So, today I was trying to update my blog and add a link to the old life update. I was like, "Well, I have links to my blog archives, why not add in the old life update. I had it for an entire year..." So I go to add the link and decide to look at the page... Over half of it is gone. It only goes back to mid February of this year. I started it in March/April of last year. I was really upset that I lost all of the journal. I should have printed it out. It contained all of the origins of names like Rebound Girl, Tattoo Girl, Raver Girl, Totoro, The Violent One and many, many more. It went back to when was using real names instead of nicknames. This was back when I was really hung up over women and let them really play me. Back when, as some people believe, my journal was more interesting. I'm pretty happy about having this format though. It's all pretty and stuff.
A lot of stuff has been happening lately. First and foremost on my mind is/was the fact that an ex-girlfriend of mine from college, we'll call her Little, is going to be in town this weekend. OMG e-mailed a bunch of people who were/are friends with Little if they wanted to get together with her for dinner on the one night that she's in town. I had to say that when I was "invited" I wasn't all that thrilled. Even before I heard about her coming into town, I had decided I was going to try to make plans with a girl to go to dinner that night (which unfortunately didn't work out because I ended up not seeing her where I thought I would). So I had a way out. When my plan didn't go through, I was stuck with this feeling that I was a punk for not really wanting to get together with her. It ate at me. I talked about it a bit with Rebound Girl over IM and she set my mind at ease a bit. It's not just that things between Little and I ended rather poorly, but she's somewhat of a reminder of a person that I used to be that I'm not anymore. What happened between the two of was not just stupid on her part, though I'll consistently claim so. It was dumb on both our parts. For a little while I got all up in arms and persnickity when The Violent One was asking me why I didn't want to go. I really just didn't want to relive the person that I was back then and what had happened between us. I also think somewhere in my heart that she owes me more of an apology for what she did and how she treated me. I guess maybe I was dissatisfied with what I felt was her understanding of what all went down. Anyways, The Violent One got torn into a bit. I apologized for it so it's all good. I think at the end of the conversation she really understood how I felt about the situation. Well, I think that's enough said about that.
In other news, I have been helping The Violent One out in her job search with resumes and contacts. My friend Booch is a bio-techy kind of headhunter so I passed Booch The Violent One's resume and they're getting together next week. I'm psyched. I wonder if I would get some sort of referral bonus? That would be cool. I think Booch and The Violent One would get along very well together.
Anyways, I have to go. I have some stuff to do. A bunch of us are taking Amnesiac out for a little going away party. She's moving back to Japan. The company is sending her there. Well, she's gonna have a month off before she goes back, but she's leaving the office nonetheless. Tonite should be a good time. 'Til the next time...
Okay, since I'm short on time, I'm just gonna give you the quick skinny on what happened this past weekend. On Friday, right after work, I went to Haymarket to go fruit shopping. I made a huge fruit salad for Glare's surprise b-day party. The Violent One and I teamed up on the gift. We were gonna get Glare a fully stocked picnic basket for four for her b-day, but we found out her sister gave her a picnic basket. Grrr... So The Violent One and I decided to get her a cook book (a mad cool one that I, myself, want) and the Primo Edition of Cranium. If you've never played Cranium, you should. It's a crazy fun game. I got to Glare & Totoro's place at 5:55P. Totoro had left the key for me under the mat while they went to dinner at The Top of The Hub. Everyone had arrived by 7:30P. Glare and Totoro didn't walk until 9:30 or so. Glare was so surprised that when we yelled surprise, she freaked and closed the door again. It was entertaining.
I spent all of Saturday at home watching TV after waking up at 3:00P. Friday tired me out.
Sunday, I had one last Dim Sum with Barbie before she flew off to Spain for the remainder of the year. *sigh* Gonna miss her. Oh well... Time to fly.
Media & Music: Finally People Peek Their Heads Outside Their Asses
I've been reading a bit today. One article was brought to my attention by Raver Girl and the other I just found on CNN.COM. The first one was found one was an article found on Salon.com. This first article concerned electronic music (Click here to read the article) and its place in the world and in the United States. It talked about how small minded the American audience is in its brushing off of electronica. Electronica has worked its way into American culture without anyone noticing. It's in our commercials and played at breaks in our sports games, and yet electronica as an art still gets shit on. Wake up, America! Techno is an art form and it is here to stay. I don't care if it gets played on the radio. I just want it to be appreciated as a legitimate art form.
