Are Than Ow? / Pickup Line

Good times on the home front - Beck had both of the weekend days off and a quarter marathon to run on Sunday, so we took it relatively easy on Saturday - hit up Lola's and dominated the NYT Saturday (!) puzzle over mochas and pastries. (No Saturday morning frisbee por moi because most of the Phoenix disc scene was in L.A. for Lei-Out, a beach tournament I attended last year with the Tuftsmen. I stayed home this year to cheer on Beck in the P.F. Chang's race). We ran by the Phoenix Concention Center (I think) to grab Beck's race paraphernalia and enjoyed the spectacle of the alien master skinny race that had descended on Phoenix for the weekend. I ended up circling the downtown block while Beck ran in to avoid the ridiculous "EVent Parking" charges, and I had a grand time trying to figure out the logic of the one-way streets of downtown Phoenix. Came home to watch a disaster (locally speaking, anyways) of a playoff football game b/w the Cards and the Saints. Speaking of his holiness, I'm pretty sure Warner got sainted at one point during the game:

Yowsers. Fortunately, the debacle was tempered by some ridiculously delicious and, I'm sure, healthy chipotle-velveeta-sausage dip and chips. Mmmmm ... the second game did not fare much better, with some idiocy before the half by the Ravens allowing the Colts to run away with things rather handily. In fact, this play pretty much exemplifies the kind of day the bad boy Ravens had:

Oops. I ran over to the Parlor at some point to grab some carbo-loadage for Beck and a pizza for myself. All in all a groovy day - we went to bed pretty early for the early-to-rse that needed to happen on Sunday morning.

Took Beck to the starting line in downtown Phoenix at about 7:45 AM, hitting a mass of traffic. Something like 30,000 people were participating in the marathon and half-marathon, and I'm pretty sure all of them drove themselves down there. I ran back to the house to take care of the animals, drove to the local Circle K to get Beck some post-race electrolytes, and drove to our pre-determined spot on McDowell Rd., approximately at the 10K mark. Dan & Christina nicely met me down there, though the McD's breakfasts they brought were, I think, a direct taunting of the running masses. We got to enjoy the antics of the surrounding spectators - one group just yelled out things people had on their jerseys or pointed out things about people's clothing ("Yeah! Go Penn State! Yeah person wearing pink socks!") while a dude acroiss the street was offering "Free High Fives" to the racer, complete with a homemade sign and an excessively anthusiastic voice - Dan guessed that this guy was in marketing and not engineering. As a side note, I am not sure what inspires people to watch foot races - it's one thign to cheer on someone you know, but to just stand there and yell at a morass of strangers? I mean, props for supporting them, but there are more exciting things to do with your self. Among other things, the constant motion of a crowded footrace can actually induce some "moving ground" optical illusions, further proving that Descartes was right and we cannot trust our senses. (Ftr, *if* you are going to attend a race with teh sole purpose of telling jokes along the side, please spend the previous evening writing some clever one-liners. The racers may only hear you once along a 13.1 mile course, but I heard your repeated junk for an hour and half! UGH).

It didn't take Beck and hour and a half to do the 10K - she got placed in about the 15th wave of runners and so started at 9:00 instead of 8:30 as scheduled. She ran a solid 1:05 10K, which is awesome. We congratulated her and headed back to the car I had parked around the corner. After a shower and some recovery, we spent some Lux bucks on a well-deserved late breakfast. And conquered the NYT Xwd, nasty Avatar clues notwithstanding.

Caught the end of the sixth of seven bad playoff games so far, this one involving the utter embarassment of the Cowboys. I couldn't take another crappy viewing, so I headed down to a fun game of afternoon pickup instead - got some great running and silly layouts in for the first time in a few days. It's supposed to rain a lot this week, so I'm not sure if we'll get Sprawl in; glad I got a chance to at least stay moderately in shape. Cam ehom eot some delicious Chinese food - not P.F. Chang's, but close enough.

And now I'm taking in my last day before classes kick back in tomorrow. Should be good to get back in the swing; I've got lab and Jenny's course to TA tomorrow, and plenty of my own work to do. Routine will be good. But until then, I'm going to enjoy my MLKJr. Day and the dreaded, dreaded birthday eve eve. Sprawl might be off tonight; hope not, but playing in the cold and rain can be pretty miserable anyways. We need the work, though. We'll see...

Nyet Train Derailed

Rough practice for me personally last night:

• Big collision with EBay early on in the scrimmage
• Slipped on a layout D and hit the ground shoulders then face first
• Reached back for a behind-me pass on the goal line, dropped it an dlanded knees first, bending myself backwards
• Clocked in the face by Ebay on a backhand, but no broken nose :)
• Half-laid out for a low pass and ending up making the catch but eating it on the turf.
  
• Tried to step out on a full speed Tricky to slow him down but got there a second late and got more or less punched in the face, and worse, tripped and let him go deep.
  

Not exactly my most graceful evening. Add in a too-far backhand for Sully and I didn't exactly have the best practice (though it wasn't terrible, as I did get some solid field defense in / good O). Ah, well. Definitely need to work on my man D and break throws. But the main point is that I am a sore, beat up dude this AM. Banged up, swollen kneed, you name it. Ah, and 2 ^ 5 is around the corner. Sadness.

Things looked pretty good, though - a lot of the speed / height was on the other side, and they looked very good in the O. If you take away a few of our drops / turfed throws, we structurally looked pretty good, too. We worked on the Swedish, marks, breakmark throws, 50-50 discs on the night. Everybody seemed energetic, and I've already gotten a good deal of positive feedback on the tighter structure / focused practices.

Good news, too - we picked up a flagstaff dude named Ian (pronounced, oddly enough, Ee-ən) who is a money handler and all around great guy. Everything's coming up Millhouse...

The plan today - Lux, hanging with the off-work Beck, and a UT championship tonight. We shall see...

Thank You!

From a Boston Globe article, courtesy of Chris:

Sheer data, which Burke has compiled and stored like a librarian, argues the point. On average, an offense operating outside the red zone will make the first down on fourth and 2 60 percent of the time. When teams face the situation the Colts would have had if the Patriots failed - two minutes left, needing a touchdown, at roughly the opposing 30 - they score 53 percent of the time.

The Patriots would certainly win the 60 percent of the time they convert. They would also win the 47 percent of the time they’d stop the Colts. Overall, going for it gave them a 79 percent chance to win.

