Big NIPpin' (Spending G's)

More goodness from the Big NIPS Hoasis 2009 Championship weekend (all photos courtesy of Kaetlynn):

Russ, Emily, EBay, Cole, Jose, Sarah, Big Nate, Monika, Josiah, Dheintime, Nyet the Lesser
Fife, Skunk, Lindsey, Nicole, Joe (Not pictured: Jenga)

And now with Champion Hats (and Champion Pizza!):

Skunk, EBay, Nyet the Lesser, Dheintime, Big Nate, Josiah, Jose, Cole, Russ

Monika, Lindsey, Fife, Sarah, Emily (Not pictured: Nicole, Joe, Jenga)

The infamous FleetPigeon-Footed Mercury D:

Dear Diary, Today I got skyed by Dheintime.

Princess Cole / Princess Cole in Action:

bəm də lei lee, etc.:

Throwin' and Scorin':

Game winner!

And celebration!

Thanks again to Big Nate et al. for a fantastic weekend! And thanks to Kaetlynn for the great photos. Yeah Phoenix Ultimate!

Best of the best

The Clarion Content's staff are regular visitors to Craig's List. We love their collection of the best posts submitted by Craig's List users. This isn't your grandma's Reader's Digest.

Here are the two best, "Best of Craig's List" Posts, that the Clarion Content has seen lately. Both reveal the hilarious, insider perspective that many folks have, but which is so rarely ventable in a public forum. Craig's List allows for the anonymous shout or the anonymous shout-out.

First from Fairfax, VA a post entitled, "The drudgery of adulthood for single, free-spirited life..."

Tired, achy, worn-down 39 year old seeks to trade one weekend with his 20 year old former self. 20 year old former self will get a gut, thinning hair, bills, a honey-do list a mile long, a soul-killing job, and the realization that it's going to be another 26 years to retirement. Tired, achy, worn down 39 year old will get a flat stomach, chest and arm muscles, a full head of hair, and access to keg parties and tipsy 18 year old college women. More than willing to make this a permanent thing.

Second from Chicago, IL a post entitled, "Cute but doomed girl who gave me the finger..."

You: young hipster girl with dark hair in two ponytails. Your ride stopped smack dab in the middle of George last night, while you took your sweet time pouring yourself out of the car, opening up the back door, pulling out your groceries and making sure your panties were on straight. We couldn't get around you, so my friend honked his horn, just a couple of times. You finally allowed us to pass, carrying your bag in one hand and using the other to shoot us the bird.

I know that you were totally the most punk rock girl in your dorm. However, you now live in the neighborhood known as Avondale. The person you flip off could very well be a Maniac Latin Disciple or a tough street girl who is waaaaay meaner than you. A neighbor once got a beat down for telling a kid to get the f**k off of her car. I know there's a family out there, probably in Crystal Lake or such, who loves you to death and is terrified about your move to the big city. For their sake, keep your head low, choose your battles carefully and chill out.

Check out more from the Best of Craig's List here.

Surreality of the PHX Airport

So I have photo evidence of all of this, but for now just trust that my flight to Orange County got delayed by three hours, but the airport boredom was replaced by an all out Phoenix Suns festival. The first sign that something wacky was going on was the security line featuring a quartet of scantily purple-clad dancers / cheerleaders / solar flares or whatever the hey they're called. I could understand that cheerleaders need to fly, but I couldn't fathom why they would be decked out in uniform aside from some bizarre Suns corporate policy. Turns out they were arriving to welcome the Phoenix Suns to the airport, and they had the famed, child-terrifying gorilla in tow. Oh, goodness. Oh, and let's clarify, it wasn't "the Phoenix Suns," it was "some Phoenix Suns" - Grant Hill, Louis Amundson, Robin Lopez, and a couple of guys I didn't know. I.e. no Nash or Stoudemire, who apparently have better things to do. They welcomed them off the plane as though it were an announcement of a starting lineup at a game - blaring music, PA guy, the whole nine yards (or maybe eight, as there were no smoke machines and a decided lack of laser graphics). People got autographs, posters, calendars, free t-shirts, and mugged by the gorilla. There were decidedly disparate reactions from the obvious business travelers in the audience, who just glared over their Blackberries at the mid day disturbance, and the rest of us idiots, who were enthralled by the entirety of the meaningless spectacle. All of the players / people were exceptionally gracious, took pics with the fans and even ran a mini-trivia game with ticket handouts. The whole time Grant Hill smiled brightly, though I am pretty sure his internal dialogue had a whole lot of "Don't you know who I am? I'm Grant effing Hill! I won national championships! I don't appear at lame-ass 12th man Southwest Airlines promotional stunts! WTF!!?!?"

