entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I was at the colo about a month ago, and while my coworker was away, i figured i'd do a few pullups on a fallow rack because, hey, exercise.  After i was done, i let go and my foot landed on a piece of galvanized steel pipe, which neatly flipped up and delivered a quick blow to my left shin.  I pulled up my pant leg, expecting to see a nasty welt, and was instead surprised by a trickle of blood.  I took the picture as i cleaned up the wound at the first aid station.  Naturally, i played soccer that night, and the next night, with only minimal bleeding.

Yesterday, i had soccer at 17:00 with Quakes (we won 4-2; my defense performed admirably and i had a nearly flawless game), then came home, showered, and on our way out to San Francisco, we stopped for food at El Pollo Loco, but the drive-in line was huge, which caused us to arrive at the GAMH a tad late.  Then i forgot to get the earplugs from my emergency stash in the car, so i had to run back to get them, then on the way back i realized i lost my ticket, so i had to track back my steps; fortunately, i found it in the parking garage, so in we went.

Saturna opened, and they did a good job.  I went downstairs to buy their CD; Matt, the drummer, couldn't unlock the cashbox, so he told me to just take the CD gratis.  I dropped by later to pay, so he gave me their EP for free.  Swell guys, and their music was good, too.  What more can a fan ask?

Bob Mould came on and opened with the best possible song he could have played as an opener.

• The Act We Act
• A Good Idea
• I Hate Alternative Rock
• See a Little Light
• Hoover Dam
• I Am Vision, I Am Sound
• The Silence Between Us
• Hanging Tree
• Miniature Parade
• Your Favorite Thing
• Hardly Getting Over It
• Changes
• Paralyzed
• Can't Help You Anymore
• I Apologize
• Celebrated Summer
• Divide and Conquer

Encore

• Egøverride
• If I Can't Change Your Mind

Encore

• Chartered Trips
• Makes No Sense at All
• New Day Rising

Leave it to me to find flaws in what was practically perfection: seeing how often he dipped in the Sugar and Hüsker Dü well, i would have killed to hear "Tilted" and "In a Free Land".  And the drummer was awfully sloppy during the first few songs (or maybe i'm just too attached to the beautiful precision of Malcolm Travis's beats).  But, damn... it was good.  Great.  Awesome.  I heard stuff i'd never thought i'd see Bob play.  One funny thing was that Kim and i sat next to these two twenty-something kids who had a completely bored expression throughout the whole show.  On our other side, a man and woman sat listening to the show with their earplugs neatly sitting in front of them.  Down the way, there were two girls dry-humping, in an apparent attempt to titillate their boyfriends.

This is the third time i've seen Bob play and i'm sure i'll be back for more... so long as i don't forget my earplugs.

I haven't written much here lately.  I guess i'm depressed or something with the job search.  So maybe i should write about the good stuff.  Like meeting people; Kim and i met mezdeathhead and schwa242 over Thai food in San Francisco, together with Mez's sister grrjessi and her boyfriend Justin.  All too short a meeting, as i had to take off for soccer back in the South Bay.  Some days later, after i had a job interview at UC Santa Cruz, Kim and i met solipsistnation and stophittinyrslf for lunch.  It's a lot of fun to hang out with couples who have a good dynamic and obviously like each other (and i don't mean gooshy stuff, although i have no objection to that), and all of the above qualify.

Soccer's still good.  I took a shot in the nuts the other night, and my cup wasn't able to protect me, so i spent some time on the ground groaning.  I've been getting a lot of compliments on my improved play, all of which really started after i went to the park one weekend to learn some fundamentals.  Funny how little things have big effects.  I still can't get my teammates to reliably and quickly set up walls on free kicks, though.

Last week, Kim and i went to see allannah's daughter perform as part of a choir.  Afterwards, we went out for Mexican food, and allannah and i decided to have a premium añejo tequila flight with our meal.  The first had obvious vanilla overtones and burned all the way down (now that i think on it, it was AsomBroso); the second had definite butterscotch flavor, although not quite as strong as the vanilla in #1.  The third was free of any foreign flavor and was my favorite.  I mentioned this to our waiter and he offered me a taste of a reposado that he recommended.  It was superior by far to the añejos, both in aroma and flavor, which surprised me a bit.  I'm not really a liquor drinker anymore (excepting soju, which is distilled but only comes in at 24% or so), but it was fun to give this a try.  And i was glad Kim was driving, too.

I stopped a shot with my mouth today.  Now my jaw won't close correctly (i can force it but it hurts).  What makes it worse is that Centavo was undefeated until tonight.  Ugh.  It was inevitable, though, as yesterday, Quakes finally won its first game of the session after four straight losses.

rone: "Man, one of the other guys gave me a good kick on the shin.  It's sore."

Teammate: "Aren't you wearing shin guards?"

rone: "Sure, but it went right through it.  Just like this, whack!" [demonstrates by whacking leg with fist] "Ow.  OWWWWWW." [limps off to car]

Yes, despite my interruption of my soccer reports, i'm still playing.  Not only am i still playing with Quakes on Wednesday and Centavo on Thursday, i'm also playing with FC Red Storm on Fridays in the SBASL.  This was the first week i played three games in a row; to top it off, i went to my first goalkeeper training session (ever) this morning with SBASL, and i'm quite tired.  The instructor confirmed my own assessment of my strengths (quickness, fearlessness) and my weaknesses (iffy footwork, bad catching technique, terrible conditioning), so that's good.  If i work on my fundamentals, i think i'll be pretty damn good.