Now, what if the Patriots had punted? On average, the net punt would have been 38 yards, and the Colts would have taken over on their 34. Statistically, teams will score 30 percent of the time in that situation, meaning a punt gave the Patriots a 70 percent chance to win.

Burke is not the only statistically minded football source to draw the conclusion. The ZEUS program, developed by a pair of champion backgammon players, was made to simulate specific football situations and spit out probability. One of the developers told the New York Times that Belichick had made the right call, their numbers similar to Burke’s.

Critics of Belichick made two mistakes. First, they underestimated the chances of converting a fourth and 2 and overestimated the difference a punt makes. Playing with abandon against a preventative defense, an offense can typically pick up the yardage from a punt in a matter of three plays and 30 seconds, Burke said.

(Burke, it should be noted, did not wholly absolve Belichick. Burke believes Belichick, who knew he was going to go for the fourth down if necessary before third down, should have run the ball rather than pass on third down.)

“The one thing people aren’t looking at is that third-down call,’’ Burke said. “An unsuccessful pass on third down gives you fourth and 2. An unsuccessful run is going to give you a real short fourth down and make your chances of winning better.’’

I am not PEOPLE! I said this immediately after they went for it on fourth down. On Sunday night. Where's my extensive Globe article? Or my gold star / cookie / certificate? Huh?

Sprawl / ASU / Eskicensored / This is Pop! / BB / Walk

Still buzzed from some old school, late night Ultimate with the ASU club team. Diablos Captain (and Sprawl player) Brady asked if we could scrounge some guys together and give them some competition. We got about 11 or so together and played them from 9-10:30 tonight. Pretty exciting; this was kinda Justin's and my (nay, Justin and I's!) first official Sprawl event. Tough game at first; predictably, ASU came out running really hard and putting up some nice hucks. Didn't help that I started things off with an under-warmed up, too low huck to JD that got D'ed. Yeah, my first throw as a Sprawl cap'n was a turn intended for the other cap'n. Yikes. Anyways, we exchanged points for a bit, then pulled up by a break and took half 7-5, then busted out a trap zone that befuddled them. We ended up winning 13-5, and got some pretty heady play from a lot of dudes. I got my act together, too, playing okay on D but putting up quite a few hucks and scoobers/hammer for scores. Really fun night; ASU looks pretty solid / athletic, a little off with some throw-choices, but that's more or less par for the course for a college team v. club team. I like our farm team. :) I like our club team, too - great to get out on the field with Les Dudes again.

Other news: had a bit of an embarrassing moment at school today. A little background - there are lots of "fashionable" guys and gals at ASU, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. And as with generally any American style situation, the gals' fashion choices stand out quite a bit more than those of their male counterparts. The standing joke is that there are 65,000 students here, but only clothing enough for 40,000. Ha. One of the more interesting fashion phenomena is that the instant the thermometer drops below 78 degrees, a lot of the gals bust out their ASU hoodies (or even worse, fur-lined hoodies) and Uggs, aka ridiculous $300 fur-lined boots. Only they generally don't adjust the rest of their clothing to match and end up walking around in a sweatshirt, butt-length shorts / miniskirts, and knee-high furry boots. I don't think this is me being prude or unhip; they just look kinda ridiculous. Absurd, even. The moniker that has arisen for this ridiculous ensemble, or I suppose the girls who wear it, is "Eskiho." It's a name that's as ridiculous as the outfit, and generally grabs a few laughs. Note also that it's generally not said to people or even behind people's backs, but is a joke told about the fashion phenomenon. I.e., I've never heard anyone say (nor have I said), "Here come some eskihos," or anything like that. It's always in these abstract, what-the-hell-are-kids-these-days-thinking sense (which I suppose says more about us than said kids).

So today in lab, someone was wondering why there had been a camera set up immediately outside our building, and I made some crack about the photographer doing a National Geographic spread on the migratory patterns of the Southwestern Eskiho. One of my labmates then pointed out that she didn't like this word as it was a "sexual-habits slur." Ouch. I felt immediately bad, and I have to grant: this is certainly a gender-un-neutral derogatory term, and "ho" is certainly a gendered slur aimed at the sexual habits of women. I'm generally sensitive to these sorts of PC speech issues, but oddly, this offense hadn't really occurred to me - the joke is so much about the idiotic fashion and not about anyone's sexual habits that I hadn't thought of it. But yeah, point taken, pretty rude to call anyone a "ho" in any sense, even if it is more a comment on absurdity of still wanting to bare one's thighs while one's toesies are cold. I guess it fails to hide behind a sort of "hey, you are dressing rather unsubtly provocatively / like a sex worker in a way that is logically incoherent, unless you have come kind of weird circulation issue" claim. Oh, and "all that fur is stereotypically what you see Inuits wear." That, too, I suppose is breaching some sort of code.

So anyways, I pacified the offended by saying, "withdrawn!" and promising never to use the term again. But I demanded that we needed to come up with a new word for this phenomenon, because I still need to be able to talk about the goofy styles I see, just not in an offensive way. So - if you can come up with a solid term for this Uggs/Mini/Hoodie combo that doesn't involve sexual habits or Native Alaskans, let me know. In the meantime, I've devolved to groaning, "UGH!" every time the fashion comes up. And that will only work for so long.

Oh, also in lab today - LiJing gave a talk today on the history and science of the "Hayflick Limit." It's the cap on the number of divisions a cell line can undergo before the telomeres get too short and the cell enters senescence. LiJing pointed out that a poet, an indie band from Houston, and an electronica group had all used "Hayflick Limit" as a title in their works. This was somehow supposed to indicate a pop culture relevance external to the scientific study of the topic. People were arguing over whether this was worth including in the talk - L had gone about ten minutes over and was looking, as Andrew said, to use a hatchet, not just a scalpel. Some thought that this info was superfluous, some thought it was a good selling point and would get people talking. Huh? I pointed out that, strictly speaking, three random works including a term hardly makes it have "a pop cultural impact." And wow, some people in the room got this, and some SO did not. When pressed, I said that the point was that you can take almost any scientific term and it's virtually guaranteed that some indie band nerd out there has written a tune about it. I.e., not every slapped together reference to a topic represents an impact. This was met (again, by part of the lab - many people were nodding "Nyet's right" or pointing out the difference between popular culture and Popular Culture) with incredulity. The exact quote was "It's not like any band is writing songs about telomerase."

