Temptations

So again taking way too much time off from blogging but what can you do.  Anyway I'll start my recap off with Thursday. Last week I had Thursday and Friday off from work.  I decided that on Thursday I'd head up to Methuen and get some chicken pies, it was a decision I do not regret.  It had been a while since I've had them so I was over due.  The one problem is that as I was stuffing my face with chicken pies on the ride back I happen to pass by the river trail in I think Andover but I'm not sure.  I ran there a few times with Jim and a few with Michelle.  It got me thinking about how great trail running is and how much I missed it.  Only problem was I don't even know where my running shoes are since moving and I was stuffing my face.  I got home and figured well maybe later today if I have time(I had a long list of things to do) or tomorrow I'd head to the trails for a few easy miles.  Well obviously I did not end up going because lets be serious I am me.  I didn't finish the stuff I planned to do Thursday, then the nice weather disappeared along with my motivation.  I suppose I can pretend the good news is I at least dug out my running shoes so I am aware of where they are now.  I will keep you posted if the unthinkable happens and I go for a run.

I think I just need to accept I am just not a self motivated person.  I really enjoy running and even running alone but apparently not enough to get in shape by myself so I can actually go for runs with my friends.  I think I'd just need someone that wants to get back in shape or just in shape and forces me to go with them.  That'd probably be a lot more likely to work than me actually getting back in shape on my own and staying that way.

The rest of the weekend wasn't too exciting.  Friday I did go to the Beer Summit in Boston which was really cool. If you are a beer drinker I'd definitely recommend going next time they have one.  50 different microbreweries and 200 different beers(and some ciders).  Next time though I'll have to figure out a way to document all the ones I try because there is maybe a handful of what I actually remember drinking.  I remember things like the expresso beer I tried that tasted a lot more like coffee than it did beer, it was pretty good but I can't remember at all who made it.  The same with the pear cider, it was different but pretty good and again no clue who made it.

Anyway I will leave you with this picture that I came across after Easter which had the funny headline "the lord has risen"  apparently some religious people have a problem with this picture.  I thought it was pretty funny.

The Gunners Dream

So to recap the weekend it was pretty fun.  Went out to Patriot Place on Friday night which is pretty cool.  The rain made it less fun walking around but still that place is impressive.  I had never been in a Bass Pro Shop before and it's odd to say but being inside that store has really made me want to spend more time outside.  Sunday we had our last regular season games of the regular season.  We had a double header due to 95% of our team being in Toronto next weekend for Mike's bachelor party.  The first game was a bit of a disaster from the start, again the league has the scheduled screwed up and gave people incorrect times, the field we played on was absolute crap which I'm sure we didn't have a permit for.  Anyway very few bright spots between the two games.  Between a couple of guys getting banged up in the first game and 2 guys having to leave before the second game we were tired and very short handed so we didn't stand much of a chance the second game against a team that was undefeated.  Anyway to highlight the day, I had two plays I was really happy with.  The first catch was a high ball that was a jump between me and the defender that I came down with.  A tough enough catch that the teams that played in the previous game that were still on the sidelines were commenting on it and giving me high fives as I went back to my huddle.  It was a bit awkward but cool that it apparently looked that good.  The second was just a great throw by Dan outside of the defender so only I could get it. I dragged my feet to stay in bounds and got a first down.  Sadly those type of plays were probably the only kind of highlights of the day since we got beat so bad.  Oh well it's been a fun season and now we know two things.  We need to find a better run league to join since this one sucks, and we need to find more people(specifically more committed people) since probably half of our games we had 2 or less subs.  Actually to be more specific we need more big guys since our lineman generally played both ways the entire game just about every game.  

Moving on.  So I've been still eating pretty poorly but one thing that has improved is breakfast.  So instead of either nothing or junk food for breakfast during the week I'm now having fruit smoothies.  The weekends I still go a little overboard with french toast, bacon and eggs or something like that.  Anyway so this is a picture of the smoothie pre mix.  

  So what I have in there is an orange, a banana, two kiwi's, some mango, blue berries, strawberries and raspberries.  I think thats everything at least.  Then I add green tea to it, it's surprisingly pretty good and I'm sure better for me than pop tarts or nothing.  

I am about as good at blogging as I am at running.

