casual ultimate » chi-tizzle

In big points, I‘m good enough to be out there, so all I have to do is play. It seems like in big points, particularly in coed, it’s a possession game. The team that can control the disc when they get it will win. The problem never seems to be getting the disc: coed teams love to cough it up. The problem is always controlling the disc. Controlling doesn’t mean anything more than trusting that the right opportunity is coming and being patient with the disc. That means resetting early and often, taking what they give you, and only striking deep when the point is demanding it.

I feel like as players, we are simply trying to demonstrate our skill at responding to the game, that’s all. We don’t make the game. The game is the way it is, and at our best we are able to dance with it. We never actually control it. It feels like double-dutch; we can either jump in at the right time and keep pace and not disrupt it and wow the crowd, or we can try to force it and mess it all up. Of course, that’s just what works for me. I see players like Seth and Beau who can just step into a game at times and completely change it. (That would be pretty cool if you were at a party and Seth and Beau were able to change the music by the way they danced…)

At this point in my Ultimate career, I feel like suddenly I have this voice that is good. I have things to say suddenly. I swear I never thought I had much to say to club players. Now I realize, after inflating my ego for a couple of years with the uber-supportive Revolver and uber-young BCBC, that I know some stuff. What’s more important is that I know stuff that most people don’t. My observations, in case you haven’t read this blog, are pretty much all about how it feels and the spiritual side of things. That goes largely unaddressed by most teams, so I feel like I can just walk around blessing teams and leaving them better than when I greeted them. That’s kinda cool, even if my knee is pretty jacked up.

I played Sandblast last weekend, and I only spoke in the huddle a couple of times, but when I did, I usually just said that we are a positive team, we look for opportunities to support our team-mates, and we try our hardest, trusting that our team-mates will do the same for us. All really simple stuff, but it was surprising how well-received it was. Of course, it was the worst result I’ve ever had at Sandblast, having never lost a game on Saturday before and never losing before Finals. Becky is officially better than Bjorn and I because as soon as she was gone, we suddenly were bad at Sandblast.

Who DID win Sandblast was Hector’s posse of young players. I’ve always been impressed with him and have never had more than basic conversations with him. I get the sense that he stresses discipline and buy-in. Whatever he stresses, he seems to be a great player and teacher. I imagine that his philosophy would fit well with Revolver’s values of intensity, humility, and discipline.

it is a gorgeous chicago fall day for the 2008 election and this blogger has tickets to obama’s election night rally in grant park! woot! we got lucky enough to get them before they disappeared so the casuals will be in grant park to witness history.. either our first black president gets elected or the loop erupts into an absurd riot. clearly we are hoping for the former. get out and vote today!

also in other non political news team pegasus, the cycling team that i joined but then shirked all summer while planning the wedding, is having a recruitment meeting at weegee’s a week from today at 8pm. so if you still read this blog and are interested in racing for an awesomely fun team come out and see what its all about.

in other pegasus news.. the team has put together a calendar of lady cyclists to raise money for the team and for world bicycle relief. you can pre-order yours here. there is even a NSFW version cause im not gonna lie.. some of my teammates are giving it all away. Im not of course but i am nevertheless in the calendar with my bike (Im july) and so is ms. ultimate’s new haven roommate (she’s october). anyways the team and world bicycle relief are both great causes so buy a nudie calendar for charity.

i will probably post about the wedding at length at some point (i can hear you holding your breath your so excited) and hopefully chuck or bjorn will give us a post about nationals? anyway is anyone out there?

happy election day!

edit:

heres a video of our own flying viking at nationals making a heroic catch.

well i have to say marriage is awesome. we get to blow off social functions to stay home, make dinner with all our fancy new kitchen gadgets and watch netflix until kingdom come. i know that sounds horrible to you youngsters but im an old lady and a homebody and to me it sounds like heaven. we get up early and watch meet the press and drink coffee and talk to our friends about how excited we are about the vice presidential debate. this is starting to sound like a post on a different blog… stuff white people like.

if you havent read this blog you need to start. especially now because they have a post about ultimate. heres a small highlight to entice you…

‘It is important to know that when you hear a white person saying “we should do some ultimate this weekend” or “I’m so pumped for ultimate,” they are talking about a sport and not an “ultimate solution”-type race war. Though a quick look at a field full of Ultimate Frisbee players might lead one to surmise that an ethnic cleansing has taken place.’

good stuff.

and speaking of the race issue.. now that we are a hip interracial married couple we are noticing a few things. mr. casual isnt too interested in ultimate. ‘yeah yeah its great…’ also after seeing an old family photo of the towns he declared ‘i need to start a new blog called ’so i married a white girl’.

ahem.

maybe i need to start a new blog category called ’so i married a latino (i originally wrote hispanic but apparently thats not the pc term…)’. lord knows the man wants to keep every weird piece of junk my mom tries to unload on us out of the basement of the cottage. heres a picture of our living room with our new america pillow. im trying to relax about it all. really.

ms. ultimate wasn’t optimistic it could be done.. but i didnt take ‘wasnt optimistic it could be done’ for an answer! thats right i went to the non-rat infested whole foods, the one in the gold coast to be exact, and bought 5 items for under 12$! five items! half the time i go to whole foods and get 5 things and it costs me $72.50. How did you do it miss casual? well ill tell you..

the key is no booze, no magazines and no flowers. now the boys dont get lured in by flowers but i do. however the ranunculus i love are going to droop in two days and my debt will last a lifetime. and i know the alcohol at whole foods looks so shiny and nice. it has fancy labels designed by hippies in the northwest who dropped out of college and it might be organic / local / small batch / ‘fill in the blank other expensive adjective’. and the magazines! they have cool do it yourself projects that might get you onto apartment therapy (ahem.. tbrizzle..) and hip interracial couples with expensive furniture and asymmetrical haircuts! maybe you could be like them if you just buy this magazine that costs 8.95… but hold strong! you too can conquer this mecca of bourgeois consumerism!

just buy their generic house brand everything, avoid the organic produce, dont get the readymade meals they have (although their samosas are great..) and you too can get out for under 15$.

whole foods. beautiful but deadly.

this post has been coming for a long time but now.. i cant stay silent any longer.. a bebe opened on damen. seriously. i mean i guess where else makes sense for that carnival of spandex and plastic rhinestones but across from cans? but still.. it is definitely the last nail in the bucktown coffin. marc jacobs? ok. bcbg? er.. club monaco? wait.. but bebe.. this is it people. the end is near. watching pre-teens with fake tans stroll out of intermix with a bag on their arm that costs more than my rent is just your average saturday afternoon at this point. i suppose the gentrification gods threw us a bone with the whole dairy queen / orange julius complex but just because you give me sprinkles doesnt mean someone shouldnt stage a protest outside of skankwear international. how do those women smoke? their clothes are mostly plastic and certainly flamable…

there goes then neighborhood. time to move to logan square.

in other news.. the new batman is quite good and much scarier than i thought. plus they flip a semi truck on south lasalle which is amazing to witness even on film. the olymipics are coming which is ore exciting than i expected. we are t - 7 weeks to the wedding and things are floating along. and last but certainly not least.. it sounds like everyones favorite team of speedo wearing gentlemen made it to the finals this weekend at sandblast so congrats to those dudes (if they still read this..) hey someone should post about sandblast. i want to hear all the play by plays.

alright.. gotta go. their unveiling a new gladiator.

im pretty sure this is a post about nothing but here it is anyway. so guess what? swimming is frickin hard! i went swimming for the first time tonight in preparation for the half triathlon in july with the cnd ladies and.. yeah. at least during the running part you can stop and walk if you are tired.. if you are beat and in the middle of the lake i don’t really know what you do. float? lets hope so. i hope there are some lifeguards. also i am going to try racing at the velodrome soon. which should be terrifying. i hope there are some lifeguards there too.

in other news.. ms. ultimate was in town for the last couple of weeks and it was wonderful. we went out on the town last weekend with the viking and t-brizzle.. just like the old days. drinks. dinner. ice cream. criticizing the outfits of everyone in lincoln park. seriously though.. we saw some lady wearing black and white leopard print shorts and black suade boots with fringe on them. this prompted our new category ’signs of the coming apocalypse.’ also in this category would be the appearance of an intermix on damen in wicker park. its getting dangerous out. fer realz. also we went and saw the ’sex and the city’ movie even against our better judgment. it was good but im glad we brought small pink cans of champagne.

the wedding is coming right up. best thing? we get to go taste cake this weekend. yeah cake. i love cake so much i want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant. um… anyway. its exciting. 3 months to go before im mrs. casual.

