Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Wow it's been a while: Scuba, lawyers, frisbee

It's been some time since I rapped at ya, but things are good in the nation's capital, at least for me: I'm renewing my lease, which is nice because it's a great place; My girlfriend and I are getting along swimmingly. We're young(ish) and in love(est) and all is super. Despite all the elapsed time, I still smile like a dork when I think of her. She's the keenest.

In other news, in my ongoing effort to become less boring as I get older I've taken up Ultimate Frisbee again and now play with a crowd of lawyers on Sundays. The effect so far is that I feel like I've been beaten up by a crowd of Huns come Monday, but I'm sure that will fade.

A week ago, Sunday, one of the tinier lawyers among them (thank God) and I crashed into one another at velocity. She must weigh about 100 lbs soaking wet with friends, but I now tip the scales at a (fat) manly 182 lbs of pure taught indolence.

As I hurtled towards her and realized we were going to collide like a Buick into a kitten, I did some back of the envelope calculations in the back of my head and realized I might kill someone.

And that someone would be a lawyer; and have lots of lawyer friends around to bear witness, provide testimony, do pro bono work on behalf of their dead friend's family and whatnot. The homicide would occur, I figured, either by me flattening and running blithely over her or by her ricochetting off me like so much ping pong matter off a bowling ball and landing in the nearby river.

So I grabbed her.

I figured I'd either pick her up and cradle her safely where no fat blokes were likely to run her down, or at least I'd stop her from bouncing off this mortal coil all willy nilly. I think it worked and that she was as uninjured as possible considering the kinetic energy involved. That said, all her forward momentum that wasn't used minutely stalling my onrush shot into the only unrestrained part of her body, her head, which translated it quite nicely, thank you very much, into my trachea via the small surface area of her nose and teeth.

My mom, who I told about it quite a lot later during Call To The Folks, gasped and pointed out, as though I were dragging my feet about getting a lump checked out, that I could have been killed. It's possible her diagnostic skills are getting rusty, because here I was talking to her on the phone, using my very own larynx and everything, hours later. It's nice to be loved though, honestly.

Still, I can't recommend taking a lawyer to the throat. It made me sound like Kathleen Turner for the better part of a week - so I was dead sexy - but it also made me feel as though I was coming down with something the entire time. Like a law suit.

Other efforts to remain hip and with it have been much safer despite happening under 5 to 10 feet of water. I just finished learning to Scuba (no longer SCUBA it seems). I'm not prepped to take my open water certification dives should the opportunity present itself in Brazil, where I'm going next month - with my awesome girlfriend. My life sounds so interesting, doesn't it.