Went to go see a fight, and a hockey game broke out...

Ok, so the all-day solar paper exposure of my bedroom window yielded a blank piece of paper, but I decided to try and make a contact print of some black and white negs. These are from a lighting class project that Elizabeth and I did at her studio. I forget the name of her friend who modeled for us:



Naturally, the actual print is much more clear, but in lieu of a 10 meg jpeg, you get that squished-down image. I hate dial up.

---

Angela, a friend of hers, and I went and saw the Dayton Bombers hockey team tonight since they had a game here in little ol' Troy at Hobart. A great time was had by all, despite the Bombers losing 4-3 to the Cincinnati Cyclones. They lost after tying, not scoring during overtime, and finally losing a tie-breaking shootout. Mostly, I was there to watch the defenders and maybe pick up a few of their strategies. Ended up just watching the action like every other normal person there.

One fight broke out early, and it was really quite comical since one of the combatants was a giant tall guy and the other kinda short. Like something from a cartoon, the tall guy simply grabbed the small guy and held him out at arm's length while the little guy just swung away at air. Then the giant guy would quickly jerk him in close, land a punch, and then hold him back out again.

Of course (ever the good sportsman) I also thought it was very noble when later one Bomber's player got bopped in the face with a stick and went down momentarily, and a nearby Cyclone skated over to check on him. You could see him say "Are you okay?"

God, after watching a live game, I can't wait to get out there Sunday morning.

---

The third segment here is where I would normally step in like Silent Bob at the end of his movies and expound something of actual intellectual depth, but frankly, I got nothin'. Dry as a bone. Nada.

I could bitch about being lonely, but do you guys really want to hear that same old shit again? Besides, it wouldn't make much sense anyway, given that I just spent the evening in the company of a close friend. Also, at the game I ran into Dark Haired Girls' teenage daughter, and she said that Dark Haired Girl was wanting to see me again.

So, yeah, I'm in my usual perpetual state of heavy-heartedness (and damn it would be nice to get to kiss a girl every now and then), but reality has stepped in and frankly, I'm feeling pretty good right now. :-)

Good night, gotta hit the office in the mornin'.

Have I talked about the 4x5 view camera that I've been lusting after since this summer? A local camera store had it for sale for a truly ridiculous low price, but I never could come up with the spare $150. Well, I just happened to unearth it in a neatly wrapped package the other morning. I now have a bona-fide, honest-to-goodness piece of professional equipment. Oh, the things I'm gonna do with it...

Speaking of, for a while now I've been thinking of something. Remember that blue solar paper that you had in science class as a kid, and you'd lay keys or leaves on and set it in the sunlight for a few minutes? Well, I've been wondering if that stuff couldn't somehow be used to capture an actual image, but never could figure out exactly how. So I picked some up.

At first, I used a piece and did the usual thing with it, laying a negative strip from the Holga on it, as well as some of my (now defunct *sniff*) pony tail bands and exposing it with a floodlamp. Here's what I got:



1000 bonus points to any Dayton-area folks who can identify what and where the top right frame is located. :-) Anyway, encouraged by this, I actually used my view camera this morning and did a 1-hour exposure of a tree in my back yard. Surprisingly enough, it took a negative image!



Admittedly, this is photoshopped a little to bring out the contrast. But this shows that if I can keep up an exposure for, say, 4 or more hours, I think some hauntingly surreal images can be created. Tomorrow I set the camera up in my room and leave the shutter open all day...

---

Ok, so I'm a little bummed that Santa denied my request for a girlfriend, but I think the view camera will do as a suitable substitution. Santa's still my homeboy.
Spoken like a true shutterdork.

---

Chickpea is in Ohio right now visiting family, and we'd made plans to meet tomorrow. Unfortunately, our house phone died the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and just started working this afternoon. So I called her, and given the inability to make contact, she'd made plans. BUT! There's always the open invitation to visit her new place, the only thing needed is gas money. This could work, since Lee usually keeps me busy only on the weekends. And I have an internet sales check coming soon.

