Year: 2014

Wow, here’s today’s front page from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reporting on the civil unrest in Ferguson:

Crazy. These are policemen facing a crowd at a Quiktrip convenience store, but it looks like a massive military operation. Does anyone still doubt police forces these days are over-zealous and over-equipped with military hardware?

So today Alex and Kyra both went out on their first dates. They had a good time watching a movie, bowling, eating pizza, and getting slushies at Sonic.

Nineteen years ago today, Laralee and I went out on our first date.

To Arby’s.

She’s just as awesome as she was nineteen years ago. Maybe even more awesome.

Today was the much-anticipated Grass Roots Ultimate summer league tournament. All summer we’ve been playing double-headers every week, leading up to the tourney, so this was a big deal. Just like all major sports, the regular season is all about positioning for the final games.

Well, we finished in third place during the regular season, which is actually the most desirable spot in a fourteen-team pool. The top two seeds, both 15-3-1, skipped the first round. We were 15-4-0, so we were definitely contenders. We had a first-round game against the lowest-ranked team. It was actually kind of sad; we beat them handily 13-1 and the only reason they scored the one is because we were playing a lazy defense against them. That was pretty much how their entire season had gone, which can be pretty frustrating as a team.

Second round was definitely a tougher game, but we ran up the scoreboard early in the first half and expanded our lead in the second half to finish at time with a 12-6 win.

The third round was against the second-place team, who had barely beat us 8-7 during the regular season. They made a few questionable calls and tempers flared a bit on both sides. One thing I really enjoy about the Boulder ultimate league is the spirit of the game and how most of the players are there to have fun, not to win at all costs. So we generally just redid a questionable play, and did our best to shake it off. We took a commanding lead in the second half and finished 11-7.

Then came the finals. The top-seeded team had been bumped out in the semifinals, so we were playing a strong team coming off an upset victory. They were pumped. In a really cool move, the opposing captain suggested we start the game with a joint cheer, so we all whooped and hollered and hit the field. Both of our teams had played (and won) three hour-plus games, so we were starting to get tired. It didn’t help that it was almost 90 degrees and the sun was beating down.

We traded points, with a few of the points turning into grueling back-and-forth contests as the wind picked up a bit. At half we were in good position, leading 7-3. They came out strong and picked up a few points, but their captain (one of their best players) twisted his knee badly and had to sit. They were also missing another strong player. We, on the other hand, had almost our entire team (a couple players were out of town) and played good, solid ultimate all day.

The final game is always extra fun because many of the other teams stay to watch, so the sidelines are packed with people shouting and heckling. A bunch of the women were chanting “take off your shirt!” to one of the well-built guys on the other team. There were also a lot of calls for hammer throws– always a crowd pleaser. I threw a long hammer on the last point, hoping for the score, but it ended up just outside the endzone and the receiver then made a light toss to one of our cutters and we won the game 13-7.

In ten years as a captain, I’ve never won the tournament. This was a huge day, and a ton of fun. I really enjoyed this season, and the strong players we had. We also had a really good time together, finishing with one of the top spirit scores in the league as well as the most points scored in all. Interestingly enough, on average we were also the oldest team and the tallest team. Tall and experienced: a great combination.

Here are a few pictures from today’s games.

First, the team photo before we started. Everyone is fresh, happy, and not at all sweaty:

Raj tosses a nice backhand past his defender:

Here’s an amazing catch by Tessa, who left her feet and landed right at the back corner of the endzone:

This guy isn’t on our team, but it was an awesome catch.

Writing a cheer for the opposing team is a very important part of the league. Here Brenda (the cheer master) writes while Peter and Tessa look up the words to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. Yes, it was an amazing cheer to that tune.

Cameron does some kind of monkey leap to catch a point in the endzone:

Here’s Tessa with a tough mark on Barb:

And here we are after our victory, holding our awards. Yep, that’s right: we won flip-flops with the GRU logo on them. I’ve won the championship three times in fifteen years, and this is the second time I won footwear. Don’t they realize I’m Shoeless Jeff?

It was a great time and a great season. I’m looking forward to the fall season, which will be in Longmont under the lights. And I’m running the league. We’ll see how that goes…

Yesterday Kyra was asked on her first date by a guy named Ricky. It’s been a long time coming… about a year ago, he approached me to get permission to ask out Kyra when she turned 16 (our kids aren’t allowed to date until 16). Ricky is 16 and a good kid, so of course I said it was fine. He’s literally been waiting almost a year for her sweet sixteen birthday, and all of his friends– as well as Kyra– were well aware of his little crush.

Now that the deed is done and he has a date secured, Ricky asked Alex about going out on a group date. Why? Because Alex can drive, of course. At first Alex was willing to just be the chauffeur for Ricky, Kyra, and another couple, but I told him he wasn’t going to be the “fifth wheel” and he needed to get a date.

Of course Alex is a year and a half older than Kyra and hasn’t ever been on a date, so this is a pretty big deal. He pretended to really think about all of the girls he could ask, but everyone knew all along that it would be Brianna.

(Brianna is the pretty blond on the left.)

There are now two other boys in the posse, and today one of them asked out Kelsey, Brianna’s younger sister (and the girl to the right of Alex in the photo). Apparently when he was over at her house talking to her about it, Brianna said she was still waiting for Alex to ask. It’s funny that even she knows it’s coming.

Anyway, tonight Alex was brainstorming about how to ask her out in a funny and creative way. I tossed out a few ideas– it’ll be fun to see what he decides to do. Even more fun is the fact that Alex and Kyra will be on the same group date…

Kyra and I competed to see who has the most chins.

From what I can tell, she only has two. Amateur.

Zack got a shirt from Kyra for his birthday… it’s one of the crazy purple minions.

Somehow, it suits him.

Last week Zack was at Scout Camp. He and a dozen other boys went to a local lake and spent the week camping, hiking, and learning to wakeboard, kayak, and surf. He had a lot of fun. Heck, I was there for a day and I had a lot of fun too.

The day after he came home, he complained that his legs hurt. We peeked beneath his shorts and discovered that he had a ton of little bites. Laralee actually counted 46 of them, mostly on the back of his legs but also on the front. Here’s a photo of the back of his right thigh:

Yikes.

Strangely, they actually got worse over the next couple of days. They were very painful– so much that he couldn’t sit, and had to spend the day on his stomach reading books and such.

A bit of research indicated that they’re probably chigger bites. None of the other boys at camp had any problems like this, so the best we can figure is that Zack either had a bunch of them in his sleeping bag, or he sat down somewhere in the forest and managed to stir up a bunch of the little buggers.

It’s almost a week later and they’re finally subsiding, but it was pretty crazy for a while. Hopefully this isn’t all he remembers about Scout Camp years from now…

Here are a few artsy photos from the latest download from my camera…

Blinkenlights at my hosting facility:

Peering into the guts of a server:

And Skittles!

Over the past few months I’ve made a lot of progress trimming the amount of spam I receive. Every now and then something still manages to sneak through, but it’s nowhere near the flood I used to endure.

Today’s awesome sneak-through message? Toenail fungus cure!

I can’t imagine the sorts of people who click through on this. But I suspect it got through the filters simply because I wasn’t filtering for “toenail fungus”. Until now. Mwah ha haaaaa!