So i realized today by reading some other girl’s bride blog that my wedding is exactly 100 days away. wild! i cant believe how much planning and money weddings take. i mean im sure this isnt a big revelation for those of you who are already hitched but good lord.. i didnt expect it. did you know there are support groups and websites for ‘post nuptial depression’ for when you realize the biggest party of your life is over? so i have that to look forward to…

did you also know the average american wedding costs 25k$?? thats completely rediculous. go feed an orphan for goodness sakes. we are doing our part to feed the slave labor that nike employs by getting custom dunks for the groomsmen.

but things are coming along. i know all you dudes reading this cant wait to see our color scheme so here it is. exciting stuff right? we are tying the knot at the town cottage on lake michigan which i know many of you have been to over the years. i wish we could just have mama town make an epic feast of spaghetti and meatballs and enchiladas. it would be fitting and yet.. i think we still will get a caterer.

outside of all this madness.. i havent been doing much. training for the half triathalon? not really. we did bike the drive last weekend which was early but fun. lots of 30 rock but no ultimate. i was the worst spring league teammate ever. but ill let ms. ulty post about beach since she back in town this week. yay!

holy moly i really don’t recall the last time i was this sore. yesterday was my first day at spring league and today.. i can feel it. biking up there felt pretty good and actually playing was a lot of fun except that im so rusty and the fields were essentially a large swamp. seriously. ive never seen anything like it. there was one moment when i was trying to change directions and my cleet stuck in the ankle deep freezing mud and my foot started to pull out of my shoe altogether and i remember thinking ‘am i doing this? what in the hell are we doing out here?’ i thought our first field was rough with a few mucky patches and a couple pools of standing water but our second game? there was no grass to speak of except right on the sideline. thats brown bear there in the foreground taking a break from the mud bowl.

so i could complain a lot of things… from my idiotic choice to bike up to schiller to the field conditions to playing savage after not running for 6 months… but honestly it was a lot of fun. my team ‘and 1′ is a great team and miss casual is psyched to be a part of this squad of ballers. also after watching some and 1 videos and actually figuring out what ‘and 1′ is and what the nicknames are all about… i’d like to request a nickname revision. can i be hot sauce? that guy is bananas.

the photos courtesy of the future mr. casual who was nice enough to explain ‘and 1′ and its implications after standing in the cold watching us for like 3 hours.

in closing id like to extend an extra special guilt trip to team paulina since it sounds like they have some big news of their own that they have yet to share with the blogosphere. good to see you guys. now blog already.

hey blog! how’re things? i guess its been a while.. a month? well i guess i’m a bit embarrassed. but honestly i haven’t had anything to blog about except love and romance and the total absurd money pit that is wedding planning. exciting yes. affordable? doubtful. poor papa town. at least i’m the only daughter. i’ll try not to post about wedding stuff but i can’t make any promises.

in other news.. guess who won paganello? bjorn. single handedly i might add.

this just in from our casual ultimate quality control : bjorn had a team. a team called scandal. who knew? i figured he just went out there by himself and ripped beach ultimate apart. either way i believe we can now say chicago is the home of the beach ultimate champions of the world.

the entire globe. think about it.

and in even other other news.. mr. brizzle and miss casual are breaking up their happy home. mr. brizzle has bought himself some real estate. a real home for slider which he so truly deserves.

and in other other other news… our own chicago son, mr. chuckworth townington, is headed to chicago. soon even. stay tuned because im sure shennanigans will ensue and we want you there.

okay thats it. i feel so much closer to you now blog. really. this time has been special.

edit: i expect all the people / events mentioned in this post to be blogged about by their respective casual ultimate staff memebers.

this afternoon was kind of tedious at work so i thought id liven things up by downloading a song by omarion (”icebox”) and eating a fair trade chocolate bar from trader joe’s which tasted like magic. that certainly brightened my mood. and then i remembered today is the big primary showdown in texas and ohio and even teeny tiny rhode island. very exciting stuff. big things poppin in this country…

on a side note.. i just heard from a public relations officer from rhode island. she informed me that rhode island doesn’t like to be called ‘tiny’. it likes to be called ‘yes you are… look at you. you’re so cute…come here little guy… ‘

we finally made it to march thank jebus. february was one mean son of a gun. now that the spring light is at the end of the winter tunnel its time to start getting ready for frisbee and track season. just thinking about spring training is the most satisfying thing i’ve done all day. but seriously ms. ulty and i were thinking about some kind of ongoing posts that could chronicle our efforts to get in shape for the warm weather. i personally think this will be too embarrassing to post but i suppose the threat of humiliation is supposed to inspire us to work out more? anyone have some good jump start type workouts they’re doing that they want to post about?

if you want to get inspired (read: intimidated) check out our chicks and drinks friend michelle’s blog about training for a half ironman. it makes good reading. especially over a bag of ruffles.

well another winter weekend goes by mostly uneventfully but at least we topped 40 degrees today. i got to ride my new bike and chat with c(b)r about real estate and slider’s potential effectiveness as a guard dog. although i watched a good deal of television (hey the dunk competition was fun to watch this year!) at least a bit of it was inspirational.

i watched a sports special about the kona ironman triathalon… and if that doesn’t get me off the couch for at least a week i don’t know what will. seriously… 2.5 miles swim, 112 miles on the bike, and then a marathon (26 mi.) how do people survive this? a frickin 65 year old woman completed it! she was happy cheery the whole way. a blind grandfather completed it. a guy with no frickin feet and completed it with prosthetic limbs. a female former winner of the race crashed her bike, broker her collar bone, and rode like 20 more miles before giving up. the first place dude from last year was throwing up as he was riding his bike and didn’t stop for quite a while…!? if that doesn’t give you serious self esteem problems i don’t know what your life is about. i couldn’t even finish 100 miles on the bike this summer and i ride more than most people. not more then triathaletes but holy hell! a flippin 77 year old nun completed the swim and bike portion!

alls i knows is im gonna have my butt in the saddle of a bike at the gym for some serious hours in the next few weeks to pull it together so i dont get sick during the first spring league game of the season because i assure you, cherished reader, that i will not continue to fight on after such an occurance.

it did make me think about doing a little bitty 1/4 triathalon with some of the chicks and drinks ladies this summer. if a legless man can do the ironman i figure i should be able to swim 1/2 a mile, bike 20 and run 3 by july. right? right???

cricket. cricket.

i think i have election fever. its great to watch the primaries and realize that all three of the front runners have some qualities that i admire and some stances on issues that i can get behind. hillary gets lots of bad press i think but she ultimately has a pretty great track record as a senator. obama is my man and the thought of a very new face in the nation’s highest office is exciting. and mccain is pretty great too. all in all its going to be a really interesting road to the white house.

i mean i think that to make it more interesting we could turn it into a reality show where they all have to live together on the campaign trail and allow people to vote via text message but that’s not going to happen in this election. maybe 2012. we can hope.

anyway i am officially sick of winter. like for real. i have such cabin fever. i have barely ridden my new bike which is rediculous but so is the fact that every other day we get another 6 inch heap of white fluff. im trying to look forward to spring league ultimate, a summer of racing on my bicycle (ive joined a sweet cycling team called team pegasus) and feeling the sunshine on my face…. but its snowing sideways right now.

