Sunday, bloody Sunday

We played Weapons of the Gods tonight and it was fun.

I like the way that the dice hit the table and then you have choices to make, resources to spend, the River, and Joss. If you hit a mofo hard, ya really feel like you out-gamed him, which is fun.

I tried to pick up a fight with Jeff’s bad-ass bare-knuckle brawler but he wasn’t having it.

Lore Sheets are an ingenious way to concretely link the PC’s to the game’s fiction. The intro adventure that Storn ran had its own Lore Sheets that really dragged us right into the thick of it. Suddenly the tournament had meaning and we wanted to win. Jeff was retrieving his dead master’s porcelain servant girl, I was retrieving my twin sister’s stolen books and Jim was getting his beloved’s wedding dress in hopes of marrying her.

Jeff’s character was righteous, Jim’s was a scheming bastard and I think my guy was just pissed that he couldn’t go up into the mountains and study like an old man. He didn’t start off pissed but it just came out in play.

Like most games with these kinds of system buy-in, it will get better as the players master it. Burning Wheel/Empires, Spycraft 2.0 (I hear), the crunchier d20 stuff and Exalted all get better when the players at the table are bought into the crunch as much as they are bought into the color.

The game ran late and I accidently ate a piece of cracker that was attached to a piece of cheese that I devoured with alarming speed and volume (totally my own fault). So, I was a few minutes late to my soccer game and I watched a goal go in as I arrived, a goal I could’ve stopped.

We went down 5-1 before this older guy, late forties, early fifties, who just settled us down and got us passing right. As folks in the Wire would say, he got our shit correct. Ziggy didn’t do anything dramatic or fancy, just solid, simple passes that made sense.

We came back 6-6 only to lose 7-6. Rough loss but a fun game.

And now I’m out of the shower and the gluten has poisoned my chi, leaving my sorry ass exhausted.

I planned out my week on Google Calender with alerts that get texted to my phone. Things that need getting done have not been getting done. We’ll see how this works.

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And on the seventh day…

I didn’t have to open a library this morning. What a different that makes to my day. I woke up, met Storn for breakfast at ABC where I had the most mediocre of their guacamole and cheddar omelets yet, but it was still damned good.

We walked about town and talked shit, running into J.J. and planning for Dreamation. I bought Battle Lore from Odyssey and collected my ogre figure that came with pre-ordering.

Then it was off to Jeff’s for today’s early afternoon Spirit of the Century Game which we recorded and was as low key as our pulp games get, which is to say there was time travel galore, a giant robot looking for forgiveness (or WAS he!?) and a lawyer under the sway of a Martian shape-shifter (who got away again) and the Tyrian Mind Tyrants.

We did some Sons of Kryos brainstorming and recorded a new intro and a funky promo for Paul Tevis.

Got home in time for my soccer match, which was a fun 6-2 victory over a solid team. Janaki and Zorro came to watch, though the Z-man didn’t like it as much as the outdoor games because he had trouble seeing over the indoor wall. He liked it when people crashed against the wall, though.

My stomach feels like shit but other than that, a lovely day that is easing its way to a lovely night.

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Done and Done

This afternoon I handed in the last bit of work due for this semester’s class. I think I did alright. That feels good, especially after the debacle that was last semester. I also visited Boynton Middle School’s librarian and chatted with her about the gig which really re-charged my batteries for working as a public school librarian.

Yesterday we played Spirit of the Century, which was quite fun. Thread here.

After the game I put on shorts and went right to my indoor soccer match. I am playing on a really solid team for the holiday season. The match was kinda boring. Its indoor with walls keeping the ball in play but the other team just couldn’t put it together. We won 8-2 and looking over the two remaining games, it doesn’t look like the other teams will be any more challenging. Bummer.

I wanted to play a bit more and waited around to see if any other teams needed extra players but none did. Feeling in a bit of a funk, I went home and took a brutally deep nap.

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Punim Save

I played the first game of the indoor holiday soccer season. My team has played three games already and went in 3 wins and 0 losses. The team we were playing was also undefeated.

There was a point in the first half when they just got shot after shot at me. I had let in an easy goal early, which gave them the idea to shoot early and often. I tipped a shot wide, it went off the wall and they shot again. Neither of my hands touched it and after the ball bounced away I had a headache, so I am assuming I stopped a shot I never saw coming with my face.

