Are you a sports fan? Are your spouses/lifepartners sports fans? Are your kids sports fans? Well, if you are, you should have a look at this site: Family Family Sports.
I'm not into fantasy sports, but this place looks like it could be fun if fantasy sports are something that you enjoy.
...and I am alone with my thoughts.
Really.
As I sit here, at nearly midnight, I find myself being kept company by the sound of rain and rolling thunder. I have been trying to collect my thoughts for an interview that I am going to conduct with a great blogger that I have discovered, but, at this late hour, the questions aren't forming.
Good thing for me, I have the random thoughts that come from a sleep-deprived Gunfighter's mind. For example:
Is it just me. or is it wrong to just abandon your grocery cart, willy-nilly in the parking lot at whatever store you happen to be shopping at? Truthfully, those socially irresponsible people are probably cheating on their taxes, too.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that starting nine-year-olds on the path of "travel" soccer is just a bit much? Truthfully, I find the concept of travel soccer exclusionary at the very least. The best players in my county will NEVER be able to participate at the higher levels, because most of them have parents that can't really pony up $800 just for the registration fee. It gets worse, what with all the parents living vicariously through their children etc.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that people who would vote for Johnny "Walnuts" McCain just because Obama beat Clinton for the nomination is some sort of f***ing idiot? The only name that I can come up with for such people is... well.... you know.... REPUBLICANS!
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that it's time for a Gunfighter/DC Metro Moms & assorted bloggers Happy Hour REALLY soon?
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that spending the Father's Day weekend in the heat/rain... watching a certain child's (so-called) All Star team get the living shit kicked out of them, wasn't lots of fun?
I had to move out of my office today. A guy who was two grades higher than me joined the unit. I have a cubicle now. I'm not irritated about having to move... seniority happens, but having to move all of my stuff into a much smaller place was a real pain in the ass. The upside is that I was able to get rid of a LOT of stuff that had just been taking up space.
The aforementioned unit (that I have run for a long time), has been absorbed into the national headquarters... Thats why I lost my office... there are guys more senior to me.
I think that's all I have tonight, friends. I'm getting a little sleepy.
Gute Nacht
GF
...and some days you get the living shit snot beaten out of you!
There is another option there, you know... the part that says: Some days you play so horribly, you can't help but be beaten by a team that you should have easily seen off the field.
Well, yesterday was a good example of this. My girls never had a bleeding chance.
Here is how it went down: We had the first game of the morning, which was supposed to start at 9. I was at the field at 7:45, so that I could start assembling the goals, and to take a look at the markings on the field, since we had so much rain lately.
I got our the parts for the goals, the corner markers, and started to mark the field when Mrs Gunfighter and Soccer Girl arrived. they helped mer for a few minutes before some of the other girls arrived, and then SG went off to play with them.
Finished, our team was assembled and warmed up... but the referee hadn't arrived yet. Screw it, I thought, I'm the division League Director... I mad e the call to start the game without the Ref... the little punk would just have to catch up.
Naturally, two of my players hadn't arrived, but I don't believe in waiting for players that were supposed to be there a half an hour earlier!
That said, my starting line-up was affected by not having one of my better defenders on the field.
We got mauled, even though the other two players arrived 5 minutes after that game started.... about the same time as the little punk Ref. (Mrs GF saw the Referee having a conversation with his mother in the parking lot).
Well, my girls were off their game. There were two players who stood out, and whose level of play kept the other side to three goals, and to tell you the truth, we were lucky to get off that easily.
My players didn't listen. They didn't talk to each other. They stood around and looked at the ball when they should have been kicking it. They kicked in the wrong direction! Oh, and my Goalie! My Goalie! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Hello????? Can we at least PRETEND to be interested in the game?
The horror.
The horror.
As it turns out, one of the girls who is ADHD had been medicated just prior to the game, and bless her heart, she tried, but just wasn't quite with me... I am not being critical of her parents or of her... just saying what happened. Two were late... and therefore had no warm-up, two were just not interested and several of them had been allowed to stay up late the night before... "because it's Friday, y'know?"
It was enough to make me want to eat my hat.
The late-comer's mom didn't even have the good grace to apologize for being late.
God.
I had more than a couple of glasses of wine as a result of this debacle... I'm still not sure if I am over it yet.
On Saturday, I experienced something that youth sports coaches have always had to deal with. A situation that, try as you might, you can't control. When our game started on Saturday, I was faced with an entirely different group of girls than my usual players.
Before you wonder why I had a team full of new players, let me explain. These weren't new players... they werre my regular players that played (with three notable exceptions) like absoloute CRAP!!!!!
