dry toast: sometimes i am boring

Tsonga wins! (This is actually the Quarters)
Maria wins the Final!

Sorry it's been a little while. I've been celebrating Australia Day and it took a lot out of me. It's a doozy.

On Friday I gave blood. (Make an appointment right now! It is so important.) Australia has pretty tight controls on who can donate. I was only allowed to donate because I hadn't been to the US in over 6 months. They are worried about West Nile Virus.

Last Friday Liz came over for dinner and to watch the Novak/Nadal match. It was great to see her as she has been really busy lately selecting the Australian women's national team to represent the country in Vancouver in August. I think I might try to go watch some matches up there as it will be some great ultimate and it is supposed to be a great town. I like watching ultimate almost as much as I like to play.

On Saturday, I went to Rod Laver again to see the women's finals of the Australian Open with Amanda. That was pretty cool. They were 15,000 silent and attentive fans. I've seen 3 women's grand slam matches in my life, and I've seen Sharapova win 3 times. She was dominant. It was really hot in there.

After that, I went to a full-on Aussie barbecue at Dave and Sarah Trovell's. We had beers and sat in the back yard. I felt genuine Australian patriotism. I think there was even cricket on the TV.

Sunday I went to the final Team Box try-out for this season and afterwards, Jess and Steven had a bunch of us over for even more Aussie barbecue and to watch the Tsonga/Novak match. That was heaps of fun and we were all for Tsonga. Maybe next year.

Monday was a day off for Australia day. I had brunch with Joy and Hussey at Issus and then rode Dierdre to St. Kilda beach. She can't swim so she just hung out by the bike rack, but I swam around in the warm ocean and read magazines on the beach before going to Monday night league. It was great and I need to go to the beach more often while it is still summer. It is about a 15 minute bike ride from my apartment.

At league, I got there early, and so did Snail, so we ran a quick 5K around Albert Park Lake. Then I played a Div 2 game with the Juniors and got to handle in the zone as the axis, and played a Div 1 game with Joy and Hussey where we had only 2 guys and 6 girls so I got to play a lot and played pretty well, though we narrowly lost.

Tomorrow I'm going for a throw with Jess and she is making me dinner.

Friday I am going to the cricket at the MCG to see a Twenty-20 match which is the wildly abbreviated version that doesn't take 5 days, but instead takes only a few hours but still makes baseball look fast paced.

With Football over and done with, I can focus on basketball, and naturally my focus is on the Nuggets. Go Allen. Go Melo. Go Nene. I hope he is back soon. Do you think that this story has basketball announcers thinking of new ways to describe a turnover so that in the future they can avoid saying that Nene has "lost the ball". (Not funny, I know. I can't help it.)

I can't believe how quickly January flew by. I'll be going to Rimini, Italy again in March, so that's the next big trip.

That's pretty much all my news. Nothing clever or particularly noteworthy, but I am well and hope you are too. More soon.