Despite the annual plunge into 110+ degree days, I pulled off a thoroughly enjoyable weekend down here in Sunny Azz. After Friday afternoon's ill-timed* afternoon class, I trekked down to my advisor Jason's place for the summer Bio & Society Society (that's right, BS Society, so clever) BBQ featuring philosophers and real life scientists. Andrew, Shannon, Mark&Amy (currently a singular entity), Jake, Chris and, natch, Jason comprised the relatively humanoid spectrum of the attendees, with grad students of the predictable social-tic genres rounding out the crowd. Beck was kind enough to make the trip after work, only to suffer the consequences of conversation crafted by people involved in parsing arguments, manipulating snake glands and staring at plants for hours per day in secluded quarters. Straight from the If You Thought Med School Party Conversations About Exams Were Bad Channel, we heard all about whether a snake's decision to bite is a conscious one, whether a goatee indicates that one is an evil twin or "just that we are in the evil universe right now," a not-so-appetizing nickname for facial hair beneath the lip - let's just call it a "malphemism" - and a "who can top whom" competition of gross-out tales culminating in a strip club narrative of venereal disease and necrophilia. Oh, these were ungood times. Nonetheless, we managed an enjoyable evening by singling out the few normals in the crowd and munching away on sausage, pita bread, grilled sweet corn, apple pie and the tasty beverages of our choosing (coke nada for me, as I had SLUGgin' to do in the morning - yes, I am starting to be that guy [hangs head in shame]).
* - Seriously: Friday afternoon classes? Whose idea was this? IMHO, the only sort of viable workplan for a Friday afternoon involves a margarita and blasting Erasure. See Rice comma 2000 comma Danimal's Balcony. Right now, for one more painful week only, I'm locked up helping students with paper topics from 2:30-4. Surely there are worse things in life. But equally surely there are better. That involve Erasure.
Beck and I escaped by the appointed 9 pm Beck bedtime and caught a Wire episode before bed - I should note that we are mowing that series down, and I'll try to write something with a fresh angle at some point. Saturday started HEXTA early with a wake up, eat a carby breakfast, go to the fields at 6:45 for a 7:30 warmup before SLUG. Beck had CE all day that fortunately started at noon, so she got to sleep in a bit. Kinda a crappy way to spend a day off for her, though, and worse it left me on my lonesome for the day's and evening's social activities. Egads.
SLUG went really well - for the first time, I got bitchy about the time of the game (we had World Cup to watch afterwards) / RSVP process and required people to sign up ahead of time or pay an extra five dollars to pay. This also carried a five dollar penalty for no-showing (the collection of which will undoubtedly prove challenging). Consequently, I was able to set and balance the lineups well ahead of time, and with the extra time to balance things out, I actually did a reasonable job. And then... Cole no-showed (cough, cough, five dollars), leaving one of the teams decidedly short-handed in the talent department. I pulled a little bit of an ornery "this is not my problem; if you want to get mad, get mad at Cole" line, which may or may not make me a bitchy individual but got across my overall lesson of personal responsibility w/r/t Sprawl. Of course, a new guy from Florida, Fernando, showed up late, and as he wasn't on the mailing list and is new to the area, it would have been *really* bitchy of me to charge him an extra five. Fernando is quite the decent player, so Cole's absent talent was at least partially replaced, and the game roared on. Lesson lost. So it goes. At least we started at 8 for once!
Good, tight game with few turnovers* - dark took the first game 13-12 on serve, and white took the second game 13-6. A wind had kicked up right around 11-6 in the second game, leading white (my side, btw) to throw a Z that dark couldn't crack. We continued the trend in the overtime game to 3, got a few bad turns out of their hands, and took a 2-0 lead. They eventually cracked the Z to make it 2-1, then threw one at us that Garret, Trant and I devoured for the 3-1 win. So, you'll note, my losing streak was not one, and I am back on the sunny side of life: 11-1 in 2010 in SLUGs (and my personal game in this one was just fine, with a few big IO hucks, only one turn (on which a "new" guy** made an impossibly bad play), and some breakmark throws taboot). Huzzah.
* - So, a forty-to-fifty year-old experienced player who will remain nameless showed up to compete... and played more than his share, didn't know the offense, blew his mark, didn't go to the disc, and turned an easy possession over on the goal line. I am generally not one to directly turn people away from our weekly competitive scrimmage - I try to let people figure out whether they belong - but wow, hombre did not get it and accepted no empirical evidence. And you'll note that when you lose a game 13-12 on serve, and one dude contributes three turnovers in a game that features no more than ten per side... well, this entirely contradicts Justin G's thesis that individuals cannot lose team games, but there you have it. Look at me, keeping up the bitching throughout a post. To be fair, this behavior aggravates me independent of whether said offender is on my team at the scrimmage. Sure, come out and play, but know thy role - I'm not going to call myself the primary cutter in a game with All the Young Dudes, you need to dump it back to a handler in key situations. Rant over.