Au contraire...

Anyways, a weird interaction, because here we are on the one hand arguing about every little esoteric factoid, trying to be as historically rigorous as possible, yet we were about to advise L to make a unfounded claim about the social impact of this term to "sell" her talk. I'm not really down with that; I'm also generally against these sorts of "the zeitgeist" claims about pop cultural impact. We're fractionated, people; I don't care if the band is called "The Airborne Toxic Event." I'm not about to pretend that it's not just the hipster-namedrop of some indie-dude but really some sort of mass impact that Don Delillo is having.

Anything else? I spent two hours this morning getting continuously educated by my TA-job-employers. I theoretically learned some tips for teaching a large class. I submitted the proper forms and passed the appropriate quizzes. Competence indicated! Johnny spent a solid five minutes trying to convince me that Sting's solo career is superior to his work with the Police. He's obviously forfeited all rights to be taken seriously in future music discussions. (I mean, he might as well have said that "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" was a masterpiece). Beck and I got some delicious $4 cheeseburgers at Maizie's Bistro in central Phoenix for dinner (yes, pre-scrimmage cheeseburgers! I did not major in kinesiology). Fun date; Beck continues to do an excellent job tracking down and trying out all the good restaurants in our new hood.

Oh, and yeah - SHUT UP ABOUT THE 4th DOWN, TALKING FOOTBALL HEADS. I will never understand the non-existent intelligence baseline of sports commentators. *Some* people are at least clever enough to point out that given even a normal offense, let alone the Colts' high octane supershow, going for it on 4th down was the proper percentage play. What is extraordinarily disappointing to me is that no one is mentioning that if BB really had this all planned out and wasn't just shooting from the hip, then perhaps a run on 3rd down (if nothing else to take the clock down to the two minute warning) was in order. That's the weirder thing to me; not the BB went for it on 4th, that he acted as though he didn't plan anything in advance. How do you not have some sort of decision-tree set up in your head approaching that last series? Anyways, the game disappointed me badly; it's just terrible to be unable to defend that lead in the 4th. Blar.

AS long as I'm accounting for miscellaneous things here... Beck and I went on the Thursday evening Scottsdale Art Walk a couple of weeks ago, and it was MUCH nicer than the downtown First Friday experience. Lots of galleries, hip people, space to breathe, etc. We'll definitely be making that a biweekly experience. We've also been hitting up the outdoor film showings at the local mall; so far we've caught The Birds, West Side Story, and Diamonds are Forever. It's a fun time, and nutty - I got there an hour early for WSS and almost didn't get a seat. People show up way early and make a picnic of it. Anyhoo, good to be getting out and about in our community. Good also to have Beck bring calzones to the movie and follow it up with Mojo. The good life.

Alright, time for bed. Full day at school tomorrow and a VOTS-league showdown with Justin's* May Cause Dizziness. Should be fun. I'll let ya know.

* - Oh, btw, apparently I gushed a little too effusively in the Sprawl post. Justin asked how much he owed me for the writeup and said he was going to show it to his mom or something. Hey - I only blog the truth. Except for that speed of light thing; that was a little over the top. At least I haven't referred to JD as the "Hey There Delilah" of VOTS Ultimate yet. I imagine only Beck will get that one.

1 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment

Orin is rope-gliding into Mile High Stadium in a Cardinals costume as his grandiose entrance to the game. He hates heights and can't believe his plight. And yet, it's the Ravens that are on my television set playing against the Broncos. And they're in Baltimore. As everyone knows, YDAU *is* 2009. So, um, NFL? What gives?

Depression is a Blue State

Sorry, that title has nothing to do with anything; I just read it in Elegant Complexity (a study guide to IJ) and the now-double-meaning of "Blue State" made me laugh. Liberals of the world unite... in your futile mission to spread compassion. A paraphrased quote from The Colbert Report from a couple of weeks back: "Now convince me why I should be in favor of Public Health option, given that I'm fabulously wealthy, have top-notch health insurance, am very healthy, and don't care about other people." Ha-ha, Stephen, but only kind of.

Back on topic: the week/weekend that was/were. Working backwards, am currently sitting on the couch watching the Cardinals trail the Colts. Steak tonight for dinner, as it's still summer-grillin' weather 'round these parts. Dogs are doing well; both got "chewies" today, which is kinda like crack-laced heroin cheeseburgers. Happy times. Beck and I chilled for most of the afternoon in front of the football, hit the grocery store, hung out at a coffee shop doing the Sunday puzzle, and walked the dogs in the opposite of that order. Sparkle / Wrigley were kind enough to wake up at 5:30 this morning, so our Sunday was extended in time if not in wakefulness.

Our neighbors spun the wheel for "how do we decorate for Halloween this year" and the roulette ball landed in "grotesquely / tackily." I'll have to snap a picture of this surreptitiously, but trust that it involves a life-sized headless skeleton bride and groom. To each his or her own, but preferably not when I'm going to spend the next month looking over and saying hello to what I mistake for people only to be scared out of my gourd.

Fell asleep last night early after an evening of Dexter and delicious pizza (from A Slice of Sicily, check it out Phoenicians!) thanks to the nine hours I spent in the blazing Sunny Azz yesterday. The latter five hours were spent golfing with Beck's cooking internet friend Eva and her husband Che; we hit up Papago golf course where I managed to shoot a 105 using my modified golf rules. (My goal was 2 over par for every hole, or 108, so that's cool; and only five balls lost between Beck and me, three of those coming on one hole in which Beck investigated the acoustics of the sound "Splash!"). Fun times, though long, and my one round every five months plan has not exactly paid off with Tiger-like adroitness. Beck was fantastic, just got better and better as the day rolled on, getting really consistent with solid contact by the end. She claims that getting to the green is really the point of the game, not sinking the ball, which actually makes for a much more enjoyable experience. Fun times, though it's still possibly a little too hot for comfortable golf starting at 12:40.

