volleyball and other stuff

Yay, samildanach is back from Scotland! Though I will probably just stay out of his way at work for a few days so he can catch up on the ninety billion things people need him to take care of.

I felt accomplished at work today because I gave up on trying to do something my way and just copied the way other people had done it. That's a lesson for me, really.

After work, rather than going to the Twins-Mariners game, I decided to head up to the gym, where I did arm weights for half an hour, and then I noticed these two guys kept wandering by with a volleyball. They seemed to be looking for more people, so I decided to go up and see if I could play. I hadn't eaten dinner so I knew it'd be a really bad idea to stay for very long, and it was already a little past 8pm by then, but I played in one game, and by the time I left we had 7 people there. They play rally scoring to 25, which is a little weird, but other than that it was kind of like CS volleyball, just with slightly older people. Also, I played pretty well, which felt good; even my sidearm serve was working really well. I left at 8:30 because 1) I was starving 2) my arms really hurt due to lifting weights and then playing 3) I was already exhausted from running around. Man, it'll be good cardio if I go back and play again, and I did promise I would... apparently they play Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons, so I should be able to make it sometimes.

Came home. Listened to the Mariners fuck up the game, eventually losing in 14 innings. Read websites. Played some PP; they released the housing stuff today, which is going to totally turn the game into Animal Crossing, I swear. I needed to take a bunch of hemp oil down to Turtle so I could make varnish, though... eh, we'll see. Oh, and Hades has Jorvik now. How come every time I run a shop on an island, it gets taken over by Hades? I can tell you right now, I have no interest in governing Jorvik. Nor anything else in the game. I think maybe after the big buzz for furniture dies down, I might bother getting some stuff to decorate my ships or shops or something, but it's really just not that important to me.

Felix Hernandez and the Bullpen of Secrets, Part 1

(A story of a young pitching wizard, by D. S. Rubin.)

Commissioner Dumbledore stepped forward holding a long list of names of the incoming rookies who were yet to be drafted. The Drafting Cap, having finished its poem, sat contentedly on the dugout bench, as the rookies shuffled nervously in their lines, awaiting their fate.

One by one, they walked into the dugout. The cap, which looked very old, so old you could not tell which team's insignia it held, was put onto each rookie's head as they walked in. Sometimes it would immediately scream "HUFFLEPUFF!" or whichever team, but sometimes it would take a while before it made up its mind.

Felix awaited his turn as calmly as possible, given the circumstances. Would it draft him to those despicable New York Slytherins? Or would it put him in the Boston Ravenclaws? Or perhaps the Oakland Hufflepuffs? He hoped to get into the Seattle Gryffindors; he wanted to be a pitcher, and their team could certainly use another one, that much was obvious. Plus his childhood hero, Freddy Garcia, had been a Gryffindor. The rookies thinned out their lines into teams, when at last --

"Hernandez, Felix!"

( Read more, if you dare )

General Manager McGonagall nodded. "Well, I'll speak to manager Mike Hagrid and see what he thinks about us calling up this boy early. Heaven knows, we need a better team this year. Flattened in that last series by Slytherin, I couldn't look Severus Snapebrenner in the face for weeks..."

To be continued.. if I don't get lynched for this.