Ho ho, hold the phone.

With just one week and one game left till the end of the first half of season and the beginning of Christmas break, this will likely serve as my last post of 2012 folks!  Anyways, settle in, this post is going to be a doozey—consider it my Christmas present to you. We’ll discuss recompense later.

If you remember, we last left off with our big win over Wasserburg, the team everyone predicted to win our league. Turns out after that win, I got player of the week, which was alright.  Rhein Mein was our next challenge, and while they don’t boast the offensive talents like Wasserburg, their trademark scrappiness and fast play always seems to disrupt their opponents and promote ugly basketball. Road wins against them are always crucial. Ugly doesn’t quite do justice to how poorly we began this game, unfortunately. Far too many turnovers, missed lay-ups and zero execution highlight our first half performance that ended with us tied at 33. 

The second half was considerably better for us, especially in terms of taking care of the ball and we won 79-70. I finished with 32 and 9 and was player of the week again—I think reinforcing the importance of a win at Rhein Mein. But my favorite part about this game, with the exception of the win, was Sidney surprising me and Bri by showing up! I haven't seen her since season opener so it was great getting to catch up in person! 

I had my second European concert experience following the Rhein Mein game and it was every bit as amazing…basically. I don’t know if any concert will beat my back stage experience with Mr. Costner’s band last year in Berlin. Florence and the Machine was the band this time and Century Hall in Frankfurt was the venue. I went with one of my teammates whose girlfriend orchestrated the whole thing as a Christmas present for her. We had one of our trainers drive out an extra car with us so we could take it after the game. Fortunately our game was only 15 minutes away from the venue so we had plenty of time. Our tickets were for the standing area in front near the stage and it was perfect! Florence was incredible—if you don’t know her, seriously, get to know her, her voice is heavenly. Don’t be put-off or intimidated by the whole “and the machine” thing. Want to know my favorite part? Sure you do. Now, I am just gonna put this out there but here it is: the harp. The harp is sexy, I tell you what. Music would be strikingly better with more harps and Florence understood this and just had a crap load of harp mixing around on stage and I dug it. I could be wrong, but I am pretty certain harps are super easy to learn and cheap as chips, so we should all probably just go out and buy one and get this harp movement rolling. Good talk.

This weekend there were no league games and instead we had our Pokal games to play. We faced Opladen, a second division team about 4 hours away. We won 77-55 but this game sincerely felt like a loss. I know the final score suggests we won, but I assure you we lost in everything else in that game. We sucked. Granted, the team we played wasn’t good but for most of the game we were just as talentless. I was absolutely no exception—I finished with 8 points and the strong desire to throw-up. With that win we advance to the elite 8 for Pokal. We face Oberhausen next on January 5^th.

The snow has really started to come on strong the last week or so making the Christmas markets even more picturesque, and waaaay less tempting to attend. Still, as painfully cold as they have become, we repeatedly go and pretend to not freeze. We went to Wolfsburg last week which turned out to be real magical for me since I got some one on one time with my boys—Kobe and Dirk. Seeing their faces blown up 100 sizes too big on a wall really warmed my soul.

Our final game before break is at home against Marburg on Saturday. We beat them in our final preseason game on the road at the buzzer, but it’s safe to say that just as we have improved since then, they have too, so I expect a good game. Our Christmas party will follow the game and two days later I will be on a plane to LA. After booking our flights home, our management casually informed us that we might have some trouble returning to Germany—Merry Christmas! Ho ho, hold the phone. Evidently, the paperwork that they were supposed to do for our workers visas, allowing us to stay out here for more than 90 days at a time, well, they hadn’t done it. Wednesday morning we attempted to amend this by doing said paperwork only to find out that it takes weeks to get the documents back and traveling without them would guarantee problems at the border upon our return. Neat.

We made a Christmas card as a team this season and while I am not going to actually send it to any of you, I am going to post it below and we can just pretend that is the same thing. I hope you enjoy it and I truly hope everyone has a blessed holiday with friends and family. Rejoice in our Lord and Savior’s birth, the true meaning of CHRISTmas! God bless!

I'm no chemist.

Chemistry, it’s a fickle thing, but man oh man, is it a delight when you attain it. When you think about it, team chemistry is the ultimate gamble; the odds of merging 10 or more random people together, asking them to play varied, yet specific roles all for the benefit of the group—well, it’s a tall order. Piggy-back that with the pressures and emotions of competition and…well, you got yourself one fickle pickle. Overseas pro-hoops is particularly precarious. Career longevity is almost solely contingent on production which creates an obvious degree of narcissism. But what trounces an athlete’s ardent self-importance, you ask? Really awesome team chemistry. It just so happens we have just that in Wolfenbuttel.