The initial four hours of sun were spent at Sprawl's next-to-last practice before Regionals next weekend. I am getting psyched because 1, after a summer-ful of injuries, I am finally getting somewhat back to form, and 2, some big-time Ultimate 2.0 style concepts - drop passes to huck, attack the breakside for easy scores, play position defense - are finally taking hold. Though it's a long shot based on any objective measure, at-least-shooting for Nationals is starting to look less thoroughly impossible. We've had some great practices of late, and hopefully this will carry over to a solid performance this coming weekend. PrimetimeDheintime Deion Sanders Justin and I finally got to play some points together for the first time in what feels like forever these past few weeks, and the huck-let-him-run-it-down-strategy continues to serve us well. Props to homes for running some great drills / practices in the past few weeks. Props to all of the Sprawl leadership - BP, Justin G,, Dixon, Vince - a lot of people are starting to fall into roles, which is step one-A of getting to that next Ulty plateau.

I can't reiterate this enough - I'm excited about getting back on the field just because of the stupid duration of this most recent injury, but really I'm just amped that we're getting some gelling going on. I shared with the team recently the idea of Ultimate heroin - those rare games when you go out and it clicks, the other team blinks and it's 13-2 because you're swarming them on D and can offensively do no wrong - and I've seen a couple of glimpses of a capacity in Sprawl to achieve that. We'll see this weekend, I suppose, but I am ITCHING to get on the field with Les Boys Phoenice. YES. I will be sure to keep the excitement-meter rolling through the week. Practice Saturday started at 7 AM, started with a lot of deep throwing and ended with some pretty intense scrimmaging. All told that (plus the golf) was a loooooong day in the sun. I'm appropriately bronze and pretty.

Friday night was fun times, too - Beck and I had butter garlic shrimp for dinner and saw 9, a post-apocalyptic movie about life-force-endowed burlap sacks. It's an animated film with a distinct, thrillingly dark / steampunk look. Beck and I agreed that though it was a gorgeous film, but the plot seemed somewhat tacked on - like they had a great idea for a movie setting and vibe, but lacked anything concrete for them to do. This was entirely instantiated in some pretty terrible, stock dialog (e.g. "I started this; I've got to finish it"). Plus the ending made no sense, always a killer. PLUS we endured some annoying teenagers through the previews - I tell you, every day, my lawn (and the accompanying desire that people get off it) grows a little larger. We did however beat them ... to Mojo after the movie (let's hear it for jokes recycled from Facebook, yeah!). One of the better chocolate and peanut butter-based topping concoctions I've had there in a while, incidentally.

Friday day worked - I had a more-successful-than-they-have-been discussion session with the Bio & Society honors students / Bio & Soc majors in which they finally asked some questions. I still feel like it's too much of a binary discussion - student asks question, Nyet answers it - and I'd rather that something resembling an organic discussion develop. Problem is that even the honors students are operating from a very limited knowledge base - so a lot of the questions are honest "what the heck is going on with bio phenomenon X," and I'm really the only person in the room that has access to the fact foundation in order to be able to address it. Still, getting better, students getting more confident, and it's cool, because it's exactly the kind of thing for which I'm into this business in the firs place. I've got a few with whom I'm making good interpersonal contacts and who have told me that they've really enjoyed the lectures and the discussion class, which gives me all kinds of warm-fuzzies.

Ah, yes, the follow up lecture on Cancer: Genes & Environment. It went well - a little less audience-pleasing than the last detailed account of the horrors of various diseases - but I got a good amount of info across in an engaging way. My big problem was a couple of students who kept asking and asking tangential questions - they ranged from the word association ("Telomerase? I read an article on that once...") to the absurdly complicated ("how does cancer staging work?") to the repeating-what-the-lecturer-said-just-twenty-seconds-ago ("Doesn't the spleen clear red blood cells?"). It's hard to keep momentum when curious peoples keep derailing you, and I tried as best I could to keep things on task. I did, unfortch, have to resort to "why don't we talk about that after class" more than once, which always strikes me as taky because you're all but pointing out the stupidity, or at least inappropriate-for-context-ness, of the question. Ah, well. I was also observed by the Center for Bio & Society director Jane, and she was complimentary afterwards, so hopefully 'twas a good job. Again, I'm psyched that these lectures went well, as this is pretty much my motivation for teaching - you know, moldy minds - though I'd be lying if I'm glad I can focus on my other work and not speak to 200 people audiences for a few weeks.

That's taking it back far enough, I suppose. The only other persistent thing going on is a silly debate from our Applied Ethics class on the existence of timeless, acontextual, universal morality. It's fun to work on developing points of view if a little frustrating to have to backtrack to argue such a naive-take - I don't entirely feel like getting into it, but the general problem with such a stance (a definitive end-all be-all notion of right and wrong) is that it's essentially impossible to articulate how such a thing would be articulated without being subjectively filtered and therefore subject to question of political dynamics, blah blah blah etc. I'm kinda tired of the topic at this point.

Okay, so get psyched for a fun week - one more practice with Sprawl (tomorrow), a league game on Tuesday, the usual slew of classes and reading, and it all comes together in the super-exciting regional tourney in which I should really be working on writing but will instead work on my forehand hucks. Wish us luck...

New Year Fest '09

Ran with Big Nate and Le Tigre for New Year Fest¹ this year and had a great if not victorious time. Le Tigre is a Master's Team conglomerate from New Mexico, Tucson and Phoenix. You have to be 33 to play in the master's division for the club series, but Big Nate is all excited about Le Tigre 2012, so I jumped in with them for a three year preview. We ended up having about 13 actual Le Tigre guys (Russ, Nate, Bill, Jamal, Glen, Digo, Brendan, Chris, Jack, Eric, Harry, Dave, and Nyet) plus 3 stragglers (Pat, Pat, and Lee), all fairly competent if not in the best shape of our lives. Good mix of handlers / cutters; the most notable pregame thing was that Lee malaproply said we should do "ice builders" so we started insulting each other's playing abilties. Funny stuff.

Won our first game against Cole and the ASU crew pretty easily, 13-7 or so; they were athletic but took the predictable chances. Our second game was against the ASU alums, featuring Tricky, Vince, Rob, Pete, and some other solid characters. I remember making a crazy horizontal layout catch on an IO forehand from Russ, a greatest attempt on an errant throw from Lee that involved diving into the watching ASU team on the sideline (Pat tried to get it, but Vince ate it up), and generally watching Pete make some key Ds at very bad times for us. We were up 7-5 at one point but managed to fade and drop the game 13-11. Sadness.

