Tuesday’s kickball game was the final of the pre-season and we lost by 1 run. Considering that we only won 1 game this season, losing by such a close margin is actually pretty good! The field was also ridiculously muddy and the playing area had to be reconfigured a bit to accommodate the large muddy areas.

After the game several of us did go to the bar afterward, although it seemed a little more dead than usual. I had made plans to go to 80’s night with a small group later on though, so I hadn’t planned on staying very long anyway. The 80’s night was fun—I hadn’t done it in forever, and I put on my most 80’s attire I could find, which consisted of a black shirt with some crazy writing on it, a denim skirt, and my hair in a side ponytail. Rockin’! Other 80’s attire included Kristen’s legwarmers, denim skirt, and lacy gloves, and Dave’s sweatband.

Last night was Pub Quiz once again, and we came in 3rd. We did get a perfect 10 one round, but lost out on free drinks by getting the song length wrong. We got a decently high score considering that we were iffy on some of the answers—in fact, on the perfect round, we had been skeptical about at least 3 of the answers!

Tonight is the last game of the season for my Thursday team—we are going up against a good returning team, although one we very nearly beat last season back when they were ranked #1. So, I suppose there is always a chance, although I feel like this team is still not quite at that level, and we also seem to have trouble getting a lot of people to show up, which sucks.

Hopefully tomorrow will not bring another blog post about once again ending on a loss!

Posted at 3:54 PM | (0)

Wow, it’s already Tuesday. Tonight is the last season game for the Tuesday Kickball league. Then…playoffs!

I feel like the weekend went by too fast though. On Saturday night a bunch of us went to dinner at Dargan’s before heading down to Joe’s to meet up with a kickball guy celebrating his birthday. We eventually headed down to Tonic where we stayed until closing—after of course making sure that the birthday dude got plenty of free shots. Afterward we went to his place for a bit, before calling it a night pretty late.

On Sunday there was once again brunch at Mesa Cafe. Hanging out turned into pretty much an all-day affair as several of us went to go find some Halloween costumes, then grab our bathing suits and head out to the pool/hot tub since it was such a nice day, before going back inside for a double-feature of movies. We watched Planet Terror and then Nightmare Before Christmas, and had a decent number of people show up, which was cool.

Overall, in addition to being too short, the weekend was also very enjoyable. And now I must start preparing for my game tonight. I don’t expect that we will win, but you never know!

Posted at 5:08 PM | (0)

On Thursday night we had our game against the team that was ranked the same as us. We did end up losing, but the other team had this secret weapon kicker whose turn always happened to be when the bases were loaded or almost fully loaded (no, he didn’t kick out of turn) and who kicked it so far into the outfield that there was no way to retrieve the ball before everyone rounded all the bases. The team scored 10 runs total, but 7 of them occurred on just 2 kicks from this guy.

Our team stayed to watch the game following ours, which involved the top two teams. Each team possesses several people I know, so it was definitely interesting to watch. The #1 team retained their spot after narrowly defeating the #2 team. Afterward everyone went to the bar and did the usual post-kickball antics, which were very entertaining, although they lasted much later into the night than anticipated when Will, who was supposed to get a ride home from Dave, decided to wander off and then keep walking and refuse to read us street signs for over an hour. How we wound up eventually finding him is a mystery!

Last night was a scary movie night in a group consisting mostly of kickball people. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not really do scary movies. The movie, however, wound up not being that bad in terms of scariness—perhaps it’s just that I’m not 7 years old anymore, or it was the fact that it was zombies and not something like dolls that come to life and kill you. We watched Dawn of the Dead, which did have some unpleasant imagery, but I seemed to be a master of knowing when to look away, and thus avoided actually having to look at the scenes that involved the most blood or closeups of gruesome faces or acts. There will actually be another movie night tomorrow, and it will probably be scary or otherwise Halloween-themed. I am personally hoping for something like Nightmare Before Christmas!

