Knee deep in the water somewhere...

Last game, last road trip—last ditch effort to end season on a positive note. Unfortunately, things did not go quite as planned and we left Rotenburg with a loss. It was poorly played, poorly coached and poorly refereed, so I’d rather not discuss the particulars. This was not the season I was hoping for in a lot of ways but I am still disappointed it’s over. Hopefully there is more basketball to be played in my future. Season is over now, but in one week I begin my vacation... so I got that going for me… which is nice.

Okay people, tickets are bought, hostels are booked. Bags. Are. Packed. And let me tell you, that was not a simple job. Packing for a month long, 4 country trip is wildly complicated (especially when I have to fit it all in the one bag you see) and I have no doubt that during my trip I will kick myself for overlooking some essentials; however, one thing I did not neglect is sunscreen—figure I’ll be set for like a year with my sun protection needs, but you just can’t be too safe when it comes to those pesky UV rays. They’ll getcha. Seriously, if you saw me last summer you understand why I am mildly compulsive about this now. I got sunburned so badly I looked like an actual burn victim. Don’t laugh—that crap wasn’t funny. Thus, I intend to never get burned again. But anyways, back to my actual travel plans; let’s dive right in, shall we?

I leave Monday the 26^th for Munich where I meet up with Sid and together we leave Tuesday for Zagrab, Croatia. At this point it will just be Sidney and I—Kelly’s passport expires so she has to race home to Holland and take care of that before she can join us. We will spend like a week and a half exploring Croatia, top to bottom. Our stops are: Zagreb, Zadar, Plitvice Lakes, Split and Dubrovnik. If you really want to hate your lives, google images of those places, they are incredible. The last 3 cities feature beaches that are world renowned, evidently. In each city we have different things planned from kayaking and rafting, to hiking and site seeing (museums/parks, castles etc). From Dubrovnik, we plan to head south to Montenegro—there is a city there, Kotor, which we really want to visit. After a couple days there, we will go to Mostar, Bosnia and explore for a few days. Then we head back to Munich. 

At this point, I break from the group and take off solo to Spain to visit my high school friend Max. He is teaching in Madrid so naturally I convinced him he wanted me to visit. This trip is a lot less structured, probably because I am in charge of the planning instead of Sidney. So, all I really know is I am flying into Barcelona and at some point I will meet up with Max in Madrid (which is a 7 hour bus ride away) and hang out with him for a while till I come back to Germany. I will probably spend some time exploring Barcelona before I go see Max, but who knows. It’s been years since I have learned or used Spanish, but I have been brushing up on it lately. Pretty sure it won’t be any better than my German though, let’s be real. So yeah, that is the trip… just your basic 3-4 week vacation. Ha. Who am I kidding, between Bosnia and Spain I am going to get lost and end up a gypsy in some remote village somewhere learning some useless trade to earn money to support myself. But don’t worry, I’ll be sure to blog about it. :) 

BUT first, before any of this, my friend Nick is visiting this week. He gets here Thursday and leaves Sunday. Gonna show him all Chemnitz has to offer (that will probs take 30 mins) and then hopefully do some day trips to Berlin and/or Dresden to fill the rest of the time. The men’s team plays Friday night so we will go to that as well. Short trip, but should be really fun.

Last night I had dinner with Raoul (my original coach from this season), our assistant coach, our trainer and 3 teammates to say good-bye. That was really nice—I hadn’t seen Raoul for months and who knows if I'll see him again. Ultimately he is the man that made this year possible by giving me the opportunity to play in Chemnitz, so I owe him a lot. He has an adorable daughter, Emma, that I also hadn’t seen for a while. She has the biggest cheeks ever! I'm gonna miss them. 

