Team America: Week 5 Report

Team America plays in the upper intermediate indoor volleyball league for the Chicago Sports and Social Club every Tuesday night.

You’d think that after winning our first match I would have written about it much sooner, but alas I’m still having trouble breaking out of my Friday vball blogging habits. Not to say that I wasn’t excited by the win, it was the lone highlight of my day. After having my car think it was being stolen and refuse to start in a parking garage on Sunday, not being able to get it out of said garage till Monday morning, paying $200 to have the computer rebooted, not being able to sell/give-away Cubs tickets for Tuesday, and locking myself out of my apartment that night, it was by far the best part of the previous 2-3 days. Whew, sorry, enough with my bitching on to the recap.

Highlights from the night…

• Gail getting a ridiculous dig, to set-up a set right back at her, which she put down. The highlight for me was that I yelled, “Get up” during my set, while she was still landing from the dig. The lessons learned is this: “If you dig it, it will come (…right back at you, so get up and put this one down).”
• Matt getting a block up front. I know you said it was just off your fingers, but we count those as blocks on this team.
• Steve getting two digs in the back row. I honestly thought those were going down, but no, you got to them and they were pretty good passes to boot.
• Kristen and Sarah for setting all night. I know it can be a less glamorous job than hitter, and sometimes you get people on your back (literally…Matt, I’m looking at you) but you guys did a good job.
• Jim and Ali, for not yelling at each other this week. We really appreciate it when you guys keep any domestic violence marital spats out of the game.
• Bryan…well, there’s not a whole lot to say, but we miss you. At the very least you look very professional in your profile.

So by winning all three games last Tuesday we have pulled ourselves out of the gutter and stand at 4-11! Next up are Balls In, during another 10 pm game. Seriously, how do we keep getting screwed like that? On another note, these are the guys immediately ahead of us in the standings. We win 2 of 3 and we can move up another spot!

Team America: Week 4 Report

Team America plays in the upper intermediate indoor volleyball league for the Chicago Sports and Social Club every Tuesday night.

Well, we certainly accomplished our goals for this week. We pushed fewer passes into the net. Ergo, they had fewer opportunities to force hits down our setters’ throats this week, we were able to set-up our offense, and we put down a few hits of our own. Secondly, we never got down on ourselves and we kept playing. This was certainly a noticeable improvement over last week, and our play reflected that.

Now, just because we achieved our goals doesn’t mean we came away with the match…or a win, but at least we’re making progress. So officially we are 1-11 but I think we could definitely be as high as 3-9. To date the standings are:

Spring 2006 Tuesday Drucker Upper Intermediate Volleyball
Team	W	L	%
Cardiac Arrest	10	2	83.33
Side Out	7	5	58.33
Parkway Bank Rules!	7	5	58.33
Six Pack	6	3	66.66
Hank Scorpio	6	6	50
It's All About the Shoes	5	4	55.55
Balls In	3	6	33.33
Set Shorty	3	6	33.33
Team America (F*ck Yeah!)	1	11	8.33

We have three weeks (plus a bye) to go and I think we can hit that illustrious 3-win mark before the playoffs hit. We'll be peaking at just the right time, as those other teams beat each other up with their "trying" and their "skill" and their "sobriety." Like my mom always said, you have to eat a lot more rice before you know as much as I do. What that has to do with volleyball I'm not sure, but I'm not one to question my mom.

Highlight of the night: Ali getting all fired up when the girls on the other team started talking shit. Let me break it down for everyone, the ball we played game one with was completely worn down. Seriously, this thing was smoother than the inflatable super bouncy balls you get at the supermarket. You know, the ones that you would throw around and bounce off of the walls but then get yelled at because you just knocked over the smoked sausage display and now the summer sausage is rolling under the other shelves, your mom is trying to pick up everything, and you're yelling because some pimple-faced kid just took your ball away from you. Not that that ever happened to me. I digress...in-between games one and two Ali politely requested that we switch balls and asked if the other team cared or not. The response from the girl in green was, "Well, if you think it will help." What a bitch. Not that I'm surprised, had the tables been turned I would probably be thinking the same thing, but alas they weren't and I'm calling her names now to make our team feel better. I will say, it was definitely one of those situations that we could have used our enforcer but he was elsewhere.

Goals for next week: I think our goals for next week should be 1) To continue the goals from last week, 2) Take more swings and 3) Put'em in a body bag!

