Super Happy Fun Time

Ellie Pics-better late than never

2011-03-22T13:50:00.002-05:00

Here are some favorites of the last 6 months of Ellie. Man how time has flown and how she has grown. Ellie is currently chatting up a storm, although it is still hard to decipher what she is saying at times. Loves to be outside, loves stairs, enjoys eating snow; overall just a little joy! Enjoy some pictures.

What can i say she is a cutie :)

One day i will post more again

2010-08-26T14:46:00.005-05:00

Kind of hard to post fun things when the internets has run away from home and you result to using your work for posting fun. As the last time i posted here are some great pictures of Ellie who turned 1 over the last week :p

Some favorite pics of Ellie

2010-01-13T10:01:00.003-06:00

I realize my blog has been quite dusty over the last 4.5 months so i figured i would post some of my favorite Ellie pictures for you all to enjoy.

So enjoi!

How come Frisbee peeps do not blog about Tron

2009-10-22T16:10:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiw2FbHBd14&feature=related#
I mean what more do i need to say.
(sorry i am un-technological when it comes to putting youtube videos on the blog)

Attitude and not even a week old

2009-08-23T14:03:00.004-05:00

This was shot 2 days ago and i post this because well it is kind of funny. If you look closely at her hand she is flicking off the camera. That is right-JD is looking on from above and giving all of us a little how you doing?

And because there are pictures pictures pictures, here are a couple more cute ones :)

Thank you again to all who have stopped by, sent a congratulations email, prayed for us, thought about us...you make this new family so happy and we are thankful to all of you.

Say hello Ellie

2009-08-20T20:54:00.004-05:00

World this is Ellie, Ellie this is the world.

Say hello to Eleanor "Ellie" Elizabeth Mooers. Born on August 18, 2009 at 11:55pm. Weight: 8 lbs. 9 oz. Length: 22in.

She is a little angel...when she is fed and gets her sleep. Both her and mom are doing just great after the natural labor-yeah the epidural did not work so much. There is so much to say, but I will save that when i am not as exhausted. here are some wonderful pictures for all to enjoi!

Awaiting the Baby

2009-08-08T09:12:00.003-05:00

The due date has come and gone and we are in the under 24 hour realm of inducing. At this time tomorrow unless nature decides to take over and push Katie into labor we will being the process of inducing labor.

These last 2 weeks have been the most exciting and on edge days i can remember. We have had a span of 6 days where labor seemed to be coming on with contractions becoming closer together, crampiness in the stomach area, backache, other items the lay-reader will probably not want to know; and each time we are stuck with false labor. One of the things that does not help is Katie has been contracting since week oh lets say 26. Some women will not contract until it is time for Labor. Not Katie. My little preggy pu has been staying positive with the contractions and hoping for real labor to come at any time.

But before we make the jump into parenthood i wanted to say a couple things: 1-Thank you all for your love and support over the last 9 months and really since we have known you. Because of our friends and family we are the people we are today and we are blessed. We are excited you are excited to see the little one and know little Ellie will be welcomed into the world by all of you with open arms.

2-When this time comes in your life when you will have a kid or if you know someone who going to have a kid and you are super excited...the parents will tell you when they have had the baby. When Katie and I were still working (she has been off for a week and i took last Friday and tomorrow off) we would get the question, "Have you had the baby yet?" This is sort of a funny question because we would be there, you would think if we had the baby we would not be there.
But when you get repeated phone calls and texts asking if the baby is here...trust me when i say it gets old. It is kind of like getting that question when you are in High School, "Where are you going to Collge?" or "What are you going/did you major in?" After a while the question gets a little tiresome.

So as i am about to venture onto the land of dreams, let me assure you, when the little one is here all of you will know. Emails will be sent, phone calls made, the mass networks are on call awaiting the launch codes to tell you the news. This may have sounded like whining, but take this as a thank you. thank you for the love and support during this time and let us say, when the baby is here you will all know :)

God bless and have a great day or night-depending on when you read this!

True Hunter

2009-07-15T07:00:00.005-05:00

Last night before we went to our 4th Child birth class we let our cats run around the front yard like we usually do (on their harnesses). Lately we have let them roam free with the leash trailing behind and if they go further than we like we get up and get them.

Well last night Tuna ran outside and was on the prowl. Katie calls me outside and Tuna is creeping towards our neighbors parked car. Sure enough he slides under the car and I run out there to get him away from the car. When i pull his leash he comes out from under the car with a bird in his mouth. That is right a live bird squawking and trying to get away.

Now Katie will seem to think i pulled Tuna away from the bird because i did not want to bird to die...but i pulled him away because i was afraid the bird may have had some sort of disease and i did not want Tuna to get anything bad from a bird. Looking back i should have let nature takes it course, for i am sure the bird would have been quite the delicacy.

Regardless i was shocked that this little house cat who we let out on a harness had it in him to catch the bird. Hats off to you Tuna.

(This is not Tuna, but same style cat and this is sort of what it looked like)

Would you have let Tuna or your cat eat the bird? The lingering question...
Also the bird lived.

21 gun salute

2009-07-09T10:09:00.002-05:00

We miss you JD.

Nursery Update

2009-07-07T15:46:00.009-05:00

So the Nursery is pretty much complete, all we are missing is any Wall Art we decide to hang. We have discussed placing the name Ellie above the crib, we have a couple small pictures to hang as well as the possibility of putting up a shelf over the diaper changing station.

We are at 35 weeks now and oh the weeks will come fast when little Eleanor is out in this world saying hello to all of you.

Since this is all about the Nursery and the baby-i leave you with these pictures of the Nursery:) enjoi

Books of 2009

2009-06-30T12:27:00.010-05:00

So i have never kept a running list of the books i had read in a year and was curious too see the variety and # of books i could read in a year without really pushing it. Well here is the list.

Swine Not
*The Grand Slam: The Story of Bobby Jones
*Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich
*Boom
*The Greatest Generation
*The Reader
Pillars of the Earth
Harrington On Hold'Em VOl 1
Under the Banner of Heaven
Fool
The Great Gatsby (on tape)
*The Kite Runner
What to Expect When your Expecting
I was Told There'd Be Cake
*Daddy Needs a Drink
*Memoirs of a Geisha
Choke
*The Grapes of Wrath
*Tao of Pooh (re-read)
*Dangerous Wonder: A Journey through Childlike Faith (re-read)
*Three-Martini Playdate
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer
Lord of the Flies (re-read)
Autobiography of Bud Grant

I stared the ones i would recommend to people. This year i have started by re-reading the Harry Potter series...because i thought it would be fun.

Better post next.

Knife Show

2009-06-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

Check this site out. Snowboarding and creativity all in one. I am blown away by the sweet visual of these videos. I am sure some of it is simple, but from some of the other articles i read on them it takes almost 200 hours to get some of these videos done. Super sweet!
http://knifeshowinc.com/#

One True Band That ROCKED

2009-06-02T14:29:00.001-05:00

DBR-look for them wherever GREAT music is sold.

What is on your feet?

2009-05-18T12:14:00.004-05:00

ASICS® is a brand of shoe that is wonderful to wear when running. For the longest time i had no idea what ASICS stood for but now i do. So i figured i would tell you all in case you were wondering:

"ASICS is an acronym form the Latin phrase, 'Anima Sana In Corpore Sano,' which translates simply to 'a sound mind is a sound body.'"

I just thought it was a bunch of words thrown together. Who would have thought it meant something. They feel great on the feet and you do not have to break the bank to get a pair :) But what about other shoe makers names?

This got me thinking if other shoe places meant something. Nike is apparently the goddess of victory in Ancient Greece who "became a symbol of victory over death."

Then we have Reebok-Reebok is the Afrikaans/Dutch spelling of rhebok, a type of African antelope or gazelle.

Adidas-Adidas was named after its founder, Adolf [Adi] [Das]sler. Or if you look it up they always say All Day I Dream About Sex...or sports...or sexy sports.

How about Converse- Well i just looked up the definition as it is a word and get this- it means "frequent intercourse".

So next time you lace up a pair of running shoes know that somewhere there is some kind of crazy meaning behind your shoes.

Boredom and Bloggin

2009-04-30T11:52:00.003-05:00

I think they go hand in hand. Maybe things that are associated with the letter B and blogging go together?
Boarding+Blogging=Happy face :)
Beer+Blogging=Happy Face :)
Babies+Bloggin=Happy Face :) mmmm there is a flaw in the system.
Disc+Blogging=Happy Face as well :) Bisc does not work, Brotherhood of Disc does work though :)

That is not what this post is about but i am oh so slow at work which makes me sad :( So i figured i would show off the one not amazing but will do picture of our NEWLY painted Nursery! Our wonderful Friend Heather who started her own painting business Tasteful Interior came and painted the nursery and it looks FABULOUS!

Thank you Heather :)

Once the room is complete with Furniture and all the other good things another picture will have to be taken, but this should work for now!

Yes your post was longer

2009-04-23T08:03:00.002-05:00

BUT i did come about some interesting information and was told that the government basically told the banks to allow these loans and that is why a bunch of people who probably should not have gotten housing got housing.

SO that made sense.

The whole generation thing...The only thing lacking in our generation is a respect for people. We take the small things we should not care about, blow them out of the water and make them into big deals. Likewise some of the things we should care about we do not give enough respect.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.

It is all relative as well.

I am like you, taking what is on the plate and rolling what i got.

Jimmy we should start a talk show where we just talk back and forth. I think we could go something where like Paris, Texas or Hoboken, Wisconsin.

Government Help on Housing

2009-04-22T15:51:00.005-05:00

So i know little about some things and when it comes to government i know very little. The bail out plan, our nations debt, all that stuff i claim I am no top of the road scholar. BUT here are some personal thoughts that have kind of gotten to me.

All of these companies and people are looking for the Government to bail them out of things they got themselves into. Foreclosures on homes for example. Now i believe Bush passed some law that allowed more people to get homes, what the ramifications were to people getting the house i am unsure-BUT here is my point.

If there were really so many people who could not afford a house why were they given the loan in the first place? If you are a Bank or Loan place and you see based upon the numbers that come through your desk that these people cannot afford the Loan, is there not some code of Ethics saying if they cannot afford it then they should not be allowed to get the loan? I realize Banks, Credit Card companies and Loan places make their money on people NOT making their payments, but does this strike anyone else as unethical?

2nd Point-Since we are in this situation why not lower the interest rate so people have a chance to get out of Debt? Right now some of the interest levels are there to compensate for what they are losing. But by raising the rates on an amount people could not already afford you will not get this money. No kids, money does not fall out of the sky, and the tooth fairy is only so rich. This money needs to come from somewhere. If the loan places lower their interest rate to a point where they are still making their fiendish profit but people are able to pay off this debt we might not be in such a "state of crisis".

There are a lot of people out there trying to make a buck, but it seems people will do anything and everything to make a buck. Seems kind of like a bad plan that is going to end in disaster. The last thing the Government should be doing is spending MORE money. i mean x gazillion in debt is enough. Lets try and take "the richest" nation in the world out of debt and somewhere else. If people want the Government to help with the foreclosures, maybe there can be something istated to the people who issued the loans to lower the rates.

Get a payment plan where you pay x amount and if you make that payment for so long solid, home paid. If you miss there will be a penalty, BUT at this point maybe a charge instituted, not before.

Makes you wonder what the Government is about? I do not understand the full realm of Government positions and how it all works, but you think there is something that can be done?

Rob-where did all this politic-government talk come from? Reading Cnn. Reading 2 excellent books by Tom Brokaw "The Greatest Generation" and "Boom"-both fantastic reads. I have a lot of respect for this nation and especially for those you have placed their lives on the line for all of us. The men who fought in WWII and what this nation went through shows the kind of nation we can be: Prosperous, Strong, Compassionate, Caring, Aggressive.

There was a time when the nation was in need and the people came to the rescue. What happened to that flair? When did the government stop listening to the people and vice-versa?

All of these are just questions, take them as you will. Not looking for any answers, but love to hear the comments.

now that this rambling is over and done with, time to go outside, throw a frisbee and enjoy the wonderful day we have :) Go out and get dirty, maybe do something nice for somebody, who knows.

As one of my favorite songs EVER says, time to "Open up your heart and let the sunshine in :)
cool image huh

Roofing

2009-04-21T13:01:00.003-05:00

Yesterday i helped my brother in law put up new shingles on his soon to be acquired roof. It was awesome. I really do enjoy manual labor. Maybe because there are immediate results, you are outside and your body gets a work out. Who knows...

But it was enjoyable.

Getting ready to seal the deck this week...and maybe clean up the yard a bit...who knows. Welcome Minnesota Spring and Summer, it is going to be a good one ! :p

Say Hello to our Little girl

2009-03-24T14:51:00.002-05:00

For those who i have not told yet i was waiting till this moment for you all to know the great news: Katie and I are having a BABY!

She is 20 weeks along and battling all the pregnancy woes that come with it: queasiness, glass cases of emotion, etc... But she is doing great! She is the most adorable pregnant woman ever. The belly is getting bigger and our little one is safe.

We went to get the ultrasound today and found out we are having a girl! Attached are some choice pictures of her for you to enjoy!

SO EXCITED! Since it is a girl i have the right to a shotgun for that first date which will come right?

Welcome to the THUNDER DOME

2009-03-18T08:38:00.001-05:00

Coen brothers Fail

2009-03-18T08:24:00.004-05:00

Last night Katie and I watched Burn After Reading...I do not think i will watch another Coen brothers movie for a long time.

What a waste of film. At the end (stop if you still want to see the movie) of the movie where they are sitting in the office they talk about what they learned and what they know...NOTHING. It was just a waste of time. If you want to see Brad Pitt act like a moron or get what is coming to him watch Meet Joe Black when he gets rocked by the car or 12 monkeys when he is a nut bag. John Malkovich plays the role he was just born to play, quiet yet angry and yellie. I could go into the whole cast but the movie was just horrible. I apologized to Katie after watching it saying it was a complete waste of time. Brad Pitts face in the picture shows how you will feel after you watch this movie. Like you got punched in the face and you don't know why.

No Country For Old Men was another complete waste of time. Raising Arizona...had moments but really not worth watching again and again. O Brother Where Are Thou? on the fence still for me. I did enjoy that movie i suppose. I think if i saw it more like Lewbowski i would enjoy it more. Looking back at their track record i have only really liked one of their many flop movies the main stream media seems to like and that was The Big Lewbowski.

The Dude Abides but all you other movies can just wither away. O Brother Where Are Thou?...you can come on this trip but i have got my eye on you.

Day 4 on Utah-Park City

2009-03-11T08:56:00.002-05:00

Every trip has an ending and Park City was the last day of riding for the trip to Utah. Duane was feeling oh so much better so we headed out for the mountain around 9:45ish i think. SO happy that the roads were not covered in snow and horrible. There was still some lingering ice, but overall the drive was simple and fast.

We got to Park City and saw a plethora of signs for the 2002 Olympics, AND for the first time on any mountain/hill we had no clue where to go to buy the lift tickets. It is this small hut away from the lodges and resorts...kind of weird but hey i do not run the place.

The first lift we took up brought us by the monster half pipe and big air jump that was used last Saturday in the IDP where Park City made a new competition that combined Big Air, Slopestyle and half pipe all into one run. Needless to say we did not watch the even because we were at Snowbird shredding :) but it was cool to see these giant kickers. Not one person went off one all day. IN fact i never saw anyone in the pipe either but what do you do.

So we get to the first lift and decide we are going to go searching for some powder and what better way to do that than go to the back bowl of the park. There were some other people who had a similar idea and well the 2nd chairlift was the longest we had to wait all day. But then the lines cleared up so life was good.

We got to the back bowl and it was so great. You stand on top of this wall that is super steep and you don;t care because it is just pillows of powder the whole way down. They look like moguls, but really just big pillows of powder. So we got some videos and pictures and decided maybe it was time to head in and get some lunch.

After lunch we headed to the other peak where the view was amazing. Mountains everywhere and just beautiful. Did i mention it was sunny with blue skies again :) The weather was great, my nose, lips and cheeks are a little burned but it was awesome.

Park City was different in the sense that it was more open that the other places. Think of a midwest resort with a 10,000' peak spread out...that is what park city was like. Lots of open spaces and TONS of options of where to go. There were some groomed runs but they were usually all on catwalks and trails to get you back to center. That was the least fun part of park city. You could not really ride peak to bottom without hitting a flat spot at least 3-4 times.

BUT if you were not riding the flat spots it was pretty sweet! Park City is the place you bring your family or you go to throw down monster whoop whoop airs and get noticed. We ended the day in the small park going over little kickers and carving our way down the only run open that time of day. Our day ended because we thought a different part of the mountain was open and it wasn't.

So the trip is coming to an end. 4 resorts in 4 days and 3 of the 4 resorts were on different parts of the mountain/canyon range. SO how would i rate each of these. That is tough. Each day there was something so different. Snowbird was amazing but if we would have went to snowbird on wither Monday or Tuesday after getting some fresh snow it would have been even better. Solitude was great for the openness and having a little bit of everything. Brighton had in my mind the best wooded areas of here. SO many ways to go into the woods and come out without worrying your head would get smacked by a tree. Park City was a true resort with everything you would want to do.

I would say Brighton was my favorite. I think this was in part with the weather and how powdery it was. I said this in the Day 3 post, but when you can stand and the powder is coming up to your knees if not more that was just awesome.

#2 would go to Solitude. I highly enjoyed the runs here. just a great place to ride with friends and can be ridden by people of all skill levels.

Park City grabs the 3 spot for the resort feature. The people there were very nice and helped you get to where you wanted to go. TONS of people probably year round and a little expensive, but overall something for everyone.

Snowbird gets a surprising 4th but really does not deserve to be here. This place not only give you challenging runs, but you can weave from the peak to the bottom in so many ways it is was just great. I think it gets a 4 spot based on i would not bring a beginner here. And that might be it.

I am sure there will be some follow up about what i would have done or what could change with the trip to the mountains, but or know the last of some pictures form Park City.

Thank you again to Jenny and Jimmy for housing us, thank you thank you thank you.

Day 3 on Utah-Brighton

2009-03-09T21:44:00.003-05:00

So after yesterdays extravaganza, a visit to Urgent Care and waiting an hour for penicillin- Duane was not diagnosed but diagnosed with strep. So when we woke up this morning he decided he was going to sit this one out but that i should still go boarding. I asked if he wanted to do something else like just go to Park City and see the Olympic stadium or see a movie but he said head to the mountain.

I decided i would try someplace new and leave Park City for yesterday. Brighton was right up the road from Solitude and i figured why not. When i got on the road there were clouds a plenty and visibility looked questionable. This was good because that meant snow. On the way up the canyon the snow started and by the time i reached Brighton I could barely see the chalet when i got there.

So what does this all mean. Robin Mooers has finally snowboarded in true powder. At one point i was up to my knees, about 2' of fresh powder and the snow kept falling. I went off a small cliff like thing and just fell in powder, could butter on top of the snow with out even trying, went through tons of back country which was easily the highlight of this place. The back country maneuverability was priceless. It was like God placed those trees on the mountain in this particular order so you could weave through them without worrying about smacking into anything, but at the same time having to keep in control so you do not smack into the tree.

The powder runs were what makes the west something people come back to. A couple of weeks ago i went to Afton Alps in MN and we had about 3 inches of fresh powder...this decimated the 3" because your board just sunk. It was truly great. Being able to land in the powder was so much fun.

Place this on top of weaving through the back country trees and it was a great day. I can see why people want the powder. Sure it takes a little more muscle to get through but it is soooo much fun! The biggest bummer was riding alone. Although my day was brightened by talking to Wifey twice on the mountain. She sang me the most bestest song ever and oh do i miss her. This is the longest we have been apart for sure since we have been married and well it is weird. I see Katie every day and to only get to speak to her via phone...does not cut it. Next time the west calls my name she wil need to be by my side.

Another thing that made the day great was the grilled cheese sandwich and beer for lunch :) It may have been the best Grilled cheese i have had, or i was hungry. But followed by the local brewed Chasing Tail ale, it hit the spot!