What a year aye? The past 9 months (almost) have been unbridled chaos, unpredicted thrills and an unadulterated transformation. It has been this incredible challenge and this unparalleled opportunity. It’s been so many things, but one thing it hasn’t been is a mistake.  Lots of people ask me if I regret quitting my UW job for this—kiddin me? Negatory. This experience has been everything I wanted and didn’t know I needed. And somehow, it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. How does time seem to both drag on and speed past us simultaneously? It’s crazy. And I can’t thank you guys enough for supporting me! But, it’s about that time. I have more than enjoyed blogging about this season’s ups and downs and sharing this whole experience with ya, but I am afraid all good things must come to an end, so this will serve as my final post (I guess till next season). Thanks for following along! Hopefully when I return to the US I will get to see all of you and thank you personally. Till then, just picture me knee deep in the water somewhere, grossly sheltered in sunscreen, happy as a clam. Ciao!

And then there was one.

With peaks come valleys, right? So I guess losing our last two games now after winning 4 is par for the course? Our game at Halle was pretty embarrassing for us defensively. Until the final 5 minutes or so, it was a 10 point game, give or take, so it was always within reach until they went on a run and closed the door on any comeback. We just could not guard their two best players—their post player had 37. Yup. One of their guards had 36. Uh huh. It wasn’t like their shots were uncontested or easy—their guard could not miss and made tough shots, and their post was just stronger and more athletic than ours. We should have played a zone, but what do I know. I was back at PG this game again because Mary hurt her knee in the previous game. I had 20 points, but I didn’t do a good job facilitating the ball and running the offense this game. 

Our Rhein Main game ended the same for us (with a loss) but was a different story in terms of our struggles. No one player killed us, rather we killed ourselves. Coach decided to start a different girl at PG this time, which I was pleased about. However, this is a girl that generally doesn’t play at all. I want to say that we started the game with like 5 consecutive turnovers, so I was eventually moved back to the PG spot for most of the game. After being down 10 after the first quarter, we outscored them the remaining quarters, but not by enough. MJ had 25 points and was really the only one to do anything well. I took 5 shots and had 6 points and 9 rebounds.

And then there was one. We have our last game of the season this Saturday at Rotenburg. That will be around an 8-9 hour drive including stops—the longest of the season, heck the longest of my life outside of driving home to Ventura from Seattle.  I am not particularly thrilled about this and I am incredibly hopeful that they drive us out the day before so we have time to recover, but my gut says they won’t.

My bed broke this week and I gotta tell ya, it was like the worst way to be woken up. Alright alright, I am SURE there are worse ways, but this ranks up there. Let me break it down for you. When it comes to sleeping, I am very much a woman of habit—I always sleep on the right side of the bed and I cuddle up next to the edge. This is exactly how I was sleeping when it happened. It was about 4:30am when the left side of the bed just collapsed, transforming my mattress into a slide. I woke up somewhere between the snapping of the wood and my own rolling toward the floor. I am only here for another week and a half and I didn’t feel like complaining, so now I am sleeping on my mattress… on my floor… in the middle of my room.  

Nick gets here in 10 days, he stays for 4 and then I take off for my trip. All of my travel plans are now booked and I am very excited about it. But, I will wait till next week to outline everything.

It's selection Sunday people! Get your brackets ready :)

Bring on the madness.

Well it appears we are peaking at the right time. Saturday we beat Oberhausen at home in what was arguably our most complete basketball game of the season. We started aggressive and efficient and sustained it close to 40 minutes. It helped that MJ scored 31 points, naturally, but our defense was the real game changer. I had 10 points, 9 boards and 4 assists. 

If you are keeping track (I assume none of you are, don’t worry) we have won 4 of our last 5 games, and have somehow put ourselves in position to make playoffs. I was informed before this wasn’t a possibility, but it looks like some other teams had some unexpected losses, so the window, though small, is indeed open. We need to win our final 3 games of course, but it is still quite possible.

Tomorrow we play at Halle (HOLLLLLLAAA). Our closest opponent, Halle is only 2 hours away, tops. They have experienced a few roster changes as well this season, but they seem to be the better for it as they continue to climb the standings. Won’t be an easy game, but if we can contain their post player, we should win.

