Adventures of a "Real" Athlete

My Time in LA

I have to begin this entry by letting everyone know that my best friend Emily and her husband Phillip are some of the most quality people I know. This is made even better by the fact that they know more quality people. This fact has made my time with them 'freekin' awesome.

The night I arrived Em and Phil and I went back to their very cute apartment and we were quickly joined by their friends Joel and Grace (cute newlyweds) and Shane (funniest guy ever). We began by looking at wedding pictures making small talk and going out to dinner. After returning home we played poker ( a game I don't truly understand, but win with some regularity). This is when the carnage begins. We go over to the college for a game of softball. Anyone who knows me knows that sports come hard for me, since they often require some kind of running and more often than not..some semblence of hand eye coordination. But being a good sport I attempt to try and play a little. They quickly discover that i am absolutely hopeless and out of pity they make me all time pitcher.
Sounds like a good plan until my lifelong friend and confidant comes up to bat. At this time I become target for 80% of the wiffle balls she hits. Not just little taps but pounding....wiffle indent leaving marks on my arms and stomach. Now almost five days later I am still sporting my marks of love from my oldest and dearest friend. And you thought your relationships were disfunctional.

A New Day... a new injury
The next day was looking out to be much more uneventful.....Em, Phil and I hung out during the day with plans to meet up with Shane again and go to a Deliriuos? concert. The concert was wonderful and lots of fun, but it was getting cold so we decided to head to get dinner. We had some wonderful chinese and went home to make plans for our next activity. Little did I know what geeks we were headed out to be. As it would happen, Emily and Phil have both read all of the Harry Potter books....not only that but Phil was anxiously awaiting the next book in the series. Lucky us, the book was coming out Friday night at midnight and local books stores were having Harry Potter Parties to celebrate...Em and Phil were familiar with the books and characters....Shane and I were not....but off we head to the Book party. Being a planner, Emily found each of us 'magic wands" (they may or may not have been sticks out of a Pier 1 placemat)
Anyway, we have our wands and off we head. As we walk in the door we are handed our very own authentic plastic Harry Potter glasses (the best suvenier of the whole trip!!!) Which naturally we each wear for the remainder of the evening. We then continue to do every free activity that this store has to offer...we had our picture taken with Harry...decorated our picture frame and recieved stickers from the naming hat. I am griffendor...if that means something to you. Anyway the whole everning was a blast. To make the evening even more fun Shane (who had not read a single book or seen a movie) kept waving his wand at people and saying nonsense words and made-up spells. This confused the other Harry Potter fans and they kept apologizing to Shane becuase it had been a long time since they had read the last book and they couldn't remember what his spell meant.....he would then accept thier apology and make up what the "spell" meant. Once we left the book party Shane continued to put spells on people out the window of his truck while explaining with a stutter that he in fact was "Harry, Harry Potter, I'm Harry Potter." Who knew Harry Potter could be so much fun?

Next time I will tell you about my trip to Hollywood with the giant albino from Jersey and the volleyball injuries.
Later dude (people here say that all the time!)