** - Yeah, same guy.
Even better, almost everybody came out for pizza at Venezia's and the World Cup USA-Ghana game afterwards. Exciting atmosphere - we all had a good, relaxed, USA-cheering time and hung around until the end of regulation. Of course, I tried to rush home before the start of the two fifteen minute OT periods, only to turn on the tele at home to find the U.S. of A. down 2-1. Oof. So not a great end, but a good athletic playing and watching morning regardless.
Came home to scrub dishes and the pool and generally hang with the dogs. Aforementioned frisbee pal Garret was having a non-frisbee shindig at his house in Tempe that night, so I ran to the store to buy beers and ears (of corn). Beck was still stuck at CE, so I trekked down to Tempe to be the seventh wheel of a couples' party - 'twas okay, 'cause I had a great time playing water volleyball, eating turkey/salmon burgers, and generally chatting with a bunch of really nice folks who all turned out to work at ASU. Garret (and Amanda, his Pippen) have a lovely house, and it's recently been augmented by a RIDONCULOUS outdoor surround sound HD home theater system that, oh yeah, resides just beyond the pool. We watched a few minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean at all kinds of epic, neighbor-disturbing volume before my 5 am wakeup time and a waiting Beck necessitated my departure. Great to hang with the Westlakes and friends in a non-Ultimate environs - I'd like to thank them on behalf of the group, and hope my semi-sleep-deprived solo-self passed the audition. Seriously, thanks for a fun social evening.
Beck sadly enough worked on Sunday, so I spent the day doing chores - more pool-scrubbing and some lawn-mowing - then caught a Cubs game, did some reading and waited for PM Ulty to roll around. Oh, right, and decided the fate of Sprawl. No, really, I finally got a hold of JD and went over tryouts, the roster, everything - it involved a fair bit of deliberation, mulling over, insert your term here, but we whittled things down to a traveling roster of 21 that we believe maximizes chances for our Natties aspirations. I can't go into details for all of the obvious, authenticity-destroying-yet-feeling-sparing reasons, but sure, I'll list the initial roster below (note that it's already changed, as people have backed out. D'oh). That was a stressful endeavor, one that continues to be stressful, but yeah, I feel we got the job done. The reviews thus far are, I don't know, mixed? Not a whole lot of bitching to our faces, and some people who say we more or less "got it right," so I suppose we did okay. Definitely the sucky part of the captaining gig, and naming the alternates whom we choose to replace the no-goers to particular tourneys will continue to be an ulcer-inducing pain. Comes with ye olde territor-e, though.
That was me being entirely nondescript about a process that was more stressful than perhaps I'm willing to let on, but there ya have it. Anyways... we *finally* had a good turnout at Sunday pickup, despite the 108 degree weather and a water-logged (!*) field, so I got another heady workout in on the weekend. A little awkward to play pickup with guys whom I had already "cut" or "accepted," but I got through it okay. Actually, on the physical end I did not get through it okay - my knee got wonky toward the end, and stayed wonky to the extent that I was unable to practice Monday. D'oh. The beat rolls on. I rushed home post-pickup to yet another delicious grilling meal from the Beck. Nice cap to a fun weekend, even if I did not get to spend quite as much of it with my SLF as I might have liked.
So yeah, good times, and then back to the grind of ASU on Monday. It's stupidly hot lately - over 110 pretty much every day - and my enthusiasm for, among other things, the 0.7 mile walk from my parking lot to my office, has started to wane significantly. Sentiments for another post. In the meantime, here's the Sprawl roster as of that Monday morning. That Monday night involved more of the awkward non-referencing the disappointment and/or joy of not-making / making the team, and my injury / inability to practice made the whole experience relatively miserable. Ah, I whine with the best of them. Time to stop typing. More reports later...
Sprawl MMX Initial Roster (6.27.10)
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1. Eric Bay
2. Cole Cairl
3. Justin Dhein
4. Kyle Gerschutz
5. Justin Gries
6. Aaron Harczynski
7. Will Holt
8. Nyet Jones
9. Joe Kauffman
10. Josh Kohl
11. Vince Noe
12. Dixon Oates
13. Rob Ozdoba
14. Bryan Paris
15. Ian Phillips
16. Josiah Roberts
17. Tom Studer
18. Jason Trant
19. Andy Wade
20. Garret Westlake
21. Jia Xie
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