The pictures below do not show how much snow they got, but even when i left the snow was still falling. Speaking of leaving-4pm was rolling around the corner and it was time for me to head home and take some lovely people out to dinner for putting up a couple joes for a couple days. So i head out the car that was just smothered in snow and saw some guy needed help moving because his car was stuck. So i helped him out and then dug out the car and started moving. I was so anxious to head out of there i did not let all the windows become visable and i got stuck next to a bus. Finally some guy helped me out and i floored the car in reverse and started to rethink driving down the canyon.

Side note-there are many signs saying if the lights are flashing 4-wheel drive cars or chains are required. I am driving a Hyundai Accent-front wheel drive 4 cylinder mighty mouse. so i was questioning whether to make the drive or not.

So i call Jimmy and ask what he thinks. He says he will make his way up and get me. Sure enough i get stuck again. So i finally get out of this spot and decide it is time to park the car for the night. and what happens-i get stuck trying to park the car. So much anger at this point. So i realize parking overnight might not be a viable option and ask about it...sure enough the only overnight parking is available down the mountain a little bit. So i make the push and start driving down the mountain-jimmy was not able to head up because they were closing the road and well the conditions were bad. so riding in 2nd gear-about 20mph and almost 30-45 minutes later i was down the canyon road and heading to dinner.

Looking back on the day the powder was both the joy and the pain of the day. Riding was joyous. I am so excited for the the last day because every day has brought something new. Day 1-Challenging with steep runs, Day 2-able to carve on lots of open terrain, Day 3-POWDER. Day 4-?????? who knows what will bring. We are heading out to Park City as Dico says even if he feels horrible. Another update will come when Day 4 comes to an end. Till then enjoy my couple pictures.

Day 2 in Utah-Solitude

2009-03-08T19:12:00.002-05:00

Before we jump into Day 2 recap lets give a better day 1 recap.

Yesterday at Snowbird we got to Summit for pretty much our first run. Duane dropped in and sure enough got to the first stopping point without any big struggles. I go to drop in and sure enough so some sort of somersault thing and then kept going. It was fun :)

Most of the day was spent going down double black diamonds and moguls moguls moguls. The snow was plentiful but the groomed trails or runs with good snow were not as easy to find. BUT the day was great. We hiked to Mount Baldy like i said in the day 1 recap and we rode some great lines. After lunch Duane sat out the rest of the day and decided to nap in the car. Jimmy and I went back to the backside of Snowbird and found some AWESOME spots. One that for some reason was un-ridden and full of powder. pure joy, followed by multiple cliff drops no joy. We went around those and called it a day.

DAY 2- we wake up a little later and head out to Solitude. We start by going up to the middle part of the mountain and we did not think much-until we got to the top of the Apex chair. The whole side of the mountain opened up and it was glorious. We decided we have to go higher. We went up Powderhorn and looped around all the way to the bottom. The run was the exact opposite of Snowbird. The runs were groomed and the you could actually carve instead of hop back and forth so you do not fly forward and roll over a million mogul like spots. We took a bunch of good runs where we were just able to carve back and forth and get some speed.

We met up with Jimmy and said it is time for the Summit and to get to what else solitude can offer. We ended up taking this run called sol/bright. It loops around the back of the mountain. The run consisted of a narrow trail that showed 3 separate valleys of just snow. It was gorgeous. God made some beauty up in Utah my friends. We also ended up going through a lovely wooded area of trees that was quite nice. The worst part of it was we could not get enough speed to finish the run without unstrapping the bindings. But the sights were great.

So we stopped and some some great chicken and pineapple pizza at the base of the mountain-easily one of the best made pizzas i have had in the last 2 years-remember i worked in a pizza place to.

We finished the last 2 hours going down a couple lovely black diamonds runs where the snow was soft, the mtn was steep, but the soft snow made it joyous! Some quick highlights were Jimmy going off a jump, sort of landing it and then falling hard. Not nice that he fell but the jump was funny. The 3 minute movie made by me that when you watch it you could easily have a seizure. the spots of carving that were possible. Blue skies and sunshine:)

I will not bore with a ton of pictures so here are just a couple. Tomorrow Jimmy goes back to work :( but sicko and I (yeah Duane decided to get sick on this trip so he is kind of slow to get rolling) are heading to Park City for a day of hopefully hitting some small-medium park runs as well as the wonderful runs of Utah.

Till next time don't eat yellow snow, don't make your kid go down a run they do not want to because their crying echos in the mountains, and remember to take a moment to see all God's glories because they make the days so much better.

Day 1 on Utah- Snowbird

2009-03-07T18:27:00.005-06:00

Well kids the day has come and i officially have been on a mountain where i screamed I LOVE KATIE MOOERS! What can i say i did not have a newsroom. IT WAS GLORIOUS! The only thing i do not like are moguls and i swear they were everywhere. But oh the joy.

Highlights:
We started out and went through some woods and down many a fresh powder runs. Hiking to the peak of Mount Baldy which stands 11,061' above sea level. The hike was the most unfun part of the day, but the view was priceless :) Going down a small chute and falling on a rock...my butt is swollen.
The sad part was Dico was feeling under the weather and did not join in the last couple hours :( I am sure there are millions of little stories about this day but i will let some of the pictures tell the story.

Right now we are watching School of Rock, about to make burgers and fries, and relax. What can i say i am tired, my but hurts and my hands do not want to type. SO here are some pictures:

Surfwise

2009-01-06T08:20:00.003-06:00

Go and rent this movie. It is awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLrx_QSd44E

Paging Mr. Jimmy

2009-01-06T08:10:00.003-06:00

Mr. Jimmy Budnik-

I have recently reviewed your last blog and comment to my comment. Upon reviewing the post my brain has been bubbling and shooting ideas left and right. WHAT IF I changed my plans with my brother-in-law and WE were to go to Utah instead of Colorado? WHAT IF we changed the days so we could ride with you on the weekend and also get a couple of days just riding the wondrous snowy Mountains of Utah? WHAT IF the visions of Jimmy covered waist deep in snow hurling snowballs at Robin as he Whoop Whoops down the hill with tears of joy running down his face because he just pushed Duane(Bro-In-Law represent) into the snow and he is one a mountain with great people?

WHAT IF Jimmy agreed to this wonderful plan? WHAT IF?

Jimmy i am writing to possibly impose upon your winter wonder-land. It would entail putting 2 guys up for a couple nights in Utah. We would even make you diner one night! Maybe even teach your wife some lessons about snowboarding. Stay up late talking about the past times, the new times and the good times to come. At least once or twice drinking way more than we should have and watching drunk phone calls go out to people.

So Jimmy what do you say? Are you in or are you out?

One might wonder why i did not just email this to you?...that questions shall remain unanswered as this seemed like a fun way for all to enjoy the wonderful letter writing of both parties.

Go enjoy the snow-Whoop Whoop
Robin Mooers

2008-12-29T15:48:00.000-06:00

The blog is not dead, just on hold for a while :(

The Ultimate Showdown

2008-09-11T15:35:00.002-05:00

Who will win, the left side or the right side?

Kanye Says Chi-town

2008-09-08T08:38:00.003-05:00

Congrats to all who represented the Heavyweights Tourney this last weekend! I was expecting to check the page and see all kinds of scores and what not...only in the open division :( All i got for the other teams was who won out. Congrats to Cobra Squadron Alpha Beta Zebra Gorilla sometimes with Lighting and other times with flaming crotch as well as Zero for wining their respective divisions. Ellsworth you owe me a Jersey.

Mad props to Pop for finishing second, crush them all in the next month-we will see you on Tuesday night. Bon-Bon way to make the final game look exciting even though i was not there. I am sure some great plays were had and the game was one of those nail biters.

Also got to give a shout out to Prairie Fire! Thata way Kansas boys, taking the pool day one; although the lost to Madcow...little upset about that. I mean FUCK MADCOW. they do not deserve to play frisbee. I wonder if they are still calling mass amounts of horrible calls? Wither way, Hope you all had a good time at Heavyweights, first year i have not been there in about 4 years (not all that big, but a fun factoid); instead saw the family and went to the Renaissance Festival which was SWEEEEET! Saw some good shows, ate some good food it was all good.

Very disappointed in the blogsphere this year. I mean does anyone blog anymore or was this just a phase like Bum Equipment and panchos? Later yall.
This is what i did on Saturday night! Building castles rules!

Educate Yourself

2008-09-05T11:54:00.001-05:00

If you have a problem with the world today. Educate yourself and find a means to make a difference. Not a point, a difference. If you hear that something bad is happening and you want it to change-Educate yourself and make the change. Don't blame others for something you could be doing to solve the problem.

A swarm of good tunes

2008-08-28T11:32:00.006-05:00

In the last couple weeks my ears have had the pleasure of getting loads of good tunes worthy of some mentions. Lets start with a band most people have heard of.

Marking there 6th studio album Weezer "The Red Album" starts where "The Blue Album" ended. The songs have a classic Weezer feel to them which make you want to put on whichever shirt you like and not care about what others think. Although "Pork and Beans" has been getting lots of publicity with the hilarious video, make sure to listen to song 2 "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn)": this is the Red Albums Sweater song.

The end of the album shows Weezer trying to branch out in new directions and I say Branch. I was not to keen on tracks 7-9, but in the end they stick in your head. For all you people who loved the Blue Album but then lost interest, give Weezer another shot.

Lets hop genres and talk about a little band by the name of Dr. Manhattan. If you want something a little different these guys are for you. Based out of Illinois they fit in the "modern" punky, warped tour mix quite well. The album has a raw sound, but it is clean. The use of Synth, and the drum beats will keep your head boppin' and the feat stompin'! Check out their myspace page www.myspace.com/drmanhattan listen to their key tracks at least twice and i bet the songs will be stuck in yoru head. Keep your eye out for them as I see them going far. I would also like to add they are great to see live!

Last one i leave you with is Family Force 5. Step 1. See when they are playing in a venue near you. Step 2. Buy tickets to their show. Step 3. Prepare yourself for one of the best, most fun shows you have seen in a long time. With their rock-pop sound they are sure to please all who listen. The rock-star in you will find you singing along at that top of your lungs; the pop-star in you will want to dance to the tunes; and you will be there to enjoy it all. With the release of their second album "Dance or Die" not nearly as good as their freshman CD "Business in the Front, Party in the Back". As Durst said, "Hey rockers, hip-hoppers" get out and give them a listen as they use hard rock, smooth lyrics and catchy beats to keep the music moving throughout the whole album.

Give "Business.." a listen first. This album is full of great chorus's and a more rock sound. "Dance or Die" was not nearly as good and honestly left me a little disappointed. I have only listened to it twice, but minus tracks like "Get Your Back Off the Wall" and "Fever" meah, the rest is just an album worth listening to from time to time, but not in a normal rotation. This could be one of those albums that grows on you...time will tell.

For all you Fantasy Fanatics

2008-08-22T09:06:00.002-05:00

For some reason i felt the need to post the Fantasty Football team i drafted last night. I know little about football and did the i have heard of him and oh he has a high number so lets take him.

So really i am just looking for comments on how you think "Dish and the Spoon" will do this year in the football hunt :)

Madden go away.

Here we go:
Ben Rothlisberger-QB
Philip Rivers-QB
Torry Holt-WR
Brandon Marshall-WR
Santana Moss-WR
Javon Walker-WR
Reggie Brown-WR
Brian Westbrook-RB
Brandon Jacobs-RB
Kenny Watson-RB
Justin Fargas-RB
Tony Gonzalez-TE
Nick Folk-K
Chicago-Def.
Jared Allen-IDP

I believe all games are head to head and here are how points are distributed:
Max Moves: No maximum
Max Acquisitions per Week: No maximum
Max Trades: No maximum
Trade Reject Time: 2
Trade End Date: November 21, 2008
Trade Review: Commissioner
Waiver Time: No waivers
Post Draft Players: Free Agents
Playoffs: Week 15, 16 and 17 (6 teams)
Roster Positions: QB, WR, WR, RB, RB, TE, W/R, K, DEF, D, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN
Fractional Points: Yes
Negative Points: Yes

Stat Categories:
Passing Yards (25 yards per point)
Passing Touchdowns (4)
Interceptions (-1)
Rushing Yards (10 yards per point)
Rushing Touchdowns (6)
Receptions (.5)
Reception Yards (10 yards per point)
Reception Touchdowns (6)
Return Yards (20 yards per point)
Return Touchdowns (6)
2-Point Conversions (2)
Fumbles Lost (-2)
Offensive Fumble Return TD (6)
Field Goals 0-19 Yards (3)
Field Goals 20-29 Yards (3)
Field Goals 30-39 Yards (3)
Field Goals 40-49 Yards (4)
Field Goals 50+ Yards (5)
Field Goals Missed 0-19 Yards (-2)
Point After Attempt Made (1)
Point After Attempt Missed (-3)
Sack (1)
Interception (2)
Fumble Recovery (2)
Touchdown (6)
Safety (2)
Block Kick (2)
Points Allowed 0 points (10)
Points Allowed 1-6 points (7)
Points Allowed 7-13 points (4)
Points Allowed 14-20 points (1)
Points Allowed 21-27 points (0)
Points Allowed 28-34 points (-1)
Points Allowed 35+ points (-4)
Tackle Solo (1)
Tackle Assist (.5)
Sack (2)
Interception (2)
Fumble Force (1)
Fumble Recovery (2)
Touchdown (6)
Safety (2)
Pass Defended (.5)
Block Kick (2)

This really a forsight to the future

2008-07-31T10:51:00.001-05:00

Robin Is Happy Again

2008-07-30T14:53:00.003-05:00

http://penguinvpolarbear.blogspot.com/2008/07/jimmy-misses-robin-mooers-of-happiness.html

Robin Misses Jimmy Budnik from the Ultimate team

2008-07-30T10:04:00.001-05:00

Mud in the Eyes

2008-07-28T14:47:00.006-05:00

I know what you are thinking and yes this blog is still active. Last weekend marked the return to the ultimate field as MUDI took place again in Maple Plain/Independence, MN. I mention Independence due to the Million Dollar house that went aflame Sunday during the games. Definetly a first to see and for a sure a first for me at a Frisbee tournament.

I did not play day 1 as i was out at Neal Andersons Bachelor party cranking out some monster drives on the golf coarse and helping win the Beer Pong championship, but Sunday marked an awesoem day of Ultimate for the XMN.

XMN, who are they? They are a team Greggy Williams started up this year. A bunch of great guys who are out there playing some disc.

A team pic from this weekend:

This weekend we went 5-2 losing to the Zero D-squad and Surly. The rest of the games were good hard fought battles where we came out victorious. I would say it was a great first tournament even though i was only there for Sunday where we went 3-0.

Minus some dropsies and some miscommunications the team looks to get better as the year goes on. Hopefully when time comes my way this blog will be updated a little more. I was looking back and there is this long list of subjects i started but never finished. Oh in due time.

Till then- much love to all those i missed this weekend. I know i barley got to talk to anyone from out southern family in Iowa, nor did i get to see many of the Surly or Zero fellas, All those POP ladies super excited to see how the team does, but hey, there is a lot of season left and a couple beers to drink and chat things over. (yeah sentence that does not make sense).

Shout out to you all. Make today a great day!

The deck

2008-06-11T09:46:00.003-05:00

last sautrday Katie and I and our loving family and friends helped erect a deck.

BBQ to come. as well as more blogs. Really just showing the 12 hour days that consumed our Saturday between the massive amounts of weddings.

Chairs

2008-06-03T08:44:00.002-05:00

Last night i had an amazing dream and no it was not the one where i was standing on a pyramid and tons of naked women were throwing pickles at me. I believe that dream will stay with Val Kilmer from Real Genius, but hey we can all wish for it right.

No my dream consisted of me being in this big banquet style room with a bunch of Frisbee players. We got up to go get something and there was this bench that was out of place. Jokingly i said i could move it back with my mind. BUT sure enough when i thought about it the becn moved back in place without me moving a finger.

Immediately I thought it was a fluke. So I tried it with another chair and it worked again. The rest of the dream was me moving chairs with my mind. I awoke from the dream thinking that was the sweetest dream. I had superpowers! That is right superpowers!

Maybe it was the Veggie pizza with pineapple, hot peppers, black olives, green olives, onions and mushrooms with garlic and red sauce on thin crust that made me dream such things? Who knows.

ponder the dream-what could it mean?

also more blogs will come just been a little busy. go figure.

"Now Popeye, he was a great man..."

2008-04-18T08:04:00.003-05:00

I got to thinking about something as i was climbing my 5 stories to start a day at the old office: people who refuse to change or think they are unable to change their habits are either too comfortable and scared to change their ways, they honestly like that aspect about themselves and do not want to change or they do not know how to change.

Before going on i am in no means perfect. I make mistakes all the time and actually fall into each of these categories in different aspects of life.

Rob, where did this thought come from? I got to thinking about my self of coarse. No I thought about little things people say or do and it just got me to thinking about it- that is all. When someone says I am the way I am or that is who I am or any number of phrases when a person talks about a personality trait that means probably one of the couple things from above.

People who just like who they are and are comfortable with their personality traits more power to you. Your are the Popeyes so to speak. There is this part in the movie Airborne-(jack Black, Seth Green, Sean McDermott-roller blading movie from the late 90's freaking awesome movie!!!) and there is this brief speech that goes as so:

Mitchell Goosen: Popeye, now there was a great man. Do you know why?
Wiley: He never joined the Hairclub For Men?
[buzzer sound]
Mitchell Goosen: Wrong. Because his motto was: I am what I am. Do you think Popeye ever worried about what he wore just so he could get Olive Oil in the sack? I should say not, Dude. And do you know why?
Wiley: He was gay?
Mitchell Goosen: Because he is what he is.

The context in the movie is way better, but for this purpose we will say that Popeye was confident in himself so he did not worry about what others thought. One might argue that if Popeye did not like you he would just pop some spinach and whomp on you, but only if you pissed of Popeye would that happen-lesson don;t piss off Popeye. Okay enough horrible humor; he was confident in himself and he stuck to his guns when push came to shove.

There are a lot of people who lack that confidence in life and that makes me a little sad. Now the lack of confidence is masked by either fear of change or not knowing how to change. This leads me to think these people ultimately do not want to achieve their goal. (Harsh Robin, why say such a thing?) Because history and time have proven that if you really want something bad enough you go for it. But this has to be something you truly want; Something you are willing to sacrifice for.

For the sake of an example lets take someone who wants to lose weight. If someone truly wants to lose weight then you should watch what you eat, make it a point to get exercise and keep yourself on a strict plan. When someone says "lets go eat 50 chicken wings?" you say thank you for the offer but i am going to eat this. or sounds great and I will join you but i am going to get a salad or whatever -!Note- This is not an opportunity to get pity and make yourself look good by saying "I am dieting or anything" this is you stating why you will not partake in the wings. If they ask why then you tell them, but sometimes just saying thanks but no or giving the base information is enough.

"When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full."- Matthew 6:5

Not just in prayer people just in general it has to do with gloating or i am doing this and you are not kind of thing, it goes for all things.

But people wonder why they don't always get things and it comes down to a simple fact: they did not want them bad enough. They were not willing to make the sacrifice to go and get them. Have the willpower to say no. Have the strength to pursue your dream and be confident you can accomplish it. Look within yourself and see what you are made of. You are full of amazing things the world will see soon enough if you just start showing confidence in yourself. Don't think it is possible-test if out yourself. DOn;t be cocky-confident there is a big difference.

So if there is something you really want to do: Run a marathon, drop weight, find someone to share your life with, be able to lift a car, burp the alphabet, throw a thumber, write a book, whatever it may be; go and get it. Seize the day friends:)

Karl the legend

2008-04-17T08:10:00.002-05:00

Oh Karl, you just can;t stay out of the lime light these days. First you get the spirit award at nationals...and now there are 2 big pics in the Ultimate magazine with your name and picture. The myth is now the man. There is no hiding the Karl.

I love it.
Karl you rock buddy this post was all about you.

Minnesnowta

2008-03-21T10:03:00.002-05:00

So it is March-the snowiest month for Minnesota. With March comes the NCAA Mens B-Ball tournament. It always snow when the tournament comes on. We have just been through roughly 4-5 months of snow so you think people would know how to drive in it. Nope Rob is wrong again.

People are swerving, getting in accidents and i bet you about 75% will blame it on the weather. Guess what people: you are in Minnesota, it is snowing so drive safe. Don;t be flying around a tight corner at 40mph start to lose traction so you are coming straight for me, have me swerve to get out of the way, just barley miss a collision because some stupid driver thinks the road will be empty. uh-uh not cool.

