Reverse angle

I found this picture of me, my dad, and Jeff Samardzija from last Saturday. (Click on it to see a larger version.) Yeah, there's a few thousand people that got into the frame, but it was still a great moment for us three Valparaisans.

It's how you finish

"There are no bad wins." -- Charlie Weis

"That was the best individual effort I've ever seen in any sport in my entire life!" -- the guy sitting behind me, after Jeff Samardzija caught the winning touchdown pass

I'll stipulate to both of those remarks if only because Saturday's win got me off the schneid. Things had better be better this week against Navy, though, when I'll be going for two straight.

Beat the streak

Tomorrow I leave for South Bend and the ND-UCLA game. If we don't win this one, there will be problems -- most notably because UCLA is a team we should handle with relative ease. The bigger problem for me is that a loss would extend my streak of seeing the Irish fall in games ranging from the heartbreaking to the embarrassing, all of which simply ruined my weekend:

09/16/2006	Michigan	Notre Dame, IN	L, 47-21
01/02/2006	Ohio State (Fiesta Bowl)	Tempe, AZ	L, 34-20
10/15/2005	USC	Notre Dame, IN	L, 34-31
10/23/2004	Boston College	Notre Dame, IN	L, 24-23
11/01/2003	Florida State	Notre Dame, IN	L, 37-0
10/25/2003	Boston College	Chestnut Hill, MA	L, 27-25

Sad to think that I haven't seen the Irish win in person since 2002. I've also been at three of Weis' four losses. That is simply because I go to the big games and not because I'm bad luck at all. See for yourself Saturday.

Remember me?

I'm in Lumberton, NC on business and just got back to the hotel from dinner -- at the exact same group of restaurants we stopped at with the Bandits on the trip to Augusta. That coincidence itself isn't worth mentioning, except that it brings to mind certain other events of that weekend. I figured now is as good a time as any to post the following story, which was written after the weekend of June 1.

Thursday afternoon started out with a drinking emergency. The Clubhouse, where we usually do our pre-kickball drinking, would not be available, so I needed a place to get hammered before our game at 7:30. Adding to my sense of urgency was the fact that I wasn’t going in to work the next day; all I had to do was get to Brandermill in the morning and catch the Bandits’ bus to Augusta. So I really didn’t want to waste any time that could otherwise be spent pouring alcohol down my throat. I e-mailed my kickball teammate Ford, who is renowned for his willingness and ability to throw a few back, and he graciously invited everyone to his house for the pregame. Before our previous 7:30 game, almost the whole team showed up at the clubhouse and we all had a really good time, so I was hoping a bunch of people would stop by Ford’s that night. Turns out it was just me and him, which didn’t bother me at all since the bar was fully stocked. He also had a couple of glass jars of some discolored liquid with pieces of fruit floating in it that he had made last weekend. I didn’t even want to know what was in it; I could only assume that it contained significant quantities of grain alcohol and was at least 125 proof. After a couple of glasses of that – and eating the fruit, which by then had become engorged after absorbing the alcohol – I switched to rum and cokes until it was time to go to the field. Though I didn’t drink anything during the game, I sure was feeling the effects as my hand-eye coordination deteriorated the last couple of innings.