Coming off of the Freiburg win, we were feeling pretty good. Everyone was on the same page and things were really starting to fall into place. Our chemistry off the court was finally translating on the court and we were starting to put 40 mins of basketball together. We faced Osnabruck at home next, a team we were tied with in the standings, a team we expected to challenge us, and thus, an opportunity for us to rise. By half we were up nearly 30 and we continued to dismantle the panthers until the final score read 97-49. Talk about rising, we were flying high after that game. The Osnabruck win was a perfect illustration of our team, our chemistry, our balance, and our capability. Everyone scored, many in double digits (I had 14), and no one played more than 22 minutes. Chemistry.

Wasserburg was our next challenge, our next opportunity and this would certainly prove to be a bigger one in both regards. Wasserburg was the heavy favorite this season to win the league, though honestly they are always a contender. But this year they seemed to have picked the best players from each of the teams last year and fashioned an offensive power-house. But see, the problem with those teams are, everyone wants to score all of the time. They lack that something, we’ll just call it chemistry. And I think I mentioned before that we had exactly that. We started out strong playing tough defensively and executed fairly well offensively. At half we were up 5. The second half was a different story, a story that I can summarize in two words: technical fouls. The refs called 4 in the second half, 3 almost simultaneously on Wasserburg and two on their head coach, who was consequently ejected. Their 3 T’s followed a shooting foul called for me, prompting a not so subtle disagreement from their coach. This led to me shooting 8 free throws in a row (6 for the technicals and then 2 for my original shooting foul). Despite standing at the free throw line alone for an uncomfortable amount of time, I made all 8 to extend our lead to double digits. Wasserburg put up a fight and made a couple runs, but we stayed together and battled back and pulled off a respectable 12-point win. I finished with 26 points and 6 boards and more pride in our team than I’ve ever had. Wasserburg arguably has the more talented team, but we have the chemistry. I’m no chemist, but it would seem sometimes that’s just as potent.

This week might have been just the greatest week EVER when you combine our win with our thanksgiving celebration. We were granted Tuesday night off and since cooking a thanksgiving feast is no small task, we figured dedicating an entire day to it was wise even if it meant celebrating two days early. So after morning workouts we all rushed home and spent hours slaving over the stove and oven and microwave; unless you were making deviled eggs, in which case you boiled eggs for 20 minutes, did some yolk mixing and BAM, your masterpiece is done leaving you time for a cozy cat nap. The genius that I am, I was sure to secure this job as I did last year. Anyways, when it was all said and done, we had all the trimmings of a buffet that would satisfy any thanksgiving meal aficionado and we ate all of it. I mean we really did our land-stealing ancestors proud. But more than just devouring food, we all gave thanks and stopped to appreciate how blessed we are to be together doing what we love. And because of that I count our thanksgiving a success. Annnd because my food coma didn't kill me. It was touch and go for a while. Kudos to us. 

Christmas is a mere month away, which means the Christmas markets are just a week away! And it means that Morty, Bri and I are starting our 25 days till Christmas movie countdown. I won’t lie, we have already started—we watched Home Alone the other night. There’s just something about Kevin McCallister’s clever shenanigans and silly antics that I find wildly amusing. Tis the season right?

Next week we are back on the road against Rhein Mein. Should be an exciting game, and as always if you are so inclined, you can watch it for free online! I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving with friends and family. Here’s to being thankful 365 days a year rather than just the one.  

Riddle me this.

Riddle me this: what is black and white and incomparably adorable all over? If you guessed Morty and I dressed as 2 of the 101 Dalmatians, you’d be both unremarkably perceptive and absolutely correct (points are also awarded if you said Shamu or Snoopy cause those two are just precious). We were a few days behind, but our team hosted a costume party the weekend following Halloween. Zipped up securely in our spotted onesies, a conservative application of face paint was all it took to transform Mort and I into loveable pups. Bri played the evil Cruella Deville to our Dalmatians, and she nailed it. Feel free to feign surprise here, but the 3 of us won for best costume as voted by our peers. But who’s kidding who (whom? ah, WHO cares)—put me and Mort in a onesie and we’ll pretty much win any competition…am I right? I’m right. The party came after our game against Halle, which much like my black and white face paint, began brilliantly but turned ugly once I started sweating ten minutes in.