Posted at 6:34 PM | (0)

Today is not quite the start of the weekend, but it is getting there! On Tuesday, I skipped kickball in order to attend book club, which only meets once a month. There was a slightly larger turn out than last month, which was nice. Regardless, it might indeed be time to recruit some new members.

After the meeting, Mike, the lone guy in our club (who also belongs to kickball, goooo kickball) suggested going to Wildcat, where his friend’s 80’s cover band was playing. One girl, Kristen, joined me, and along with Dave we were there for only a short time once the band was done playing (which didn’t seem like we were there long, since I was under the impression they would play for longer than the half hour or so they were on.)

Mike went home soon after the band was done, but the 3 of us remaining headed over to Madison’s to rock some karaoke, which is always pretty fun. There was a bit of a wait from the time we put in our songs, but we did get to do a couple before the end of the night.

Last night was Pub Quiz once again, and although our really good sports guy was not in this week, we did still manage to get all the sports questions right and pull out a respectable score. We did of course still lose, but considering the broad categories and the couple of non-regulars we had, we were not expecting to necessarily do as well as we did.

Tonight is kickball, and there is a possibility we could win, but who knows. The team has the same record as us, but with way, way less runs against them. We shall see—should be a good game!

Ok, so the weekend is actually over now, but I did have a nice one. On Friday I went to go see Burn After Reading, which I thought was good. I did not expect some of the more violent parts, but it was interesting that the way they were set up also made them funny.

On Saturday I started out at Soho with a little group of people to check out this bluegrass band. Most of their stuff sounded more rock influenced by bluegrass than the other way around, but it was entertaining. We did not stay there all night though, and eventually wound up at Tonic for the rest of the night.

Yesterday was mostly spent just chilling—although it did start out with an impromptu late breakfast at Mesa Cafe with various members of multiple kickball teams—but later on there was a movie night where several of us gathered to, well, watch a movie! There were many movies to choose from, and eventually through a little process of elimination game, we settled on The Prestige, which I had not seen. I had seen its similar cousin, The Illusionist, which everyone knows is not as good, so I was looking forward to seeing the better version. And indeed, it was better.

Today was back to work as usual, and I have learned that I will be a bit busier with some projects in the near future, but I don’t mind. I always like it better when I have a lot of things that need to get done in a short time frame.

Posted at 6:42 PM | (0)

Last night we played the #2 team in the league. I was not expecting us to win, even though we technically had the same record—they had far fewer runs scored against them and they are pretty much all returning players.

The other team showed up with like 15 guys and the required number of girls, whereas our team only had 11 people total, and only 4 were male. So, you could say the odds were slightly stacked against us. The team was very, very good at running the bases—they always knew when the opportunity was right to advance to another base, which is something we often struggle with.

At any rate, they are a fun team, even if they did totally crush us both on the field and at flip cup. We won the first flip cup round, but that was to be our last win of the night, sadly. But hey, I suppose any win is better than nothing. Hopefully we will not fall too far in the rankings as a result, because we had like 15 runs scored against us. Not so good! Maybe they will get taken out in the playoffs, or we will defeat them then—stranger things have happened!

Posted at 5:19 PM | (0)

Last night we played the team that the captain of my Thursday team is on (although he did not show up for the game, oddly enough). They were ranked higher than us, so I did not have the highest of hopes for beating them.

And, indeed, they beat us by 4 runs or so. I THINK the score was like 5-1, but I am not 100% sure, since they have not yet posted the results. I do know that we only got 1, and that they seemed to average about 1 run per inning.

As for me, I got someone out while defending 2nd base, and I even got myself a double when I kicked the ball, thanks to someone overthrowing at 1st! Unfortunately, when time came to run to 3rd, I took 1 step too many past the base and got immediately pegged in the back with the ball, so I was out. Dammit that sucked, I was SOOO close to making it home!