Of course, the absurdity of the over-exuberant cheerleaders were what really grasped attention. I mentioned elsewhere that they were about a square yard of clothing north of stripper apparel, and while I am sure they are talented in the cheering / dancing department, this particular event required little more that their standing around and showing off eighteen inch waists and ample, too-tight-top-enhanced cleavage. Seriously, it was freaky, and a few steps past family friendly. I got a little entranced by the slew of middle aged men and eight year old girls lining up to get their pictures taken with the cheer-squad. "You are HOT, I must document that I saw you!" "I want to be confined to roles as a sexual object when I grow up!" Or something. Anyways, the cycle continues. You may at this point be wondering why I led this with Dr. Frankenfurter; well, I learned my flight was delayed and turned around to see a Gorilla milling about with exotic dancers and Grant Hill. Don't dream it. Be it.

I noticed that I've been pulling my usual end of semester trick and popping up for air once a week to post here. So I should probably fill you in on what's been going on. Last week I presented my prospectus project for that class; it was more than a little stressful but was pulled off adequately. Immediately went from that to a grading fest of Bio 311 assignments and exams; that course and its 200-some-odd students have had a way for grabbing all of time for stretches. I also had to wrap up some reading assignments for Jason, present an article in lab group, write my final paper for the applied ethics course, and wrap up / respond to the complaints about grades from the aforementioned course. Got kinda nutty and sleep-depriving, but as far as I can tell, I came out unscathed.

I am currently waiting for a plane to take me to Orange County where I am TOTALLY going to hang with Seth and Ryan. Sorry, couldn't resist, and I maintain that the first half of season one is among the best TV ever. No, I am going to the Sackler Colloqium on In Light of Evolution: The Human Condition. I am psyched for the program, as it features some cool talks and some heavy hitters, some of whom I aim to interview down the road as part of my project, so hopefully I'll get a chance to meet them. On the other hand, I am not entirely psyched about the networking aspect of this stuff that I "should" be doing. I am a crappy careerist. I will try to meet some folks and be sociable, but I don't see myself going out til all hours, partying and cavorting with Steve Pinker or anything. Though you never know. This is probably something I should work on, but I think the main thing is that as a lowly grad student, I don't feel very comfortable asserting my knowledge with all these people who have specializing in the area for years. I'm sure I 'm having a fairly standard issue reaction, but I feel like I know squat next to the crowd that's going to be there. I suppose I'll find out how much of a fraud I am at breakfast. "Professor, could you pass the eggs?" "Oh, how cute, the grad student thinks we still call them eggs!" ARRRRGGGGHHH.

So anyways, the conference is for the next two days and then I'm back home on Sunday. I feel bad abandoning Beck / S&W / Fred for the weekend, but I also think that when the Nyet's away, the cat and/or Beck gets sushi. So that's good. I'm somewhat relieved to be for all practical purposes done with my assignments for the semester, but also anxious that there's a stack of more work waiting on Monday. Hopefully it will be work that lends itself to breaks for blogging, though, and I'll be better able to keep you appraised of goings on. Until then...


California... California... here we come!!!

