I made sure to drink plenty of water and Gatorade well ahead of today’s games. It paid off; now I’m just sore and winded, instead of sore, winded and dehydrated.

The first game went pretty darned well. It was hot, but overcast, so that was a huge help. We gave up an early goal, but then got things under control and won 5-1–and Your Humble Narrator scored all five goals. Sure, the other team was a man down the whole game, and yes, all I had to do was stand in front of the net, wait for everybody else on the team to pass circles around the bad guys, and then tap it past the girl who probably had never played goalie before, and I’ll grant that I scored one because she forgot she was allowed to pick up the ball on a certain play, but still– five unanswered goals! A natural hat trick plus two! I hereby congratulate myself.

But the real highlight came when, with a minute or two left in the game, my team’s captain–a female–threw some whiner from the other team to the ground (he had tried to take out her already damaged knee) and he came up ready to swing, screaming, “You’re a bunch of superstars, right? You have seven players, we got six, superstars!” She probably would’ve killed him but another teammate held her back. Awesome.

My second game (for my other team) could’ve gone better. We tied, one-all, with Yours Truly scoring, but also missing three or four good opportunities. We were happy enough with the result, considering we played short for the entire second half and were missing some of our stronger players.

So, a win, a tie, all six of my teams’ goals, no cramps, no palpitations, no dizzy spells, and no symptoms of dehydration. I can’t expect to score that many goals on a regular basis, but I didn’t almost die. That’s a good day.

My first destination was Aabrock and Nikita’s place in Cary, NC, but my first actual stop was at a party at Nikita’s parents’ house across town. The guest of honor was Nikita’s aunt, visiting from Tehran, who announced that I had gained weight since she last saw me several years ago at Aabrock and Nikita’s wedding (at which she announced that I had lost weight since the engagement party). The comment didn’t faze me, for it was true.

 

Anyhow, at the soirée, we feasted on chicken legs, a really good rice dish, another slightly less impressive rice dish, and some green stuff. I remember none of the names and hardly any of the ingredients of the recipes, but I rest assured that Nikita will provide them.  

 

Afterwards, it was over to their home and off to beddy-bye in their guest room. I know I mentioned this in an earlier post, but that room could easily have served as a sensory deprivation chamber. It was on the bottom floor, slightly cool, dead quiet, and pitch black with the lights out–no windows to let light through, no clocks to give ambient light, nothing. It was so cut off from the world that there wasn’t even a cell signal. I woke up relaxed and refreshed in complete darkness the next morning. I found my watch, hit the Indiglo button–it was 9 AM. I was impressed.

 

Nikita was busy with conference calls most of the day, so Aabrock and I hung out, talking about work, movies, television shows, and politics. We went out to eat, leaving Nikita behind–which was probably good, considering she’s a very healthy eater and cook. She would never have let Aabrock eat the fried chicken tender appetizer, the half-pound bacon double-pizza burger or the baked potato smothered with sour cream, bacon and chives, much less let him wash it down with a pitcher of soda and a pitcher of beer. She might‘ve let the caramel-drenched banana split slide. We came up with a good cover story for dinner: organic salads with fat-free dressings and bottled water.

 

We returned to the house, and spent the remaining evening chit-chatting with Nikita. The highlight was when she asked whether I had any current romantic interests. I told her some stories, then said, “Well, there’s this one girl who reminds me an awful lot of you.” She said, “Then that’s The One. You can forget everyone else.”

 

Net result of the visit: I caught up with old friends, ate well, slept well, and got my future wife picked for me. I’ll just have to remember to invite Nikita’s aunt to the wedding.

 

Next stop: Central Virginny.

Got all the way home after a great vacation (which I’ll write about in the coming days). After driving the last five hours home, I had to turn right back around and head to the fields for the first of three back to back games.

My teams (I play on two) won one, tied one, and lost one. After the first 25 minutes or so of the first game, I’m pretty certain I was dehydrated. I won’t go into the medical indicators, but it was bad. So bad that I barely played in the next two games and I may just die tonight.

But if I do, I’ll die knowing I went out in a blaze o’glory, scoring a natural hat trick to crush the team that beat us 14-1 last season. Suck on that. Nighty-night.

Last night I arrived at the Aabrock’s house in North Cackalacky. I slept in a room that was so dark, so quiet and so comfortable that it could double as a sensory deprivation chamber. This was the dream I had:

I realize that I have a third eyeball to the right of my right eye. I don’t know how long I’ve had it. Nobody else seems to notice. Is it because they’re used to seeing it? Is it because they’re all just too dern polite to say anything? I can’t tell. They say nothing, I say nothing.

Of course, I’ve got to wonder why my optometrist never said anything. You’d think that noticing supernumerary eyeballs would be somewhere in his job description.

I wonder about surgery to remove the extra eye. Some good surgeons should be able to scoop that thing out, throw a prosthetic bone in there and stitch it up real nice-like. And I’d still be able to see perfectly well; my vision is still binocular, meaning the third eye is doing nothing. More precisely, it means one of my three eyes is doing nothing. After some rudimentary vision tests involving a mirror and waving my hand in front of my face, I realize that my third eye is functional– it’s my left eye that doesn’t work.

So to clarify: if I were to have the nonfunctional eye removed, my face, from left to right, would go empty eye socket, functional right eyeball in the proper location, functional further-right eyeball close to right temple. Since that would probably look even more bizarre than I already do, I decide to leave well enough alone. When the new seven-a-side soccer season starts, I’ll wear jersey number three.

…

I woke up with the correct number and placement of eyeballs.

…

I’ll have to go back later and fill in the italics.

I’m trying out the WordPress application on the phone. Hopefully it’ll work. Here goes.
Now I have to figure out how to get the pic to show up in the middle of a post, rather than being forced to the bottom.