Weekday ball began again, but this time at our new home away from home.
Big Shot Rob ordered me to leave work early, so let the games begin! We established that you can play 3 on 3 at Mirage. Eventually we had enough for fours. This day I played well--getting plenty of blocks and some pretty astounding saves. Me, Crawfish, Jess, Wescott, Ronin Steve, Big Shot Rob, Atty Scott fought until the sun went down. Attorney Scott discovered there is safety in inertia, and was glued in place in the parking lot for two hours after the games, or so the story goes.
Headline for Saturday: "These are the best watervolleyball games I've ever seen." Jeremy--actual Mirage resident and sand baller, who played with the Jesus Tasty TJ show and came out victorious in a best of 3 matchup. He has been informed of the website, but sadly he failed to show up the next day when we did. Good weather inspired a better degree of timeliness (~3) and good turnout, despite the absence of Ford & co., Crawfish, LJ, Creepy, Tattoo, T2, etc. Again I was happy with the level of competition and my own performance on the day. I've got some ideas about why I'm getting more blocks and kills than I would at the Obstacle, but I don't want to reveal them just yet.
Sunday looked promising as well, but was marred by persistent plagues of suck. First was the Mikey meltdown--two games of missing everything and out. Then there was the wierd resident participant--something about that guy just wasn't right, and it went way beyond the fact that he had no game. Then there were the game dynamics--blowout after blowout. Sure there are a couple of games where all the height ended up on one team or the predominance of skill, or both, but these factors changed constantly as the teams were rebuilt after just about every game. Sure, I had a few serves and a bunch of saves, but spent most of the day on the defensive. It just sucks when you see your team has some mismatches you can exploit and not once can you execute the play that exploits them--inexplicable. There were some notable performances on the day, in particular Wescott's serve--literally a "stinger." I left somewhat early out of frustration (7:30), so someone else will have to fill in the blanks. If memory serves, someone was filming as well, so we may have total coverage of a not so great day.
A few points in closing: let's keep our safety meetings in the safest possible locations. I had one of the little Miragelets tell me not to smoke cigarettes, so imagine if they tell mommy and daddy they smell wacky tobacky??? It would be nice if their parents would try to keep the little ones out of the way when games are on, instead of blithely letting them run amok wherever they please, especially since there is a nice large pool in which they can freely frolic, but we don't live there, and have been doing at least as good a job watching out for the little ones as those that should be minding them are. On a similar note--all residents outrank us, even if they are crazy and suck. So we can hope the loopy Sunday guy is never seen again, but if he is, we can't just be shooing him off. Best solution I can think of is a one game in, one game out regimen that can be explained.
Didn't see any Obstacle progress this morning, but they've got the rest of the week--let's all hope for a grand Saturday reopening!
_________________ Chief
Death from above! Fire down below!
|