On the good side though, my kick and running was basically what allowed our sole run to score, so I guess that makes me pretty darn awesome! ;)

I didn’t go out to the bar after the game, instead opting to head over to the girls knitting night thing. We hadn’t done it in a few weeks, and I also hadn’t worked on my project lately, so I figured it was a good opportunity to hang out and get some more knitting done. We watched some episodes from last season of The Office and just chatted a bit. I also helped a girl bind off her very first scarf and cast on for her very first hat, woo! Knitting rocks. :)

Posted at 4:22 PM | (3)

Last night I drove back up to SB, in time to join a few people for a movie night. Once the other people arrived, we had some wine, ate some cookies, and played some crazy video game before starting the movie. We watched Vantage Point, which wasn’t that great, but it was amusing to make comments about, and it’s hard to watch Matthew Fox in a movie when he’s now so closely associated as Jack on Lost. Overall though, I thought it was a very nice evening spending time with some pretty cool people.

Today I did not eat lunch in my apartment, instead joining a friend for lunch at CPK. It’s been way too long since I did lunch with anyone, since most people have crazier work schedules than I, or else it just winds up not being convenient for some reason. This particular friend, who also does kickball twice a week, had been promising to do lunch forever, and finally we were able to settle on a suitable day, which was cool. We were able to somehow beat the lunch crowd, which is always nice, and now I also have some leftover pizza that I will hopefully remember to reheat for lunch this week (I am always so bad at remembering to eat leftovers).

The rest of today has been pretty mellow, but tomorrow begins my string of kickball and pub quiz evenings, which are always pretty fun.

On Thursday I played kickball as usual. Like my Tuesday team this week, we almost had to forfeit, but were able to get enough guys to show up to avoid that. We were really anxious to not have to forfeit, because we knew we could beat the other team—and we did! By quite a few runs!

Yesterday evening was the mid-season party for both leagues—they combined it probably to make it easier, as well as to allow intermingling between the two groups. Almost no one got there “on time”, but once the party got going, there were quite a lot of people. The teams played a flip cup tournament, and our team totally won, which was awesome!

After having enough of the party, a bunch of us decided to head down to another bar for some karaoke. The place wasn’t too crowded, and so we were able to get in quite a few songs. I did The Sign by Ace of Base, a duet of Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler, and was supposed to do another duet of Somewhere Out There from American Tail, but we ran out of time. Other members of the group also did several songs, and much fun was had by all.

Today I drove down from SB to attend my cousin’s 30th birthday. It was a pretty mellow gathering. It was actually pretty chilly today, with a crisp wind blowing for much of the time. We had a little fire pit going, which definitely helped in not freezing to death. It was also quite windy up in SB this morning as well as last night during the mid-season party. Fall is most definitely here!

On Tuesday I played kickball against a team that is mostly new, but has been fairly solid. They also have the advantage of having a lot of guys on the team. Our team, on the other hand, barely had enough guys to play to avoid having to forfeit.

So, the game went on, and though we had few people playing, we totally kicked ass, just like my Thursday team did last week! Although the other team had a good pitcher who threw crazy balls that were super hard to kick, when we did manage to get on base, we did get quite a few runs. We also seemed to improve on our defense, catching almost all of the balls that flew into the outfield, and making other smart, timely plays. The end result is that we won with a score of 6-4, I believe. Pretty awesome! We shall have to see if these winning trends hold up.

As far as pub quiz last night goes, that was not a win. Although we improved the last couple weeks, we didn’t score as high this week. Also, the winning team this week won the pot that had been building for several weeks. I think that the questions this week were a bit harder, and that perhaps some teams had brought out better players because of the higher amount of money at stake. Regardless, it was still fun, and hopefully we’ll someday be able to win it all—especially if it’s a week where there is more money involved!