(Oh, and my final ethics paper was on phenomenological / embodiment approaches to the abortion debate and whether they could possibly resolve issues of selective trisomy-21 abortion. Fascinating I know. I won't post it here, but if you want to see someone try to cram too many ideas into a fifteen page paper on a topic that's notoriously clumsy to write about (phenomenology, I mean, though I suppose you could say the same for abortion), I'm happy to share the doc with you. YEEHA).

NASA selecting a new patch

NASA challenged its past and present space program workers to design an emblem to mark the end of the space shuttle era in a contest that ended December 1st. They are now going through the nearly 100 entries received, including a few by those who rode one of the shuttles to space. There are only five shuttle flights remaining. The shuttle program began back in 1981. Over the years, fourteen astronauts have lost their lives on shuttle missions.

Check out a couple of cool entries here.

The Way to Wikki Wakka

Whoa friggin' Nellie. I am emerging from the moist dungeon of term paper-writing, moronic paper grading, prospectus-presenting and final grade point carping to tell you an important tale, a tale of a pantheon-worthy weekend, one that involves a little boy named Timmy. No, not that Timmy. A completely different Timmy. One that plays Ultimate Frisbee, a lot of it. One day Timmy found that his team was *almost there*, they just lacked a little bit of spark, a little bit of The Love. However much Timmy tried, he could only get his team up to a certain level - there just always seemed to be some energy missing that kept them from transcendence. One day, Timmy got frustrated with his plight and ran off deep into the jungle where he bumped into the mysterious Ultimate Guru. No words were exchanged; the UG intuited Timmy's situation and merely whispered the world's most powerful Ultimate cheer into Timmy's waiting ears:

bəm də lei lee
də lei lee tikki takka
ə washu washu washu
ah də wei, də wei də Wikki Wakka

Ah, the way to Wikki Wakka, an unspeakably vivacious place of perfect, aggressive, inspiring disc. The remainder of the tale is unimportant; Timmy indeed took his team to all kinds of Ultimate glory. What is important is that Timmy passed on the powerful incantation to select friends, and one of his select friends (namely Jay the Recylner) passed it on to me. And this past weekend, at Hoasis 2009 in Tucson, AZ, my team and I used this cheer TWICE en route to an unprecedented Phoenix team championship. Here's a snap of Fred and my illustrious three dollar championship mesh trucker hat:

What made this weekend incredible was not just the championship, but the intense team camaraderie AND the humming, vibration of life disc that we played together to get that exquisite piece of headgear. Big Nate* assembled a fantastic team of Phoenix Ultimate studs and studdettes; pictures are still en route, but here's the roster:

Big Nate, "Skilled" Nyet, Justin "Dheintime," Cole "Advanced," Eric "EBay," Russ, Josiah "J-Ro," Hip-Hip-Jose, Joe, Greg "Skunk," Emily "Player" Haydon, Monika, Lindsey, Jenn "Jenga," Jennifer "Fife," Nicole "Curious," and Sara.

* - You may recall that in Phoenix Ultimate circles I am known as "Nyet the Lesser" to avoid confusion with him. But Big Nate was kind enough to dub me "Skilled" Nyet after this weekend, which is also a pretty cool moniker.

Clearly a bang-up squad of fun people and great players top to bottom. We needed a clever name, and given that a lot of the team had driven down to Tucson Friday night in Big Nate's RV, we went with Big Nate's I-10 Pleasure Squad, or the Big NIPS. Yeah, I know, Ultimate people are like sooooo mature. It made for some interesting cheers throughout the weekend, though. :)

There were nine teams at Hoasis, so things started in pools of three on the three fields. This meant that one team in each pool got a bye; the Tucson folks were nice enough to give the first round bye to us Phoenix people, so Fife and I drove down to Tucson leaving at 7:15 instead of 6 AM. Always nice. In lieu of a game by game breakdown, I'll just give the Saturday skinny up front. We beat a ragtag team of Tucson locals 8-6 to start the day and beat a better U of A / Tucson team 11-10 (on a double game point that featured two unclutch turns from Skunker and a "let's end this now" poach D and flick huck to Cole from yours truly). This put us in the power pool - the three pool winners squared off (triangled off?) in a single pool with the winner earning a bye for the first round of Sunday aka a free trip to the semis. The other two teams in the power pool were a team from New Mexico (primarily Sweet Roll guys) and the local Tucson favorites, a crew led by Jeff Grob who is a legendary Ultimate dynamo in these parts.