The other article concerned the state of radio (Click here to read the article) as an industry. I have to say that I agree with this writer as well. Radio is going downhill and the only way to stop it is, first, to cap off the number of radio stations in a market that a corporation may own, and, second, make it easier for independant and college radio stations to get on the air and be heard. I would be generous by saying that 95% of the music on the radio is crap. Britney, N*Sync, Puddle of Mudd, Nickleback... It's all crap. Don't get me wrong. There is a time and a place for cheesy pop. But come on! Saturating the market with pop really narrows the minds of the public. Why don't we hear experimental music on the air anymore? Why do we have to turn to college stations and internet stations to hear the really enriching music? The pop radio really does play the same 15 songs over and over and over and over and over and over again. I dunno... I'm not saying that I would like ONLY music that I like played on the air, because that would be just as bad as what the pop stations do. I would like there to be a larger number of stations with a number of different formats. This way I could find a station that not only would play music that I dig, but also a station that would expand my understanding of that particular genre, offering me new music to go an pick up at my local record shop. Call me idealist. It's just how I feel.
Yesterday, I had Dragon Boat practice. I was asked to come to a closed practice for the people going to Toronto even though I, myself, was not going. So I go to practice, expecting people to be amped and ready to put in one more good practice before they went up to Toronto. Honestly the boat looked like crap. People weren't putting 100% into practice. That kind of ticked me off. I hate that shit when people don't put it all into practice. If you're not going to work, it's not worth everyone else's time. In a sport that requires a team to work together in unison and such, everyone needs to be pulling their weight or it just falls apart. Practice fell apart. After yesterday's practice, I have mixed feelings over whether I should have gone to Toronto or not. I would have liked to have gone to compete, but if I was working with a team that wasn't doing their part, as it seemed after practice, then I wouldn't have wanted to have been a part of it all.
A couple of weeks ago, I promised one of my teammates that I would lend her some of my old europop techno. I forgot to bring it to practice yesterday, so I'm going to her office today after work to drop it off so she has it for the ride up to Toronto. I really think the people in her car will enjoy the music, even though I don't find it as entertaining as I used to. It is fun now and then though. Today is "EUROPOP DAY" in my cube. I've been playing the stuff all day. It has been fun. I haven't been able to take myself seriously all day long. I think I scared The Violent One on IM. I think she thinks I'm on crack.
I talked to Rebound Girl for the first time in what seems to be a while. She seems to be doing alright. It's nice to know she's doing aiight. She still hasn't made it back to L.A.. I actually find that really amusing.
Anyways, it's time for me to go. Gotta go drop off the CDs. Laterz.
Just a quick note... I'm a little sad that I'm not going with the team to Toronto. I think that would have been fun. But then again, there will be Montreal in a month. Yay!!! So I'm trying to figure out what to get Glare for her b-day... It's difficult. Everything I would have wanted to get her is on her gift registry. There is one thing I would get her, but it's not all that much fun. I think it's something everyone should have and should have been on her gift registry, but no. *shrug* Maybe I'll suggest it to her later on.
In other news, PJ is the new mack daddy. If you know what blog is his, check out the story and take notes. ^_^ Ookie, time for me to fly. Nap and then practice. Yay! It's gonna be a great day to be out on the water. Til then...
Today during my lunch break, I did something exciting. I went to Border's Books and saw Norah Jones perform an in-store concert. I knew about this weeks ago, but somehow I forogt to bring my CD with me. I'm a dumbass. I almost didn't make it to the concert. It was 12:15P and the Unadvised Receipts report hadn't come in so I couldn't finish my duties on time. The last two or three business days, I have been able to bang out my off-shore funds in a jiff. I was completely expecting to have everything nice and faxed before 12:00P, alas, no. I'll let you know that the concert started at 12:30P. At 12:25P, I'm getting nervous. At 12:40P, I'm going bugnutz. At 12:45P, I'm faxing. At 12:50P, I'm at the back of Border's listening to what I thought was a recording, but then realized was her... Norah Jones.