So I know most of you haven’t seen me in a while, but maybe you will recall that I am not the tannest person in the world. Fine, fine—I am borderline albino—semantics. Well, I recently visited the skin doctor out here to have my moles checked and she recommended I have one removed and biopsied. It is a very simple procedure, she assured me. Now, maybe this is unfair, but I am incredibly skeptical of doctors over here—I think I think they don’t go to real medical school or something. Obviously I know they do…obviously. But still, this simple procedure sorta had me freaking out. One of my German speaking teammates chaperoned for me, translating and explaining what was happening. Oh, and holding my hand. Yeah, that’s right, I’m not embarrassed to admit that I needed it. I got 3 stitches for heaven sakes! The removal went swimmingly, and actually the worst part was hearing what the doctor was doing while it was happening; really could have done without that. I have never had stitches before so I didn’t realize how ugly they are, but they are.

I gave up sweets for Lent and it has proven to be especially challenging so far for two reasons: first, I live like 100 feet from the Haribo candy store. That stupid Haribo bear taunts me every time I walk by. It’s only a statue, but it knows what it’s doing; and second, my roommate has made it her mission to tempt me every chance she gets into caving and eating sweets by keeping candy everywhere in our house and constantly eating chocolate in my face... delicious chocolate. At this rate, I don’t foresee both the bear and my roommate surviving this Lenten period.

March is here! Bring on the madness. Trying to create our own madness over here, so keep us in your thoughts this weekend! 

Consistently inconsistent.

Oh inconsistency, you reliable son of a gun. How you envelop my life. This season, whenever I have convinced myself we had finally taken steps forward as a team, generated momentum and flirted with something resembling stability, somehow inconsistency reared it's ugly head and we'd take a giant leap backwards. After two big wins in a row two weeks ago, I was again cloaked in this blinding pretense of permanence, thinking perhaps this time our steps forward would only be followed by more forward movement. So naive. 

Following our Marburg and Donau Ries wins, we faced Saarlois at home—a team that typically wins our division, but a team that this season is dead last. Leave it to us to make this team look like all-stars. We beat them in a close game on the road earlier this season, but this was a completely different game. MJ and I each had 20 against them there, so this time they played a triangle and two. I think I mentioned last time that we run 3 plays, none of which are designed for any version of a zone; needless to say, we struggled offensively. MJ and I combined for 20 points this game (I hit one 3 and had 5 points), and unfortunately, our offensive woes became contagious and spread to our defensive efforts. We lost by 16.         

The crappy thing about this league is that we only play once a week, so we had an entire week of two practices a day to be reminded of how awful we were against Saarlois. In college, if you stunk it up on the court, generally speaking you had 24 hours to dwell on it before having to focus on the next opponent. Of course this went both ways—you only had 24 hours to appreciate a win, too. Still, I miss this aspect. Anyways, after a long week, Saturday we drove to Osnabruck for our next game. We played Sunday but since it was about 5 hours away, I think our management thought it might be beneficial to drive out the day before and have some time to recover from the ride. Despite our embarrassing start, this seemed to work. 

Osnabruck began the game on a 14-0 run. Yup. That happened in like 5 minutes and the starters were benched the remainder of the quarter, consequently. Somehow we were only down 8 by the end of that turrrrrible quarter. At half, we were up 8. That might be my favorite thing about this team—we don’t always come back and win, but we never quit. After giving up a 15-point lead of our own, we held on and won by 5. I hit five 3’s and finished with 21 points—the picture of inconsistency, this girl. At least I do that consistently.

We have 4 games remaining this season (our Saarlois loss all but dashed any possibility of making play-offs), two road games and two homes games. Considering our league, I like our last 4 games for us. I don’t like that our final game is a 7-hour road trip to Rotenburg, but I do like our chances of beating them again. However, just because we can't make play-offs doesn't mean we are playing without purpose. The way leagues/divisions work over here is that in order for teams to move up, teams have to also move down--more specifically, the bottom two teams. So while we cannot make play-offs, we want to ensure we stay in Division 1, therefore winning is critical. 

