Sadly, no game-time photos or videos were taken this week, so you'll have to settle for this photo I snapped of us standing around before our first match. You should be able to sufficiently glean the palpable intensity that surrounds us.
I ain't gonna lie: this week felt good. After a shaky start last time around, I think we were all in the mood for a little ol' fashioned confidence-boosting. During my usual on-the-way-to-the-gym routine of chugging Diet Rockstar and listening to G-Unit at peak volumes, I blew past cars on the freeway and remained focused on one goal: walking away from our set of matches certain that at least one of our opponents was going to have to make a stop at the pharmacy that night for Tylenol, an ice pack, and possibly a gurney. They might also choose to contact their lawyer to get a will in order before a rematch occurs. Anyway, these thoughts were preparing me, in a roundabout way, for victory. And no less than two would do.
We looked strong from the opening. We were playing a team who I'm pretty sure we had played last season, but in case there was any question about who the returning champions were, we made it crystal clear by taking a decisive 8-0 lead. They got one back (which resulted in quite a hullabaloo from their players), we took one more, and we walked away with a 9-1 victory. They took the merciless beating in stride, and I'm happy to say there were no outbursts. But, one of their girls did look like she was going to cry when I almost took her hip off with a pinpoint-accurate throw of missile-like velocity. I would have offered her a tissue, but I am completely devoid of compassion and most other human emotions.
Our second match was a lopsided one, with our opposition only fielding five players, one of whom appeared to be a hastily-acquired sub. Apparently this gave us the green light to not take them seriously, and before we knew it we found ourselves embroiled in a 2-2 tie. I called a huddle, threatened my teammates and their loved ones with unspeakable acts of violence, and we skated to a 7-2 victory. You just have to know how to motivate 'em.
To the girl I pegged in the ovaries: the look that shot across your face as the ball I threw made contact with your reproductive organs has been burned into my memory for all of eternity. And I thank you for that. I hope I didn't knock anything loose.
Standings are here. All of a sudden we're in second place. I like it.
The Bot is sad that the faucet in the tub isn't leaking anymore.
He's the only one.
This weekend, with major assistance from my father-in-law, I not only fixed the constant leaking of the tub faucet, but fixed the water-shooting-out-of-the-faucet-when-the-shower's-going problem as well. The Bot is standing next to the new faucet (with spiffy new knobs), wondering why there's not a steady stream of hot water for him to stick his mouth under anymore. I'm taking the photo, wondering if my water bill's going to be bigger than it should be because of all that hot water that went down the drain these past two weeks.
Whatever: the damn thing is good as new now, and we even installed a new shower head for good measure. Observe.
Old crappy yellowed plastic Water Pik: Sleek new chrome model, resembling a futuristic sports car: The water pressure's still not quite where we would want it to be, but it's improved. And we're picky about our showers. I like it to leave a mark. That ain't happening with this one, but it's definitely getting the soap out of my back hair, and that's the most important thing.
I won't bore you with the details of the Saturday spent accomplishing this, but it was an ordeal. We went back and forth to Home Depot five times before we finally got everything working right. First we needed a tool to reach the valve that turned the water to the house off (which I never would have found without help, btw). Then we needed a pipe wrench. Then we needed a new spigot and knobs. Then we needed gaskets. Then the knobs weren't the right ones. There was something else in there, too.
But, it was a day well spent. We're going to fix the jacked-up door in the bathroom next weekend, and I'll try to do a better job of documenting that. There's going to be a circular saw involved, so it promises to be some big time stuff. Luckily I still have my goggles from my belt sander expedition. You can never be too careful.
In other news, if anyone has a pair of 60W 17.75" Lumiline bulbs, I could really use those. Hook me up.
In additional news, I bought this today: So I'll see you in a month or two.
I knew it would come to this, but I didn't realize I would feel so stupid about actually sitting through crap like this. Parked on the couch late at night, alone, watching What Women Want didn't exactly make me feel like I should have been clad in a ratty nightgown cradling a bucket of Bon Bons, but it was as close as I've been to feeling like that in a while.