So it's been about 2 weeks since my last post.  Woah, ok that sounds a bit too much like catholic confession so I have to stop.  Anyway  I've been pretty busy lately, obviously not with running.

Where to start, well since I started this blog to be about running I'll at least start with football since it's the most exercise I get without running.  So well my left ankle is still swollen to about twice the size of my right one.  It doesn't hurt really, I don't ice it which is really dumb of me but since it doesn't hurt I really don't think about it except on Sundays.  The first game of the last two weeks was awful.  We showed up at Arlington High where our game was at and started warming up etc... only to find out that our game was an hour after it was scheduled since AGAIN the league did not get a permit for the field and the early game was forced to play on a separate field and it delayed the start of all the games.  It makes me wonder what we paid $600 bucks for since we supplied our own uniforms, flags, ball, tee, and we pay ref fees every game.  We haven't played at the same field more than once with the exception of double headers and we were only supposed to have one game that wasn't on the same field.  Anyway  I'm not sure if it was the delayed start, or what but for some reason our team was just not in the game that week.  The opposing team was good but very beatable and we just couldn't get it together.  Needless to say we lost.

The second week we played a game at 8am on Easter Sunday in Milton which was pretty shitty since it's like 45 minutes away.  Anyway because of the holiday we only had 8 people show up for an 8 on 8 game.  No subs and we ended up having to play with some nagging injuries the entire game.  Not only that our quarterback was one of the people who could not make the game forcing me to step in as the backup.  I was not really looking forward to that but what can you do.  Somehow early in the game I'm not sure if it was dehydration from being out drinking for a friends bday the night before or what but I had my right calf cramp up pretty bad.  This isn't just a normal cramp this is a recurring thing  with me, I've had it happen before just from running and it's bad enough that on one run with my friend Michelle in the Dracut/Tyngsboro woods she noticed me limping and refused to continue running despite being fine herself and me insisting that we continue on.  Now imagine that playing football with lots of cuts and sprinting instead of just running at a measly 8:30 pace(I have no idea what we were running but it probably was close to that).  So this cramp came up within the first 10 minutes of the game which was nice since we had no subs, but at least I was quarterback so on offense I didn't have to run too much.  The first half of the game went alright Mark bailed me out of a bad pass and ended up scoring a TD which was my first throwing for the season and I think Mark's first receiving since he's been out with a bad foot.  We kept it close, I scored another TD running the ball to keep the score tied at 13.  The second half however was when our lack of subs really killed us.  Jeff hurt his leg so he couldn't run too well so he needed to switch with me at QB.  So now limping around I was still playing receiver, which I did well enough at but at this point in the game we had too many people either tired, hurt or not playing their normal position and we gave up a couple of big plays and were not able to respond.  So that was that, another game we could have won but did not.  We need to find a better run league and maybe some more players so we aren't always so short handed.

Aside from that work is going really well.  Things are finally after a few years coming into place for me.  Plenty of money coming in and I've decided I need to get my CFP within the next year.  Now if it happens who knows I need to take 6 classes and shell out over 6 grand before I can even take the test so we'll see if I can get all that done soon so I can start studying for that wonderful 10 hour 2 day test.

Another reason I have been busy is I have some how beyond everyone I knows expectations I have manged to get myself a girl friend.  How this has happened is still to be determined but it's been going pretty well so far considering my general retardation when it comes to girls.  And since people will find a hard time believing me I will offer a picture as an attempt at proof.

Trust me this has nothing to do with my recent download of photoshop.  Anyway thats it for tonight.  I have a double header for football in the morning and I'm just hanging out at home by myself for the night.  I'll try to keep the posts coming more often than once every 15 days.

Double Time

I already posted once today but it's your lucky day I'm making a second very quick post.

You ever wonder what would happen if Mark Wahlberg and Steven Colbert had a son together?  Wonder no more

Catching up.

So it was brought to my attention yesterday that it had been 8 days since my last blog entry...whoops.   Sorry about that.  Anyway it's been a pretty busy week but I will start recapping from last weekend I suppose.  So we had a double header for football a game at 10am and a second game at noon.  Now we weren't exactly off to a very good start losing the first game 32-0 then the second game 18-0 at least we could say we had improved.  What helped us this past weekend was those two teams played each other in the game before us and it was close.