I haven’t had anyone visit me for some time, but next month that changes! Nick, a friend from college, will be visiting. Nick played on our practice squad my four years at UW, and we actually guarded each other nearly everyday in practice, so while we became friends off the court, we generally despised each other on it. We have quite a bit in common: we love Seinfeld, we agree IHOP is a totally acceptable place to eat…every meal, and we both have never seen a shot we didn’t like, or take for that matter. It will be nice to see a familiar face before I take off for my euro-trip after season. But I'll get into that later. 

Can't catch a break.

Raise your hand if you’ve won your last two games… anyone? Just me, huh? (I am waving my hand ferociously in the air right now.) Two weekends ago we beat Marburg at home, a good team that beat us by 20 at their gym, and this weekend we beat Donau-Ries, also a solid team, though we did beat them the first time around. I know most of you can’t watch my games because of the time difference or whole “better things to do” conundrum, but one of our friends/fans from out here made a little highlight of my Marburg game (I finally played decent again), so I have attached the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM4BqXpkvhE

Both the games were tough games in which we had to overcome deficits, which made the wins even more satisfying. We play at home against Saarlouis this weekend who we beat last time and have to beat this time again since they are sitting in last place.

Lately, I just can’t catch a break. It all started like a week ago or so when I jammed my finger in our game, the same finger I broke in college. X-Ray showed it wasn’t broken, so just a bad jam, but still, frustrating. But a jammed finger isn’t so terrible by itself. Unfortunately, my pesky troubles would continue to mount. Monday morning I was in a car accident. After staying at our friends house for their super bowl party (the game started 12:30am our time) he gave us a ride home that morning. Simply a case of wrong place-wrong time because this truck cut us off from the opposite direction and we slammed into it. It’s amazing how a moment so ephemeral can seem so huge, so altering. Nothing had really changed, of course, but I felt so impacted in the moments after the accident. That's when I realized the airbag deployed. Naturally, I was in the front seat--why must I be so good at calling shot-gun! I have never been in an accident where the air bags diffused, so I didn’t know that being struck by the bag would in fact be the most disturbing part. First of all, it sounds like a shotgun going off in your head—I swear I was temporarily deaf and then really confused because I was certain I left my gun at home. I’d like to tell you that the sound is the worst part, but I’d be lying. Can’t they toss a pillow out 

of the dashboard, or one of those tempur-pedic mattresses that absorb everything so comfortably without waking a soul? No, instead they hurdle what I can only assume is a 200-pound bag of sand. Fortunately for me, I was blessed with fantastic reflexes (and I anticipated the accident happening) so I was able to brace myself. Unfortunately I did this bracing with my hands, so they caught the bag of sand and all it’s power. Aside from achy wrists and some sausage fingers, I am fine and so were the other two in the car. The car however was totaled. The entire front was destroyed—I couldn’t even get out of the car from my side. The truck we hit had the tiniest of dents. We were truly outmatched, and incredibly lucky. Bet you think that was the worst thing to happen to me this week. Wrong. This morning I stubbed my toe against the corner of a wall! I know right? You thought the car accident was bad, I could lose a toenail! Just keeps getting worse. Seriously though, it’s all bruised and I can barely walk. I can't catch a break.