The Jack Bauer Power Hour

Is it bad when you walk in to a co-worker's office and yell "TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW!" and then threaten them with electro-shock torture until they give up the memo you were looking for? Ok, perhaps a little bit, but that's what happens when you watch eight hours of Fox's 24 in less than a week.

If you haven't been watching this season's 24 you're missing out. This by far is the best season of the show. Let me run it down for you: Jack has been "off the grid" for over a year after the events of last season. He gets pulled back in after the four people that knew he was still alive are targeted by assassins. Shortly after he is reunited with his one true love, CTU in an effort to uncover a conspiracy, track down stolen Sentox nerve gas and the terrorists that plan on using them. In the meantime people learn a lot about themselves, some enemies become friends, some friends become enemies and Rudy makes an appearance.

It'’s hard to say why I like 24 as much as I do. Is it because Jack is a bad ass and I wish I could be like him? Perhaps. Is it because I'’m waiting for the day that Chloe and Edgar get together and make sweet, sweet geek love? Umm...definitely not. I'’d say my love of 24 breaks down something like this:

• Jack'’s nuclear powered PDAs. That thing never runs out of juice. Seriously, he's been making calls, getting e-mails, viewing streaming video, and uploading schematics all day long and I haven't seen it once in a docking cradle.
  
• Self destructing memory cards. Stupid Germans.
  
• The fact that everyone can be a suspect because the writers only script out six episodes at a time.
• Every time a terrorist/informant gets presidential immunity, Jack figures a way to get it rescinded and then goes to work on them. And by work I mean do their taxes. And by do their taxes I mean crush their testicles throat.
  
• This season'’s Spy vs. Spy between Jack and Robocop.
• Curtis. That'’s one BAMF.
• Chloe can find a schematic of any building in Los Angeles and berate three colleagues within 90 seconds.
  
• That President Palmer was Pedro Cerrano in another life.

Things that drive me crazy about this season of 24:

• Is it me, or do people recover from torture aggressive interrogation much too easily? Look at it this way, Henderson got pumped full of chems but was able to awaken, kill Tony, steal a car and rejoin his strike team. Audrey, also after a meeting with Burke, looks like she just left the spa with a make-over. Apparently the solution Burke is pumping into them is just sugar water and they'’re sweating because they know they'’re inching closer to type 2 diabetes. Either that or his breath smells like a diaper covered in Indian food.
  
• I'’ve been to LA numerous times, and have driven from one end of town to the another. It takes forever to go anywhere. How the hell does Jack, Curtis, and the terrorists get around so quickly? Is there a magical flying car that they use to get around SoCal and if so why aren't they showing it? Seriously, bump up the budget a little bit and let's see some Jetson action.
  
• If you were President, wouldn'’t you just stop coming to California? Seriously, everytime they'’re there, they killed, almost killed, or a national emergency drops out of the sky. I would avoid it at all costs.

So, that being said the season wouldn't be complete without at least one night playing the 24 drinking game. I can hear my liver already screaming that it's in a flank two position.

Team America: Week 3 Report

Team America plays in the intermediate indoor volleyball league for the Chicago Sports and Social Club every Tuesday night.

Wow, judging by the way everyone scattered Tuesday night after the game, it couldn't have been a good one. And you know what? It wasn't. We got our asses handed to us in three straight games and we stunk up the joint.

Jim and I were talking yesterday and we both agree, we're freshmen again in the sense that these other teams have been here for a while, know how to play at this level as a team, and do so on a consistent basis. Obviously, this isn't something that comes as a shock to anyone. We knew this would be challenging at the very least.

So, where do we go from here? We have five weeks and four matches left. Aside from me putting on a skirt before the end of the season I'll make the following predictions:

• We will win at least two more games, and possibly as many as five.
• Ali will call Jim, Captain Dipshit at least once.
• Steve will mistakenly bring two bottles of MGD instead of water. Hilarity will ensue.
• Sean Preston will divorce his parents. Seriously, wouldn't you?
• I will actually put a good hit down on the other team.
• Eminem will finalize his divorce from Kim, only to remarry her and divorce again.
• Matt will continue to touch tall things.
• I will enroll at Northern Illinois University.
  

That being said, there are a few things we can work on between now and our end of season bar crawl.

