Fun-NEE!

A must read. I almost commented about my history.
http://dopacetic.blogspot.com/2007/08/its-not-your-girl-its-just-your-turn.html

How to be inspiring when one is uninspired

Today has been not so good for me. Not horrible, and I need to keep that in mind, it could be much worse, but just tough. It should motivate me to work harder & study more, but it just makes me want to quit & to eat. And eat. And eat. I could, you know.

My Ultimate scene is drying up- no place to play during the week w/o sacrificing coaching. My poor performance in school and frustration there is spilling over into the other areas of my life, as it is likely to do for the next year, at least. I still want to workout, although the morning runs haven't been as often as I intended. I still have good workouts on the days I do them. It is what to do with those Tuesdays and Thursdays....I can't wait until Lana gets back; I have some ideas.....but time becomes a problem- if I go straight to Scorned practice from work/school & spend 2 horus coaching, it is approaching dark by then- what is a girl to do? I NEED CHC, and need it badly; I need to play. The visualization step is happening b/c I am thinking about Ultimate so often. Now I am almost wishing I would have held a practice this weekend, but then when would my trailer become liveable?

When I feel this way, I want to be around people that just naturally cheer me up. On the other hand, I don't like to be a downer & don't want to risk bringing people down. The solution, of course, is to find some Ultimate (in the longer term), study until sprint time (now term), then spend MORE time throwing and practicing layouts. All right, I think I've begun to talk myself through this.

Sweet Sixteen & The Vicar are hitched!

Most of you that read this were there (although there must be some "others" or who would think Racks weren't a shoe-in for Regie Champs?), but this last weekend was Kevin and Lana's wedding.

It really started for many of us on Thursday night, with attendance to a bachelor or bachelorette party. From hearsay of the Bachelor Party, our party was a lot raunchier/dirtier/had a thousand more sexual inuendos. However, it didn't last as late & JC got more intoxicated than I did (I think we each represented our couple well, consuming the most liquor at each of our respective parties). Since what happens at the Bachelorette party stays at the Bachelorette party, I can only release a few details: 1. I was the ring toss champ- I threw a pink ring around Peter the Blow-Up Boy's manhood. 2. Natalie did a good job of hostessing, along with her assistants. If you are hosting a bachelorette party, you should ask her for some games. 3. I am a pervert. Or maybe I am just comfortable with sex, my sexuality, and nakedness. 4. Lana is a superstar for having both her mother and mother-in-law at the party and still sharing stories, etc.

Friday night there were SUPPOSED to be many people coming into town. The troopers XXX, StuJack, and Ellen actually made it. We spent the bar part of the evening at Welch Ave Station (Yum, late night Pizza Pit!) This was a pretty tame night, although a long one; I kept asking Jon if we could stay a little longer. He got me to quit talking offensive strategy with Stu at 4:30 am. We were up and at the CLX reunion scrimmage by 10 am, as promised. Slowly, CLXers, party-goers, and a few current ISUCers trickled into town and made it to the fields. There was a little bit of good Ultimate, some silly Ultimate, and a lot of fun. Drew remains the Hammer King; be it throwing or receiving hammers, I choose him. After that most of us headed to Thai Kitchen (sweet, sweet curry) and I ate a lot. I realized it was getting late and NONE of the group presents were wrapped....Gibbs came and helped me wrap the 107 (or so) presents. At 2:35, I asked her if she wanted to leave, and continued to try and pretify the gifts until 3:15...I realized even I was pushing it to leave for the wedding at 3:45. I made it by 3:48, albeit with unpainted toenails.

The Wedding: There are many, many pics available on many people's Picasas. Lana was beautiful, I couldn't get anyone to bet against me about Kevin crying (although he did keep it to a minimum), and used 2.5 tissues to Gibbs' 3 tissues. Natalie has a positively angelic voice. Two of the greatest people I know are joined forever!!! I rejoice for them!