First game against New Mexico was a doozy and featured some gratuitous rough play from one of their clumsier dudes on Justin; not cool, and it even inspired a little bit of an angry spike from JD. YEAH! All of the games this weekend were stunningly similar, so again, I'll just give it the quick run-through - tight battle back and forth, we pulled away just in time at the end as the hard cap went on and won it 10-8, maybe 11-8 or so. Nice. This took us to an incredible game against the Tucson A squad for the bye on Sunday - Nate correctly commanded me to deliver Timmy's ancient cheer, so we did, and promptly went down 7-4 at half. Oops. But we turned the jets back on and went on a big run to take this one 10-8 as the hard cap went off. Much celebration ensued as we knew we were getting just a bit more sleep the next day. Miles of smiles abounded as we took in a little of a game featuring the other Phoenix team there before I had to drive back to Phoenix to attend Beck's holiday office party at Dr. K-gorium's Magic Emporium (which, incidentally, was fun as usual, and even included a tutorial from Dr. K on the finer points of bubble hockey).

Drove up Sunday a little earlier to get adequately warmed up and watch the other Phoenix team play a game in the quarterfinals, the winner of which we would face in the semis. They got matched up against the second team we played from the day before and unfortunately went down on the hardcap 14-13. So we had a rematch with a tough game from yesterday for our semifinal game. This time, though, probably thanks to our restedness, we started out very strong and kept on them all game long. I believe we took half about 8-5 and then just pulled away, taking the game 15-8 or so. FINALS! The other half of the bracket had New Mexico facing off against the Tucson A team, and Tucson A won that one on Ultimate point 13-12. So the finals would be a rematch of the bye-game from Saturday... once again, Timmy's cheer rang out.

And once again, we went down 2-0 to start the game. And we had a bad turnover on that point that could have led to disaster but I managed to get a handblock and pick the disc up to fire a score. We got back into it and actually managed to go up 9-7 when they called a TO and shifted to a zone. We struggled a little bit against that momentarily and let them right back in the game - they were actually up 11-10 and trapping us on our goal line, a bad situation to be in, when I fired an 85 yard flick huck to Cole past and over their entire defense for the score. A one throw zone shreddage, if you will. 11-11, and we never turned back, amping up our D and taking the championship 15-11. Wahoo! The final goal was a big flick huck to me in the back right corner; I got position on my guy, skyed for the disc / came down with the goal, and let off about a sixty yard spike in excitement as I sprinted back toward our exuberant team. Unprecedented and WAY too much fun. And honestly, in the finals, we overwhelmed the other team - they had the disadvantage of not getting the bye, they lacked Grob for much of the game (see below), but they just generally didn't have answers for our top players or the all-around team chilliness we brought. (Keith did point out that virtually all of our goals involved one or more of Cole, Justin or me, which is an indication that they did not have enough to match up with us - again, particularly after they lost Grob).

Friend Kaetlynn, who played with the other Phoenix team for unknown reasons (if we could have had her, too? Yikes!), was kind enough to take some photos in the finals and just sent me these three tasty shots of Nyet the Lesser:

That's me getting open on an in-cut against the aforementioned Southwest Ultimate legend (and captain of perennially Nationals-bound co-ed team Barrio) Jeff Grob. Seriously, dude is power beast magnum delta Jack Bauer Chuck Norris force on the field, and when he's in high gear there's not a whole lot anyone other than other athletic superfreaks can do about it. He laid out on this one (why I'm not catching the disc out in my usual hands out full in front style is beyond me) and I stepped in his way to prevent him from getting at the disc. Unfortunately this meant (as you can probably tell from the picture) that he laid out into my back and took me down semi-horse collar style. No harm, but a foul. Immediately after this shot, Justin cut deep from the weak-side, so I faked a flick to move Grob off the mark and then sent a perfect 60 yard backhand huck to the back left corner where Justin scampered for the score. Grob said, "Nice shot," and I'm pretty sure my heart pitter-pattered *just* a bit.