---

The "lateral drift" lull in my photography? It's dissipating like fog in the late morning sun.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

I must've eaten something funky friday. Started feeling queasy toward the end of writing the preceding post late friday night, and spent the rest of the night and most of yesterday puking my brains out. This bites because I still have a fever just under 100 degrees and feel only about 70% back to normal, so I really don't feel up to playing hockey at all, which I've been looking forward to all week. I'm still going over there this morning say hi to the guys and watch, but my stomach muscles are still all cramped up from their marathon workout yesterday, and my entire back is screaming at me from laying down all day. I may try to hit up public skating later this afternoon if the fever breaks. Don't wanna push it, though.

But if this is my only complaint in life right now, I'd say things are going pretty well. :-)

---

I watched the strangest, cutest, weirdest movie I've seen in ages: Little Miss Sunshine. What a delightfully bizarre film.

---

I hope Santa brings you everything your avaricious (is that a word?) little hearts desire tomorrow. Of course, there's the "true reason for the season" (for those so inclined) and family togetherness and bonding too, but admit it... you can't wait to rip into your presents tomorrow morning. My mom kept asking me through November what I wanted, and the only answer I could think of was, "Stuff that's useful." I bought mom an electronic pocket Sudoku thingy, and Chuck a book by Yogi Berra. Everybody else is getting their presents a little late, as my printer is out of three inks.

Passing a mall santa the other week, I said to him, "Dude, if you can, hook me up with a girlfriend." He chuckled and said he'd do what he could. What a guy!

Santa's my homie. :-)

Well... the quarter ended wednesday night, and also my career there at OIP&T. For now, anyway. Hopefully they'll get my tax/FAFSA info straightened out during winter quarter so I can come back for spring. I'd be lying if I said the prospect of a break wasn't appealing, but the heartbreak of not being able to go back after the new year overshadows it. Kaplan Corp. can kiss my pastey white ass.

After saying my goodbyes and see-ya-laters, I left a note on Shaggy's windshield with my email address. I get an email from him the next day with the subject line "haha, you cute bastard..." The entire quarter has been jokes like that between us, but I'd swear the boy has certain tendancies screaming to be let out.

---

Went skating tonight to keep the muscles excercised for the drop-in hockey sunday morning. After the first hour they zamboni the ice, after which it's super-slick until it gets all choppy again, which doesn't take long, especially given the huge crowd there tonight.

Unfortunately, about five minutes after they let people on the ice again, some poor girl took a spill. I didn't see it happen, only her laying there motionless. Then the skate guards surrounded her. After I took a few passes around the rink, she looked like she was talking. They got her on her feet, but it looked like she passed out again, so they covered her with a blanket. They called to clear the ice immediately, so out of respect I just put my boots on and left. By the time I did, the ambulance was there and the EMTs had a gurney on the ice. I'm sure they would've had her off the ice in time for skating to resume until 10, but I felt so bad for the poor girl that I just wasn't in the mood to skate any more.

My guess is that she fell backward and clunked her head but good. It's a worst-case nightmare, and amazingly (and very fortunately) tonight is the first time I've seen anything like that happen, and I've been skating there since I was a kid. One time when I was real little, I was goofing off when my mom had me take skating lessons, and I fell forward and face-first onto the ice. Bloodied my nose, and I remember clearly how it hurt like a bitch (oh, I was wailing, it hurt so bad), but no breakage or tooth loss. This is the only other serious incident I've seen since then.

The ice can be dangerous if you're not careful. People fall all night long every night I'm there, and most laugh and get back up. Every now and again, though, somebody falls just right, and it's the absolute worst feeling in the world to witness it.

Late night beer-induced stream-of-consciousness...

Yeah, I'm feeling a a little rude tonight... a tad fuck-it-all right now. Affection starvation taking its course, I went and rented a porn DVD. Pictures on the Internet just haven't been cutting it lately. Can you believe it's the first one since the divorce October '05? Well, I attribute that to the fact that the only video store in town that has a porn room (aptly named Family Video... how's that for irony?) has one that's roughly the size of a large walk-in closet, and no kink or fetish diversity. But they do have, as I discovered tonight, a small handful of MILF videos. So I picked up Milf Cruiser 7. Stunningly hot women, and the guy is nice and polite to them. Men who disrespect women is a deal breaker for me. If the guy's a jerk to the ladies, that's a total boner-kill. I hate that macho shit, and this was mercifully devoid of any degredation like that. The best part is, though, that the women look like they're actually enjoying themselves, which is rare. Even rarer still: they had orgasms. Boner-kill #2 is when either party looks like they'd rather be on Mars than doing the scene, and there's nothing in this world that's sexier than a woman actually getting off, not (obviously) pretending like some boring production company starlet.