Boy did this game start promising. I mean, if ever there was a first quarter so outrageously unreliable, so fallaciously indicative of the remaining three quarters, our first quarter against Halle would really top that list. Our team would really dominate a league of only first quarters, I tell you what. Someday. How it’s possible to play so drastically dissimilar from quarter to quarter—so good and then just bad, just really, really bad—I will never understand. Needless to say, despite not playing up to our potential the remainder of the game, we lost by just two.  I had 16 points, 5 assists and 5 steals, most of which came in the first half, unfortunately.

Freiburg was next and a win at Freiburg is always particularly rewarding because of the absurd distance it seems to be from everywhere else. I promise it doesn’t matter where you are in Germany, you are always 7 hours from Freiburg, at least. We took a charter bus with a kitchen built into the back, that’s how intense this journey is. I hate these alleged “luxury” buses. I’m onto them; they are just spacious enough to promote relaxation, but ultimately still too crammed to ever produce legitimate comfort. It’s trickery, and it’s shameful. It took us 8 hours to get there and I assure you no 8 hours have ever felt longer. We also traveled with a pack of our most devoted fans, which was a new experience. That, along with a couple other things, made this trip unique.

First of all, speaking of unique, the Freiburg coach was sporting a Mohawk. I kid you not. Now I am not one to judge, but it certainly merits mentioning. I can’t imagine playing Oregon or USC in college, for instance, and Paul Westhead or Michael Cooper rolling in the gym with a Mohawk. Although perhaps if they had more people woulda come to games. Kidding…sorta. Seriously though, are Mohawks even a thing anymore? Who does he think he is, Mr. T? Anyways, much like the Halle game, we started the Freiburg game well. Determined to not repeat our previous performance with disappointing 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th quarters, we were able to sustain our effort and focus and play 40 minutes of pretty good basketball. What is the result when we do that? A 13-point win. I had 16 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists. Our starting 5 player, Ieva, had 20 and 11 and was huuuuge for us inside and really made the difference. If our posts produce consistently, we’ll be pretty tough to beat.

Our luxury bus transformed into a party bus on the way back, thanks to the win and thanks to our enthusiastic fans that, apparently, travel with cases of beer and lots of food. No complaints here, although I could have gone without the bad karaoke, but what’s a party without pitchy Germans screaming, “We are the champions”! That’s no party at all. We got back to the Wolf at 5:30am completely delirious and ready to sleep for 3 days. Too bad we only get Sunday.

We’re back at home this weekend against Osnabruck. Sure would be nice to string together a few consecutive wins here and build some momentum going into Christmas break. Our next Pokal game is December 8^th against a Div 2 team in Opladen.

Vlasti's real birthday was last week also, and to commemorate it we made him a gigantic cake...out of beers. It was quite the spectacle. We surprised him by hiding in the gym with the lights out and his cake at center court. We also got him a new pair of chucks since he has worn the same ones every day for the last decade. 

Happy Veterans Day. God bless!!

Hocus pocus.

It’s easy sometimes to forget that playing basketball is my job. It’s easy to overlook that I am being paid to do exactly what I want to be doing—until it’s not. Until my check comes late, or not at all, or worse—until someone or something tries to take your job away. Suddenly you are desperately aware that your livelihood is contingent on playing this game, your survival is fundamentally linked to it. When you are fighting like hell to keep what you have, you become frighteningly cognizant that basketball is your job. This past month has been a frustrating and scary blend of the aforementioned, but fortunately, the dust has settled and things are just fine. I guess God was just reminding me of how fortunate I am and how grateful I should be. Well played, God.

A lot has happened this month: 5 games, Halloween traditions, a painful discovery regarding Dirk and the arrival of undoubtedly the greatest care package to ever travel across the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, I said it. Bold I know, but if you saw what’s inside this box, you'd get it. 

Okay so let’s recap the games, shall we? After season opener, we were back at home against Rotenburg who we had barely beaten a couple weeks prior. This time around, things didn’t go as well for us. I don’t know what it was, but we really struggled offensively, missing easy buckets and forcing bad passes. After being down by 15 we stormed back and I really thought we were going to pull off the comeback, but we simply ran out of time. We lost 68-71 and I had 36 points. Next up was Donau Ries on the road, and sadly, our offensive woes continued. Our defensive efforts kept this game closer and certainly winnable as well, but again, it was too little too late on our part and we lost 52-58. I played as poor as I have all season and finished with 12 points.

