The Halls v6.0

This is the beginning of the 2nd most expensive week of the year for me.
Valentine’s day / our anniversary, Ann’s birthday, Aubrey’s birthday. Only Christmas can eclipse this week.
There’s already lots of plans for eating out, having cake and cookies.

Goodbye money, goodbye diet.

The girls had another game against a U12 team last nite. This was was not nearly as good, but FAR more physical. These 6th graders went out of their way to lay into our 4th graders and just leveled a few of them such that I had two out crying, no subs, and still had Ally and another girls take big hard shots, where I could see they wanted to come out, but they knew they couldn’t.
The worst was when our goalie ran out to challenge the biggest girl on the field for the ball, and that girl put all she had into a shoulder shove, like she was in a baseball game and was trying to score by running over the catcher at home plate. Just leveled our goalie, she falls back, and immedately screams because she hyperextends her wrist on the fall. Our girls stop to see if shes all right, giant girl takes the opportunity to put the ball in the net. Other coach and parents cheer wildly.
I was seeing red.
The whole game was like that, we were the better team, but couldn’t match them physically.
I had to go to a nite jiu-jitsu class to take some frustration out after that.
At least our last two games are against U11 teams.

The new-ish volvo threw a check engine light yesterday, and I was not happy about it. Just because it’s so ubiquitous, and I had no time to check it out right away. So I drove all over with it on, and finally got to the store at 8pm on the way home from judo practice to look at it, and it was… nothing. A “slow” oxygen sensor.

Check that under “don’t care” and clear please.

When we lined up for our game monday nite, it looked bad. We played a team of 6th graders. Very big 6th graders. Our smaller than average team of 4th graders played a bigger than average 6th grade team.

So even before we started, they agreed to play 4 instead of 5 on the field, and they clearly thought they were still going to kill us. Instead, the game was tied at half, and they clearly did not like that, as the second half they really stepped up the intensity. They also had at least 5 subs (that’s a full field’s worth of subs), and we had 2.
My highlight of the game was when we first scored, because as I said, they didn’t expect it to be close at all, so after scored twice quickly, the goalie started becoming weepy/bitchy and her parents made her leave. It was pretty funny.

We were outmatched, but the girls played them very tough, so it was overall a good experience for them. They lost, but didn’t get killed, and I hope built up some self-confidence. Cause we play another team that big next week.

Very bad poker weekend. Lose, lose, lose.

Been watching season four of Dexter, and it is not disappointing.

Ann and I watched Surragates friday nite. Very disappointing.

When I saw the trailers for zombieland, I thought, “maybe a rental at best, looks like a stupid zombie spoof movie, with no real redeeming qualities, especially with the Micheal Cera-ripoff kid”.
I’m watching it now. I’m only 15 minutes into it, and I stand corrected. The main character is a total Micheal Cera ripoff guy, but it’s not too hard to look beyond that, because everything else is really, really good.

The girls CRUSHED their opponent again tonite. I love those games, and will have to hang on to those memories, as I know the next 3 games we have are going to be very tough. But they’ve improved a lot, so I still am optimistic.
Went to jiu jitsu after the game tonite, and now have a very sore neck. I’m getting better, but there’s so much to learn and get better at.

Tomorrow nite there’s an East high Alumni wrestling meet I think we may go to, which I enjoy watching the occasional match.

Seems like we have a lot of little things coming up, but in general nothing big, so I feel like not much is going on. I should just sit back and enjoy it while it lasts.

Well we finally got Thor fixed, and he is predictably bummed out.

Of course, the real story is, that we scheduled him to get fixed just before Daisy’s next heat cycle, so there’d be no risk of her getting pregnant again. Well, the timing was off, and she’s been in heat for one full week before he was scheduled for it, so we’ve all been on high alert on keeping them apart.
All but one of us. One of us who is far too busy playing computer games and watching tv, such that during the 1 hour that we were gone at a  soccer game, he allowed them to do it, so now we have to assume that she’s having puppies again.

I’m of the opinion that only Aubrey should take care of these puppies, from beginning to end. I’ll even let him keep most of the $ made, but it should totally be his job, since he let them do it. I stopped them from hooking up at least a dozen times during that same day, it’s not that hard.

Also, I got a new car, in anticipation of Aubrey needing a car sometime in the near future. The plan is that he will buy my corolla, as it is affordable and reliable. So I’ve been looking off and on for something similar. I still want fuel economy, but I need more room than a corolla, so I’ve been looking for a wagon. Wagons are not as popular as SUVs, but SUVs get terrible mileage.

I drove a suzuki swift, and it was cheap, but I decided against it because they have many bad consumer reviews, especially about the brakes, and this one had brake issues. Then I found several volvos, which intrigued me, because I’ve personally known several people who swear by them, and get 100’s of thousands of miles on them. And few that I found were very cheap. But I found a cheap one, cheap because it had high miles (160k) and is 14 years old. But it looks and drives very good, and again, cheap. So now I own this.

Ever since I mentioned Paranormal Activity, all the kids wanted to see it, even though they are all big babies when it comes to watching them. This is how Aubrey watches a scary movie.

The girls are basically the same way. They can’t really even see the screen. And the movie did not disappoint, they were all on the edges of their seats, it was great. I had to edit the movie myself to remove the tons of f-bombs, but it didn’t take away from anything, and all enjoyed it.

The girls had a indoor soccer game tonite, and they all played great. This wasn’t the strongest team, but we played absolutely great together, they looked like a professional team. We were beating them so bad I pulled a player and we played a man short on our side the whole second half, and still outscored them 2-1. These are the fun games to watch.

Ann had to get up at 6am to watch our niece’s son all day, and I had to get up at 8am to take the dog to get neutered. Needless to say, he’s hating life right now, and we’re all very tired.

restful. NOT.

I had a judo coaches certification clinic in Ames, IA on saturday, so as usual, I slept almost not at all, got up at 4:30, drove 3.5 hours, and participated in the clinic until 4:30pm. Then we had some dinner, and did the white knuckle drive back in a thick fog until almost midnite, where I went to bed almost right away.

And of course, sticking with history, whenever I go a trip anywhere, that’s when all the bad stuff happens.
So the girls went to a friend’s birthday party, and they went ice skating. Remember like two years ago when Ally fell from climbing a fence, put her arm out to brace the fall, and broke her arm? Well, she doesn’t put her arms out anymore when she falls, and that means when she falls forward she instead uses her face to break the fall.
So she split her chin open on the ice and needed 7 stitches.
I’m sure there’s got to be a better way to stop your fall, I’m going to have to teach her how to fall correctly.

As usual, I’m like 2 years late to the party, but I just watched Paranormal Activity. Best movie I’ve seen in years.
Also just watched Inglorious Basterds. Pretty good, but it’s no Paranormal Activity.

I will sing the praises of that movie for a while I think.

Also watched “The Goods”, which was written by a friend of mine. Didn’t care so much for that one.

Several weeks ago I finally saw Bengamin Buttons, and it was ok. Bit of a chick flick.

Watched ‘The Hangover’ a few weeks ago, best movie I’ve seen in several years. That’s best overall movie, and definately best comedy in several years.  Paranormal Activity is the best horror/suspense I’ve seen is many years. Both are now in my all time top ten list.

Next on the list is Dexter Season 4, Surrogates, & Transformers2. I only have high expectations for Dexter.