so i was inspired by vijays post to man up and start repping my blog again. (cu for life!) i miss everyone! turns out the tv isnt my real friend no matter how safe it makes me feel. i miss chuck-town, and bk, and ms. ulty and especially willis and little joe. ive been having some work drama so ive been trying to focus during the day and not blog but the blog must go on.

got back from lasik a bit ago so pardon the spelling.. but im typing this without glasses! and i can kinda see! although im wearing these jacked up huge stevie wonder sunglasses they gave me to put on.

dudes lasik is so werid! it was over fast but i swear i nearly ripped the stuffed animal they gave me in half. its the longet 20 seconds ever. its like your staring at this light, they everything is pressurey and you cant see anything but grey. then they go back and your supposed to stare at this orange blinking light while the laser clicks next to you. the problem is i couldnt tell where the damn light was hlaf the time. i thought it was moving or something and i tried to focus but i guess my eye was moving. but we got through it eventually. honetly youre only in the laser room for like 10 minutes.

but then my eyes slammed shut and i couldnt open them for anything the whole car ride home. they were so achy and itchy and i was just miserable driving from arlington heights but we made it home and then itook a super short nap wearing some other goggles and now i can kind of see but things are still fuzzy. i think im gonna take some more tylenol and go back to sleep for a bit.

the wonder of lasers! the magic of science! the fantastic winder of giantg whirring machines!

thanks for all the well wishes. see you guys (for real) very soon…

so after getting my stem and riser bars stolen off my bike two weeks ago i have not ridden my bike to work again. its starting to get frickin rediculous so i thought id buy another bike for commuting. something less flashy and track bike-y for bad weather. well my new baby is on its way. its an empella bonfire cross bike i found on ebay. pretty but still pretty rough and tumble. ill get some locking screws and cross my fingers that it will be safe outside my work.

on another note im getting lasik on thursday morning. the magic of science is going to make me able to see in less than a week. this is profoundly scary for some reason.. mostly because ive never had surgery of any kind but also because everyone knows that when you want creepy medical stuff to go away you close your eyes (and possibly cry or whimper) but for lasik you have to be wide eyed and awake. i hope they have lots of valium on hand.

friday i had my preliminary appointment and they super dialated my eyes to the point where i went back to work and couldn’t read at all. also my eye doctor berated me for wearing someone else’s glasses. my prescription was so old and it was only for two weeks so i didnt want to buy new ones.. and my friend ben had some old glasses that were close to my prescription. they work fine. but the doc thought i was a total nut. her actual words were ‘wow i’ve never seen something like that from an educated person.’ wait wait.. i’m educated? werd.

also friday night we had a little going away fete for simon and amy (of chicks and drinks fame) at delilahs. this was one of the better parties ive been to lately. great crowd. great beer for cheap. well miss chivolvos premiere couple.

im hoping well get an update from lei out when everyone gets back. yall are lucky youre in la. its a degree outside her. a. degree. burrrr….

so i rode my bike to work today for the first time in like two weeks. it was nice although i thought i might pass out at any moment. i seriously thought i had the flu but i went to the doctor on monday and she gave me an antibiotic so i guess its not the flu?? (this is my marginal understanding of the magic of medicine. if you are a doctor and you want to correct me please do. i dont understand the wonder of the human body because inside me is just a ball of white light. not gross guts and stuff like you see on csi).

i am no good at being sick. as much as i like couch and tv it is only in their capacity as downtime that they truly shine. when they offset the flury of activity that is going to work and the gym and the grocery store they are like a bright brilliant light from heaven. when you havent left the house in 4 straight days because you get winded walking from your room to the laundry it starts to feel like house arrest.

the bright spot in the haze of my illness was definitely watching the premiere of the new american gladiators with the viking and tbrizzle on sunday night. there was a bit too much talking to the contestants for our liking and helga didnt end up being as fast or as mighty as we hoped, (that lady is bigger than chucktown for realz) but wolf and hulk hogan were great. as was seeing akira’s body double win and witnessing the total body shutdown of some of the contestants on the eliminator thing. we kind of hope that wolf and hulk hogan start their own reality tv show where theyre roommates and hulk overloads the laundry with too much bubbles (uh oh!) and wolf’s incessant howling leads to a house meeting.

its good to be back.

well the christmas is long gone and new years is just around the corner. although lots of the usual chicago suspects will be in portland witnessing the wedding of dr. mercer there are two big events going down for nye in chicago so hopefully next week will be bloggarific with the recap of action from both coasts.

the first is a party being thrown at the real world logan square. our very own brown bear, along with other casual ultimate notables have concentrated domestic power in another location closer to the double deuce and they are throwing the new years jam this year. rose bowl themed. should be bananas.

also michelle, our lovely chicks and drinks planning princess, has coordinated a brilliant party just blocks from the casual / brizzle residence. heres the flier. 15 bones all you can drink. seriously. on new years. also the beer sponsor is fat tire which is amazing and there are tons of djs and its in the same spot as the sadie hawkins after party. holler! dress to impress. you can buy tickets in advance even at www.myspace.com/holyrollernyc.

its that time of year when you are expected to cough up the dough to show your loved ones you.. well love them i guess. also its the time of year when the blog kind of degrades into open emails between ms. ultimate and myself. what can you do?

i finished my christmas shopping on michigan avenue monday evening (except for tbrizzle which well get to later…) and it was actually very festive and fun. i usually hate shopping here because my office is here and as soon as i get out of work i just want to flee as fast as possible from the parade of babystrollers, tourists, and aggressive 100 pound blonds that make up the shopping public. but monday night it was snowy, i had gotten a christmas bonus (woohoo!) and the lights were on so i bounced along and got into the christmas spirit by spending the evening surrounded in a cloud of bliss and consumerism.

and i got everyone taken care of except tbrizzle. the thing i wanted to get him was sold out. but really.. what does one get for the dude with everything? how about a patagonia t-shirt? oh wait… okay how about something with basset hounds? well… or maybe bike related stuff? okay now youre just being mean.

ill figure it out. meanwhile ms. ultimate is finishing up ivy leaguing to come home and shop, eat and watch tv like the good old days. only a couple days to go! lemmings is already on red alert.

well im back from the town family christmas and i have to say the weather up here is not as bad as the news made it sounds. i thought i would at least get a day or two off because of the ice armageddon that was going on but i suppose i missed the worst of it. certainly not the sunshine state but for chicago its not bad.

family holidays are great because of tv. man we watched a lot of 30 rock and it is so so good. for my money it doesnt get better than when tracy jordan sings ‘imagine christmas wishes shooting out of your eyes’ while dictating his biography. it was a tougher holiday than usual for me for some reason and since i am not open with my feelings and like to use humor and denial to avoid situations that are difficult in any way.. 30 rock really came through for me. as did the flight of the conchords. those dudes are funny too. like check out this french song.

so im just going to relate one scene from 30 rock, mostly for c(b)r because he makes fun of me for saying comfortable looking shoes are for lesbians. not comfortable shoes but comfortable looking shoes. well theres an episode where jack sets liz lemon up on a blind date and it turns out to be a woman. she storms into his office afterwards and says ‘im not gay!’ and he responds ‘those shoes are bi-curious at least.’ so im not alone.

also watching tv last night tbrizzle had an idea for a dating wesbite called ’settle.com’ for the mature dater who’s ready to give up. unfortunately settle.com is taken but were thinking about besticando.com or readytosettle.com. look for our youtube promo to be filmed over ms. ulty’s christmas break.

