The 1st Annual Westing Family Press Short Story Contest is officially underway! If you think you can write well enough to win an I-Pod for your trouble, then send us a short story by March 15th, 2007.

On Friday I put my motorcycle away for the winter at Motoworks , a vintage BMW shop on 19th and Western in Pilsen. They sold me my bike, a silver 1979 R100/7, last year, and Steve, one of the mechanics there, has worked on it since. It's a real looker, but it pulls pretty good too. As I look back on the year in review-not something I usually do-I realize that Westing has changed everything about me. I live in Chicago, a city I'd never been to before the trip. I ride motorcycles, something I'd never done before the trip. And I don't have a job besides writing, because I want to keep living the trip...

Isn't he just another Bruce Arena guy with a slightly shorter list of credentials? That's the question a lot of U.S. Soccer fans have been asking since USSF President Sunil Gulati named Bradley the new interim coach of the national team, following a botched negotiation with Germany's World Cup coach and former world star Juergen Klinsmann. I played two seasons for Bradley at Princeton and have kept track of his career as much as possible since then. I have a lot of respect for him both as a man and a coach, but the questions remain about whether he is the man to turn U.S. Soccer around after a dismal 2006 World Cup...

I've been on a good streak with reading so I thought I'd put a reading list together for the holidays. I've finally caught on, after years of reading to learn how to write, to what I really like reading. And that has, as a consequence, made me realize how I want to write. So it's all working out happily for now. Sadly, there isn't much chance that I'll turn you on to some new discovery.