My only beef with the DVD: The camera man needs to shut the hell up. Aside from that, the movie (or at least various segments thereof) was well-enjoyed tonight. Twice, in fact. Maybe even a third, depending if I'm feeling up to it after posting this...

---

Shot a rodeo Saturday at the same place as last time. Amazon cutie was there. :-) My primary job was to take Santa portraits, but St. Nick only showed up for about 45 minutes, and while he was a kick to talk to, he looked drunk in all the pictures. In actuality, he just desperately wanted to get out of the suit. The pictures of the kids were adorable, though. Maybe family portraiture wouldn't be such a bad thing to get into.

There was a tense moment in one of the more dangerous events, though, and after I uploaded Lee's sequence of photos of it, Rodeo Amazon Girl came over to one of our viewing stations to look. We were taking down, but as I helped him disassemble and pack things, Lee (who knows of my crush) kept saying to me "I've got it under control. Go ask her 'Can I help you find anything?'" I did, but same as last time, I just didn't get any sense of diggage from her. Ah well. She's a horse girl. Horse women want cowboys.

---

Traded in my anemic little ill-fitting shoulder pads for credit toward a totally pimpalicious set they had at the used sports store. TPS brand "Breathable Body Armor." This one actually protects all the way down to the belly button, and has extra pads over the breastbone and spine, not to mention far beefier shoulder pad plates and wide velcro elastic straps to ensure a snug and secure fit. It's on like Donkey Kong now, mofo!

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I was thinking back to the 1990 Christian Slater movie "Pump Up The Volume". You realize what he did back in that movie was basically to create the first blog, of sorts. Think about it. Then I got to thinking about my favorite song from the soundtrack... Ivan Neville's "Why Can't I Fall In Love?":

So many people
Come walking by
Looking so happy
While all I do is cry
I just want to be
With somebody too
What I'd give for a kiss
What am I gonna do

Why can't I fall in love
Why must it, it seem so hard to find
Why can't I fall in love
I know she's out there waiting
So why, why can't I fall in love

--

Bah, I'm not feeling drama-queeny now, though. I'm listening to my "Andy's Horny Mix" Winamp playlist, chock full of sexy sultry songs, to compliment the afterglow of watching the DVD.

---

I googled the lady I've been chatting with, based on her SCA association and the pseudonym in her email address. I found her and her soon-to-be ex husband's blog, and a picture of her.

OH. HOLY. FUCK. She's hot. And I mean H - O - T hot!

And on top of it, we're on similar wavelengths, and that is so damned hard to find.

---

The other day in class, I... you know, I never mentioned "Shaggy" to you guys, have I? He's a good friend I've made in my History of Photography class. I swear, the boy looks just like a scruffy Ashton Kutcher (a comparison he hates). Anyway, we've become pretty good friends. We're always bouncing mock homoerotic jokes off each other, freaking out those within earshot, and making fun of long-winded pretentious people picking apart the photos up on screen. He's always acted like the annoying little brother type, poking me with his pen and otherwise irritating the crap out of me, but the other night out of nowhere, and without a word, he just leaned over and rested his head on my forearm, grabbing my hand and drawing a little squiggle on the back of it with his pen.

It was kinda sweet. I was tempted to give his hair a brief pet, but he sat back up as I hesitated. Oh well. It felt good to be touched.

Making like a hockey player, and getting the puck outta here...

This morning, a new chapter began in the history of all things Andy. A momentous occasion that surely will shape the outcome of the rest of my life. How many ages hence shall this my lofty scene be reminisced over in years unborn, and living situations yet unknown! Yep. I played hockey. I hit the ice and thundered across it as hard as I could. I chased the puck. I defended my goal valiantly. I ran into walls for no reason. In other words:

I sucked. Bigtime.

But I made an ass of myself with every ounce of moxie I had, and FUCK was it fun! And I really don't think I did too shabby for somebody who's never been on the ice any other time than public skating. Joking aside, I'm totally satisfied with my performance, given the intimidation factor of playing against a few people who are/were AAA and AA semi-pro players.