But it can not get this day down for it id Good Friday...so it must be good.

Tonight is the winter league championship-best of luck to all.

travel safely and have a happy easter.

Happy Tuesday to You

2008-03-18T08:17:00.004-05:00

Just wanted to take a little time to say Happy Tuesday to all who may encounter the site of the blog.

All kinds of things i have meant to post in the last couple of weeks so i will just do a recap of some of the finer points:

Getting to the Championship of Winter League-Yippie! There will be a repeat of the championship game from 2 years ago and it will be a fun game.

40 and a Movie is back! You get a 40oz, grab a movie and some buds and the good times will happen. Last week watched American Pie 2, still a funny movie.

St. Pattys Day- Went to Ben and Kari's where they make the best corned beef and Ruben sandwiches. Thank you again for the wonderful times-Did you know that by putting 5 coats f rustoleum on your wall you to can make your wall magnetic? cool huh?

Watching the Gopher game with my Dad. Although we lost in 2OT 0-1 to the Mavericks it was the first chance this year i got to watch a hockey game with my Dad and that is always a good time. Go Gophers for winning the series by winning the next night in OT and then the next night in double OT.

Finished Season 2 of LOST. Waiting for Season 3 from a friend but i am excited to see what happens next!

Davannis- eh.

Work has been super busy and steady and overall good.

Went to the Vitner Ball a couple weeks ago. The Vitner Ball is a charity event my boss and some of his friends put on to raise money for the Second Hearth Food shelf. This year they raised like 97,000+ for food so that was awesome. The event is a giant wine tasting event-Got to taste a lot of great wines (32 i think to be exact). They also had lots of different cheeses and desserts and it was a great time.

Watched Scratch a documentary about DJs and the history of scratching...check it out it is a sweet movie.

Listened to the new Jack Johnson- not to bad, but i agree with the reviews i heard that it is toned down and more mellow. Not a bad thing but still Jack Johnsonish.

Exited to hear the She and Him album and there are a couple others i have yet to listen to that are in the punk regime.

Went to Red Lobster for the first time-i could wait to go there for as long as it took me to get there.

Stored the snowboard for the spring and summer :(

The cats are good. Luna is a sweetheart. She does not meow unless she is getting a bath and she is little and cuddly-but all on her time. Tuna is a hellion. His favorite activity is playing bat your head at 5AM. Overall still love the cats.

My delete button fell off my compy. I glued it back on but it will never be the same.

I love my wifey :) She is the cutest most wonderful wife a fellow could ask for :) That is right Katie you get smiley faces :)

So what does this all mean: No matter what comes your way today, or whichever day you are reading this-take a deep breath, take it all in and smile. Because today is a great day! Nothing special abotu the day, it is just a great day. We are alive. Things are good.

-peeps heading to the Upper Peninsula- I am jealous, hit a kicker for me and i will have to make sure to check the calendar a little closer next year.

have a Happy Easter and God bless.

Year End or year start?

2008-03-03T08:49:00.002-06:00

This last weekend may have brought about the end of the snowboarding year for me, not because of the lack of snow (i mean we are in march the snowiest month for MN) but because time is running short. With only a couple good weekends left in the month and the calendar filling up with this and that will there be time to hit the slopes? I went up to Spirit Mountain this last weekend with the intention of this being my last time on the hills this year BUT we went into the park for a lot of the day and here is what happened:

I had been working on landing consistent 360's last time i was out boarding and this weekend i landed 0. The full rotation was not happening. This left me with a bit of a frown. I think the main problem i was having was speed. I could get around on the couple 360's i tried but i did not have enough speed to hit the landing and was hitting the flat part after the jump and it through me off.

But on a good note i did some rails i usually would not do which to me is cool. I might actually look into doing rails a little more next year. I would love to be able to go into any park and hit whatever is there just because. I would also like 3to board slide or do more than just a simple 50-50 on the rails-Next year goal!!!!

I also hit the 3 of the biggest kickers i have ever hit. With a name like Robin i was meant to fly. This is what i really want to do with boarding is get launched into the sky and fly! At Spirit they have 3 kickers in a line and at some point in the day i hit each of them. Sadly i hit them later in the day when the snow was being less kind and speed was an issue (i knew i should have waxed my board). It got to the point where wax would not help because no one was hitting the landing and they were charging full fledged at the jumps. But i was happy that i could overcome the fear of that jump looks big and just go at it. I did not do anything amazing in the air, but just hitting the jump is half the battle. The first hit:

We had just come back tot he park and we were strapping in. All day we had kept close , but i put myself closer to where i could drop in and without saying anything to either Mike (baller boarder) and Duane (better watch my 180 or i will knock you off the chairlift) i just charged at the 1st kicker. Just focused on getting the speed and getting a grab in the air. Pumped the jump went in the air, grabbed the board and landed. Went for #2 and did not have the speed to clear to the landing but still had it.

As i was going bigger the park was getting sloppy and nothing had a good line. So we decided to call it a day. Before i get off this point Spirit had a Ski comp in th park that day and all the jumps were set up bigger and beautifully for the event sponsored by Solomon. Mike who lives in Duluth said they were the best formed and higher than they usually are. But we left.

Now i just want to go back out there and hit the kickers. maybe a simple 180 front side or backside? maybe even trying for a 360? I don;t care i just want to get back on the hill.

Anyway, lets end this with a goals for 2008-2009 snowboarding year. Consistent 360's off any jump where the 360 is thrown -yes falls will happen, but lets keep it over 75%. I would also like to perfect the backside 180-blind spin. Probably the most graceful trick in boarding-It looks so pretty. And last but not least hitting the rails a little more and getting to board slides/tweaks on the rails.

That is a lot for goals next winter, but i hope to somehow be on the hills more and well i think all of those are attainable.

With the end of boarding comes Frisbee. What this year bring for Frisbee i am unsure, but right now the boarding will not escape the mind.

Duck, Duck...

2008-02-20T10:08:00.003-06:00

In the age old debate which is it:

Duck, Duck, Grey Duck

or

Duck, Duck, Goose.

The most discusting thing in a long time

2008-02-07T15:25:00.000-06:00

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/07/clinton-raises-4-million-in-day-after-super-tuesday/#comments

If you read this article you will see that the Hilary Clinton campaign raised $4 million dollars after Super Tuesday and hopes to reach $6 billion by well by tomorrow. Obama raised $7.2 million in 36 hours after Super Tuesday. Now i am looking for how much the Republicans have but lets just start with this disgusting fact.

These 2 people have raised a total of $11.2 million dollars to run for the presidency. That is right, just to run. Not to help the thousands without homes in New Orleans, or to help the people in Ohio where the floods are running. Lets talk about the people who just had there homes destroyed in the recent tornadoes. Okay well natural disasters happen every day and things can get taken care of Rob.

Fair enough. But lets talk about the debt America has. Or how about all the children that do not eat every night. Lets just take a look at our nation and figure out how $11.2 million dollars will help two people, both of which might not be the president. This is also just one side. We add republican dollars to this and I would like to think that we have well over $20 million dollars. This might seem small to many, but i find it hard to believe that $20 million could not help out in many areas of this country. Why is this money being giving to politicians who can not give you a guaranteed anything.

I guess Americans love to gamble and we have a hope that this money will go towards a greater good. I sure hope it does. Just imagine where all this money could go and who it could help. Regardless of presidential candidates and parties and all the hoopla (which i have been reading about-b.jar you would be proud i am trying to learn about politics sort of) i just think this money could go to something better than people talking about things they can not promise but might try to do if they can fit it in their schedule.

Just read the Clinton issues on cnn.com. Lots of woulds. What good is would. I can tell you that would buy a house. Or i can tell you i would fly a donkey to the moon (the tense is all wrong here i know but i am trying to make a poor point), this does not mean i will do it!

oof. I feel a little better. Writing can be a great way to get what is on your head out. Now it is onto some snowboarding- what can i say i am selfish in the sense that i would rather go snowboarding than give my money away...at this juncture.

It's been a long time

2008-02-04T08:54:00.000-06:00

So it has been a while since i posted anything and instead of commenting very which way i wanted to say I am reading a lot of the friends blogs and appreciate hearing what is going on in the world of all of yous. My guess is if you are reading this then at some point i am reading your blog or well you never update your blog so i am not reading and if that is the case let me know where your blog is and I will probably read it.

I just wanted to say hi (electronically) to all of you. HI

Wicked Gladiators

2008-01-09T08:34:00.000-06:00

How many people out there have seen the new American Gladiators? When i was growing up i loved watching American Gladiators. In the basement my friends and I would set up a mini assault course and play for hours. There was a magic to the show and it was a ton of fun to watch. Seeing these normal looking people go up against the steroid-injected gladiators was awesome. Needless to say i was really excited when i heard the show was coming back.

So Sunday night Katie and I nestled in our basement and watched the 2 hour premier (the most television that has not been sports in a really long time) and i was so disappointed. The first even a contender goes down after getting annihilated by the gladiators, then a gladiator goes down. Everything seemed overly hokey and well i was just disappointed. Although there were a lot of disappointments for some reason i keep thinking about the show.

I thought the first episode was really dumb and we almost turned it off but decided to give it another shot. We watched the second episode and that one was way better. I think it was the contestants. I mean watching the women as super awesome as the ex-marine bashes her face into a steel bar, shakes it off and when she gets to the handbike in the eliminator she is bleeding. BAD-ASS. most people would have stopped in the pool but not here. The dedication was super awesome. Or how about during the gauntlet when Wolf asked for his wolfpack (he must have been at Nationals watching Ellsworth the pack leader). Small things like this made the show memorable.

At the same time all the smack talking was over the top and just needed to go. To much stage and glamour, like wrestling today. All the glitz just killed wrestling. Or i grew up not sure which one, but there was something lacking.

As we are talking about something lacking i just finished the book Wicked. My mom gave me the book and i thought it was because she said it was a challenging read but interesting. When she said interesting i thought she meant she liked it...Half way through she told me she did not like the book. At this point i had to finish it, but i would never wish a bad book on somebody.

I got through the book and well it was not a good book. Great concept, but just not good. The plot is super slow, the story is not all that great, characters leave a lot to be desired. There are moments where i thought the book was going to get philosophical and there might be some merit to the book...nope. The book is about the Wicked Witch of the West and she really is not even a witch. Yeah, all in all don;t read this book.

BUT i am interested to see what the play is about. I have no idea, but i would hope it is more entertaining than the book. I looked over a quick synopsis and well it looks better than the book.

Just had to vent. I am done venting.

Goog-izzle

2007-12-19T08:11:00.000-06:00

Take some time today and google your name. throw in your last name and see what comes up. I was surprised to see that since blogging my name shows up all over the pace for my blog. I love it! Pictures and all, just think that someone out there might be looking for you and now you can be findable....

It also fun to see what else comes up!

Like i have no idea who this is, but i share a last name with him.

Health/Utimate topic #4

2007-12-04T08:14:00.000-06:00

So one of the things i have thought about well for a long time is staying in shape. I can not say that i have seen tons of people who appear out of shape by like mid twenties or anything like that, but when i have kids i want to be able to keep up with them and not get winded in like 2 minutes. One of the best ways to do this is to start good habits young right?

The hardest time for me to stay in shape is the winter because it is hard to just throw the shoes on and go for a run in the dark. Maybe I am just being lazy.

With this said since the ultimate season has come to an end i have been kind of staying in shape but i would say i fell off the wagon. I have not ran in about a week which is sad but i think i need to rest. I did run for about 2-3 weeks after the season ended and my left knee was hurting and my feet were also starting to get a little achy. I did not really take a break but i did not do anything.

Then last week i started a basketball league with some my old roomies. Everything was great until i swatted a ball away and trying to get it landed on my knee. Just a little bump but enough to go off for a minute. Then later in the game i went knee to knee with another dude and then sort of twisted my right ankle. So this week has come and as of yet i have not run but i might tonight and i picked up a knee brace for a little extra help. My big focus in the off season is to build some muscle in the upper body. I have never really been able to do pushups and well i want to. So i got this thing from the big man drew in boston and what the NAVY has for a training regimen. This i also have not started yet to a T but i have been doing them and i can actually do pushups.

What does this all mean? I need to get up and start running again. I like to run and like i said before i want to be able to keep up with all those youngsters and not tire out fast. My biggest concern is i might push something to much and well hurt myself. I also have a feeling i could have planter fasciitis as my heels hurt quite a bit after working out and well yeah. So we come to the big question, take some time off and heal or just pay through it and see if i am not being a little nancy?
Comments welcome.

As for Utimate: The question of the hour what is in store for next year? That question is based upon this one: how many weddings to attend next year=11. That is a lot of weddings to attend and All the weddings i am attending and am in are worth going to. These weddings are for people who are great friends and family and I would not miss them for anything. but with so many weddings comes some dollar bills yall. I am not sure i could afford to play next year. This question is way to early to really answer but i have no idea what to plan for or expect. I know i will be playing some TCUL maybe twice a week, but as far as club goes i am still open to all kinds of good things.

Lets also talk about the greatest time of the year: WINTER. That means snowboarding season is upon us. This will be the leg workout for the winter as i plan on wrenching the calves in every carve and using the knees to absorb every landing. I love the winter and the snow and am ready to go and play on the board. Boo-ya.

I am unsure how people can write down their thoughts at 2 different times as i am doing that with this post and i fell not perfect about the post but will post it as that is how i am. This is why the writing style is not perfect. I give it to you like it comes from the head.

Check out this lovely picture of the love of my life!
love you all and keep thinking of good thigns!

lame

2007-11-29T11:24:00.000-06:00

I have been lame in my bloggin posts and am inspired by the gibbs post. But since i am unaware how what to write as of yet i leave you with a little funny picture i found.

Also check out this link....SUPER AWESOMENESS ACHIEVED. Watch them all for a good time!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ppsW4XAUTI

Gobble Gobble

2007-11-21T08:47:00.000-06:00

I like Turkey though so Tomorrow eat the Turkey and save the ham.

Love for Chainsaws

2007-11-19T09:04:00.000-06:00

This weekend was a weekend of work.

Friday night Katie and I worked at Davanni's till the we hours of the morning and it was good. The night flew by and m only complaint was the numb hand i had while weighing out the toppings for the first two hours. Other than that good times.

Wake up on Saturday morning and i was off to help my Dad take down some trees. We took down three huge branches. The first branch to come down was over the fence and well just needed to come down. This was our first attempt at the branches and we learned a couple good things. 1. Do not cut down a heavy part of the tree while your extension ladder is braced on the same branch. Yeah that tree is going to shake when it goes down...Scared the heck out of me. 16' ladder, chainsaw ready to go and me shaking on a tree...survived to tell the tale.

Next we took down the branch that was the main focus since the trunk of the branch had split in half and well could have fallen anytime. This one went a lot smoother. We got it down in no time.

Then came the mother branch. For the other two we were able to trim away most of the smaller branches before cutting down the bulk...but this one was to high up to trim. So after much deliberation we decided to cut the whole branch down. We covered up some things by the pool in case something got hit, had a rope over the branches to help the branch fall correctly and we were ready to go.

That thing came down with a very big boom and the best thing is we only lost one small part of the pool cover (easily replaceable).

So why tell you all this so far..well without the chainsaw this would have taken forever. With the chainsaw it only took about 6 hours to get it all down, then another 3 hours cleanup the next day of burning the smaller stuff and cleaning up the yard. I had a wonderful time and a new affinity for chainsaws. They are fun, loud and destructive. I will need to get one in due time just in case something needs cutting.

Then changed and went out for a old high school buds b-day: Dustin good times. We went to the Uptown Diner...good portions of food for a good price then to the VFW for some karaoke fun. I learned that hey Jude is not a great karaoke song :(

BUT, woke up, some church goodness then back to work as we help Heather paint a 20' high warehouse. after about 3-4 hours it was time to see the family. which was awesome!

Really i just wanted to tell all how awesome chainsaws are. More movies should have them.

Product of China

2007-11-15T07:47:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago I went the the Great Dragon Buffet with some co-workers to catch some "high quality" Chinese food. After a couple plates of yummy buffet goodness Todd, Chris and I started to look at the Chopstick package. We were surprised by our wonderful findings. I could not get a good graphic image of this, but let me share some findings from this world class package.

Front: Welcome to Chinese Restaurant.
Please try our Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history and cultual.

BAMBOO CHOPSTICKS
PRODUCT OF CHINA

Now some of you who know me well may think i just made some spelling mistakes or was speaking in Rob, but THIS IS NOT TRUE. These glonous cultual chopsticks spark us into laughter as we work in advertising and deal with proofing. But can it get better? The answer YES.

Back (There are pictures associated with each type break)

Tuk under tnurnb and hold firmly

Add second chcostick hold it as you hold a pencil

Hold tirst chopstick in originai position move the second one up and down Now you can pick up anything:

PRODUCT OF CHINA

First lets start with the obvious, you can pick up anything! Why even have a strongman contest when these little beauties can pick up anything? These free originai chcosticks have impeccable powers!

Obviously i am not the first to find the flaw, but boy did we get a laugh out of it.

Next time you are in an Asian restaurant and you ask for chopsticks make sure to check the package as you may be holding a wonderful product of great responsiblity.

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

2007-11-09T10:00:00.001-06:00

I ran into this little post that never aired the daylight. Sure it reflects back to last year but there were a lot of good items i found and figured why not share. Hope all are having a great summer with Disc, Life and everything else you are doing :)

So these are not by Jack handy but by me and as far as the deep goes...we will let the words be the judge. After writing about Nationals and reflecting on this last year on the Van Buren Boys i wanted to share my thoughts and feelings about how things went and how i feel about them. There are some if's below and well that is just that they are if's. We will not know if they worked but ideas.

I wish i could think of a format for this but time will tell.

Concept of team: this was awesome. Put together a group of talented people who all want the same thing and see what happens. A hand picked squad was put together of people who were talented at the game of Frisbee and we were to go out, play and win some games. So we went out, played some games and won some games. This leads into...

Practices: Loved the system. I personally loved the time commitment of training on your own and then coming together to play. I felt like i was in better shape than the last couple of years because i was not overloaded with Frisbee. Even now i feel like i did not play that much disc this summer because i played on average once a week, maybe twice. This helped not overload me with the game and come the series i was still excited to play. In last years i got to the series and was a little burnt out from practicing twice a week and league and running. My days of the week went from about 4-5 days of the week to about 1-2 days of playing and a lot of running.
The only thing i would have changed about this system is to have a couple of practices closer to the series. I agree with what Kevin wrote about the mistakes we were making and how practice would not have fixed them (drops, throws, and other mental mistakes, these are all things you can work on with one or two people), but practicing and learning each other on the field would have helped. When you play with people more you can learn their abilities and what they can or cannot do and there were times this could have helped us down the road (nationals). Or this is a time where we could have ironed out a solid offense or something like that.

Goals: A little upset about this one, but when i think about it all was good. We had one set goal all year: Make Nationals! We made nationals, but i think that we may have not done as well at nationals because there was no common goal or thing we were shooting for. Our best playing was done at regionals against BAT and Madcow and i think that was because our goal was in jeopardy and we were not having it. We came together because everyone EVERYONE wanted to win the game at hand and go to nationals. I mean after losing to Zero we said we needed to win 6 games so we went out and won 6 games. We obviously peaked at the right time.

At nationals i think everyone wanted to be there and everyone wanted to win and do well, but there was no common piece besides winning. Like some people wanted to break seed, but by how many seeds? Did they want to make quarters, pre-quarters, 9th? We wanted to win a game. Which game? Personal goals...always need to be had, but they should coincide with the team goal.

This is probably going in depth a little too much but i think if we would have had a more common goal at Nationals we could have done a little better.

I have one regret in the whole year and it is on myself and that was at Nationals. There were times where i felt i was thinking too much about this or that and not letting the game take me away. There is this wonderful scene in the Greatest Game ever Played where he talks about wanting to play where the game just flows through you. That is how I would love to play. Not to worry about the score or what game to watch or any of that but to enjoy each moment and let the game take you away.

In most tournaments this is how i felt, but at Nationals i just felt like it should be more i guess. I don;t feel like i played as well because there was this little voice in the back of my head saying play better you are at nationals, when if i just would have played because i love the game i think i would have played better. There were a couple of plays where i jumped higher than I thought i could and ran faster than i had, but these were just spurts and they needed to be constant.