The fact that the flick was over two hours long did not make things any easier. At around the 90 minute mark I assumed they should have been wrapping things up, but I could tell they weren't even close. There were way too many questions left to be answered – like how Mel Gibson was going to magically not hear the voices of women thinking anymore, and how I was going to live with myself after sitting through the entirety of this schlock fest.
Well, Mel finally got mildly shocked by a down power line or some shit, and I fended off being consumed by dark shame by laughing at how utterly misogynistic this movie was, which was sad considering that women I respect like Ms. Greer and Ana Gasteyer were in it, but also ridiculous because it seemed to be done under the guise of being empowering. I guess when your film is directed by a woman, It's OK to have every thought coming out of the women's mind in the film revolve around calories or self-obsessive lunacy. I mean, come fucking on.
This movie is what is wrong with society.
Anywho, Greer plays Erin, a suicidal mail girl who works for Gibson's character's company. Throughout the film she contemplates killing herself, Mel hears her, and of course, he saves her towards the end of the film by offering her a better job. She looks pale and miserable throughout the movie, which is not a stretch for her. It's part of her appeal, people.
Is Helen Hunt too old to be in movies now? You don't see a lot of her these days.
And we didn't do a very strong job of it the first night out. But, we had to lose sometime. And as usual, we did it in the first game of the season. I'll get to that.
First, I want to mention that I'm really looking forward to the league this time around. It looks like there's a good mix of old and new faces, and some solid competition as always. Plus, I got a new pair of sneakers for the season, so I'm content. (It was my championship gift to myself.) Clearly though, we are the team to aim for. Joy heard a girl on one of the other teams, while she was watching us, say (and I'm not kidding): "I think if I saw Team Awesome walking down the street I'd cross to the other side. They're intimidating!" You got that right, sista. Now step on the court so I can peg you in the cervix.
Anyway, yes, it's going to be a great season. We've already won our championship, so I hope we can just have a good time and not worry too much about winning or losing. Easier said than done, I know. I always tell myself to be lighthearted about the whole thing, but when the balls start whizzing by, I go into a trance-like state where all I envision is one of the foam balls crushing some squirrely dude's skull. It often works to my advantage.
On to the matches. We lost our first one. Just flat-out lost it. We played pretty well, but in the end, we got straight-up beat. It was against a team who we knocked out of the playoffs on our way to the championship a few weeks back, and they were thirsty for revenge. We weren't playing with the same vigor. So, good for them. They got what they wanted, we got snapped back to the reality of losing after closing last season with so many wins, and we realized quickly that if everyone is going to be gunning for us like that team was, it may be time to finally nut up and look into the oft-discussed anabolic steroids.
But, that would have to wait until after our second match. As usual, we were warmed up and slightly angry at losing our first game of the season. It was enough to propel us to victory in the second half of the evening, but we were right: teams are taking us very seriously. Whether this enhances their ability to get hit and not go out, we may never be 100% certain, but it sure seems that way. I hit this girl in the hip, and she must have been practicing her routine in the mirror before she drove to the gym, because it was timed quite nicely. She gave a big dramatic wipe of her brow and a simultaneous "wheew!" (like, "Wow, that just missed me!), and just kept on playing. It was not cool. Thankfully, we won the game, but it reminded me of what riles me in our matches. It's not the winning or losing, it's the opposition's weasling. Their dishonesty. Their ability to ignore the sound we all heard when in fact, it emanated from their person.
Whatever. We won. But the other team played crazy hard. They also took a bunch of balls I threw crazy hard in the thighs and sternum. There were some tense moments because they seem to have some whiners on their team, but when you hit somebody so hard that the ball bounces up and hits one of the light fixtures rigged to the gym ceiling, it shuts 'em up pretty quick. And off to the sidelines they go.
The video is from our first match, showing one of the better games we played. Make sure to watch for Katie hitting Joy while she's filming. Now that's action.