So I hit the ice for warm up, and I've only in my life ever been out there for public skating, in great big circles around the rink. So it almost felt kinky zigzagging randomly across it chanting to myself "Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law!" A guy says, "Hey, grab a puck!", so I do, and have one floppy-assed awkward time of trying to skate and handle that damned puck while slapshots are whizzing past my head. Yeah, I know I'm being sized up, and my team members have to be shaking their heads going "Good god, who is this clown?"

See, when you're public skating, you have to think only one-dimensionally: forward. You skate forward, in a big oval that follows the rink. But here, you have to think two dimensionally. There's all this lateral space that's opened up that you have to be aware of, and ready to move into. Yeah, that one kinda threw me for a loop.

Honestly, the guys were very supportive, and one was kind of sergeantly in his advice to me, which I appreciated (heretofore known as "Sarge"). I sat out a few shifts (turns on the ice), but Sarge said "You're up! Defense!" I spent my first shift skating my freakin ass off chasing the puck too much. After a couple of minutes I skated back to the box and gasped "defense..."

So I'm on the bench heaving to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. One guy looks over at me and says "Whadda ya think?" I beamed back an ear to ear grin and said "Fucking awesome!"

The next shift I went out, and Sarge was my fellow defender. Fortunately for my clueless butt, he kept barking orders at me: "See that guy? Cover him!", "You! Get over on that side!", "Get out of the goalie's way!" I appreciated the straightforward coaching/direction very much.

For my third shift I lasted only about a minute before getting exhausted, and as I skated back to the box, Sarge grinned at me. "Already?" he teased as he hopped over the wall to replace me. My back muscles had really begun to tense up, and I spent most of the rest of the game on the bench letting them relax as I manned the door.

See, I noticed the other defenders didn't chase the puck so much, they just kinda hung out and let the action come to them. So in the last few minutes of the game, I jumped out on a shift change and took that approach. To my amazement, it actually worked. Instead of trying to jump in the fracas, I looked more like this:



And on my final shift of the game, I actually did two productive things: I blocked one shot, and then I chased down a stray puck shot into our zone and I swatted it away. Let me tell you, it's a weird and unnatural emotional mix of both piss-your-pants dread, and "Bring it, motherfucker", to stare down a guy who's thundering toward you trying to fire a chunk of solid vulcanized rubber at the area directly behind you.

So all in all, I had a fantastic time. And for once in lord knows how long, I could say that I felt like a million dollars. As I had anticipated, necessity truly was the mother of invention, and I pulled skating maneuvers out there I never knew I could.

Sometimes it's nice to discover I can still surprise myself.

Tragedy again befalls our intrepid hero

So I get pulled out of class today. Long story short: either find a co-signer by tomorrow morning or say goodbye to OIP&T. Methinks there's another option or two still available, which I'm going to drive down and discuss tomorrow. That, and I cried the blues to Dark Haired Girl tonight, and she volunteered her expertise in matters of financial aid. So I'm not panicking. Yet.

Andy is not a happy camper right now.

Because I know... I know I will...

I will triumph!

---

My slide show blew the socks off everybody in class today, instructor included. I rock. It'd be posted, but it's 35 megs. Instructor was a little iffy on my inclusion of two nude self-portraits, but fellow students didn't seem to mind.

---

I want a girlfriend. I need sex. (me? priorities out of whack? Naaahhhh...) Actually, I'm just saying that to sound cool, like the kids in high school who'd boast during class about "niccing" and/or "jonesing" for a cigarette. What I really need is to curl up nice and tight with somebody and sleep. You know... the type of spooning that's so full-body contact that you get sweaty where you're touching and have to lay apart after only a few minutes? Is there anything more delirously heavenly than the deep slumber you get with another person lying next to you? I'm so starved for affection right now I could just vomit.

---

I think I went on a date tuesday night. I think. Back story: My friend Jen was on a first date at the L&V last week, and I got to chatting with her and her (now) man, who was cool as hell. Somehow (and I swear I wasn't poor-me-ing) the topic of my near impossibility in getting a date gets brought up. Well, the other day I get a call from Jen. She says that she has a friend she wants me to meet, and would I mind if she gave her my number. I say that would be great, please do. She says, "Ok, well, she'll call you in a few minutes."

Yikes!