No fun.

But we won, so that was nice.

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World Cup Hope

As Italy settles in to defend their one goal lead and Germany revels in their PK win:

I’d really like to see Italy vs. Brazil in the final.

The Italian keeper has really impressed me in the little I have seen him and I’ve entirely fallen for the Brazilian team’s hype.

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World Cup Hope

As Italy settles in to defend their one goal lead and Germany revels in their PK win:

I’d really like to see Italy vs. Brazil in the final.

The Italian keeper has really impressed me in the little I have seen him and I’ve entirely fallen for the Brazilian team’s hype.

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A Bad Call and a Post

Went to Benchwarmers this morning and watched the U.S. lose to Ghana and exit the World Cup. The ref’s call for a penalty kick in the first half was just awful and after that, the U.S. never really recovered.

There were some late chances, a few free kicks and a moment when Donovan had the ball in the box and just didn’t know what the eff to do with the thing.

It made me miss playing soccer something awful.

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Dirty Play: Further Consequences

The co-ed team I play with remains undefeated. They are a glorious team and it is always fun to watch them play.

I got to the field early and saw the team I played Sunday’s co-ed contingent. They are amazing players. In the heat of the game I didn’t take time to really appreciate how solid a team they are and their co-ed team is just as good. Their goalkeeper is fantastic.

So, I stretched out and watched them take a team apart.

The team we were supposed to play had all of its female players but its male players had left for spring break early. They asked the afore mentioned team, whose member I fouled and talked shit to this past Sunday to fill in for them.

And they did.

We won.

Wow, they are good. Their goalkeeper was just flat-out better than me; it is a long time since I have looked across the field and really thought that the other keeper played a flat-out better game and this one did.

His team lost but it wasn’t really his team. If it was, it would have been a different game, methinks. I wonder who would have won.

In the first half we were winning but I hadn’t made a clean save, one desperate, oh-my-lord, get my big toe on the ball to make it stop rolling at the goal save but not a clean and solid save. In the second half I made a few that were alright.

It was just an odd night and the shadow of taking shit over a player who was so obviously hurt has been following me around, not just at this game but in general.

The difference between getting kicked by that kid and just getting kicked over the course of the past few decades of soccer is the following:

Every other time I have been kicked in the face, stepped on, grabbed, run over or whatever, it was always in pursuit of a goal. I could respect that. This has nothing to do with a goal. It was just spite, dangerous and cheap.

We won and it was quite clear that they took the game to have opportunities to score on me, which they did. Even the goalkeeper wanted to step up and score on me. It makes it easier to play a team when you despise their goalkeeper and they have decided to despise me. That feels odd, just plain odd.

It didn’t feel like a win tonight and I’m still figuring out why.

Maybe it is because I can see the horizon where my reflexes have grown too slow to play at this level anymore in any meaningful way. Maybe it is because my body isn’t moving like it used to. Maybe my own poor sportsmanship, by which I mean the shit-talking, has left a sour taste in my mouth.

And there’s another game tomorrow in the goal with the young’uns. They have asked me to go to Philly with them in the first weekend of April and play in an all day tournament.

I’m just feeling wierd about soccer lately, not bad wierd but certainly as if I am coming to some kind of crossroads, wherein if I want to continue I will have to put more work into it than I have given in a long time.

And I feel like an outsider, watching, curious to see what kind of choices I will make.

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M.V.P.

The soccer team sent out a post-game e-mail after last week’s game and named me MVP, which is really sweet. The team is so young, I’m the old man on the team by at least ten years, so its nice to be appreciated.

Just call me Old Man Keeper.

In the last minutes we were up by one goal and I stopped 2 or 3 deadly shots. Fun.

The other team wanted to score so badly I almost felt bad. Almost.

Next week we play the highest scoring team in the league. It looks like a few guys from the weekly Burning Wheel game are going to attend along with Janaki, who usually attends too, which is super-cool and fun. It is nice to be supported.

In the above mentioned game I somehow bruised my butt. Well, its technically my lower back just above my butt, however its so much more fun to just say I bruised my butt.

In other news, I’m wide awake.

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