Ultimate is back

It's been quite a while since I've laced up the cleats and taken to the ultimate field. But it's back, baby.

I didn't play much during law school, but before then it was a huge part of my life. I used to design my college class schedules around ultimate practices, and after college I made a habit of driving between Palo Alto and San Francisco twice a week for ultimate practice. Some of my favorite moments have taken place on an ultimate field.

The Anchorage summer ultimate league starts next week; they had an informal pickup game tonight. It was great to be back on the field again, trying to recall what it once felt like. I felt more than a step slow, but the instincts were still there. So, in addition to the softball stats, you can expect an ultimate recap throughout the summer. Lucky you!

Wedding and stuff

I'm back after a great weekend in the Bay Area. Had a good lunch at one of my favorite places (Primo Patio, a Caribbean joint), and went to a Giants game at PacBell/SBC/AT&T Park... that brought back a lot of memories from the old days living in the city. After some adventures in Noe Valley it was time to head to Petaluma for the big event, which was flawless. A terrific ceremony in a gorgeous old church, and a fabulous reception on top of a grassy Petaluma hill.

Then, after a visit with some Santa Rosa family, the weekend was already over. But the pictures remain, and they can be found here.

Softball, and miscellany

Another triumphant night for NinJustice, your friendly softball team. Here are my mostly-fabricated stats:

6 IP, 7 ER, 12 H, 1 BB, 0 K

Not nearly as good as last week, but my team scored 14 runs or so. Go team.

I have more thoughts about the Sonics and the draft lottery, but they'll have to wait. Nobody cares what I think about this, I'd bet, so I'm mostly talking to myself here.

I'm off tonight to the Bay Area for a fun wedding. Going to be a great time. Maybe I'll have some non-Alaska pictures to post next week.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone.

Sonics' ping pong future

I haven't written more than a couple words about the Sonics since the beginning of the season, but I'll break from that trend now, on the most important day this franchise has seen in many years. Today is the NBA Draft Lottery, and I think the Sonics could start getting some support for a new arena if they land one of the top two spots. Even with so many jaded Sonics fans out there right now, myself included, I think we would have to start thinking seriously about saving the team if we had the prospect of watching Greg Oden or Kevin Durant for the next 15 years.

They have a little more than 18% chance of getting one of the top two picks. Not likely. But, if this team is going to stay in Seattle, it needs some luck. I'll take those odds.

Space filler

I don't have much to say... just wanted to post again so the top spot on the blog is not occupied by pictures of horrible facial hair. So... what's new with you?

Oh, here's something. We're playing softball. Many of you know that I usually abhor softball -- it takes field space away from ultimate, and I always get hurt fielding grounders. But I'm playing again with a clerk team, and we had our first game on Thursday. I'm the pitcher, which is great because I don't have to do any particularly difficult fielding. Just have to throw the ball straight. Our team crushed... it was a 12-0 victory. A shutout! Our team is pretty good, actually.

So instead of weekly bowling scores like you got last year, you can now expect a weekly pitching line. (And because we don't keep stats, I'll mostly be making it up.)

Thursday's line: 6 IP, 1-3 H (depending on scoring decisions), 1 BB, 2 K, 0 ER.

Death of a Beard

The beard is gone. I'm back to the clean-shaven look, and I'm happy about it: I'm no longer confused about whether I should shampoo my face or not.

But what fun is there in growing a beard if you can't experiment with other (creepy) looks you can create with (creepy) facial hair? Therefore I present this photo essay: The Death of a Beard (In Three Phases).

First, the full chops.



This one had the advantage of being mostly beard, so sometimes people didn't notice anything was amiss. But it had the disadvantage of being really weird.

Next is the half chops.



This one has the advantage of being rather unique. I don't know if I've seen anyone try this before -- just the lower patch of chops on the side. But It has the disadvantage of being even more weird than the last one. I kept this look for about a week, and I must say, if there's any place in the country where you'd want to experiment with crazy facial hair, Alaska is it. No one ever gave me a second look. All forms of facial hair are forgiven here.

Next is the classic mustache.



This is a polarizing look. Some people think it's cool, in a retro kind of way. Others run screaming. So let's call the polarization effect an advantage. Otherwise... I got nothing. The disadvantage is that it's possibly the creepiest thing a person can ever do. Don't get me wrong... some people can rock the mustache and make it respectable: Burt Reynolds, Rollie Fingers, Joe Namath, this guy, my uncle Rob in the '80s, and so on. But not me. I look awful. And what's worse, I have the tendency to look like this... and in that case I think there's a law that requires me to go around and introduce myself to all my neighbors so they can warn their kids about me. That's not cool. So the 'stache only lasted one day.

And now I'm back to how you probably remember me: looking like a 14-year-old. So that's over. I'm sure you'll sleep better tonight.

Zoo stories

It's funny how, in a place with so much natural wildlife, the zoo makes so much news. (It's weird that we have a zoo in the first place, what with moose, eagles, foxes, porcupines, bears, reindeer and other creatures wandering through our backyards. They actually have a moose in the zoo, which is simply comical. And they have ravens and crows, which just makes no sense. I'll give them credit for having some cool stuff like a polar bear, a tiger, and snow leopards, though.)

