Last night, we had another Mischief track workout at the Stanford Dish. Instead of running the Dish loop, however, we ran up one particular hill.

Up. And up. And up. And up. And up. And up.

The workout was three sets of six sprints up the hill. The hill wasn't particularly short, nor was it unnecessarily long. But it was hard. After the first set, my legs were moosh. After the second set, I wanted to puke. Apparently, I'm not the only one who wanted to puke: several others admitted to the desire, though no one actually vomitted.

Kris commented to me, "Don't overdo it. You get injured when you overdo it." My response was something like, "I need to overdo it, I have a roster spot to hold onto!" Unfortunately, the thought of stopping was appealing, and I stopped.

After about 10 minutes, my heartrate had dropped to normal, I had rested, walked around, and relaxed, and was completely regretting my decision to stop.

This morning, as I was half asleep, but rolling out of bed anyway for our morning workout at VS, Kris commented to me, "Consistency. As long as you're working out hard each day, you'll improve."

So, that's my new motivational word for the next few months. Consistency on my way back from injury.

I swear, the West Coast gets crap sometimes.

Take, for example, the new dollar coins, honoring presidents (fortunately, DEAD presidents so we won't have to see the village idiot on a coin for a long ass while).

Turns out, there are TWO of these coins out already: George Washington and John Adams (with Jefferson coming out in August). Not that I'd seen any before Kris handed me the 18 he received as change the day before.

And here I was stuck on the Susan B. Anthony coins.

Maybe this will inspire me to memorize all the presidents in order...

Nah.

Kris: "Looks like Goldilocks showered here last."

Me, thinking, uh, Heather spent the weekend at our house while we were in Boston, "Why? Are there blonde hairs in the drain?"

"It looks like my towel was just right."

Realizing I had used his towel because mine was in the bedroom, "Ah. Well, uh, maaaaaaybeeeeeee."

Growing up, my little brother used to clap in the house. He started when I was around ten years old, and he was six. He'd enter a room and clap clap clap.

Drove me nuts.

I told him to stop it. I told him to stop with the clapping already. I yelled at him. I did everything I could to get him to stop with the GD clapping, but he continued until he just grew out of it.

Around the same time he grew out of it, I grew into it. I randomly clap when I'm walking. When I don't have anything on my shoulders, and my arms are swinging free, I'll clap and make other percussion noises with my hands.

Last night, after Kris and I crawled into bed, but before either of were really settled down to go to sleep, I got back up and wandered to the bathroom. After doing my business, I returned and crawled back into bed.

"Do you think you might have Tourette's?"

"No."

"Wait a minute. You have every other disease known to man. Why not Tourette's?"

It was then I realized I had announced my return to the room with a single clap.

"Well, maybe."

Andy volunteered to watch the girls while we were in Boston. I though he was fairly insane when he offered to bring them over to his house for a slumber party.

Turns out, he was only partly insane. He let us know:

Sleep was a commodity in short supply Saturday night, although we had fun.

Blue and Annie ran around in circles in the back yard a bit, while I held
Bella and Shadow so they wouldn't bark. Annie seemed to be having fun, but
might have been a bit stressed about the whole thing. There was one tussle
at feeding time. Later, she spent a long time licking Blue's face (Blue
licked back--it was cute but weird), and then she tried to spend a while
licking my face, which was cute for a minute or two. Dogs will be dogs.

We had one group outing: to Whole Foods Sat evening. When we got there, we
had a vote and elected one person to go in and buy the goods while everyone
else waited in the truck. Luckily I was the only one that voted.

Annie, Bella, and Blue all wanted to sleep pressed up against me. Bella had
at least one spell of howling in the middle of the night. It's a little
hazy--there might have been two incidents. She finally settled down for good
around 4AM when she figured out how to get under the covers with just her
schnoz poking out.

Sunday, I couldn't come up with any plan to take everybody to the park that
I was happy with, so I decided to drop off Annie and Bella on the way around
10am. When I gathered everybody up in the truck, I had to search for Annie,
and realized she had found a hole in my doggie defenses: she was attempting
to consume a bag of mulch that was made from cocoa bean husks. They do smell
nice. Blue went at them a little bit, then gave up the day I got them. I
don't think she was at it long, but it was a little scary. There are no
warnings about dogs on the bag, but I really don't know whether it had any
properties of chocolate. I stopped back to check on her after the park trip
around 11am, and surprised Heather. Annie seemed fine, and I told Heather
what had happened. (I probably didn't surprise her as much as Crystal did
when she squirmed through the dog door to pick up the cones and white
board.)

Anyway, I think everybody had fun--including me--and I don't regret it a
bit.

Practice was very productive. Lots of women this time--we went 4-women about
half the time. Once, the defense ran 4-women by accident, and since they
were playing zone, no one noticed until the turnover. We had a scrimage, and
two games. Dark won the scrimmage 5-4, light won the two games 7-6 and 5-4.