I am talking all about me here...damn it blog.

2 year money back guarantee

2007-11-07T08:20:00.001-06:00

Here it is the check back from Ayron. It took 2 years but i got it back.
Sorry if the pictures are super small, but for now that is what i got. I will put the better pictures up here when i get them till now this will do.

All good trips must come to an end

2007-11-06T15:13:00.000-06:00

Day 5-

The Frisbee is done and today we say goodbye to people (or start to as people were departing on Sunday since they needed to get home). The day starts out with me on a couch and Solarz and Sheldal coming in and asking if i had seen Ty. I said no, But somehow they got into my bedroom since BJ left hours ago and i was finally in a bed. I slept for a little while longer and then finally woke up as i could no longer sleep.

Ended up watching some Saved by the Bell with Drew. It was the episode where they have the mock marriages in school and Lisa is allergic to Screech and...at the end of the episode Drew and I looked at each other and were flabbergasted that we used to A-watch that show B-were ready to gouge our eyes out and 8-Why did we just waste 30 minutes watching that. When the show was done we cleaned up a little got dressed and went to the main house to see if anyone wanted to join us on our venture tot he Waffle House before watching some Finals.

Mikey Lun came with us and Brendan and Megan went to a coffee shop while we ate. This Waffle House was hopping with a ton of Doublewide guys and well we had to wait to be served. The waitress was running around frantically and we felt bad, but overall it was great. We talked about ultimate in our respective places (Boston, Minneapolis and Ames) and had a good breakfast. Waffle with pecans and syrup (they call it the nutty buddy) was scrumptious. This was one of my favorite talks all weekend; just chilling with people i don;t get to talk to all that often and finding out about them. I like that. I should have done it more this year, but did not: FOR SHAME ROBIN.

After breakfast we headed to the fields and were there just in time for the open finals (Mike Lun made it to the finals game early that is right!). Looked at the left over merch and there was nothing worth getting. Then i decided to cut the hair. I could not take that fact that my wife could not stand the hair and well i thought that Oosh would have his clipper with him. So Drew used his hair cutting powers and i had a Free.99 coupon for one free hair cut from Drew. Well if Oosh would have had the clipper life would have been good, instead it looked like i got a haircut that well just was not all that great. I had my hat so that was nice, but i lived and all was good.

Watching the finals...mewh. Fun to watch, see previous posts on how i feel abotu watching the elite. Maybe i had watched so much that i was just ready to chill and talk with more people, who knows. I did get kind of caught up in the idea of jersey trading so i lent Ellsworth my yellow so he could get what i thought was the old doublewide jersey but ended up being the white doublewide new jersey which is sweet. But he said he would order me a new one so that is good. Then i traded my black for a Bravo jersey because why not. Then i just asked Matt to get me a new black and it turns out i traded my yellow for a bravo jersey. This to me was a good trade. I think i would have still liked to have the doublewide, but i will survive. Jersey trading..cool idea, but i think if i would have really been trying i would have gotten other teams and they would have been with people from other team that i knew a little better. Again something to do next time.

We did find out after that game that the Van Buren Boys were the spirit winners of the open division! Boo ya!!!!! We got our picture taken and I got smacked in the face with the spirit disc. It was completely an accident and later on i cried laughing about how it happened. Kevin had the disc and we were telling him to spike it. Well on wind up it ended up going straight into my nose. Rob drops like a sack of potatoes and starts to bleed. People start laughing (i mean cmon it was funny) and i was even in a weird state of laugh crying. I got my nose check out and no broken ness just a lot of soreness as it also smacked my front tooth. So that was a good time.

After this we started to watch the mixed finals but it was not as much fun. A lot of turns and well after half the game was over (most of the team had left due to needing to get to the airport) we left. I got in the car with the Seilers, Joe B, Nat and ty (i know her name is spelled a different way, but i like spelling it that way). We ended up stopping to get some homemade ice cream that looked really yummy but i was just not all that hungry. Good conversations had, the ice cream was superb from what i heard and well it was back home. When we got there it was beach time.

Headed to the beach to throw some disc and relax. Ended up in the water playing some disc. I was starting to get hungry so i got a group of people together and as we were getting ready to leave a huge storm rolled in. We went to this steak place...it was tasty. Talked with Jimi...awesome dude. Not that i ever had any doubts as he was in good company before i met him, but i really enjoyed chilling with him some more. It was also great to chat with Ben and Kali as i had not seen them all that much during the trip. Shawner and Tobie and Katie i see in MN and it was good to have a dinner with a group of people that were all hungry like me:) But the conversations had to do with a little disc, but really everything which is what i like. Yes Frisbee can bring us together, but there are so many other things to learn about people. Like i found out today that Wimer works as a consultant for a railroad in Kansas City. That is sweet! And that Drew is in the reserves. Stuff like that is always to learn about.

Anywho when we got back the night was a mix of some people were going to stay up until they had to leave and others went to bed since Doje had told people the party was at the house. We ended up cleaning most of the house so we would not get stuck doing it all in the morning and I went to bed with Katie next to me. This was a great feeling. I got to say good night to my wife and to me that is very nice. The last couple of night were just not the same getting to text her to sleep...lame. So i was happy.

Day 6-
I woke up very early as Katie and Solarz headed out at like 6AM. So i stayed up and watched the sunrise from our porch before staring to really clean. We cleaned for about 1 hour and 30 minutes before leaving. Said our good byes to the Seilers and Barret, got Karls stuff from the penthouse, said good bye to Berkseth and Cathy, then onto the airport.

I left in a car with Nickels, Louie, Karl and Sam. After dropping off Nickles and saying more good byes we decided to eat some lunch in the food court. After eating it was flight time. I got to the airport and for some reason after saying good bye to each person i got to my gate and wanted to cry. I did not know if it was the emotions of going 0-7, of the weekend being over, the season being over, not really seeing Katie, i had not idea what it was. But i started to reflect a little on the week and here are some things i concluded on...but first lets talk about the trip home.

I read my snowboarding magazine which was fantastic! All kinds of good stuff that i was excited to learn about and do this winter. Come on snow start falling! The flights were smooth and for the most part i had plenty of room. Then i finished 1984 by George Orwell. talk about a downer of a book that was good for a while, but ultimately i was not all about. I could see that book being better if i went more in depth to it, but i just thought it was alright. Probably one of those i will only read once, but hey read it and take it as you like it. Walking through Atlanta was crazy, 4,000 ft to my gate, but a good walk and I got to chat with katie for what felt like the first time. ( i should have talked to her more down in Florida, i thin i was "caught in the moment" downthere). But landed in MN and well Delta decided not to put my bag on the Norwest flight i was on but kept in on the Delta one with out telling me. so as katie is waiting for me looping and waiting i am waiting in the airport wanting to go home.

My bag does come in i get it, go home and relax with the Wifey!

So there is the trip in a nutshell. I was going to give my reactions to it all but that will have to wait. i am tired of writing and should do some work before i head out.

Make sure to check back with how I felt about the season, and overall posts that are not 100% disc related, but i am sure it will be there as it is always there. CHECK OUT MOCKOREGONTRAIL.BLOGSPOT.COM it is sweet.

Keep on smiling and hoping for snow :)

The Ghost of Van Buren

2007-11-05T10:32:00.000-06:00

Day 4-

2 days down and well this is the last day of playing the VB Boys will get at Nationals. The best we can do at this point is 13th and the worst we can do is 16th. If we lose these two games we hold seed and people will just shrug their shoulders and say well they were the 16th seed, what do you expect?

On the way into the fields i saw that Shazam returns was warming up...A-RON! I stuck my head out the window and with the voice i had left screamed, "Ayron i want my money" He responded come and find me i got your money! So this is in the back of my head, the last day to get my money.

Game 6 vs. Rhino (Portland, OR)
Our first game was against Rhino and like most games we started out optimistic, but in the end things fell short for the gang. We lost the game 6-15. U-G-L-Y we ain't had no alibi we played ugly. They made some sick catches, but really we just played horribly. BUT we did get a break in there somewhere i think...or was that another game. Regardless the D line did score a couple of points this weekend so that was good. We had some time after our game so it was time to pay Ayron a little visit.

I walk down to his game and i let his game end before confronting him. A little awkward but he did come right out and say he was a dick for not paying me. So i was like yeah, but at least you are paying me now. We watched the rest of the Brass Monkey Tandem game which went to universe point. After watching this game i realized how different coed and open really are. There were some guys out on the field that would not have been at Nationals on an open team. The women...well i think that coed women are pretty dang good and a god mixed team will use their women as well they rock. But there were a lot more turnovers as well. BUT still enjoyable to watch. Brass Monkey wins and it is time for Robin to get his $600!

He says he does not have a check book here so he will find someone to write a check for him. He asks if anyone has a check book, and a nice woman on his team says yeah i got my checkbook. A-ron asks if she could write a check to me for some money he owed. "How much money do you owe him?" "Umm $600 from like 2 years ago." At this point the lady takes her sun glasses off and looks at A-ron. That is a pretty big check how can i make sure i will get my money back. They work it out and here it is the pinnacle:

After 2 years, a number of emails and a flood of people never thinking i would get my money back i held it. A check for $600 made out to Robin Mooers. I got my money back. Take that all you people who doubted. It was a great joy to have this money in the hat. I ran down to my next game which well they were calling the first line when i got there, but i got paid! Even Becky was like no way. I don;t believe it! Shawner did not believe it, The clouds opened and miracles were happening. With this we lead into our last game of the torunament.

Game 7 vs Pike (New Jersey)
We start down in this game and due to time (for some reason) we cap this game. The cap goes on and it is 10-9 pike game to 11. We go out there, and tie it up so it is 10-10. Will this be the moment where the Van Buren Boys win a game at Nationals and break seed? no. We lost. :( A lot of people got to play in this game and we actually showed signs of goodness, but overall we were still not clicking like we should have. I think i played 2 points the whole game, but was yelling as much as i could.

So we went 0-7 at nationals (if we would have played one more game it could have been 8 and that would have been sweet) and although we did not win it was still fun to be there in the open division. I think it showed a lot of people on our team how good they are as players, if they could make it elite open or not. I agree with a lot of people on our team that if we would have thrown a couple practices in between Chicago and nationals we would have beat a couple of the teams we played. I will go into this a little later as i have other thoughts about the play at Nationals, but I still hold that we earned our spot there and we played some good disc.

Well now that playing was over it was watching time. Semis! This is where the games really get stepped up. The games were GOAT vs. Johnny Bravo and Jam vs. Sockeye. (Notice how the 2 teams in the 1st pool made it to semis!) I started to watch the Bravo game and it was a good game. There was the call where the guy got slammed to the ground and a fight almost ensued, but i was looking away when it happened (the spike that is) and well it just looked like a play that got heated. I was so far away that i am not sure of everything that happened, but at that point i went over to watch the other semi.

The only thing i noticed in these games was how crisp the cutting was. You started your cut and then if you were not open you were out and the next person was in. There was no clogging. The marks seemed a little less aggressive and I guess this is where i would need some coaching: why are the marks less aggressive at this stage? and were we cutting that sharp or was it just them? The played seemed faster but when we played Jam it did not seem this way. Was it because they were playing down to us or were we cutting that hard as well?

Overall it was fun to watch but i did not really care who won. I wanted to watch Surly in the finals. I started to walk over to the Surly game because Sockeye was up like 3 goals and i figured they had the game. Sure enough Jam fought their way back in the game but i heard it took so long due to calls.

Now it was time for some Minnesota Cheering. I need to bring my computer when i get back to nationals so i can put all this information up with detail. I remember seeing great plays but can not remember exactly who did what. As always there were some hard points to watch as our boys lost the finals, but it was a great game to watch and i am very proud of those Surly guys. They have so much knowledge for the game and they are all such nice guys. I have played with many of them and I hope they take the whole thing next year! Congrats to you Surly, 2nd place is awesome and it is the first step to knowing what to do different next year.

Wow, so what is next. I was under the impression that we were going to have a team dinner, but well that did not happen :( I was a little bummed that there was never "team" time off the field. This is something i think hurt us a little bit. We got home and went to the beach, and after a while came inside. A group of us headed to this little seafood place that was super good. I had this crab stuffing that was glorious and well overall it was just good food. We talked about possibilities for next year and this and that and previous tourneys and it was a blast! I was happy that i got to enjoy a decent sized group of the team at dinner.

The real fun began as we were leaving. Karl was doing something as we left and then one of the people in our car mentioned to Dave he should go and slam/wrestle Karl. Sure enough Dave walks over and it appears there are 2 guys scrapping in the parking lot. We are all laughing as people who are walking out are kind of walking faster away from the scene. it ended with Karsten slamming Karl down and well that was it. Dave felt a little bad since the ground was way harder than he thought it would be, but it was still fun. When we got back it was costume time!

(sorry about the glare...jimmy)I sprayed the hair as much as I could and put on my priest costume (disappointing, never again will i buy a cheap costume) after much waiting and what we were going to do we headed to the party. The party was in this really little small crammed bar. Wehn we got there it was packed and the majority of us did not want to spend time crammed in a bar. So we decided to pick up beer and have a party int he beach house. Looking back i wish i would have stayed at the party and just sucked it up because i think it would have been fun, but i still had a great time at the beach house. Instead of highlighting each piece there was some thriller dancing, a lot of cheering for people to drink, good conversations had, lots of dancing, some hanky pankey on the couch brendan, the beach was visited and a for most a late night was had. There are pictures going around of the party and it was a good time.

And i got to spend some time with Katie which was nice. It was not good quiet quality time, but it was still good to be with her and just to be around her. :)

After Katie left the party i went to bed shortly after as i was just tired and wanted to go to bed. A big group went down to the ocean and I was not about it so as it died out i went to bed. The door to the room i was sleeping in was locked (broken door knob) so i slept on the couch.

You are almost done reliving the briefness of Nationals 2007. Tomorrow should be the last post as i will combine the 5th and 6th day since the 6th day was just a lot of traveling.

I feel like there has been a bunc of other good things i could post about like how candy bars are still around 50 cents. I think that is awesome. I mean pop is up to like a buck, but candy bars are still 50 cents. Things have not gone completely AWOL just a little.

Enjoi your monday and we will be chatting on Tuesday.

Thank you Jimmy Budnick from the Nationals ultimate frisbee team for the pictures!

Will the Sun shine in Florida?

2007-11-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

Day 3-

We wake up ready to play day 2 of Nationals. We do not arrive at the fields as early but still around the 8AM time frame. When we get to the fields I am wearing my hat and well keeping my head covered from those pesky UV rays (i did make sure there was sunscreen on the head before i left the house). We get to the fields and start warming up for our first game of the day against Machine.

Before the game starts I run all the way down to where Katie is playing. I told her I would find her and wish her good luck before the day started (for cute). As i came closer so got this look on her face like say it ain't so. All of her teammates wanted to see the hair so the hat came off. She looked at it and oh the face :( She was unsure how to react but i she stepped away from me and started to cry. Tears of embarrassment. So i put my hat back on and ran back to the field where we were playing. I was a little sad that i made Katie cry, but i know she would love me no matter how I looked so i did not let it get to me.

Game 4 vs. Machine (Chicago)
Bummer we had to play a team we had already seen this year, but just more of a reason to come out firing on all cylinders! We lose this game 12-15 again in a close game where we played good but not great. I think this is the game where Kevin got his calf rolled on and Jimmy had the "what should i do call." The game had observers and like every time we had observers we were offsides once and then never again. I am pretty sure i was never offsides, but i was proud that i could still print down on the pull by the first throw or fast enough to not let the offense get their play rolling. I think having observers just for this reason is pretty awesome and it changes the game to how it is supposed to be. I really enjoy the challenge of chasing down the disc and waiting till it leaves the pullers hand. All Frisbee players are guilty of offsides, but to really follow it is pretty awesome.

We lost another close game and we were a little crushed. As this happened one week ago today i am unsure of the plays, but i remember this game being alright. A lot of drops, but overall not the worst to watch.

We took break realizing that by losing this game we would only be playing one more game and this game would be a game to play the "easier" game in the 13th place bracket. Our spirits are getting crushed a little more but still the fun meter is on the high point.

After watching the ladies lose a tough one we headed back to our fields for game #5.

Game 5 vs. Doublewide (Texas)
This game did not go as smooth as we were just flat most of the game. I think we started to click a little in the 2nd half of the game, but this game was just not the greatest. They had cool jerseys...sorry not much to report. I was really hoping to win this game as the Kansas boys had the inside scoop on them but when it came down to it we lost the game to ourselves. We were making poor disc decisions, dropping a couple here and there and just missing the disc.

At this point in the day it is time to watch the pre-quarters and the masters quarterfinal. So far the weather was cloudy and overcast for most of the day with a little sunshine here and there. Went to the food tents and bought a BBQ burrito...meh. not that great for $6 but it was food and I was hungry. Had a couple beers and started to watch the Condors (Santa Barbara, CA) Vs. Truckstop (Wash. D.C). Lots of calls and thankfully the masters quarterfinal of Surly vs. Old and In the Way was happening. This game was awesome to watch. All the minneapolis peeps were in the endzone heckling and cheering on our old guys. Phil Bowen makes the best D i saw all weekend as he flies past his defender and gets a D right at the goal line. P.Bo you rock man! Unfortunetly the good times were thwarted by the rain. The rain came down and there was a delay and well we were cold so we left. Surly was up and we were confident they would win this game.

Got home, put on some dry clothes and headed to the beach as the rain stopped. Over the coarse of the next hours some pasta was made and people were going from the beach to the ocean to the house. I ate 3-4 bowls of pasta and boy was it yummy. The beer was flowing and it was wrestling night in the house. Everyone wanted a shot at the Title holder Ross Cram who, when will people learn you just don;t wrestle him...he is good! Kevin took his shot at Ross and went 0-3, and I think Karsten took a shot at him and it was close...or was it...think brain think...regardless it was fun to watch! We ended up down by the beach were late night in/out box was played, Kevin put lots of people in the water, we met some locals who were chilling, talked with some doublewide dudes, eventualyl headed back to the house before everyone wanted to put Robin in the water. From there it was pretty tame as I believe I went to bed again just getting a text from katie saying good night :(

It was a bummer that Katie and I were in the same state and I feel like i barely saw her. Even when were are in different states i felt like we talked more but maybe it is because there was not contact at all. But this is when i really started to miss my wife. "Rob really it was like 3 days since you have spent quality time with her and you saw her earlier that day!" well to all of you saying this i stick my tongue out at you. Just getting to say good night to your loved one can make or break your day and well it just seemed like we never had a moment to sit and relax. So this bums rob out and he goes to bed.

I am starting to warm up to the wonderful hair! Good times are still being had and well yeah. As you can tell as the days start to trickle away from Nationals it gets harder to think of everything that had happened. Seeing as tomorrow is going to be a full day and the weekend is relaxing time i might miss posting day 4 and 5, but i will try to get those posts up.

Check out the following like for some wonderful pics from Jimi www.massiveimageworks.com/ultimate I am unsure if there are any rob pics :( but there are plenty of other ones that are pretty sweet!

I think i wish i would have done this day by day when i was down in Florida. Think of what would be in here, not to mention you would get rob typing after a beer or two...oh the simple joys in life.

Till next time, the next post will be at the same bat time, same bat channel.

Welcome to the Fields

2007-11-01T11:26:00.000-05:00

Day 2-
I forgot something about Day 1. Becky had been asking me for like 2 weeks to fix his IPOD. Well i had not seen him so i could not fix it. Sure enough when i got there i asked to see his iPod but there was not power left in it. So i ended up opening the ipod (with a paper clip, i was impressed) and after some fiddling and fixing got his ipod working again. Hey if your name is Beckified nation it was exciting, all others...not so much.

We wake up oh so early as we are to be at the fields by 7:30 AM per our capi-tan. Wake up, we blast the music from our little beach house and it sounds like the party never stopped. I mean i am pretty sure that if we were at the ocean we could still hear the music. At this point we were pretty sure we were the only ones on the block as the cops were not called and if they were no one was there.

We get to the fields and check out all the "schwag" as Drew puts it. As to be expected everything is super overpriced, but since it is Nationals people will pay for it. I was planning on getting some shorts, but i did not like what i saw. Then i thought maybe some sweats...for $30 i think not. So did i get any wonderful merch...yes i did. I bought a netted Camo hat with the Nationals logo on the front and some other jargon on the sides. Still overpriced but i do not have a camo hat and i liked it.

