Damn.

Well, at least I still have my Midwestern draaaaawwwwwwwwllll.

For the last two weeks, Kris was sick. He had some sort of cold/flu/lung congestion, coughing all day/night, with several days in bed, sick days at home. Through it all, I was able to take care of him, no problem. Well, as much as one needs to take care of someone who spends the whole day sleeping.

He managed to heal enough to restart his training for the Wildflower Triathalon, which he, Ben and Kyle are doing in two weeks. And then he overdid it, becoming ill again.

I stayed healthy through it all.

At least until I ran out of apples.

I've been eating a fuji apple a day, with peanut butter, as fujis are in season, they're sweet, crunchy and simply delicious. I'm convinced the nectar of the gods wasn't some mead or other drink, it was apples covered in tasty, tasty peanut butter. Mmmmmmm....

The organic ones are currently on sale for $1.99 a pound at Whole Foods, so I've been buying them by the armful, 20 at a time.

But I ran out last week.

Right about the time I came down with whatever Kris had. Or a reasonable facsimile there of. That was last Sunday. I felt bad on Sunday morning, but went to practice anyway. I managed to do the warmups, run the plyometric drills, play a few points, stand around for a while, then go home. I was tired, feverish and not feeling good at all.

Two days of trying desperately to recover, working slowly from home, and off to try the track workout tonight. Half a mile warmup, ladder drills and I feel like crap. What the fuck was I thinking? High intensity workout with a fever. Hello?

So now I'm back home and feeling horrible: feverish, achy sore, unable to breather, the works. What was I thinking?

Sigh.

(And, no, I don't really think running out of apples was why I got sick. Quite coincidental.)

Received an email from a teammate tonight. It referenced tryouts for Mischief, the coed team I play for.

I just got off the phone with P.  Apparently beer run has been
bad mouthing both us and monkey (and probably other teams) to 
try and get our tryouts.  At any rate, I'm told it is working,
they just hooked J (she said no to monkey at their last tryout).

P told me that he'd like to see us rather than beer run get a
couple folks monkey cut.  As such we've got a few more folks we
should consider...

Quick seque... Or not so quick. I often think these entries are like a Simpsons episode, where the first 5 minutes are compellingly strange and designed to set up some completely improbable scenario that leads to the rest of the episode.

On to the part where Lisa says something clever...

When I was living with Kelly Johnson, she would often provide insights into people's behaviour (being a psychology major, such insights were probably second nature). One of the behaviours she pointed out was the act of criticizing others in order to make oneself appear better.

It's quite easy to do, as it's easier to cut the other person/team/group down than it is to build up oneself.

Once Kelly pointed it out to me, I tried to eliminate when I made myself appear better by making the other person look worse. Sure, honest self assessment is always hard, and bad-mouthing someone else isn't really bad-mouthing if what you're saying is true. But as the saying goes, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Or something like that.

So, when I received the email quoted above, I was a little annoyed. Okay, a lot annoyed. Probably more so because I sometimes feel I have no options to play with another team because I'm expected to play with Kris, and his options are limited. So I'm on this team, even though I want to try to get on another team.

When I voice this desire to Kris, he'll ask me if I want to get to Nationals because I earned it, or because I rode the coattails of others on the way. What joy is there in winning if you spent the entire tournament on the sidelines? I can help build a team, contribute to the success of the team, or I can let someone else run the show.

And then there's age. Or at least the perception of age. I'm not convinced I'm heading down in my athletic ability. But I'm also not convinced I'm as fast as I was, say, at 25 when I started playing. I train much smarter now. And more deliberately. My mental game, lord, my mental game is definitely better.

But why you got to be dissin' us, BR?

It bothers me. More than I thought it would.

Climbing back down off the soapbox now.