Of course the even more diary worthy moment is that Grob covered me for a couple of other points in the game, too. On one, I managed to beat him deep and Russ tossed a backhand that just got eaten by the wind. I got reasonable position on Jeff, but he essentially just jumped over and around me and calmly tapped the disc away. I got skyed BADLY. Eesh; like I said, he's a beast. But on another one, I faked an incut and took off, got some space again, and Russ sent up a nice low IO backhand huck. Grob jumped for it but just not high enough, and I trotted to the back of the endzone and grabbed it with two hands for the score. So yes, DEAR DIARY, This weekend OMG I beat Grob deep for a score and I will never forget this moment I cried so hard etc. Of course, it helps that Grob was banged up and having some back issues; he laid out on JD at one point and had to take himself out of the game for good. I.e. this was not full on, 100% JG we were dealing with, and he was still a preternatural force. We were hanging just fine with him in there, but I won't be delusional and say it didn't help our chances not to have an athletic superfreak and awesome opponent out there. Okay, more pictures:

That's me over Tucson nice guy Phil Brown. Who's fouling me in the back and the back of the head, incidentally. Nyet the handler, going deep and up for it? Crazy.

So this looks a little bizarre because of those pigeons on the field that look like extensions of my feet. They're not, I assure you. I poached off on this one; it was a deep shot to that guy, but I had a good angle, timed it and batted the disc away. Pretty key point, somewhere around 10-9 or so, and I'm glad I managed to jump higher than eight inches for once.

So... looking back on this writeup, it may sound like a ho-hum, we went 6-0 on the weekend and had a good time kind of affair. Let me tell you why, at least from my perspective, that was not the case. I had two mistake turns this weekend, one an ill-advised hammer to Cole in the finals (semi-D'ed by Gretchen; I think Cole was just being nice) and the other a too-far huck to Lindsey in the semis when we were already up 14-7. That was it for my turns*. On the other end, that huck to Lindsey was the only one I missed all weekend long. And it's not like I was being Mr. Conservative handler - I can't be sure, but conservatively I'd say I went 24 for 25 on deep throws for the weekend (96%), and it may have been more than that. Obviously it helps having targets like Cole and JD, but the throws weren't fifty fifty discs that were working out; they were on the money back corner float down "golden throws" as described by JD. I was, in a word, en fuego, hitting everything with all varieties, and probably had the best Ultimate hucking weekend of my life. I really hope someone (HINT HINT JD!) comments and confirms this so I don't just sound like some self-congratulatory jackass, but I was just feeling it. It was friggin' awesome.

* - Full disclosure - on Saturday, Jose fell down on the dump and I had to jack up a stall nine throw to Cole that got D'ed by Grob. And I had a perfect front corner backhand to Skunk in the finals that he inexplicable stopped on (more on that later) and didn't catch. And I put up a (as described by Cole) "too perfect" flick huck to Sara that she misread and cut to the wrong corner of the endzone on; it floated neatly to the back left corner after she lost track of the disc. Oh, and I had a flick huck to Big Nate that he milked and dilly-dallied on and let a guy D when he easily could have caught it - this was confirmed by our sideline. So *that* was it for me and turnovers, I suppose, but none of those four were my mistakes in any reasonable sense.