After the game, nobody on the team wanted to go to Mulligan’s. This disappointed me not so much because I really wanted to hang out with them, but because of the overall attitude that they were too busy for kickball activities, which all but statutorily mandate that you go to the bar after the game. I was still going to go to Mulligan’s anyway, but Ford suggested Buddy’s instead and I was fine with that too. I stopped home quickly to change, and, not knowing when I would return home, packed my bag for the football trip. By the time I made it to Buddy’s I had not had a drink for over two hours but was still pretty hammered. I sat at the bar, ordered a beer, and that’s the last thing I could swear to remember happening. Bits and pieces of the evening stick out, like the beer I spilled all over the bar, and seeing some kind of hockey on the TV. Somehow in my stupor, it occurred to me to close my tab, but when I asked the bartender for my check, he told me it was already taken care of. Puzzled, I asked again, and he reiterated that my tab was taken care of. That was enough to convince me, and I put it out of my mind. The only other thing I remember about Buddy’s was talking to some girl, and quite possibly hugging on her and making an ass out of myself. The next thing I know, it’s 8:15 am and I am being woken up by my phone. I checked my alarm clock and saw that I’d set it for 7, but either not turned it on or (more likely) slept right through it. I panicked a little, because the bus was leaving at 9:00. I got dressed, threw an entire bottle of Advil in my bag and, when drinking some orange juice in a futile effort to hydrate myself, noticed that the shirt I had worn the night before was on the kitchen counter. This is all in between throwing up a couple of times and saying to myself over and over, just get to Brandermill and you can sleep on the bus all day. I was driving on 288 thinking to myself, I’m going to cut it pretty close to 9:00, but I probably still won’t be the guy that holds everyone up because no previous trip had started within a half hour of the time they said we were leaving. So at 9:02 by my car’s clock, I was turning into the Brandermill driveway from Hull Street, and Travis called to ask where the hell I was because the bus was ready. I was just stunned. “You gotta be fucking kidding me” was the exact thought that went through my head. I threw the equipment underneath the bus, threw my bag in the empty seat in front of mine, mumbled an apology to the coach who was sitting across from me, and threw myself in my seat and was dead to the world before the bus turned on Hull Street.

I didn’t wake up until we stopped for lunch in Fayetteville, and was still mostly feeling like shit but decided to at least get off the bus and drink some water. But as soon as I entered the restaurant, my stomach started growling at me fiercely. I thought, OK, let’s try some food, and the next thing I know I’ve put away two pieces of fried chicken, hush puppies, and a huge serving of potato salad. Feeling much, much better, it occurred to me to check my wallet and see if I had actually retrieved my credit card last night. There it was, and in the right place no less. The post-drinkathon inventory continued as I checked my outgoing calls to see if I’d drunk dialed anyone the night before. There were no outbound calls, and also to my relief, no incoming calls. I did check my contacts, and there was a new entry that wasn’t there Thursday afternoon – someone named Margo. I laughed to myself, thoroughly entertained at the thought that in my state last night I was still charming enough to get someone to give me her phone number. How freakin’ drunk was she, I wondered.

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful – I didn’t relapse at all and was feeling normal by Friday night. We got back early Sunday morning, I slept much of the day, and first thing Monday I was on the road to Charlotte for work. I spent the night there, and as my last meeting with the Davidson honchos Tuesday morning was wrapping up, we exchanged business cards – and I found that I didn’t have any with me. This was slightly strange to me, since I make it a point to always carry at least a couple of cards in my wallet, but I just figured I forgot to put any more in there since I gave my last one away some time ago. That had happened before. I got back to my office Tuesday afternoon and checked my messages, and saw this in my work e-mail:

From: Margo [lastname]
To: [my work e-mail]
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 9:10 AM
Subject: Buddy's...

Tim,

Hey! Remember me?? Sorry for the performance at Buddy's last night... I'm usually not that girl. Anyway... email me later (if you want) because I had SUCH a good time hanging out with you!

Ah, so that’s where my last business card went! There’s no other way she could possibly have gotten my work e-mail. And apparently, I was not only so charming that she gave me her number, but my game was so good that she had to e-mail me at 9:10 the next morning to tell me how much fun she had! Granted, that may indicate that she’s a little bit crazy, but even if that’s the case, sign me up. I got this crazy train started and I’m staying on to see where it ends!

Time keeps on ticking, ticking

After making the rounds of a few Fan bars last night, I was walking from Easy Street to my car near Buddy's. I passed a couple of places I haven't been to in quite some time and got to reminiscing. I remember a time when I hung out in Commercial Taphouse at least once a week, and I remember some of the people I hung out there with. It seems to me that almost every time I was there, I met a new friend of a friend, some of whom became semi-regulars, some of whom were simply passing through town on the journey of their life. Everyone had a story, and it's the stories I remember more than what they looked like or even their names. Of my group of friends at the time, some are still good friends of mine, others have moved or started families or otherwise just faded away. I still remember the good times and on occasions like last night wonder what some of them are up to these days.

I wonder if they remember me.