Ridin' Solo

I've never really been someone who needs companionship just for the sake of public appearance. I long ago learned not to care about going places by myself. In college I'd go to the dining hall by myself, I went to see the first Hunger Games movie by myself, etc. But yesterday, I almost wimped out on myself.

The U.S. Men's and Women's National Volleyball Teams were in town, playing in their respective NORCECA tournaments to qualify for worlds. I planned on going to the gold medal matches, which were yesterday, and several of my friends had been planning on going as well. But when the time came, I suddenly found myself facing the prospect of going solo or not going at all.

I waffled for a little while, if we're being totally honest here. I've seen plenty of volleyball in my life, including the MNT play Bulgaria last year. Was seeing this tournament really necessary? Bumming around my apartment sounded just as appealing as going out.

Well, I eventually decided to suck it up and just go. And you know what was really hammered home to me?

...Are you paying attention, folks? This is life-changing stuff. Get ready for the knowledge I'm about to drop on you.

Nobody cares if you're alone.

Let me repeat this: Nobody. cares. if you're alone.

Nobody is looking at you. Nobody is judging you. Nobody gives half a crap what you're doing with your life.

As I was sitting there, alone, surrounded by families, I thought briefly that this was the first sporting event I've ever been to by myself. But that's such a lie. This may be the first sporting event with seating I've ever been to by myself, but almost two years ago I made an entire cross-ocean trip to go to sporting events by myself at a little thing called the London 2012 Olympic Games.

But first, lemme take an Olympic selfie!

Not only was I alone, but I was LITERALLY draped in the American flag. My pores oozed red, white and blue stars and stripes. And do you want to hear something magical? Brace yourselves: people talked to me. I made friends. I was not judged for a single solitary second.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that eveyone should stop being wimps and just do what you want to do, regardless of whether anyone else wants to go with you. Whether it be getting dinner, seeing a movie, going shopping, whatever. Live your damn life! Because it's a hell of a lot more fun to take a faux-sad selfie in the pouring rain at the Olympic women's marathon by yourself than it is to watch it from your couch at home and wish you'd decided to go.

And then, of course, there's always the chance that you'll run into a bunch of people that you know, and end up watching David Lee and Reid Priddy unleash their dominance while sitting with a group of people. Hey, it happens!

I do have one regret, though; forgetting to bring my camera and having to rely on iPhone 4 photography. *sad trombone*

Has anyone else done cool stuff by themselves? :)

I Dream Of Loose Teeth

(The pictures you see in this post have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm about to write. But they kind of look like they do, and come with the added bonus of being taken while I was in London, so I'm gonna roll with it.)

Towards the end of my senior year of college, I had a really weird dream. In this dream, I was running desperately to catch a school bus, all the while spitting my teeth out into my cupped hands. That was it. Needless to say, when I woke up I was totally wigged out. I mean, the idea of my teeth falling out by the mouthful is gross and kind of horrifying and a big fat NO THANK YOU! But I got over it and really didn't give it much thought beyond going to my friends and saying, "Ew, guys, I had the WEIRDEST dream last night!"

But when I started regularly dreaming about my teeth being loose -- not spitting them out like in the first dream, but just being able to wiggle them with my tongue -- I realized this had to mean something. I don't usually remember my dreams, so having the same dream multiple times in a week was seriously bizarre. So I looked it up. And what did I find? Well, according to teethfallingoutdream.org (I am so not even kidding), dreaming about your teeth falling out indicates:

• Anxiety.
• A costly compromise or decision.
• Radical change.
• Starting a new project or phase in your life.

Gee, that hit the nail on the freaking head, no? I only had the school bus dream that one time, but I don't need to be a professional dream interpreter to figure out what that one meant. Running to catch a school bus? Anxiety about a new phase in my life? Pretty sure I was subconsciously freaking out about graduating college.

Those dreams went away as soon as I had a plan for after graduation; my USA Volleyball internship. But as my year has progressed in a pretty regular cycle of anxiety levels, dreams of loose teeth have become an odd sort of constant in my life. They returned at the end of the summer as my internship was about to end, and went away as soon as I got extended at USAV through the end of the year. But they returned again when the real end of my internship approached, and went away again after it ended. So now that the end of my job at the USOC is imminent, I knew it was only a matter of time before I was waking up in the morning and desperately checking my mouth to make sure I'm not missing a tooth. Because by now, I realize that I'm not truly worried about my life until these dreams show up.