After this was done it was time to get down to business. Game 1 vs. GOAT (Greater Ottawa and Toronto)

We had played them three times previously this year and lost to them every time, but we know we can play with this team and believe we can beat them. We have a great first half in the fact that we are down 8-6 going into half. I sadly do not rememmber much of the game play but i believe this is the game where if you read Jimmys blog then the greatest that happened happens during this game. It was my guy that caught the greatest...but when it comes down to it, one of the three of us should have came down with that disc.

BUT i was really happy to see that we were sticking with GOAT and playing descent disc as we can come out flat against teams and well not do so well. So i was excited for the second half to start. The final score of the game was 13-8. We came out flat and well that was just no good. The weather was overcast so that was not the factor, but i think we just were not playing our game which is relaxed and creative, instead we were playing a more concrete this should happen then this and we ended up pushing the disc into places it did not need to go. But one game down 2 more to go.

We go and watch some neighboring games and get ready for our second game against JAM.
Game 2 vs. JAM (San Francisco)
Now the final score was 15-5 Jam, but i was not overly impressed with thier team. They put up some real ugly stuff and somehow came down with the disc. Others have said they were not playing all their "stars" and that they stopped caring so it should not look that great, but i still was not impressed. Even in the first half i know some of their big guns were playing and there is no doubt we could stick with them. Like the last game (the second half at least against GOAT) we were just flat. Bummer of a game and well i do not think much "fun" was had at this game. They do a good job of giving you ample time between games and so we went and checked out some other games like the Zero Truckstop game i believe and that was fun to watch. Heard the ladies were also having a tough time, but watched them minimally as whenever we watch them they tend to lose.

Between games was walk around with teamates and just overall chill. I got hungry during this time and grabbed a couple apples which were delicious! Then it was on to game 3. At this point we were going to drop down and so was Ring has they lost their first 2 games as well, so we were really playing a game that was crucial to our new pool.

Game 3 Vs Ring of Fire (North Carolina)
Well the final score was 12-15 Ring winning, but the game was actually a lot of fun. Good spirit on both sides of the disc and for the most part they were really nice guys. They had this tall handler #0 names Zack that i got along with but i think it was because i looked like a guy he knew who was also called Rob back in NC. There was a play in this game where i was downfield and a huck went up to me; it hung in the air a little and i beat my guy in the air but could not close on the disc and it popped out of my hand. I need to be coming down with those. I mean i had that disc, i just could not grasp it enough for the catch. BUT the disc went deep to the guy i was guarding and I did mangage to go catch up to him (yeah shawn and the TC crew running sprints) then get in the air and somewhat get the D. He missed the disc as well but if i had not been there it would have been a score. So that point it was kind of like a wash, but since we ended up getting scored on i feel like i lost. That was the end of the games. Obviously bummed we did not win one, but still had the hope of possibly making the play in game for quarters.

We ended up watching the battle of Zero and Furious George and watchign George go 0-3 on day one. Some of the plays were very contested but it was fun to watch. When this game ended it was Beer Garden time. "icepick, icepick, icepick, icepick" was the common cheer in trying to get Barrett well drunk. Got to chill with the boys and Katie and after she left we decided...maybe i shoudl cut the bald spot in the head to look more like Van Buren. Kevin grabbed some scissors and went to town. Oosh had a little shaver/buzzer and before we knew it the hair was gone. I texted Katie to let her know i was partially bald. (later i found out she cried a little bit :( )

So after much some more beer drinking we decided to head back home and have some dinner. We made pizzas. They took forever, but tasted good. In future cases i would not suggest making pizzas because of the time it took to make them, but they were tasty. The night was a lot of chilling and drinking and i think we ended up going to the beach...but i can not be sure. At this point it is more of i just am unsure, but i think it was make pizzas until like 11pm and then hit the bed around midnight as we had some games to play tomorrow.

On a side note, i forgot about finding Ayron, but i was looking for him around the beer garden...nowhere to be seen.

So we are 2 days in and well a couple more days to go. I understand how much reading this is, but hey, good times! At this point in time i am still waiting to see pictures from this weekend but I keep reflecting on it and really had a good time. I will most likely be doing a recap at the end of all this, but if you are reading it, i appreciate it!

We are done with Day 2 of 5/6 (which we will make one day) so there are couple more days to go: things to look forward to:
Katie's reaction to seeing the hair.
will VBB win get their first game and for that matter their first break on defense?
Will Rob eat a good meal at a decent time on Friday? -Lou the pizzas were really good, just took too long, much love bud!
How much beer has been drank?
What about the garbage build up in the house?
Why aren't there more cool pics on this blog?
What is your favorite disc throw?

Back later

Sarasota 2007

2007-10-31T08:33:00.000-05:00

Oh the times that were had down in the state of Florida. Lets recap via the epic novel and parts!

Day 1- Wednesday. Wake up super early and say good bye to the kitties. We get to Solarz place and take the shuttle to the airport. Get to the airport around 6AM for my 8AM flight. I started reading 1984 by George Orwell while waiting for the plane wondering if i would see any other frisbee players while on my way down. Sure enough i bumped into some zero guys and chatted with them a little before boarding the plane. Got on the plane, kept reading and then started watching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. So on this flight...it may have been the worst flight i was ever on in terms of turbulence. There were moments where the whole plane was just shaking back and forth and your stomach would drop from the weightlessness and well I was happy when we landed in one piece. I was also in the middle seat between to guys who were impeding my arm space. So that was not the greatest.

Quick stop in ATL and then onto Florida. When i got there I waited with Toby for Katie and Solarz to pick us up. More sitting. They come, we leave, get a little side tracked by taking the wrong highway but get right on track and we are on serve! I get dropped off at the beach house and dang that place is pretty sweet! I end up staying in the guest house in a bed in what will become the quieter house which is nice. When i want to sleep i want to sleep and well sometimes it is tricky when it is loud. But we quickly decide to head down to the beach and enjoy a little throwing in the water with Berkseth, Ellsworth, Louie and myself. If you ever want to work on your high release forehand playing in water is the place to do it. We did see this washed up Jelly fish :( (poor little feller) on the beach but it was HUGE. i think it was probably about 16" in diameter and just looked like a giant boob implant. Honestly it was just clear and jelly.

After getting inside and looking at the time we mention the captains meeting. to Kevin's response, "Oh yeah, shoot." Since we did not have a ton of cars yet Louie, Ellsworth, Berkseth and myself decide to go to the captains meeting and then get some dinner. We were thinking it would be a check in and then go, but we found out after checking in that there would be an hour long meeting at 9pm...lame. But the beer was already flowing so we enjoyed a couple beers :) I also say Ayron. Now Ayron owes Rob $600 from buying his car about 2 years and ago. I see he is playing with Shazam Returns and plan on making my move for my money later, tonight was just not the night. I knew he was there and he seemed to walk around the areas i was at. BUT Louie stays for the meeting and the three of us to eat at this sports grill. We eat some burgers have a beer, talk about the tournament and how we could do all around good talking. Drive home with the Peter Gabriel playing through the iPod "I've been waiting for this moment all my life..." oh yeah!

When we get back to the house some more people have come and i think we just ended up chilling. We watched South Park and people were playing cards and just overall chilling in anticipation for the first day of playing. I did go downstairs and start to whiten the hair. The spray i got worked, but the hair was more gray than white and it did not stick as well as i would have hoped, but it did the trick as the hair was going sideways and looking gray! Went to bed around midnight and that is Day 1.

Now i am just going to do this by day on different posts because otherwise this post will take forever. As of right now here are some running conflicts/plot pieces to unfold!

Will Rob get his money from Ayron?
How will The Van Buren Boys play at Nationals?
Will everyone arrive in Florida?
Will there be jersey trading?
Will anyone get hurt?
How will the hair look after playing a day?
How much beer will be drank?
Will there be sun in Florida or will it rain the whole time :(?

Check back later for the answers!

Im an Optimistic

2007-10-19T07:59:00.000-05:00

Hi, my name is Robin Mooers and I'm an optimistic. I think it all started when i was a junior in high school. Some of the tunes that were on the jukebox for me were bands like nirvana, radiohead, the cure...but there were also ones like blink 182, bob marley, the suicide machines(punk band), the beatles and other classic rock good times.

Well one day i just woke up and it was like a cloud was lifted from my head and i thought "i want to be happy. I want each day to be a great day and i think it can be." i have no idea where it came from but since then i love to see the best in each situation. There have been many contributors to this feeling like always seeing the best in each situation and all things are good and other prophetic verses from the Bible.

Since then it has been a downward spiral of smiles and hugs. I mean i wake up in the morning and when the feet hit the floor the day begins and i am ready to go.

This last week i was having a conversation with Jimmy Budnick from the ultimate team and he said optimism was just false confidence. Now we toggled with this idea and well i think we were both saying the same thing in completely opposite ways, but i remeber leaving on the note that we were on the same page.

I think in the optimism i believe anything can happen. This is not to say that it will happen, but i have the hope/faith and belief that it can happen. This can be for anything that life brings at you. Are you unhappy with your job, why? If you hate it and you apply yourself to finding one you will like you will find your job. Not finding the ladies or dudes that you want to find? Are you going to places you might meet these people or are you sitting at home talking to others about not meeting the people?

What is the point of all this? Well i think i changed ideas mid blog but if you want something go and get it. Better job, more friends, closer to family, more athletic, eat less, grow a worm farm, fly thirty feet plus in the air on a snowboard, break the international record for longest sneeze, whatever the goal may be you can achieve it.

The first step is believing you can achieve the goal.

The second step is taking the walk towards the goal and overcoming the obstacles.

I am Robin Mooers: husband, morning person, younger brother, brother in-law, uncle, account coordinator, pizza/sandwich maker, teammate, friend and an optimistic.

Life is Good

2007-10-15T15:41:00.000-05:00

Rob and I shared our 1 year anniversary yesterday and it was amazing. I can't believe I am so lucky as to have the most wonderful, caring, funny, and crazy man that I do and I simply adore him. I love you hunny. Love, Nationals, Engagements and weddings everywhere; what a wonderful year!

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more."
--Erica Jong

Smart Woman.

The Wifey

breaking it down

2007-10-15T09:55:00.001-05:00

So i went to Exit 69 this last weekend and played with the Waffle House Society (olaf alum team, weird that i have played twice for an Olaf alum team but never for a St. Thomas team...it will happen in due time) but i had a couple realizations that i just needed to put out there.

1-College ultimate is so much different than club ultimate. I think Truesdale said it best or at least something like this, "i was cutting off lanes, putting up crazy throws, looking people off, by no means playing great ultimate but everyone was telling me how good i was playing." Now this is not word for word but the basic idea is that in college you can get away with a lot of things. I for one am happy that i am not in college anymore but for the people who play play and college at the same time dang what a mind trip. You go from people who do things for a set reason (club) to people who do something just because they don't know what else to do (college). There are some pros to no knowing what to do, it brings out creativity and flow and you learn things about yourself that you may have not known.

But I had a good time playing as always and well it is fun to make yourself feel a little better by schooling the youngans. Well maybe not schooling but making yourself look good.

2-I have a real tough time playing in games i know mean nothing. When i stepped out on the field this weekend all i could think about was my current team. I did not want to do something stupid and injure myself or anything like that. So while i was playing there were times of hold-backy-ness. Which leads me to a wondering question that Ellsworth pointed out earlier this season...

3-Why do i not get more d's? I feel i am fast enough to keep up with the people i guard and i know i can get the disc from them, but i think i FEAR making the play, not getting the disc and then letting the player get an easy throw off. Now when this pops into my head i need to crush this FEAR and realize a good come from it: i could get the D and we score a break to put us ahead of the other team and let the O take a little break.

or

Do i fear injuring myself? I like to think no, but there are times i am sure the back of my head says don't do it you might get hurt...and i hate that. There are many times where i do lots dumber stuff (check that grammar babY!!!!!) that could be way more hazardous to the body, like when i attempted a 360 last winter in the snowboard and instead of twisting i inverted myself a little and landed square on my back knocking the wind out of me. That was not fun. I could care less that the entire chair lift line went oooo and laughed a little, i was in pain. took a little breather after that one. But that did not stop me from hitting my first real kicker last winter either which was exhilirating to just be in the air and then land smoothly.

The same comes in Frisbee. I think there are times when i lay out for a disc and even if i don't get it i am amped from the attempt that i pop back up and crave the disc even more.

(sidenote-after the fact of writing i really do not care about personal stats, as long as the TEAM is doing well then what else is needed? My mom asked me my best play at regionals and i said i had no idea. I know there were a couple of moments in a couple of games where i played well and had some good plays, but at this point i can not remember them. I just want to be perfect for my team like Coach Barnes said in Friday Night Lights. Knowing that i gave it my all is all i care about. Stats...not my thing, i just want to play and inspire others to play as well. And that is why i like to cheer so much :) )

So what does all this writing mean? why post these thoughts out there for all to see when there is a vulnerableness and there are way better things to read (mikey lun and kevins blog wonderful)? I think it is a personal form of putting the thoughts down and realizing step 1. what needs to be done and step 2. going and doing it.

I have waited for the chance to go back to the Nationals i was kind of in a trance when it all happened. I mean this season has been like no other but it has also been one of my favorite-not because we are going to nationals, but because i really enjoy this team. There is a comrade-ship on our team that is indescribable and it makes things so much fun. Yeah we have had our rough times, but we have had our great times. Losing was not fun and it was frustrating but when isn't it? I still look back on this not yet done year and smile :)

I am looking not only go to and do well at Nationals but to have a great time with a wonderful group of people.

love you all!

'07 logo is Sweet

2007-10-11T10:13:00.001-05:00

So the Nationals logos have been up and down over the past years, the best being in 2004. 2005 was horrible, 2006 not bad, 2007...AWESOME. Enjoy the goodness!

Thank you Illinois

2007-10-08T15:04:00.000-05:00

Nationals here we come. Our regional weekend in Tulsa, OK has finished on a high note with The Van Buren Boys snatching up the last spot in the Central Region to go to Nationals. But there are so many things to cover before we get to the "road to Sarasota!" Lets start with the ride down:

Jimmy picked Katie and myself up at our home on Friday around 11:30AM and upon a little late departure we were on our way to pick up Brendan. We pick up Brendan to find out (although i think i knew) that he works right next to the Summit Brewery!!!!!!! well for the next couple of weeks anyway.

We hit the road and the trip starts off with usual Frisbee banter, how will we do this weekend, what do you think of the seedings, etc... I finish a game of sudoku and feel good. We stop and get some gas say hello to a stray kitten that looked like it had come battle wounds :(, have a subway sandwich that was poorly made while we all agree that Wall Mart sucks. We get back on the road and sooner or later i start to drive. While i am driving Brendan and myself listen to some Beatles and Jimmy and Katie watch election and good times are had by all. After the movie Jimmy and Katie and Brendan started a game of scrabble which ended when we stopped to get some dinner at the high class KFC. At this KFC the bathrooms are well very undesirable, the food is food, and we see two little stray kittens (can;t be more than a month old) walking in the parking lot hungry for food. Katie lets them eat an extra burrito and we are on the road again.

We get to Jimmy's mom's house right around 11ish and things are good. I have a beer, Katie and Brendan hit the pillow hard while i am just thinking about the next day. I don't sleep all that well and as i start to sleep really well we wake up and get ready for a big day of ultimate. Peggy(Jimmy's awesome mother!!!!!) had made us French Toast which was delicious and after eating we were on our way to the fields.

Game recap (not really recaps, but thoughts begin!):

Game 1-pool play: VBB 13 Rawhide 9. Although we won this game and we were never down to these guys we did not play all that well. We had a lot of dumb mistakes and overall i think we could have played better. Looking back on this game i dont; remember much except that we thought we were to play to 13 but later found out we were to play to 11. Go figure. Regardless we start the day 1-0.

Game 2-pool play: VBB 4 Machine 11. This game was just ugly. Machine capitalizes on our turnovers and we just could not get the flow we needed to get back into the game. It seemed like we were not awake yet or something but i remember this game just being one to forget. Out shot at taking 2nd in the pool is very slim now and people start to talk about what the rest of the weekend will look like.

Game 3-pool play: VBB 3 Sub Zero 11. This game was a a bummer as well considering how we usually give zero a pretty good game. Again we could not get the groove going and come the end of the game we just seemed to have fallen into the funk. At the end of the game a goal was set forth. 6 games. 6 games to win and we will be heading down to Florida. We knew who 3 of these games would be against so it was time to prepare.

Game 4-pool play: VBB 11 Hustle 9. My memory sucks since i don't remember much about this game, but i look at the score and say how was it that close? Was it because we lost two huge games before playing this one? Was it because it was the 4th game of the day and fatigue was setting in? Who knows, but we win th game with some beautiful plays and lot of grinding to get the disc in.

We take our bye and watch the rackages start to hayride and Zero beat Machine in pool play and all kinds of other fun times.

Game 5-pool play: VBB 11 Illinois 7. The magic number had been pushed down to 5. We start this game with intensity and i think the Martin and Buren cheers are introduced for the world to hear. The first half is well bad. We go down at half 3-6. And then it happened. Van Buren started to adapt to teams, playing as one, getting d's and capitalizing. This game ends with 11-7 with the Boys ramped and ready to take anyone on. There is a flame in everyones eyes and the relaxation has set in. The question for the next day is will this fire burn bright through the night or will it fade and need to be rekindled in the morning?

Our car plans on eating with the team but 2 of the womens car merge in front of us, loose Louie and after making a couple wrong turns and not knowing where they are going we decide to eat some home made roast beef, corn, rice, gravy and biscuits at Jimmy's place. We meet Jimmy's older brother, sister and family and just have a chill night. I mean things were just chill. good times lets get back to the action.

Sunday
Game 6-pool play: VBB 11 Ding Wop 2. The fire not only stayed burning but was gettign more intense with each passing minute. We came out hard, fast and focused. We were creating turns and getting the breaks, having a creative flow on offense, adapting to their plays and forcing them to make mistakes. While the rain keeps coming down our magic number turns to 3 and we prepare for our next game against General Strike.

Game 7- 3rd place bracket quarters: VBB 15 General Strike 4. Before we knew it we were up 6-0. This fire was consuming our team. We were clicking and making the plays we all knew we could make. The disc was moving, we were coming down with the disc, contesting plays, working as a whole to achieve the goal. I believe we win this game with Karsten doing one his classic 5 feet in the air over a guy layout catches in the endzone. Magic number is now 2. Knowing that BAT would most likely lose to Zero we get ready to play BAT.

Game 8- 3rd place bracket semi's: VBB 15 BAT 10. The weather was all over the place for this game. It was rainy, lightning, sunny, windy and cloudy and then mixtures of each of these as well. We came out firing on and we traded points with BAT in a great game. The weather takes its course on us and we are told not to play for 30 minutes due to lightning. So we stop and throw around and when play resumes our o line is on d. They get the disc back and score. I believe we now have 4 points till the end of the game. We come out of this break with one thing in mind: Getting to magic number 1. A huck goes up, Berkseth runs deep, slides on his knees and grasps the winning goal. We win 15-10 and we have one game left to go to Nationals.

During this time the Front Line Madcow game is delayed because well there should have been no reason but their game should have started at the same time as ours but was delayed due to a Madcow taking forever against Machine. So they were granted a 30 minute break before their game. Well their game barley got going when the lightning delay happens so by the time we finish our game they are not even at half time. We start looking at our watches and we just throw around getting ready to play the winner of the game. Madcow beats Front Line, again the RC gives them 30 minutes...(honetly this was just BS. These games should have been capped. The schedule was set and the horn should have been blown. Not to mention the observer and traniner issues, but that is a another ball of wax. For any Tulsa player who might read this, you did a wonderful job with the tournament. I think most of the complaints are coming at the RC for changing game times, not having observers, trainer leaving early, and other reasons)

Game 9- 3rd place bracket finals (GAME TO GO TO NATIONALS): VBB 15 Madcow 13.
Even before this game started Madcow was complaining. One of them asked Wes if they could not smoke on the sidelines because it "affects" their team...then move away from the smoke. I know there was talk that we had a huge bye and they had 30 minutes (whose fault...i blame RC or Madcow) and all kinds of other crap. We were looking for an observer for this game and there was none of coarse. Right away in the start of the game the calls start. Lots of yelling and worst call ever and "are you serious'" are called and things just look ugly. On i think the second point brendan lays out for the disc and knocks the guy down, Joe B is close by and the guy goes face to face with Joe. As b-jar said, hey i knocked you over. But i don't care what happens this is ultimate and where in the rules does it say to go face to face with another player? Oh the calls continue. We trade points and the score is 7-6 good guys. We are on D and we create a turn. Ross cram throws a gorgeous huck down the line and the slot machine tracks it right inside the line and we take half 8-6.