This girl (she's only 23... makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life) has a voice on her that's by no means delicate. She's got a raspiness that lends itself to jazz and blues rather well. It's sultry and tough all in the same breath. I actually got there halfway through her set. If I could have, would have been there early enough to get a good place. As it was, the place was packed and I was in the back for a while. I did however make my way to where the sound guy was and I had to stand on my tip-toes to see over this woman who just wouldn't stop moving and talking to her friend. She was in dire need of a foot up her ass. But I digress...
Anyways, I heard her last five songs (Don't Know Why, Lonestar, I've Got to See You, Come Away & Bessie Smith) and heard that she would be signing CDs like I hoped she would when I heard about the appearance. Once again, I forgot my CD like a dumbass and started to feel sorry for myself. Then I noticed the playlist on the sound guy's table. I asked if I could have it and they let me have it! So after about forty-five minutes of waiting in line, where people would have their CDs signed, I walked out of there with a close encounter with Norah Jones, asking her to sign the playlist and telling her how much I enjoyed her music.
I have to say that I was doubtful of how attractive she was based on her CD cover. I had seen some of the pix on her website www.norahjones.com and didn't think she looked nearly as good as she did on her album cover. When I saw her in person, it completely knocked me on my ass. This girl was beautiful. She's clearly a mixie/halfling and has the most beautiful eyes and smile. Glare will tell you how much I like eyes and smiles. Yah... She's a cutie with a great voice. She looks like any normal 23 year old though, maybe she looks a little younger. She seems pretty down to earth, someone you would want to take to coffee or tea or something. Anyhow, I was really glad to have met her. Maybe more stuff like this will happen in the future. Maybe next time I won't forget my CD.
At college, I ended up working with this nice, yet at times incredibly annoying, stubborn, dense and good-intentioned dean on a number of projects including peer mentoring and a thing calle the "Preview Program," which invited first year students of color to arrive at Colby a day before the rest of the students for a "Special" orientation. If there's one thing I remember about all of these events that I helped her run, it was that she was always mentioning "connections." It was all about making connections with other people and other cultures. That word just came to mind as I was reading another's blog.
See, I know this girl through a friend of mine. I don't know her all that well, you see, but she's cool beans as far as I know. So her boyfriend (the friend of mine) used to live in CT. Here's where it gets amusing. I found her blog through another friend that the guy introduced me to. And the first girl mentioned in her blog a book, or rather recommended a book that another girl I know from CT recommended to me. I know this is kind of confusing, here, I'll use better pronouns. A introduced me to 1 and 2. A and 1 are dating. A introduced me to another one of his friends who is 2 a while back. I ran into 2's blog and 2's blog, one day, had a link to 1's blog. Now there's this other girl, 3 who I know knows A and 1 and possibly 2. So here's where it gets interesting. I was IMing 3 a while back and we got to talking about this book called The Story Of O. It was highly recommended to me by 3. So I was reading 1's blog today, which I discovered through 2 and she also mentioned The Story Of O. I thought it was amusing the connections, or rather the random connections, that you make between people that you know. Or is it just me.
If I have confused you, please disregard this entry.
I don't know what happened this week at work... It all started out with praise from Mumbles and news of Broadway moving to another team. This means that we'll be going from eight people in our team to five. Mumbles said that he was going to ask Boo if I could take on more reponisbilities to cover for the two other grade 12 people who are leaving for other teams. I think that this would give me a leg up on a promotion, I'll bet. It's not like I really want to go anywhere with this company. I'm just a mercenary, you know, a hired gun. I'm the weird guy in this industry. I mean, I'm not weird like I'll break out into Broadway showtunes like Broadway (hence the name). However I did threaten to reinact a scene from Michael Jackson's Beat It video when another guy in my group jokingly bumped into me as he walked past.
In addtion to all of this craziness, I've actually been working full eight hour days. This means that I've not been web surfing as much or anything like that. I have been booking trades, investigating income issues, checking to make sure all is right in the world and just being a general good worker. It's been so busy that I forgot that Wednesday was the 12th and forgot to say anything to Totoro about his birthday. That made me feel like a schmuck. I guess I feel like that a lot these days. I've been in a daze a lot lately.