6:15 am: slider wakes me up for the second day in a row by repeatedly scratching/headbutting my bedroom door. though drowsy i barrel out of bed, visions of yesterdays rectal explosions fresh in my head, eager to avoid another such incident perpetrated indoors.

the dog seems in fine spirits today, leading me cheerily through the house with a spring in his step and a wag in his tail that i consider cheeky for early morning use. It occurs to me that he may just be waking me up to lead me to the treats bowl; having learned the day before that i will rush to his smallest need when his bowels are threatening. the possibility of this makes me feel like a patsy. am somewhat relieved when he goes past the food bowl to the back door, where i release him to the outdoors.

i follow along to see what i’ve been woken up for. i will keep things mature here and only say that his output in the slush and mud of my backyard as seen during a pre-dawn chicago sleet was admirable, and thoroughly justified my awakening. as he was outside for quite some time executing various maneuvers i went back inside and put on a pot of tea. i decided to make some hay out of this situation and unload the dishwasher, after several precautionary hand washings.

slider evenutally is able to return to the indoors, demand another bowl of water and settle back down to bed. i notice that he is able to fall asleep immediately. fantastic for him.

i return to my bed with a full mug of chamomile tea and my big picture book of fish, thinking that i’m going to need some transitional time to get back to sleep. in my drowsiness i misapprehend the true location of the chair next to my bed thus spilling the very recently full mug of tea all over the fish book and the bedclothes. lacking the energy to care, i wipe off the book and move my better pillows to the far side of the bed. the noise has upset the dog and woken him up and he is once more in my room and wants a treat for his trouble. defeated, i oblige.

moments later i hear him rustle himself back into his premium polarfleece bed upstairs. it is 6:45 am and i am wide awake.

this email discussion happened today and i thought it was appropriate to share. anyone have any others???

ms. ultimate : I thought you prodejiners would appreciate this: apparently my school has its own font. It’s called Yale Design. weird.

miss casual : our office has its own font too. we just call it ‘lucien’. i think instead of christmas presents we should design fonts for each other.

i would like mine to be called ‘jesstown classic’

tbrizzle : cbr and i talked last year about designing family crests for each of our friends—like quartered shields with relevant symbology on each quadrant. i think the russells would be fun:

enormous dog, Ohio State, big sweatshirts, and People Magazine, divided on invected saltire.

volkmans:

brussel sprouts, ham sandwiches, disc golf, and a toyota echo, emblazoned on a cross fitchy.

towns:
great hair, frisbee, tennis, and saturns, on an azure plain with dovetailed fess.

by the way, in the course of my research into medieval heraldic terminology, i came across this image, which clearly must have been the crest of the early Brown family. I can just picture the early Charlemagne Brown, lovable loser that he was, constantly being let down by his friends and family, suffering through the crusades with a wry “good grief!” and getting a rock in his stocking at Whitsuntide.

c(b)r : not sure where Whitsuntide is but Charlemage Brown is awesome.

ultimates’ - recycling symbol, star of David, crucifix and a beagle.

miss casual : b-r’s - a hyphen, a pickup truck, a basset hound and laptop

sheesh long time no post. i tried to verbally assault the blogging staff at casual ultimate for not keeping up their end of the bargain but what can you do? its the holidays. so all verbal harrassment aside heres a pic of our cu dinner over thanksgiving weekend. if you read the blog last year you might remember a similar dinner but this year the role of bjorn was played by our dear friend jason who recently moved into the double deuce. the cu staff bumped into him during our holiday shopping outting the day after thanksgiving in wicker park. sometime between american apparel and a drink at the new bar on division (becky you were right.. not too bad) we found our fifth for dinner.

wednesday night was great. very vintage casual ultimate happy hour style. early dinner at piece with heards of people, some of the newleyweds (the hales’s and the bayers) plus the usual suspects including out of towners (heyo becky and pat were in town!) and then we rolled to lemmings. ah lemmings. ms. ultimate was already there when we finally made it up damen. and not a minute too soon. somehow cbr managed to tell tbr that no one had gone to lemmings and they ended up at cleos for a bit before coming by but it was a good night nonetheless. one thing changed since ms. ulty left town, though: the dress code at lemmings. now our viking and other, undisclosed c.u. staff members didn’t mind this ladies backless shirt (jesus woman, at least wear jeans that fit!), but ms. ulty was shocked enough to ask the bouncer when the neighborhood started going downhill. bjorn and ulty then adopted a ‘if you can’t beat em, join em’ mentality, seen here. slept late on t-giving and then ms. ulty moved into the brizzle / casual residence in time for a screening of elf. smiling is our favorite!

the rest of the weekend passed by quickly in a whirl of shopping, tv, and driving to dinner right down the block. we motherfrickin love this country.

anyways it was sad to be without bjorn but he made it home last night in time to watch some football in bucktown and discuss the phenomenon of flirty girls gym : a place for skanks to work out. this place is an actual gym with more pole dancing classes and pillow fights. probably what cbr thinks women do at the gym anyway.

p.s. couldn’t we have named this post the bjorn identity?

well right now as im typing ms. ultimate is flying across the country to come back to chicago for casual ultimate 60622: thanksgiving reunion special. hopefully this will involve some if not all of the following

- lemmings, piece, and quenchers (this is already in the works so if you’re in town wednesday night holler)

- brunch, manicures, and light shopping

- napping, arrested development, and live blogging the law and order mini marathon drinking game i have devised

- a battle of wits between slider and the door of tony’s truck

- more bulleted lists

also in an unrelated incident… i overheard a conversation this morning about oprah’s ‘favorite things’ show, which is on today. its the one where she travels around and gives people in georgia presents like new cars and diamond jewelry for taking her to the best hot dog place south of the mason dixon. the conversation in question was between two guys who decided she should say her favorite thing in 2007 is ‘making it rain.’

the idea of oprah saying ‘im gonna make it rain’ tio a bunch of old ladies in macon is more than i can handle right now.

well in the long list of violence done to my cursed bianchi, the insane huge dent and hole that showed up in my top tube at some point on saturday night while we were at the after party for the sadie hawkins day race is certainly the worst. ending the evening by biking home ever so slowly so as to not finish the job of ripping my frame in half was a little disappointing. i cant figure out if someone was trying to steal it and just destroyed the frame before they could get through the lock or what but i always make it a policy to put my bike next to way nicer bikes in the hope that thieves will look at the others first and it still got jacked up. go figure.

the party was great. huge fantastic loft space. everyone we know. tons of cheap beer. plus tbrizzle and sally took it to the house and made it in 10th place out of about 100 teams which is a fantastic finish. they showed those nerdy fixed gear hipsters for sure. its called athleticism and it comes from chasing a frisbee, not wearing tight jeans and a bandana. nice work peeps. also michelle (of chicks and drinks fame) and her new hubby won the best dressed award and jessi came in second at the skid comp. heres a pic of the newleyweds with aaron wearing his fake moustache as a unibrow. all around nice weekend especially dance party central courtesy of andrew.

thank god i made it through this weekend in one piece. things are shaking up at the office and the fact that im still employed and might eventually afford replacing the bike that was trashed is, in itself, a cause for celebration. if im going to get fired however, it might as well be for blogging. happy monday. and happy belated bday to dr. tanguay. and congrats to the hales-es.

miss casual

p.s. can we get a role call of who is in for black wednesday night mayhem thanksgiving weekend on the forum? i cant wait to see everybody.

well fall league came to a close this weekend with the ledonnes (shakes fist) winning again. public news team did well in the tournament though winning our first game and then losing in the semis. im no sports strategist but im just gonna guess that it had to do with the round of walking beer schtick our team played on the break. drinking 4 beers didnt help our performance? go figure. i think it also added a bit to the hostility level in our semi game. the best part of the day was cheng coming by. her team, the dreaded syndicate, got knocked out by team ledonne in the first round. i asked how the game went and she pointed at her cup and said ‘well im drinking a bloody mary so you can guess we lost.’ as i looked across the field at my teammates slamming beers and walking very fast i thought ‘thats why cheng is a champion and we will nearly get into fist fights over bogus line calls in the next round.’

still a very fun day overall. hopefully a team dinner will happen this time as there needs to be more togetherness in the off season. yall are gonna need to drag me off the couch so that tbrizzle and slider and miss casual dont collectively weigh in at 476 lbs in the spring. i mean law $ order mini marathons are great and so is heroes and 30 rock but tv cant be your whole life. (can it?)