Anyway, the Alaska Zoo is in the news for two reasons this week. First is because of the sad, sad, lonely, depressed elephant Maggie. She's cold, and she doesn't like it here. So she sat down, and she wouldn't stand up. Firefighters were called in to lift her up. Folks want to move her somewhere warmer where she'll be happier.

Next is the sad, sad, lonely depressed camel Tula. Her camel friends keep dying. Poor Tula.

UPDATE: Maggie sat down again!

Busy weekend

This weekend was jam-packed. Lots of fun stuff.

It started on Friday with a Colin Hay concert. Hay is the former lead singer of Men at Work, and now he's a strummy-strummy kind of solo act. His career has been rejuvenated lately thanks to appearances on "Scrubs" and the "Garden State" soundtrack. We were front-row-center for this fun little concert. He spends a lot of time between songs just chatting... philosophizing about whatever is on his mind. He's quite funny. And still a very good musician. Check him out if he comes to your city.

The next day was the Tour de Beer, a bar crawl on bikes around Anchorage. Started at noon, finished around 7:30, and covered probably 20 miles and visited three bars. Anchorage has a ton of great trails, many of which I hadn't seen before. I was riding a tandem bike because one of my co-clerks has bad knees and can't pedal, and that was new. Tandems are fun -- it's tough to start and to turn, but you can actually move pretty fast once you get going.

Once the Tour ended, it was off to a barbecue to celebrate those of us with May birthdays. It included some beer pong, so it felt like college again. Unfortunately it was a little too much college, as the games went until the wee hours of the morning. And that became a problem because...

... I had to be up at 8:00 the next morning to drive two hours to Seward and jump on a whale watching cruise. If I could give visitors some advice about these cruises, it would be this: don't stay up until the wee hours the night before playing beer pong. (I'm looking at you, Mom.) I found out that the last thing you want to do after a night like that is to get on a boat. Absolute misery ensued.

My stomach yelled at me the entire time. I was pounding ginger ale and trying not to move too much. I considered throwing some loud children overboard. I mapped out an emergency escape path in case I needed to boot. Luckily we were on the calm waters of Resurrection Bay most of the time, and we saw otters, eagles, sea lions, sheep, a black bear, and orcas. No whales. And I made it through without incident. But, whoa, that wasn't the best idea I've ever had. I'll have some pics up in a couple days.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day, Mom, Grandma, La Verne, and all the other mothers out there!

Bear vs. moose

Uh, bear wins. YouTube clip? Okay: parts one, two, and three. This is why it's fine to have a moose in your driveway, but... wow, no bears, please.

Denali

You might have already skimmed through the pictures from the Denali flightseeing trip, but I thought I'd give it some context. Elise was here for my birthday, and we went to Talkeetna and grabbed a flight from Talkeetna Air Taxi. They have two types of clientele: tourists and climbers. There are plenty of tourists throughout the winter and summer, and even though it was still April, climbers had already started to arrive.

Our trip took us from Talkeetna straight up a glacier, and eventually we landed on another glacier between Mt. Hunter and Mt. Foraker.



This place was the basecamp for Denali climbs, and they were just starting to set up camp for the season. One person lives there the whole season and runs camp... a unique existence, to say the least. It must be amazing to live on the mountain and meet all the 1200 different folks who attempt Denali climbs every year.

We took off again, and it was just an unending show of glaciers and peaks. It's hard to grasp just how big the whole place is when everything is dwarfed by the 20,000-foot behemoth, Denali. Unforatunately Denali itself was shrouded by cloud cover this day, so we couldn't get a clear shot of the peak.

But the rest of the trip did not disappoint, and I recommend it to anyone who makes it up here. Photos just don't convey what it's like to swoop and soar over this land.



On the way back to Talkeetna, I saw a bear! They're just now coming out of hibernation. It was too small to photograph from the plane, but there it was, just moseying along. Maybe there will be more bear-sightings this summer.

Uninvited moose

A moose came to our apartment for dinner tonight. We found it sitting on the grass outside, and a little later it stood up -- and then it just stood there for about a half hour. Then it sat back down again, this time right at the bottom of our stairs. We were moosed in!

But we did have our fun:



There you go, Wally... there's the hat. More pics can be found here.

Also... there's no good way to bring this up, so I might as well mention it while we're discussing a cute moose. My beard has taken a considerable turn for the horrible. I've decided that I'm done with the beard... it has run its course and I'm ready to shave it off. But why not have a little fun with it? So, for now, I've shaved just the chin. I feel like Goose Gossage. You can kind of see it in the picture above, but it's probably best that you don't get a good view. It ain't pretty. However, I'm fortunate that Alaska is a land tolerant of all facial hair. People don't bat an eye when I walk by, even though my face is disgusting. For the brave, here's another look at it.

31

years old.

New pics

Lots of new photos on the Flickr page, including a flightseeing trip to Denali. Descriptions and accounts still to come...