Coogs lose to TCU, end 2007 with 8-5 record

The University of Houston Cougars ended the 2007 football season on a down note last Friday evening, losing 20-13 to longtime nemesis Texas Christian University in the Texas Bowl at Reliant Stadium. It was Houston's eighth bowl defeat in a row; the Coogs have not won a postseason game since the 1980 Garden State Bowl. Moreover, it was Houston's eighth loss in a row to TCU; the Coogs have not beaten the Horned Frogs since 1992, when both teams were members of the Southwest Conference.

Credit has to be given to TCU and coach Gary Patterson: they were determined to keep the Coogs' top offensive weapon, running back Anthony Alridge, from becoming a factor in the game and they did so, limiting "Quick Six" to 29 yards on 15 carries. In fact, TCU's defense simply shut down the Cougar running game, which netted a measly 32 yards. The Horned Frog defense also did a great job placing pressure on UH quarterback Case Keenum, whom himself showed a great ability to scramble and improvise under pressure as he completed 23 of 38 passes for 335 yards and a touchdown. The Coogs had a chance to tie the game in its waning seconds, but what should have been a touchdown pass to receiver Jeron Harvey missed by mere inches and TCU defensive lineman Chase Ortiz sealed the deal two plays later flew by hitting Case Keenum as time expired, sealing the win. The 13 points Houston managed to score were its lowest of the year. While TCU's offense didn't exactly put up stellar numbers themselves, they scored just enough points to win. Horned Frog QB Andy Dalton, who completed 21 of 30 passes for 249 yards, was named the bowl's MVP.

Of course, given the hardship the Cougars faced going into this bowl, it's remarkable that the game was as competitive as it was. The decision by former head coach Art Briles to bail out on his team prior to their bowl game - and to take two of his offensive assistants to the coaching graveyard that is Baylor with him - put the program in a very difficult position going into the Texas Bowl. Interim head coach Chris Thurmond and the remaining assistants did the best they could under the circumstances, and to the team's credit they stayed focused and played a decent TCU team tough. Unfortunately, it just wasn't good enough, and the Coogs' bowl losing streak continues.

The Coogs end the 2007 season with an 8-5 record, which is one win better than I predicted in my pre-season outlook. It was a season of ups and downs, featuring exciting nail-biters such as a 56-48 victory over crosstown rival Rice and a 34-31 win over UTEP in El Paso, as well as disappointing losses such as a 35-37 home defeat to East Carolina (wherein the Coogs missed not one but two field goals at the end of the game that would have secured the victory) or a 7-56 road shellacking at the hands of Tulsa. The Coogs also came within one play of potentially defeating Alabama in Tuscaloosa, but fell short 24-30. Although the Coogs end 2007 with their first back-to-back winning seasons since 1989-90, the team proved itself to be little better than mediocre; every team they beat ended the season with a losing record, and every team they lost to ended the season with a winning record.

Going into the season, most savvy UH fans (myself included) expressed the most concern about the quarterback position, the offensive line and the secondary. These concerns were accurate, but not to the degree feared at season's beginning. The quarterback situation proved to be unsettled for the entire season, with Case Keenum and Blake Joseph trading time behind center. The offensive line was far from stellar, allowing a cringe-inducing 34 sacks over the course of the season. To be fair, some of these sacks were caused by young quarterback uncertainty - both Keenum and Joseph showed a tendency to hold on to the ball too long - but the O-line's domination at the hands of TCU's defensive line last Friday proved just how relatively weak it was. In spite of these weaknesses, however, the Cougars still managed one of the nation's most productive offenses, amassing almost 502 yards per game and scoring 34.5 points per game.

The secondary wasn't quite as bad as feared going into the season, although the UH faithful obviously would have liked to have seen fewer touchdown passes (the Coogs allowed 28) and more interceptions (UH picked off 14). The CBs and safeties were helped by the fact that Rocky Schwartz, although technically a linebacker, spent most of his time in the backfield and led the team in tackles with 103.