on another note… marc jacobs and bcbg are opening on damen right near the old vessel office. looks like miss casual and ms. ultimate will be shopping in beverly hills 60622 at thanksgiving. bucktown is the new soho? discuss.

well all our friends are back from nationals by now but after playing their butts off all weekend in sarasota im sure they need a day or two to recoup and collect their thoughts… check email, call mom, check in with their tivo, etc. hopefully well get some recap and highlights after all that but to give them a breather heres what happened in chicago this weekend.

the race. it was awesome. went off basically without a hitch. check out simon bringing the pain to his checkpoint in the video above. we had 29 teams and we raised a pile of cash for cornerstone plus everyone was in costume and the afterparty was a hit. big thanks to dave and rodan for putting up with all of us. the only minor snag was that 20,000 war protestors were in union park right when our race was starting. it was a little confusing to say the least. why couldnt they have their protestacular another day? oh well. heres some of us getting swarmed by them as they began their march downtown.

another minor miracle was this guy from one less car clothing just swooped in (literally swooped) out of nowhere and brought us a bunch of shirts and stuff for prizes. we are now best friends forever with those guys. the Brs and ms. mimms did the race and said they had fun. cbr’s porcupine costume was interesting to say the least. you dont often see an architect dressed in all black and covered in clothes pins riding a bike.

meanwhile i was watching scores on the upa website and clenching my teeth. i was on the war phone to mama town during brass monkey’s face off to the death with tandem that took it to double game point. i almost died of the tension but brass pulled it out and went on to semis. the talk in the forum was the big upsets in the open bracket in pool D with furious going 0-3 the first day as the top seed in that pool and chain lightening going 3-0 as the bottom seed (ATL represent!). madness.

anyway wished we could’ve dusted off our press passes and joined you on the sidelines. congrats to everyone who played on finishing great seasons. cant wait to hear your stories.

hugs

miss casual

here is an overdose of cute to celebrate my birthday today. this is maxine and slider competing for total dominance of the water cooler at sectionals which is almost more than i can handle. i ran into maxine and her parents at fall league this weekend and man is she getting tall! she is undoubtedly going to be a pro basketball player so hopefully i can sign on as her manager if i get on board now.

public news team went 1-1 on saturday although its been a great season and the weather was near perfect so it took the sting out of our first game loss. plus mr. baker and miss casual got to play together for the first time all fall league season so that sweetened the deal too. baker we’ve missed you! we had 7 ladies but it was really nice and everyone got to play a lot somehow… now we just need to win both games next weekend to hopefully get a first round by at the tournament… unfortunately ill miss our games since they are in the afternoon and the headless horseman hunt will be happening at the same time. we got picked up in time out chicago thanks to m. ulty and every stop on the course is someplace haunted so its looking to be good times.

also this week ive discovered that there is an event horizon for me around wabansia and milwaukee and that if i get any further north than that i am sucked into the black hole of my couch never to come out. or at least not til the next day in most cases. this is worrysome as it isnt even cold out yet and the event horizon only expands as the temperature drops. anyway im officially a grown up today so im blaming that. seriously though… i did a series of dances in my kitchen when i received a bitchingly awesome coffee maker as a birthday gift. if that doesnt make me grown i dont know what does.

xoxo
miss casual

so ive been looking for a new bike for a while. i was thinking of getting a road bike.. something with gears for longer rides and for use as a backup when someone steals a pink wheel off my bike or other hypothetical situations like that. and i looked and looked and finally i found the new whip. here she is in all her splendor. of course its not a road bike. and of course its a bianchi. and of course its white and shiny. but what can i say? i know what i like. lay off me its almost my birthday.

the ‘concept’ sticker is coming off first thing and will be promptly replaced with new decals. maybe pink ones that say ‘casual’ or something. ill post new photos when it gets all built up proper like. alls i knows is… its gonna make me fast at the track. big time.

in other news the alley kitten scavenger hunt were throwing is gonna be bananas. piece is sponsoring and so is rodan (which is where the afterparty will be) and so is casual ultimate of course. but maybe most importantly tbrizzle is sponsoring our own ms. ultimate’s plane ticket to come back for the festivities. that is if she can finish up all her forestrying in time. here is the new flier and the request for sponsorship that i send to tbrizzle.

‘Dear Mr. Brizzle

We at chicks and drinks incorporated are looking for a sponsor for our grad student rescue program. For your contribution of just 25$ you will receive a photo and a letter from the grad student, your logo on our race flier for the headless horseman hunt, a smug feeling of superiority, and the chance to have your grad student come and stay in your home for an entire weekend. Such a small amount can do so much for a needy grad student from New England. Wont you help us at Lets Get Crunk.org to give this starving Yale forestry student a temporary home?

Please make payments via pay pal to m. ulty.

Thank you so much for your contribution

Miss Casual
VP of Forestry Refugees
Lets Get Crunk Corp.’

i know machine will be busy at nationals but the rest of you better come on out. while condors are getting their asses served by our boys from the chi you can be biking around in silly costumes and drinking cheap draft beer at rodan. what could be better than that?

well as you may or may not know… my lovely bicycle had a run in with thieves this week and they made off with one of my wheels, pink hub, spokecards and all. i can honestly say i didnt cry but i was trapped in a glass case of emotion all day on tuesday when i found out. thankfully mama town was here to drive my me and my bike home but it still means my big birthday present to myself is going to be replacing a wheel i already owned which is not fun at all. i briefly considered just throwing this bike away and getting a new one but ms. ultimate talked me down. ‘your horn broke so now you need a whole new bike?’ now i have to decide what color rim to put on my new back wheel. thoughts? pink again? white? maybe a nice dark eggplant? decisions decisions…

the other things going on in casual land are 1. fall league has started which is awesome because we have an awesome team who is big fun filled with tall dudes and fast ladies. 2. football season arrived with the first turkey chez casual / brizzle. tbr hooked up a crazy thanksgiving dinner for most of briefcase to watch the bears go down pretty hard to dallas. at least there were sally’s cupcakes from heaven to cheer everyone up. and 3. chicks and drinks is throwing a sweet bike race / scavenger hunt type thingy for halloween called the headless horseman hunt. check out the flier. its dope. granted everyone reading this will be in florida for nationals that weekend but if youre not for some reason and youre in chicago you should come out. itll be fun plus its to benefit a chicago homeless shelter so you get a smug feeling of satisfaction with your 5$ entry fee.

so thats all for now. im riding my first century this weekend (thats 100 miles for those who dont know) so ill be missing fall league but im sure public news team will be taking a break from their pledge drive to kick some ass without me. hopefully i dont have to call mama town from the side of the road to pick me up.

Warning: this post will be lengthy.

Saturday was quite a long day. And I’m gonna start from the top.

Morning: Machine has a double practice scheduled so that a Machine/Nemesis potluck could go down. Bill Finn and I jump in the ZamDog (my ‘91 Camry), make a quick stop at McDonald’s so I can fill up, and get to practice just in time. Nemesis, Dish, Madison, and UofC/Northwestern/UIC combo are already in the midst of the women’s sectionals. A BEAUTIFUL day, sunny, blue skies, mid-70’s. God invented ultimate frisbee for days like this.

Practice went well. Doubles are usually a horrid affair where by the end of the day I feel as old as Gary is. However, with the potluck/party coming ahead and the meningitis behind me, I felt great the whole day. The practice seemed to revolve around the escalating O-line vs. D-line battle. The morning had us do some basic flow drills and then an O vs. D endzone game…make it take it. O-line won best of 3. I think there was a game to 7 also.

Lunch break called and we go over to root/heckle Nemesis on. They just started their game vs. Madison in the finals. A lot of hooting and hollering, some calls of “Yeah Dirty! (Megan Sweas)” and “Yeah Skanky! (i’ll leave this one alone ), etc. Dane finally gets over a hangover and starts challenging people to cone races. I beat him and get his plum. Taste it blondy. Andy Neilsen roshams Denis Agniel and loses…consequence: he has to introduce himself as McLovin’ all night at the party. (I’m gonna get a good pic of Andy and McLovin’ for the CU lookalike post). General shenanigans.