Welp... they're back. I'm officially at that point (again. Sigh). At this point, I want to find a job not just to have a job, but to make the damn dreams stop! Hell, there's a reason I floss every single day, and it is NOT because I want my teeth to fall out!

So, that's the state of my life right now. Maybe I should just drink some tea and watch mindless TV to de-stress. And apply for some more jobs. And floss. Definitely floss.

Does anyone else have weird recurring dreams? Or, better yet, does anyone have the same teeth-losing anxiety I do?!

The Olympics Go Hollywood

How on EARTH is it May already? What the heck? Pretty sure we skipped March and April, and mother nature still seems to think it's January; it's currently snowing. But either way, the calendar tells me we're now five months into 2014, and I'm still doing pretty well with my New Year's resolutions. I got a job (for the time being), I'm working out more, I'm reading regularly, I get up in the morning like a grown-up, and I've flossed every single day (woop woop for no gum disease!). But for the longest time, I was majorly slacking on #7 - "put leisure time to good use."

After the Olympics and Paralympics ended I had plenty of leisure time... but what was I doing with it? Not watching sports movies like I said I was going to, that's what. But then I happened to mention my desire to expand my Olympic movie repertoire to Brandon, my boss (the same one I called dude, if that gives you an idea of our relationship), and suddenly he's showing up to work with DVDs for me to borrow! Seriously, only one of the movies below belongs to me. So basically, this post could be called "Darci raids Brandon's Olympic movie collection." And it just so happens that they all divided nicely into two weekends, and two Olympics. :)

Munich: I knew going in that Munich is NOT the kind of movie I seek out and enjoy. Call me crazy, but I tend not to like watching people get killed in various violent ways. However, this movie is very highly regarded, and while I can't say I'll watch it again, I can say that it was really good. Avner and his crew were secret agents assigned to kill the people responsible for the massacre of the Israeli Olympic team, and the longer they were under cover and killing people, the more and more paranoid they got. By the end, Avner had spiraled so far into his paranoia that he could barely function. And as the movie ended, I found myself sitting in my otherwise empty apartment and wondering if someone wanted to kill me. They get into your head, these psychological thrillers!

While seeing the Israeli athletes get taken hostage and murdered was a wee bit traumatizing, I did like learning a bit about the aftermath. Munich is not entirely factual, but everything I know about the Munich Massacre is about the day itself. I knew basically nothing about what happened next, or if Israel retaliated at all. So learning that much was pretty interesting, even if I do have to take everything else with a grain of salt. But if it's good enough for Cool Runnings, it's good enough for Munich.

Without Limits: I had zero expectations going into this movie. I knew nothing about it other than its subject, and judging by the DVD cover I figured it would be pretty bad (I mean, look at it!). But I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it! It follows distance runner Steve Prefontaine from his high school days up through his death. I didn't know all that much about Pre beforehand, other than that he (spoiler alert?) finished fourth in Munich and (spoiler alert?) died really young, so it was really cool getting to hear about the kind of impact he ended up having on track and field in the U.S. He also seems like a pretty interesting character. Considering his final record didn't fall until 2012 (holy craaap), I have to wonder what he could've accomplished had he not died so young. There was, of course, a love story subplot, but I didn't totally hate it. They really loved each other but it was far from all sunshine and rainbows. The girl actually had a personality! It was refreshing.

My main complaint is the fact that the movie didn't make clear the passage of time. You know that time has gone by, but the only indication of that is Pre's slightly longer hair and the sudden appearance of a mustache. Have we just skipped ahead several months? A year? And then, unfortunately, there was the utter predictability of Pre's death. Even if I hadn't known it was coming, the absolutely heinous foreshadowing all but told me it was going to happen. He was literally counting down to his death. Alas.

Uh, hi, my name is Darci and I'm obsessed with Lake Placid 1980. Is there a support group for this? (Also, Miracle is obviously mine. And it is not new. But if you thought I'd have a Lake Placid movie weekend and wasn't going to include Miracle...)