Then there was the Unholy Trinity of turnovers, penalties and poor special teams play that plagued the UH football team for yet another season. The Cougars end the year as one of the nation's most penalty-prone programs, committing 101 flags over the course of the fall. They were also one of the nation's most turnover-prone teams in 2007, losing the ball a total of 30 times. And don't get me started on special teams; not only did the kicking game cost the Coogs at least one victory this season (ECU), but their net punting average of 31.2 yards and their punt return defense of 14.6 yards are both among the nation's worst. After five years under Art Briles, it became clear that these problems were simply not going to go away.

But none it matters now. The season - Houston's fourth winning season in five years - is over, Art Briles is gone, and the Cougars and their fans now look forward to new coach Kevin Sumlin (currently an assistant with the Oklahoma Sooners) and the 2008 season.

What can we expect from the Coogs in 2008? It's simply too early to tell. We know that the Coogs lose key seniors such as Anthony Alridge, Donnie Avery, Jeron Harvey and Dustin Dickinson on offense and Tate Stewart, Brandon Pahulu and Rocky Schwartz on defense. We know that the gap between the departure of Art Briles and the arrival of Kevin Sumlin (as well as the fact that Briles is busy redirecting what were his Houston recruits to Baylor) means that Houston's 2008 recruiting class is probably going to be pretty sparse in terms of talent. And we know that, when a school taps an assistant head coach with no personal track record of winning or losing to be their next head coach, there's always a risk involved. Sumlin is, to be sure, an unproven commodity.

But I'm not going to write off the 2008 season just yet. The schedule, which sees the Coogs play division rivals Tulsa and UTEP at home and whose toughest games are road dates against Oklahoma State in Stillwater and East Carolina in Greenville, is not unfavorable. There is plenty of returning talent on this team: Case Keenum, for all his faults, showed flashes of brilliance over the fall and has the potential to be a pretty good quarterback; Terrence Ganaway and Andre Kohn show promise at running back, as do Teric Williams and Chris Gilbert at wide receiver; Mark Hafner is a solid tight end that will hopefully see more utilization in Sumlin's offense; defensive end Phillip Hunt (10.5 sacks and 18 tackles for loss), cornerback Kenneth Fontenette (65 tackles and 4 interceptions), linebacker Cody Lubojasky and safety Ernest Miller return to a defense that, while still weak, has steadily improved over the last few seasons. Kevin Sumlin has an impressive resume, and he has worked under proven winner Bob Stoops for the last five years. There's definitely reason for optimism.

In spite of his faults as a coach (lack of attention to defense or special teams, poor team discipline, etc.) or the rather classless way in which he quit in his team prior to their bowl appearance, Art Briles deserves credit for returning a winning spirit to a University of Houston football program that for so many years had only known defeat. But the 2007 season, with its slightly-better-than-average result, indicated that he had taken the program as far as he could. Now it's time to see if Kevin Sumlin can take Cougar football to the next step: bowl victories and top 25 appearances. The UH faithful will find out, beginning on August 30, 2008.

Troy gets screwed. Or shafted. Take your pick.

The college bowl season is well underway, with a a handful of games already in the books (East Carolina's nail-biting upset of Boise State in the Hawaii Bowl being the most surprising result so far) and many more games to come over the following couple of weeks, including the traditional slate of games on New Year's Day and the BCS National Championship Game on January 7th. Once it's all over, 32 games involving 64 teams, or almost 54% percent of the 119-team Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-A), will have been played.

Some college football elitists decry this proliferation of bowl games, claiming that most of these games are meaningless and that their existence has made the reward of postseason play equally meaningless. I disagree, because I like college football and more bowl games mean... more college football. Besides, it's not like anybody's being forced to watch any of these games. Don't think that Purdue and Central Michigan matchup in tonight's Motor City Bowl is worth watching? Then watch something else.