Post wedding: PARTY TIME!!!! Of course I can't write it ALL! Highlights: dinner (Hickory Park, lots of gravy for me!), cake (yes, I like frosting, okay), DANCING, crotch-tagging everyone, getting picked last for Bride Side vs. Groom Side Boatrace, WINNING the Boatrace (and I anchored strongly), DANCING, getting crotch-tagged by everyone, Kevin & Lana running the Gauntlet to their car, nailing Kevin in the chest with a disc, afterparty at Welch, the waitress crotch-tagging Kalli, skinny-dipping (that's hearsay on my part...I was "tired"), reliving it the next morning (especially the hazy parts from Welch on).

I almost died of hunger before we finally made it to The Cafe the next day (it was afternoon!), where I had a good Bloody Mary, a Veggie Skillet, and cheesecake (plus nibbles of many other dishes). Finally, I had to say goodbye to everyone; the only upside is how soon I will see most of them!

I laughed and laughed and laughed with everyone; CLX included some of the funniest people I know,a nd it was great to have so many of us there, as well as the "new" VBB & Rackage additions. I had such a blast, and Kevin & Lana seemed nothing but happy (duh) & did a great job of mingling with everyone. Mark Meyer was buying shots and boatracing (JC won...twice) and just generally being a good time. I am SO glad I will see so many of these people in 2 weeks at CHC!

I did something different...

I did plyos with Gibbs last night, and they were SEEMINGLY the same Frosty's plyos I have been doing all summer. But my rear end protested in a new way- it screamed at me that I was tearing it apart, threatening to cramp or pull, I couldn't tell which. I also felt woozy (not enough sleep? not enough to eat? I don't know). I finished plyos, but regretably, made Gibbs do the sprints at the end on her own. Good job, Gibbs! I hope I made the right decision; I hate not finishing workouts, but a pulled glute or passing out would not be a good situation. My cheeks are extra-sore today and not so much my quads, which are normally the complainers after plyos.

Women's practice tonight, hurray! Rackages found another skirt, so there are skirts for people to try on. I am not a clothes horse, but I do get excited about everyone trying out this new skirt. So far it has gotten top marks from all who've tried it.
More people voted for non-Rackage Regional winners....interesting. Makes me more excited for this weekend.

Sprints in Colorado

This last weekend I flew to CO not to play Ultimate, but to visit a friend from undergrad. There was some great catching up, reminiscing, and some AMAZING overeating of delicious treats. Also, since I had to fly out Friday afternoon, I had to do last weeks sprints on Saturday, at something like 4800 feet with about 2% humidity. You'd think that would be good, but I decided I would rather sweat than lose all the epithelium lining my throat from the dryness. I did the split 500s by myself; the only way I got through the last 200 was chanting "Sarasota" in time to the pounding of my feet on the track. There was a man in probably his 70s at the track that was long jumping. I talked to him a bit, and he was training. I thought that was pretty cool.

Food highlights: grilling- cook it on a flame, I will like it. The Melting Pot- never been? It is a fondue place. They give you a PLATTER of meat to cook in a pot of bubbling stuff and then have an array of 10-15 sauces to dip it in. I LIVE for sauce!!! I thought I was going to le Blanc myself afterwards, no kidding. For dessert, a pot fo chocolate with STUFF (Bailey's & pecans for my table) in it and an array of dippers: strawberries, bananas, cheesecake, bronie, pound cake, rice crispie treats; unbelievable. It is about $50/person, tho'. Oh, and then I got GELATO! It was good, almost as good as Perth- I could have eaten disgusting amounts of it, but just ate my own and 2/3 of J's (she never finishes her food...we make a great friends).