And that was it - we were all feeling it. Making timing cuts, calling endzone plays that worked, coming up with poach and help D's. Completely incredible. I would be remiss, of course, if I didn't include the notion that we won the tournament despite the exceedingly erratic play of Skunk - hard to tell if he was high or tripping or what, but guy was throwing crap all over the place, making terrible decisions, and as referenced above, nearly cost us that 10-10 game with a pair of horrendously bad backhands on double game point. What's even more ridiculous is that at 3-3 in the bye game on Saturday, Cole launched a beautiful IO forehand huck to him that was going to be five feet short of the endzone. Instead of catching it - you know, like you would tend to want to do in important games at 3-3 - Skunk saw JD behind him in the endzone and tried to tip the disc back to Justin! WTFTTM? Completely inexplicable, and Skunk didn't even have a good answer for it. I'm guessing "One pill makes you larger / one pill makes you small" or something, seriously. Anyways, Skunker did have some good D's here and there, but he was overall a complete moron on the weekend, really disappointing.

Okay, that negative lowlight out of the way, here's a bullet point account of the excessive list of highlights:

• I hit Monika with a huck for the score in the semi-finals which she read perfectly
• Hit Haydon for two goals against Gretchen off of endzone sets, one to win the bye game on Saturday and one after a TO in the finals. Nice!
• Dhein mainly, but we all hit Lindsey umpteen times for scores on the weekend. She was / is going to be a beast herself. But her extreme highlight was on a poor choice huck from Cole - a guy poached off on Lindsey, but she just upped and skyed him in the endzone! Hot damn. Sportscenter worthy.
• I'll just sum up numerous hucks to Justin and Cole in one bullet point - I can't even say how many there were, and they were forehands, backhands, you name it. One of the best was a forehand to Justin that got called back on a travel, so he sent it back to me, went back to where he was when the throw went up - and we just did the exact same thing again. Hilarious.
• I managed to get a few skies in myself, the best coming in that double game point game where I just went up over a crowd at the right front corner of the endzone. I came down just out of the endzone but in bounds, and flipped a scoober to Haydon for the score.
• Also busted deep for Jose and EBay on a couple of occasions. Yeah!
• Ebay made a diving grab that probably took all of the flesh off of his knees. I tried to apologize to him for the slightly out-in-front of him throw, and he replied that it was his fault for letting himself gain ten pounds and it'll be no problem on Sprawl. Nice.
• Speaking of, EBay and I played a game of burnout to get his head snapped back in the game after a couple of gaffes... and it worked. Sweet.
• Nicky had a great up the line flick off a dead disc to me for a score in the semis on Saturday.
• Attack of the killer scoobers - in the finals, they tried to trap me on the left sideline, so I crossed the entire field with a scoober to Justin who promptly fired a breakside huck to Ebay for the score. Just a beautiful play.
  
• But the highlight was the scoober to Cole in the third game on Saturday - I made eye contact, pointed to the right corner, and dropped an IO invert blade scoober right into his hands while the crowd gasped in disbelief. More than one "What the @#$%?" was heard, and Keith told them that I was from Boston, as though this explains anything.
  
• As mentioned, I ripped off an 85 yard flick to Cole out of a flick trap zone. I'm repeating it because it was one of the better throws of my existence.
• Though the backhand against Grob to Dheintime was pretty shwanky, too.
• Speaking of Cole "Advanced," he got that nickname because Russ tossed him a flick that got partially blocked about five feet in front of the goal. We're talking the type of D you basically don't have time to react to and results in a drop / turnover. Well, not only did Cole change his hand position instantaneously to adjust to the disc, but he toed himself in the endzone while doing it. It was truly ... advanced.
• Sara had a fantastic double happiness in the semis, D'ing a guy in the zone, sprinting to the stack and then smoking her defender to the front cone for the easy goal.

Okay, this has gone on way long enough. I am sure I am forgetting things - handblocks, a key poach D on that one double game point to rescue Skunk's gaffes, a few help D's to bail out people getting taken deep. ANd there's no way I'm appropriately catching just how well the team clicked, how smooth the cuts were at times and how much laughing and self-heckling was happening on the sideline. All of this was for Big Nate's birthday weekend, too, so I can't imagine the partying I missed by coming back to Phoenix that night (though I'm sure it helped me!). So, we'll leave it at that - about a week ago, I mentioned a bit of an Ultimate slump. Since then, my men's competitive team has gone 4-0 (we won both games Thursday rather easily) and we ran off one of the most fun six game winning streaks I've experienced this past weekend. 10 wins makes things a little better, I guess. Big thanks to Big Nate and the rest of Big NIPS for a fantastic weekend; I probably haven't had that kind of a quality winning Ultimate weekend since Regionals '02, and I'm still buzzing about it four days later. Thanks for taking me back all the way, the way to Wikki Wakka.