Another interesting thing is that Boo keeps on saying how efficient I am. Say she's looking for something she gave me an hour ago... I'm done with it. I've put it where it needs to go. She then comes up to me and asks to see it so she can check something. Of course, I tell her that I filed it away. And she turns to me and says, "Wow, you are so efficient." It makes me happy to see that she notices that I don't fuck around when it comes to doing work. It's nice to be appreciated. There aren't nearly enough times in my life where I truly feel appreciated. Sometimes I hear that I'm appreciated, but it's really because I'm fishing for the comments.
In other news, I slept through Dragon Boat practice. I was kinda bummed. I think the ice cream I ate at the Scooper Bowl ($5 all you can eat ice cream from random companies like Ben & Jerry's, Breyers, Edy's, Herrell's, Hood, and Brigham's to benefit the Jimmy Fund/Dana Farber Cancer Research). I think the lactose put me out, and I was out like a light. After dinner, I had coffee with Booch. I've only met her twice now and she seems like a cool kid. She now has a blog link... Yah... Look to the left of the blog and there it is... it's the one labeled "BOOCH." The funny thing about having coffee with her last night was the fact that we were out for coffee at a coffee house, yet neither of us had coffee... She had some sort of white drink that I was afraid to ask about. I had a carrot orange Fresh Samantha. Damn I love those Samanthas. I bet she's a fine lookin' girl with all of the juices and herbs she's drinkin. But I digress... It was fun. We had a really good conversation. Next time we'll try to get her man to come out. He was in Chicago. I sure wish I was there. However, from what I've been told he's been traveling so much for business that he's getting sick of it. I can understand that, but he's going to Chicago! Man, I miss the place.
Time to be flying... Much to be doing this weekend. Besides... this place is dead anyways...
I found out last night that we have won entry into the local NYC dragon boat festival through our in-town mixed first place win! Yay! I also have been giving serious thought to the idea of going to Toronto in a couple of weekends. I have to weigh things out. My team really wants me to go. I would have to drive with someone after work on Friday, because I'm not willing to shell out the two hundred duckets to fly. I dunno... There's just too many things...
Not The Winner, But Feelin' Badass Nonetheless Please read to the end. This post has been edited and added onto.
Wow, what a weekend. The weather was beautiful here in Boston. I can't believe how excellent the weather was. I mean, forgiving the brief showers in the morning on Sunday, it was awesome. As I have sort of eluded to, this weekend was the Boston Dragon Boat Festival. I was by far the newest member fo the team. Many of the members knew each other from previous races and previous teams. However, this was the fist year that they were all together as a team. My team has the proper mix of sweetness, comedy, hardcore attitude, quiet and loudness. I believe that I add to the mix in the over-the-top comedy area. I mean, come on... Every team needs a person who tells the team to go longer, stronger and deeper. ^_^
Saturday was the day that we had time trials. As I said before, the weather was beautiful. The sun was shining and it was in the mid 70's as far as temperatures go. There were gorgeous buff women everywhere. I actually saw a girl from the M.A.D. (Metro Athletic Dragons, NYC) team that I recognized from last year (who is unfortunately underage). She was so cute... Grrr... I hate when they're under the designated floor.
Anyways Saturday's time trials were rather lousy. I believe we pulled a 2:26 and a 2:29 on the DBCB-I (Competitive) boat and 2:49 and 2:46 on the DBCB-MIT boat. Those put us in the middle of the pack, but we were really hoping to be higher up in the pack. The good thing about this day was that I finally got to get in a boat with full competition teams. Up until that day, neither DBCB-I or DBCB-MIT had a full practice with the complete race teams. It was a little discouraging. It was good that we had the time trials to get used to each other. The seeding really was just gravy. I'm sure we could have been eliminated earlier had we been put in a bad seed, but we were lucky. My time trials for DBCB-I were at 10:00A, and the DBCB-MIT time trials were at 11:00A. In DBCB-I's time trials, we were racing against three teams that were obviously no match for us. We won by no less than a boat length and a half. It really wasn't a good gauge of how good we were and our starts sucked. It was pathetic. DBCB-MIT's time trials were a little more difficult. We were racing against some rather good teams and came in third in each of the time trials. Our form was horrible. We weren't together and it was just kind of sloppy. It didn't help that I was the only experienced drummer on the boat and instead of drumming for that team, I was paddling. The team was little-tiny-girl heavy. By this, I mean we had a lot of delicate little freshman and sophomore MIT girls on our team who didn't know a paddle from a chop stick and their arms from a wet noodle. There was one girl, Braidz, who I mentioned in an earlier post, who was a pretty good paddler, but we ended up using her as the drummer, because she could keep time. Her voice didn't carry as well as mine, but then again whose does? I was surprised that we didn't have the slowest time given how inexperienced and kind of weak our team was. We had a handful of alternates from the DBCB-I boat on the MIT boat as our leaders and strokes, but other than that the experience was iffy at best. A lot of the paddlers had only paddled in the three manditory practices.
