I was just informed that I gained four gold pieces by CHaN! I'm so happy. I'm going to spend those to buy a twenty-sided dice. Any dungeon master worth his weight in geldings is never without his twenty-sided dice. If you got that reference, you're an extremely cool person.

I'm biding time at work, trying to determine what mysterious problem I'm up against at work is all about. The application we've developed works like a charm on every server here at our office, but the government servers really don't seem to want to cooperate with us. I'd geek out and explain it more thoroughly, but no one really cares, and neither do I.

While you wait for me to say something more interesting, look at this (click for a bigger picture):

Well, Jeff stole a bit of my thunder by posting a comment about it, but that's okay, I forgive him. I won my division in the city championships. So, as I said, I was playing in the D division. It's the lowest division, so it basically means I'm the best of the worst. That's a pessimistic way to look at things though, and that's not my style. I started making an effort to improve my squash game over a year ago, when Jeff and I first met each other playing on the UVic squash ladder. Since then, and most especially in the past couple of months, my game has grown in leaps and bounds. I'm still down at the bottom of the totem pole, but I've achieved a lot of the goals that I've set out for myself, and winning the D division is, for me, tangible evidence of that fact.

My first two games were easy. My first opponent was a nice guy, but had a lot to learn (I scored at least a third of my points because he couldn't return my serves). Keeping the ball deep on him (playing my shots to the back corners) were really all I needed to do. Even though I won the match quickly, I didn't feel particularly good about my game - most of my shots weren't to good length (didn't make it to the back of the court), and my drives kept coming off the side walls. Oh well.

The next game I played was on Friday. My work week had been hectic and frustrating, and I was tired and grumpy. I didn't really know how I was going to play, but hoped to be able to shrug off the mood and focus on the game. My opponent was definitely better than the last game I played, but was at a big disadvantage because he couldn't play drives to a good length. I didn't usually have to move too far off the T in order to get to his shots, and that meant he was doing a lot more running than I was. I was played better squash this game, but still didn't really feel like I'd had to work hard and earn the victory.

The club had a keg tapped on Friday night, so I hung out and had some beers before I headed home. My final match was the next day at 2:20, so I didn't want to get too drunk. My friend Nate went home and proceeded to party until 5:30 in the morning, giving himself two hours of sleep before getting up, going to work, and then playing his final match. I'm glad I headed home when I did.

The last match I played was good. I was playing very well (which means I was happy with how I was playing - it doesn't mean I was playing at an A level), and my game was definitely on. I was hitting drives to good length, keeping most of my shots tight, lobbing for time when I needed to up front, and kept moving my opponent out of position, waiting until he gave me an opportunity before trying to end the rally. I didn't feel like I was playing overly-aggresive, and I didn't feel like I was playing too defensively. I went in with a game plan, and I played to that plan - it felt like I was playing smart squash. In spite of all that, my opponent Matt put up a good fight. He took the first game off of me, which was a negative starting point - it sucks going into the second game knowing that you've got an uphill battle in front of you. Matt wasn't happy with the final result - after losing the first game to him, I came back and won three in a row. If I remember correctly, I took one of those games 9-0 - definitely a shot to his confidence.

So, now I'm ready to move up to the C division. My friend Bevan and I are planning to spend a lot of time doing drills this summer, as we're both really getting into squash, and both have set goals that we want to meet by the end of the summer. I'm meeting my friend Lee for more drills tonight, and should have a journal posted of what I'm planning to focus on over the next month or so.

It's been a while since I last updated, but for once, it's not because I'm lazy! It's true, I really have been pretty busy. Given that it's been so long, I'm just restricting this post to updates on myself and what's been going on, rather than making fun of the outfits and smells that my co-workers wear/eminate like I usually would.

When I last wrote about squash, I was feeling somewhat discouraged. First I discovered that my forehand swing sucked chong, and that all the progress I thought I'd made had really been in the wrong direction, and I needed to re-learn all over again for the second time. Then, while playing poorly as a result of re-learning, I hurt my back, and was out for two weeks. Then I was sick for a week. Then I came back and played for a week (still sucking, but my forehand stroke was gradually improving) then got sick for another week. What the flipping fudge? A double dose of sickness. Very lame.