One of the best things about the large number of bowl games, however, is that fewer and fewer deserving teams miss out on postseason action. Several years ago, I began the fictional "Screw Bowl" and "Shaft Bowl" to commemorate teams, almost always belonging to one of the non-BCS "have-not" conferences, who racked up impressive records over the season but nevertheless spent the holidays at home. On four occasions (Wyoming in 1996, Miami of Ohio in 1998, Toledo in 2000, Northern Illinois), teams with ten wins were left out of the postseason bowl party. In eight other instances, nine-win teams stayed home. As the number of bowl games has increased, however, the number of teams with winning records who spend the holidays at home has decreased. Last year, for example, every team with a winning record went to a bowl game, thus no need for the Screw Bowl or the Shaft Bowl.

This year, only one school with a winning record is missing out on holiday bowl action. The Troy Trojans, of the Sun Belt Conference, ended the 2007 season with eight wins, including a road victory over BCS conference member Oklahoma State and a respectable showing against a Georgia team that is ranked #4 going into the bowl season. Their bowl hopes came down to the final week of the season, when they hosted Florida Atlantic for the right to win the Sun Belt Conference championship outright and represent the conference in the New Orleans Bowl. The Trojans fell to Howard Schnellenberger's Owls, however. Troy coach Larry Blakeney and his team spent an anxious few hours waiting for an at-large bowl bid that never materialized before accepting that, in spite of an 8-4 record, they would be spending the holidays at home.

While Troy got screwed and shafted out of the bowl picture (in this case, by the Sun Belt Conference's lack of bowl tie-ins), they were fortunately the only team to receive such a fate. Every other team with eight wins, all teams with seven wins, and even a handful of teams with six wins made it to the postseason. As such, I can't match Troy up with any other deserving programs in my fictional Screw Bowl and Shaft Bowl matchups, because there aren't any others. Which means that, for the second season in a row, there will be no Screw Bowl or Shaft Bowl.

Troy, a relative newcomer to the Bowl Championship Subdivision, has been to bowl games in the past - they clobbered Rice in last year's New Orleans Bowl - so it's not like they've been habitually excluded from postseason action. And, if nothing else, they do get to claim a share of the Sun Belt Conference title. But that's probably little consolation to the players and the fans who enjoyed a good season but missed out on the reward that is a bowl appearance. Better luck next year.

Meet Artemis and Orion

Due all the distractions and general busy-ness that I've experienced over the past few weeks, I've neglected to mention the two newest members of our family:
Meet Artemis, at the left, and her brother Orion. They've actually been with us since right after Thanksgiving; one of Lori's friend's relatives had found a litter of four kittens whose mother had died and sent out a plea for good homes. Since we were thinking about getting a new cat at some point (to replace Elektra), we obliged. Originally we were only going to take one kitten, but we ended up with two.

Artemis and Orion (as you might tell, I name all my cats after Greek mythology) seem to have adjusted well to life with us, although Athena and Hermes still aren't especially impressed with their presence. Surprisingly, Kirby hasn't shown too much interest in them, one way or another. That's probably not altogether a bad thing, though, since we debated as to whether Kirby was old enough to be around kittens.
I've had many cats over the years, but Orion is the first one of this variety. Hopefully he'll bring me good luck, rather than the other kind...

Christmas is a week away

I guess that means I should start doing some shopping, or something.

So many things have been going on over the last few weeks that I've hardly had time to even notice that it's the holiday season, let alone buy gifts for people.

Thus, I'll get to spend the upcoming weekend fighting my way through the hordes of fellow last-minute shoppers. Oh, joy.

Weak dollar impacts Dubai's construction boom

Speaking of Dubai: it was inevitable that, sooner or later, this would become an issue:

In the four years that it has taken laborers to climb more than 150 floors over Dubai's congested freeways and skyline, the U.S. dollar has fallen with equal steadiness. Its decline has helped trigger unprecedented wage strikes and a rock-throwing protest this fall by the foreign construction workers, who are paid in local currencies pegged to the dollar.