Anyways, after the time trials were finished, I stuck around and watched the rest of the time trials. I chatted with teammates and other people from other teams. After the time trials were all finished, I ended up hanging out with the dock staff (of which 90% of them were on the DBCB-I boat) and having lunch with them. Some of the teammates and I discussed strategy and how to deal with our poor performance in the time trials. The sun was shining and it felt nice to be hanging out on the docks.
After a while everyone went home. I went and took a shower, bought some snacks at the grocery store for the following day's races and had some dinner. By the time dinner rolled around, I was tired as hell. So, I ended up taking a nap on the couch while Buffy killed treacherous vampires on the TV. Earlier in the day Carpenter had called me and told me that Tattoo Girl had told him to give me a call and invite me to a pot luck kinda dinner party at her place. When I came home from the time trials, the grandparents already had food ready to cook for me so I had to eat at home. So I ended up going over after ate to hang out and stuff. One of Tattoo Girl's friends made this killer gaspatcho. She said she got the recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook, so I was pretty happy. My mother has a bunch of Moosewood Cookbooks, so I figure I could get the recipe off of her sometime. I got to the dinner party just after 7:00P and letf at around 9:30P. I was home by 10:00P and asleep by 11:00P. I told you I was tired. Do you believe me now?
The next day, I had to be down at the Charles near Harvard at 9:00A. DBCB-MIT had a race at 10:00A, and DBCB-I had a race at 11:00A. When I got there there were only a few people from my team there. Right before I left the house, the captain of the DBCB-MIT boat called me, asked me if I was on my way and asked me if I had the phone numbers of anyone else on the team. Unfortunately I did not. So I was beginning to get worried as well. Eventually all of the team members were present and accounted for, however by that time, our captain was not. He was busy doing dock staff work. So, one of the DBCB-I alternates and I took command of the group and stretched them out. The funny thing is that this other guy on the DBCB-I team tries to get us to stretch in synch, but he can never do it because no one takes him seriously. He tries to be all bad and shit, but he just comes off as a dork. We'll call him Hardcore from now on. He sounds like a freakin' drill sargeant, but no one listens to him because he really has no clue what he's doing. I, however got my entire team stretching and doing jumping jacks easily. It was great.
The first DBCB-MIT race was a difficult one. The way things worked was that the top two finishing teams advanced to the quarterfinals, and then the third place teams would race each other in a consolation round for a spot in the semi-finals. This meant that the third place team weren't out of it like the would have been in past years. We ended up coming in a close third place with a time of 2:39. So this put DBCB-MIT into the consolation round.
My next race was with DBCB-I. I have to say that we blew the doors off of everyone. Since our regular steerer was steering for an all women's team, we had the captain of DBCB-MIT steering for us. He said that off the start he felt the power and he was expecting it to drop off, but we just kept going faster and faster. We blew out the other boats in our heat by at least a boatlength to a boatlength and a half. I was so proud of my team at the end of that race. We pulled a 2:15 which is about five seconds better than our best time ever. I was nearly speechless, and if you know me, you know what a difficult feat making me speechless is. At the time we were the fastest time thus far. I take some credit for the race though. For the first time, I had people sit and close their eyes on the way up to the start line. I had them think about their stroke and visualize it in their mind. I focused them and kept them in the boat making sure they weren't worrying about the other teams we were racing against. That was my job. It was a fantastic race.