We get back into it for the afternoon scrimmage. O vs. D game to 13. A heated battle ensues. Kolb calls a lot of bullshit. Finn calls Kolb every name in the book. Ferrari spikes cones and says something about hating this team. I wish every practice could be like this. D-line pulls away to win 14-12 I think. Both sides were looking more pumped than usual. The fire is building and the only thing that’s gonna put this baby out is a Regional Championship.

Afternoon: The Domers: Butler, Kreece, and Mini come over to RWLS (Real World Logan Square bitches!) so that Mini can make yellow curry, so that we can shower, and for pre-partying. Butler is wearing my former/his current OU Sooners sweatshirt the entire time (it was 90 degrees that day). He paid me 30 bucks, a carbomb, and his shitty rain jacket for it. Biggest mistake of my life.

After 45 min of telling jokes, Kreece decides he’s gonna bake a cake for the potluck. This is about an hour before we’re supposed to leave. I hate this guy. He mixes everything together and decides to bake it there. Mini has a delicious yellow curry, I have hummus and jello shots, Moy has beef with rice noodles, and Rich Aycock made Irish sodabread. We’re ready to roll baby. In the car, Butler decides what with Mini having an entree, and Kreece making dessert, he’s gonna have to make appetizers. He puts peanut butter on 20 Triscuits. They are the hit of the potluck.

Potluck: So the potluck was an idea I’ve had for awhile. We used to do these at OU all the time and it was fun to see people get creative with food, and then it was more fun to eat the food. So we decided to have a Machine/Nemesis Potluck with a party for everyone afterwards. Both teams threw down…very impressive. There was a wide array of entrees and desserts with a scattering of appetizers. Some notables: Beef’s “Better than Sex” cake, Moy’s beef/noodles, Shiel’s enchilada casserole, a lot of food I can’t remember. It was good. Nemesis decided to have a team theme and they showed up in meningitis prevention gear. Very funny ladies. Machine was thinking of wearing Sectionals Champions t-shirts. OHHHHHHHH SNAP! Nooooo he didn’t?!! Well…you bet your ass I did bitches.

(I forgot to mention…Nemesis lost to Madison in the finals after being up at half. We saw them shake hands while we were practicing and a lot of dejected faces but none of us believed it until I talked to Beef quickly during practice. Revenge is sweet ladies; show those college hussies what ultimate is really about in Tulsa.)

Back to the potluck…our theme ended up being dress as your favorite Chicago Ulty player. A lot of good ones out there, but the winner by far was Hensley dressing up as our boy Denis Agniel.

I wish the pic was better, but you get the gist. The potluck proceeded, everybody ate a little, but there was a whole hell of a lot of drinking going on too. This is where it gets interesting. Weasel and I agreed to go 1 for 1 for the whole night till one of us passed out. I brought the leftover Bacardi O I had from the jello shots and we started the night with an O-bomb. We decide at the party that we have to go one for one on drinks, food, and girls. Beautiful.

Party: The potluck quickly escalated into the party. I think I was drunk by 8:15. Weasel and I have 2 more beers and another shot somewhere in there. At some point, Schulze gets 2 of Ferrari’s American Apparel underwear that really only look good on him. One is purple, one is neon green. One for one. Weasel and I don are new gear and the party continues. Many of the Nemesis ladies showed up a little buzzed and the dancing went down full swing. There was the requisite flip cup in the kitchen speared by Zales/Berg. Schulze, the veteran partier that he is, sets up an ulty frisbee version of “The Dating Game”. 6 girls sit on Bryan King’s futon while Weasel sits in an office chair facing the other way. Kolb is the moderator and asks all sorts of questions that the girls have to answer. By far the best question/answer…”What 3 things would you bring to a deserted island?” Bachelorette #6 (Annie Miller): “I would bring a razor, shaving cream, and Bachelorette #4 (Shawn Wall).” #4 ends up being King Weasel’s pick. More drinking ensues.

So most of my party memories are sketchy at best. I’ll tell you my highlights and other people can add theirs.

Highlight #1: Sally shows up with carbombs. I request 1 for her, 1 for me, 1 for Weasel, and 1 for Butler (it’s his fav). We’re all set to go and Butler says..”Vijay, shirts off shot right?” How can I argue with such logic? Shirts come off..and I get pwned.

Highlight #2: Weasel and I take god knows what number shot around 10:45? with Brody’s gf. Weasel and I are gasping, Heather is ready for another shot. Weas calls it quits. He goes and yaks in the bathroom, in Dane’s bed, and on himself. I’m worried the entire time that Butler is gonna pee on him.

Highlight #3: Candice. That girl brought beer can chicken (delish) and her drunk ass to boot. Every time I turned my head, she was headbutting Katie B, wrestling Kolb, getting wrestled to the ground and having her pants ripped off, etc.

Party is escalating, and the 1.5 kegs for the party are bled dry. Angela and I make a quick beer run and we get back to the house with 4 cases and some liquor and walk into drunk Dane trying to calm his downstairs neighbor who is not happy with the partying/noisemaking. Classic: Dane trying to explain to his livid neighbor that our contraband would not keep the party running. Neighbor wins and we have to get everybody out. Only after a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday! for Mini and some shotgunning. Exiting the party became a mess when Akira told everyone to go out the back and Ferrari told everyone to go out the front. Everybody just returned to the kitchen and drank more.

Finally people got hustled out. Most went their merry way. A brave bunch of 15ish made it to some local dive not far from RWIP. Crew: “You’re only open till 2 right? We’ll have enough time to get a beer I suppose.” Bartender: “Naw man..we’re open till 5.” Dropped jaws and gleaming eyes. The bar was when the beast was let loose. Men, women, and alcohol. Inevitability folks. Although at one point I think Ferrari gives Bjorn quite the lap dance. Men and alcohol. Inevitability folks. Winner of the party: well, the pic says it all.

Weasel made it to church the next day. May god have mercy on his soul.

our friend moved away to be brainwashed in some kind of ‘tree and squirrel saving landbound cruise type graduate program’ on the east coast so we have an opening for a new friend this fall. the right applicant will be trained via teleconference by the original ms. ultimate herself. they will be crunk, smart, ride a sweet bike and have a sweet forehand.

we will be conducting interviews friday at lemmings between 6 and 730 pm. please bring a resume and headshot as well as a desire to drink beer out of cans and a thirst for adventure. please answer the questionnaire below to see if you pass the first hurdle.

1. (submitted by trbizzle) you are cutting towards the end zone. you are looking at
a. the disc
b. a puppy on the sideline
c. your united shoelace

2. it is saturday morning. you are
a. sleeping in
b. drinking your intelligentsia coffee, listening to npr, and reading back issues of the new yorker
c. out for a run

3. weeknights are for
a. catching up on sleep and laundry
b. watching law and order and getting takeout
c. working late and microwave dinners

4. friends dont ask your opinion on _______ unless they REALLY want to know.
a. high heels and lindsey lohan’s progress in rehab
b. carbon offsets and the new patagonia fleece colors for fall
c. tax shelters and rock climbing gear

if you answered mostly b’s come out to lemmings cause we want YOU!

I would like to announce the new addition to Team Paulina, The Reverend. It’s plain to see that The Reverend is a rabbit, in fact a half-French/half-English lop, which explains the floppy ears. I’ll have to post a picture showing some scale because The Rev is bigger than those little city rabbits you see in the park; he’s actually the size of a cat.

You may be wondering why we chose a rabbit and why we chose the name. First off, we didn’t actually intend on recruiting a rabbit to Team Paulina. The Rev was a birthday gift from Ms. Paulina’s siblings … that’s right, the rabbit was a gift. Prior to a few weeks ago I was under the impression that you never give a pet as a gift. The only exception to the rule that I knew of was if you lived with the person so that you could bear some of the responsibility of pet care. Maybe the rules are different with siblings and I just never knew growing up as an only child or maybe the siblings didn’t ask the follow up question, “Are you sure you want to take care of a rabbit?” every time Ms. Paulina expressed interest in getting a cute little rabbit. In any event we now have a pet who’s pretty damn cool when he’s not pooping everywhere.