Our third game was against Papal Age, an alumni team from Notre Dame who seemed to forget about that whole WWJD concept. A very deep and talented team who also enjoyed some bad calls and general asshattery; not too much fun, and the only game we were not competitive in (another fade-job, we lost 13-8). Our last game of Saturday was against the NAU alumni team featuring Skunk and a redheaded guy whose name I didn't catch. A very competitive and spirited game, my big memory of this one was a nasty breakmark scoober to Jack for a score and an accidental clocking of said redhead - we were zooming in from opposite directions toward a corner of the endzone, he got there a split second before I did and so when I took a swipe at the disc I caught his suddenly-appearing nose instead. I felt really bad about that one; he was very forgiving and realized it was just a freak event. We once again faded late and lost 13-11; sort our MO for the tourney.

Before I forget, 1: Big Nate, on a dead disc, gave me the ol' head nod go deep communication. So I did, only Nate threw the disc about 90 feet in the air. Just a really, really terrible throw, hilariously so. I read it quickly and went to the spot, only six other guys all had time to catch up to it and came flying into me from the side. A technical foul (ha), but it was laughable to call on a throw like that. Much fun of Nate was made. 2: The ground at this tournment, unsurprisingly, was terrible - dried out, dead grass made for the effect of Ultimate on razor-blade laced sandpaper. On a couple of occasions, the disc was thrown to me low and I clearly thought to myself "this is going to hurt" before hitting the deck to secure the catch. Ouch. I lost a fair amount of skin which made for fun (lack of) sleeping for the rest of the week / end.

Beck and I had dinner at a local house restaurant called Asi es La Vida which turnd out to be a bit disappointing. I was zonked and passed out the second we got home.

Sunday was more of the same - we drew a New Mexico club team in the first round and managed to drop the game 12-11 on point. Barf. That led to a friendly with one of the Sprawl squads in the losers' bracket - we got our act back together and worked them pretty well, 13-7 or so.

This account is probably not doing justice to the fun we had - we lost a lot of tight games, true, but we had a good time in the process and had some real clicky moments. I played individually well all weekend on both sides of the disc, and as Nate pointed out, some of the core of the actual Le Tigre side really picked it up at the appropriate moments. So despite a paltry 2-4 record, we felt pretty good about ourselves, and it's always nice to reconfirm one's ability to play semi-competitive disc. I caught a little of some Phxation and Sprawl games, too, and ran into Verbal's wife Tali (aka EWO SUPREME!) for a brief chat on Sunday.

PLUS, the nice thing about an early round exit was ample time to get home in time for the Super Bowl. Another post.

¹Lest you think i am the only grammar nerd in these parts, the program for the tournament contained a paragraph-long diatribe from former VOTS president and all-around good guy Keith about the mispronunciation of the tourney as "New Year's Fest." particularly instructing the reader to look at Year and notice the lack of an "'s." The paragraph, natch, had a typo in it.

Softball Addendum

Almost forgot about this - last night, ground ball to the short stop with a runner on first. The runner, Jolene, is not exactly a fan of the hustle, and as the SS ran over to step on second, she just stopped, about eight feet from first base. So she was directly between the SS and the 1b, actually doing quite a nice job screening the 1b. None of this was relevant as the batter did a reasonable job of hustling down the line and would have beaten the throw regardless. But when the SS's throw went sailing over the 1b, he immediately turns to the ump and starts screaming that she has to get out of the way, what is he supposed to do, hit her in the face? I was coaching 3b at the time and just asked "why should she have to get out of the way? She's in the baseline. There's no rule about relinquishing the basepath once you're out." He replies, "So you want me to hit her in the face? Okay, next time I will."

That's pretty violent and sorta a stupid thing to yell out loud on a field, but that's not what I found interesting. It's more that his reaction to her stopping five feet from the base and standing there was one of "this is out of the ordinary, and therefore must be illegal." My reaction to it was much more that there is a consistent set of rules within baseball/softball that can't possibly anticipate EVERY behavior, so you need to consider the behavior as it relates to more typical examples. Someone running from first to second in a normal situation might try to break up a double play by sliding into the SS. If they do so by going out of the baseline, they can be ruled out for interference, but if they stay in the baseline, even though they are out the moment the SS steps on the bag with the ball, they are still playing and still have every right to be in the baseline. It is the SS's responsibility to get around them if they want to throw to 1b. SO in last night's situation, likewise, though it's strange that she chose to stop running immediately, she still has no requirement to evacuate the baseline; he needs to move out to get an angle to the bag. It's actually an interesting strategy on her part - note that she wasn't "playing goalie," she wasn't actively trying to block the ball, she was just standing there.

Anyways, I found it interesting as a study in what people understand to be the nature of rules. I'm clearly more interested (and rightly so, I think) in a consistency within the rules, so you don't have arbitrary decisions about x or y being "not fair" on the ill-defined basis of being abnormal. The SS last night - though in some respects just wanted any situation which would have given him a better chance at turning two - reacted to a weird event with a visceral "that ain't right." I don't really think you can govern that way; I suppose you could add a rule that says the runner "must make an honest effort to get to the next forced base on a ground ball," but then there are other situations in which it is a generally accepted strategy for the runner to stop running in order to hinder a double play (e.g., on a grounder to second where the runner would inevitably be tagged, he may choose to stay put so as to force the throw to second and hopefully delay the relay enough to prevent the double play). Regardless, that would have to be a "known rule" beforehand, not something you shout about midgame because you're surprised.

Inconsistency in rules, though, in other contexts appears to bother no one. The boundary rules of football have always driven me nuts - in certain respects, the field boundaries pertain to the ball, in others, to the player's body, and sometimes, to multiple parts of his body (see "two feet in" rule for receivers in the NFL). Ultimate is much more consistent in this respect as on a caught disc, it is always the first point of contact that matters, not "where the disc is."

In other news, grumble grumble, get off my lawn.

Intermission

Account of the excellent weekend that Beck and I just had in Santa Monica with friends Jamie & Elaine and the Tuftsmen is forthcoming, but in the meantime I HAVE to post this insanity from the Ravens football game last night. This is what happens when a wide receiver gets to take revenge for all the shots he's taken going over the middle over the years:

OUCH!!! I'm talking about the first hit; the second is quite brutal, too. Glad to be playing beach Ultimate instead of professional football these days...

World Class Trash Talk

Props to this guy:

Jacques Cesaire

Regarding the Denver Broncos: "“They have bad teeth,” the Chargers defensive end disclosed Wednesday. “They have bad hair. They don't know how to cook. What else don't I like about them? They watch “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.' Who does that? Who watches “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?' That's what I want to know. I heard the Denver Broncos watch it. I'm just sayin'.”