The game started out quite normally. The opposition was no better than my team, in fact, my girls were really pressuring the other team right from the start. My girls were playing like they normally plaed. About ten or fifteen minutes into the game, SoccerGirl scored a goal, which made her and the rest of the girls happy... and then disaster struck.
The girls decided that they were tired.
They decided that they were tired, and fell apart. All of a sudden, the hustle went away. Some of the girls decided they would jog up and down the field instead of RUNNING. Most of them WOULDN'T SHOOT THE BALL AT THE FREAKIN' goal until they were three feet away!!!! Some of them were so contact averse that they would rather let the other players take the ball rather than physically challenging for it. My God did they piss me off.
There were some highlights, however. SoccerGirl kept it together and played defense like a madwoman. C, my little pit bull, chased down opponents and broke up plays. D, my goalkeeper stopped shot after shot. If not for the three of them, we would have been doomed.
The fortunate thing is that while my girls weren't doing very well, they were able to fend off the other team, holding them scoreless until the last three minutes of the game.
The game ended in a tie 1-1, and to tell you the truth, we were lucky to get away with that.
On Saturday, my girls, The Tsunami, went up against the Cheetahs and kicked a little ass. Well, not really, what they did was put on a real athletic display, and squeaked out a 7-5 win over their opponents in a close match that could have gone either way up until the last moment in the game.
It was great sportsmanship, and great effort on the parts of both teams... and the stuff that heart attacks are made of for the coaches. I kid you not... we had a three point lead when all of a sudden, we started making some key mistakes... but I don't need to go into all of that.
If I can say something nice about my own kid for a moment, I'll tell you that she worked so hard, and was so strong... she played offense and defense with equal ferocity. She supported her teammates, and is really, along with many of the others, learning how to read the field. It is a joy to watch. Even more exciting was watching her score two of our goals. You see, I can't brag about her at the games, and I can only clap and do the "GREAT JOB, BABE!" at the games, because as coach, I don't want to overpraise my own child for fear of the dreaded accusation of preferential treatment.
In this particular picture, SG (in red) is challenging her opponent (who is also a classmate) for possession of the ball. She won the possession, breaking up her opponent's scoring attempt.
Anyway, suffice it to say, that all of the girls ball-handling skills are improving, their fitness levels are coming up and their heads are in the right place, God bless 'em! As long as they stayed switched on, they will give a good account of themselves for the season.
It was a busy weekend at Castle Gunfighter, folks.
Saturday, we started our Spring soccer season. We were expecting a rain-out... why? Because I stupidly believed what the weather reporters told me: That it was going to rain, starting around 3 A.M., continuing all day.
I went to bed around midnight, sure in the fact that the games would be canceled for weather.Do you know how much rain we got on Saturday? Zero. Goose egg, Nada, Zip, Zilch.
I woke up at 5:30 (yes, A.M.), and looked out the window. Not only was there no rain, the street was even dry! Shit! I couldn't go back to sleep, so I got my stuff ready, and at around 7:15, I headed out to the field to start getting things ready. Yeah, thats a little on the early side for a 9 A.M. game, but what the hell... I am the U-9 (girls) league director and I wanted to make sure we started the season right.
So... the game. Well we had to play it, even though half of the team missed the first practice, and we have three players who have never played the game before. The team that we played was pretty much intact from last season, and coached by a good guy who is a real soccer coach... unlike me.
Oh, how'd the game turn out?
We got our asses kicked. Four to nothing. It wasn't for lack of effort on the part of our team, they 
tired... or at least, some of them tried. You could see that for all except SoccerGirl and one of the other girls, none of my team had even looked in the direction of a soccer ball since last November.
Look, I'm not a maniac coach... not at all, I want the kids to have a good time, learn a bit, and be fit... but you what? getting beat BLOWS! I don't like it.
(and don't even get me started on the player who decided to make a call on HER CELL PHONE while she was on the bench!)
I mentioned, last week, about taking delivery of our new bookcases, didn't I?, well, having them really isn't enough, is it? They have to be assembled. So after soccer on Saturday, we ran a few errands, had lunch and set about the task of putting them together. This can be a time consuming thing, but in this instance, it has to get done soon, kids, because my harpymother-in-law is coming to town on Friday (Cue music from Psycho).
Once we got home, it was time to start assembling our new book-cases... which was fun... That's what I said: Fun! You have to know by now what a geek I am... well, Mrs Gunfighter is more a geek than me. She has a Ph.D, which sort of makes her a geek by education and profession... I'm just an amateur geek. What I mean by this is that we read... alot. No, really. ALOT. There are piles and piles of books in our house, and they need a place to live, too. Hence the purchase of lots of new cases to go along with all of the other cases that line the walls in several of our rooms.