Observers come in at some point and imagine that...the calls stop. Could it be that Madcow knows they make a lot of calls to try and get into other teams heads and create anger. na-uh not cool. The game is pretty good from here on out.

All i remember is the game point. As with this blog i am just keeping the tension and i do not remember all the plays. I am sure there will be a blog about plays and all that (like the Wimer throw pass and "NO" before dave catches it, or the kick the disc in the air to catch, Joe Nickles forgetting that we are playing Frisbee and not football and tackles a guy, Drew sayign go-go-gadget arms and ripping discs down, or Barrett flying, or Staron looking like a muppet as he gets lay out d after layout d, or ellsworth morphing into a wolf and while eating a baby cow d's the disc then runs deep and catches the score). This point took a long time but everyone on the sidelines from both teams were yelling. The score is 14-13 and the disc is pulled to VBB. We work the disc up the field and we turn it over. Madcow makes one throw that is caught but looks horrible. Ont he second throw turf. We pick the disc back up and there is a throw to Wes in the end zone. he catches the disc but there was a call on the throw and it comes back. We turn the disc over again. Our d-steps up and we get the disc back. We work it to the center, Staron throws the high release inside out to mikey or wimer (i forget dang it) this in turn is thrown to Barrett in the end zone. Catch Score Van Buren Boys are going to Nationals. We storm the field smother Barrett only to end with "Whose house?" WHITE HOUSE! we shake their hands and the celebration continues.

We hit the road as it is closing in on 7pm and the adrenaline that is pumping could probably kill an ox. I think i am still rolling in it.

Bottom Line, there will be another blog i am sure but VBB is going to Florida!

I thank you Illinois for giving us what was truely a great game. They came out firing and in that game we became the team we wanted to play for. A team that used all there talents to achieve the goal of making nationals. It is time for one last goal...One last campaign...Florida.

My Band of Brothers

2007-10-04T14:23:00.000-05:00

What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.-Henry V

Thanks Willie Shakespeare

Cookies making the world Happy

2007-10-02T08:16:00.000-05:00

As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true.

This quote is from Stranger Than Fiction and if you have not seen the movie then well you should. Katie and I watched it again last night and i must say that i really really really like this movie. The way the story is told and how things are done...the movie might have been one of the best released in 2006.

As regionals is dawning upon us we must remember the sugar cookies that happen in our everyday lives. May all your subtleties be brought forth to give a wonderful day. A day that will kick start you towardswhat you strive to achieve each and every day; whatever that may be i wish you the best of luck.

Keep on smiling :)

Muffintops

2007-10-01T09:45:00.000-05:00

Alright, so I decided to write about a topic that is something I feel very strongly about. Muffintops, or the flub that hangs over girls jeans in an attempt to squeeze themselves into a smaller size than they actually are.

Let me start out with a quote that was found online that I feel gives an accurate depiction of what I am speaking of:

“The Sausage Casing Girls are everywhere this summer, their muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans, clothes shrink-wrapped around fleshy bodies that look as if they've been stuffed — like forcemeat — into teensy tops and skintight pants.”

I was disgusted at the sheer volume of muffintops that were seen when I went out to Gashofs this weekend. Woman after woman walked by wedged into pants that were clearly too small for them causing this massive bulge to come up and over the tops or their jeans and peak out of their baby t's. Actually, some of them didn't even have baby t's, but you could still clearly see the overflow coming out of their pants like a fleshy volcano ready to blow.

Sidenote- I am not by any means picking on larger women; the muffintop applies to all sizes. The picture at the top of this blog shows two women who are not fat by any means, but look ridiculously chunk-normous due to the fact that they don't know what size pants they should be buying.

First I would like to state that there is no way possible that this can be comfortable. Breathing seems like it would be a difficult task and talk about having to go to the bathroom ASAP upon the signal arrival.

Clearly, they don't look good. Perhaps they think they look good. Perhaps they think that this is how a woman is supposed to be shaped. They are wrong.

Another option could be that they don't realize how they look. They put their clothes on and through the idiotic approval of their friends, they are out the door and ready to party the night away and wonder why they can't find a man to dance with them, or even talk to them for that matter.

I think the best observation that can be made is that these women are in SIZE DENIAL. That's right, size denial. They don't want to believe that they are a 10 when they can squeeze into that 6. Last time I checked the tags on our clothes are on the inside and NEWSFLASH, no one else can see the size you are wearing, so suck it up and buy the 10!

I admit I am guilty of not wanteing to wear a bigger size. Perhaps that is why I only buy my express jeans. at express I am an 8. At most other places, I am a bigger size. However, I am aware of the fact that I won't fit into an 8 at hollister and therefore I choose not to shop there because I don't want to buy the bigger size (well, that and for a number of other reasons, but that's a whole new blog altogether). Is this stupid? Perhaps. However, I have found a healthier alternative to squeezing myself into pants that don't fit and I have found a place where I don't have to wear a larger size, therefore I look good and feel great!

Benefits of wearing the right size:
First off, you are going to look smaller wearing a bigger size that fits. Secondly, you will be more comfortable. Thirdly, I have only checked with a few, but from what I know you will be a much bigger hit with members of the opposite sex.

Moral of the story:
So please, I urge you all, big and small, to wear your size and not disgust us all. Don't lie to your friends and tell them they look good when they clearly have spillage; that's just rude.

Muffintops must be dispenced of, and it begins with you! What size do you wear? Really?

- The Wifey

PS- If I ever have muffintop, god forbid, please, you have my permission to drag me out into the street for all to see and shoot me.

FYI- I got the biggest skirt I could for Rackages and am still extremely paranoid about muffintopping it.

on hold

2007-09-26T12:59:00.001-05:00

This weekd blog has been put on hold based upon inspirational email that has been sent. IF there is time i will talk about the Gyro and Superdog and sectionals, but well that is in the past right now and the eyes are on the prize: REGIONALS 07. i am sure there will be posts here and there but now..well i just got to many other things to say and stuff.

The time is now!
Oklahoma here we come!

Gyro man!

2007-09-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

There have been many things on my mind but one thing in particular is going to happen very very very soon. For about a month and a half i have wanted to meet the Gyro man in Ames, IA. My coworkers (ex-IStaters) have talked many a good things about him as well as the current VBB players and ad the time is drawing near the wonderful thoughts of gyroness are filling my head. This hunger for gyro will be put on hold providing certain events happen on Saturday, but a must this weekend is getting a gyro, getting picture taken with the gyro, gyro stand workers and myself and then telling all about the wonderful experience. I hope you all help me in this endeavor!

Gyro time is coming!

Catch-up

2007-09-18T14:49:00.000-05:00

Wow! I can see the Mr. has been real busy and so it is time to catch-up on a lot!

1. CHC. I am not sure what to say about CHC. I had a good time, but the weekend seemed to lack a certain spark that this team has had at previous tournaments. With the exception of certain points on day one and the last game on day two, it appeared that our team lacked the flair that made us strive for excellence and be the best that we can be. I agree with most that our lack of ass-whipping had to do with mental game more than anything else.

I myself am guilty of a lack of focus. I felt like I was kind of in a zone all weekend. I was crabby with some people which I usually am not and I feel as if I lacked confidence on D which resulted in me kicking my own ass on the field.

I am confident that this weekend will blow in with fresh air and everyone will take what happened at CHC as a wake up call to really be as prepared as they can be to play their hearts out. Not only physically, but mentally. I challenge myself to score deep at least twice this weekend and to get at lease one layout D if not more and I know that I can do it. I am stoked to be starting the series and I couldn't be happier with the team that I get to play for in it!

2. Jared. I miss him so much that sometimes I feel as if I am going to burst into tears right here at work. Well, and sometimes I do. Jared, for those of you who don't know, is my baby brother. He was the brother that I was closest to (of 4). Last summer, he lost control of his crotchrocket and didn't make it. This is the worst pain that I have ever felt and I would never wish it on anyone; not even my worst enemy. Jared was only 21 and was an inspiration to so many people with his happiness and enthusiasm and there is not a day that goes by that I am not proud of the exceptional man he had become, especially in the last year of his life. I love you bro, and I always will. Happy 23rd. Say a little prayer for the series for me eh? I'm thinking you got some pull up there with how charming you are :)

3. Birthday. Well, did I have fun or what? I can honestly say without a doubt that I do not remember the last time that I was that drunk. I had way too much to drink and had awesome people there with me to share in the good times!
I still can't believe I took my bra off through my shirt in a crowded bar... not my finest moment; not that anyone saw anything... Thanks Rob for those pictures; your mom reads this you know! Ah well, such is life. Email me and I can send you a link if you want to see all of the pictures :) ( kedurant8@yahoo.com )

3. Housewarming. What a success! We had over 60 people grace us with their presence and I think that everyone enjoyed my homemade chicken salad and strawberry trifle :) Thanks to all who brought over gifts! It was both unexpected and pleasantly surprising! Thank you as well for all of the lovely comments on our new home. We truly love being back in St Paul and closer to all of the gang :)

4. Tuna vs Luna. These kittens have stolen my heart! They are so cute! The pictures really do them no justice; I guess you'll just have to come and visit to see them!

Thanks to all who read and are interested in Rob and I's lives :) Take care and I can't wait to kick some Central Booty this weekend!

Katie / Matie

Tuna and Luna

2007-09-17T11:12:00.000-05:00

Well lets start this blog by welcoming two new additions to the SuperHappyFunTime hour: Tuna and Luna. This lovely pair of 4 month old kittens were purchased yesterday and the St. Paul human Society and were a part of an unwanted litter. Tuna is the boy (brother on the left, don't let his gangsta look fool you) and is as active as rob. He loves to play with the toys and just loves to run around. When not running around he purrs like a machine and is super cuddly. Luna is the girl (sister, true playa who will steal your heart) and she can JUMP. I mean for a 4 month old this little kittie could probably sky Wes...no lies. She is a little calmer than Tuna but she loves to stay close to you and just cuddle. Katie and Robin are super excited to have them and as far as we can tell they will be great little kittens!

Lets take a step back and go back to Katie's 26th b-day! Mr. M cooked the Mrs. a lovely steak dinner with scalloped cheesy potatoes (sadly they were not fresh but boxed), broccoli and french bread. We woudl need this thick wonderful dinner as Gastovs was in our future. Solarz and Amy were coming over early for some pre-outing festivities which included the jello shots. So while Solarz being Katie's dress up girl Katie manages to put down 7 jello shots. By the time we were in the German Bar she was feeling great. Then she got a liter drink called the "Tie me to the bed post" This drink came with a warning saying..."Warning: If you drink the contents of this drink you may end up being tied to the bedpost!" The thing was of 8/9 alcohol and then a little mixer. I would say Katie put about 1/2 down and the other girls were helping take on this monster. Oh no she was not done there. She also took a couple swigs from the passing boot, and her own 1/2 liter and liter of beer. Katie is not a beer person but her German roots shown through and she put them down like a champ. Some highlights of the evening. Katie looking into her purse and seeing three womens bras, rob putting Katies bra on top of head, Solarz and Kara attempting to kiss Katie again, Solarz polka dancing, kara's friend giving out a fake # to some dude, the old guy who Solarz denied on the dance floor, Rouda being Rouda (so many things to say here but you must ask), Juice downing the boot with authority, oh my gosh so many things to keep posting but just ask Benny boy for the pictures and let them speak for themselves!

We got back late, Katie had a massive hangover and could not eat her Taco Bell (i think we still have it, Gyro man i am coming for you!) and we enter to our housewarming party.

This went great and thank you to all who could attend! If you could not make it but want to see the house give us a call and we will she it to you! We have lots of food left, good times were had, and when the evening ends watching the 1966 Batman movie you know all is well.

Sunday was Kitty adoption day and watching the Vikings lose but i would say this weekend was great. I did get to go running on both Saturday and Sunday in preparations for sectionals this weekend and now that all things House are done Frisbee can really take over (more so than before so really it will feel like college where all it is is disc disc disc!)

I will post again i am sure but enjoy the pictures and we will talk to all soon!

Happy B-day

2007-09-12T09:05:00.000-05:00

Don't know where else to write this so i am taking this space to vent a little bit.

Jared, Happy Birthday brother. I wish you could be here and i Miss you man.

There was more written here but that was between you and I! Happy 23rd buddy and May God grant you peace and at least a little b-day cake.

Harder, Bigger, Faster, Stronger

2007-09-12T08:22:00.000-05:00

CHC is the hot topic and for once i am going to have a little personal reflection starting with something that Ellsworth (you know for someone so new to the game he brings up all the good little things you start to forget) said at the end of the weekend about D players forgetting why they are out on the field...to get D's! Now i am always out there to get D's but at the same time I admit there are times when defending when i am afraid to take that chance leave my guy open for something big and get scored on because of it. But this is what the D needs to do. I feel like i have the speed to D up more guys if i am guarding a cutter and when on the handlers i think i can play a lot more aggressively to generate the turns. So point one, get the crazy eyes and generate the d's!

point 2. I apologize to some of the handlers for not getting open off the line faster or open for dumps faster. I can think of 2 in particular that i should have cut a different way and then we would not have turned it. Stu i left him stranded on the line once and Mikey that turn in the FrontLine game where the dump was all kinds of crazy was my bad as well. I think this was maybe not recognizing where i had the advantage on the defender but i think if i can clean this up i can get back to where being that consistent handler who can get the disc from you if needed.

F-breaks...Rob where were the breaks this weekend? i love to throw breaks, it is actually my favorite throw the low IO forehand break (okay the IO backhand huck is probably my favorite but you get to throw that like once a millennium). I know it is there i have thrown it may times and i am unsure as to why i was so hesitant to throw it this weekend. Were the cuts not there, was there a clog in the lane, was i just not in a breaky mood, was the wind a factor... i am unsure. Along with this i need to make sure i don't forget about that other break on the backhand side. the low backhand has come in handy many a time before and i should use it more. I mean when someone on the other team asks you how the hell you got that throw off you should be able to throw it more. Bring the breaks back!

8-Cheering, i got to get something new. I feel like my MUDI was great because everything was so new and the cheers were just flowing. The last 2 tournies i can do better. Like where is the Martin! (yes that annoying thing that comes after the White House is me saying Martin! listen to the RUN DMC song and you will finally understand the greatness...or watch Dogma it is in there as well) I was happy to see others yelling the for the White House because lets face it, yelling for 7 games is going ot take a toll. By the end of the weekend i was squeezing sound out of my abs to try and make a sound. Whatever it takes you know i will be yelling all game!

Overall as a team i have to agree that there were 2 VBB teams there this weekend. The team we know we can be but are afraid to unleash for more than one full game a weekend and just let play halfs; and the other team that lets teams get back in the game and plays to the ability of their opponents. There have been people commenting about the team coming together we need to do just that but also understand it can not be forced. When everyone finally gets on the same page we will be the team we want to be. When we as a TEAM realize our goal is to beat the opponents as a team and not individually then we will gel... If you are worried about PT or the next game or about how your left index finger is a little sore and you should not play (i had nothing and just made this up, not pointing fingers or any of that just more of a i could play but i dont feel like it sort of thing) then at that point we are not working as a team. If you ask any team i have been on or people that know me being a TEAM is the biggest part of the game to me. If we put together a bunch of great people who play disc and they are all great players but don't respect the other person or feel like this person should in not be in because i can do more then we are missing what makes TEAMs great. This is why the 1980 US hockey team beat Russia. They honestly were not a better athletes but they trusted and believed in each other. When they were not together they were thinking about how they could better the team. Since we don't practice if you are not out there running or getting yourself in better shape then you are not contributing to the team. There are guys on this team that are in great shape and they are ready to play whenever called upon. It also feels like there are some guys on the team that could be in a little better shape and are waiting for something. Well i tell you what, if we are all out there bettering ourselves for the sake of the team then who will stop us. Not everyone needs to do sprints every week or run 5+ miles or lift weights, but you should know within yourself what you need to do to better your play for the team. Even thinking about the team and what you can help. -wow i just kind of had a little tangent about this and i love it. The last thing i will say about this is any team out there that works as a team to beat an opponent will win! TEAM is a huge part of the game. Maybe for sectionals we do just that and we have the team all go out for dinner in the same spot and stay in respective close places. This has not happened all year.

Back to the CHC. I was bummed that we lost to GOAT and BAT but really the only 2 loses that really make me mad are the Front Line and Madcow games. We had them and we lost them. Nothing more to say here.

Like the nation-o-beckifiness i am weary to all the great plays and this and that but i will call out his D in that one game where he laid out into the lane and got the d it was pretty sweet. Shawner getting up and getting the D in the zero game was awesome. Benny lyons always amazing me with what he does...keep it up. I dont want to go off on a everyone list at this point in time but i will end on this little story:

In the Zero game Karsten was already playing is ass off to get our team out and excited about the game. He makes an in cut, Shane lays out trying to get the disc and ends up rolling Dave's ankle. Dave dumps the disc and what does he do...He gets up and starts limping. He sees an open cut for a huck, takes it and lays out for the score. The whole team remembers this point and how awesome it was...but what i think was so awesome about it was the heart and determination it took to get up on the ankle sprint in pain and then layout for the sake of a point. Dave you inspire! I hope your ankle is better and may we all play with this kind of heart in the upcoming tournaments.

Last thing i swear about disc. I love this team. I am having a great time and meeting all knds of awesome people. Lets see people i did not really know before being on this team: All the Kansas boys, so much fun, Passed a lot of the Iowa boys but have gotten to know them better and just getting to know everyone has been a treat. I feel like i have barley gotten to know some people which is a bummer, but hopefully this will change! The VBB has yet to reach the summit of where we can play, but i do not think we are that far off from the top! Lets keep climbing and finish the 2007 campaign trail!

Chocolate Squirrel

2007-09-06T08:24:00.000-05:00

So i have been thinking about the Frisbee here and there and i have to admit that i am nervous for this weekend. Regardless of who we play (which is intimidating yet also exciting) i am just nervous to play. I feel like i may have lost a step which is coming back slowly due to some routine moving of homes, but i don;t know i am just nervous. Maybe it is that the those Van Burgen Boys really do have what it takes but we have yet to unleash the furry on said teams...are we waiting for something or someone to bring out this fire...because now would be the time to do it.

Like the guy who used to wear all orange shoes but now follows the path of Mr. Johnny Cash dressing all in black, lets just finish the top 2 in our pool and then take the elite 8 by storm. We come out on Saturday morning with the grass still waking up for its night time rest and we not only surprise the GOAT by not giving them one inch to make any mistakes but take the game away from them before they know what is going on. The team is in good spirits and stays loose to play Sir Duke where visions of Karsten hucking and bringing down crazy throws abound. Last Call bring just that, the last call for the VBB to blog their way to a #1 seed from their pool. There is some rest and some food and some Liquid and then the 8 begin. We dig deep and people realize that the VBB have shown up ready to win this CHC election. The team is supporting each other and making sure people are staying up and positive. The sidelines are active and loud, the white house has been flown in just for everyone to see whose house it really is.

Meanwhile while all this is going on the the rackages are staking their claim that even with small racks our four legged friends can take on any Mojo or nemesis that gets in their way.

As the midwest comes together this weekend to do Battle the VBB will emerge victorious, but will do so with a glimmer of light shining down from the heavens giving thanks for all that this weekend has brought. And there will be a light in the south that is calling to the blogging boys saying "come and play with me"...

A life lesson

2007-08-31T10:48:00.000-05:00

So Frisbee in a way can take on life lessons...weird huh? As I was thinking about Jakerz last comment about not utilizing the information we talked about from the previous tournament. So this is something that comes in life as well. Like for example: I know that eating a lot of pizza will make my stomach feel bad and overall i will be lazier and this wil make me crabby because of all the crap i put in my body and etc... yet i still do it from time to time. Why is this? Is this part of Human Nature or is it a part of the self that does not want to let go and we as people need to overcome this sensation and learn more self control? I am going with the later of learning yourself and teaching your body to say NO!

