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Kurt Gibson on San Jose? GG AUDL. 

Winter league later today, first time stepping on the field in a long while. Yay

Ding Dang Dong

Finally picked up a disc for some outdoor action 13 days into the new year. Made it out to pickup on my lunch break to enjoy the relatively warm weather that has followed the polar vortex. Did I wonder if two weeks of little running, less sleep and lots of eating and drinking would have a negative effect on my game? Hell no. I was brimming with the reckless confidence of a maniac.

After a quick jog halfway back to work to find my Guilderland jersey that I'd dropped on the way over, I dove right in to some 3 on 3 box. Never been a big fan of box, but it was nice to break in the ol lungs in a game format where defense is incredibly easy.

A couple more dudes showed up so we got down to business: 4 on 4 mini with boots for cones. Sweet.  It was great to be back on the field, and showed me what to expect for winter league today and in the upcoming weeks: pain. Somehow my lungs are wrecked again. Maybe its the cold air. I forgot to breathe through my nose. Legs are okay, but a long warmup is necessary. Need to sync the lungs and legs up. Throws are basically fine as long as I am active. Fitness baseline is good, long road to Stonefish. Gotta get hyped for work.

Things I do not like about pickup: "I'm not straddling the line if I landed on THIS PART of the shoe cone," closely followed by, and this is a much more general and common occurrence, when there is a woman on one team and no women on the other, and the dude that guards her keeps trying to poach and help other defenders, and she scores on him over and over. That's about the fourth worst kind of "ultimate sexism", and also really annoying for said duder's teammates. Yikes. I'm just, no fun though.

You know what else is annoying? Playing as a conservative handler in a pickup game. Maybe I am being punished for every turnover I inflicted on David over the years. It’s tough trying to play as a reset handler when everyone else will instantly jack it to the same third of the field. Haha. No fun. I tried to be gregarious and friendly but for at least one dude I was the pickup buzzkill.

Which is a good segue into the next thing I have on my mind: I'm realizing more and more lately that my facial expressions and tone of voice show a lot more of my inner monologue than I ever realized. Emily told me this, and it was confirmed by how customers react to me at work. I'm learning to control my facial expressions and tone more deliberately, but I don't really know where to start. And its 10x as tough on the ultimate field, when the blood is pumping.

The thing is, the negativity I project is not even directly proportional to how I'm feeling. I'm just not great at even like, knowing what my face is doing. And I have no idea how I sound. How I sound in my head is apparently way less negative than I often come off, in general. How to fix that? I barely have a clue. Anger issues don't help either. Lots of mental game work to do, but my confidence is high right now.

I don't engage both my arms when I jump, leading to a kind of awkward faux superman pose. I can probably jump higher while reducing residual awkwardness.. With my highest approach jump indoors I can hang on the rim with one hand. Goal for now is to get two up there. Maybe with enough squats and squat jumps, I'll be able to dunk.

Zim zam zoom.
Seeya later blog friends.

The Nasal Struggle

So its two thousand and fourteen. Year of the horse I guess. The recent ice age put the kibosh on winter league this past week, so I have not gotten to try my new cleats yet. Hopefully the field has melted by now, and that this week is just a bit warmer.

Working on breathing technique. Finally trying to learn to breathe through my nose, and time breaths with running steps. Three seconds in, two out, something like that. It hurt a lot, breathing through the nose in the cold last week. Hopefully I'll have it figured out by the summer.

Really got not much going on, ultimate wise, but I did make two important realizations. Grapefruits can be peeled like oranges, and are very good that way. Also, on a cold day, pajamas under pants will keep you warm and cozy. And for those of you following along at home, I did reach my sketchbook goal for 2013.