I am happy to report that we we are off to a good start with the assembly. There were a total of seven book cases, seven extensions (oh, and two CD shelves as well). The CD cases are installed, and two of the seven book cases (and extensions) were finished on Saturday, before we went to Vinny's for dinner.
Sunday was our usual go-to-church-teach-Sunday-School-go-to-lunch routine.. which we did, but as soon
as we got home, it was back to the construction . By the time I had to stop to make dinner, I had put three more together, which leaves me two more to assemble today, and then I have to go to Ikea and exchange all of the wrong-sized doors that we bought originally. Once we get that done, it will dramatically increase the amount of available floor space in our house... especially in our bedroom.
Fun stuff, no? Well, here are some pictures during the assembly phase... I will post more when they are finished, and the books are finally in residence.
(...and remind me to tell you about the 5th grader that had to leave my Sunday School class to take a call on HER cell phone! These children and their phones are starting to piss me off.)
Michael Vick has been sentenced to 23 months in prison for his role in crimes relating to dogfighting.
Good.
I think justice has been served. Federal sentencing guidelines for Vick's particular crime say 18 to 24 months imprisonment, so sending Vick to prison for a 23 month stretch seems reasonable, right?
I think so, too... so why are we now hearing the bleating from various quarters that his sentence was unduly harsh? It makes me tired.
Michael Vick is a liar. Michael Vick uses illicit drugs. Michael Vick murders (yes, murders) dogs. Michael Vick is a criminal.
He deserves every minute of the sentence.
I do not know, nor do I care about, what the National Felony League (NFL) will do with Vick after he serves his time... that isn't any of my concern. His employers may do as they please. All I know is that his sentence was not unreasonable. It was well-deserved.
No excuses for athletes.
No excuses for politicians.
No excuses for celebrities.
No excuses.
So, Don Imus has returned to the airwaves.
I have to tell you this, his return leaves me cold.
I know, I know, he said bad things. I know. I know he is an ass. I know that I would never invite him to my home for dinner because I think he is a boor.
I get it. You already know how I feel about the subject of his comments if you read part one.
Listening to the callers on C-Span's Washington Journal, yesterday, I get the feeling that a lot of people understand WHY Imus is back on the air.
If you are one of them (and I am sure you are not... all of you are much smarter than me), I am going to explain it in very simple terms. Are you ready?
Here it is:
It's because he makes lots, and LOTS of these for his employers.
It really is a matter of simple math. The majority of the people who would call themselves fans of that assclown are people that wouldn't stop listening to his program because of those stupid comments vis a vis the Rutgers women's basketball team. Advertisers? They like controversial people... as long as their controversies don't reflect negatively on them.
So... what, then?
Imus makes money for those who would pimp him out. Isn't that the American way? Imus is popular, and some people want to listen to him spew... so what? Let them listen.
Let's not get too worked up over it, ok?
I have started this post five separate times since Monday, in vain attempts to strike some sort of chord. On this, my sixth attempt, I am going to do what I should have done in the first place… tell you about our weekend soccer tournament, focusing not on the odd cultural event that these things can be, but on what this one meant to Soccer Girl, and to the family as a whole.
Our Soccer Club only had one All-Star team in our division, despite the fact that various folks in the club office wanted to have at least two… tough shit, folks… Yours Truly is the League Director this season, and I don’t want two or three all-star teams drawn from nine teams… I want the best team that we can field, drawn from the nine teams… not some primadona show, where some, more exalted coaches get to take their teams as a whole to the tournament. I know some clubs do that… but sue me for being something of an egalitarian. Our All Star team was drawn by picking two of the best players from each team… except for the two coaches that refused to participate if it wasn’t going to be their way.
Well, f*** ’em! (the coaches… not the kids)
This was a large tournament, with 433 teams competing in varying age groups, both boys and girls. The tournament was so large that the fields were spread out over three counties!
Our story starts on a cool, crisp, Saturday morning. I was decently rested, since I had the good sense to leave our happy hour gathering before the REAL fun started… We gathered all of our things, including the folding chairs, Insta-Bench, mittens, jackets, fleecey blankets, books, etc… and loaded them all into the trunk.
We were a little behind schedule, so we had to step on it, in order to get to the field on time. We arrived in time to find a last remaining parking spot… OK, so it was a handicapped spot… Don’t call the SWAT team… I moved the car shortly thereafter. 
Anyway, we found our team, and Coach Patty took over. The girls had their warm-up while the parents scouted out the fields, which were pretty cool. It’s rare that the U-9 kids get to play on the artificial turf! I mean, these fields were BE_YOU_TEE_FULL!
