Success!

It was a long weekend that I am still feeling the effects of, but I'd say it was a success.

I suppose I'll start with Friday...
I got out of work around 5pm and wasted an hour or so in front of tv before I really got to work on my party prep. Three different Safeways and a Giant later my fridge was filled with all sorts of goodies for Sunday's cookout. I had sent a feeler out earlier to see if I could find someone to see Iron Man with and Dave came through around the 2nd quarter of the Wizards game. I was planning on meeting up in time to watch the end of the game, but somewhere around 6 minutes to go Dave deemed that unnecessary (poor, poor Wizards...), so we headed out to Chipotle to get some dinner before the movie started. Iron Man = best action movie I've seen this year. If there's one movie you're going to see this year, Iron Man would probably be a decent candidate (although Run, Fat Boy, Run was pretty hilarious...).

Saturday
We had scheduled a little round robin with GMU, VCU, and GW-B for Saturday, but late Friday night I was told that VCU was going to drop out. We only had 8 guys for the day, so I scrambled to get a message to Eli, VCU's captain, asking him to bring whatever guys he had to the fields. I don't think he got my message, but Eli and three other VCU guys showed up to pick up with us. We played a great game against George Mason that included some great grabs by Lemon and some stifling defense by Andrew (one of the VCU dudes), Stills, and Lemon. GW-B left a little to be desired on the defensive end, but we still played a tight game until the Hippos went on a run late and scored a Callahan to win the game. Definitely an exciting finish for them. I think there was confidence built across our team, and it was great to get to play alongside the Biscuit Villian's as well!

After the game I wound down a bit at home before heading out to meet up with Megan and her roomies for a little (in my case, a lot) Mexican food, margaritas, and a quick game of Jenga. Dion, one of her roommate's friends from Zimbabwe, was in town and he was absolutely hilarious. One of my favorites: "Pelosi is so liberal. She wants to legalize abortion up to age 8!" Turns out he knew a lot about American politics as well...

Sunday
Long day ahead! I got up early since I was a little worried about the temperature of my keg... A trip to Home Depot and 4 bags of ice eased my nerves, and I was ready for the Alumni Game. We somehow managed to get time on the nice turf football field here on campus, so we set up early and tried to get everyone organized. Alumni games are interesting because it's been so long since everyone's seen each other and we all just want to hang out and chat. The game seemed to be the last thing on our mind until a few of the guys who had to leave early began working on motivating everyone.

We started a little after 12:00pm and were faced with a strong wind that some thought might favor the older (more experienced?) alum. Using their experience early, the Alum won the flip and elected to start going downwind. The wind was pretty strong at this point, so I was a little concerned about having to actually work to get a lead in this game (it would've been so much easier starting the game in their place!). The game generally went as expected as we traded to 5-5. Then, we (I) lost a little focus and allowed the old guys a big break upwind. At 6-5 and up 2 breaks, things were looking pretty good for the Alum. I'm pretty sure they were salivating as they pulled downwind to us looking to extend their lead. Our secret weapon was then introduced into the game: Chilly handling. We had a zone offense that had been tested multiple times this year against Vermont, Georgetown, Towson, and Penn State, and we were ready for this. (Note: It may sound a bit serious at this point... that's because it was. The Alum are known to be much better at heckling than Bad Habit, and we were met with a barrage of heckles following that upwinder.) Long story short, Dave almost had a point-saving 'd', but when it was deflected back into the endzone, I managed to reel it in and ~40 throws later we were celebrating in their endzone. We stole another upwinder to go up something like 9-7 at half.

The second half was much of the same with a few exciting points. Mike Martini had a huge layout 'd' that was unfortunately during Frodo's time on the video camera, Arin had the same experience, but Kyle's upwind huck to Lemon to end the longest point of the game was captured by a better cameraman. There were some great plays on the Alumni side as well: Anya had a big layout/sliding grab to save a downwind point, Jimmy had some clutch foul calls (yes, and a layout that spurred an upwinder), Scrap lasered a pull that ricocheted off Jim's face, and they collectively played solid Ultimate despite not playing together for quite some time. In the end, Habit took over and finished the game 17-14, sending us all back to my place for chicken and beer!

There aren't too many things that could follow up a great game of Ultimate better than food, beer, and more heckling, so we cooked up some food, drank some beer, and heckled each other again while watching the vids from the game. Good times.

I'd just like to quickly thank the Alum for coming out and making this possible! Here's to doing it again next year!