Census advice

One of our Pennsylvania sources sent us some advice about dealing with the 2010 United States Census. It has already gotten underway in some places and is set to get going across the country. This advice comes from the Better Business Bureau, and the Clarion Content has verified it is legit.

"With the U.S. Census process beginning, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) advises people to be cooperative, but cautious, so as not to become a victim of fraud or identity theft. The first phase of the 2010 U.S. Census is under way as workers have begun verifying the addresses of households across the country. Eventually, more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers will count every person in the United States and will gather information about every person living at each address including name, age, gender, race, and other relevant data. The big question is - how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice:

** If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag, and a confidentiality notice. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions. However, you should never invite anyone you don?t know into your home.

** Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information. Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census. While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range, it will not ask for Social Security, bank account, or credit card numbers nor will employees solicit donations.

Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail, or in person at home. However, they will not contact you by Email, so be on the lookout for Email scams impersonating the Census. Never click on a link or open any attachments in an Email that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau."

All makes good sense to us. Be cautious with your personal information, answer no more than the basic questions. Never give out your social security number, bank account info or credit card info to a anonymous stranger!

It's So Easy (Being Green)

Back in the saddle for a Men's Competitive League double-header tonight, and despite the slump of late, the green crew and I pulled out two wins, 15-12 (vs. Keith, John Miller, Cole et al.) and 15-7 (Garret, Rob, Alex et al.). We've got a solid team top to bottom - Dixon, Tom, and I form the core of experienced players, Eric, Gus, Dave, and "Tank" give us another set of hands, a lot of well-wheeled runners join the fray (Will, Ryan, Clay, and Dan) and big deep target 6'9" Kyle rounds out the roster. Keith keeps insisting that we're the favorites for this little 5 game regular season mini-league; we'll see. Another double header pops up Thursday; hopefully the knees and I can survive. I've also got a tourney in Tucson this weekend, so... yep, lots of December Ultimate to be played. Take that, Boston!

Oh, and ftr, I played well, missed Dixon on one huck (overthrew him by a tad), but otherwise hit a lot of dudes with deep shots, even getting a couple of big hucks off against a Cole flat mark which is pretty lucky on my part, methinks. Made a couple of Ds on deep cuts - I'm still feeling a bit sluggish out there, so I'll continue to fight the battle of in-shape-ness vs. knees. Anyways, yeah, had a silly highlight catch of a footblocked pass, hit my dudes, made some cuts, good times. The usual.

The Ultimate fun capped a busy day in which I prepared for and delivered a prospectus presentation. I'm running out of gas here on this short post, but suffice it that it went well - I crammed a ton into 18 minutes and got some good feedback from some friends in attendance (who, incidentally, seemed to be the only two people paying attention. Other than the prof, who I'm sure will give me some feedback in the near future). This was kinda a big deal, as it was the culmination of trying to get my project a bit more focused / grounded to satisfy certain departmental whims requirements. Things are looking good, though a ton of work looms. NEhoo, I am most proud that I successfully worked in my best pop reference of my short career - the prof in question has a habit of aggressively responding to presentations with "So What?!?," so I had an entire slide prepared for that inevitable question featuring the cover of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. I didn't really mention it, but at least one person in the audience got the joke. A wild success, given how my last big "clever" lecture joke went over.

So that was a bit of a load off - I have one big thing left to do for the semester, but after that I just need to get a readin' until things pick back up for the spring semester. So Huzzah! Here's to hard work and maybe a couple of seconds to review some albums or something.