Practice weekend on the 4-5: FUN. The play was mediocre at times, although my team came back from an 0-5 deficit (which was mostly my fault) to win 9-7 or 8-6 (game to 7, win by 2). Besides the Brendas/Debbie/Sarahh combo and the late night religion (I wish I had a recording of that conversation....it would have some hilarious quotes), highlights: eating MASSIVE amounts of delicious pizza, Solarz' near expulsion story (Cooler will be the near-arrest story, Yay!), still being hungover at 1 pm, calling Matt and Kara, Thai kitchen and its array of currys. Sweet, delicious curry. It is my current favorite food.

I'd like to know who thinks we won't win Regionals....I am glad they think that because proving people wrong is one of my favorite activities. But still, be serious: look at results so far, look at our players, know that we will only improve with each tournament. Competition brings out the best in us, so I'm glad that somebody thinks we'll have some. (I do, too; I just think we will prevail.)

Workouts this week should be good; they include a women's practice. I am looking forward to Cooler. School starts in ONE WEEK! I have assignments already, and I am really looking forward to all the new women that will come out to Ultimate. This could be THE year for Iowa State; gurad against burnout and inner turmoil, vets. Feed off of the young'uns enthusiasm, love your teammates to the best of your ability. I think having Rackages around will be a GREAT opportunity for those younger gals to see what they could be; I want to be that player, I want to be that team that inspires. And all it takes is love. Love of plastic. Sweet, now I am pumped for plyos tonight!

Motown Throwdown

We started with a 10 hour or so drive, 7 of us in Lana’s ‘Stro. The excitement of the ride was being pulled over about 1:30 am less than 10 miles from the campsite. Lana’s van window only rolled down about 3-4 inches, so she had to apologize and offer to step out of the car. He declines and directs his questions to the gap as Lana tilts her face up to listen and respond. It was the general- do you know why I stopped you (Lana didn’t know how fast she was going, nor the speed limit) where you coming from, where you going, why…. He takes her license, registration, etc. (oh, it also may have not been the current insurance….) & is back in record time. I’m not even sure he went all the way back to the car. He comes back, says, “You’re almost there. Just try to keep it between the lines.” It was one of the standing jokes of the weekend. Since Lana had driven the entire way, it was also possible her crazy eye was in effect and that was a factor in his pity on her. We set up 2 tents; the entire time I am trying not to yell at people to hurry up- they weren’t really moving THAT slow, but I wanted to go to bed. To credit myself, I never did raise my voice. Gibbs and I blow up the air mattress and settle in. Ten minutes later we are both giggling hysterically for a reason unapparent to both of us. Ten minutes after that we are asleep. The 2nd Ames car rolls in about 5:30 am, so Kalli joins us on the air mattress. Gibbs and I wake up to Lana asking the question, “What time did you want to leave?”, which I think caused us both the same panic: I fumble frantically for my watch and see that it is about 10 minutes before I want to BE at the fields. We were supposed to all go over zone together…ah well, it would turn out we would have plenty of teams to try it on, anyway.

Because we were planning on being there so early, we arrive about 10 minutes before the captain’s meeting starts. I start to set up “my” zone, then the horn blows. I leave for the meeting, Shel goes over “her” zone. She relieves me at the captain’s meeting and we quickly walk through “my” zone. (Reminder: my zone is a 3-2-2 force one way trap, hers is 3-3-1 force middle). I get the pleasure of surprising everyone with jerseys. Or rather, Matt does b/c he picked them up for us. I was VERY pleased.

We do a warm up and game one starts. The first three points or so had about 4-8 TOs/team. No kidding. The ground was really dewy, and lots of discs were dropped, or passes attempted that slipped. This is an excuse, it is just retarded. I dropped one during this game due to dew- I think I grabbed at it 3 times and in the end layed out to try to get it. I also had a weird layout D bid attempt- I landed with my lower back on my offense’s shoe, which knocked the wind out of me. I think it was either my only layout D bid or one of 2 for the weekend. All the pool play games on Saturday kind of run together. We tried both zones and made the adjustment on the FM that worked really well (crotch and hatchet alternating positions). The 3-2-2 was less successful, although I did force a few turns on the sideline trap, and touched a few more that still got caught. I am not ready to abandon that zone, yet, and we learned a lot from running it.

