Practice

The morning began with my ride arriving at 6am...

No, not to pick me up, but coming home from his best friend's bachelor party. I knew this would be entertaining. At 8am, I deigned to wake him up. First action on his part: Roll over and hand me the keys. Sweet, I like driving. Especially now that I no longer own a car. I start my pot of coffee for the morning (My absolute favorite variety: Light Roasted Mexican Altura Coatepec from McNulty's Tea and Coffee) and then head out for the standard pre-practice meal from Johnny L's Bagels and Deli.

As usual, as I walk in, Johnny L himself immediately starts making my usual: Ham, egg and swiss on a whole wheat bagel with salt and pepper. So much better than Dunkin' Donuts across the street. I can't fathom why you would get a sandwich there. If you're a donut fiend, you've got other problems, but I understand.

As I return to my apartment, some crazy woman is yelling at me about moving my ride's car because it is parked in the "Clergy Only" space. The Greek Orthodox Church owns our building, so I understand the space is reserved, but I don't understand the anger. I tell her that all I need to do is go inside and rouse my guest and we'll be off. I'm inside for 2-3 minutes, and by the time I return, there's a gaggle of men of the cloth telling me "You can't park your car here." I quickly decide that neither explaining that the car isn't mine nor responding like Raoul Duke with "Is this not a reasonable place to park?" will likley remedy the situation.

I rush into the car and we get on the road. Lively discussion (with a still-drunk passenger supine in the back seat under a sleeping bag) of bahelor parties and wedding fuck-ups ensues. During the ride, more importantly, I realize how good "Murder by Numbers" by The Police is. Sick, twisted, lyrical, creepy, clever and smooth. Just like the oft-underappreciated Steely Dan. I also finally placed where the riff from the Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Pretty Little Ditty" had been used: That annoyingly catchy Crazy Town song, "Butterfly!" That had been bugging me for a while.

We arrive early and cleat up. This is good. I had a bad habit of showing up just on the edge of on-time last year. A goal for this season is to get there early.

Practice consisted of drills on dump O/D, lane D, skill drills, some basic zone work, and various modified scrimmages. We broke into studs vs duds for the scrimmage, much to the joy of Brandon who was captain of the stud team at "~3 hours ago." Of course, we, the stud team, won using our superior relaxation despite the defensive focus of the scrimmage. I think this makes me 6-0 in practice on the season thus far.

We had 32 dudes at the beginning of practice, and only about 20 at the end. That was odd. Some tryouts looked pretty good. Some showed signs of actual field sense as well. I would say that it was a good practice made great by a team BBQ right after we were done! I finished stretching and walked over for some ice-cold beer followed by some brats. Tasty. Not a perfectly sensible meal choice overall, but not too shabby. Followed it with some veggies and the like in evening while watching some okay basketball.
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Workout Total:
5 hour practice