 

As a team we collectively agreed that if we were going to make a change and compete better in games we needed to compete tougher in practices. And so the following week we took out all our frustrations in practice and beat each other up every night. Our game against Bamberg that Saturday was a breeze compared to 5 on 5 in practice, and we won 77-60. I sat with fouls much of this game and finished with 13 points.

We had a short turn around following this game as the Pokal series (series where all the German teams play in a tournament separate from conference play) started for us the following Tuesday. We were on the road against a Div 3 team in Erfurt. We won 114-41 and I think nearly everyone on our team scored double digits. I had 26 points but missed an embarrassing amount of easy shots. Seriously, it was silly. Our next game was again on the road against Oberhausen, a team notorious for physical play, cheap shots and unbelievably biased refs at home. While we were never more than 15 points ahead, we were in control the entire game, even as they attempted a 4^th quarter surge. We took punches and asinine no-calls and kept battling to win 60-55 in another game that highlighted our defense. I again missed way too many easy baskets and finished with 13 points, but we got the win and that is the only stat that matters.

So we are 3-2 in conference and 1-0 in Pokal. We play at home this weekend against Halle (Holllllllllla, sorry it’s still funny to me) who despite having a pretty solid roster has struggled thus far.

Since Halloween is in the middle of the week, we opted to celebrate it this weekend with costumes and a party! But, that didn’t stop us Americans from getting into the spirit still before the weekend. Sunday night we carved our unsightly second-hand pumpkins that we resourcefully secured last minute while watching my favorite, Hocus Pocus. We aren’t the most talented carvers, but we did our best and no one lost any phalanges, so I’d say it was a success.

I have bad news people: Dirk is officially off the market. So all my years of pining and planning our pretend life together comes to a sad and necessary end since he married another woman. I know we hadn't even met in real life yet, but I still had hope. I only recently found out about his wedding, but it turns out, in an odd and painfully ironic twist, they actually got married this summer…on July 20…my birthday. How special for them. That day will forever be marred for me—darkened by the loss of what probably never would have been between Dirk and I, but will now certainly never be. All hope is lost.

It’s a good thing my family sent me this care package when they did! If I got stranded on an island with just the contents of the box, I'd totally survive longer than if I was stranded without it, that's how good this box is. Thanks family :)

                                                                                   Happy Halloween!

That escalated quickly.

Finally, season has officially begun! Season opening weekend started bright and early Saturday morning, but unfortunately for us, we would only be spectators until Sunday. Our entire Saturday was spent watching the other teams play, watching people shoot in the 3pt contest, and then watching other teams play again. Thrilling. Our league rules dictate that every team stays and watches every game. It’s silly and a bit ridiculous to enforce this, but enforce it they do so stay and watch we do. The banquet was that night and just like last year the best part of it was the food. There is just so much and it’s buffet style so I get real liberal with my portion construction. Otherwise it is just a lot of German pish posh for a couple hours. The real disappointment for the evening was Vlasti being robbed of the coach of the year award from last season. He is way too dignified to care about any award, but everyone in that room knew he deserved it.

Saturday was a lot of watching and sitting around—mildly put, it was dull. However, in the middle of my nagging boredom was the first round of the 3pt competition, and of course you remember I was participating. One player from each team shoots and the top four move onto the semis. Standard rules apply: each shooter gets one minute, 5 shots from the 5 spots, but instead of shooting balls from a ball rack, you get two balls and two teammates, one to pass one to rebound. I held a tryout before selecting my passer and rebounder. It was rigorous, I won’t lie and ultimately I picked Mort and Bri. It wasn’t easy, but they proved up to the challenge of chasing down potential bricks and passing me the ball in my shooting pocket. Having lost last year in this competition I am regrettably aware of how important those two things are to winning. Each shooter shot at the same time as another but that was simply for time saving purposes—you didn’t have to beat that person to advance. I decided I would anyways. I made 17 and moved onto the semis. We wouldn’t shoot again until Sunday afternoon, and this time it was head to head. I got paired against a girl from Osnabruck who had played Saturday, so she was visibly hung-over from celebrating the previous night. 

Seriously. All the teams that play Saturday party together that night then stagger into the gym Sunday to watch the remaining games. We keeps it classy. Anyways, I thanked her after beating her 14-7—hope it was worth it. The final was a few hours later, just before our game. Mort asked me if I wanted to know throughout the shooting if I was winning or losing and by how much. I decided I didn’t want to know since that wouldn’t really change anything—regardless I needed to make shots—but I did want to know how much time I had as I moved to each spot. This created some comedy. As I got to the last spot, I had no clue how many I had made or if I was winning and as I made my last shot I stopped and just turned to my teammates, almost unsure of what to do and waiting for some sort of gesture or clue as to the result. It felt like 3 long, full seconds passed before they started cheering as they swarmed me. I guess I won.

