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our juniors played a meaningless tournament in austin this weekend. i say meaningless because it doesn't serve to qualify them for anything, in fact it was the last tournament of the season. these gals are 14-15, just finished with school, and are looking forward to summer vacation and boys. more volleyball is the last thing on their minds. i wasn't there for friday play but apparently they stunk it up. that means saturday they play in a pretty sorry pool. i guess on the bright side they were going to be playing pretty well, just crushing the competition, and they did. it's like this one time the spice crew came up to norcal to play in a coed jacl tourney and we got placed in this lower division. we didn't belong in that division and other teams that knew us told the organizers as well. we had no choice but to beat the shit out of the competition, our point margin was something ridiculously high. speaking of, i was watching one of our 12's teams playing against a 12's team from somewhere like costa rica. they lost one game like 25-4 and i kid you not, one gal served for about 20 of those points. they had family and friends cheering like crazy, you would've thought this was a world cup soccer match. the kids must love all the support they got out there. one of our gals caught a serve in the grill, she did not love that and cried at the end of the game. oh yeah, saturday afternoon the team went to barton springs to cool off. it's this swimming pool that's fed by natural spring water. the water is very cold but stinky cuz there's algae growing in it and lotsa kids doing their business in there. saw a coupla nice belly flops and face plants off the diving board too. it's funny, as we watched a college kid hanging around two of our girls we were already getting worried. apparently when he found out how old our girls were he bolted. good for him.

i flew out of austin for montreal sunday afternoon. connecting in chicago, first there was a mechanical problem with our original plane. then when they couldn't get it fixed in time we had a gate change for a different plane. i feel bad for the gate personnel, they get screamed on by everybody but it's not their fault. if i could i'd stick up for them and put some of these angry fools in triangle chokes til they passed out. speaking of, last night i dreamt i was being chased around all night by some big dudes and finally i tried submitting one of them using an ankle lock. of course i don't know how to do that but i heard his ankle pop in my dream. ufc unleashed is making it's way into my subconscious.

i'm sure you've noticed that just as smells can bring back memories, so can music. in this particular case, oswald = debbie yang. why? that girl is cool and fine as hell. and we went to go see this local band somewhere in walnut creek a while back, they've got a little pearl jam sound going on. deb, you gonna marry this guy or what? if not i'm ready to move back.

beck concert in austin next week, should be kick ass. last time i saw him was in oakland i believe. radiohead is also on a very limited north america tour right now, not in support of a new radiohead album but some of thom yorke's solo stuff. they should be going back in the studio to record a new album in a few months tho.

last night i met up with my cousin to go running at memorial park. i'm two months older than him and live a few miles away, yet we rarely see each other. he and i are both only children, my mom and his dad are siblings. a year ago his father was diagnosed with cancer and they had to remove a mass from his brain as well as one of his kidneys. they didn't think he'd recover or live past a year. he's been undergoing chemotherapy and apparently his body has been responding to it extremely well. throughout all of this i've seen how his family has been supported by all of his brothers and sisters around the us. my cousin and i though, we won't have brothers and sisters around when we're ill in our later years. hopefully we can fill that void for each other when the time comes. i think he'd like to have a kid in the near future, preferably with a wife but possibly without. i'd be ok playing uncle hanky to my friends' kids until i can start a family of my own. i dunno, maybe that's why i volunteer at the spca and coach juniors.