VfB Stuttgart had a horrific start to the season where they went 1-7-7. The were in the midst of a relegation battle, when the front office decided to fire then coach Markus Babbel. The newly appointed coach Christian Gross had a profound and immediate impact winning his first game 3-0 just 4 days after he was hired. The newly revitalized squad continued this momentum and kept winning in the league, and playing well in the champions league. Current, Stuttgart sits at sixth place with a record of 15-8-9 with 2 weeks remaining.. They are capable of clinching a place in a european tournament with a win over the weekend, and with some luck may be able to make it to the champions league once again. Although it was not an ideal season, it does make me look forward to next year.

The coaching will be intact and we will be returning a large number of our current players. However, the thing that excites me the most of the retirement of our current goalie, Lehmann. He is one of my least favorite players and has lost us many many games. The team will greatly improve with his retirement... not to sound rude or anything. The team is very young, with I believe the majority of the starters being under 22 years old. They will continue to improve and we will soon be competing for a title once again. We may not have the money that teams like barca, real madrid, or the big 4 from england do, but we are capable of developing talent... which often gets taken by those teams with money which really pisses me off. But o well, what can you do.

So is this the last blog or do we have to do one for next week? Don't we get one off at some point? I am not sure, but I guess we will see.

As we approach finals and the end of school year, I feel my motivation to do work decreasing each day. There have been many days where I sit down to work, and I will hear down the hall "anyone want to play ____(various things)" and I will join them without a moment of hesitation. I am sure that I am not the only one that this is happening to. I have seen my grades drop in several classes, but hopefully I can bring them back up since the drop wasn't anything too significant. At least this semester is almost over, I can't stand the classes I'm taking. I have two humanities classes which is awful for me, a ridiculous yet pointless engineering class, and physics class that is practically impossible and a math class that almost puts me to sleep every time I go. Not only are my classes dreadful, it has become increasingly beautiful outside. I could go on, but I just realized that I feel like I talk about this every time so I guess I'll find something else to write about.

To be honest, I am not sure of what to write, so I think I am just going on a Wikipedia run and tell you guys about it... so here goes.

Apparently, A viking is a Norse explorer that colonized many places between the late eight and early eleventh century. Norse being those who speak North Germanic Languages. The North Germanic Languages is part of the three Germanic languages. Among these languages is the now extinct East Germanic Languages which include languages such as Vandalic, Burgundian, and Crimean Gothic. Paul the Deacon was a Benedictine monk who was primarily a historian. His major work was the Historia gentis Langobardorum which accounts the history of the lombards from 568 to the death of King Liutprand.

That is all for now.

Here is my story for the assignment we did the other day

The origin of fans

It was a scorching summer afternoon when I was first amazed by the capabilities of wind. The cooling experience of it flying pat me caused an insatiable desire to harness this power. I had lived many years being forced to deal with the heat, but no longer, the wind would be mine. All else seemed meaningless now; I rejected the outside world and spent many sleepless days devoting myself to developing concepts to harness this power, yet all failed. Becoming desperate I was forced to quit my job and began to seclude myself even from my family. Unaware of the situation my wife attempt to console me, yet upon hearing the truth behind my actions she grew frustrated. She raised her hand and stuck me. It was at this moment that a cool breeze followed. But how could this be? I was inside... there was no wind. It soon dawned upon me that this was what I had been looking for, artificial wind. With haste I constructed an apparatus that would enlarge my hands. With my new invention in hand I went around town slapping those who looked as if they needed a break from the heat. Yet the response was different from expected. All of those who had received my aid quickly turned to anger and cast me away. Perhaps they were just simply unaware of the miraculous gift I had just given them. Their ignorance was astounding. I had just accomplished something that had previously been reserved for the gods. Perhaps they were just afraid of the abilities I now possessed. It became clear to me that I would have to develop a machine that would slap people for me. Thus I began work on a set of rotating hangs capable of doing so. After its completion I left it in town saying it was a gift from god. Although I never saw it again, I am sure that it has been put to good use.

Every year around this time I am reminding of my growing contempt towards baseball. It is not the actual sport that bothers me(in most cases, I'm really not a fan), but what really grinds my gears is that baseball ruins many of the programs I generally watch on ESPN. Sportscenter becomes unwatchable because like 95% of the airtime is all baseball, and the same happens to the other shows on that network.

In other news, a month from today is the last day of class. It has felt to me that the spring semester has gone by much more quickly than fall, perhaps because of the placement of the breaks. We are starting to approach the final stretch, where the workload always begins to pile up. The weather gets really nice outside, and the last thing I want to do is work, but with tests and finals preparation approaching I realize that I may have to waste beautiful days working. With all of that being said, I am really looking forward to summer. Although I have no trips planned(money is a little tight nowadays), I am really looking forward to relaxing. I plan to work, but that won't prevent me from hanging out with friends, maybe even taking a few small trips to places.

I guess since I'm talking about summer I should quickly mention the world cup again. It starts in June, and will make the summer even better. I still remember watching the world cup in '98 and being marveled by it. It leaves me speechless each time and yearning for more. I don't feel like doing an in depth analysis of the teams right now, maybe another time; but there are so many teams that I feel could win it that I think it will be an excellent event.