Would you believe I'm a single guy?
Wack! Maybe next time I'll pass on the trip to Star Market and just click, eh? Check out the 5-star "Meaty" review!
Actually... Check it *all* out. The features, product description, and the sad detail that gift wrapping is NOT available for this item. Nuts.
=)
It was a fine evening of volleyball. I'd played in a number of Friday night 6s tournaments in the past couple months and never quite felt tip-top about the evenings. Keri was captain of all of them, including tonight's team, and she consistently assembled some great players. We played well enough together, but with each tournament I felt like I was getting a bit worse, and generally uncomfortable with the CR 6s format in general. I'm basically feeling like sharing one side of the court with five teammates is getting to be too crowded, y'know? I supposed it's partly a seasonal thing. I'm subconsciously registering the higher daily temps (altho still colder than perfect on average) and the longer daylight and itching to start playing outdoors and doubles.
I made a remark about the 6s claustrophobia to Keri at the end of this evening and explained that 4s is definitely a step in the right direction, even if it's only just a gateway to doubles. Heh. =)
Tonight Keri wrangled Jill, myself, and Will S. for our foursome. It was a very good and complementary combo. Will's got a good head for setting up for defense. Whenever he could, he loaned Jill some of his know-how and instinct, and together w Keri, our defense was really solid.
I could swear Will introduced himself to me as Will, but I heard Jill and Keri call him Bill a few times. Halfway thru the evening I was interchanging the names when I called out to him to hit 10s.
It was a good night of sweating. We went past 11pm with pool play. BVA was supposed to be out of the gym by then, so they had to drop playoffs. Finishing up so late got me thinking a bit of a summer between sophomore and junior years that I spent as an intern at a small architecture firm on Newbury Street. I started playing indoors with a regular group of students and alum at M.I.T. in the evenings. I'd wander over to Rockwell anytime after 6 or so, jump on a court w these guys and play 2s thru 6s, depending on how many we had, and when the gym closed for the night - I think it was supposed to lock up by 9, but depending on who was working, we sometimes had the courts until 10 or so. But when that happened, the gang would head across campus to a gym on the top floor of a building along Mem Drive, next to several outdoor tennis courts... Frack. I can't remember the name of the building now...
Anyhow, the top floor gym was pretty old, with red, or reddened, hard wood floors, and marked for a short basketball court and a volleyball court. We'd set up the net when we got there and play and play and play all night until morning. We'd start with 6's if we had it, and as we pushed on thru the a.m. hours, we'd lose people and whittle ourselves down to the last four nutjobs playing doubles. I was always one of them, surprise surprise. =)
Those last doubles matches weren't about beating the heck out of our opponents, they were more like sparring, or peppering, y'know? We'd do everything we'd do in a regular match - dig, set, swing - but our hits were, as deliberately and controlled as possible, delivered to and directed AT whoever was on the other side of the net. As hard as we liked, but y'know, totally GET-able. It was a beautiful thing playing doubles while the sun was coming up... *sigh*
Sometimes we'd just split up when we finished, and others, we'd carpool out to IHOP for some breakfasts. That's how I first sorta found out about the Soldier's Field Rd. IHOP. Those were some of the best bleary eyed mornings ever.
Would LOVE to find a place where I could play volleyball all night long again...
It was good to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in weeks, not that I really got a chance to play a lot of catch-up between playing and reffing matches. Mostly I just saw them thru the net while playing them, and I never feel quite okay with pushing "real" conversation w anyone while games are on. Kinda sad how many people whom I like are folks I only see at league vball nights.
I'd taken nights off from league over the last two weeks so that I could hit my thirteen screenings and eight buckets. I'll hafta pilfer some new email addresses for my nahant roundups this summer. I should really get a central email address book type resource. Each summer I end up building a new list of regulars from scratch, and end up adding people as the summer goes along. I recently went thru the same process w my movie update emails for the IFFB, just went thru and addressed them to anyone I could think of when I was writing them up. Thusly, I probably left a couple dozen regulars from last year off the list.
And apparently, included a few people who'd rather not be, having received more than a couple "unsubscribe" email requests. Fair enough. What with the fest being the fest and all, I DID kind of harass people pretty hard over a short period of time.
I am so babbling right now. It's 2.10am. I'm puttin the kibosh on this bit o blog...
Keep on keepin on~
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