I’ll be brief with the explanation of the name as I am not certain of its origin. Initially the rabbit was called “Fropsy” like flopsy with an R. I think the full name was “The Reverend Fropsy” but I’m not entirely sure. Knowing that the rabbit was a buck (male) I was adamantly against the feminine name and suggested we shorten it to “Rev.”

There you have it. Team Paulina is now one stronger. If anybody wants to rabbit-sit for a few days in October let me know.

Ms. Paulina says, “seriously, come give our rabbit hay and greens and watch him slide all over the hardwood floors.”

So when I walk into the gym (every 3rd month unless it’s got a tuesday) and head for the locker room during busy hours, I run into this same scenario. Locker rooms are fully of sweaty naked men, and while that’s fine and necessary after a fashion, I like to give them their space while I’m changing. So as I enter the room I do a quick, eyes-above-belt level sweep of the space to see where the nudists are in order that I may pick a little private space and not have to have some guy’s junk hovering a biscuit away from my forehead while I’m furiously tying my shoes (velcro was made for these situations). These calculations are quite black and white: any garment is acceptable; a towel, a pair of pants, even jockey shorts will suffice to prevent that scenario from happening.

But every so often I run into this same guy (and I’m never looking too carefully at anyone in the room, so I’ve never learned to avoid him) wearing a big sweaty t-shirt around and looking like a sane, rational human being with no outward signs of exhibitionism. Trustingly I end up grabbing a locker next to him, and proceed to pack, unpack, hang things up, turn off my phone, and basically go through the small ritual tasks that prepare one for exercise. And at some point, near the end of all this, I sit down to tie my gym shoes. And inevitably, without fail, this guy, this hairy sweaty, clueless, racquetball playing hog of a man standing adjacent to me, chooses that moment to lean in and reach up to his top-row locker extending his apelike arms to remove his pants from their hook or grab some deodorant or pluck an imaginary apple from the sky and, in doing so, suddenly hikes up his enormous sweaty shirt which reveals his complete nudeness below the waist. And once again, the eerie silence of his junk just hovering there for that infinite stretch as he roots around, unable to find what he’s looking for, perhaps unable to remember why he reached up in the first place, and me getting tunnel vision on my shoelaces, which refuse to behave and end up as one massive jumble of failed knots. And though I know I need to look up at this guy, to look him full in the face so that I know who he is and can avoid him in the future, I don’t—I can’t confront what I might see there. I assume that face to be lined with the creases of guilt for the torment he wreaks on those around him, but just as likely it might be devoid of any recognizable human countenance whatsoever, simian and dull, empty, waiting for the world to change so he doesn’t have to. In the end I sit there until I see his feet shuffle a few steps away, stand up by rotating myself away from him, kick my locker shut and bolt out the door to sort out the mess of my shoes in the stretching area.

I know this may smack of some immature phobia or inability to accept the human body, but I maintain that what this man is doing is just wrong, and violates an unwritten rule of the gym. Men should not wear shirts as their only garment. Absolutely unacceptable. A shirt alone offers no practical function to a man unless it is there in cooperation with pants. I submit that those who violate this simple concept should be universally shunned, kicked out of the gym, and made to wear cutoffs at all times.

with chicago’s first-ever recorded hurricane passing through town last night, things got a little dicey for folks in the chicago area. i have to say, i do like me some severe weather, it’s pretty cool to watch. i mean, if it’s going to knock out my satellite reception, it better offer something in return. there’ve got to be a bunch of stories, good (tbr enjoying a 4wd vehicle) and bad (mercedog losing his roof), but this was my bout with the bad weather.

driving through that hurricane last night was awesome. i left my company’s lincolnshire office at about 3:20pm, just as the first front of the storm approached; i saw it coming and made a beeline to my car to get on the road asap. i -just- made it to the dry confines of the car before the rain started coming down. within a couple minutes, it was like driving through a carwash. the 60+ mph winds power-washed my car with the buckets of rain coming down. once on the freeway, i couldn’t see a damn thing at any speed above 40mph, even with the wipers on high. and it felt like i could start hydroplaning at any moment, there was that much water on the roads. people were stopping under underpasses to wait it out, which i thought was a bad idea because i bet at least a few of them got caught in high water. water was pouring off overpasses like waterfalls. there were lightning strikes all around me, super close on some; using the old “count one second between lightning and thunder equals how many miles away the strike was” rule, there were at least a handful of strikes under a mile away. and the winds had ripped apart the trees along the roads, i’ve never seen that much pulverized tree debris on the freeway.

soon enough though, the first wave of rain stopped, and i settled in for the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the edens trying to get back downtown. i made it back to my river north office in about an hour and a half, actually not bad considering what happened later on with all the flooding and road closures.

i got back to the apartment just as the second round of heavy stuff started coming down, so i sat in the car for a while, hoping to wait it out and not get totally soaked on the 20 yard walk to the front door. not gonna happen. so i changed into my gym clothes, which i had ready in the car since i was supposed to run track last night, and made a mad dash to shelter.

after reading about the extent of the damage and such this morning, and hearing about merce’s roof, i’m feeling pretty lucky about how well we escaped over on my street. fortunately, there weren’t any trees ripped down, and we didn’t get flooded out. but just to be safe, i parked on top of a speed hump, trying to get on high ground as best i can. i’ve had a car get flooded once, and i don’t want it again. that shit stinks.

I have nothing useful to report but i wanted to post this pic of Slider being our test subject for our first in-office green screen shoot. He’s even happier in person than he looks in this photo. If that’s possible.

last night was a monumental success. congrats to michelle for organizing and aaron for making the best frickin trophies known to man. below is a pic of one of the winners accepting their prize. they were forks (like bike forks) with stuffed kittens impaled on them with chain rings as name plates. so funny. first place was a team in clown costumes and burkhas. our very own little ben won third with his team. nice work friendcrusher.

the race itself drew a huge crowd. 110 participants! 30+ teams! at each chicks and drinks run checkpoint teams had to do tasks to get points and they could return to the same checkpoints as many times as they wanted. j dot and i got the ‘find the bubblegum in the flour without using your hands and blow a bubble’ checkpoint on division and damen. the thursday night bar crowd on damen enjoyed the screeching breaks and clouds of flour im sure. the trick was to blow the flour everywhere cause if you took a big mouthful your chances of blowing a bubble were slim to none.

the after party was great too. weegees never disappoints. every time i go there it gets tougher to leave. i think they put something in the water… or beer. or whatevs. this morning came early.

tbrizzle got home last night which was a nice surprise. hopefully he’ll post about his life altering epiphanies on the road. hes skinny as a rail. seriously. ms. ultimate is also back on the radar after spending a week in the woods with the yalies. the weekend looks like a circus of napping, biking, and movie watching. superbad anyone? plus the bike film fest of course. good luck to our friends headed out to cooler this weekend. we’re hoping for a post from our favorite viking next week to recap the action. happy friday yall.

last night was the kickoff party for the bicycle film festival in chicago. unfortunately it started passed my bed time so instead of partying like a rockstar the chicks and drinks ladies gathered chez casual to make spoke cards for tonight’s alleykitten. the triplets of belmont is a bike film festival sponsored scanvenger hunt and michelle and jessi are co-chairing the event so we all got together to drink some beers and do arts and crafts. everyone should come out and participate in the shennanigans. its gonna be lots of fun and its free for goodness sakes! the teams will have to do all kinds of stunts to earn points plus theres extra discretionary points for badassity. and the after party is at weegee’s, a cu favorite since july.

therell probably be some film watching this weekend too obviously and hopefully a long ride at some point since i got my confirmation for the apple cider century at the end of september. looks like tbrizzle’s return to the chi is imminent so also house cleaning is on the agenda. what does one buy a br for their birthday? i have an idea but any additional thoughts are appreciated.

