I keep finding new white hairs on my head. I’m starting to go slightly grey on the sides like my father, although he started at 15. My hair is still very thick though, while his has thinned significantly. Some see the thick hair as a good thing, but I see it mostly as a hassle. If I don’t condition, it turns coarse. Aaron jokes that it’s my mane, as if girls grab onto it to control me during sex.
Monthly Archives: March 2004
Cause I Don't Eat Smarties
I always eat the banana Runts last.
The Pat Benchmark
I just played the best three hours of table tennis in my life. Pat and I headed to the games room on campus, and had three matches to the best of 19, a total of 43 games. Every single muscle in my body is completely exhausted. The worst are the soles of my feet, which are more sore than when I stood for five hours at the Strung Out concert.
We’d been planning to play for more than three months now, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for a while. All week, I had been trying to develop some strategy to beat him, but couldn’t come up with a single idea since he plays with a strong backhand with a pen-grip. I decided to simply play more aggressively than him, and figure out his weakness on the fly. In the end, I just ran him around a lot, putting the ball on alternating corners or at an angle he didn’t expect. I can serve consistently now, and have gotten much better at controlling how long or short they are.
Almost none of his previous strategies worked on me. His quick serves to my right don’t do much anymore because I’ve been successful in balancing out my position at the table. His downspins don’t work anymore because the people at the club really make me work on my chops and my pushes. His rally hits to my left don’t work anymore because I’ve been improving my backhand for the last two weeks. My short game has become as good as his. The only thing he could do was serve a downspin to my left to force a weak return, which is something he figured out rather quickly.
I ended up winning all the matches, 10–5, 10–3, 10–5, but both of us agreed that they were the finest we’ve ever played. It was three hours of pure intensity, not only physically but mentally as well. Concentrating on the serve, the strategy, trying to figure out a weakness, adapting to an opponents, keeping track of the ball, I was ready to collapse when I got home.
Has It Finally Come To This
Emotional. Oh so emotional. Maybe it was the pint, maybe it was the atmosphere, maybe it was the presence of others, maybe it was the second-hand compliment, maybe it was the raw night sky, maybe it was the Moon Mix pumping in my ears.
I just know that I’m happy.
And loving every minute of it.
The Only Rabbits Foot
I’m generally not a superstitious person but I have this one superstition when I’m listening to my iPod. I always have my songs on random, and if two songs ever play in a row that were meant to be played in a row (i.e. in order on an album or if the second song develops the motifs from the first) then I think I’ll have a good day.
I think it started when I used to play ladder matches in WC3 with Jacky. She always listened to music when she was playing, so she had her 8000 songs queued up. If Sigur Rós ever came up, she would know that we’d win. I don’t think she was ever wrong.