After that race we had a good while before I had to race again with either team. I had a 1:40P race with DBCB-I and the consolation race with DBCB-MIT at 2:40P. So, with the extra time, I headed over to the other side of the river with some teammates to see the lion dance and to grab some grub. The lion dance was pretty cool. Two of the girls on my team are taking lion dance classes with the troop that was performing. They were trying to show me what few things they had learned in their first class. After that, It was food time. I ended up getting a rather large portion of mini pot stickers (peking ravioli) and two spring rolls. Surprisingly it only cost me five bucks, so I was happy as a clam.
The day started off a little crummy weather-wise, but by the time we had finished our first couple of races, everything was warm, clear and sunny. One of the guys on my team brought a backpack amp and speaker so I plugged in some tunes and just relaxed for the better part of the next hour. Before I knew it it was time to stretch again and psyche ourselves up for the next race. This was potentially the most important race that we were to paddle that day. It would determine whether we made it to semis or not. We were up against some tough teams. We were up against M.A.D. (who were the winners of the Open (overall) division and a team from Montreal. We knew that beating M.A.D. would be a pipe dream, so we were focusing on the Canadians. Even though we got a good start, they definitely had a stronger one. About a third of the way through the race, we were down a half a boatlength and my steerer called for me to up the rating of our strokes. I didn't think it was the right time even though the Canadians were pulling away, because we were still building momentum and were working well with our timing. When we hit the halfway point, I called up the rating and the power. I shouted at them to dig in with each stroke and to pull harder and longer. By the time we hit the two thirds mark, we were only down by two seats. I called them up again and we got back the two seats. Now we were only down by less than a foot. We were getting close to the finish by this point so I called a straight up sprint. We were neck and neck for the finish, but the judges called the Canadians into second place behind M.A.D. by a fraction of a second. I was told that if the course was a meter longer, we would have won. I was told that throughout this whole race, I was bright red and they could all hear me from shore.
Needless to say, I was dissappointed by our third place finish in that race. At the time, I believed that we needed to get into second place to move onto the semi-finals. I have to say, I wasn't pissed, but very dissappointed. I second guessed myself. I wondered if I had brought the rating up earlier like my steerer wanted me to, would we have beat the Canadians? It ate at me for a few minutes. However I really didn't have time to think about it.
Less than 15 minutes after my race against the Canadians, I was stretching out and preparing for a race with DBCB-MIT. I was determined to win. I didn't care if the other people in the boat didn't have the form or timing. I didn't care if 90% of the MIT boat blew goats. I didn't care if 90% of the MIT boat had worse timing than a white guy with two broken legs dancing to breakbeats. I was there to win. I would get to the semi-finals if I had to get out and tow the boat with the shoreline in my teeth, dogpaddling through the finish. I don't remember which team we were up against. I think it was Millenium. All I knew was that I had to win. I got to the start line and I got in the zone. I was in the second row this race. Last race for MIT I was in the middle towards the back in row five or six. When the horn sounded, I dug with all my might, in every stroke. Every stroke I was paddling was like I was sprinting. I sprinted that entire race. I knew we were close to the other boat. I could hear the boat in lane two. We were in lane three (the best lane). From the tone of urgency of my captain (who was steering) and my drummer, I could tell that we were behind. I was still paddling hard. When we finally crossed the finish line, no one knew who won. The Millenium people seemed to think that they won as did my drummer and steerer. When we got back to dock, my captain/steerer spiked his lifejacket on the dock. He was pissed. I think this was one of many indications that he was not a good captain. Glare, Totoro and Carpenter all thought we barely got edged out. However when the times came in, DBCB-MIT had come out ahead by a fraction of a second. Yay! We were going to the semis!
Also, while I was paddling my ass off, another development came forth. Right before the DBCB-MIT race there was a rumor that if we won the race, DBCB-I would make it into the semis. When I got off the boat, even before I knew that DBCB-MIT had won, I found out that we had made it to the semis with our time of 2:12. I was ecstatic. I was thoroughly psyched. However I knew that I had two very difficult, up-hill battle type races coming up. With the way that scheduling worked, DBCB-MIT would go out for their semi and then DBCB-I would race in the following race. After very little consideration, the captain of DBCB-I told me not to paddle for MIT so I could save myself for the following race. So I sat the final DBCB-MIT race out. They were slaughtered. They came in dead last. The thing is that I wouldn't have even made a difference if I were on the boat. We spent ourselves in the consolation race. My team didn't have anything left to give. And to make it even worse, we were up against some very tough teams. I'm proud of them nonetheless. For the most part, they were a ragtag bunch who did better than a lot of the corporate teams with more experience.