Lake Placid, An Olympic History: This baby both started and ended with a song from the Miracle soundtrack. ;) I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who isn't psychopathically in love with Lake Placid and/or the Olympics (like myself), because it's very much a documentary; lots of history. But considering I own a book on the very same subject, it was right up my alley. Anything that talks about Eric Heiden and the Miracle on Ice is a winner in my book. It was also cool to hear about all the Olympians from Lake Placid; apparently there's been at least one at every single Winter Olympics. Pretty impressive. OH, and I learned that the bobsled track I took a ride on was the exact one used at the 1932 Olympics!

Miracle On Ice: Do I even need to explain how excited I was to watch this? I randomly found it for sale on the same website that gave me DVDs of the actual 1980 Olympic hockey games (aka a veritable wonderland of glorious things). I'd read conflicting things about this movie -- which was, by the way, a made-for-TV movie released in 1981 with a limited budget and production schedule. Some said it's better than Miracle, some said it's crap, but what really got my attention were the reviews that said they wished it could be combined with Miracle. That it showed a ton of what Miracle left out, and the two together would've been the perfect movie.

After seeing it for myself -- and cringing, flailing, and cackling -- I totally agree. Miracle On Ice + Miracle = pretty perfect.

Most of my reaction comes from the fact that I know a whole heck of a lot about this team and its stories, and there's a TON that Miracle doesn't even touch. Miracle On Ice shows the guys getting their invitations to training camp, arriving at the Colorado Springs OTC (YAY!!! And it looks like it was actually filmed here!), finding out that they made the team, etc. So that was pretty glorious. We also got to see how the players' agents and lawyers factored in, and more of Jim Craig's relationship with his father, and more Mike Eruzione storylines than I ever thought I wanted. And more players got slightly bigger roles in Miracle On Ice than they did in Miracle, which was awesome. But with all that came stuff that Miracle included that Miracle On Ice (very, very unfortunately) left out. There's actually surprisingly little from before the Olympics that directly overlapped.

Most of my other complaints are related to the rushed production and the fact that it's a typical cheesy '80s movie. The hockey was slow and clunky (and when they used real game footage, they didn't make it blend in very well), the Boston accents were really thick and really fake, Karl Malden was 20 years too old to play Herb Brooks (and Steve Guttenberg as Jim Craig? Really?), and some of the writing/dialogue/acting was just... yikes. Holy bad.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and this boils down to the little details that were included that only an... uh, slightly overzealous fan such as myself would appreciate. I mean, Rob McClanahan talking about geopolitical absorption (and Jack O'Callahan responding with total snark)? Hello, flawless. Mark Pavelich wearing flannel, playing guitar and being late because he was fishing? Be still, my fangirl heart! The vote for team captain coming down to Mike Eruzione and Buzz Schneider? Yes, thank you. Dave Christian getting called Koho? A+. But MOST IMPORTANTLY... Ken Morrow had a beard. *standing ovation*

It's glaringly obvious why Disney wanted to make Miracle despite the previous existence of Miracle On Ice, and I myself see Miracle On Ice as more of a supplement than a stand-alone. Kind of like fanfiction; oftentimes questionably executed, but gives you stuff you wish the original had included. So, yes, if you smush Miracle On Ice and Miracle together, you'd have one fantabulous movie.

So this was a good first step in my endeavor to watch more sports movies! I do still need to see Chariots of Fire, though. Whoops. Are there any others that you think are must-sees? Recommendations are always appreciated! :)

Things That Make Me Charlie White Happy (And Things That Really Don't)

This week beat me, guys. Between (extremely expensive) car problems, all sorts of stressful madness at work, and then another round of (extremely expensive) car problems, by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around I was trying not to burst into tears in the lobby of the auto shop. Granted, if each of these things had happened one at a time, I wouldn't have been nearly as overwhelmed. But all together? Ha, no thanks.

Basically, I've been a giant grumpy ball of stress for the better part of a week now. But I don't want to be a grumpy ball of stress. I want to be Charlie White happy.