We mostly used Gibbs’ cheers from practice weekend, and they were all well-received. One team captain said she thought we were the most spirited competitive team she had seen in years. That means a lot to me, and I think it means more than just cheering. I know what this captain meant when she said most teams don’t seem to respect some of the less competitive teams; I’ve been on those less competitive teams, and it pissed me off. I sucked really badly at Ultimate for quite awhile, but I didn’t love it less then than I do now. And even when my team was blown out, I played my ass off. I can only believe their players are giving their best, and that is why they deserve respect. Okay, back to the recap.

Pounce, the 2 seed in our pool & 4 seed overall, was out last game of the day, and we didn’t know how much of a game it was going to be. Our play had really cleaned up over the course of the day, and our flow looked great. Our offense seemed unstoppable unless we chose to turn it over. Our defense seemed oppressive. I think the offense could have been cleaner & the defense firier, but both were looking good. Pounce scored almost exclusively on hucks, and if a few more had fallen better, it could have been a closer game. As it was, we played some pretty good deep D, with a few burns, so maybe more and better hucks would still have gotten D’d. I wish I would have noticed if they were more on FM or one way force. Chili’s was good, but a ridiculous amount of food, even for me. Most of us were pooped after dinner so showered and went to bed. I wish I could have stayed awake for more of Gibbs reading, but I think I was out before the end of the first paragraph. Some gals came from the hotel to hang with us, but most of us were in bed. Since we’d won our pool, we had a first round bye, allowing us plenty of rest before our 10:30 game. We came out much cleaner than the day before, and the first 2 games went much the same as Saturday.

We knew MOJO would give us a game in the final. We flipped for color and WON, which caused me to squeal like a little girl pig & one of their players clearly thought I was cracked (it was the one that got the Callahan); however it was a big victory: I called SAME, which I rarely do, but I just felt it. I then called ODD and won the actual flip as well. I love it when I feel psychic. We’re on D to start, they score. We answer and begin to trade points. To me, it looked like our D was more than they were used to. For us, their D became more than we were used to. They started triangling the front of the stack, which baffled our players. Our D overcomes and we pull out to a 7-4 lead. We take half 8-6. The second half they used triangle more and our cutters forgot that against good teams sometimes it takes more than 2 cuts to get open. Cuts were not set up well and too often there were 3 people standing in the stack. Mojo was a faster team than all the others, but we still had them beat. We go down 8-9, and our offense is really starting to piss me off. I hate turnovers. I hate them. Sometimes you can’t tell b/c I have a lot, but I tell you, my ideas are good. I hate bad ideas. So, we are letting ourselves get stagnant on O and cap goes on during the 11-11 point. Mojo ends up scoring, so it is 11-12, game to 14. I decided I was tired of this shit so I went in and scored. I don’t know what happened exactly on the 11-12 point, but I get the disc a lot and throw a backhand to Meghan Solo. It was not a pretty backhand, but neither was it horrible. I couldn’t have done it with out K Dubbs, that is for sure. On the second point, I had a throw to her up line at stall 9. I then cut up line for her, get it back and throw a forehand to a sweet cut from Noelle. I didn’t do anything anybody else couldn’t do, but scoring those 2 points quickly and efficiently got the fire into us. Joggles gets a D typical of her, closing the last 3 steps to get the run-by D, and we score fairly easily. We get a very large trophy that is difficult to fit in any of the cars and is shiny, but has a lot of plastic in it. I guess I’d prefer something else- jerseys, T-shirts, money, free entry next year, a trophy you can drink out of, a trophy shaped like a disc or having some sort of disc on it. I don’t go to tourneys for the prizes, but since they spent money on it….actually, I would have REALLY like another free keg of beer on Saturday. The only beer I got on Sunday was when the toddlers were pouring (No kidding, like a 3 and 4 year old were LOVING it). The one wanted to fill more cups, but didn’t have drinkers; I couldn’t let him down.