Soccer Girl and her chums played a good game of Soccer, but tied the first game. They tied their second game as well. After the second game, we had a few hours before the third game (they were playing 4, 25 minute, mini-games), so we went to lunch.
It really was a beautiful day. This late in November, we could have expected cooler temperatures and some amount of precipitation, but instead, it was cool, crisp, and sunny for the whole day.
At the end of the day, Soccer Girl’s team ended the day with three ties and a win. The teams were evenly matched for the most part, and the girls played hard and tough, without whining (except in the case of one or two). At the end of the day, we were in 5th place out of twelve teams, which was respectable, considering the short amount of time the girls had to practice together.
We went home with a happy but tired eight year old (who was really stinky after her day of
athleticism). After SG was fed and watered (and thankfully bathed) she went off to sleep, while Mrs. GF and I talked about our day. Since we are still in the midst of NaBloPoMo, I got online, and began my post for the day, during which I apparently fell asleep at the computer for nearly two hours… finally posting something, and then going straight to bed.
Sunday morning broke bright and clear, and we were better organized for our day. Out first game was at 8:45, so we had to be at the field by 8:15... Which meant we had to be Johnny-on-he-spot getting up and out. You know what this means, don’t you? It means that Gunfighter had to get up at 6:45.
6:45.
On.
Sunday.
Morning.
I wasn’t amused.
We got to the field in plenty of time (ok, right on time), and got right down to business. This round of play was all do or die. We had the potential to play 3 games, but any losses meant elimination.
We handily won our first game, and the girls were on fire.
The second game was…. Different.
In the second game, we played the team that was the top seed of the whole tournament. To make a long story short, we got our asses handed to us. Badly. We got mauled. It was 5-0 at halftime. Coach Patty was organizing for the second half, while coach Gunfighter pumped up the girls on the bench. Some of the other dads were coaches, too, so we were able to stiffen the girls spine for the second half.
The second half was different from the first, in that our girls were physically and mentally tougher that they were at the start. Despite being tired, our girls battled back, and made the other team take notice. To be sure, we were outclassed, but at least we held them to two goals in the second half. When the final whistle blew, the girls were able to run off the field with their heads up, knowing that they gave it their all.
I was so proud of them. I was also proud of soccer girl. She was tough, strong, determined and brave.
The tournament ended for us, with our team finishing fourth out of twelve. As it turns out, the only team to beat us on the whole weekend was the team that won the tournament.
Not too shabby.
We had a fun weekend together. It was the thing that we like… concentrated family time.
Of course, the laundry is all piled up, ready for me to do on Wednesday (today), because we didn’t do it over the weekend.
Big fun.
Our soccer season came to an end yesterday.
I would like to tell you that we ended on a high note and won the day, but that would be wrong.
We ended with a loss to a team we should have been evenly matched with... who whipped our natural asses like nobody's business.
The girls were cold and wet. They forgot EVERYTHING. They didn't so any of the things that they knew how to do, because they were cold, and not focused.
Towards the end of the game, the opposing coach graciously took a player off the field, in hopes we could even the score a bit, which we did... but even in the end, my girls couldn't even score when there was a 4 on 1 situation in FRONT OF THE BLOODY F****ING GOAL!
Well, they took the loss like true athletes, and I love them for it.
So... after the game, we went to Cici's pizza for our end-of-season party. Well, if you have never been to Cici's you can bet that on a cold Saturday afternoon, it was as crowded as you can get.
After lunch the girls gathered around me as I presented each player with their trophy (although I wanted to strangle most of them because of the way they played today).
After the trophies, there were gifts from the families, to the coach.... which I expected, but not like this....
The parents gifted me with an embroidered a sweatshirt that said: "Put Your Foot On The Ball and KICK IT!", Which is what I spent the season saying to the team.
They also gave me a gift card to Carraba's Italian restaurant.
I was pleased about the sweatshirt, but the Carrabas' gift card (for $50 bucks!) was a real treat. The card said "Thank you for spending so much of your time with our daughters" and it was signed: "The team Moms"
I was touched beyond words, and nearly lost it for a moment, but fortunately, I was distracted by the girls who (including my own child) were all more interested in going to the arcade than talking to me!
The little bastards!
OK, everybody say "awwwwwwww"
In closing, I'd like to tell you that this was my swan-song. The end of my coaching career (that was my plan)... but that would be wrong. The team moms have leaned on me.
How can I say no?
I really want to say no, but I won't.
I'll do it again. Why?, because if I don't, there will be eleven girls wondering who will coach them.
I can't walk away from that.
Sign me,
Coach Gunfighter
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