1. First passes. We definitely need to get better first passes to our setters. We sent them into the net on serves and digs a few too many times.
2. Keeping spirits up. Last week we lost the first game, but because we were still loose and having a good time we were able to come back and win the second. This week we got down on ourselves, played tight, and lost. If I need to bring the grass skirt back I will.
   

Good passes and attitudes, that's pretty much it. I'll leave you with this thought though...

Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

Work Conferences

So I survived another ISMS House of Delegates Annual Meeting. I'm not going to bore people with the details (or get myself into trouble for talking about the companies here) so let me just say this. The HOD is a grueling test of endurance for all those concerned. How I've survived six of these things I'll never know.

Shamrock Shuffle

So I finished. After two and a half months of grueling training, I was able to complete the 2006 Shamrock Shuffle. Ok, so my training mostly consisted of me walking to the McDonald's for a McGriddle or back to the bar for another beer, but that still counts doesn't it? Seriously though, I ran three to maybe four times prior to the race. That's training enough for me!

So at 4.96 miles, the Shamrock Shuffle is 1.46 miles longer than the furthest I've ever run in race conditions. The previous record holder? The Chase Corporate Challenge, which is 3.5 miles. I've done that a few times and run in other 5k races as well. I wasn't sure how fast I was going to be, but as long as I finished in under an hour I thought I'd be ok. In the end I finished in 53:14, six and three quarter minutes faster than my goal. Clare smoked me, coming in at 48:08.

10 minutes after the start we were finally walking up to the starting line (seriously, there were 25,000 people registered for this race, you didn't think we'd be up front did you?). I began to wonder, "how fast I could actually run this?" If completed in 42 minutes or less, you become eligible for the preferred start, which puts you ahead of the massive crowds. At that moment I wanted to come in at 41 minutes. Three steps into my run I wanted to go home.

That being said, I didn't stop other than at the water/gatorade stations, and that was just because it was littered with wet paper cups. Running down the middle of State Street without getting run over by a car or bus was pretty surreal. I'd say it was like Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky, but there were a few hundred people around me and I'm not a crazy Scientologist.

Next up is the Corporate Challenge, where I hope to finish in 30 or fewer minutes. Let the training begin.

Team America: Week 2 Report

Team America plays in the intermediate indoor volleyball league for the Chicago Sports and Social Club every Thursday night.

I’d like to lead-off with the fact that Sarah was perfect. On top of that, Ali hit through double blocks all night. And now that we’re done talking about Jim & Stroh’s swinger party last night, on to volleyball…

Improvement is the word of the week. We won our first game in the new league last Tuesday. Unfortunately that was the only game that we won, so we still ended up losing the match. I suppose that makes improvement a relative term, like health and Cubs pitchers, or sobriety and Whitney Houston.

To be honest, I never really felt like I had my head in the game. I suppose it could have been the early seven o’clock start, but more likely it was the fact that I got held up at work till 6:30. That obviously explains why I shanked multiple swings and a set during the game. Luckily everyone else stepped up and was able to put us in a position to win.

Sarah did a great job bringing us back in the second game, rattling off half a dozen points or more to get us the lead. Ali also did hit through double blocks, which is more than I can say for Steve, since every time I set him he ended up hitting into a single block. That of course is better than me, but let’s be honest, the net is just like one really big, wide blocker right?

Anyway, after discussions after the game, it seems as though a consensus has emerged.

1) We need to react faster

2) We need to be more selfish when it comes to the ball.

Hopefully playing on Sunday mornings now and again will help that. I definitely agree with the rest of the team, we’ll only get better as the league goes on.

Now I leave you with this though:

Pi is not infinite. It stops when Chuck Norris tells it to.

182 Days and Counting

A lot has happened in the past 182 days. Holidays, parties, birthdays and more than enough work days have passed in the past six months. I watched the Sox with a World Series, the Bears make it to the play-offs, and Illinois basketball come up a little short. My sister started working for a living and "Santa" finally gave my parents the bigger gift (seriously, how can anyone watch a 55" big screen without surround sound?).

Through it all, Clare hasn't gotten sick of me. Not of my shenanigans, hullabaloo, or other random quirkiness, alcohol fueled or otherwise. I'm not really one to celebrate the passing of time in anything less than a year, but after being single for the past six years there's something nice about celebrating six months.

So, happy sixmonth-iversary baby!