Also - I'm trying out Vimeo. The video's better, yes?
After about a year and a half of plotting and planning, we finally sealed the deal. The home-buying process was a painful one, so much so that I don't really even want to speak of it ever again. It really tried my patience. I'll just leave it at that. But fuck it; we are now in our new place, so the road we took to get here doesn't seem so important anymore.
I have done a monumentally terrible job of documenting our moving in/first round of remodeling and repairs, so I'm just going to go through what I've got on my phone. That picture up there is the keys to our house two minutes after I got 'em from the title place. After all the invasive documentation we had to provide to get the loan for this house (check stubs were a hot commodity every two weeks), walking into the title place and having them hand me the keys without questioning for a second that I was who I claimed to be was just too perfect. It was the only easy thing about buying this damn house.
Speaking of the house, it is awesome. It was built in 1953, and has retained a lot of (what I assume to be) the original accouterments (yeah, I'm using that word) from that era. This was really important to Joy and I, as nothing bugs us more than people going into a place that has a lot of character and ripping it all out to bland it up with new shit from the same store where everyone else has bought their bland shit. It's why I had to stop watching HGTV. All the coolest things about houses from the 50's and 60's are being destroyed by people who insist on making their house look like some other house they saw one time. Lame. And boring. And wasteful.
Here are some crappy photos of some of my favorite things about the house. This is the light switch panel in our bathroom. The switch turns on the light, but the knob controls the heater/fan/lamp that is mounted on the ceiling right above where you stand when you get out of the shower. FLH gives you fan/light/heat. FH gives you fan/heat only. FL gives you fan/light only. F is just the fan, L just the light. You already figured that out. One of the settings doesn't work, and I need to fix that. I have no idea how to do that.
This is a picture of Joy putting green paint on the walls before we ripped the carpet out. This is a picture of the cats being awesome after we ripped the carpet out. So yeah, the floors were in pristine shape. And that's my sweet new (old) recliner that I got for twenty bucks. (Also - ripping up carpet suuuucks. If you've never plucked hundreds of staples out of a wood floor – one by one – with needle-nosed pliers, consider yourself lucky.)
This is the built-in bookshelf in the front room that has lights built onto it. There is a box of fluorescent bulbs leaning against it because our front room has this weird track of fluorescent lighting that runs along one wall and I had to replace one. And two in the kitchen. And two in the garage. Oh, the garage. I don't have any pictures of that.
This is fireplace in the kitchen. I bought a set of vintage Advent speakers (at Vintage Pink, which is officially the best vintage store in town) and rigged them up to the main stereo so we can have music in both rooms if we want. The fireplace is pink, but that's not really coming through in this photo.
It's kind of hard to explain what this is. There are two recessed picture-frame sized areas in our front room wall with glass bottoms that house these strange 17-inch Lumiline bulbs that look like fluorescents but aren't. Anyway, they're attached to this fader thingy and you can illuminate whatever's sitting in the little framed area. I've got a Talking Heads limited edition record in there right now. Only one of the lights works, so I have to buy another one. They stopped making them a long time ago and they aren't cheap. But I'm determined to get it working.
This is my new office. It's coming together. We painted the walls gold, except for one, on which I peeled the paint off in hopes to salvage some old wallpaper that was underneath it. The wallpaper's too shabby to work, so I bought some Super Mario Bros. wallpaper off eBay that we're going to put on that wall. And I found a WWF Superstars sheet from 1989 that Joy's going to make into curtains for me. And yes, I am this guy.
This is our new washer/dryer set. We had them delivered on Saturday, only to find out that they were half an inch too tall to fit in the cabinet where our hook-ups are, and that we had a 50 amp dryer plug instead of the 30 amp model that the dryer required. This presented a perfect opportunity for me to be a real homeowning dude and figure out a solution. I hit Home Depot for a 30 amp plug and a belt sander rental, and a few hours later I had a new plug installed in the wall, the doors removed from the cabinet, a half inch planed off the top of the cabinet frame, and the washer and dryer all hooked up. I am incredible.
