roofin' man tunes up? not really.
Ok so I gotta clear the air. When I went to chicago this past weekend apparently a number of people thought I was drunk every time I posted to this space. Despite the fact that I am drunk right now (4 labatt blues) that is simply not the case. I'm actually sober most of the time. But enough of that.
Tuneup, or to the newer generation CHC (chicago heavyweight championships, though now its more of a middleweight), was just ok. In fact it was pretty bad. I played the worst I have at a serious tournament since probably my freshman year of college and our team despite playing well at times, never really started to click. It was a frustrating weekend as far as ultimate is concerned. However, ultimate has recently become a vehicle with which to see friends as 90% of my current friends play ultimate to some extent, rather than an end to itself. I got to see Lyrica for the first time in a year, which was totally sweet, as she's totally cool and moving to chi-town soon, which is all the more incentive to go back there because its one more totally righteous and fun-living individual. I also got to see kevin and george. He was an especially fine see as he's leaving the country, along with nate (though he's embarking for deutschland), for the greater part of a year for london to study polysci at the london school of economics. He's an inteligent man and a wonderful human being, we talked about books, betrand russell, and the decline of page2 on espn as an entertaining media source; really a classic joe/george conversation with both the highbrow and the low all intertwined and such, we only lacked a new personal best record for spyhunter to bring up. I also saw trudy (I'll email I promise though you probably won't read this), rose, eric, julia, josie, erica, and others. I think I may have more to post here about that weekend, but I'll leave that to more sober times.
So yesterday I went to help a full-time type from here tear down a fence at his place so he could put in a better fence to keep in his horses. It should be noted he has quite the personal zoo, including a slumbering feline that got quite indignant when I started peeing in front of it. I managed to test his electric fence twice. It apparently conducts quite well through both the work glove I was wearing and the metal posts that I was carrying which grazed it. Sort of made my arm go numb. Not bad work. Today I helped another guy from here, jim, put a new roof on a house he bought to fix and resell. With 5 of us it took 13 hours and he'll probably put in another 3 tomorrow to finish it. It was rather satisfying work as you got instant gratification and the sense of having done something noble (namely putting a roof over someone's head) not to mention being well paid, fed, and beered. So now I could almost roof on my own, a scary thought. Afterwards we started telling stories about this and past years at the creek. The funniest ones included someone "lubricating" root samples with WD-40 and the resident chemist and sometimes roofer nearly having to kill him, but restraining himself to a "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" which was pretty understated when you consider the question of why anyone would think that roots need to be lubricated. Other ones included the girl who not only couldn't get hot water in the shower (she was used to two knobs rather than one) but who didn't bring this up in conversation with anyone else for 3 weeks before bringing it to Jim the facilities guy, this especially boggled people because she never wondered how her roomates could steam up the bathroom with cold water. The other good one is the guy who borrowed a screw gun, brought it back 30 seconds later and said, "Can you give me the other screw gun, this is the one that unscrews screws," not realizing that there's a rather nifty switch which toggles the function between unscrewing and screwing on one gun. Yes we get some interesting types around here, though to be fair I myself once walked into a mirror, you might ask why didn't I see myself, and the answer is I'm a narcissist and would be inexorably drawn to any image of myself. It should also be noted that Jim spent $100 dollars on a nail gun. This is the single best investment anyone could make if they roof their own house, outside of the actually roofing material of course, It probably saved about 15 man hours and if you ever get the safety off, can really keep the neighborhood kids at bay. This might be a good point to just reiterate the fact that I'm evil. The house he bought incidentally was about the worst in terms of fixer-upper I have ever seen. The previous owners had just destroyed the interior walls, floors, bathrooms, and anything else they reasonably could. To give the reader an idea they fixed holes in the wall with newspaper and duct tape and I think one load bearing structure looked a lot like paper-machie (sorry for the spelling and yes that was a poor joke), just abysmal.
In other news this week my friend EB departed south to go home from here. She was one of the good ones and we'll all miss her. Especially those of us who egged her on in her baking habit, its wonderful getting home-baked cookies in the morning what can I say, she was also just genuinely happy most of the time, even when she recently floated the burb' in a in a huge puddle up to its bumpers.
The last bit of news is that steve, the WD-40 on roots hating chemist also plays ultimate. He invited me to play in maine at clambake with a lot of the guys I played with from 2 years ago. I decided to decline because of the expense and because its the same weekend as regionals and although my attendence in the UPA series is still in the air, I'm not keen on ditching my chicago friends and go to maine. It is however clambake, and when will I ever get another chance is what I ask myself. I guess I'll have to trust to fate and to the fact that I suck at the moment. If however any readers of this space are going and would voice there profund approval to my attendence, who knows, I might be swayed, it is supposed to be a pretty sweet party. I'll probably amend this post tomorrow with more details about my triumphant return to chicago.
Wooooo! I wrote the above last night and when I went to post it I got an error message and it seemed everything had been deleted, this made me so angry I had to go to sleep. I'll try to post more regularly in the near future, sorry for the delay.
