I was recently talking (emailing back & forth, actually), with a good friend * of mine. He's one of those good people who have always been in my life - you know, the ones who you can't remember your life before they entered it. He commented that, at some point, he'd like to write his "life story" for a personal reflection. We both shuddered at the "life story" bit (how monumental and overwhelming the task of writing one's life down onto paper (or pixels)!).

However, he did point out that since the goal would be personal reflection, and not entertainment of others, few people outside his immediate family would be interested in reading his story.

I disagreed and still disagree.

So much history has been lost. I know precious little about my grandparents, even less about more distant relatives. Perhaps their lives were boring. I suspect not. I think I would probably find similarities between the internal struggles I face and the ones they faced, too. The details may be different, but the conflict is most likely the same.

A watershed moment happened for me a few weeks back. The personal evolution that has happened since that moment may not mean much to anyone but me. But knowing how I was before that moment makes me appreciate more the time after that moment. I doubt I would have the perspective without the ramblings of this site/blog/journal.

Even without the specific personal reflections.

* That link may not be good quite yet. It's a gift to my friend for Christmas and he may not have started it yet.

Last week, I received an email from an SBUL player (SBUL, whose season started a month ago), asking if his SBUL registration could be switched to an MPUL registration:

From: Said SBUL player
To: Kitt Hodsden
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:14:18 -0800
Subject: Re: [SFUC] MPUL Winter League 2004-2005

Is there any chance of "switching" from the SB to the MP? I assume that there
is a wait list for SB, and I'd love a higher quality game, and my dog ate
the homework, and

Since the leagues are separate leagues (my name happens to be associated with both of them, I only nominally run SBUL), I responded this week saying no:

To: Said SBUL player
Subject: Re: [SFUC] MPUL Winter League 2004-2005

{Said SBUL Player},

> Is there any chance of "switching" from the SB to the MP?
> I assume that there is a wait list for SB, and I'd love a
> higher quality game, and my dog ate the homework, and

Although my name is listed on both leagues, they are quite
separate. So, no, not really any chance. Sorry.

Kitt.

About 20 minutes after I told this guy no, the SBUL organizers get this email:

To: organizers
From: Said SBUL player
Subject: [SBUL:organizers] (maybe not so) wierd request

I signed up for SBUL because the MPUL were flaking and not so sure that it would happen. Then they cam e to life, and my firends signed me up as a core member of their team. It's not that I don't like the SBUL, it's really fun and lowkey. Perfect for the winter. But could I "sell" my spot to somebody on t he wait list so that I can switch over to the other league? I'm sure you're aware that they play at th e same time so doing both would end up screweing teamates in both leagues.

What is this guy thinking?!? Mom said no, so let me go ask Dad? He hasn't even signed up for MPUL, in the first place. In the second place, when he does, does he really think I'll just say, hey, it's okay if you insult me, I'll let you play anyway.

Go find your own damned fields, asshole.

And learn to spell weird.

I'm pretty much not able to eat enough food, and it's starting to frustrate me. As part of my training program I'm eating as much as I can. Literally. If I can eat, I do. I have pooped more in one day (I'm averaging 3-4 times a day for the last week) than I ever pooped in a single day before (the goldfish story excluded).

Kris says give it time: eventually, my body will adjust to the additional nutrition requirements and extra food, and process it accordingly. Until then, 4 poops a day.

The worst part is that I don't know if I'm getting the correct requirements for food. Am I getting enough protein? Vitamins? Iron? I have no idea. I wish I knew.

From http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/1996/04_96/protein.htm

How much protein do athletes need?

There isn't an exact number for athletes because protein needs vary, depending on whether an athlete is growing, rapidly building new muscle, doing endurance exercise, or dieting, in which case protein is used as a source of energy (table 1). Protein requirements for athletes are higher than the current recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of 0.4 g of protein per pound of body weight, which is based on the needs of nonexercisers. Protein recommendations for athletes are commonly expressed in a range to include a safety margin (2). If you do the math (1g of protein has 4 calories), you'll see that you don't need to have 30% of your calories come from protein.

Table 1. Recommended Grams of Protein Per Pound of Body Weight Per Day*
RDA for sedentary adult	0.4
Adult recreational exerciser	0.5-0.75
Adult competitive athlete	0.6-0.9
Adult building muscle mass	0.7-0.9
Dieting athlete	0.7-1.0
Growing teenage athlete	0.9-1.0
*To find your daily protein requirement, multiply the appropriate numbers in this table by your weight in pounds.

One of the very, very, very few things I'm uncomfortable about with my quality of life is the lack of time I spend with my parents. Unlike many people, but like most people I know, I have good relationships with my parents. I like spending time with them. Unless, of course, Dad and I are talking politics. Then all gloves come off.