I was informed the other day that I have not spent much time discussing my team in the blog—the players, our style and team dynamic, what place we are in etc. Well, now I’m gonna, but ONLY cause I have nothing else to write about and not because I am some patsy. I do recall mentioning a few things about my team a while back, but since our roster and coach has changed since then, it seems valid that I revisit this. Let’s talk about the players first. Including  me, there are 3 Americans—Cherise and MJ are the other two. MJ is our small forward, our leading scorer and our best player. She went to Oakland and is my age. She played on this team last year. She is averaging 18ppg.  
Cherise was brought in to replace Sidney as our back-up PG. She has been a valuable addition for us. We have one 5 player, our 6-5 Serbian. Unfortunately she has been nursing some ailments since she got here, so she can’t play extended minutes generally, which means typically we play undersized. Undersized is really the wrong word. We have size, they just prefer to play on the wings and shoot or penetrate. That’s Euro-hoops for ya. We have a lot of really capable players, all of whom can produce for us any given game. With our former coach and roster, we looked to run and fast break a lot. Now, we are very much a half-court team: we rarely get transition buckets and almost always run our set plays… our 3 set plays. That’s right, we just have the 3, but we make them work. We generally score one of two ways: MJ driving and getting a lay-up, or someone cutting and getting a shot off a pass. Every so often one of us will hit a 3, but that is less frequent. The last 2 games I haven’t started at PG, which has been nice. Up till now I have not been an offensive force really, but I am 3^rd in our league in assists per game. We have 6 games left, 6 very winnable games. Our only chance at making play-offs requires that we win all of them. Here we go.

What They Don't Tell You

I know what you must be thinking: haven’t seen a blog from Sami in a while, she must be incredibly busy living her amazing life and doing some super cool things. You would be very shrewd for making such an observation. You would also be very wrong. My life has lacked a certain element of excitement lately; instead it has been a little… what’s the word, what’s the word, oh right—boring. Don’t get me wrong, my life is still probably exponentially more thrilling than yours, but you will have to forgive me for having higher expectations than that (I make fun of you only to feel better about myself).  And I am not really a fan of writing just for the sake of writing. However, some of you have proven to be quite pesky as of late, and oddly enough, your annoying persistence for an update cultivated a desire to write, if only to shut you up. I spoil you, I know.

Since there are no Paris trips to recount or rewarding games to narrate, I will not be writing about my humdrum life of late; instead, this will be an insightful editorial about this enchanting and isolated profession I have chosen as a European hooper (as you’ll see, this is not just a job, it’s a lifestyle). I know I make it seem pretty glamorous, but living overseas definitely has two sides. I interviewed myself—don’t worry I asked the tough questions—hopefully to establish a clearer image of what the past 6 months have been like, and perhaps, with a little bit of luck, what the next 4-5 years will continue to resemble. So here it is, the untold story of life abroad.

Of course there is the obvious: Europe (and any country I live in here) is not my home—I am not a native. This has countless lingering implications, but only one has been especially impactful. Sure, not everyone speaks English, you generally don’t know where you are or how to get wherever it is you are trying to go (the only street name I know is the one I live on), and yes, sometimes you have to just be okay with not knowing what you’ve ordered; but none of these things surprise or trouble me. What has frustrated me is the underlying paradox—the subtext of these conditions—that the incredible independence both craved and realized the moment you pack up your life and move to whatever country, is almost instantly crippled by the inescapable dependency innately built into living overseas. Grocery shopping, getting to and from practice, mailing a package, going to the bank—suddenly you are 8 years old and can’t even walk across the street without someone holding your hand. I hate it of course, but I can ‘t deny that I needed the guidance. 

Naturally this doesn’t last forever, depending on the size of the city and where you live in it, it’s just a matter of time before you know how to get around on your own. Still, every new city is met with this reliance period, rather than a honeymoon phase. It’s almost comical and it’s certainly ironic how hastily this changes with time, leaving you habitually alone, missing the dependency you were so anxious to ditch. As cool as I thought I was, a couple weeks of just me and needing an escort to get me around suddenly isn’t looking so bad, ya know? This brings me to my next subject—time.

