It will come as no surprise . . .

. . . that the main site is still offline.

Toronto FC still looking for first goal of season

Toronto's newest professional sports team, Toronto FC, is both winless and goal-less after four outings, including last night's 0-1 loss to Kansas City:

A chilly afternoon didn't stop the crowd of 20,158 from welcoming first-class professional soccer to Toronto. The raucous, largely red-clad fans chanted and cheered from the opening whistle to the last, and their club gave them much to celebrate in the early going.

After starting their MLS tenure with three road games, Toronto FC clearly seemed energized by the BMO Field atmosphere and responded with the strongest first half of their brief history. Toronto had three shots on goal to Kansas City's one in the half and dominated the pace of play. It was a far cry from the club's showing in the first half of Wednesday's 3-0 loss at K.C., when the Wizards outshot TFC 9-2.

The first real chance for either squad came in the 10th minute, when some sloppy clearing from the Kansas City defense led to Toronto forward Maurice Edu carrying the ball into the K.C. penalty area. Edu managed to separate himself from his defender, but his hard shot sailed wide right of the net.

The first goal in TFC history was nearly an own goal. An innocuous-looking corner kick in the 14th minute from Toronto's Kevin Goldthwaite was caught, but then dropped by Wizards 'keeper Kevin Hartman. But he managed to grab the ball just before it rolled over the goal line and gave Toronto an unusual debut on the MLS scoresheets.

My kind of science class

H/T again to Roger Henry.

An alternate source of maps

R.J. Henry, through diligent espionage efforts, has found a source of Soviet-era maps, including London, Dublin, Manchester, and Newcastle. Roger writes:

Which makes you wonder what their maps of the US of A looked like. Still, it worked both ways. Working in Moscow in 1980, the only street map of the city came from the US embassy and was obviously prepared from high altitude pictures or, maybe, satellite pics. Even the Russians used it as the attitude of the authorities in those days was "If you don't know where you are/going then you shouldn't be here".

Fiction reader's life-cycle

The Seven Stages of Falling In Love With an Author. Addicted readers will get this one, immediately.

H/T to Laura Gallagher.

Main site still down

This is beginning to be a regularly scheduled post . . . the main site is still out of service.

With the 7th pick, the Vikings draft . . .

. . . Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson. Access Vikings has the details:

The Vikings had their pick between Peterson and Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn and they elected to go with the running back.

UPDATE 3: Just got some more Peterson quotes from an interview he did in New York. Asked about sharing time with Chester Taylor, Peterson said: “I think that will help me a lot playing with a guy like Chester. Just learning the ins and outs and some guidance. You know , you’re never too good to not have advice from other guys. I look forward to that. It’s a team that when I visited, they emphasized that they love to run the ball. I’m just ready to help them and be a big contributor.” Peterson said he would be flying to the Twin Cities today and he should meet the local media on Sunday morning.

UPDATE 2: Peterson just did a conference call with the Twin Cities media. He said he would not need surgery on his collarbone and that he feels good, “really good,” right now. Peterson also said he is working on running lower to the ground to avoid taking a pounding.

From what little I've heard, this sounds like a good pick: the other top choice in that slot was quarterback Brady Quinn, and drafting another QB would have been the next best thing to saying that the Tarvaris Jackson experiment is already a bust.

Chris Taylor hob-nobs with the brass

Chris Taylor reports on the Rev. John Weir Foote, VC, CD Memorial Luncheon.

A different kind of photoblog

This isn't your father's photoblog . . . it's more like your great-grandfather's photoblog.

H/T to Christian Tucker.

Main site still down

Well, the main site is still not responding (unless you count a 404 as a response), so Jon is still doing whatever maintenance may be necessary over at bolditalic.com.