I have to admit, this has been one weird week. Seriously, it feels like it's been a month since Sunday.

Sunday was the final tournament for my Goaltimate team, which was the first one I'd ever captained. We played pretty well and everybody seemed to have a good time (even though we lost two of the three games at the tourney), and I went home feeling like I hadn't royally screwed up as a captain. I'd panicked from day one that the team wouldn't work, but it felt like we had a good season. I certainly had fun - we didn't have any hotheads on the team, so the games never got dicey. We even finished the season with a winning record.

After the games were over, a player on my team mentioned that one of the local coed club Ultimate teams was looking for players for an upcoming tournament. I'd been eager to play club again, so it sounded like a great opportunity. I got home, and one of the captains of the team had posted a note on the league forum asking for people to email them. Perfect! I sent an email.

Later, when I pulled off my shoes to take a shower, and noticed that the previously blackened nail on my big toe (from a new pair of cleats that were formerly too small) was now white. I knew I had jammed it once during the tournament, but wasn't sure what the damage was. Ooh, pretty.

Monday was just nuts. I do web design for a "living", and it's not uncommon for me to go a while with just the regular updates - without any major "new" projects to work on. Well, in the previous week, I racked up four new projects, all at the same time. And one of them had a strict deadline of Wednesday.

In my head, I inadvertantly low-balled the amount of time that I thought it would take (considering I rarely do heavy programming work, and have never done anything like this in PHP), so I ended up spending all (and I mean all) of Monday cranking out code. Tuesday rolled around, and it still wasn't finished, so I skipped the usual Goalty pickup night to get it done.

Heh. Then the deadline shifted. Wasn't "really" due for another week and a half. (I love that.)

As panic-driven as the coding was, I was really pleased with how it turned out. I added a couple of "cool" features that made it look more professional than the cheap crap I figured I would have to submit. (My coding skills are... um... decent. But if you're reading this because you're looking to hire me, my coding skills are AWESOME!!)

I did take a break Tuesday to go vote. Amazingly fast, even if it was on one of those controversial touch-pad we-don't-make-a-paper-trail voting machines. And we may have finally put that whole Georgia flag controversy to rest, thank god, but that's a discussion for another day. I also picked up the new Get Up Kids album, which marks the first time in years that I bought an album the day it came out.

So then, it was back to Goalty. The end of one season meant the beginning of another, and, for some reason, I decided to volunteer to captain again. In my head, I wanted to keep the previous season's team together (as much as possible). But when our key player opted not to play this season, I knew the best move would be to go to the draft solo, draft another high-ranked player, and try and grab the rest of the previous team in the draft.

Wednesday night was the draft. For the second season in a row, I lucked out and got first pick. Which allowed me to draft exactly the player I wanted. I was psyched, and hoped for good things for the rest of the draft.

But, a couple of rounds later, I noticed that I had gone a long while without a pick, and couldn't figure out why. The draft order was being calculated by computer; the total rank of our players determined our position in the next round. I unexpectedly went from picking third to picking ninth (out of ten), and watched as two of my former team got picked by other captains. I asked the person manning the computer if something was amiss, and she chalked it up to my having picked a couple of high-ranked players at the beginning. Seemed reasonable, so I let it go.

We got to the last round, and she told me that I had ten players, so I only had one more pick. I looked down at my notes and counted nine players. I went back through the entire draft list, and still only counted nine. I wandered over to the computer to see what was going on, and she told me to wait until the draft was over to sort it out. Only, by sheer chance, she happened to have my team list on the screen, and I immediately spotted the problem.

I had ten players because I had a player assigned to my team that wasn't on my team. And the ranking points of that player weighed down my team total, dropping my position in the draft order. I'd been sandbagged for almost the entire draft.

Admittedly, I was able to draft two key members of my previous team and scored several people that I didn't expect to be able to draft, so I still would say that the draft worked out well. My issue isn't that I think my team is weaker because I missed out on a couple of players. It was just such a frustration, knowing that I'd missed out on people who I'd talked to beforehand and who I really enjoyed playing with. I can only imagine if they're going to wonder why I didn't draft them. Ahh, the joys of being captain. (I bet I'm overthinking this something fierce.)

But I'm still looking forward to the season. As I've seen many times before, sometimes an unexpected change can be good.