Tuneup, or to the newer generation CHC (chicago heavyweight championships, though now its more of a middleweight), was just ok. In fact it was pretty bad. I played the worst I have at a serious tournament since probably my freshman year of college and our team despite playing well at times, never really started to click. It was a frustrating weekend as far as ultimate is concerned. However, ultimate has recently become a vehicle with which to see friends as 90% of my current friends play ultimate to some extent, rather than an end to itself. I got to see Lyrica for the first time in a year, which was totally sweet, as she's totally cool and moving to chi-town soon, which is all the more incentive to go back there because its one more totally righteous and fun-living individual. I also got to see kevin and george. He was an especially fine see as he's leaving the country, along with nate (though he's embarking for deutschland), for the greater part of a year for london to study polysci at the london school of economics. He's an inteligent man and a wonderful human being, we talked about books, betrand russell, and the decline of page2 on espn as an entertaining media source; really a classic joe/george conversation with both the highbrow and the low all intertwined and such, we only lacked a new personal best record for spyhunter to bring up. I also saw trudy (I'll email I promise though you probably won't read this), rose, eric, julia, josie, erica, and others. I think I may have more to post here about that weekend, but I'll leave that to more sober times.
So yesterday I went to help a full-time type from here tear down a fence at his place so he could put in a better fence to keep in his horses. It should be noted he has quite the personal zoo, including a slumbering feline that got quite indignant when I started peeing in front of it. I managed to test his electric fence twice. It apparently conducts quite well through both the work glove I was wearing and the metal posts that I was carrying which grazed it. Sort of made my arm go numb. Not bad work. Today I helped another guy from here, jim, put a new roof on a house he bought to fix and resell. With 5 of us it took 13 hours and he'll probably put in another 3 tomorrow to finish it. It was rather satisfying work as you got instant gratification and the sense of having done something noble (namely putting a roof over someone's head) not to mention being well paid, fed, and beered. So now I could almost roof on my own, a scary thought. Afterwards we started telling stories about this and past years at the creek. The funniest ones included someone "lubricating" root samples with WD-40 and the resident chemist and sometimes roofer nearly having to kill him, but restraining himself to a "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" which was pretty understated when you consider the question of why anyone would think that roots need to be lubricated. Other ones included the girl who not only couldn't get hot water in the shower (she was used to two knobs rather than one) but who didn't bring this up in conversation with anyone else for 3 weeks before bringing it to Jim the facilities guy, this especially boggled people because she never wondered how her roomates could steam up the bathroom with cold water. The other good one is the guy who borrowed a screw gun, brought it back 30 seconds later and said, "Can you give me the other screw gun, this is the one that unscrews screws," not realizing that there's a rather nifty switch which toggles the function between unscrewing and screwing on one gun. Yes we get some interesting types around here, though to be fair I myself once walked into a mirror, you might ask why didn't I see myself, and the answer is I'm a narcissist and would be inexorably drawn to any image of myself. It should also be noted that Jim spent $100 dollars on a nail gun. This is the single best investment anyone could make if they roof their own house, outside of the actually roofing material of course, It probably saved about 15 man hours and if you ever get the safety off, can really keep the neighborhood kids at bay. This might be a good point to just reiterate the fact that I'm evil. The house he bought incidentally was about the worst in terms of fixer-upper I have ever seen. The previous owners had just destroyed the interior walls, floors, bathrooms, and anything else they reasonably could. To give the reader an idea they fixed holes in the wall with newspaper and duct tape and I think one load bearing structure looked a lot like paper-machie (sorry for the spelling and yes that was a poor joke), just abysmal.
In other news this week my friend EB departed south to go home from here. She was one of the good ones and we'll all miss her. Especially those of us who egged her on in her baking habit, its wonderful getting home-baked cookies in the morning what can I say, she was also just genuinely happy most of the time, even when she recently floated the burb' in a in a huge puddle up to its bumpers.
The last bit of news is that steve, the WD-40 on roots hating chemist also plays ultimate. He invited me to play in maine at clambake with a lot of the guys I played with from 2 years ago. I decided to decline because of the expense and because its the same weekend as regionals and although my attendence in the UPA series is still in the air, I'm not keen on ditching my chicago friends and go to maine. It is however clambake, and when will I ever get another chance is what I ask myself. I guess I'll have to trust to fate and to the fact that I suck at the moment. If however any readers of this space are going and would voice there profund approval to my attendence, who knows, I might be swayed, it is supposed to be a pretty sweet party. I'll probably amend this post tomorrow with more details about my triumphant return to chicago.
Wooooo! I wrote the above last night and when I went to post it I got an error message and it seemed everything had been deleted, this made me so angry I had to go to sleep. I'll try to post more regularly in the near future, sorry for the delay.
posted by Joe Little at 10:19 PM
3 Comments:
Joe-
Hooray! Great post.
Please come to regionals. Z's going to be playing with us (presuming we make it)...
Come to sectionals, if you can...
Jayadev
Go to clambake. Because when someone knocks on the door, you should go out the window.
Joe, I am mightily flattered that I might have a positive influence on your thoughts about Chicago. Oh, 'twould be a grand time indeed if we lived close by. And in regard to your comment on my blog, I was definitely NOT being "polite" about the superbowl 1 1/2 years ago. I don't think of the Superbowl as "football". The Superbowl is a cultural experience.
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