For the Arab builders and business leaders rushing to convert the temporary boon of Dubai's oil reserves into lasting prosperity, U.S. policymakers and consumers have committed one of the few unforgivable sins in this desert boom town: They've slowed the building down.

The currency of the United Arab Emirates is fixed to that of the USA's at an exchange rate of 3.67 dirhams to the dollar. Thus, as the dollar loses value, so does the dirham.

A weak dollar has some economic benefits here in the United States: American goods become cheaper on foreign markets, and the United States becomes an attractive travel destination for foreigners (for shopping as much as vacationing); in both cases, the influx of foreign spending stimulates the domestic economy. For countries such as the UAE who have pegged their currency to the dollar, however, the economic dynamics can obviously be much different. Especially since that dollar-pegged currency pays for everything the Emirates import: cars, construction materials, food, and labor:

To build and tend their kingdom, the Emirates' 800,000 citizens imported millions of foreign workers, including 700,000 construction workers. Nearly one in five people in the kingdom is a construction worker; most are from India.

(Note to the Washington Post: the UAE is not a "kingdom.")

As recently as last month, some construction workers on the Burj Dubai and other projects made the equivalent of as little as $109 a month. Back home in India, where the dollar has fallen 14 percent against the rupee in the past 18 months, remittances that workers here sent to their families steadily lost value.

The result? Labor strikes and higher wages for workers, both of which profoundly affect profit margins. The cost of doing business has increased, the building boom in Dubai (as well as those in neighboring Emirates such as Abu Dhabi or Sharjah) has experienced a slowdown, and the imported laborers have ended up being the ones hit the hardest:

The surge of oil profits and the fall of the dollar have brought record inflation to the Emirates. Workers say they pay twice as much for cooking gas, vegetables and the other bare necessities. K.V. Shamsudheen, an Indian businessman who runs a group aiding Indian laborers, said the financial crisis has caused a one-third increase in suicides among the workers since 2004.

Given the economic problems the United States is currently experiencing - the housing and credit crises created by the subprime mortgage meltdown, soaring trade deficits, and the propensity of the average American to saddle themselves with debt instead of actually saving and investing their money - it is likely that the dollar's decline will continue. Naturally, this is causing concern to nations whose currencies are pegged to the dollar. In the case of the United Arab Emirates, several remedial options are being discussed. One is the possible revaluation of the dirham relative to the dollar (for example, resetting the rate at 3 dirhams to the dollar instead of the current rate of 3 2/3). Another option is to eliminate the dirham-to-dollar peg altogether, as other Gulf nations such as Kuwait have done. So far, neither of these options have been exercised. But that could change as the dollar's decline continues to eat into Dubai's massive building boom.

(Countries such as Ecuador who have eliminated their local currencies in favor of the dollar, on the other hand, don't even have this option. They, and their economies, are simply along for the ride.)

Emirates begins flying to Houston

Last week, Emirates kicked off non-stop service between Houston and Dubai. I couldn't make it up to IAH to witness the event, but fortunately the planespotters at airliners.net were up to the task.

As I suggested last February, nonstop service between Houston and Dubai makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. I believe that Emirates will find this to be a highly successful and profitable route, and I hope I get to take advantage of it if and when I get sent back to Dubai.

Initially, the service will be provided three times a week; daily service is scheduled to begin in February of 2008.

When cats attack

Consider yourself warned...

Big drug bust at University of Houston

Wow, that's a lot of acid:

A University of Houston freshman was planning to sell about half a million dollars worth of LSD he had in his dorm room, Houston police said.

Clarke Lane Denton, 18, was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. He was in Harris County jail in lieu of $999,999 bond.

Denton, a chemical engineering major, was arrested Thursday after he sold LSD to undercover officers, who later found the drug in his dorm room, authorities said.

When officers tried to arrest him, Denton fled. A janitor found him hiding in a room in one of the campus' buildings and alerted campus police.

After the arrest, narcotics officers got Denton's consent to search his dorm room in the North Tower, where they recovered about 250,000 hits of LSD with an estimated street value of $500,000, authorities said.

