Long and Eventful Weekend

Last weekend, in my opinion, completely balances out my extreme laziness on the weekend of the 4th. Party, baseball game, hockey game. All in about 28 hours.
I'll break it down day-by-day, just cause that seems like it'll be the most fun for me right now. And that's what it's all about kids.
Friday night - Leave work, hit the gym, head home. Nothing exciting. Normal friday night gym, too. So pretty empty and the only people that are there are just peeps getting in a quick work-out before the weekend. I then proceeded to stay up til about 2am with a mix of GameCube (Bond - Agent Under Fire) and bad TV. There's not much on normal cable on friday night, so it was tough. When we had paid-for Comcast we had the Action Channel, which had a good set of anime on Friday nights. But alas, no good anime for me.

Saturday - Wake up around 10 or 10:30. Proceed to lay in bed watching TV til about 11:30ish. Exact time are vague. And then I begin the waiting game for my buddy Mark and his crew to head back from Crane Beach so we can go get some sushi. So I hopped on PartyPoker.net to try my luck and see if I've learned anything from watching poker on tv. Turns out I had learned something and did pretty well. Of course the free version (.net) is full of other people that don't really know what they're doing, so it's hard to say exactly how good I did. Did that for about an hour, then got the call. And it turns out the sushi place up in Saugus is actually pretty good. Not the greatest sushi ever, but it was very good. So we load up on sushi, get some booze, and head back to Mark's to begin the party. And what a party. Stud Boy was there to whip up some margaritas. Paul from work definately has a work and non-work side. Got into a heated politcal/societal arguement with a gay guy for quite awhile on the porch. And just general merriment. No real fiascos, no real awful moments, just a great gathering.
So I head home at 2:15 to try and get some sleep before getting up at 7:30am for baseball.

Sunday - Arise at 7:30 and wonder if it's really worth getting up. I do have a hockey game sunday night, so maybe I should just get a good sleep. The decision was really made when I had to pee. And while I was already up to pee, might as well go to baseball. Glad I did. One of the regulars just recently bought a batting cage nearby and donated a dozen balls to the game. With Raised Seems. For those that don't know, that will hugely help any breaking pitch you throw. More friction to generate force to generate a break. So my ordinarily good overhand curveball was a monster. You could really hear the seems buzzing when it left my hand. Needless to say it was pretty much untouchable. I had guys swinging at balls that were bouncing off the plate. A few were WAY out in front. A couple were just frozen as what they thought was a high fastball broke right down the middle. It was filthy. 6 innings pitched, probably 10Ks. I don't really count, but at least 1/2 of those innings I K'ed 2 of 3 outs. So a great day.
Eat my turkey sandwhich when I get home, climb back into bed for a little nap/World Cup. I make it through the first 1/2 drifting in and out of napping. But then at half time I decide to try to sleep for a little bit. Turns out 'little bit' meant the entire second half and the first 3 minutes of OT. Luckily I was awake and ready when Zidane pulled his idiotic move. I don't care what the Italian player said, it's the f'n World Cup final game. The last World Cup game of your life. You're the captain of the French team and one of the best players in the world. What do you do? Act like a complete moron and get yourself tossed from the game with only a few minutes left. Meaning that not only do you miss the rest of OT but also the PKs. Stupid. And maybe because of that Italy gets the trophy instead of France.
Then it was off to hockey. First hockey I've played in probably 3 months. It felt great to get back out there. At least it did in the first period. Then my poor cardio conditioning kicked in and made it a bit of a struggle. I did verify that the extra stregth work I've been doing has gotten me my speed back. My endurance is down, but I've got most of my old burst back and my top speed is back up to where it needs to be. Feels good to be the fastest man on the ice again. I also had a couple great defensive plays hustling back down the ice. Broke up a couple runs by just muscling the puck away from guys in the corner and made a sweet diving play on a break-away. Their guy had beat the defence and was streaking down the boards. I cut just inside of them both and just lay out from about the face-off circle, cutting him off from the net. So to get there, he'll have to either somehow get the puck and himself over me, or slow up and try to go around me as a slide along. There's no way he's going over, and if he slows down the defender on his heels and everyone else has a chance to get there anyway. He pretty much trips over me when he made his move to the net, break-away over. I get bruised ribs, he gets NO GOAL!! Worth it every time.
But alas, we still lose 7-4. The other team clearly had better players and were much more fundamentally sound. We kept it interesting the entire game, but just didn't have the skill or luck to win this one. But it was still very encouraging for the rest of the summer and next season. If we can get 10+ guys to show up and play like that every game we'll do really well.
So for now, maybe it's time for bed, maybe it's time for more partypoker.net. Only time will tell....
PEACE!!!