Benched!

I realized I forgot to post about our game last Thursday. It was the first one where we really came together as team. I actually didn’t play. I came as a sub, but they didn’t end up using me. It was fun to watch the game as a spectator though and sit and socialize with the other people cheering the team on. The game actually went to 7 innings. I think the longest we’ve gone before is 5. We were also up for the first 5 innings. We got a good number of runs each of the first two innings. After that we just got a few here and there. I believe by the end, they still beat us by a factor of 2, because by the last two innings, our team was really tired and a lot of mistakes were made. We gave away a lot of runs those last two innings. I don’t remember the final score exactly, but it was something like 13 to 26. There were some really good plays by our team though and people were working together well. Overall it was our best game, hands down. That being said, the team we played has the next worst record after us, so who knows how it would have gone against a different team. I am excited to see how we do this week.

There were a few people on our team that attempted slides to avoid outs. One of the guys ended up skinning up both of his knees really deeply. One of our teammates was running around asking people if they had first aid kits in their car. It turns out that I have ample first aid supplies in my car, so I brought everything I had down and helped my injured teammate clean up. He is also from Texas and he said to me, “I’m glad you had this stuff in your car. Texas girls rule.” : )

More Pretty Flowers

I’m starting to have a pretty quick turn around with plants on my patio. Hrm. Anyway, I got some more pretty stuff and finally took some pictures. I didn’t think I liked it, but I saw some Impatiens that was stark and unique looking, so now it is a member of my garden family, for the time being.

The Tolerant Horse

One thing I forgot to mention in my original polo post – those horses are so well trained! Imagine horses slamming into each other without so much as an ear flick, a batted eye, or a lifted hoof. They make no attempts to kick or bite at each other. For those of you not familiar with horses, they are fairly space conscious animals. The way one horse asserts its dominance over another is to be in charge of the available space. Part of horse training is to assert that you are in charge of the space and that the horse may not ever be in your space unless you initiate it. So for these horses to be so close together that your legs are pinned in between them – yes, that happened a few times – without being remotely bothered by it is pretty amazing.

Not only that, but think about all the times that they get clocked with a mallet or binged by the wooden ball that’s being batted around. I saw horses get hit with balls several times last night, one of which took it right in the face and didn’t even flinch. According to my friend Jess, it’s not all that uncommon for them to get hit in the face with a mallet on the upside of a swing – yikes!

In fact, last night, I took an awful swing on the left side of my horse. Keep in mind that the mallet is in the rider’s right hand, so I’m trying to swing across my body and the horse’s. I completely messed up the part where you’re supposed to swing the mallet parallel to the horse’s body – not so easy to do backhanded across both our bodies. So the end of the mallet, the part that looks like a hammer, went flying inbetween my horses back legs. Immediately I felt awful. Then, I felt the head of the mallet hook on the horse’s right hock, so I’m leaning to the left with my mallet underneath the horse and now it has hooked on the back of his right leg and he’s still going forward. Perhaps my immediate though should have been that I might get pulled under the horse with that physics going on, especially since I was already leaning over holding a heavy object across my body in the same direction. I guess I knew I could just let go of the mallet. Instead, my guilt immediately turned to panic. I was envisioning the mallet twisting up between his legs, causing more tension as it remained hooked on his right leg and he brought his left leg forward, and him either falling down in a tangle or breaking a leg. I started to let go of the mallet to avoid that scenario when I felt it spring free of his leg and swing back to his side. Whew!!! Later Jess told me that the mallets are designed to break for exactly that reason, so the most likely thing would have been for it to break before he fell or broke a bone. Not knowing that at the time, it was fairly stressful! The most impressive part of it though, was that my horse didn’t care at all. He wasn’t annoyed and he didn’t hold a grudge. I suppose that kind of thing has probably happened to him a lot. Regardless, the level of patience and training those horses have is awesome.

One more note – I think it’s fascinating that some of the horses actually play polo. Meaning, even if the rider doesn’t quite know what they are doing, the horses will chase the ball and push other horses off of it. It all depends on the individual horse, but Jess told me, for example, that her horse is a more aggressive polo player than she is. If there is a moment of indecisiveness, sometimes, the horses will just decide for themselves and run down the ball or another horse. I think it’s a really interesting insight into animal psychology that they participate in a game to that degree. Whether their motivation is some kind of distortion of natural competition or something more like having fun is a question that probably can’t be answered, but it’s still pretty cool.