Miscellany

I have a bad habit of dropping my blogging for a couple of weeks at a time and neglecting to blog in detail things that deserve it. And then I write a single post that lumps a bunch of things together, diminishing the apparent importance of each thing individually. This would appear to be an instance of that sort of behavior:

HSD PAPER IS DONE. Yay. Submitted and everything. I'm a little concerned that I didn't do enough of a back and forth, writer / editor style interaction with the professors, but I met with them several times regarding topic, got help with the paper outline / framing, etc., so hopefully they won't destroy my self esteem with red pen. We'll see. Anyways, if you're interested, here it is; let me know what you think:

Addressing the Laity: Public Rhetoric in the Sociobiology Critique

THANKSGIVING IN RACHACHA. As briefly alluded to, we had a great time over Turkey week in Rochester. Hit Jine's for brunch twice, once on Wed. and again on Sat. Good stuff. Sat around and watched a whole lotta Season 1 30 Rock on Friday and Saturday - I mean, it was a marathon, and we just couldn't stop pressing next on the AppleTV. Wow. Good show, but we seriously watched 24 episodes. Yikes. Saw Liz's apartment and visited the Bishops for Liz's birthday. Liz has a cool place, walking distance (when not in winter) from her workplace and apparently up the street from cousin Ian. Good stuff.

Thanksgiving day itself was fun - the bulk of the extended iPJ family was there, including the usual Margie-Scott-Jamie-Meghan-Greg -beck-Nyet crew, The Red Robster and Ginny, Greg and Jane, Brednan and Annie, Ian briefly, Kathleen, and Suzie (I'm pretty sure I got everyone; correct me if I'm wrong). Good times, good conversation and good eats - I'm pretty sure Ginny was the source of the sickness that touched Beck last week and now me (boo), but otherwise it was a 100% successful visit. We managed to watch no football whatsoever I think, which is a great rarity for me, but for whatever reason, I just haven't kept up with the NFL this year, so putting aside time to watch Detroit get killed seemed frivolous. (Actually, we had been at GPGDS the night before thil 1:30 in the morning, so most of us were comatose well into the Lions game anyways). NEhoo, a great time, potatoes peeled and everything, and I'm glad we made the trip.

The Royal WEfnuk CELEBRATORY DINNER. Genevieve kindly hosted the team for a two weeks later, celebration of our league championship, potluck dinner last Sunday. G made pizza, we all drank beer and wine and bored everyone's dates with tales of our Ultimate glory (including some folks from other teams in the league, har!). Great post cap to the season, and better yet, Alexxx is a graphic designer and came up with this bad boy as a trophy t-shirt design:

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Excellent.

BECK ON THE FIELD. Despite coughing up both of her lungs over the course of the past two weeks, Beck took to the Ultimate field at women's practice this last Tuesday and is returning tonight! I am super-psyched as my eleven year plan to get Beck to play frisbee is finally coming to fruition. Just kidding - I really am supremely proud to see her giving it a go; it's very hard to jump in with a bunch of people who know what they're doing* and try to pick up a sport. I am excited about warming up with her tonight; we've got "competitive pickup" alongside their practice, so should be a good evening.

* - PHXation, Phoenix's women's Ultimate team, may or may not know what they're doing.

MEN'S LEAGUE. Is going just fine, thanks. Our team took the one seed in regular season play, tying Justin and Vince's team at 4-2 but losing both of our games by a single point, giving us the nod in point differential. We're playing pretty sloppy - this year doesn't seem quite as crisp as last year's men's league for whatever reason - but having a good time. I've felt exceedingly banged up (tight hamstrings, quads still giving me trouble, sore feet, bruised hip from crazy layouts), but other than being unable to shift it into seventh gear b/c of my quad, I've been playing pretty well. Last week, axshully, I was en fuego, with something like 12 deep hucks connected and a bunch of poach Ds on the other side. Excited for the coming year; I'm gonna try to play club, pending my body holding up. We'll see how that goes. And yes, I''ll give the playoffs the full treatment on Monday.

Alright, gotta run. Sorry for the lame coverage. More later. Wish Beck luck!

Dr. K-araoke & the Pool of Candy Goodness

GREAT time at the party last night. Dr. K's wife Sharon had busted out their blendertron 5000 and some kind of tequila-bot 9000 because wowsers, were those some effective margaritas. Before we even got to the karaoking, we had already gone down water slides, shot baskets, and played a seriously one-sided game of water volleyball 21-4, I believe). Beck had forgotten that it was going to be a swim party, so we didn't actually have suits with us - fortunately, our hosts graciously lent us some. Amazingly enough, as Dr. K is quite a bit skinner than Nyet, I fit into a pair of Dr. K's swim trunks - at least in the waist anyways; my thunderous thighs were a little tight, but it got the job done (and more importantly, didn't rip or fall off).

Dr. K kicked off the K-festivities with a sterling rendition of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There," and he even pulled off the whole song in falsetto, no mean feat. I contributed a few songs from my staple collection - "Here I Go Again," "Sweet Child O'Mine," "The Greatest Love of All," and even a little bit of an encore Madonna dance while Shelly was singing "Like A Prayer." I also assisted Beck and Traci on - and if you guessed this, you win the free Ballad - Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," and Beck and I teamed up on "Eternal Flame." Good times, and with all apologies to Tad, I'm pretty sure I won the looniest spouse award. Though on second thought, that may have gone to Katy, who was in full on talkative mode, having no correlation whatsoever with the number of times Tad topped off her margarita.

Like I said, just a really good time, fun crowd; I think they have quite the nice dynamic up there at Beck's clinic. Definitely not the typical "dragged to your spouse's office party" experience.

Beck and I managed to waste a lot of Sunday watching the BrettsJets game and trekking around to the local libraries and hanging by the pool. I got all of my law reading done for tomorrow; some spectacularly uninteresting stuff about law cases involving the health effects - or really, lack thereof - of silicone breast implants. The point is to discuss the relative merits of expert witnesses vs. judge appointed neutral panels, but the arguments were pretty clear after the first article and didn't *really* require the following five. Oh, well, it'll be better after discussion in class tomorrow anyways. Big day tomorrow, actually, now that I mention it, as I have a couple of meetings which will hopefully give me some direction for some papers and research projects this semester.