Because I don't spend a lot of time with my parents, I feel I lose out on great stories from their lives. I wish I wrote down more of the ones I hear. Why, just tonight, Dad related to me this story:

"A friend of mine told me he had sex seven times in one night. I was talking to my dad at dinner, and told him about this guy, about how he had sex seven times in one night. Grandma piped up, "Ike and I don't have it that many times in as many months!" Dad turned to her, "Well, he's missing out."

What a hoot! My grandpa telling my great-grandmother to have more sex. I'm sure Grandpa's stories would have been entertaining, too. I miss him.

Update: Moving this to a book entitled, "Conversations With Dad".

G has decided to help me go all-out on my workouts preparing me on my road to Team USA. Instead of working on building muscle with weight-lifting, we did a full plyo class. The class was made "worse" by the presence of another trainer, who was learning the game plan. Having a new guy watching means, of course, we have to show off. Well, at least I did. G did say a couple times that the workout was harder than most because I'm training for team USA, which made me feel good.

We started out with ladders. We had a few more than we normally do. Nominally, we had

  LR-RL-LR-RL
  Ali shuffle
  facing sideways, L over R in, L below R in, repeat
  facing sideways, with left foot in, R top bottom, as above
  facing sideways, RL in, RL below, RL in, RL below
  facing sideways, LR in, LR below, etc.
  L hop in/out, R hop in/out
  "hopscotch" with only L foot, again with only R foot
  hopscotch L-R-both
  quick feet: LR in, LRL out, RL in, RLR out 
  cross over: L cross over (foot lands perpendicular to the
    direction of travel), RL out, R cross over, LR
  hip switch (L outside on L, R outside on R, twist, landing
    with feet perpendicular to direction of travel), twist
    back, landing with feet on outside, repeat advancing one
    square.  repeat with other foot first
  two taps: heading L: LR in, LR out; heading R: RL in, RL out
    I caught up to Kris on these.  Zoom!

I was tired already after the ladders. I zipped along hard, both trying to keep up with Kris and showing off for the new guy.

We started the workout outside, with shuttles. With an 8# ball, we shuffled down and back throwing the ball back and forth between each other. We did a progression of 2 lengths (down and back), 4 6 8, then back down 8 6 4 2.

At the first 6, it became apparent that I wasn't doing them correctly. Instead of lowering my butt and staying on my toes, I was shuffling on my heels and leaning forward ("hunching over"). So, at 6, we rolled the ball instead of throwing it. The point was to practice lowering the rear and staying on the toes. We rolled for the 6 & 8 lengths, returning to throwing for the remaining 8 6 4 2.

Next came the "I of pain" shuffles (perhaps spelled "eye of pain", not sure). 5 cones, each spaced 3 steps (~3 yards) apart. Starting at cone 1, run to cone 2, run backward to cone 1, run to cone 3, run backward to cone 1, etc. Kris did 4. My times were 18.3, 17.9, 18.2, 18.0, 17.9. I did 5 because my time didn't decrease each time. The first 17.9 I cheated on, and didn't go all the way back to cone 1 on one of the backward runs.

Next were some quick feet drills. Ugh-a-rooni. Using a Reebok Step, with one riser, we did 1 set of 3 exercises, and 2 sets of 4 exercises, each for 30 seconds:

• feet together, jump on the Step, jump off to the side, jump on the Step, jump off to the other side, repeat
• bound over: two feet together, jump over the Step, landing on the other side, spring immediately to jump back over the other way, continue
• single step: RL step up, RL step down, LR step up, LR step down
• single step with crossover: same as the single step, but step up with the outside foot, using arms to explosively bound onto the step

3 sets of jump ropes were next. My goal was 120 jumps in a minute. If I didn't make it, I had to continue with 110 jumps in the second minute. If I didn't make that, it was 100 jumps in the next minute. This trend would continue until I managed the required number of jumps in a minute.

I didn't make it.

I went all the way down to 90 before I was so tired I couldn't manage more than 4 jumps without missing a jump. So, I threw down the jump rope and just jumped for a minute. Even then I had less than 90 jumps, so I had to do them again. Argh.

Kris had the great idea of jumping on the cement, since the cushy floor was causing problems for him. My second jump rope set was no problem, hitting 100 jumps in 52 seconds. Whoo! The third set was back on the squishy surface, and I managed 100 in a minute. Barely.

Next were 3 sets of lunge jumps using the Step. Using the Step meant our lunges were deeper, and the jumps harder. The first set was 15. We had sets of 15 because I stopped 15 times when trying to jump rope. D'oh. When G realized I hadn't swum today, he added another 5 on sets 2 and 3.

Last were abs.

• bicycles
• single leg V ups
• partner throw downs
• side to sides with 25# (!!!)
• lying down, 25# straight up, lift straight up
• lift feet up, hold weight up, lift weight to touch feet
• lying down, weight (8# at this point) over head, do V up bringing weight over to touch knees
• 6-12" leg holds
• lower back: supermans, twist lifts, lift straight up.

My upper butt and butt sides hurt.