Back in the game

WE WON WE WON WE WON :)

Man, that was a great game last night-- everyone played awesomely and did I mention that we won? First of all, huge shout-out to Ashley and Jennifer of the teal team who totally stepped up and played with us since we were two girls short. Without them, this win would not have been possible.

Highlights of the game:
-awesome pitching by Brian (as always)
-beautiful firstbasemanship by Adam
-ridiculous defense by Hutch (um, remember the inning where no one else even touched the ball?)
-fabulous hustle and effort by everyone!

Hope everyone has a fabulous 4th of July holiday! See you on the 11th for another win!

Holy smokes, moving sucks

So I am taking a break from a very important task - packing!

I can't believe it. My time here in DC is almost over. And I didn't realize how hard it would be to leave.

I did my undergraduate degree at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. I loved Northampton. It was the perfect college town for me - walkable, intensely liberal, and quirky - but I was ready to leave.

But I don't know if I am ready to leave DC.

I wasn't planning on leaving so soon. In fact, I was planning to be here through the end of the kickball season. (Why else would I have joined?) But things happened and plans changed. Also I killed my 27th mouse two nights ago, which affirmed my decision to get out of my apartment.

My summer will take me to many places - Philadelphia, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Boston.

But I will miss my kickball team tremendously. I will miss the Hutchster for his intense loyalty to kickball as both a sport and as a way of life. No way did I know that I would become such good friends with the guy who walked in on me and Tim Lee hooking up. I will miss our captain Brian, as he is the nicest guy in the world (seriously), and his dog Wookie. I can't believe I just met Becki. There are so many other people to mention too: Lizzie (Z), her former roommate Jeremy, Brighton, Fred, Kat (my heckling fiend in crime), Adam Heller (whom I forgive for NEVER SHOWING UP THIS SEASON). Steve.

My sister Patty stared at me in a different way on Saturday night when she and her bff Olivia came to our kickball party at Grand Central. By this, I mean I wasn't sure she could take me that seriously. We play kickball and at the bar, we play flipcup. "Isn't that so college?" she'd asked. Perhaps. But it's fun. Kickball had a stable place in my life. As a member of the Lame Train of Life, without kickball (and frisbee; I played on a WAFC team for four seasons), I know I wouldn't see my friends as often nor would I have met as many people as I have in DC.

So I'm grateful.

Meanwhile Patty and Olivia did win huge brownie points in the eyes of Carter Rabasa, the founder of DCKickball and one of my and Hutch's reasons for living, when they walked up to where he was collecting donations for our charity, Project Northstar, and handed him an extra five bucks. "For no reason whatsoever except to give," Carter remarked when he came by me, the sister and Olivia later on Saturday night.

In closing, I leave you with a picture of my new digs and footage from our last game.
http://picasaweb.google.com/GoingBackToLA/ShabbosVictory2

Ohmygod we won

We friggin' won. We WON. First game of the season!

We had a full house too - me and Hutch, Brian, Fred, Lan, Kat (heckling from the sidelines and on the field), Ari, Jeremy, Zach, Jeff, Noah, Becki, Liz, Liz's gf Alisha, Brighton's friend Joanna. And the other team... well they didn't have enough guys. So inevitably we beat them. But we didn't know that.

Hutch can write up a far more effective write up than this. But lets' just say that Hutch, Brian and I got sick of losing and started strategizing. We were up by 3 at the end of the first inning, and swept the other team away by the end of the 3rd. Lizzie scored a run. She wants everyone to know that. Kat wanted dibs on the returning MVP dibs. Rookie MVP honors goes to Lan, for continuing our multi run streak in the first inning alone.

In the third inning, Steve was at first and I was behind him in right field and I kept yelling that I had his back. (This didn't go so well). Fred made the most bizarre loop around the bases and almost got Hutch out. Like somewhere between second and third, he made a detour or something. I didn't understand it.

Hutch totally took charge of the team strategy. I am so proud of him.

It was a heart racing, heart pumping round of kickball. I am going to be so sad when I have to leave.

Meanwhile the league party is at Grand Central in AdMo on June 9th.

At the bar, first we proved we were the better yellow against the goldenrod team ("Lickballs"), which was okay because there was a guy on that team who was sort of cute. Then we got together and ganged up on the team we beat earlier ("the Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins", whatever the hell that is). There was this dude on the green team who started totally hard core heckling us and Hutch and I would smack him on the forehead and scream back at him.

So see you again next week! I'll be the one with the cube.

We are the champions

...of flip cup, that is. For those of you that did not make it to the Front Page last night (i.e. everyone except myself, Steve, Dan Yang, Hutch and Ari, with a brief cameo by Jen), you missed a great show. It started off small-- me (double-cupping) and Brandy (from Bob Vance; a real trooper--she had just given blood AND it was her bye week, but she still came!) versus Hutch, Dan and Steve-- and then got bigger as we stole more and more tables and found some people from the Lickballs team to play against. Basically, IDROS plus Brandy plus Donovan dominated the entire time, including when we all used only our left hands to flip. I think the other team maybe won two games. But that's just because we let them, kind of like they let their little sister win sometimes...
I could go on and on about how amazing our flip cup performance was, but I will soon be posting some pictures that I think speak for themselves (e.g. cups being flipped with tongues, feet, elbows, etc.)
Anyway, thanks to everyone who was there for a good time, and to everyone who wasn't-- now you know what you are missing.

Pictures from our game on 4/25

Hey kickballers,

The Hutchster plucked these pictures of us from the DCKickball site. Check it out. Yellow has never looked so good.

Is that Becky making the run home?

A strange picture of us hanging out on the sidelines. I (Sirinyay) am the one with the black capris. Rafaela, Brian, Kat and Hutch are also definitely in this picture.

YAY! Me!

We don't roll on shabbos gets into their field positions. Brian is heading into the outfield while Ari prepares to pitch another no-kicker.

And there Ari goes. Man, you gotta love how the digital camera blurs the ball, making it seem like he is rolling the ball at 90 miles per hour.

Becky is at home plate, waiting for someone - anyone - to throw the ball to her and tag that dude (Josh is his name) out. She's a sharp cookie.

Hutch is proud of his biceps and flexes them at every opportunity.
In this case, it's at the pre-season party.

We play today at 7:15 in Stead Park.

Game one - not even worth talking about

We got whipped so bad. The captain of the other team had a clipboard and organized kicking and fielding orders. (Once upon a time, I did that too. And Hutch strategized with me on it.) So yeah, I did manage to score a run for the team, but other than that, I basically stood back and gossiped like a girl. Hutch almost kicked a home run. I say almost because he tripped on a patch of grass and someone tagged him out by aiming the ball at his back. Bastard. It's kickball, not dodgeball, jerkface.

I think the score seriously must've been 15-3, in their favor. I didn't even want to know. In fact, I almost asked if we could simply go to the bar early. And I'd never do that. I'm fairly hardcore about the actual kickball component of the kickball experience.