His next scheduled court appearance is Monday.

Lemme get this straight: acid is selling for only two bucks a hit these days? Wow.

I guess the LSD market took a bit of a crash after the techno-rave scene of the 1990s finally petered out.

Art Briles goes to Baylor

Over the course of this fall's college football season, I had planned to write regular updates and thoughts about the University of Houston Cougars. Of course, other than an entry I wrote after the first game of the season, that simply never occurred. Now the regular season is over; the Cougars have ended their season with an 8-4 record - one win better than what I predicted last August - and are heading to their fourth bowl game in five years: the Texas Bowl, here in Houston, against an as-yet-unnamed opponent, on Friday December 28th.

However, all of that has been overshadowed by the fact that, as of yesterday, the Cougars are without a head coach. Art Briles, who has been at the helm of UH football for the past five seasons, has moved up the road to Waco, where he will become Baylor's new head football coach.

Briles's base salary at Baylor will be $1.2 million but he could earn as much as $1.8 million with incentives. Considering that to be a doubling of the $900,ooo he was paid here in Houston, you really can't begrudge the man for wanting to go where the money is. Given the money, the fact that Briles, a west Texas native, probably feels more comfortable in a place like Waco, and the fact that his relationship with UH Athletic Director Dave Maggard was widely reported as being strained, it isn't a surprise that Briles decided to make his move.

Needless to say, the University of Houston faithful are pretty angry right now. A quick perusal of UH message boards, or even the comments of Michael Murphy's blog, will show that fans feel angry, shocked, and betrayed by Art Briles. Some are upset that he'd leave Houston for Baylor, a Big 12 bottomfeeder whose inclusion in that conference at the expense of Houston over a decade ago is still a source of resentment. Others are angry at the timing of his decision, leaving his players to fend for themselves with a bowl game one month away. Others are mad at what they perceive as his dishonesty: he claimed he was "still proud to be a Houston Cougar" and that no contract details were discussed upon returning from his interview with the Baylor AD Tuesday night, only to be flashing the Bear Claw at a press conference in Waco less than twenty-four hours later.

I, however, can't say I'm too broken up about Briles's decision. I never expected Art Briles to be at the University of Houston forever, although I figured that when he left UH it would be for Texas Tech, his alma mater and the place where he previously coached as an assistant. To be sure, his decision to take the Baylor gig - a job with a recent history of being a coaching graveyard - was a bit surprising to me. I also could have done without the timing of his decision, but I realize that is the nature of the college football coaching business. But I'm not very upset about the loss of Art Briles, because, quite frankly, I think the time was right for both him and the University of Houston to move on. He had taken the UH football program as far as he could take it. It's now time for somebody to come in and take the program to the next level.

Art Briles is a good guy and a decent coach who certainly deserves credit for turning the football program around. Before he got to Houston the Cougars had enjoyed only two winning seasons out of the previous twelve; since Art has been at the helm the Cougars have had four winning seasons out of five. After five years in Houston, however, the limitations of his abilities had become apparent. Consider:

Briles compiled a 34-28 record over his five seasons at Houston, which is a decent average and is certainly better than what the Coogs were accomplishing before he arrived. But, of those 34 wins, only six came against teams that finished the season with winning records. Other than perhaps the victory over Oklahoma State last season, the Cougars did not notch any significant upsets or score any "signature" wins. Under Briles, the Cougars never managed any bowl victories, he never managed any top 25 appearances, and he led the team to only one conference championship in an extremely weak Conference USA.

Of course, it's unfair to expect for Briles to take a team that was once the dregs of the college football world - Houston had an 0-fer season as recently as 2001 - and turn it into a perennial top-25 program in only five short seasons. But there were times, under his leadership, where the Coogs underperformed against lesser opponents as well, losing games they had no business losing: Rice (3-8) in 2004, SMU (5-6) in 2005, Louisiana-Lafayette (5-7) last year (all three games were played in Houston, by the way). The Cougars frequently allowed games to be closer than they should have been (this season's 56-48 nail-biter against Rice being one such example). Sometimes the team suffered humiliating blowout losses to schools that were not exactly powerhouses: the 13-42 drubbing at the hands of 7-4 Kansas in the 2005 Fort Worth Bowl, for example, or the 7-56 pounding against Tulsa earlier this season with the division championship on the line.