After what feels like an endless string of seasons where we either lost early in the playoffs or reached the championship match only to walk away empty-handed, we can at last say that we are the champs. It wasn't an easy road to the title, but that only served to make the final victory that much sweeter. It was hard-fought all the way, but we turned up the heat when we needed to, and continued to play with the vigor and enthusiasm that spurred our season-ending streak of seven straight wins.
It was said streak that allowed us to stroll into the venue with confidence on Monday night, but I think we all knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park. We were certainly feeling ready, but we had been plenty prepared for the playoffs before, only to be struck down by the frigid chill of defeat. Not this time.
Our first match was against a team who we had bested earlier in the season, but if I recall correctly, it had been far from a blowout. They have a solid squad across the board, and definitely rival us in size-per-dude ratio. Wisely, we came out blazing, taking an early lead and not stopping to catch our breath until it was mathematically impossible for them to take the lead. Even then, we had a hard time letting up in the slightest. When the final whistle blew, we found ourselves on the winning side of an 8-2 score.
As is often the case when it comes to the scheduling of the playoff brackets, we found ourselves with 40 minutes of downtime between games. I took the time to go out to my car and pound the rest of the No Fear energy drink I had started on the way to the gym, and also to watch The Green Team (our steady rivals for the past year or so) win their first game of the night. I had an inkling that we would face them before the night was through, so I studied their lineup and began to pick apart their weaknesses, of which they have few. I finally decided to just go with my usual plan of throwing the ball as hard as I can, as often as I can. But we had one more team to get past before I could put my plan in action.
Our next match was against the team that beat us in our first game of the season, who we hadn't played against since. While they took us out fairly decisively some seven weeks ago, I think we all felt we had not only the momentum, but also the raw animal desire to both walk away with the W and heartlessly crush their dreams in the process. Almost fully rested after our lengthy break, we came out and took the first four games, only to have them fight right back and tie it at four apiece. This clearly would not stand, so we decided to stop dicking around and won the next four before the whistle blew. Suddenly, we found ourselves in familiar territory: The Championship Game against The Green Team.
I think I can say with brash certainty that this was a match we'll all be telling our grandchildren about. Through twelve games, we went back and forth, each team digging deep and never letting the other get too far ahead. With the match tied 6-6, we all knew we were running short on time. While Team Awesome was once a squad not known for handling pressure situations well, I think we made it clear on Monday night that we have matured in every facet of our game, but especially when it comes to the ones that mean the most. We took command, channeling our last bits of energy into the thrust behind each throw.
The score on the official site reads 8-6, but I think it may have been 9-6, because I remember thinking during the last game that there was no way they could tie us. And if it was 7-6 going into that one, that wouldn't have made sense. Either way, here's the final game of our championship season, and the mild celebration that immediately followed. I think we were all to exhausted to whoop and holler too much, or maybe we were just playing it cool. For me, it didn't really sink in until they presented us with the championship complimentary food card for the sponsor bar. $65 worth of free Mexican grub split eight ways? That's when you know you've hit the big time.
A great end to a great season, and we even made nice with a bunch of opposing players, which felt really good. I hope we can keep that going next season. I can see how we (some of us, at least) can come off as jerks sometimes, so it's nice to shake some hands and throw in an extra "Good game." And it was a damn good game, because we finally won the very last one of the season. These are truly the glory days, and I will savor them. Final standings are here. We are the team at the top. Oh, how it feels glamorous to type those words.
I'm expecting to hear about our championship rings and victory parade any day now.
And check out my teammate Erin's blog for more photos, including the one up top there that I stole from her. I'm going to try and post more videos of our games soon, as I have a bunch that I haven't posted here. Be patient. I'll get it together.
Sadly, no game-time photos or videos were taken this week, so you'll have to settle for this photo I snapped of us standing around before our first match. You should be able to sufficiently glean the palpable intensity that surrounds us.