Anyhow, I got over the sickness, and I'm fully recovered. The time spent practicing my forehand has been paying off, and I think I've finally gotten the hang of a correct swing. If I haven't, my drives are still coming out much better than before, tighter to the side wall and with better length. Actually, right now, it feels like a good number of aspects of my game have improved to a degree, which is good. One of the hardest things about practice is that you improve in spikes and plateaus (or at least, I, and a good number of other people I've talked to do). You practice, and undergo a series of noticeable improvement - you can tell that the practice you've been doing is paying off. The you hit a plateau, where it feels like nothing you're doing is right, and you're no longer improving. Wash and repeat.

In any case, I'm going through a spike right now, which hopefully will last me through to the end of the upcoming tournament. That's right, I'm playing in a tournament this weekend, starting Wednesday and going through to Sunday. I put myself down as men's D division, because I really didn't know what else to enter as. I thought that I might get bumped up to C, because, although I've had some serious problems with my forehand swing, I can still compete with some of my friends who are C players. Also, playing better players is a great way to improve, so I was hoping to play C. I didn't get bumped, so I'm playing D - I think that means I have a reasonably decent chance of winning. Hopefully the pressure doesn't cause me more problems than it should.

In addition to the tournament, I've been taking lessons with my friend Bevan, and now we've started doing drills on Sunday. Both of those factors are making a huge difference, and Bevan is a good drill partner, because he's as keen as I am, and left-handed. His backhand is his weak side, and my forehand is my weak side, so it provides us both with a lot of chances to practice our weaker side.

On Mondays and Fridays, my friend Lee has started doing drills with me, and that's great too. Lee has more energy on the court than most people I know, and although his game is raw (he hasn't taken any lessons, and so is less refined), he learns quickly. My game is improving pretty quickly, and Lee seems to be pretty keen on drills - just practicing lobs has added a new dimension to his game that wasn't there previously.

I've been practicing dancing when I can, though I haven't had too much time with the sickness and back injury I had. I've been trying to go out to clubs a little more than I had been for the previous year, because that provides me with much needed motivation to keep improving my dancing. If you never get out and actually use what you've been practicing, it becomes a pretty boring cycle. My leg rolls are coming along nicely, and my chest roll is improving quite a bit too. I'll post videos when I have something new to practice or report, but for right now my focus is still on improving those aspects of my boogaloo.

Work has been crazy busy, which is good. I had a performance review about two or three weeks ago, and it was all positive, which means I got a raise. I'm making about what my friend Graham started at, but I think I'm a lot happier at my job, and I really love the company I work for, so I consider myself very fortunate. As noticed by one of my supervisors, I work best when I'm under pressure (probably one of the reasons I did so well at UVic - it was nearly all pressure), and I like being busy. The application I've been working on is finished, and my friend Brock and I are now trying to deliver the finished product to the government. They of course have a billion bizarre, seemingly arbitrary standards that we are required to follow, and that's added at least an extra week of work to what we would have had to do otherwise. Oh well, such are the consequences of government contracts. The good thing is that Brock and I get along very well, and make a very good team, so we're able to deal with the things that would otherwise be flogbar and laugh about them. Then we make fun of people on the street and steal money out of our co-workers desk-drawers.

In other news, I finally got my Ninjas eating Tacos t-shirt in the mail today, but the company sent me an XL! Now, we all know I'm a pretty burly guy (seriously, I've got guns), but I don't think I'm XL. That sucks, because I REALLY want to keep the shirt. If you're wondering why, let me help you alleviate the problem of suck that you are obviously suffering from: Ninjas are awesome. Adding tacos to any situation increases it's awesomeness by twenty, minimum. So you can see that this shirt is really sweet. If I do have to send it back, I'll be sure to take a picture of it before I do so everyone can revel in it's radical-o-max-ness.

Expect updates about the squash tournament, either throughout, or at the end.