Ultimate this afternoon, and despite the 108 degree reading on the thermometer, something like 30+ people showed up. Great times; things seem primed for the start of League this week. I had quite the nice back and forth with Vince this afternoon; he's super awesome, as I have gushed before. BIG FUN on the way; we'll see how things go. I will undoubtedly keep you posted.

Beck and I capped the night with some "football food" - sausage from the grill - as we watched Peyton suffer an opening night defeat. I don't know about the rest of America, but I am not really feeling the football this year - other than to say that if the rumors that Chad Johnson *legally changed his name* to "Ocho Cinco" are true, then I have to say: well done, sir, well done.

Alright - Beck just challenged the factuality of my claim that I would "be there in two seconds," so I am going to cut this off and go to bed. I may drop out for a few days again here, so don't get disappointed if I go poof. More hilarious stories and things that give your absurd existence meaning are on their way. Maybe.

Minor Adjustments

Phew. Just got back from a little rehaul on the old nyetjones.org site. So little that you won't even notice it. All I really did was change the rating scheme (at least on the reference pages, if not within the reviews themselves) so that everything is multiples of five - i.e., MASH is no longer a "68," it's a "70." This makes it a lot easier for me to think through the relative ratings (I effectively changed it to a 20 point scale), plus it garners cheers from Shavano Creek because we can finally equate MASH with Knocked Up. Thank goodness.

More importantly, I got tired of staring at the electronic pile of reviews that I have yet to do, so i quickly reviewed everything I've seen / read in the past 8 months in this little ditty:

8 months!

So that's that. I also am hereby publicly promising to get back on my review bandwagon, because I know that's what the people want. The now greatly shortened pile includes Murikami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and the excellent movie we saw on Saturday night, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I am getting on those pronto. Wahoo!

As for the weekend, Beck and I slugged our way through and suffered tremendously Sunday night. Oh, those poor Pats. I have no problem with the upset or all the glee that comes with the "18-1" chants; clearly the giants played very well and their defense gave the Pats O-Line et al much more than they could take. More than anything it's just disappointing to see such a lackluster performance - again, all credit to the Giants, but having by far the worst game of the year in the super bowl just makes the whole event disappointing. (And it all would have been okay were it not for one of the most amazing helmet pinning catches, um, ever).

So minus that tragic Sunday occurrence, Beck and I made a good weekend of it. We caught up on Lost on Friday, and Beck renewed her hatred for the "show where nothing happens." And yet she likes Seinfeld. Woah. I worked all day Saturday and unfortunately could not connect with tufts-bud Jesse - you may remember him as the wedding air guitar legend - who was in town for the superbowl. Sorry, homes. Beck and I were supposed to go to a Chinese New Year party but lacked the energy / motivation, and wound up going to watch the aforementioned French flick instead. Drove around Scottsdale and got to see all the beautiful people humming it up in their hammers or various other elongated cars. We hit a mexican restaurant where I paid a stupid amount of money to eat a fried tortilla with cheese, which I can make at home for about 120th of the cost. D'oh.

On Sunday morning we looked at the rain and wind and coldness outside and said, "hey, let's go hiking!" Kidding, kidding - it was pretty cold and a little wet, but we did a nice easy jaunt around South Mountain park and got some nice, cloudy views of our smog-smothered town:

So not the most beautiful setting, but a haunting one that provided some nice pics regardless. We next contemplated the face that it was Superbowl Sunday which means time to eat - we headed over to Chompie's, a New York style deli around the corner from our house. Beck was feeling Druish, so she ordered some unpictured scrambled matzah & eggs, and I was feeling heart-attacky so I order a Monte Infarct:

Sooooo bad. That reflection off the plate is due to the flavor. Those plates are actually black. Scary.

Replete with calorific goodness, Beck and I headed to the grocery store to buy our super snacks. Given the choice of two Fry's within walking distance of our house, we chose the lesser of the two, and boy are we glad we did!

Oh, we wish we were. Were. WERE.

Then the game, and... well, this guy captured our feeling:

Tragic. An episode of HOUSE, and off to bed. Sad. Nothing too crazy from the next two days, other than my driving all the way down to Tempe last night only to find our game had been canceled due to rain the day before. BARF! PIZZA THE HUT!! Annoying. I made up for it by scoring 360 points at Scrabble instead.

Okay, so those reviews will come, AND I will make more of an effort to write on the site proper. Ideas, Thoughts. Essays. RANTS!!!!

My blog has turned into a boring vacation slide show: San Diego, Pt. 5

So the bar experience was crazy. There were approximately two other Pats fans in attendance, and we all noted how much the Chargers fans were grasping at small accomplishments. The bar ERUPTED every time the Chargers completed a pass or the Pats didn't. It was nutty. A couple of snaps of the general atmosphere:

As you can see, we were lucky enough to sit behind Phillip Rivers, which is cool. (Actually, that was a VERY drunk Irish guy who, unsurprisingly and fitting the stereotype nicely, no one could understand). The Chargers kept it close, but the Pats, despite craptitude by Brady, ran away with it. Huzzah, Super Bowl. Beck and I snapped this celebratory photo-booth-esque series:

The last one is actually quite nice. Beck went to grab some food after the game; I ran back to the hotel room to take the dogs o-u-t. When I got there, Sparkle greeted me with her t-shirt in her mouth. Woah! She managed to take the shirt off somehow, lack of thumbs be damned. I was thoroughly impressed. After taking the dogs out for sweet relief, I met back up with beck on the beach for sushi and pizza. Que romantica! We had our lunch, then headed back to the room for more scrabble and the unfortunate loss by the Packers. Bwah.

After another sunset stroll with the pups, Beck and I walked to a local wineshop/bistro for a delicious dinner. The place had a cool concept - you pick out your own wine from their storehouse, and they serve it to you with dinner - you essentially get the wine at cost but get to have it served to you for a $5 uncorking fee. Yummy stuff. Our waiter was sent by John Connor from the future, though, so that was somewhat strange. Still, all in all another grand evening, and a solid birthday completed.

The next morning, Beck and I eschewed a morning jog on the beach (have you noticed a pattern here?) for a leisurely stroll with the dynamic dogs. The sky was threatening, but we had a nice time on the beach with the dogs anyhoo:


And now, with digital video clarity, visual proof that my dogs are scared of the ocean... and that they secretly want to soak Beck!