Posted at 11:59 AM | (0)

This weekend was mostly a more mellow one, but on Friday night I did head out for some karaoke at a local dive bar. The place wasn’t super packed, but most of the people there seemed to be present just to do karaoke so I only got to do one song. I picked Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You”, mostly because I knew all the words, felt I could sing it, and the selection of songs was so massive, that if I spent much time going through all of the artist alphabet beyond the letter “C”, I would’ve been looking all night (this was also partly why I only got 1 song in…it took me quite awhile to even choose the one)! I think I did all right—the crowd seemed pretty forgiving anyway, but someone complimented me when I got off stage, so go me! I suppose it’s good practice for whenever I next get to play Rock Band or Rock Band 2!

This year, as my birthday approaches, I needed to finally go into the DMV to renew my license. After mailing it in 2 times already (and never taking a new picture) they finally made me go pass the vision test and get a new picture (although, who doesn’t love having an ID with a 16 year old version of yourself on it?!)

I was a bit apprehensive about the vision portion, since I don’t quite have 20/20 vision anymore, but I also never wear glasses. It turns out that I did not need to be worried, as I passed (now, whether YOU as a fellow driver need to be worried, that may be a different story!). So now I have to wait a few weeks or whatnot for my new ID to come in the mail, and hope that I don’t look too retarded, since if I do, I am clearly too lazy and unwilling to pay to get it changed (hello photo 13 years outdated!).

Going to the SB DMV was a lot faster than when I did it back in the LA area. I was probably in and out in 10-15 minutes, and the local office is not too far from me. Sweeeeet.

Posted at 4:13 PM | (0)

The most amazing thing happened last night at my kickball game—WE WON!!!!!!! And not just by a little, but by 7 points! The final score was 10-3! It was as if all the planets and stars aligned or something, we just played really really well. Everything seemed to fall into place—we made all kinds of good catches, didn’t overthrow, etc.

I think it also helped that our shortstop from last season was finally able to come play last night. She is amazing and was our MVP. Basically if the ball comes in her direction, she will catch it, and she will get it where it needs to go in time. She is also very good at physical contact. For instance, she stepped on 3rd base to force the runner out. However, despite being obviously out, the runner decided to slide anyway, essentially kicking her in her side and knocking her over. Amazingly, she did not drop the ball! She does, of course, now have a giant hideous bruise, but this is just one example of how hard core she is.

Afterward, many of us went to celebrate at the bar. We challenged the team we beat to some flip cup, and to their credit, they beat us every time. So, while they were unable to take us on the field, they at least got bragging rights off the field. They were a good team to play against though, because they seemed to have a good attitude and were more like us in terms of just wanting to play and have fun and not all about being super competitive.

Of course, I will say that winning—especially by a sizable margin—makes playing the game even more fun!! As for me…I didn’t do anything really awesome during the game—I made it to 2nd once before our team got 3 outs, and one of my turns to kick I got out running to first, but it allowed one of my teammates to score, so I guess sacrificing for an RBI is pretty good.

Hopefully our good playing will continue into the latter half of the season. :)

Posted at 6:50 PM | (1)

Damn, it appears I’ve been slacking again!

On Tuesday I played kickball and our team lost by 1 point. On the not so bad side, they were a returning team. Although, there were a few bad things that happened, like when we didn’t field the ball quick enough and someone got a homerun. Or the time that one guy held onto the ball instead of giving it back to the pitcher and someone advanced another base. But, overall, we do have some good outfielders, and we had a few impressive plays of our own.

Instead of going to the bar afterward though, I joined a couple girls to watch a movie and do some knitting! These girls have only recently learned how to knit, and so they are working on their first projects, which are scarves. They seem to like it so far, so I’ll have to show them some other cool things they can make. Considering that this is a hobby that I’ve always pretty much just done in isolation, it’s nice to get to hang out at the same time.

Last night was pub quiz. We once again won one of the rounds by being the only team to get a perfect score! We actually did pretty well overall and beat our old high score by 4 1/2 points! In fact, our score last night was only 1 1/2 points away from the team that wound up winning, which is encouraging! Each week we’ve inched closer, so is it possible we could win next week? That would be super awesome!

Posted at 9:40 AM | (0)