We saw the team we were playing against as they arrived and it was hopeful, they didn't have a lot of big guys and unlike last week they didn't have an offensive line that all played semi pro football and were 6'4 300+.  So the game starts and we controlled it from the start.  I don't remember enough details now about the game so I'll just highlight a few things.  My first catch was a stretch that I could not hold my balance after so I went down(which ends the play if you fall) but it was a good gain, then Pete made a great catch that caused him to land on his head and sit out a couple of plays.  I had 3 touchdowns 2 in the first half the first one catching a tipped ball in the end zone for the teams first score, then catching the 2nd cutting across the back of the end zone for another.  One pretty cool moment was my friend Mike's parents had swung by because they were in the neighborhood so they watched for a decent chunk of the second half, right after they showed up Dan called a deep pass to Mike, the defender bit on the fake bad and Mike was wide open for a long touchdown.  I ended up scoring once more in this game where I don't even remember how I caught the pass, I just remember coming down with it and heading for the end zone and as I ran away from the defender I heard "How the hell did he catch that?"  so that was pretty cool.  That was pretty much it for that game, game 2 was a lot more exciting.

So game 2 gets started and it was a lot more competitive, granted this team had 2 players from the team that beat us week 1 filling in for some of their guys but still it was good.  They scored first I believe on somewhat of a broken play.  The QB was forced outside and I thought he was going to run so I bit as did Jeff who was in man coverage, only the QB didn't run and saw Jeffs man open deep and tossed him an easy touchdown.  On our next possession I ended up scoring on a deep pass that was thrown a bit more to the middle than I was expecting but unsuspecting to the CB covering me who I think thought I had no shot at it but I slipped behind him and came up with the TD.  Only right after I caught it I rolled my ankle pretty bad so I hopped off the field to my first aid kit where I had an ace bandage to try to wrap it up some.  The pain subsided and with my newly wrapped ankle I was back on the field.  The problem was on defense Jeff made another mistake of letting his guy get behind him and scoring again so we were down 13-6 heading into the second half.  We decided to mix up the defense a bit early in the second half taking me out from safety and putting Mike in to play linebacker and really getting a lot more pressure on, it worked perfectly.  We were able to stop them from scoring the entire half, we had a late score from a great catch and run from Pete, then we only went for 1 on the PA to force OT which Pete made a great play on again.  The overtime rules are kinda cool but not what I expected.  Each team does one play from 3 yards out, and you go until someone scores.  So we missed out first scoring chance, but stopped them on theirs, so we went to the second round, they were up first and Doug came up with a huge stop after it seemed like his man had him boxed out.  Then we were back on offense, Doug completing his great game comes up with a huge catch to seal the win.

It was really cool how close the game was and to see how well we improved in the second half so it was a great confidence booster.  One of the refs told us after the game it was one of the most exciting games he's reffed in years so we were glad we weren't the only ones who thought it was awesome.  Thats about it for Sunday though.  I've been pretty excited about how that went all week and looking forward to our next game this weekend who this team against our team from the first game of our double header they won 30-15 which is a good sign for us.  If that team was able to score off them we should have a field day with their defense.

The only other really interesting thing from this week was going out Wednesday night.  I headed out to trivia in Chelmsford which was a good time then decided it was still a bit early so I headed to the Brewery in Lowell for some pool since it's free Sunday-Wednesday.  Walking from the parking lot to the door I see a very large "woman" standing outside smoking.  Then I remember hearing someone say a week before that they do Tranny nights on Wednesday nights on the 3rd floor so that was a bit interesting.  Granted this "woman" was probably at least 6'2 without the high heels on and bigger than some NFL players, I considered trying to recruit for the football team since our lineman don't really have many subs but then I decided against it.  Either way had a good time playing pool despite not being that good at it.

That about sums up the week, of course I'm still not running.  Oh my ankle that I rolled last Sunday is still about twice the size of my other ankle.  I don't really have any pain unless I try to move it side to side but walking it's been fine.  I haven't run on it or done any cutting/football moves on it so we will see.

I'm not sure how this is happening.