Notice Beck's dubious claim at the end: "I almost died." i feel I have been unfairly chastised in the past when using this exact phrase w/r/t falling off of Camelback Mountain. I humbly submit that if "almost got wet" equates with almost dying, then "almost tumbled off a cliff" should also qualify. Just saying.

We checked out around 10 and said goodbye to Ocean Beach. Beck had read about an excellent, Centre Street Cafe style diner called "The Mission" a little bit north of us, so we grabbed all of our canines and other possessions and headed up there. TBC.

XXX: San Diego, Pt. 3

And the day arrived, inevitably as they must, barring accident or plague or the like. We quickly distracted myself from the stabbing pain that was the contemplation of the implications of my 30th birthday and headed down the beach for a looooooong double-u with the dogs. The sun was just rising and made for a slew of nice pics, like the following action shot of seagulls in the sunrise:

The surfers were out in full force, as were the fishermen. We headed up and down the beach and even illegally took S&W along the pier. They are not huge fans of this whole "ocean" concept, and I will post pictorial evidence of that hilarity in a bit. But for now, enjoy some of the shots of Ocean Beach on a sunny Sunday morning:


We made the long trek back to the hotel and left the pups in the room so we could head north along the coast for a birthday brunch. We drove up through Paradise Beach toward LaJolla to a restaurant overlooking the sea that Beck had learned about from her handy tourist guide. The drive was beautiful - the coast is lined with what we can only assume are lovely cost-efficient houses - I mean, seriously, with the risk of falling off the cliff and into the sea, they would have to mark the price down, right? There were also parks galore (more on that in a second) and the general lush green scenery that the Pacific Coast is famous for. Sweet. Beck and I were a little nervous about making it back in time for the Pats game because, without the beloved internets, we had no real way of figuring out what time the game was. And since we were in the PST zone ,there was a chance that things might be starting at 10. We figured we should probably just ask someone when it dawned on us that WE WERE IN SAN DIEGO! And the Pats were playing the Chargers! After our big DUH wore off, we overheard the hostess at the restaurant say that they shouldn't have many people coming at 1 o'clock because of the game, so we knew we were safe. Here's a snap of me enjoying a scrumptuous b-day omelette and a snap of the view from the restaurant:

We ate up our delicious seaside breakfast (after a small scallion-related SNAFU by the cooks) (I had ordered my usual special-occasion cheddar-bacon omelette which came stuffed with gross onions; it was quickly replaced, but the odd thing that was our waitress explained this by telling us "the cooks are all Mexicans, and they're always throwing crazy stuff in omelettes." Ah, hilarious Mexican hijinks! I should have known) and, with plenty of time before kickoff, took a stroll down the beachside. Those pics are coming in the next post, but just be forewarned that Beck started off our journey with "Look at those weird looking rocks..."

Don't the Brakeman Look Good, Mama: San Diego, Pt. 2

Beck and I got back to the beach in time to watch a bunch of surfers riding waves in front of a gorgeous Pacific sunset. I'll post all of the pics below in a table, but I highly recommend clicking through them and checking out the big versions. Note that Beck is using the sweet binoculars gifted to us by M and G and wearing a GPGDS hoodie to keep out the chilly pacific air. It's a veritable iPXmas!!!


And one more that I shot vertically:

Nice. We capped off this evening by going to a yummy hamburger grill place that played crazy thrash metal music and had a ton of vanity plates from all over the country on the walls. We walked pretty much everywhere around the hotel which was great; good to traipse through the neighborhoods of many an ocean bum and work off the burger/ice cream calories. Capped the evening with a cutthroat game of Scrabble and fell asleep with visions of Patriots dancing in our heads.

Fretting the Pats

So the preceding sunsetscape came form our drive down to D&C's on Saturday evening. Dan had enticed me with a simple text message Saturday AM that read something along the lines of "Pats, pizza and Wii Guitar Hero?" Realistically, that's an unpass-upable offer. So when I got off the full day tutoring train and beck came home from work, we piled into the enviro-friendly mobile and headed down to Phoenix to kick it with the DC. The game was sweet; the pizza tasty. Como fue the Guitar Hero? Well, with all apologies to Frank and his coolest picture ever, the DCNB crew submit their parodical entry:

In short, DCNB rocked the Guitar Hero world. It's clearly a game with dubious merit - we've asked the dreaded question here before, why rock out to a video game when you could rock out to an actual physical style guitar? Well, mostly because it's fun, also because it entails fewer hours of preparation. I humbly admit that it's a bit toolish for me to play the guitar hero in lieu of expressing myself artistically via the real deal; I can do no more than hang my head and point to my own following of the masses. But really, who can deny Dan "God" rocking out in a turtle neck?:

We will eschew textual commentary for the now customary table of nyet-pictures:


See, you may think that by now you must have seen the awesomest of pictures. Well, it turns out that your favorite and mine, the Beck, likes to gyrate quite a bit while she rocks the 'Hero. And as a result, you get 5th dimensional images like this:

Wowsers. To cut to the details, we started the night on the "Easy" setting, ripping through a fair number of tunes before we decided we were up to a greater task. Medium! Yeah! Of course, the medium setting required religious rituals to overcome the adversity. Enter the DC's mystic ornament, the Lobster Hat. That's right, it's the Rock Lobster - or, as some of you may remember, the Lock Robster. Christina bravely took on the adornment, and when I needed it most - a fierce battle vs. Rage's Tom Morello - I, too, donned the eight-legged wonder:


We made a formidable GH team. I brought several years of guitar playing, Christina brought a keen sense of rhythm, and Dan brought all kinds of coffee house music crit witticisms. But we all paled next to Beck, who not only rocked with rhythm and accuracy but brought unbelievable dance skills to the table... er, floor. Here is the world premier, available on nyetjones.blogspot.com only, of the Beck rocking out (and NAILING) Social Distortion's "Story of My Life." Warning: this is a two minute clip, so feel no obligation to watch the entire performance. However, if you need some enticement, check the background for Coffeehouse Dan's approving sip of wine, which carries more approval that the standing ovations of millions could hope to muster:

I see you all, cowering in a state of stun.

All in all, a fantastic night - the Pats won taboot! Here's to several more rockabilly evenings in the swinging abode of DC. Maybe someday we can throw some wood and steel strings in place of the Wii plastic, and Dan and I will get the Pleasure Pumas off the ground. Until then...