So we chat for a while, and its a very pleasant getting-to-know-you conversation, and we agree to meet wednesday night. Fast forward to tuesday: she calls and says that she's at the L&V if I want to meet. So I go, and it turns out she's 50, and while attractive (you know my penchant for milf types), just not exactly dating material. A delightful person nonetheless, but not a g/f potential. We go to A's and have a wonderful time dancing and singing to karaoke. In a nutshell, she just needs somebody to go out and act well below her age with. So I made a great new friend. :-)

So... I guess that was a date. Kinda. maybe? help.

---

As for the lady I got to chatting with from her ad on Craigslist: we still haven't met, but there's no hurry. We're still in the "Hey, you seem pretty damned cool." phase of things. I'd be lying, though, if I said I wasn't getting my hopes up just a teensy-weensy-little bit. She does seem wonderful.

What is the world coming to?

So I was doing some grocery shopping with Angela at Meijer (an east coast box store chain like Wal-Mart or Target), and went over to the men's sports apparel to look for something that might pass for a hockey jersey. To my luck, there were two racks of Starter brand shirts on clearance. I found an XXL black long sleeve athletic shirt, so I bought it.

We came back to my place because I was scanning, enlarging, and printing a photo for Angela on my computer. While the scanner took its sweet time, I put on my shoulder pads, slipped my new shirt over them to see if it would work as a jersey (it does), put on my gloves, and grabbed my hockey stick. Angela exclaimed "P-I-M-P!"

So I'm wondering... what is it about a particular style of shirt that can make somebody who is otherwise ininteresting and bland totally pop? I mean, with my new short haircut and this (dare I say!) trendy shirt, I (Mr. Modesty) sneak peeks in the mirror and look damned good! In brand name clothing, no less! For god's sake, I actually feel attractive.

I can feel my hippie soul withering and desiccating before my eyes. Oh the humanity!

---

I've been thinking about last year at this time. Texas Gurl and I had plans to meet. Those plans had to be delayed, but I made a promise to see her. My exact words were: ". . .come hell or high water. . ."

Well, neither hell nor very high water arrived (as you may have noticed), but yet I never flew out. I guess life just got in the way, but is that any excuse for breaking a promise? I feel really bad for talking so big and not delivering. And now, what was once a budding romance has been reduced to the infrequent blog comment. How could I have let this happen?

It's nice every now and then, but this business of always going out alone is getting kind of old.

What Was I Thinking?

Note to Self: read back over the last year's postings, and remove all personally identifying references to other people and places. Even if I said good things about them. It's not right.



---

BTW, that whole 'fate' thing I mentioned a few posts earlier? I'm seeing a pattern of near-miss events emerging. More on that later, if they actually do produce an outcome.

---

I'm so horny/lonely/angst-ridden right now, it's ridiculous.

---

UPDATE: It's 5am now, and I've spent the last three hours and a couple of cans of High Gravity beer (read: ridiculously cheap and high-alcohol) sifting through and rewording references to specific bars and people here in town. There's still more work to be done, but I'm tired.

This has taken me by surprise though... it fucking hurts to re-read posts over the past year. I'm damn near in tears right now, and my heart feels like it's dropped down into my stomach. The last year has been so turbulent, and so emotionally tumultuous, that it's such a terrible struggle to make it through the reading of some posts.

Here's one, though from the late-february night that I met Dark Haired Girl.

I've been hiding something from you guys. For about a week now, I've been in email correspondance with a lady whose craigslist.com personal ad I answered. We talked on the phone for the first time tonight, and I'm really having to restrain the urge to gush on here. I know I'm being intentionally vague, but it's too premature to say anything else. Just had to get that out in the open.

---

And then I'm thinking back to something I wrote in a post from September 12 of this year:

So I send out this spell for love, as did the young girl in the movie Practical Magic (and with her intention of describing a non-existant person... past, present, or future): My true love will be an albino with creamy skin, bright purple eyes, and snow white hair. And she'll have a lovely singing voice. And she'll have a smile that lights up the darkness. And she'll have a weird hobby, like playing the tuba or raising mountain lions or something. And she'll glow as she dances in the full moonlight, and she'll pose patiently for my camera. And she'll be a terrible cook and we'll bumble through recipes together. And she'll have a figure like Kate Winslet before she got all skinny, a la "Quills". And she'll bear a striking resemblance to a lovely girl named Kena that I knew back in high school.

The similarities to some of my musings are eye-opening to say the least.