I practice 2x a day totaling around 4 hours. I lift 3x a week for an hour. Once a week I have an hour German lesson. Once a week I help coach 10 year olds (and by help, I mean I stand on the side and cheer cause they don’t speak English). Generally speaking, this means 18-19 hours of every day for me is wiiiiiiiiiiide open. Naturally I sleep and eat like a normal person, but everyday there is still about 6 hours of time unaccounted for between practices, time I need to fill. Sounds great doesn’t it? Indeed this would be fantastic if there were things to do and people to do them with. But I am in an old city in Germany, so this actually becomes a bit arduous creating things to do each day. I read and watch movies. I play my guitar. I nap more than any person my age should nap. When Sam and Sid were here, I would follow them to the mall and watch them shop, but it’s rather cold out now and I hate trying on clothes.  I check my email and Facebook 30 times a day—seriously, it’s pathetic, I know, but I justify this with the significant time difference and feel mildly better about myself. Mildly. By the 30^th “check”, you start to lose respect for yourself no matter the justifications. Speaking of the time difference and the internet, we can now move to the next query of my days—communication.

People forget sometimes that the Internet is my only legitimate way of communicating with anyone that I can’t talk to in person. Maybe you can imagine how this might affect my relationships, both the firmly established ones as well as the potential for creating new ones. Don’t get me started on dating; I can go ahead and put that on the back burner for a while. Who wants to date the girl that can’t tell you where she will be in 5 months. So, my relationships develop into a series of choppy, interrupted Skype sessions where at least one of us is always just getting up or just going to bed, or an ongoing stream of emailing. Ah email, text messaging’s inept cousin. Nothing is worse than an unanswered email, and the insecurities it harbors. And while lack of communication certainly curtails my relationships, it still isn’t the toughest restriction or the most disheartening.

I miss everything…literally. I am never around. I miss birthdays, weddings, funerals, holidays, sporting events and parties, baby showers, graduations, reunions, alum games (I know, I made one) watching friends coach games, watching friends play games, engagements, break-ups, and most other relevant life milestones and celebrations. And every time I come back, it’s harder and harder to squeeze my way back into these people’s lives. Some people run out of room for me, some people run out of time, and others simply run out of things to say. It’s surprisingly easy, you realize, to forget and to be forgotten. Simply put, people grow accustomed to life without you, and who can blame them. I am gone for 8-9 months and home for 3-4, splitting time between Seattle and Ventura. It becomes increasingly difficult to not feel like a temporary inconvenience in their lives while I am home, demanding their time and attention until I pack up and disappear again. This might be my least favorite part about living overseas. These relationships are all I’ve got, and each time I leave and come back it feels like I’ve got a lot less. This leads me to my final item—how long will this last.

One injury could end it all. One tough season and you are old news. One error in judgment, one misstep and you can be fired, so who knows how long I will be playing. This is not a forgiving profession—like anything else it is a business where your performance is all that counts. No one cares if you are trying your best or working overtime, they simply care if you are producing. I love it, but it’s a little unsettling knowing some things you can’t control. I choose to ignore this and savor every day that I get to play basketball for a living, even if that day is my last.

 

This sort of reads like a downer, but I assure you that is not my intention. I am exactly where I want to be. I am not looking for a reminder of how fortunate I am, nor do I need one. I tell myself 10x a day. I just thought it might be interesting to underline the less sensationalized side of this lifestyle, the things that are maybe less obvious and more mundane, but boast sizeable relevance in my daily life. I guess I wanted to demonstrate there are both amazing rewards and very real sacrifices, ones that I am only just grasping. I’d still choose this over anything else everyday of the week and twice on Sunday. And God willing, I plan to for the next 260 Sundays. 

This is my nightmare.