Winning was nice, I won’t lie, but you know what makes winning way better? Prizes! And it turns out the 3pt champ got a prize! It was the best kind of prize there is too—a cash prize. I won 300$ for making 16 shots. They literally handed me an envelope with the cash inside. Sorry I’m not sorry. This money actually comes at an auspicious time since I recently got my speeding ticket from the famous Chemnitz road-trip. Allegedly, I was driving 160 in a 100 speed zone. First of all, no. That is flat out wrong. There is no way I was only going 160. As you can imagine I got a hefty fine, and my license is suspended for a month. That’s rich. I don’t want to hear any “oh my gosh” or “holy cow” nonsense. Must I remind you I was driving on the autobahn, not in some school zone—there is no speed limit, mostly. If you are gonna have a highway without limits, don’t be surprised when people are driving really fast. Needless to say, the prize money will come in handy.

 It had already been a long weekend but finally it was time for us to warm-up and play. Our game began shortly after the 3pt final around 4:30 on Sunday. We started off a little slow but once we shook the cobwebs off it was a pretty good game for us. At half we were only up 6, but the next time I looked at the scoreboard we were up 30. That escalated quickly. We played one of the two teams that moved up from Div2 last season to replace the two teams that moved down—one of which was Chemnitz. We played good defense and ran their butts off that second half and won 83-60. Everyone contributed which made the game really fun. I had 11 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists and couldn’t hit a single 3. How fitting.

Minus all the waiting around, Saturday was actually really fun. Sidney and Mary (teammates from Chemnitz) drove out with Raoul and Ralf (coach and trainer from Chemnitz) so I got to hang out and catch up with them which I loved. There were actually a lot of former Chemnitz players at season opening, some playing and some not. Judith is now with Freiberg, Tina is with Halle (HOLLLLLLA), Sam is with Rotenburg and I am with Wolf obviously. It was great to see everyone again doing well.

So I am backtracking here, but I am sure you can manage. Friday night after practice, a group of us drove to Braunschweig for dinner. We heard about this sushi place, this all you can eat sushi place and we were intrigued. No one ever needs to eat "all you can" but there is something about that label that entices us, isn't there? Ichiban was the name of the restaurant and boy oh boy did we enjoy this place. First of all, you order from an ipad. I hadn't even eaten yet and I was somehow satisfied. Here is how the place worked: you spend 20$ for all you can eat sushi as well as the hot food, like teriyaki chicken, noodles, fried rice etc. They had it all. We could order 20 items at a time but before you could get more you had to finish your first order. No problem. I am still disgusted when I recall how much we ate, how much I ate, but I didn't spend 20$ to fool around with no salad or a roll. That's not my style. I like to make those places second guess their profit margins when I eat, cause I absolutely leave on the winning end of that scale. 

We play at home this weekend against Rotenburg who picked up a new player since we last played them and it happens to be one of my teammates from last season, Sam. They lost their game at season opener in a close one to Freiberg. Evidently the link I posted for watching games didn't quite work so I will try to figure that out and update the link next time. Happy October friends!

I'll sleep when I'm dead.

I have slept nine hours in the last seventy-two, so please mind the poorly veiled urgency dripping from this post—but frankly, all I wanna do is shower and sleep for three days straight. Instead I am writing this. Guess I'll sleep when I'm dead. 

This week we played our final preseason games. Holy cow, I can’t believe that is true, but it is and now, one week from today, season will have officially started. Tuesday we faced another team from our league, Rotenburg. The game was at home, which is always nice, and we had an energetic little crowd that night. The game started really well for us and maybe that was the problem. After jumping out to a fifteen-point lead in the 1^st, it seemed like we took our feet off the gas for the rest of the game until the 4th and sorta lost our edge. It didn’t help that Bri, our PG, twisted her ankle in the second quarter. I was PG for the remainder of most the game. AS I am writing this I am suddenly seeing a distinct correlation. Anyways, we had sustained a ten-point lead going into the 4^th, despite not playing particularly well, but as the clock ticked away, so did our uncertain lead. With 4 minutes left, they took a one-point lead for about ten seconds, but wouldn’t regain it again. We won by six and I had thirty points.

