nags of a similar ilk

Way back when, a couple years out of college, I moved into an apartment with a friend of mine who needed housing for only two months. She had graduated from Tech, which had a late school-year-end date, and heading off to Dartmouth, which had an early school-year-start date. Since she had a summer job where I was working, it made sense to room with her.

To do so, however meant I needed to move out of my one bedroom house. That place was preyty awesome, though the rats, flys and post-earthquake tilt made it less desirable as time went on.

So, my friend and I slapped down a security deposit, paid our first and last month's rent, and moved in.

Thirty days later, we gave notice. Twenty nine days later, the painters arrived to paint the apartment. They came in, looked at the walls, and asked how long I had been in the apartment. I answered, "two months," then asked why they asked me.

"Because this apartment doesn't need painting."

Which didn't matter to the property manager. They had it pointlessly painted, and took the cost out of my security deposit. I was angry. Was? Bah. I'm still annoyed by it. They spent the money needlesly because it wasn't their money.

Today I received the security deposits back from housing from Nationals. In past years, we've received the full amount back. This year, we didn't.

One of the damage costs was for excessive cleaning, which I expected, presumably from a wine spill (who puts white carpeting in a party rental?). The other was for a window replacement. And here's where my two stories merge.

The other charge was for a window repair. The window broke sometime during one of the storms that ran through the area when we were there. We were unfortunate enough to be in the place when the window actually broke, but were not the cause of the window breaking.

Didn't matter, we have to pay for it anyway.

Which annoys me to no end.

I have to wonder if I should write to them requesting a full refund of the deposit, citing non-responsibility for the window breakage, or just let it go. I was told about the breaking, and the amount when I called to see if we were getting our deposits back before I sent out "you owe me this much for housing," so I'm not actually out any money personally (okay, that's not quite true, I'm out $300 / 30 people = $10 for the non-return of deposits, but not out the full amount of $300).

I just don't know if this is going to be another one of those turns-my-stomach a decade afterward because someone shanghai'd money from me.

Or maybe writing about it will be a catharsis of both.

Question: How amazingly cool are the Mischief folk?

Answer: Incredibly so.

Brynne had Pickett as her psych-up buddy. He made her a special batch of beer for her as a psych-up gift. The name of the beer?

Big Booty Ale.

So, the layout.

I don't layout in ultimate. I can count on one hand the number of times I've laid out (4), but I've wanted to be able to do so for a long time. Actually, I've been wanting to be able to be able to reach a disc, increase my range of reception, be a bigger target.

So, to overcome this "limitation," I've been visualizing. My body can't do what I want it to do if even *I* don't know what I want it to do. I've been watching videos, and live games, watching for what I want to learn to do, imagining myself doing it. Mostly what I'm trying to figure out is how to lay out in stride. I recall seeing Dave Brokaw lay out in stride by reaching by just running and reaching out straight, and that seemed the smoothest way to go.

Figuring out the movement has been the challenge. I'd settled on a one-two-boom! step where the first two steps set up the launch.

Not sure it helped though. I've asked Doyle to teach me, but his response has always been, "No, you just have to do it."

Somehow, today was the day. I had cleared to the back of the stack, and saw the disc swing from the sideline to the dump straight in front of the stack. I started cutting in as the disc was swinging, as hard as I could. Ryan threw the disc, but it was low.

Just as Doyle say, "You just have to do it," I got low and tried to reach low. It wasn't graceful. It wasn't pretty. I held my right arm tucked into me as I landed, slightly jamming my shoulder as I landed, my left arm reaching out for that disc, I wanted that disc.

I missed. It hit the ground and bounced up. I don't know what my legs were doing during the attempt. I could have looked as much like a dork as I fear I did, but I don't care. I had one arm stretched out and I tried for that disc.

Shirley congratulated me on the attempt, and included a "so close!" A couple other people commented on it. I've heard a few comments on my attempt from other teammates when they didn't realize I was listening. I've been so happy to hear their praise. It means I didn't look like the dork I think I might have been at that moment. *smirk*

Odd that I'd post on just one play in one game in the entire tournament, but I'm happy that, on my last tournament at the elite level of ultimate, I managed to achieve that one elusive goal.

I can retire satisfied.

We lost our first game, quarters, dropping us to the bottom half of the top bracket, playing for 5th. We lost to Slow White, whom we had beaten last year in the finals to win the Championship. We had beaten them earlier this year, and, well, they had their revenge today.

Since we were out in the finals, we played two more games for fifth place. We won both of them and finished the tournament in 5th place. Not bad, but not 1st. I played a lot more points in the last two games, managing to actually lay out in a bid for a low disc coming in. I missed, but the visualizations I've been doing for the last month paid off: I didn't think about getting low, I didn't think about reaching, I just did it.

Next time, I'll actually catch the disc.

Tonight will be a night of debauchery, given we're done with the tournament. Not the reason we wanted to celebrate, even Kris dashed off for beer as soon as the game was over and psych-up buddies were revealed, but, well, sometimes parties don't need reasons.