Aside from the wins and losses, Briles's teams were frequently sloppy on the field. Throughout the five years of Art's tenure, the Cougars were plagued with the "unholy trinity" of turnovers, penalties and lousy special teams play. These frustrating problems never really seemed to improve over time, and ultimately cost the Cougars games (such as the home loss to East Carolina earlier this season, wherein the Cougars had two chances to win with field goals in the final minutes of the game but missed them both). Sloppiness was oftentimes evident in other areas as well: tackling, clock management, center-to-quarterback exchanges. All of Art's Houston teams had a rough, unrefined, work-in-progress feel to them: they had just enough physical talent to beat almost anybody, but made just enough mental mistakes to lose to almost anybody.

This is not to suggest that Art Briles is a horrible coach. He is not, and he deserves appreciation for coming out ahead in the win-loss column and giving Houston fans something to cheer about again. Because of Art Briles, University of Houston football is at least something approaching relevant once again. But it's time for the Coogs to take the next step, and that next step probably wasn't going to happen with Art Briles at the helm.

Is Art Briles is really worth up to $1.8 million per year? That's Baylor's problem now. The Bears, of course, have not had a winning season since 1995; being the Big 12's lone private school, they are a small fish in a big pond and their abysmal 11-85 in-conference record since they joined the Big 12 in 1996 proves as much.

Based on what he accomplished here in Houston, Art Briles clearly thinks he can do what all of Chuck Reedy, Dave Roberts, Kevin Steele and Guy Morriss thought they could do: turn around Baylor's moribund football program. But it's not going to be easy, especially since there's a huge difference in the level of competition he will be facing. His divisional foes will be Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M instead of Rice, SMU and Tulane. Briles has his work cut out for him, and if the problems that plagued his teams here - the penalties, the turnovers, the poor tackling, the lousy special teams play, the overall sloppiness - rear their ugly heads on his Baylor teams, his stay in Waco could be short. As Richard Justice notes, Briles's ability to win at Baylor "may hinge on his ability to understand that discipline and toughness aren't his strong points. He must hire a staff that will make players accountable." If he can't do that, then he has essentially committed career suicide.

As for the University of Houston: Dave Maggard's task right now is to find the right person to take Cougar football to the next level: bowl wins, upset victories, top 25 appearances. It's not an easy task by any means, but the Houston program has moved up in stature such that many qualified applicants are showing interest. If nothing else, we have Art Briles to think for that.

An unhappy Thanksgiving, and other thoughts

I'm back.

Needless to say the last few weeks have been extremely eventful, and in many ways difficult, for myself and my family. Most notably, as I reported in the previous post, my Uncle Glen is no longer with us.

The original reason for his admission to the Temple VA Hospital, on October 31st, was because he was suffering from edema associated with congestive heart failure. His condition was apparently exacerbated by an adverse reaction he had to a heart stimulant he was given, and he went into renal failure. He was moved to the ICU early the following week. His condition improved to the point that he was moved out of the ICU on Wednesday the 14th, but the improvement didn't last long; on Thursday the 15th the family was informed that Glen's kidneys weren't getting any better, that he had developed pulmonary edema, and that his condition was terminal. He died on Tuesday the 20th. In the end his heart was so weak, his overall health so poor, that his body was filling up with fluids so quickly and that there was nothing that could have been done for him.

The whole experience has been an exhausting roller-coaster of emotion from my family, from initial despair about his condition, to hopeful optimism when it appeared he would recover, to shock and horror when it was realized that he would not survive, to a sad sense of relief when his suffering finally ended. My mother spent the last several weeks in Temple at Glen's bedside along with many other family members and told me that she never wanted to go through such an ordeal again.