Well, as I've stated before I haven't run at all since mid Feb, just football stuff a few days a week.  I've drank a lot more than usual lately because I've been going out yet some how I keep losing weight.   Now I had lost some when I was running before and when I stopped I slowly put it back on, now this isn't a lot of weight mind you but still since Jim insists I'll be pushing 200lbs in no time I feel I need to make this point.  I weighed myself this morning which is what I normally do and the decline continues 171.7.  I checked to see if someone had switched the scale to kilograms to play a joke but nope still on lbs.  I suppose I have been eating less junk food than usual since I'm not really home as much so I'm going to assume that was it but I figured the added drinking would change that.  I need to start doing something to get me working out more though, I might start the 100 pushup challenge again and try to go 0(well probably like 40-50) to 100 pushups in 6 weeks.

Ignore me doing this

So as you can see it's been a month today since my last actual run.  That is pretty crappy, but I haven't been completely lazy in that time.  Football has kept me pretty busy, despite it being completely disorganized I've been able to get a lot of running in when people have been around to get together for practice.  I've had sore legs pretty much the entire week.  Today they feel pretty good, mostly because I took yesterday off so I had a chance to recover a bit.  I probably would have at least gone and done some hills since it was nice out but I had a date believe it or not.  A girl I met last weekend I've been talking to a bit gave me a good excuse to be lazy.  We went to trivia at a bar near her house that she's been to a few times.  It started late and there were only 4 teams, all of which had at least 5 people against just the two of us.  It didn't go well for our team but we had a good time anyway.  I didn't run at all today either but I will have to start some things up tomorrow again.  I've got plans to meet up with some friends in Allston tomorrow night for a trip to the Sunset Grill which will be a good time.  I still need to work on posting more often, I get a bunch of views every day even if I am not posting so apparently I've got some people eagerly waiting for my next post and I keep disappointing them.

Total Chaos

So the good news is I didn't have to play quarterback today, the bad news was I don't think it mattered who was there.  This was our first game together as a team and half the team had never even played organized football before.  The other team however has been playing together for the last 5 years and were extremely organized.  This basically caused everything that could possibly go wrong to go wrong.  I don't really need to go into details but it was bad.  I will say I didn't see everyone playing cuz I had to play myself but from what I did see Sweetland probably had the best game out of everyone.  The upside is we got our first game out of the way and now we have a much better feel for what we need to work on, granted there is probably too much to work on but still we've got our starting point.  Another good thing was the other team was really cool they were having a lot of fun(easy to do when you're winning by as much as they were) but hung around and talked after the game and gave us some info of what to expect from the league in general and what they though we needed to work on most.

Backup

I haven't blogged all week, not exactly sure why but I've been kind of annoyed.  I have my first football game tomorrow morning which I am pretty excited about overall.  The only part I am not excited for is that our quarterback is in Florida so my life as a career backup QB forces me into playing.  My excitement for being the backup now is about what it was growing up.  I just have never had interest in playing quarterback but year after year growing up I was forced into it nice to see how things change.  Oh well.  Maybe it will be nicer on my groin not running receiver routes since I still have soreness, nothing that would affect running around but still it's there.  


Speaking of being a backup it's kinda strange that lately I've had two girls I know tell me if they hit 30 single and I am also single that I don't have a choice in either marrying/having kids.  The friend that said having kids I don't think mentioned marriage just kids.  Also which I'm not sure about is a girl I knew through a mutual friend a few years back got in touch with me this week and that she's approaching 30 and single has me worried given my recent trend.  

Either Way

This is about how I feel this morning.  I've been awake since 4:30 listening to some great music and it's been pretty nice.
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Aside from that my birthday was on Thursday.  29 years old, I suppose it went fairly well.  I'm not really a big birthday person for example on my 21st birthday instead of going out to a bar or doing something normal, I instead went to the movies with two girls I had a night class with.  Anyway now that facebook reminds everyone about my birthday the last two years I have actually gone out for my birthday(maybe it was 2 out of the last 3 I dunno).  Anyway the plans tonight are to head to Buddha's Tavern in Peabody that is owned by my friend Jeff and my friend Tony is hosting karaoke there.  Karaoke wouldn't be something I would have thought I'd choose to do but last time was pretty fun.  Granted I won't sing but still, Josh should be attending and he can sing pretty well, and my friend Karen also I think is going who surprised everyone last time with a very impressive singing voice.  So it's not the standard drunken awful singing, at least not the entire time.

So thats that, I still haven't done shit in terms of running.  Zero motivation and I don't know why.  Oh well.