As you know, we had a game in Freiburg before we went on break. I was both dreading this game and looking forward to it. I mentioned previously why I was excited about it, so now I’ll tell you why I wasn’t. Overseas travel, in my league at least, is not like college. We don’t fly everywhere, we don’t stay in hotels and we don’t eat catered meals. We bus everywhere and we eat the nearest fast food we can find. Additionally, we don’t stay in hotels because we leave the morning of our game and drive back directly after in order to save money. I’ll remind you that most of our opponents are around 6 hours away by bus. We stop to eat, we stop to pee, and we stop when the bus driver needs a break. These rides are painfully exhausting. We leave at 9am and get back at 6am the following morning most times. Well, Freiburg is one of our longer road games, so it was about a 7-hour trip there, all stops included. That isn’t even the real challenge, though. It’s not like we are driving 7 hours then jumping off the bus to site see—no no. We have to now play a game, which after being in a seated or balled up position for 7 hours, is not as easy as you might think. Anyways, the game started well for us and we were in control most the first half until the final couple of minutes. We went into half down 4 after leading by 10. The second half was inexplicably opposite. We turned the ball over a ridiculous amount of times and when we didn’t, we missed our shots. Defensively we were just as bad. They blew us out in the second half and we lost by 24. I had 3 turnovers compared to my 8 last time against this team, but we still lost. Our next game is our Cup game on Sunday. We play Wasserburg who is actually in our league and we play there. 

If losing wasn’t bad enough, directly after the game I was informed that I had been chosen for the random drug testing that they’d be administering in 5 minutes. How fortunate. Nothing cheers me up like peeing in a cup. I made it 4 years of college without once being drug tested, and my first year overseas I get picked. Of course in college, drug testing wasn’t as random as they'd like you to think. Still, I am the worst candidate for any testing that requires urinating in a cup, particularly after physical activity. First of all, I sweat an inordinate amount. Seriously, I sweat just thinking about working out. Furthermore, I drink next to nothing during games cause I hate when I can feel the water 

swooshing around in my belly. Very distracting. 

So right after a game, I am in no condition to be producing urine. Somehow, I didn't think they'd empathize. And so, I was introduced to my chaperone, the woman that would monitor me until I was finished giving them the sample they needed. Wherever I went, she followed; those are the rules. Remember that, there will be a quiz later.  I wasn’t familiar with this protocol, so it had me a little flustered at first—I find being followed and stared at can be disconcerting. After filling out some paper work, my lady handed me a cup and led me to the bathroom... and followed me inside. There really is no way to slyly pull down your pants and pee in front of someone watching you. After handing her the cup and washing up I hear my lady sort of sneer behind me. Evidently there is a minimum requirement—90ml—and I didn’t meet it. I bet you can’t guess how much I…made. 19ml. Yup. So now I have to sit, in my gross jersey, in this waiting room chugging sparkling water and sodas until I think I might explode. This is my nightmare. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. It soooooo did. 

It had been 2 hours now (that's right, 2 HOURS) when my coach, irritated by my inability to pee, was trying to expedite the process, suggested I shower while waiting. Normally they don’t like to allow this, but since I was taking so long they made an exception. Quiz time. Anyone remember that fun little rule I told you about earlier. Turns out, it applies to showers, too. I don’t even know how to properly describe to you this impossibly awkward “situation”, as I am referring to it. It’s this lady and me in a very empty, very open locker-room shower. There is zero room to hide. The only thing worse than her eyes glued to me is the silence. Surely nothing could be worse than this—and then I opened my mouth. “One of the perks of the job, huh?” Yeah, I really shoulda just enjoyed the silence. Fortunately, right after I showered I had to pee like 3 of those cups so we were able to leave quickly. Never. Again. 

Our new PG is here, finally. Not the girl it was originally supposed to be, though. Instead, an American that played for Ohio State (and when I say played, I don’t mean much). Still, Ohio State is very good, so I am thinking she can’t be bad. We begin practice again tomorrow night. It has really sucked coming up with workouts to do alone these past 10 days, so practice will be nice-- ya know, the way throwing up when you are sick can be nice. Sure, it's awful, but you can't deny you feel better after. 

Remember awhile back when the club took action shots of us, but the one they chose for me was very unactiony. Well, it seems they decided to amend that error in judgment and they selected a new picture. Ya know I was slightly embarrassed before with the original one they picked, but now… now I got nothing to worry about. I think as a gift, to thank them for this, I’ll get them a dictionary, maybe with some illustrations.

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe new years celebration. 2011 was pretty incredible, but I hope everyone’s 2012 is even better.