Polo!

A friend of mine, Jess, has been playing polo for a while now and has been trying to talk me into it. I finally gave it a go this evening. First, Jess had me go into the ‘hitting cage’, which is a one room building with a wooden horse in the middle of the floor. You sit on the horse, which is fully tacked, and practice hitting the ball without falling off. It allows you to figure out the mechanics of standing up in the stirrups and leaning to one side while swinging your mallet at the ball with one hand and keeping ahold of the reins with the other. It’s actually not that hard to figure out how to juggle all of that, if you already know how to ride and have decent balance and leg strength. The hard part is actually making contact with the ball and when you do, getting the swing right so that you get good distance and accuracy, and all without hitting your horse.

The way the practice clinic runs, each person gets to go in every other chukkah. A chukkah is a 7-minute round of play. In a real game, the same 8 players would play 6 chukkas, but at the clinic, we don’t keep score or play actual games. I got to go in for 2 chukkahs. As I was mounting the first horse, I realized that they use double reins, which I have never used before. The wooden horse in the hitting cage had only had a single rein bridle on it. So, add that to the list of things to juggle! Then, as I’m walking him to the arena, it occurs to me that these are trotting horses! Ugh! That first horse I rode was super lazy and all he wanted to do was trot! Despite the fact that I’ve only ever tried posting once in my life for a few minutes, I winged it. His trot actually wasn’t that bad and sitting it was fine, but I posted it here and there anyway, as I felt it helped me keep in better sync with his movement, which is important, when your turning wildly back and forth and running after the ball. About halfway through the chukkah, the horse realized that I wasn’t going to let him get away with just trotting and wasn’t going to relent on kicking until he cantered. After that, he cantered around pretty easily for me. It was much more exciting to play when your horse actually runs with the group and the ball. I had about 4 or 5 chances to make a shot on the ball that chukkah and I missed every time but one. I made a good hit that one time though, and it a backwards shot and on the left side, which is the hard side, since you hold the mallet in your right hand.

The second chukkah that I rode in, I got another horse who just wanted to trot. However, this horse had a huge trot and it was launching me out of the saddle. Having ridden a gaited horse for the past 8 years, I was totally unprepared to sit a trot that big. I couldn’t keep my balance well enough to actually try and swing at anything, but people were barking at me to make attempts anyway. Ack! When I tried to kick the horse up into a canter, he would just trot faster and faster, making it even worse, such that I’d have to slow him back down to a walk to get my balance back. I posted his trot when I could, but being unexperienced at it, it was hard to keep on rhythm when he’d speed it up in my attempts to make him canter. Again, about halfway through the chukkah, he realized that I wasn’t going to stop kicking until he cantered and he gave in. Like the previous horse, he cantered for me without trouble after that. In fact, this horse was pretty happy to give chase from then on, kicking up into a lively canter whenever asked. I didn’t get any good hits that chukkah. I didn’t get too many shots to hit the ball, and when I did, I made contact as much as I missed, but never got any great hits. Overall, it was really fun, and I’d love to do it regularly, but the cost is $400 per month. I definitely feel like I’ve been bitten by the polo bug, but I just don’t know if I can afford that.

Mitigated Glory

We had another game last night. While we still lost, it wasn’t quite as miserably this time. We only lost by a factor of 2 – 12 : 28! Not only that, we broke to a double digit score for the first time and had one inning with 9 runs (one of them was mine). In fact, I was a little ballsy about it. I was on first, and the guy after me hit the ball to just between second and center field. I hauled ass down the line to second – the one thing I know I can do is run pretty fast. I saw the ball racing me to the bag, but I turned on the motor and beat it there. Then the ball comes in and it gets over thrown, so I decide to make a go for 3rd. Later my coach and manager told me they were wondering what the hell I was doing and couldn’t believe I tried it. I booked it as fast as I could, but I could hear the shortstop behind me scooping up the ball and throwing it in. The 3rd baseman was reaching to catch the ball just as I was coming to the base. I saw him catch it, but his foot wasn’t on the bag, so I dove between his legs, head first, to avoid him tagging me. He tagged me in the back and stepped back to touch the bag just after my hands touched it, so I was safe. I got lots of hoots from my team on that one, as well as a skinned knee, since I was wearing shorts. This time, though, I made the play, so it was worth it. Not that it really hurts that much anyway, especially compared to the thumb injury!

