Accordions, Mussolini, Summer Solstice, and Ultimate Tournaments

Hmmm. What's been going on this week. Not much, at least not that I can think of. Thursday night was the last game of the season, and we got our butt's kicked by Andy's team. I guess beating them the first game of the season was a bigger deal than I thought. They have a lot of people from the OPA intramural team, so that explains a lot. What else? At work I've been working on the Q2 newsletter. Probably spending way too much time on it. Well, actually, I'm not spending much time on it at all, I'm just using it as an excuse not to get started on other projects.

It's this weekend that's been interesting. First off, I missed a camping trip to Goblin Valley with Mike and Erin and Amber and Candace and Jilleen and a few other people. That would have been fun, not only because I haven't been camping in a long while, but also because of all those girls. What odds! That's okay. Like anything's going to happen with those girls anyways. I couldn't go first of all because of a lack of vacation days (they left early Friday), and second of all because of the Ultimate tournament today. You know where my priorities are.

Last night I went with Kristen to Thanksgiving Point to see Andy play the accordion. I guess they put on parties from 7-9 every Friday night during the summer, with different musicians in different sections of the garden. I had never been the big section of the gardens. I had always assumed the stuff behind the stores was it, but the gardens out back are beautiful, and so big—I'm thinking at least twenty or thirty acres. It must take a lot of work to keep it watered and groomed. I was especially fond of the waterfall. So, we went around, taking pictures and video and stuff. Got a guy to take some pretty good pictures of the two of us at the waterfall. Then we found Andy, and I got some pretty good pictures of him playing the accordion in the Italian gardens. It was a very nice atmosphere. Very romantic. If only I wanted to fall in love. Anyways, Kristen and wondered around for a little bit more. We ran into Neal (my boss) and his wife. That was an odd coincidence. Then we left the gardens. Funny thing is that there was supposed to be an admission fee of $7 per person, and the girl at the desk had neglected to charge us (up until I found out about the fee, I was wondering why there weren't more people there. It looked like a great way to spend Saturday night). So, I debated for a little bit and decided to tell the girl this and ended up paying admission. That's what a conscience ends up doing for you. Stupid conscience :).

After that, we ate some dinner at the restaurant there. Another great place to be. I had Salmon, and it was actually quite good. We spent a lot of time discussing our goals and stuff, especially about how humanity needs a better vision of itself and where it's going. We think a lot alike on the subject. Then we went to Blockbuster and spent a while trying to decide what to see. It was a tossup between "Roman Holiday" and "Tea with Mussolini," but I could tell she was more interested in the latter, and I was kind of curious as to why I liked the film so much the first time I watched it. I mean it's Cher, for crying out loud. Who'd have thought it could actually be good? So we brought it back to the house and watched it. It was as good as I remember. I don't have time to analyze it now—I do know I got a totally different message out of it this time, though. And Kristen loved it. Told me she's going to recommend it to all of her friends.

Today, of course, I got up pretty early in celebration not only of the tournament, but also the longest day of the year. Yippee! Except it was very cold. Had to dress in layers for the tourney. That's just ridiculous. Stupid Utah. Anyways, I picked up Chris and we went to the tournament and warmed up. Probably got a half hour of warming-up in. Then it was time for our first game against Ring of Fire. This should have been a killer game, but Ring of Fire's pretty much disbanded now. Chip's gone. Jeff's gone. Woo's gone. As well as a few other people. So all that was left was Don and Brady. It was a close game at first, but then they started to get tired (no subs) and we broke away. We ended up winning that without too much of a problem. Then came our bye game. Chris and I just chilled, and Katie showed up towards the end with water and donuts. The donuts were the most important part. I ended up going out on the field for our next game eating one for half of the first point. Then I had to start running, and my stomach realized it hadn't been such a smart idea. The final three games ended up being intense. Probably more intense than they should have been. The second game was against Mike French's team, again, but this time they were out for revenge, and plus they had a few players they didn't have last time. The we played REO. Then Chocolate Covered Ants. So it wasn't like these were really tough teams to beat during the season, it's just that they were all very hungry for wins. But we rose to the occasion. We were short-handed again (Jon, Mike, Fowler, Chris, Tyler, Ben, and I were pretty much it for the team). So as you can see, a lot of handling and very little speed. Each time got tired quickly and got behind early. But all the games were pretty much the same formula. They threw zones at us, and after a little bit our team just started working together and killed the zone. Of course, this just took even more running. We had very long games with lots of dumping and swinging and we had to call hard caps. I think the scores were all like 11-9 or something. I did pretty well, but by the third game I was having a hard time making game-breaking plays. Then, up steps Chris. He was a monster handling the disc in the third and fourth games. Came from absolutely nowhere to be our MVP for those games. His favorite targets were Jamie and Mandy. He was always finding those two open. He had some great plays on defense. But my favorite play was in the last game. He made a poor decision on a throw, and it got blocked. Except it rebounded off another defender and with super quick reflexes, Chris managed to grab it, turn around, and throw a score. It was just awesome. Katie says she has it on tape. I hope the video captures the magnitude of the play. You know, it's too bad Chris is leaving now, because we could really have a good time playing ultimate together next season.

So, there it is. We finished the tournament 4-0. The only other guys to do that was our friends Andy's team. They just barely beat out Don Clark's team in their final game. I guess that means we'll face them on Thursday. I don't know. We're 4-0 and we played hard, but they were all bottom-tier teams. I don't know that we're any better than Don Clark's team. We're really going to have to bring our A game to win the championship. But our A game just shows up so randomly.

Well, after the game I came home and slept for a long time. My muscles were very tired. And then I've just been chillin' all evening. That's pretty much it, as far as the weekend goes. It's been good.

Posted June 21, 2003 (04:49 AM) | Comments (1)