On the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, Lori, Kirby and I drove up to Temple for a rather somber Thanksgiving meal. Quite a few people were there, of course, and it was good to see some folks, such as my cousins Laura and Ellie, that I hadn't seen in a long time. We enjoyed ourselves the best we could; Glen, after all, was the type of person who would have told us not to let the fact that he's dead ruin our holiday.

Glen would not have wanted a formal funeral held for him, but on Friday the 23rd we did hold a small and informal memorial service at the Temple VA chapel where we shared memories and tried to console each other as best we could. A larger memorial service and wake will probably be held for him at a later date. As a US Navy veteran, his ashes will receive a formal burial at sea.

So now a difficult period of adjustment begins, especially for his daughters but in reality for all of us. Glen was the closest person in age to my mother; my father had been looking forward to more fishing trips with him. My aunt Dorothy, his eldest sister, will now be completely by herself in Temple; given her advanced age, and the fact that Glen is no longer around to check up on her on a regular basis, her days of living independently are probably numbered.

***

One bright spot of the past couple of weeks was my successful completion of the AICP exam. I was worried going into the test that I wouldn't do well - the test covered a broad expanse of topics, many of which I had not reviewed since graduate school - and I simply didn't spend as much time studying as I would have liked. Thankfully, the test itself, taken at a testing center on the west side of town, did not turn out to be quite as difficult as I had feared. This is not to say that the test was easy - it was not - but it seemed to be well-designed, focusing on generally-relevant topics and avoiding most of the arcane jargon prevalent in some sectors of the planning profession.

After completing the test I was "unofficially" informed that I had passed by a comfortable margin; it will be a couple of months before I am officially informed of my accomplishment and become a certified planner. Nevertheless, it feels good to finally accomplish this. Becoming certified had been a professional goal of mine for many years, something I really should have completed several years ago but never did because I was either too busy or too lazy or whatever. But now I've done it, and I feel good.

***

Another piece of bad news arrived in the mail over the weekend in the form of Kirby's official evaluation from the University of Houston's Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic. Kirby's preschool teacher had expressed concerns about Kirby's language development, and that, along with concerns that both Lori and I were beginning to have about Kirby's ability to communicate, prompted Lori to take him to the Clinic earlier in the month for testing. The results of the test, according to the Clinic, are that Kirby had a "moderate to severe receptive and expressive language delay." The report we received declared that Kirby's auditory comprehensive skills score (i.e. his ability to listen) was "greater than three standard deviations below the mean" for three-year-old children. In other words, the Clinic believes that thirty-nine-month-old Kirby has the listening comprehension skills of a twenty-month old. His expressive communication skills were, likewise, below what would be expected of a child his age, although the lag wasn't as great.

A delay in Kirby's communication skills really is no surprise to us; he didn't start speaking until well after most children are expected to do so and, while he is talkative, he doesn't seem to entirely grasp the concept of back-and-forth conversation, and he can't do things that children his age normally do, for example, indicate his age by holding up three fingers.

The Clinic did not attempt to classify Kirby's language deficiency as part of a larger disorder, such as autism, but they did suggest that there might be a behavioral aspect to his communication lag (for example, his inattentiveness). They did suggest a "treatment plan" which included three hours of therapy (two hours with a group and one hour with an individual) every week. How we'd pay for them, of course, is a different matter, since such therapy is not covered by either my nor Lori's insurance.

As I stated; the fact that Kirby has been diagnosed with a communication delay is not surprising to us. The degree of the delay, however, comes as a bit of a shock. I think our next step is to have his overall behavior evaluated to see how much of a role that plays in his condition. After that is done, we will evaluate our options for him.

***

Indeed, it's been an exhausting couple of weeks (and after all that, I'm supposed to get myself into the holiday spirit?!). Hopefully now that things have settled down a bit I'll be able to provide entries and updates on a slightly more regular basis. It looks like the trip to Dubai won't happen until after the new year, if at all, which right now is a good thing.