Centavo managed to win our last game of the session by bringing in a bunch of subs from another team from another division in which two of Centavo's players also played.  The good news is that those guys stuck around and have signed onto Centavo's roster for this session.  The bad news is that, even though we had a full bench for our first game last week, we still got killed, losing to Crawdads 19-4.  I don't think we managed to score in the second half.  The guys looked tired in the second half, and when you have a full bench, you have no excuse for staying on the field if you're tired.  Crawdads was good, though, and they barely had any lucky goals.

As for my other team, it's called Quakes and we play on Wednesdays, except today for obvious reasons.  Our first two games have been losses, 12-7 to Os Caralhos and 10-6 to Defiance.  Playing with a new team is always a challenge because you have to learn everyone's names, get used to how they play, and then yell at them a lot so they don't play poorly.  I had a pretty poor game against Defiance, but i know i'll do better next time.

I know what you've been thinking, but no, i haven't stopped playing.  This season has been a disaster; due to the gameday change to Friday, half the team has been completely unable to show up.  Throw in the normal amount of flaking and we've been severely undermanned every game, and forfeited once.  I'm going to take a hit for a few hundred dollars because i couldn't get anyone else to fill up the roster.

The only bright spot was that my parents and my Aunt Martha came to visit (in order to attend palecur's and amywithani's 10th anniversary party), and got to see me play last Friday.  After the game, one of my opponents asked me if i wanted to play on one of his other teams.  At first i declined, because next session Centavo'll be back on Thursdays, and his team plays on Wednesdays, and i didn't want to play on consecutive days.  But later i thought to myself, "You know what?  That's pretty damn flattering.  Just go for it."  So i got his number, and we'll see what happens.

Tomorrow's our last stupid Friday game, against the other bottom feeder of the group (against whom we lost badly the first time around because we were three men short the whole game).  I hope we will do well.

I haven't played in two Fridays; last week was a bye, and the week before that was The Drift's concert, so i told the team i couldn't make it.  The game before that, Centavo lost to Wilson Sport, 15-6.  We did all right in the first half, but the fact that we had four new players really caught up with us, and our defense was terrible.  To make matters worse, i let the fact that our defense wasn't playing well get to me, and i effectively stopped playing hard and let a few soft goals in because i didn't care.  Their last goal was scored by a guy who took a shot, unopposed, from midfield, and despite me knowing what he was doing, he still put it in the exact spot he wanted, just out of my reach.  The game i missed, we only lost 8-2 to Atlas, so maybe the team doesn't need me after all.  I hope we all do better this Friday (and i hope i'm not rusty).

Last week marked the final games of my soccer sessions.  On Monday, Crossfire completed its second and final season at Off The Wall Soccer by losing in a different fashion: by forfeit.  Officially, Vortex won 3-0.  We played anyway and lost something like 11-2.  Our captains managed to forget the team jerseys, and the OTWS assholes wouldn't let the game be official, even though our opponents were wholly amenable to us playing in mesh vests, even though the other team had a chance to take first place (although needed to beat us by something like 13 goals, which even a team of our quality could've avoided).

On Thursday, Centavo beat Old Man U 10-7.  We started the game a man down, but only fell behind by a couple of goals.  We managed to pull away late in the second half, coincidentally when the ref let one of the opposing players languish in the penalty box 30 seconds past his due and we scored.

After the game, we faced the fact that our captain hadn't registered us for the next session (because he was moving away), and our division was full.  The only slot was in Division 5; we agreed that we'd take a shot, even though it's a top division and we'd probably get killed.  And even though i didn't want to captain the team (because that means paying up front, then dunning my teammates, plus stressing over jerseys and keeping a roster), i ended up volunteering because, well, nobody else was.  Now, OTWS had co-ed on Mondays, men's 1-5 on Tuesdays, 6-10 on Wednesdays, and 11-15 on Thursdays.  However, they recently altered it so that 1-4 is on Tuesdays, but 5 is on Fridays.  So now we're set for Friday, but since 4 of our players already play on Fridays, that means that our roster is suddenly quite short.  Add in another couple of dropouts for random reasons and things are looking very grim.

How grim?  Well, we played our first game yesterday and lost to Arsenal USA, 15-8.  Our defense was outclassed, and it could've been much worse; they seemed to be new to OTWS, so they kept making 3-line infractions and didn't play the ball off the wall very well.  Also, i had thrown my tattered gloves away after the last game, and i forgot to buy new ones, so i ended up playing with batting gloves.  Those fortunately didn't become a problem as i made most of my saves with my legs.  It was an interesting game for me because i was forced to shift side-to-side a lot and guess often, because of the quality of the shooters.  And guessing mostly worked for me this game.  So, like i said, it could have been worse.

As for Crossfire, last i heard we were shooting for reforming at Striker's Den.  My membership at OTWS expires in November, and i'll not renew it, because i'm just tired of their crap.  If Crossfire doesn't reform, then i'll try to find a team at Striker's Den or at MVP Arena.