---

In talking with Angela, I figured out exactly how to put my urge to play hockey: I'm releasing my inner warrior. Whether my blade is of sharpened steel, or of curved wood... whether my battlefield is a great open plain, or an enclosed field of ice... whether my army is of thousands, or simply six... it's time for Warrior Andy to face, fight, and defeat his adversaries!

I feel so manly right now it tingles. :-)

I'm bored. Not just momentarily, but over the last several weeks to months, I've just been really bored with myself. I'm bored with my photography... it's all the same damned pictures of the same damned stuff. The self nudes on the flickr page that I took last month are the only stylistically fresh photos I've mustered. I'm not bored with photography in general, quite the contrary. I'm just bored with my stuff. Ah well. The dude who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called these kind of periods "lateral drift".

So I'm drifting. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Be one with the plankton...

---

Bought my shoulder pads, a wooden stick, pad socks, and a duffle bag. I'm now set to actually hit the ice and play. The guy who sold the stuff to me offered to give me a few pointers this sunday night, since there's open skating before his hockey game.

---

There was the most brilliantly unusual sunset tonight, with firey hot pink sunlight bouncing off the underside of a shelf of high altitude cirrocumulus clouds. I kept gasping "wow" to myself as I drove down I-675. It made me wonder... in this hurry-hurry-hurry, duck-and-run culture we live in, did anybdody else see it? If they did see it, did they gasp? Were they moved? I refuse to think I'm alone on this one.

---

I've been thinking a lot about fate/destiny over the last few weeks. Do I believe? No, but anybody with any imagination to speak of has wondered... And have you ever noticed how nobody notices the machinations of predestiny while in progress? It's always in retrospect. "It was such a crazy sequence of unprobable events that brought our souls together! If this didn't happen, then that wouldn't have happened, and the other wouldn't have happened, and we never would have met. It must be fate!"

So I've been wondering: maybe I'm in the midst of the spinning gears and cogs, oblivious to obvious signs, hints, and indications happening right under my nose, so that if my life were a movie right now, the people in the audience would be shouting at the screen, "Wake up, dumbass! Look at what's happening around you!"

Don't you hate when screenwriters do that? The most plain-as-day obvious shit is going down, but the character on screen remains totally unaware? That's so frustrating. But anyway...

I'm keeping my eyes peeled for any suspicious occurances that could fit the descriptions of the this, the that, and the other that comprise the precarious happenstance that so often catches people off guard and smacks them upside the head.

Lemme know if you see anything.

And now for the big news...

Lee met up with the city school athletic board. They told him that I was a great guy, and my photos were top notch. But the image has to be cleaned up if the parents are to be comfortable with me taking pictures of their children. So...

Here's me before monday afternoon:


And here's me now:


I bowed down to The Establishment. I submitted to The Man. Or, I could've kept it and stayed in foodservice. No, thank you. Hair cut, please.

It's a big change, but at least some poor child who's lost her/his hair to chemotherapy will get one gorgeous wig! Three years in the making. But for as much as I miss my "Fabio Hair", long hair is kind of a pain in the ass. Let's look at the bright side:

1) No more ripping hair out of my scalp each morning brushing out the baby dredlocks that tangled up overnight.
2) No more waking up gagging in the middle of the night because I was snoring and sucked a clump of hair down my throat.
3) No more wet hair for three hours after a shower.
4) I can drive with my windows down without the frizzy bits intolerably tickling my face and getting in my eyes. Of course it's now snowing, but hey.
5) I can wear hats again.
6) I can wear my hockey helmet without pushing my bangs down over my eyes. And the helmet breathes now, too.
7) I actually have to rely on personality, wit, and charm when talking to people. No more peacock feathers. This has significantly (and to my own surprise) brought out my inner flirt the last couple-a days.

And everybody seems to like it. Or else they're just being polite. I met up with Angela last night, and she was honest enough to say she liked the long hair better. But anyway... such is life.

---

Speaking of the hockey helmet... while I had the camera out, I thought I'd take a snapshot of all the gear I have. All I have left to buy is a wooden ice stick (that's my aluminum street stick) and shoulder pads. I could use a jersey and those weird stripey legging/sock things that cover the shin pads, but they're more aesthetic than anything. Lotsa guys play in their sweats.



Of course, for shooting the tournament these next two weekends, the visor is coming off. Kinda hard to man a camera like that. :-)