comfortable at work, I think it's going to be a great spot for me, and the city itself has been nothing but amazing so far. The weather's been fantastic, and it just smells clean and healthy here, a welcome change after downtown Indy's ever-changing assortment of unpleasant scents. That said, there are some things I miss about the Circle City. Most of them will fade soon, but as long as AB is still there, I'll always be thinking about Indy.

Meanwhile, I'll try to find ways to amuse myself out here. With the holiday weekend coming up, there should be plenty of chances for fun. The Rapids apparently put on a great fireworks show every year, although the fact that they're matching up against the Revolution may not produce many fireworks of the goal-scoring variety, as neither team has been finding the back of the net too often lately. Thankfully, I'll have World Cup matches to keep my thirst for soccer sated. There's also a little movie coming out on Wednesday that I want to check out; haven't seen much publicity for it, but I think it's based on an old comic book. And in true competitive fashion, Marvel has cleverly timed the release of the teaser trailer for Spider-Man 3 to steal a little bit of DC's Superman thunder. Looks like, as rumored, Venom and Sandman will be the baddies this time. Hopefully, it stays truer to the quality of the first two movies and doesn't go the way of X-Men.

I'd talk about the US's early exit from the World Cup, but I'm still too annoyed to think coherently. I don't think Bruce Arena should be fired unless they have a better candidate lined up (too bad Guus Hiddink's not available), but I do think some new ideas would be a good thing for that coaching staff. Obviously, there were plenty of cracks in the dam, and when the pressure was on, they all burst. Mostly, what I learned from this World Cup is that the Yanks aren't anywhere near as good as they (or their fans) would like to think, and Clint Dempsey is the only US player who showed up. I'm guessing at least a few Euro clubs took notice.