I rounded off the night by playing some BF2 with Erik and Jordan to give my competitive spirit more of a successful outlet. My KDR was almost 3:1 on one map, 2:1on a few others, and just over 1 on the last two, and was in the top 5 about half the time. I am definitely improving. I discovered that playing on the wire and closing all other applications when I play helps.

New Shoes

Recently my tennis shoes began busting their seams, so it was time to get a new pair. It took me a bit of back and forth with Zappos, buying and exchanging shoes until I found something I liked. I don’t like typical shoes, so it can be quite a process. Anyway, I finally settled on a pair that I find quite interesting. Not only that, but they are white (mostly)! I am sure I must have owned white shoes back when I was a kid, but I honestly can’t specifically remember ever owning a pair of white shoes. At very least, it’s the first pair of white shoes I’ve owned in 15 years. I really like them, so I present them here for all to see!

New Shoes 1
New Shoes 2
New Shoes 3

Day 2 Thumb Pictures

Finally got them uploaded:

Swollen Knuckle Side View 1
Swollen Knuckle Side View 2
Swollen & Bruised Knuckle Top View

Blue Thumb

Unfortunately the thumb isn’t all better this morning. I was heavily icing the base of my thumb last night because that’s where the swelling was. However, apparently the point of contact was the inside of my knuckle because that’s where the biggest bruise is this morning. The top side of my knuckle has accordingly swollen up, as I wasn’t really icing that area. I also have a bruise there, even though the ball hit on the other side of my thumb. There are bruises all the way around the circumference of the base of my thumb where the initial swelling was as well. I don’t have time to upload new pictures before work, but I’ll post those later. Should be fun trying to type code all day! My WPM is definitely way down right now.

Play Ball!

Our company team had its first game last week and we got creamed – 16-2. To be fair it was our first game as a team and the other team was well oiled and full of people that clearly played on their high school and college teams. Our second game was tonight. If you want to put the positive spin on it, we scored twice as many runs as last time and only lost by a factor of 6 instead of 8 like last time – 24-4. I scored a run in tonight’s game, which was exciting.

I, also, according to my coach, had the best play of the game, but at a price. A line drive came barreling right towards me at second base. It ricocheted off the toe of my shoe and made a beeline for my face. Of course, my competitive nature and drive to excel at everything I do played its usual part in what happened next, but so did a strong desire to keep the bones in my face intact and avoid grotesque disfiguration. I threw my glove into the path of the ball and braced myself hard. The ball slammed into my glove and found that sweet spot where the padding is thinnest, crushing my thumb. Everyone hooted and shouted ‘Good stop!’, but I was immediately distracted by the pain in my hand and forgot to throw the ball to first. Our coach, Roo, yelled ‘First base!’, jarring me back into the reality of the game. I threw it, but it ended up being a tie and the runner was safe.

It was rather disappointing to sustain an injury and not even get the out. It’s tempting to say it wasn’t worth it, but we definitely would have given up some runs if the ball had gotten past me into the outfield. As soon as the play was over, I took my hand out of my glove and tried to shake it off, but it wasn’t going to be so easily remedied. It started stiffening up almost immediately. I found it amusing when the runner that had hit the offending line drive got around to second and asked me if my hand was okay.

Having a painful, swelling thumb wasn’t exactly ideal for playing softball. Fielding wasn’t too bad except that having the glove on hurt more than not. Batting, however, was fairly difficult, since I had to not only bend it, but squeeze as well. I still managed to get on base, leading to my eventual run. Roo decided to switch me to roamer for the rest of the game because I wasn’t going to be able to do any more aggressive fielding at second. By the time the game ended 30 minutes later, my thumb looked like a little sausage and was too stiff to bend more than a flicker. We celebrated our humiliating defeat at a bar, where I iced my thumb for the duration of our stay. After that, I can bend it a little more, but I don’t notice any decrease in the swelling yet. I can’t believe how much fluid is in that sucker. I took some side by side shots with my good thumb to show the swelling and the limited range of motion. Hopefully it will be okay by next week, but I don’t think I’ll be able to ride for several days and may be out for Sunday practice as well. I’m curious to see how much better it will be in the morning.

Swollen Top Down View
Swollen Side View
Swollen Base
Limited Range of Motion