December 01, 2003
Flat On Both Ends
thanksgiving has come and gone -- a holiday which started with the newcomers to this land celebrating friendship with the indigenous people. of course being the greedy bastards we are, eventually those we feasted with were betrayed, persecuted, and driven away, albeit with quite a fight.
my long weekend began with a flat tire -- rear passenger side for those curious. i slowly drove to the nearby service station and thankfully it held air. i let it sit in the driveway for a while before heading out and all seemed well. my estimate at the time was that a neighborhood troll let the air out for some unknown reason. little trolls will do that from time to time because, well, they can. probably seemed funny at the moment.
the suite was sweet, though not as good as last year. why? because last year i could stretch out head to toe in the jacuzzi in the room -- this time i had to bend my knees. yeah, yeah, a hard knock life i know. the jets worked just as well and provided a relaxing end to the night. oh! the ceiling was, again, mirrored over the jacuzzi. i'm not sure what's up with that. i'd have taken a picture to share, but will save you all the horror.
thanksgiving dinner was modest -- the hotel buffett which was sadly limited. i managed some turkey, stuffing, mashed potato and gravy along with the only veggie i could find -- green beans. at least they were fresh! while light on the vegtables, they hit a home run with the desserts -- i had a bit of pumpkin pie as well as cheesecake topped with kiwi, strawberries, and peaches. looked good and tasted great. so much for dropping a few pounds this weekend!
friday i spent some time fixing my tire which apparently wasn't the work of a troll, but of a nail i must have run over at some point. this, unfortunately, required venturing out to a store on black friday. oy vey! (mental note -- never do that again) it was chaos. i just wanted an eff'ing can of fix-a-flat and thought i'd never get out of the joint. with a little search and rescue effort, i was extracted with my bounty and headed back.
with can in hand, i shook vigorously for 30 seconds, screwed the hose to the valve stem and pressed. fuck! the little screw on piece broke and i had fix-a-flat shit getting all over me. of course the valve stem was at the 12 o'clock position and the height of the can plus hose just wasn't going to reach, so with one hand i'm trying to keep the hose on the valve stem with the right amount of pressure so it can get into the tire, the other hand is holding on to this slippery ass can and keep the button depressed. i must have gotten enough in as the rim did raise slightly off the ground, so i drove very slowly -- slow like the people that piss me off slow -- to the station just around the corner. of course this required going through 2 lights and included a U-turn... and the refueling truck was in the lot making it difficult to reach the air hose. an air hose which, btw, required me to put a fucking quarter in to make work. bastards! filled 'er up and was on my way. for those interested, fix-a-flat seems to have worked pretty well; however, it stains your hands and smells terrible! i washed and washed and scrubbed and couldn't get the smell off. eventually it faded away by mid-afternoon or so.
two games saturday due to a major penalty which caused us to lose a spot in the championship game. that sucks, but that would have backed the team into the spot, so i supposed it can be lived with more easily. of course the second game was one i really wanted to see which pushed on my schedule to get to my game some 70 miles away. making matters worse, the vendor that was supposed to supply mvp gifts for the championship games fell through and i had to run up to oakland to get awards from an extremely kind and supportive vendor who simply bailed our asses out. this made it all about an 80 mile journey, but i did get to my game in time. well, in time for all of us sans our goalie to stick up the joint. aside from one or two shifts, my level of play was so far below acceptable, it might have been advantageous for me to lay in front of the goal on my side and take away a few square feet. we lost 5-1 and frankly the score makes it sound closer than it was. we need to win our next game to advance to the playoffs, but the way things are going... who knows that team is going to show up. the one that beats the top team in the league or the one that showed up saturday night.
with mvp awards in hand, i had to trek back to the tourni to make sure they were all there for sunday morning's championship games. the negative was having to drive back so far being so tired, but the positive was that i did get to see several excellent championship games to close out the weekend.
and a special thanks to the los angeles jr. kings who so kindly traded me some of your new club pins. you guys (and gals) rock! i think i might need to slip one next to my oyster bay americans pin because.... well... nevermind.
the tourni is done and aside from a few more pins and memories, all i'm left with is a bit of the flu which started going around thursday. oj, odwalla, and me will fight it off because i just don't have the time to be sick.
Posted by ac at December 1, 2003 04:28 PM