Last Monday night, I managed to pop out my knee playing soccer. We were short our normal goalie and I'm backup goalie on account of I don't have a filter between "Should I jump in front of this guy?" and jumping. This normally leaves me in mid-air, or being trampled under foot wondering just how I got there. I've been told it looks good, and I think I'll put it on my tombstone "At least it looked good". I went out again tonight to play, but had a mad attack of common sense and just watched the game instead. It's very, very frustrating to be constrained by common sense. I'm not a fan.

As I mentioned in my last post, it was a very busy weekend (two weekends ago). The murder mystery had me worried, I'm not much of a people person if I don't already know them and it was a 'ask other people for information and role play' kind of evening. Kathleen swept out in to the crowd like she'd known them for ever and I was sitting at the table with a 'scientist' and two members of the 'gazelle liberation army' (GLA). Happily the 'scientist' was in reality a sound engineer and foley artist, which was pretty cool. The fact that I had to do a character assassination of my wife within five minutes of the start managed to break the ice. Some people were tagged as 'Dancers' and were forced to go up on stage later in the evening and do an interpretive dance bit on wounded gazelle. I took some photos with the new phone, but looking at them now ... everyone gathered around the 'wounded animal' while badly imitating gazelles looks downright creepy.


We ended going out that evening with members of the GLA to a pub near our place. Kat was stoked and having a great time. The scientist at our table wasn't drinking and gave me her drink tickets. It turns out that I was the driver that night so Kat enjoyed the large portions of wine being served. I'd been up since 5:30 in the morning to get in the ocean and by 12:30 AM I was just tired and wanted to go home.

The Testes toss tournament was a success, Kat and I burned out in the third round, which was good. We were there from 11:00 am until 3pm when we left (it continued on until 8pm). I never knew how much effort they put in to the tournament, but there were over 80 people (40 teams), four lanes to 'toss', bullhorns, kegs of beer, kegs of mixed drinks (when did this happen?) and of course the two police cars that showed up.

There was lots of what I would consider 'surfer flesh' hanging around: young, buff and tanned boys. Two of them had the, I'm assuming it's stylish, ass-crack showing in their low slung shorts. Kat and I met up with folks from the soccer team, the shorts boys came up in conversation and we learned that they are there every year, they are referred to as the "McCrackins" and most people can't stand them. Paula's shining moment this year was beating their teams out of the tournament.

Four hours in the sun, then home to shower, change and off to a wedding party for one of my co-workers who got married in Lebanon last month. I lasted until 9PM and then I was just tired from being in the sun all day and wanted to go home. I'm pretty sure it was the sun that made me tired, it could have been the Lebanese line dancing and ululations that were making me a little uncomfortable, but that would make me look bad. Four hours in the sun, exhausting.

I seem to have missed a week in my normal posting schedule. I'll fully admit that the busy weekend threw me off, but I've also been playing Oblivion again. It is an older game (a couple years or so) and an open ended RPG. It took me a while to start but I'm finally starting to enjoy it. The game has been around long enough that there is wiki site out there dedicated to it and that site has *everything*. Every quest in the game is indexed, detailed and searchable. I enjoy the game, but some of the effort people have put in to this site is disturbing.

Kat has continued to find that getting a job is very difficult to do in a depression. She had an audition on Saturday that she thinks went well, but sadly the male lead they chose was younger, so she thinks they'll be casting somebody younger to match. I told her to work the Mrs. Robinson angle, of course me telling her that after the audition probably didn't help. If I'd been there I would have said the same thing, in a stage whisper. Yep, that bad joke is in there intentionally.

Kathleen is still recovering from Saturday night. We went out to support a friend of ours in her karaoke habit. It was a quiet night with not many people so Kathleen volunteered to go do a tune. I'll say right now that I've heard Kat sing and she sounds good, not trained, but good. The karaoke machine hated her. It was a little painful and her ego was still suffering on Sunday.

I've been thinking about teaching the dog a new trick. I'm just in the planning stages. He's been giving me his undivided attention, but i don't think it's sinking in. I tell him to get me a beer and he just looks confused. I realize that opening the fridge is probably something I shouldn't be teaching him, since he'd sniff everything and leave nose marks in the butter, so I'm upping the ante. I figure if I ask him enough times and project maybe I'll teach him to run to the corner store with a $10 bill attached to him and open *their* fridge and get the beer.

I think the tough part is going to be teaching him the difference that opening our fridge is bad, but opening their fridge is good. My hopes aren't high.