Worst Athlete in the World

Most of us who know M know that he's a competent guy when it comes to that intersection of outdoorsiness and sports (e.g., cross-country skiing, kayak/canoe paddling, rock- and ice-climbing, kiteboarding, etc.). And it's not like "traditional" sports are unknown to him: he played a few years of football, was always pretty good at tennis and even played some hard-core rugby when he was in China about eight years back. He's strong and in good shape -- particularly on a bike -- and works hard to stay that way.


See? He looks tough.

And yet, as of this week, he may be known on our block as the worst athlete in the world. Tangent: Ha! When you saw the title of this post, you thought it was going to be me, didn't you? :) (That, or maybe Livan Hernandez.)

On Tuesday, the Awesome NeighborsTM were a little short-handed for their weekly kickball game (they play in a local kickball league every year, sometimes for a couple of "seasons" during the year), so Tim asked M whether he'd be interested in participating. Sure, why not? After all, it's kickball, right? You know, the game we all played when we were little. How hard can it be? Of course, it was the first game of the playoffs, therefore determining whether Tim and Seza's season would end that night or continue on for another month, but still.

Tuesday night after the game, M comes home and I ask how it went. "Let me set this up for you: Ninth inning." (Oo, I thought -- Tim had told me that kickball usually only goes to seven innings, so this must have been quite the game.) "Two outs. Bases loaded. And who gets called up?"

"Not you, right?" I asked (i.e., "Why on earth would they do that?"). But no, it was indeed him.

"So what happened?!?"

"Uh, pop fly right to one of the outfielders. Game over."

"No!" I said. "You ended the kickball season? With the bases loaded?"

"Yep. I was like, 'Um, sorry, everyone who I never met before tonight that I ruined your playoffs!'"

Oy. The following morning (yesterday), he reminded me that he'd signed up for an SJU alumni bike ride of some kind for that day. He'd forwarded me an e-mail about it at some point last week; I vaguely remembered something about an eight- or ten-mile ride starting in one of the southern-most suburbs around 1 p.m.

Around 7:00 last night, the phone rings: it's Mason, on his way home from the event and sounding miserable. "I biked forty miles today."

"What?!?"

"It was awful. And my tires were kinda flat so it was really difficult to pedal. I got my a$$ handed to me. Oh! And a dog chased me for part of the time."

"OK, let's come back to the dog in a minute," I said. "What happened to a nice, eight-mile ride through the country?"

"Well," he explained, "there were three groups: an eight-mile, a twenty-four-mile, and a forty-mile group. I got there five minutes late and the eight-mile group had already left."

"So you went for the forty? Did you fall on your head or something?"

"No! I went for the twenty-four. But that group started with the forty group, which was supposed to split off at some point and do forty while the twenty-four group took a shortcut, or something -- but it didn't work out that way. And it was through these really hilly cornfields, so it was up and down all the time, and there was no shade [blogger's note: it was 90 degrees here yesterday afternoon].

"Then at one point when I was really struggling, a big dog jumped out of a ditch and started chasing me! I'd already done, like, thirty miles and I was exhausted. Normally, I would have laughed about it because there was no way this dog was going to catch me on a bike, but today… He chased me for so long. And a couple of times he almost caught me and bit my leg. I was just, 'Are you kidding me?'

"I finally get to the end of the thing, and the problem with being last is that everyone else is already done and rested, so the organizer said, 'OK, let's all head out!' And all I wanted to do was sit for a minute!"

Thirty minutes later, he walked (well, limped) in the door and I could tell that he hadn't even realized how badly he was sunburned. I asked, "What do you need?"

"Um, some Advil and a big cocktail, I think. And some time on the couch."

It's a good thing we don't have big plans for tonight. I think M might end up on bed rest.

Tickets Booked!

At one point, M and I thought we'd get to Europe about once a year. Why not? We don't have kids, we love travel and it's something that we could make work financially.



Of course, that was before four years of law school, bar exam prep, M hunting for a job, me quitting my former job without having another one lined up (the Summer of 2006 was pretty rough for me and getting out mattered more than anything), both of us in new jobs at new places, and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad merger/conversion. As a result, we haven't been back to Europe since we got married in Prague in 2004.

Until now! We're still finalizing details about our late September two-week vacation (how many days in Slovenia? how many days in Prague? hotels or hostels or both? travel within Europe via plane, train, bus or a combination?), but this afternoon, we booked our flights to and from home. Suddenly, the trip feels a lot more real. :)

Rudbeckia Blooms

Because I very diligently planned just about everything related to my garden, it makes sense that the absence of one color from the carefully orchestrated palette of the whole would significantly detract from the intended effect.

Wow, I'm a dork. Let's try that again.

What I meant was: Until the rudbeckia fulgida "goldsturm" (black-eyed Susan) blossoms opened last week, I didn't have anything yellow in the garden, so the other colors didn't "pop" as much. But now that they have bloomed, they're making everything else look better. :)

First Tomatoes!

Despite summer's late start this year and the fact that my tomatoes aren't usually ready until August, I was able to harvest one Brandywine and a few Yellow Pears this week.


With a little olive oil and some sel gris, they were absolutely heavenly. :)

Happy Bees

There are any number of reasons that I love anise hyssop (agastache foeniculum) "Golden Jubilee" -- it's a Minnesota native; its chartreuse foliage is beautifully bright and offers great color contrast with darker-leaved plants; the purple bottle-brush flowers are long-lasting and lovely; the leaves smell of mint and can be used to make a stomach-settling tea -- but maybe at the top of the list is how happy it makes the bumblebees in my garden.