Just to make the draft that much more enjoyable, we had the tv on to the Duke / Georgia Tech game, where I had to endure watching Duke play like absolute garbage. I was grateful nobody rubbed it in afterward. (The pizza was good, though.)

When I left, I couldn't help but notice how amazing the weather was. This past week had some amazing days weather-wise. (Weeks like this make me cherish living in Atlanta.) I stepped outside, around 9:30pm, and it was in the high-60's with a nice breeze. I drove home with the windows down. Amazing, for the first week of March.

I got home, and noticed that the local coed club team's captain had posted a note on the league forum that they were still looking for players. I realized that I hadn't heard back from my original email. Not a "no thanks", or "you don't have enough experience", etc. Just nothing. (And this is someone I've played with before.) I sent the original email from my Yahoo account, and I knew it had a history of being spam-filtered, so I flipped to another email address and sent the email again (including an apology if they got the email twice).

I threw on my sleep clothes and flipped on the tv. And I noticed some kind of stench. (It smelled like ass. Umm... literally.) Then I realized what it was: the white toe nail. Oh joy. I think that means it's coming off soon, and I'll be sure not to write about it here. (Where's the Neosporin?)

So Thursday kicked into gear. Not only am I captaining a Goalty team, I'm also playing on a league Ultimate team. The captain of the team sent an email about our team and our upcoming games. The real surprise was in the draft list he sent us. It included our "adjusted" ranks, meaning our ranks were changed if they felt we weren't ranked correctly. I've been a 5 (out of 9) for a while, and felt like that was about right. The captains at the draft decided that I was now a 6. On the up-side, 6 is considered "club-level". But I've always felt comfortable with the lower ranking in that it took some pressure off of me. I could perform well and exceed expectations rather than sucking and looking overranked. (I say that knowing that I do have a tendency to suck.)

So I went out to Ultimate pickup and felt like I had to perform. (I haven't played much Ultimate this winter - there's only a women's Ultimate league here during the winter, and our Thursday night pickup kept getting rained out.) And, for whatever reason, my mind was in the right place. I made an effort mentally to use my new ranking to boost my game, and I felt like I played better. With a little luck, hopefully I won't collapse when I step out in an "official" game as a 6.

I got home, and the night was just a mess. I kept going over work issues, Ultimate/Goalty issues, "why did I get blown off?" issues, and some other issues I won't go into here. I absolutely could not fall asleep.

Needless to say, I got up on Friday relatively unrested. I looked in the mirror and realized it was time for a haircut. Nothing drastic, just a little trim.

Three hours later, the longest hair on my head was about an inch and a half long.

I've had the same mid-length haircut (as seen in the blurry photo on the left) for six years. (Actually, I first got that cut in 1995, then grew my hair out. I cut it back to that six years ago.) I'd been thinking about doing something different, but I didn't have any idea what that would be or when it would happen. I still liked that cut, for whatever reason. (I liked that I could hide my face in it when I was upset about something.)

But I couldn't help but remember what my father said recently when I criticized a mullet: "You know, you have a really 90's haircut, so what's the difference?" Right or wrong (I mean, I was talking about a mullet), it made me think of the people I see wearing really bad 80's haircuts. They like them because they're accustomed to them. To them, they look good. To me, my haircut looked good. Was I just as deluded?

Honestly, when I was tossing and turning Thursday night, one thought kept plodding through my head: "Something has to change." And, rather than change the things that need changing, I think I took it out on my head.

When the haircut started, I still didn't know what it would be. And it ended up being short.

The twenty-year-old in my head is screaming "sellout!!". When I had long hair, there was a phase where everyone I knew who had long hair cut it short. Not long after I went with the mid-length cut, everybody cut theirs even shorter. Now, here I am finally following the "trend". Yeesh. Twenty-year-old me, don't you have a paper to write?

Hmm. Unexpected change is a good thing? We'll see. I'm not entirely sold on it from the front, but I think it looks cool from the sides.

I am psyched, however, that I won't need to wear a hat during my next Ultimate game. I won't have to worry about my hair smacking me in the eyeballs. (For the first time in nine years.)

Honestly, my life is usually really, really simple. Work, eat, sleep, play Ultimate, write some music, rinse, repeat. This week was just stupid. Too many instances of "unexpected change". I can't believe it's not mid-March yet.

Hot damn, my toe stinks. Ugh.