No Joy in Dave-ville

This morning, while playing basketball, I took an elbow under the right side of my ribcage (from a "kid" I taught in 1996) and I think I strained or bruised an intercostal muscle-- so it hurts to take a deep breath, it really hurts when I sneeze, and there is no joy in my life because it also hurts when I laugh.

The Beach: Last Person Standing Wins

Yesterday, after fighting through some serious Parkway traffic, we got down to Sea Isle, ate lunch at Mike's Dock, unpacked, and headed to the courts the play basketball . . . and despite the height advantage, the old folks (me, my brother, and Nick) beat Alex, Ian, and James . . . then the old folks beat some randoms, then we played fours, then Ian almost puked his hot dog and headed home with James and on the way he crashed on his bike, spraining his ankle and gouging his leg with the big gear ring, so Ian was laid up, meanwhile, I hurt my shoulder in the last game of basketball and I've rubbed the skin raw on the inside of my pinky toe and have to keep an earplug between my toes to prevent bleeding, and Alex has a terrible ingrown nail on his big toe and Marc's knees were too sore from basketball to play pickleball this morning (but I went, despite my shoulder) and Cat managed a four mile beach run despite the neuroma on her foot . . . and that was just day one!

I Am Too Old For This Shit

This afternoon, my son Alex snuck me into the Busch gym on Rutgers and it was packed-- probably because it's so fucking hot outside-- and we got into a game of three-on-three with an old student of mine and some random college kids and Alex made a couple lay-ups and the kid covering him-- who was shorter than him-- started hanging all over him and chasing him and elbowing him and then when Alex stole the ball from him and drove the kid grabbed his shirt, soccer-style, to keep him from scoring and we were all like "you're done" and he complained that Alex elbowed him and then he stopped playing but the kind of hung out shooting in the midst of us while we were organizing another game and at some point Alex and the kid bumped into each other and then we were about to start another game but this kid kept shooting-- he was trying to get Alex to start something and he eventually succeeded-- he pushed him and Alex took a swing at him and me and another guy had to break it up and my old student got hit in the nose while he was trying to break it up (by Alex?) and then once it was sorted out the kid still kept hanging around and then he got the gym supervisors to come over and at this point I was like "we need to get out of here because I'm not supposed to be here and you're not supposed to be getting in fights on school grounds and that's what we did-- we went to the Piscataway Y and played two -on-two against two really athletic kids and got our butts kicked, but it was physical and fun and there were no hard feelings.

Birthday Athletics, Plus . . .

I am very sore today, but in a good way: yesterday Alex snuck Ian and me into the Busch gym so we could play some pick-up basketball and we ran into one of my old students from East Brunswick (Armaan) who loves to play (and often plays with my son Alex) and then once we got in the gym, we saw several soccer players and one tennis player from Highland Park (Matt, Amay, and Boyang) and so we played a couple of hours of four-on-four and-- aside from one random-- I had either sired, coached, or taught all the players in the game-- and my team was kicking some butt (Armaan could really shoot and pass) and I was driving the soccer player that was covering me crazy-- he played basketball like a soccer player-- the way I did when I started-- and so succumbed to all the basic moves . . . anyway, we had a blast and then I got up this morning and played 6:30 AM badminton, which I haven't done in a while, and it was as frustrating as it usual is-- that game is difficult and unpredictable and it's really hard to hit a backhand out of the corner-- but I got another good runaround and now I can barely move.