I remember playing KDubs in co-ed and would hate when she would yell for the disc. Now that I am on her team, I love it. She isn’t the fastest on the team, she isn’t the best thrower, but she is consistent and knows how to get open when she is needed; when she is calling for the disc, it means she is open. Lana gets point of the weekend for a peel off D, followed by a toe-the line leaning layout for the throw from Natalie, then the 40-50 yd forehand for the score. SHE was never stagnant against Mojo. Her kind of cutting will almost ALWAYS be effective. I like to think I helped shape her because of my poaching. I hate guarding her now that she knows how to keep me out of poaching lanes, but that means she keeps out of the poaching lanes when I play with her, too. BK gets offensive play of the weekend for her layout grab from Solarz. Katie M. gets defensive play of the weekend for her layout D. I thought we hucked WAY better this tournament than in Boston. We also got more 50/50 discs. I think we are a team of receivers, and it showed. Dikeman tipped one in the air then followed it for the layout grab to keep it alive. Kara and Kalli played a ton better than in Boston, which I knew they could. They played much closer to their potential. Kalli played particularly good as a hucking cutter and as deep defense. Gibbs was a superstar pretty much all weekend, although I could tell she was frustrated the second half with Mojo’s D. We went over triangle defense and how to beat it, so hopefully that will help. We had so many “near Ds”- we just need to be ready to layout on D, I think. We had great midfield hucks from a number of players, which is just what I want. I love that our cutters will throw it long! Kara showed that she has a pretty, pretty backhand. Tobes threw our first ever score off of Sexy Sadie. Solarz wasn’t quite her deadly accurate self, but her D was some of the best I’ve seen her play. I think Noelle showed everyone she is a cool cucumber and never gives up on a disc; she fit in well. Jill is FAST; she and Kara were about tied for near Ds. Minner had some really nice runs and reads long, coming up with some that the defense totally misread; she doesn’t read off of her offense/defense, just plays the disc. I had fewer turnovers than in Boston, but still yelled too many times, “Turn and run, turn and RUN!” If you hear that, it means I overthrew you. I think almost all of my throwing turnovers were overthrows. Although, my teammates are awesome and often came up with them anyway (Lana, Joggles, Meghan, etc.) I am working on keeping my IO forehand down and assuring myself of a low backhand break.

The game against Mojo was closer than I would have liked it. I was glad to find out we wouldn’t give up if behind in a game. Our offense still needs to be a little cleaner, and I think it can be. However, I don’t think Mojo played their best game ever. They were good and had a couple of really great defensive plays, some pretty throws, but there were a few miscues that I don’t think we can expect them to have. In short, they will give us a game regionals, and we will be ready.

I am thinking Hayride will be our biggest competitor at Cooler in less than 2 weeks. I am planning on partying it up on Saturday night after not playing on Saturday. I am on biopsy, so have to cut tissues in at 10 am that morning. None of the other teams on the list that we’ve played scored more than 3 on us at Motown. The ones we haven’t played I think will be of similar caliber, with the exception of Hayride. I think they are also a contender for us at regionals. I’ve played with some of those ladies before. Julie Fitzgerald is in my Top Five Nicest Players. Off the top of my head, I think Stephanie Huber from Barely Legal & Kevin Tow also are in that category. Pat from MN/Sub Zero may be, too, but I don’t know if I’ve played against him enough to really say for sure.

Cheering. We have enough girls we need to be working on 2 cheers simultaneously. That way, if one sounds promising and gets stuck, hopefully the other one can bail us out. I like cheers. A lot. This is a long, long post & I still need to look at slides for tomorrow. See you on the field (by the way, everyone that took my poll is an Ultimate player).