Saturday, December 1, 2007

Fark.

Today was decent until about 6pm. Went to bed at 1, woke up at 4 for no reason, went back to sleep. Woke up again at 6:15 by my alarm clock, went back to sleep and woke up (properly) at 6:45. Oops. I had to be at the gym at 7:30 today. That's...half an hour to do everything necessary, plus eat breakfast, with the end result that breakfast consisted of a container of coffee-flavored yogurt and a cup of hot chocolate. Yummy. Not to worry, since I can't eat anything before fencing. I have to snack.

I walked to the gym with one of the foil guys that lives in the building next to mine, and one of the sabre guys who lives at the bottom of the hill. Of course, no one else was there. Just a note: When you say "get there at 7:30," that means YOU need to be there at 7:30. And then we spent more time waiting around for the guy with the key to the equipment room to get there. (I love fencing. It's so disorganized sometimes.) And then more time waiting for the rest of the drivers to get there.
Unlike October's tournament, this one was three schools (us and two others) and local--20 minutes away from campus. We were still there from 9:30 to 3:30. We had some equipment issues (dead body cords, and for some reason all but one of our sabres is two-prong, and some flying masks) at the beginning when we tested our gear (hurrah for crappy club stuff!) but we got it ironed out in the end. We fenced the "easy" school first.Their women's sabre squad had two people on it; ours had three, so we only needed to win two bouts. (For every person missing from a squad, they forfeit the bouts the missing person would have fenced.) The sad thing is, they didn't really seem to know what they were doing, and I was the only reason we beat them, not trying to brag or anything. My teammates...one of them only started this year, and the other started last spring. We can chalk one up to inexperience, and the other...she has some good instincts, but she gets very nervous when fencing and it all goes out the window. So guess who won those two bouts? And unfortunately, they were the only ones I won all day.
The host school is a division II school with a varsity fencing team. We are...division III with a club team. The men had a much harder time than we did (the men's foil event was a bloodbath), but we still lost all our bouts (at least, sabre did). A lot of it was "where the *%&! was my brain in all this?!" Lots of touches that I missed, and lots that I should have known how to deal with. J was unusually sympathetic to me today--he usually isn't. He doesn't try to be nasty or uncaring, but he takes his fencing very seriously and so is usually too wrapped up in his game or what's going on on the strip at the moment (for some reason, only the men's events get his attention...) to be particularly sympathetic. He wasn't fencing today because he sprained his ankle the week before, so I guess he was more into providing coaching, equipment and support today. I was beating myself up about my performance on the strip, and he came over, patted my shoulder and said "Hey, don't worry about it. We're all in the same boat, and yeah, there are some things you've got to work on, but it's getting better. That was the most aggressive I've ever seen you. That's good. Keep it up and come to practice." Last bit is a tiny bit awkward since I've been missing practices due to...me not sleeping and exams. (Not that J can talk on the first front, because he doesn't sleep either.)
Anyhow, we got back to campus at 4:15ish, I had a sort of late lunch/snack thing. Tea-- only without the tea--is the best description of it. Then I hiked up the Stairs of Doom so I could take a nap...which was interrupted by the fire alarm going off. Again. Why are the people in my building idiots? At least this time they called security and told them to tell the fire department not to show up. And then I got dinner. Somewhere between my room and the dining hall, I lost my brand-new, just-bound-off Foliage. It had been in my pocket until I realized this, so I guess it's in the dining hall, from where I either fished my ID card or gloves out of my pocket. But it makes me sad, since I'd only worn it for a little while and I hadn't even gotten to take a picture of it. I'll be checking the dining hall tomorrow, as well as the route down there (for a third or fouth time). If it's not there, it may be in someone's car (I hope that's the case.) And if still nothing...I guess I'll be casting on...again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i hope you find it :-)