Good Sports

I've recently been coaching/playing on a basketball team for physically and mentally challenged adults. (None of them are "legally handicapped" or "genetically different" from what society has defined as "normal," but the physical and mental challenges are much more difficult for a bunch of slightly overweight guys who've never actually played organized basketball.) We play Tuesday nights at the Church as part of the infamous "Stake Basketball League." If you've ever played Church sports you understand that it is much different from "organized" sports. Organization is one of the key issues.
One of the major obstacles to Church sports is the distribution of talent. In an organized league you can set up different levels of teams, such as competitive, recreational, and terrible. In Church sports everyone gets dumped into the same pool and is allowed to compete together. Allowing players to form their own rosters added even more spice to the typical drama. In our local congregation the guys who had played in high school and still play regularly quickly found each other and filled their roster without an open invitation. Other teams were filled by people in a common age group, or who work at a particular place. I set out to recruit players with qualities similar to my own: Can't make a free throw, don't know all the rules, aren't very concerned with winning, enjoy playing for the fun of it, and need the exercise.
We've actually developed excellent skills as a team, playing off each other's strengths, and compensating for the abundant weaknesses. For example, I never get to dribble. Not that I'm not allowed to, I just don't do it very well, and so I pass the ball away as quickly as I can, most often to players on my team. I also have a designated spot to stand, right where the black squares are by the key. There I use my highly developed talent of being taller and heavier than most players to knock people out of the way and then hope the ball comes to me either by pass or missed shot. I then proceed to shoot the ball multiple times until it eventually lands in the basket, or someone else manages to jump over me and get the ball. I don't score a lot of points, but I lead the league in rebounds.
Our team has even won a few games, including against teams who were much better than us if taken as individuals. It just goes to show you that if you play as a team, and if the best players on the other team don't show up, you can win at any game you try.

Thank You, I Love You

Found an old file on the computer, from Mother's Day 1995. Enjoy:

There was an old woman
Who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children
She didn't know what to do.
So she gave them some soup
Without any bread,
Then beat them all soundly,
And sent them to bed.

Now this covered
The Mother's day job alright,
But what did she do
When she stayed up all night?
She washed lots of shirts
And socks all in bunches.
Then she found them some bread,
And made them all lunches.

In the morning she woke
Before the first crack of dawn,
And made up some oatmeal
Because the cereal was gone.
She then woke up her kids,
And heard them all fuss;
But she got them already
In time for the bus.

With the older ones at school
And the young ones under foot,
She read them all stories,
And kept them all put.
For dinner, more soup;
But the sisters and brothers
Offered their love for their’s,
The greatest of all mothers.

I hope the next pictures aren't of dead plants

This is the first fruits of our garden. I suppose technically we should have offered it up as a tithe. Maybe that's why I got smote with bloody knuckles.

You can see that the radishes and peas are doing well. The lettuce is also starting to look more salad-like. The corn isn't looking very healthy though. It may have sprouted too early and gotten frost bitten, or the pelting with hail stones may have broken its spirit. I think the onions are all dead. Maybe we'll cheat and buy some onion starts but not tell you when we post the next pictures.

We certainly did not cheat and buy strawberry starts. Just don't scroll down to the previous post and realize that there were no strawberry plants pictured, nor did I mention planting them. The fact that they are producing mutant strawberries should in no way be taken as indicative of the character of the care giver.

Here's another radish, actually the third one deemed large enough to be plucked out of the earth and devoured. Some of the radish seeds fell into the clay outside the garden and were actually growing faster than the ones inside. Turns out it was all show and no fruit. I tried to transplant some of the larger ones to better soil, but turns out ripping them from the ground and burying them again is not actually transplanting.

This is my brick patio. I made it with bricks that I "scavenged" from nearby construction sites. It is related to the garden because the clay I removed for the bricks is the clay that leveled a spot for the garden to sit on. Now I need to build a bench, plant some flowers around it, and get rid of the excess bricks. Maybe I could sell them to looters at a riot.