“Friday night! / the party’s here on the West side”
—Montell Jordan
time 8:04 am feeling good, sleepy wearing jeans, black-and-gray striped shirt…prisoner reading Infinite Jest, probably forever… music A League of Their Own soundtrack, HA! ready for hot tea next make tea, update #s
Random thoughts / Friday Five:
1. 8.3% unemployment rate / 243k jobs added HOLLA!! (As if I needed more evidence that Obama’ll stay in office…) But seriously, this makes me SO HAPPY to see. Beating it back!
2. Fuck the haters.
3. My knee is not totally thrilled with the skating/gymnastics, 4 days later. BUT, whatever.
4. Was going to go to Edison tonight to help coach but turns out they have a JV conference meet. On the one hand, this is their only non-Weds meet until their far-away meets, so it would be good to go, PLUS there is no UMN meet this weekend, so… On the other, it would be kind of fun to go home and watch Shameless all afternoon/evening too ; ) ha.
5. Chicago / JENNY! / fun! / Chicago Style next weekend!!
RANDOM MEMORY
1998 Buckeye Classic. At the time it was the largest women’s gymnastics meet in the country (now Chicago Style is). We had about 10 gymnasts from Badger traveling together to the meet. When we arrived in Columbus, we checked in to the hotel, then got back in the van and drove over to the arena – Tom wanted us to check in to the meet. Cool giant arena, tons of vendors, lots of activity. It was a Thursday-Sunday affair so our plan was to sling on our athlete badges and get comfortable with the arena right away.
Right away when we walked in we noticed the awards – sweet medals for places 4-8 and SUPER sweet plaques for places 1-3. I saw those plaques and IMMEDIATELY decided that I was going to get myself one of those. (Normally this wouldn’t be possible, seeing as I was not a very good athlete, but 1998 was my second year of Level 8 + I was old so I was kind of busy sweeping the season, heh.)
My best shot was bars. So I decided then and there I was going to do the most kickass bar routine ever.
(WHY I didn’t just try to do this at every meet, like a NORMAL competitor would, I’ll never know. I guess I really wanted to prove I could get one of those cool plaques LOL.)
And lo and behold I did. We competed on Friday and I was all over bars. I was tighter and swifter and stronger than usual and got a 9.something on that routine. Or an 8.95? Whatever. No meltdowns, nothing, I was sure and confident and nailed it. YEAH! And after our session when they posted results, I was in first place for my age group on bars. Heck yes. Make It Happen.
For the rest of the days there I ran over and checked the posted paper rankings anxiously, dragging my teammates along, as they updated them after each session (side note: yes PAPER, isn’t that bizarre? EVERY session they printed new rankings, too!). For several sessions I stayed in first which was thrilling, then some chick bested me. Ah fine. Still in plaque-position, eh? One more girl bested her and then in 3rd I remained. But hey – THIRD! Out of so many. So cool!
I’m amused that I was so motivated by a piece of wood or whatever, but I think it was more the prospect of saying “yeah I was in the top 3” that made me go for it. I know I placed on a couple other events but no others were top 3. Very rarely do I say “OK this is what I want and I’m going to get it” and actually GET IT (athletically anyway), SO this was an awesome memory.
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And now for the #s. Happy Friday.