For the DBCB-I semi-final, we were up against M.A.D. (who could school us any day of the week) , Dudley-I (which is comprised of members of the Harvard Crew Team), and another team that I don't remember. When the horn sounded, we had a fantastic start as did the other teams. The fourth team fell behind early so I stopped worrying about them. For the first hundred and fifty meters we were keeping up about a half a boatlength behind Dudley. However, after that, they began to pull away. We didn't lose speed though. They were just pouring on the steam. Just before we hit the halfway mark, I told them to pour it on and pick it up. They did. However, it was too little, too late and if I had called for it any earlier, my team would have burnt out earlier. We ended up finishing third and not advancing to the finals. The other teams that made it to the finals all finished with times that broke the 2:10 time barrier. We have yet to do that. Another reason that we didn't have a shot was because we were the only mixed team. The other teams were mostly if not all men. We just didn't have the power that these teams did.
So the semi-finals was where our day of racing ended. The finals were interesting in and of themselves. The captain of DBCB-MIT ended up steering for a team that had made it to the finals by bumming steerers off of other teams for their races. This team was the Gentle Giants team. They were all gigantic. They had such a large combined weight that the top of their bow was an inch above the water and if they were to shift from side to side, they would fill with water. Their team, in addition to the brute strength that they possessed, also possessed two olympic rowers. Yeah.. TWO OLYMPIC ROWERS! So the race starts and around the halfway mark, I see their boat veering for the Dudley boat. Then I hear a splash. It turns out that the the captain of DBCB-MIT didn't have the skills or the balance to keep with the Giants so their power pretty much catapulted him off of the boat, sending the Giants into the Dudley boat. M.A.D. was so far ahead that they didn't have to finish the race. Needless to say, the Gentle Giants were disqualified and the remaining two teams, Dudley and Extreme Team Blue re-ran their race for the second place overall prize.
In the grand scheme of things, my two teams came out of this race a lot better than expected. We won first and third place in the in-town mixed division, since we always had six women on the boat. I think DBCB-I placed sixth overall. I accepted the third place paddle for DBCB-MIT because the captain was working dock staff and most of the rest of the crew had gone home.
After all of it, a group of nine or so of us went out to dinner at John Harvard's Brew house. We chatted and joked until 9:00P or so. It was nice hanging out with them. They seem altogether a little more easy going than the whole swing crowd. I liked that. Plus there are more girls my age in my boat than girls I would consider dating in the whole of the Boston swing scene. Oh well... that was this last weekend. I hope this one is more relaxing.
Sorry I haven't been updating as of late. Life has been busier than ever. It was up to the point where I had to cancel and reschedule plans with Glare and Totoro this week. This is my life in a nutshell. My mother has been here for about two weeks or so and she's driving me nutz.
I've been busy with the Dragon Boat teams. I've had practice every day this week. I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. Every day for at least an hour. Some days I'm paddling and some days I'm shouting. The two teams are kind of fighting over me right now. The more competitive team really wants me as their drummer. The less competitive team wants me as their rigth stroke (the first row right hand side guy who sets the pace). I'd really like to be able to do both, but I think that if we were both racing, I would have to stick with the drumming position. I'm really happy that I'm doing all of this. I think it's great exercise. This past Sunday, the competitive team went down to Norwalk, CT for a race. We outclassed everyone there. Our time was 3:18 and the next fastest boat was 3:31. It was kinda sweet beating all of those boats by three or four boatlengths. I know it won't be that easy this Sunday at the Boston Festival. I'm starting to get nervous.
Well, I have to go now... Work is over and it's time to go and hang out with Rebound Girl who is in fact about to walk off into the sunset. Well, the sun rises and sets every day... maybe we can keep her on the same type of cycle. Who knows? Certainly not me.