Charlie has to be the happiest person on the face of the planet. I mean, look at him. He always has that smile on his face. He's like sunshine condensed into a human being. How do you do that? How are you that happy all the time?

If you're looking at me for an answer... well, I don't have one. But I compiled a list of things that made me Charlie White happy this week, because there are bright spots even on the days in which you spend three hours sitting at the mechanic while your car is being worked on. Siiiigh.

+Free cookies at work. Free stuff is great. Free food is greater. Free junk food is the greatest. I think that's something we can all agree on.

+People offering to help out when I'm carless (before I can even ask). For some reason, I find asking for a ride to be incredibly awkward. Actually, I find asking for favors in general to be incredibly awkward. Maybe the people in my life know this, because I had more ride offers than I know what to do with, and I'm so grateful! Not just that I didn't have to ask, but that people want to help me in my hour day(s) of need. :)

+Going to lunch with a friend and (finally!) hearing his Sochi stories. I do love me some good behind-the-scenes Olympic tales! And it doesn't hurt that the friend in question is an A+ human being.

+Treating myself. I couldn't even remember the last time I bought something frivolous for myself before last weekend. But I randomly decided to treat myself to a couple of books and a movie, and that was an excellent life choice. Especially when the movie showed up at my apartment with this!

+Going to sleep earlier than I thought I'd be able to. *heavenly chorus*

+People complimenting my blog. Seriously, if you want to make me really happy (and simultaneously kind of uncomfortable), talk to me about my blog.

+Getting Buzz back from the mechanic a day earlier than expected. YES. The cost also wasn't quite as high as the worst case scenario I was given, so that was a smidgen of relief as well.

+Having amazing friends who make me feel better about all the suck, from clear across the country. There is honestly nothing like getting texts that say a) "do I have to come kill someone for you?" and b) "we'll take good care of you if you ever need a vacation away from it all." Are they not the greatest? :)

+Crossing an item off my Olympic bucket list. LOOK, I can name every Olympic host city by year! (Don't judge.)

Now, you'll have to take my word for it that I didn't cheat. I didn't study, either. I just randomly decided to see how many I could remember (because that's where my mind goes when it's idle, apparently), and realized I was there. Woohoo!

+Spring has finally sprung in Colorado. I say this with extreme reservation, as it snowed on Wednesday morning. But it's supposed to be 80 degrees today, so we can call that spring, right?

+Going to see the Rockies play the Mets. I've been wanting to go to a Rockies game for, like, a year now. So when the Mets finally came to town, the situation was too perfect for me to pass up! I got to watch baseball, break out my R.A. Dickey shirt, eat a hotdog, and enjoy the flawless weather with some friends.

It was oddly comforting. I mean, it's a stadium I've never been to, friends I've never been to a game with and have only known for a couple of months, and a Mets roster that I'm like 90% unfamiliar with. But cheering for Murph and Duda and Wright felt like a little slice of home, like all the Mets games I've gone to at Citi with friends I've known for my entire life. It was also kind of fun having a sense of camaraderie with all the other Mets fans there. We share the same struggle. All the Mets jerseys I saw, with the exception of David Wright and Matt Harvey, are players that are no longer on the team -- Reyes, Davis, Delgado, Martinez, Piazza, Dykstra. We live in the past because... uh... who the heck is our present??? (Serious question.)

The game itself was crazy entertaining (and crazy long -- three hours and 46 minutes!) and the Mets... lost. On a walk-off home run. After blowing a six-run lead in the third inning. Wompppp. But any game in which the Mets score 10 runs is a good one, especially since they lost the previous two games to the Rockies by a combined 17-7. And hey, the Mets losing is the kind of suck I know to expect and have learned how to handle. So if I had to be there to see a loss, it was a hell of a loss to see. At least they kept things interesting for all three hours and 46 minutes!

Looking back on all this stuff makes me realize that, despite all the craptastic stuff, this week was pretty awesome. Maybe this Charlie White happy thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hmmmm. I'm onto you, Charlie. Let's see if I can keep this optimism going as I drive a car with headlights and blinkers that don't work for the next few days. Siiiiigh.

Wishing you all a Charlie White happy week, friends!

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