Thursday was our next and final game and it was on the road at Marburg. Though a different team this year after losing their starting posts, Marburg is still good and they proved this. Again, we started the game fairly well, though we boasted only an eight-point lead. But instead of improving as the game progressed, we got worse. After three quarters we were down five and I had scored two points. Yikes. I had missed everything with the exception of two free throws. I was something like 0-6 from 3’s and 0-2 from inside, so it was hardly my day. Down nine with four minutes left in the 4^th quarter, things finally clicked. Finally. Before I knew it, there was less than a minute left and I had just tied the game with two free throws. Moments later we fouled their shooter and she gave them the lead with ten seconds left. We inbound the ball to Morty and we have the length of the court to go. She kicks it to me on the right wing at half court—eight seconds, seven seconds, six seconds—and all we need is a two to tie. I don’t like ties (incidentally, that’s why I quit soccer) so as I dribbled toward the three-point line, I faked the drive and pulled the three with two seconds on the clock. And boom goes the dynamite. We won by one and I finished with nineteen points. Perfect way to end preseason.

This weekend was our last free weekend before season starts, so I thought it was necessary to do something—go somewhere. Who do I know in Europe close enough to drive to that would love to have me visit them? No one. Okay fine, let’s rephrase: who would LET me visit them? The answer to this would be Kelly, my Dutch roommate from last season. I have always wanted to visit Amsterdam and I hadn’t seen Kelly since we said bye in Croatia so Holland it was.  Since both my roomies were nursing injuries, this would be a solo road trip and my first one at that over here. The trip took exactly five hours and turned out to be pretty simple. And as much as I don’t especially like driving for long periods of time, I gotta say it’s hard to not enjoy yourself driving through Europe. I left at 4am and got to Delft, where Kelly lives, at 9am. Maybe you are wondering why I left so early and the answer to this is two-fold: first, I couldn’t sleep and there is nothing worse than being desperate to sleep and knowing you won’t; second, I find I feel waaaay more comfortable driving unfamiliar territory when I can stop, turn around and/or reverse on the highway whenever I need to. That might sound ridiculous, but when you have to read signs in a language you hardly know, being able to reverse after passing your exit, or simply slow down to a crawl in order to properly comprehend the signs is ideal. And yes, I did this. We took a short train to Amsterdam and walked around the city all day; it seriously is unlike anything. The canals stream throughout the city and are truly breathtaking as are the buildings, which I realize in Europe, isn’t that uncommon. 

Amsterdam though has such a unique atmosphere, thanks in large part to the liberal and free-spirited culture fostered there from all the weed. It is everywhere and it is pungent. The coffee smoke shops are all over the place and they are all filled all of the time. But this city is more than just weed, sure. It’s got that whole weird, inappropriate and questionably legal purchasing of sex element too, if that’s your thing. Even worse than that—yes, I am actually suggesting there are worse things—within the “red light district” area you can also pay to watch live sex. I was warned about this show and, actually, encouraged to see one while I was there. Honestly, it was considered. I mean, you hear “live sex show” and you wonder what’s that all about, thinking maybe it’s a metaphor or an odd improv show. Then you get there and it’s not, it’s simply people having sex…live. The consideration was short lived and we decided our imaginations were enough for us. I know in the past I have adhered to a pretty impressive tradition of embracing cultural differences, even the ones of the naked variety, but paying to see that is outside my scope of comprehension or capacity. I could barely walk past the establishment without feeling like I needed a shower. How that became normal for the people there I will never know, but all this goes into what makes Amsterdam such a remarkable city. I watched Kelly play that night in her Dutch league game and then we went dancing with all her friends. We got home at 5am and I drove home to the Wolf at noon. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Season opener is next weekend and Marburg is hosting this year. Since we won the league last season, we play the last game on Sunday. My team picked me to shoot in the three point competition, which if you recall didn’t go too well last season so I am happy for a second shot. Below are the links to both my team website and the website for the league, as promised. To watch my games, you click the league link and then on the right hand side there will be a list of each of the games for the week there. Below each game there is another link that says "livestreaming"--click this and you should be good to go. If not, tinker with some things and figure it out. Ha. 

http://www.wildcats-baskets.de/

http://www.dbbl.de/cms/

Oh, by the way, I have a number now that you can reach me at via text if you so desire. It's 1 (805) 253-2987. It is just a texting app but I'd love to hear from you if you ever get a chance! Or, if you are as cool as this lady, you can just skype me when you wake up at NOON on a Sunday :) Whatever works.