There is a wonderful little parable in the Bible:Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV)
3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

I take this to mean to mean all kinds of different things, but mainly you really need to know who you are as a person before you can offer advice or other things to people. Writing it that way makes it feel like someone has pissed me off with some advice but that is untrue. I just think that people, especially myself, forget to look internally and figure out why I tick the way i tock.

The same can hold true for the VBB. Right now the VBB is operating and offering this or that but not looking at who we are as a team. If we focus on what needs to be done and how to not become members of dropsie corp. or other various places of business like Losers Inc., Conversion City or Sweet Awesome Defense only to turn it back to the O and not score boutique; then we will start to be the team we all know we can be...in the army (tehehehe it rhymed cmon it was fun).

This little ditty was not really Frisbee inspired, but i figured since mostly frisbee people read this then well...it should tie in. Take this off the field and life will be gooder.

Enough preaching, have a safe Labor day and I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Welcome to the Water Bowl

2007-08-27T15:23:00.000-05:00

So i have meant to post since Cooler ended but well things got a little crazy with life. First off i want to give a shout out to Kevin and Lana, hope the wedding went well and as i write this you are both out on your honeymoon and we all hope you are having a wonderful time! I am sorry i did not send a congrats closer to the day, but i did wish you the best at Cooler, so well umm yeah i hope all went well!

Lets talk about Cooler and then go into the fun that has been the last week or so. I don't remember who said it but i agree with them, Cooler was a little bit of a disappointment :( BUT i think some any godo things came out of it and here is what i say. The bummer is VBB came out like we did at MUDI and we were not as amped up for some of the games like we needed to be. We beat the Mad Hatters but i think the score of 15-13 was a bit to close for comfort. We dominated this team but kept turning the disc. Then the game we lost against Madison was just a bummer. We killed them last time and i don't care if they had more people or what but they had the fire and we didn't and they just plain out played us and we lost. The opportunities to take away from Cooler are the follwing:

1. Getting focused on the next game.
It should not matter who we play or when we play a team we need to take each game like this game will affect where we play for the rest of the year. I agree with Ellsworth that we should focus a little more on warm-ups before the game. Like running a set drill, or doing something. I know there are some people that prefer to warm up by alternative means (soccer ball, plyos, hucking, throwing...) these are fine, and i say keep doing it as long as come game time people are ready to rock. Maybe get in the drill for a couple passes and then do your own thing but it is the teams job to get people off the sidelines and warming up.

2. Drops!
Holy cow...we dropped a ton of stuff at Cooler. I think we had some representatives of the drops club. When we came out against Machine most of our turns were drops not Machine D'ing us. Yes it was raining and the weather was not ideal, but this is where the mental game comes into play. If you go into a game where the disc is wet and you think man i really have to focus on catching this way because otherwise i will drop the disc, or my hands are cold i need to do this or (i am trying to put a negative spin on this and failing)...regardless if you let the elements get to you that will make you uncertain and things could go bad. Stop rewind slow motion play....What i am getting at is you need to play with confidence. If the weather is not ideal (wet and rainy for example) in your head come above it and compensate for it. The disc is wet, no worries, just attack the disc and after i catch it make sure i have a good grasp on it before setting the pivot and throwing. You will play better if you just come to grips that the weather may or may not change (we cannot control the weather) but you can come above the weather and not let it affect you. If you are unclear here comment and i will try to clarify further but what it comes to is play with confidence.

Those are the biggest things i think we need to work on, otherwise lets look at the great things we did:

Our defense was doing GREAT! We were getting D's on all the teams and it was awesome to watch. Now we just need to make sure we are converting those turns to scores and getting the breaks. I said it once at practice but D people are best when they don't have the disc they turn into someone who just needs and craves the disc and will not let anyone get in their way of getting the disc. It is like your are the Juggernaut bitch (funny clip) once he starts he dont stop! But when we get that D you become the chill hippie who notices all and relaxes. The world slows down a bit and you just wait for the right throws and the right cuts and the disc will go in. When i threw that hammer to Wes at Cooler and everyone stopped breathing for a moment...it was just what needed to be thrown. Wes was very very very open and the hammer was the throw for it. (it may have been hasty, but the sidelines erupted upon completion). bad example but if the D line just embraces the turn and we walk the disc up our point differential will become greater and games will seem easier.

Offense, you know i got to play on the O line at Cooler which is a change for me. I have played a lot of D line handler for the last like 4 years and it was fun to be on the other side of the disc. I thought the O line did a great job of moving the disc and getting to where it needed to be, we just did not get the hucks we usually do. If the O line did turn it I thought he defense was actually pretty good, the other team just had the right patience and scored a few to many times. This goes back to the drops thing, if we drop less we will be untouchable. O line, keep doing what you are doing and we should rock. I loved playing with you all and hope to play a point or 2 with you in the upcoming tourneys!

Last thing about Cooler is that not alot of teams had great d's on us they were a lot of d's on ourselves. Bad decisions or dropped passes or overthrown/under thrown throws. Little things like this if we clean up life is good. Mike Lun said it best after we lost to Madison on Saturday..."You guys we still have Sunday and it is not like we can't make it to the final still!" I love this mentality and how our team is ! We are quick to make things positive and we should be. Keep the heads up and we the campaign trail will continue.

There are tons of things i could probably comment on but well i have been writing for a while it feels like.

Katie and I are official home owners as of Thursday August 23rd. We closed on a little slice of paradise in St. Paul, off of Englewood (given up props to 2-Pac, the dumping of the 40 will take place in the back yard to pay reapect to our fallen homies later this fall tehehehehehe) which is one block north of Minehaha. For all you who dont know where this is don't worry we will be having a house warming party in the upcoming weeks.
But back to the story we started painting on Thursday and painted the dining room, the master bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen. We did a second coat on the bedroom thursday night and we had one room completely done. The mothers and Kelly came over and painted beautifully! On Friday Kelly and Jade, mom Mooers, Katie and myself tackled the rest of the house putting the last coat on in the kitchen and dining room: we called in dad mooers to finish off the bathroom but after much deliberation and hours in a small space we still had one more coat to put on the stripe (patience you will have to see it when you see the house;) ).Regardless we finished and got some time to chill with the college pals ans gals which was awesome. Rocked out on some guitar hero and just chill which was nice for both katie and myself, especially since we realized we still have a whole bunch of stuff to get ready. So after we left and got home and packed till about 1:30AM and went to bed. When we woke up we looked at all our stuff and said we have a lot of stuff.
To make an already long story a little shorter i would like to publicly thank the following for helping us move: Ma and Pa Durant, Ma and Pa Mooers, Big Bro Mooers, Juice and Amy, Neal and Anna, Jackie, Waters and Michelle, Phil and Kalen. I think that was everybody...and sitting down to some pizza and beer was nice as well.
Sunday we unpacked and tied up some of the loose ends but none-the-less kept moving stuff around. My body feels like it was at a 3-day tournament. Friday was the worst because i woke up and did the sprint workout before painting and the legs were a little tired. But it looks like we will be able to unpack all our stuff this week and every day the place gets a little homier. Can't wait to show it off and for you all to see it on September 15th, the evite will be coming soon!

But yeah the house is great, super pumped up for Chicago and ready to bring this team together and really show all what the VBB can do. Keep the training going and lets start up that VBB banter to let the teams know VBB is coming to Chicago with one thing in mind, electoral votes!

time to stop writing the analogies are horrible
rob

Cooler Classic 2007

2007-08-20T15:24:00.000-05:00

Ah, frisbee. I have to thank the love of my life for bringing me into this unique exciting world of disc which has become a love of mine in and of itself.

I had an amazing time this weekend at cooler. I love my teammates! They are rockstars. And so the story begins...

Rob and I drove with Shel down on Friday eve and we made pretty good time. We had a lot of good conversation on the way including our take on the tournament and what the desire was to be accomplished (1st of course). With only a quick stop to eat at Subway and one gas station, we were pulling into camp in no time at all.

Fun was had by all as I mingled around saying hi to the Liquid Assets, Surly, and VB Boys. Met up with Solarz, Swartie, Gibbs, Kara, and the like and Solarz was kind enough to give me a couple drags off her tequila bottle, mmmmmmmm. I thought wow, I am going to sleep well tonight. I thought wrong.

Camping. I will be honest. I have never liked camping. I never sleep very well on the ground and I am always damp and well, it just plain smells bad. I am one of those girls who would much prefer a cozy bed with my fan of white noise lulling me to sleep. Drunkin frisbee folk peeing outside my tent and constantly walking by saying "is this the path between campgrounds" much louder than necessary while they were clearly on the path walking through the woods was not my idea of being lulled. Finally at 3:45am I lost my cool, ha ha, ok so it was lost well before then but this was when my last nerve melted away.

Some drunkin girl was on this path and decided it was necessary for her to coax a man friend onto the path with her. This consisted of her saying very loudly 'Come over here, I want to show you something, giggle giggle, I REALLY want to show you something...' The guy didn't even seem to be paying attention to her and as she started getting louder and this was going on for a minute straight I just belted out SHUT UP. The next course of action was very mature. 'You, shut up. You shouldn't have camped here if you don't like it.' (She said in a 7 year olds voice half slurred) To a certain extent she was right. However, considering just about everyone else was already asleep for the night, I felt she was in the wrong in this case. I thought about getting up and pummeling her ass, as I was very frustrated at this point and just wanted a little shuteye before the tournament, but apparently my silence was enough and she scurried on her way.

I decided the car was a better choice and finally found solace in the comfort of my Kia. I woke up about 5 and found my way back to the tent as no one was up at this point and I was cold sleeping in the car by myself. Two hours later it was up and away for a day of fun.

Fun. Hmmmmm. Awesome to play with my teammates, no doubt! It was great to see everyone again including my Gibbs, who by the way kicked some major ass this weekend! I was however very disappointed that we didn't have more competition. Eight points scored on us all day and the last two games we blanked the teams. The weather was less than desirable; it was as if we were being spat on by some angry giant of sorts.

Saturday night kicked ass! After showering at the campsite where we were the only ones there, we went to get some necessary items to prepare for the long night in the rain and the next day. Then we headed over to over to the Delafield Brewhaus for what proved to be my favorite part of the tournament.

Sitting at a high-top table, myself, Shel, Swartie, Solarz, and Kara started off relatively mellow. We shared an app and started on a few drinks and hilarity ensued. Cathy, you are Hilarious! I'll never forget Dave Truesdale's penis. I'll never forget all of the ladies putting on their lipstick for the menfolk. I'll always remember the festive blue drinks and we certainly could never forget swarty insisting we all have another round of buttery nipples. Long live the ring worm and nipple poking. Kara, never stop finding yourself in awkward situations and telling stories about it. We might have been just a tidge too loud and roudy for the restaurant. I foolishly threw some lettuce at Solarz which landed on the man behind her and then I had to pick it up and apologize; talk about a buzz kill... I think I decided it was time to high tail it out of there when Cathy started shouting for Shawn to jump off the balcony. Or was it when I kidney punched Carl for humping my leg; now I am not so sure. Either way, it was good times.

That night Rob and I were forunate enough to get floor space in a hotel; thanks Wes! It was glorious to not be damp and I found myself sleeping soundly by 12:30pm. I do wish I wouldn't have missed out on the fun in Solarz' tent. I still have yet to see Solarz really drunk. I am kind of afraid now I decided; she is just a little bit evil...

Sunday was rainy. Boo. The only nice thing was that jumping for a disc was like going down a slip and slide. No bumps and bruises for me at this tournament. The first two games were real quick. The plastics had awesome prizes! I am sad that Nemesis didn't bring it like I was hoping. I was happy that the bitchy calls were held to a minimum, but they turned on themselves a lot in addition to our D's and the game just wasn't even close.

Ah well, some day soon we will fight to the bitter end and prevail amongst a strong competitor and it will taste sweet. There's nothing like a win you've truly had to fight for, and our day will come. I have every confidence in my team that we will be National Contenders this year and I can not wait for that day to come.

Long Live Small Racks with Big D. And you too Swartie and Tai :)

Katie

He is talking to me

2007-08-15T08:52:00.000-05:00

Van Buren is talking to me he is!

Cooler is calling

2007-08-15T08:38:00.000-05:00

The lake of Cooler Classic is calling. The seedings are up and I must say i am excited. It looks like the field of teams will give a good competition to what we can do as a team and well i am just excited to play like always.
http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=124&id=3997

For all you linkers out there! Nick that link is for you (even though i do not think you know about my blog, but i always remember you telling me how easy it was to make a link and well there you go). I honestly think this weekend will be harder than thought but still doable in hopes of the cheese cow. Madison changed their name to Front Line...lame! Do they think they will trick someone, who else would be the 3 seed at a tourney from Madison? Either way i think the games on day one will not be as easy as day 1 MUDI which will be good for us because we can enter into the tourney with fire in the eyes and hunger in the bellies.

To all you Bloggin Boys get those legs ready for some running and the bodies ready for a little dirt and grass stains as this weekend is going to a good one. As previously stated the campaign trail is coming to Wisconsin and it is time to start campaigning. Lets keep this wagon rolling as we still have Illinois and Iowa to go through before the big push in Oklahoma. Help bring Van Buren back to the White House!

random link for Van Buren check this out...wierd.

p.s Rec sports disc is the DUMBEST SITE EVER CREATED!!!!!! If someone catches me reading it please punch me in the face and ask me what the heck i was thinking!

Ostrich head

2007-08-13T13:07:00.000-05:00

This last weekend was a good one indeed. After waking up on Friday with what felt like a war in my stomach the day went fairly well until i heard that my little niece was in the hospital for surgery. I mean a 5 1/2 old in the hospital for surgery, kind of weird. But the weird part was she was completely fine with everything. She is sitting there with this huge IV in her arm and she is smiling like nothing is going on. Babies are amazing! To skip head a bit on Sunday Katie and I were entertaining a couple f our friends at the apartment and they had their 6 month old and the other couple had like a 4 month old. The 4 month old was crawling and was just strong for his size. It was amazing to see. it was just great to see!

So any-who, went and chilled with the Juice and the Amy while watching the Vikings do what they do...but left in order to get to the last Lexington House party and 367th Ro-sham tourney. The bummer was the stomach pain i had went away and seemed to have gone to Katie. So she stayed home and slept in attempts to feel better where i went to the party and got the semis in the ro-sham tourney. Being sponsored by PBR i think helped my chances and N.Scheibel had one heck of a quarters round by throwing the tournament fire on the first throw, me winning on scissors then throwing fire to go up 2-1. He came back and tied it up at 2's with something and the last throw was intense. Three things to throw and i was just unsure of what to do. Solarz had a theory of paper that got her to quarters before the paper crumbled so i decided i would throw paper. Sure enough the paper crumbled the rock and i was on my way to the semis. These did not go over well as Paisano the super smart just got done taking the MCAD and was full of useless knowledge just pummeled me into the ground 0-3 to go on and win the tournament all together. The highlight of the evening is when Solarz took down Ben Rouda on Shawns bed (kinky huh?!) and after about 2 minutes of Ben losing he got out of Solarz's bear claw grip and proceeded to get her stuck between the bed and the wall. kara the pictures need to be shared as they are so great.
Overall it was great to see a bunch of the people at the party as it had been a while since i had seen them and i yeah i am excited to chill with them in the next couple of weeks as well!

So Saturday marked the 3rd Van Buren Boy practice i attended and as Jimmy and I were there all to early we headed over to the Straw Poll and walked around grabbing 5 free cookies, a Mitt Romeny shirt, 2 Ed in '08 shirts, 4 Ed in '08 stickers, signatures on an Ostrich Van, and a walk through a mist fan. I would say that for the 30 minutes we spent walking around it was great fun!

The practice was hot and i felt like i was swimming in my sweat. I did take 1st place in the Van Buren Wet t-shirt contest as my lovely bod was displayed through the rackages white jersey! Oh yeah, let the imagination wander. The D-line and O-Line split the games by each wining one and that was good. Sorry to all you Frisbee players but i just dont have much to say. Wes had a crazy catch that nearly killed grant that was fun to watch. (see more about practice down below)

Chilling on Sat night was awesome although i let Joe down as a teamate in spades and well lost the game for us. I will take full blame has lucido and kevin beat the hell out of us. But i did go shot for shot of cranberry-something Gatordare AM with Kevin before we started and i think the hydration was just too much for me. I did come back and win the hearts game ever so slightly by like 2 points though so that was good. I almost shot the moon, but missed it by one card, stupid A of hearts, secretly it was joe's way of saying hahahahahaha you took all those points, but all is well. The Hot Fuzz movie was playing in the background while Transformers was supposedly playing at Mikey's place and well Hot Fuzz was alright. I mean i guess those movies are just not for me; it was not bad, but i missed some things here and there and i think i would like it but for now, meah. The party was coming to an end and for some reason i wanted to play Mario Kart and instead we got a blaring loud Army of Darkness movie. Turned that off and well went Kevins place and went to bed.

Slept well, practice temp was hotter in the sun but nicer in the shade as there was a cool breeze flowing in the air. Karsten had his usual amazing catches, Bj had some awesome D's, lots of good hucks were put up, some bad hucks were put up. Overall practice was pretty good. I was happy to be playing again, but you can tell the difference between practice and game and i am not sure if that scares me or not. In practice yes you can fight for a spot here and there but when in a tournament game there is just a different feel that takes over. I would ideally like to be a player where it does not matter where you are playing you are playing to your potential, but i just feel like that is not the case. Regardless i had a great time and was happy i went.

The jersey fiasco was "fun" but i am excited that we will most likely get a white jersey with the White House on the front because i like how that sounds and will most likely look. The shorts are super comfy. Probably one of the most comfortable shorts i have ever worn. Boo ya! Jimmy is always fun to ride in a car with and i would recommend that if you have never ridden with jimmy you make it a point to. Lots of good conversation, good tunes, just good times. Jimmy you are awesome and sorry i almost feel asleep on you a couple of times.

I was bummed to hear that Katie still was not feeling well come Sunday night, but from what i can tell she is feeling better and that makes me happy. The next couple of nights will be packing packing packing which although not the most fun thing to do will be just great!

For any of you who were waiting for the climax to this blog...well this is just typical rob stories. I am super pumped for Cooler and VBB needs to bring the campaign trail to Wisconsin! Minnesota seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, we just need to grab Wisconsin and Illinois in order to get the electoral votes and bring the VBB back to the white house.

Check it out!
See you all this weekend!

A moment

2007-08-09T14:31:00.001-05:00

I have had a pretty busy week at work and since i have this breif moment to comment and help out the other people who like to surf during the day or night i shall mention some thoughts that have been in my head in the last week.

I am proud to say that after one tournament and i hope for the season which i believe will stand, that i am playing on a team that does not call hacky cheap fouls but stays withing the spirit of teh game. There are a lot of Carleton and Wisconsin players that play very dirty ultimate: getting to stall 5 then purposely drawing a foul to get a new count, bumping to agitate another player knowing they will not call the foul (i am not talking about physicalness of the Frisbee which happens) or like things. Shawner was talking about that the other day how a cut boy was doing these things and really i was not surprised. It got me thinking back to that zero game and how crappy some of those calls really were. All people in the ultimate world so worried about possibly looking bad they will stake the spirit of the game on bad calls to try and aggravate the other team to play at a worse level?

I play with a lot of people that call fouls that are fouls. YES there are some bad calls made, but some of these calls are not as blatant as the others i have seen, but for the most part i think our team is smart enough and plays the game because the want to play, not just to "look good." For the most part the fouls are not super blatant and things are relatively clean. At least this is what i think. It is hard to say for sure if this will continue as i have only played 1 of the 2 tourenys, but i think it would stay this way and i hope it does.

"Spirit of the game" is a very broad statement and can be taking by many people differently. If i have the opportunity to throw a great throw but it involves drawing a foul i dont think i will throw it: that just means a better throw is coming. It is the love in me for this game and for the people i share the field with that i hope the "Spirit" of the game stays alive. I will say this, after the zero game i did not feel like bad blood was shed. There was a respect on both sides and that is the spirit i am talking about. Supporting friends no matter what team they play for...awesomeness.

(for all the Frisbee peeps, quick shout out to Juice! This guys was not only the best man in my wedding but he always has my back. Lately i feel like he has really put forth the effort to be a great friend to me and i can only hope i have done the same for him. Always gives it to you straight and loves to have a good time. He is honestly a great friend and i am proud to call him my best man and vice versa as i will be his in his wedding next summer. Like i said it has been on my mind a lot lately and well he is great and i could not ask for a better friend. Thanks bud)

well, my brief moment has come and gone. I am pumped for practice this weekend as i have not played disc in almost 2 weeks. Getting to play has become an event, a privilege and i do not plan on wasting the time i get to play. I mean it does not even feel like the season has started and i have been training for almost 3 months now. Weird, like an ostrich in the snow, or a phone eating a burger.

keep the good vibes rolling you crazy cats!
Hill workout is the best workout ever!

Curious George is the GREATEST MOVIE of the year. I loved it. I mean the whole movie was great and cute and full of just good wholesome entertainment. If you need a cheering up watch that movie and let the kid inside you enjoi!

mr.

Did the beckified nation go extinct

2007-08-03T09:50:00.000-05:00

I think about a month ago Becky was all about spreading the love of his blog and giving shawn some proverbial crap about not updating his blog at all...Well where are you at now becky? I think Jakerz post has prodded me towards some blog heckling. Maybe not to the same measure as his, but heckling none-the-less. I mean i was excited to see what was next on animal wars or how becky thought about himself. Instead i am just left wondering. Good thing i have other things to do at work like...check other blogs and random internet sites when i should be working? Lame is rob lame is rob. Especially since i think i am getting into a slow time at work which means story time on supper happy fun!
But Becky where are you? Shawn, he deserve a little heckle as well. Two people that are blog ho and nothing. blogging is like a bad drug, but at least it only hurts your eyes and maybe your wrist depending on how you type.

So heckle heckle heckle blog blog blog.

VH1 Save the Music

2007-08-03T09:46:00.000-05:00

A designer from my work has entered into the Save the Music design contest through VH1 and well through all the people in the nation he has made the top 5. His entry is entry #2 and here is the link at which you can vote!

http://www.pacificdesign.com/vh1designcontest/

sweetness

and here is a pic for fun!

Crizazyness

2007-08-02T09:22:00.000-05:00

As i am sure most of you know the bridge near the UofM campus went down yesterday around 6pm. Katie and I are fine and were nowhere near the bridge. All of our family has been accounted for, but it is still scary to think of the bridge going down. I know three people that were on that bridge about 10 minutes before it went down and when you think of it like that it is kind of scary.

With this i think you have to realize that life is a mysterious wonderful time that needs to be spent enjoying what you have.

On a contradictory point i was actually really upset with how the news people were telling the news of this disaster. We were watching CNN at one point and some lady from MN who had called in, the first thing she said was, " Actually you said my last name wrong it is Statley!" People just fell into a river in their car (2o missing as of last news report) and you are correcting your name! Lets not mention the numerous reporters who kept asking irrelevant questions to doctors or policemen that were just answered about a minute before the next reporter asked the same question. Funny thing is i was a journalism major, but i would like to mention when it came to reporting and the news i have some strong views about it especially celebrity/politician stuff. some other time some other place.

The whole thing hits a nerve and maybe Jimmy Budnick from the ultimate team is right in thinking maybe there are times when i should not blog because there are some things that really get to me and i have an opinion on. Really what it comes down to is taking a step back, taking a deep breath and not letting things get to me too much. Everyone needs to get angry or sad or happy or mad or any feeling at some point in time, but it is how you control that emotion that will dictate the kind of person you want to be and are.

So this was not the supper happy fun that was promised in the read but rather a way to just vent some thoughts that have been on my head as this horrible event passes us.

I hope all are safe and that you have at least spoken with some loved ones because you should have talked to the loved ones anyway! At least once a week with your family, because well they are your family.

last thought, the meaning of the word blog: a website in which an individual or group of users produce an ongoing narrative. Narrative: a spoken or written account of connected events; a story. While this blog might not be a story, the events that are connected in this are that they are the thoughts of 2 people who have become one. that would be the connection. But i have feeling there might be a story interwoven into supper happy fun.

God bless you all and if you are reading this that makes me happy :)

Happiness

2007-08-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

Abraham Lincoln once stated "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Perhaps that means that along time ago, both Rob and I made a conscious decision to be the optimistic happy people we strive to be today. Then again, perhaps this isn't true and Rob and I are just two of those crazy people who have endorphins constantly being released by some mysterious magical force that cannot be detected. Or perhaps even God has blessed us with so much joy in our lives that we can't help it. I like the last one. Either way, not a day goes by where I am not excited to be alive and thrilled to share in the many experiences this wonderful world has to offer. It doesn't hurt of course, that I am married to the sweetest man alive who knows me even better than I know myself, and can turn any gloomy day into a smiling face.

My latest happiness comes from a team that I have just recently secured a position on. Ah, my Rackages. This team is an amazing group of women that I am honored to be a part of. Not only do they work and play hard on the field, but they know how to get down and have good times off.

I came into this weekend knowing how great the CLX women were. I knew some others who had come to the Twin Cities practice and they played well from what I could see. Still others were teammates I have been playing with on Bait the last couple of years and of course, I thought highly of their abilities having played with them on a competitive team before.

What I didn't know was that when this team came together we would dominate. What I didn't know was that these women collectively could not only bring it, but inspire everyone else on and off that there is great women's ultimate out there that has no place for bitchy side calls and knows that spirit of the game is honored above all. I didn't realize the immense respect these women had for Ultimate and eachother.

This was a tryout tournament for me, and never did I feel like I was an outsider. When on the field, I had the respect of the line and the sidelines as if i was already part of the team. I felt that everyone welcomed me with open arms from the start which allowed me to be myself and play my game to the best of my ability. When any mistakes were made by a team member, never did I hear the sideline grimace or place any blame. Never was a player taken out of the game due to an untimely mistake. Never did I hear one single word of discouragement. I am a player who thrives on positivity and this team encompasses all that is positive; I love that!

Thanks to the Rachels for being awesome captains! They have put together a truly amazing team that is surely going to be the talk of the women's club scene this year. They have led by humble example and passion for the game and for that they are my heros. I wish I could go into a big rant about all of the players individually, but I think at this point, I have written enough. Perhaps another time.

Shout out for my car to and from Motown, "I see too much Bitch!", The SolarzKara show, Backstreet Boys, Missy Elliot, I'm not even Mad, I'm actually impressed, yadda yadda yadda, I can't get enough! What's up not a turn lane?! Tee he hee. so Happy.

The buzz

2007-07-30T11:54:00.000-05:00

Things to look forward to in the great world of upcoming media, really just movies:

The Derjeeling Limited, a new Wes Anderson movie that will no doubt have its moments of brilliance, quiet moments of huh and overall goodness.

The Ten, from the makers of Wet Hot American Summer a greatly funny movie, about the ten commandments that really just looks great.

Okay maybe that is it, but Accross the Universe comes out very soon and that looks like a great little twist of Beatle fun which i am excited about as well.

Not a hole lot but i found them at least greatly entertaining as opposed to informative. Like i am SURE that Brenden will be all over No End In Sight which is about the Iraq war and all the things the gov did wrong. It just sounds like a move up his alley.

Note to all who have not seen the Good Shepard...dont see it. It is long and although done well not that great. I think maybe watching the movie with subtitles would have helped since there was so much whispering in the movie, but mostly the "What the heck is going on? Who is that? how did this come about?" and other like questions fill your head so many times i just cannot say the movie was good. and it is 3 hrs.... watch at your won risk.

I like movies a lot and at one point i was thinking about making a list of movies and or music that was listened to during the week, but still in the early stages of thought and we shall see what we find.

For all you Harry Potter fans...the seventh book is sooooooooo good. To all you non-Harry fans, i don't care the books are fun and simple and great for the summer. Not to mention a book that spreads the good word of Love is a good one in my mind, especially when there are a couple of morals to learn from them and well it is just entertaining.

I like movies a lot. I prefer movies to TV shows because well i just do. I think you can get more out of a movie either enjoyment wise or artistically than from watching any sitcom. I do admit that my "artsy" films have become less and less in what i have watched, but i think in due time i will take up what Juice has been raving about with Blockbuster and being able to watch more movies. right now we just don't get to watch a lot of newer movies. I used to have the movie channels and if i were to veg on the couch a movie would be on. If there were no movies i would either put one in or do something else. Go figure.

This has been a quick blog thought about movies to consider watching! Since this is not a theater, please add your own soundtrack, because singing songs (especially made up ones) are fun!

Some thoughts to piggy back about Mudi and my family!

2007-07-27T09:07:00.000-05:00

So this was originally part of the last blog but i figured i would make it its own!

Even-though this is a bit off the subject i just have to say how much i love and respect my Dad. Last night i went out to happy hour with Katie and some of her colleagues and some of them happen to work with my Dad. Everyone i have ever met says nothing but great things about him. "He is so smart and such a nice guy" probably the number one thing i hear from people. Sure there can be the occasional joke about how quiet he is like one of my old girlfriends who actually asked if my Dad was a mute...yes she had talked him before, but that is another thing i love about my dad, he chooses his words wisely and says what he does with such confidence you know you are getting good advice. And if he does not know the answer, he will tell you " I don't know" So simple. This goes without questions that my Dad is easily my hero. My parents really are my heroes but today i wanted to point out how great my dad is! Love you pops!
The other reason i bring up my dad is it was great to have my parents at MUDI this weekend cheering us on. At one point my Dad, who has watched me play frisbee for the last x amount of years and understands the game got up from his chair and even commented during the game to the active players on zero how some of there calls were less than favorable. I loved it. Obviously if you did not know that was my dad or any of the back story that may have escaped some minds but my that one of the moments of the weekend that really stuck out.

Lets not forget my Brother who came out and finally saw some real frisbee being played. He got to see me play one time in college but that was just not the same. This last weekend was his first real glimpse of ultimate and i was so happy to see him there and cheering us all on. From what i could tell he enjoyed watching and had a good time and that makes me happy. i love my brother. There is a big age gap between us and i hope to close that gap but he is such a great guy. Sure i do not agree with all his decisions, but who does agree with every decision others make. Believe it or not he has inspired me more than he knows and for that i thank him.

Mine mama! Always a treat to see her out and about cheering and hooting and hollering. My mom has a real go-get-em attitude that i think rubbed off on me a little to well. She has a love for life that i admire and strive towards. I know i may have stepped on her toes a little bit in the last couple of years but i love her none-the-less. She is super supportive of whichever endeavor i pursue and allows me to make mistakes. Thank you, that is hard for a parent to do but i thank you. Like my brother i have learned so many things from my mom that i cannot begin to thank you enough ( i should probably tell them more often to their face than writing, but sometimes the spirit moves you and now is that time).

Gosh when you start these things, if you are still reading, they really get long and there just comes a time when you want to stop. You are probably also thinking everytime i read this blog is it going to be about how much rob loves people and sees the good in them...well yes there will be a lot of those but there will also be other things as well i promise. I am new at this so give me a break. If nothing else take this as chance to reflect on telling someone how much you love them today. or how good a job they are doing or something. I am a big believer in attitudes spread so why not spread one that people will laugh about. "Excerciseing releases endorphins, and endorphins make you happy, and happy people just dont go and kill people!" quote that movie and yes i am a dork.

Last but not least, the best decision i ever made, my Katie. For all the blogging world to see I love you. three simple words that when stretched out reveal an anthology of how i feel towards you. You honestly push me to be a better person. You inspire me to try new things, you give me a smile everyday (even on days when we disagree), and i know that wherever you go and wherever i go that we are together. Thank you for everything, all of your love and patience and understading and everythign.

And this was just the immediate family, i am sure the in-laws whom i love as well will get their post as well, but all things do not need to be said in one day. For there is work to do!

Have a sunshine day and Rackages! Kick some ass in Mo-Town!!!!!!!!

I love Fire

2007-07-27T08:44:00.000-05:00

There have been a lot of things rolling in my head the last couple of days and one of those things will be a post that b.jar will eat up and probably love because it has to do with mass media. But until then i thought i would continue to drop one last line from the wagon on the whole MUDI finals game.

There are a lot of comments out there about the da Van Buren Boys being happy about this last weekend and i completely agree that we all should be, BUT the reason for the happiness is not necessarily that we gave zero a pretty intense game but what was left after the tournament: FIRE. A desire to want to train harder and play better. The yearning to move forward and not dwell on the past but to learn from it and become stronger. We could quote the last Batman movie by saying "Why do we fall? To learn to pick ourselves back up." We could quote Harry Potter, well really Mad-Eye Moody by saying "Constant Vigilance" (at least i think that is what he said). At some point i will have to write the inspirational post because it revs me up, but we dont want to let that one go to early.

Countless people could really care less about what the hype says and all that meaningless gossip that has gone on about VBB and the lucky catches and this or that; it all comes down to the FIRE that is within the boys. The campaign trail is long and will have lots of battles, but the FIRE that is en-stowed in the bellies of these men will explode in the faces of the teams we face and we will show no fear but pure FIRE and love for the game that will make us stronger. When you put one FIRE with another the FIRE continues to grow, when we all come back together the FIRE will have gotten out of control and the only thing that will stop it is time (the end of the season).

2007-07-25T11:24:00.000-05:00

Okay this is just plain funny. Look at the picture and tell me that the little girl does not look a little bit like Chris Farley reincarnated?

Also it you like movies and you like movie parodies then you should check out this link http://angryalien.com/

Peace all!
rob

MUDI makes me happy

2007-07-23T07:51:00.000-05:00

Now what would having a blog be if we did not comment about this last weekends wonderful frisbee tourney in Maple Plain, MN. The first thing to say is thank you to all members of the Van Buren Boys. I had such a great time sharing the field with all of you and i will proceed to call out your greatnesses. Obviously there could be a book written on each player, but a sentence or two will suffice for the time being. (just watch i will forget one person and i will feel horrible, but i think i got all of them)

Kevin and his great leadership this weekend has put together a team that will show no fear when playing anybody and will continue to fight till the game is over. With lots on his shoulders with helping call lines and get the right people on the line he still went out there and dominated the filed in classic kevin style.
Karsten, what can you say. He is like the Austin Powers of Frisbee, Women want him and men want to be him. Putting up fantastic hucks all weekend and sacrificing his body left and right. I think Dave was meant to be a pilot for how well he flies in the air...maybe a hawk is better word.
Mikey with his fluid throws can easily break anyone and his chill mentality kept everyone at peace. His fearless approach to putting the disc anywhere (upwind hucks that look oh so gorgeous or his breaks throws that look so easy) mikey is just an amazing player.When you watch Mikey running with Wimer(?) it was if these guys knew how they wanted to run. One would go to one place and the other would be right there for the next. Having not really seen then play it was a pure joy to watch such great players move the disc up a field so non-cha-lontly. Not to mention Wimer and his quickness. He is so fast he destroyed his cleats while running.
Ross (25+ yards) Cram is always great to watch. So smooth and the throws look so easy. He makes hucking look like a little dump pass. I love to play with ross (even though i did not play a point with him) because of the confidence he plays with and how fundamental his game his. He knows where to be and how to get there-Not to mention his sound effects when cutting are up there with the best.
Berkseth...is fast. I know everyone knows that but he is just plain fast. But what makes Berkseth such a threat on the field is not his explosive fastness but his smarts. You can count on him getting open on anyone and then making the right decision every time. His knowledge for the game is great and is a force to be reckoned with.
Wes is a tall drink of water and man can he come down with discs like he is shooting clay discs at a gun range. it does not matter how many people are around him, Wes can pull the disc down. For only being 20 years old...(okay maybe a little older) Wes has the expierence to enter into any airzone and come out victorious.
Josh Owens besides being tall moves like he is a little guy. I have not seen such a talley cut so fluidly until watching this guy. He will layout and stretch for any disc whether on D or O as well as get up and see the air up there. One might call Josh eye candy when is active on the field.
Stu is like jack-jack from the incredibles. He looks like this nice guy who is a little smaller and then all of a sudden he explodes into this frisbee animal showing no fear against anyone. Moving the disc effortlessly with wonderful throws and getting up for discs most tall guys could barley reach.
Next lets give some props up to Ellsworth who keeps his team pumped up in the huddle then rips down some sick catches after working his butt off for a little defense. Toeing lines and standing face-to-face with anyone, truly has the heart of a champion. With only one year of disc to Matt not only is a force to be reckoned with now, but as he continues to grow will be a lethal injection against any team.
Joe. A beast a pure beast. Will go for any disc regardless of what his skin thinks and will bring things out that will make you just drop your jaw in awe. How Joe twists and moves his body to get to discs is a mystery to all but truly awesome to see. Nothing is going to stand in joes way when the disc is in his general area.
Brian Lucido plays frisbee so relaxed it makes you wonder if you are playing at all (i say this in a great way). You watch him and the world just slows down because he makes things look so easy. his cuts and throws are...you just never know what brian is going to do next and i dig that about him.
Jimmy Budnick from the ultimate team is such a joy to play with. His speed will keep people on his heals and his throws will always hit the receivers hands. The D's come so natuaral especially when a throw goes up and jimmy just jumps up and knocks the disc right back down. I think 2007 is the year of the Jimmy epidemic where people rethink about throwing hucks in his general direction!
Brenden is an organic wonderment. will body up and make sure you know he is there and not going anywhere. Withe a fierce mark and that bendy lefty flick he is a threat to both offensively and defensively. It is great to be playing with him again!
Becky or shall i say beckify. With a fierce mark on any handler you can gurantee he will get the count nice and hi and then force some bad decisions by the other teams throwers. very relaxed when the disc is in his hands and he cherishes the disc. Wonderful to see how much he has grown.
Ben like a crouching lion waiting to pounce on the disc. His offender believes he has an easy play then all of a sudden POUNCE in comes ben and who start hooting and hollering after the disc is back in the good guys hands. Smart decision making qucik feet keep this guy a solid player on both sides of the disc.
Louie has such a knowledge of the game and can keep the disc moving in any situation. he puts out sick layouts left and right and then gets up and keeps on going. with smart keen eyesight for a d he hops out there and contains his player oh so well. If louie is guarding you the disc may not reach you.
Jake is the all round player. Throws, catches, battling in the air, laying-out he can do it all and he can do it well. His attitude is always positive and ready to play. Beware of his speed, he will blow by anybody whether they are in your way or not and then when the point is over you look at him and go hells yeah that guys can play disc.
Shawn plays like his hair...Firey. Always right on his defender and slipping into the tinyest of places to get the disc. His enthusiasm off the field keeps you psyched and ready to go out and pay frisbee no matter how tired you are. Shawn inspires better play and when sharing a field with him you feel yourself ready to go and attack the disc no matter what the cost.

We were missing some peeps and that did make me sad :( but we played great and i was honestly so happy to share the field with so many great players. I was still smiling on my way back home because i got to play with such a great group of guys and play a game i truly love. I do not know what it is about firsbee but it just makes me happy. Maybe since it feels like i do not play as much anymore or because it is the people i love this game.

It does make me sad that we will most likely not be going to Motown throwdown becasue i want to bring the VBB wagon for all to fear. Zero knows they are going to have to fight in order to beat us the next time they see us and pretty soon more people will be jumping ont he Van Buren campaign trail looking for their spot in ultimate greatness.

Thank you to all the people who cheered us on and for all the good vibes sent out by all. It was awesome to have my family there to watch and cheer. Even my dad was getting up and getting into the game saying how the other team was making bad calls. it was great. And my brothers on the Assets heckling their heads off was great. I am proud to share a field with every single one of you. The rackages and iowa ladies always a pleasure to hear you rooting on the good guys. You all have made this last weekend one of my favorite frisbee weekends. thank you.

katie I love you. Three words that describe so many things. I love you.

Till i find something more to write about or there is some down time at work remember to keep things super happy and fun!!!!

thank you brian foiles

2007-07-19T10:42:00.000-05:00

So last night people were talking about blogs and i was looking at them and though why dont i start one, i have tons of useless knowledge that could be shared to whoever the heck would want ot read it. But it needed the right name. Mooers blog...boring. So Super Happy Fun Time was thought up from Brian Foiles this cool guy i work with.

Brian we salute you mr bored at work guy.

post one done and that is it