I saw this Muppet show once where Dr. Bunson Honeydew makes a machine that can combine things. Shortly following the exposition of this novelty, Beaker ends up sticking his arm in at the same time a puppy dog is placed inside; machine turns on, and suddenly Beaker has a living puppy head instead of a hand. The effect was disorienting and horrific, and left me, as a child, rather afraid of the inarticulate Beaker thereafter.

Today I experienced just this same sort of shudder when I came across this pillow resting on the windowsill of my hotel. And while I like to think that I support innovation in nearly all it’s forms, my heart goes out to the unfortunate pillow, stuffed lion, soccerball and crucifix that were jammed into Dr. Honeydew’s machine this time around.

the first competitive summer league tourny went down in history with bill finn’s team beating team pizza pizza beer in crushing final on saturday. it was a long day (3 pool play games then semis and finals) and hot as blazes but the games were fun and mr. baker deserves accolades for the season and tournament.

unfortunately russel’s team had to forfeit their game after he drove miss casual all the way out to naperville. so he took off into the air conditioned truck just as pizza pizza beer finished up their first victorious game against the benjamin team. second game was bill finns team and ppb lost a tough fight in this game. last game ppb squeaked out a win against professor berg’s team. so being the 2 seed in our pool put ppb in the semis against the clark team.

we had expected to face the 1 seed from the other pool, a team with many cu friends on it lead by jake cooper. there was some drama in the pool play however which left three teams going 2-1 and cooper’s team being eliminated from afternoon play by point differential.

ppb won their semi game with lots of time to sit in the shade and wait for finns team to battle out a long game against bakers team. both teams were playing hard and trading points but eventually bakers team lost out and we faced our earlier opponents in the final. we played a great first half and were up 7-6 but the second half was all theirs and they beat us by 4 points i think too be the first competitve league summer champs.

highlights included : lyrica handblocking the s%!t out of bill finn himself in the final game and then scoring for pizza pizza beer which gave brown bear material against his new roommate for the rest of his natural life. a great blob tag game with team pizza pizza beer as a warm up for the semis. rick bollinger and joe little being absolutely everywhere at once. and bk showing up in time for semis with tons of cold stuff and those spooky demon eye contacts.

miss casual was too wiped out to enjoy the post tournament festivities at rwip and brown bear’s but it was a great time and hopefully someone will post some comments about the after parties.

on a last note cu will dearly miss two of our friends lyrica and tiger who are taking off for the east coast very shortly. you guys are the bee’s knees. send us posts from the east coast.

(this just in for ms. mimms, our nemesis correspondant)

It’s been an exciting week to be a Nemesis player.

Last Friday, the eleven of us that got into Boulder early went on a rafting trip where we almost, but not quite, managed to launch Candice out of the raft going over a class IV rapid. That girl is tenacious.

Saturday we mostly got whooped on by other teams (ok, all our games were actually close but we only won one, grrrr), but that night featured a pre-hot tub group shower and an exciting 45-minutes of full-contact pool keep-away. During keep-away, we learned that Candice “has no off switch” and that Val thinks it’s amusing to pretend to lick the ball.

Sunday brought one more win (Layuma - avenging a Boston Invite loss), and two other losses by small margins. It’s clear that we need to learn to close games. That night 6 of us didn’t get into Midway until 2am due to a delayed flight. Thanks to Brownbear, Bill Finn, and other Machine boyz for making the time fly by.

Wednesday featured practice followed by the Beefster’s 21st birthday celebration. I think she said it best, so I’ll just reproduce her “morning-after” email verbatim:

“First and foremost, thanks to everyone who came out and bought me drinks last night. I had a great time and it just reminded me how much I love Nemesis. Seriously. I love you guys and couldn’t have asked for better teammates.

But now to recap:

From 9pm to around 10pm I consumed more shots than I can remember. I tried to count them this morning and came to the conclusion that I consumed AT LEAST 10 drinks between 9 and a little after 10.

10:30 - Ended up in the Black Beetle bathroom (that was inevitable) at which point Yaya decides it’s a good time to head home. Good call, Yaya. So we head home and I’m going to assume we teleported back to Hyde Park because I don’t remember the 30 minute drive home AT ALL.

The next thing I know it’s 4 in the morning and I’m waking up on my bathroom floor. So, I crawl into bed and wake up 3 hours later at 7am to get ready for work. While walking to the bathroom I was shocked to discover that I didn’t have a headache and wasn’t feeling nauseous.

And that’s when I realized I was still drunk.”
Finally, Thursday involved an email exchange with the TD’s to Cooler, at which point we realized that Nemesis does not in fact have a bid. They won’t just add us because 9 teams is wacky, so we’re now exploring a situation where we split into two teams. We have no idea whether that will work out, but opposing team names are being solicited nonetheless. Meagles favors Autobots and Decepticons. Beef’s suggestions include: Unicron and Primus (more transformers), Apocalypse, nemesis of Cable (more X-Men), Ares and Cheetah, nemesises of Wonder Woman, Deacon Frost, nemesis of Blade, Doctor Doom, nemesis of the Fantastic Four, Judge Death, nemesis of Judge Dredd, Sabretooth, nemesis of Wolverine (X-Men, again), The Legion of Doom, nemesises of the Justice League. Candice votes for Dumb and Dumber. Your suggestions appreciated.

(i am putting together some of tony’s updates from the road. i think hes just leaving traverse city. for those who dont know… our very own tbrizzle is biking all the way around lake michigan for two weeks with only his iphone for company. he has all his stuff in a trailer and is camping half the time. -miss casual)

late as usual

minor crisis this morning, the skewer that holds my trailer to my bike was unfit. i couldn’t find a shop that sold only the skewer so i bought a whole new trailer and left everything other than the skewer hanging in the window at rapid transit. so i have $350 in store credit if anyone needs anything…
classic.

many thanks to jess and claire for hanging out this morning and especially to mr. rick russell for supporting me emotionally through my tomfoolery.
leaving…now.

mile 32

Flat tire in Gary, in.

Fixed, but still a bit annoying.

first day

78 miles through chicago indiana and a little of Michigan. Dinner with mom and monica. Tired.

mile 242: alonzo gives me the rest of his pizza

Day 3 was long, but finished well. Made it to silver lake mi, land of the dune buggy. My campground is packed (on a Monday no less) with every kind of 4×4. People have been consistently friendly (e.g. Giving me pizza). Looked silly strapped to my bike but no chance I was going to turn that down.

mile 304: smoothie break in manistee, mi

There’s coffee shops and wireless everywhere…what an age we live in

day 5: reality check

Tired today. Arms more sore than anything else. Roads terrible, no shoulder. Only 50 miles today but I’m beat…rewarding my capitulation with a night at the grand old wellington inn, traverse city, MI. Wifi, free beer, and tight next to downtown.

Starting the ride again will be hard.

i am a manly man

my hotel room

At the risk of sounding old, or possibly completely confusing Brown Bear with all his youth and wide-eyed innocence… I’m going to throw a suggestion out there. We’ll call it a suggestion for a rainy/ Chicago day. Did you buy CD’s in high school? Did you burn CD’s in college? Did you listen to music before there were iPods? If you did, I have to suggest listening to your CD collection, if you still have it. Hopefully it will not be under the circumstances of my recent forced rediscovery of my CD collection [may none of you ever receive iPod error message 1429 = message of death]. But all those CD’s that I never got around to putting on my iPod are pretty damn good. I’m loving the Paul Simon Rhythm of the Saints album right now. Oldie but goodie. Also, have you listened to a Wilco album recently? This Team Paulina member is super-pumped. That’s all from Ms. Paulina. Mr. Paulina is at hard at work, or hard at figuring out how to properly observe my birthday in two shopping days!

Game for game..here we go

Game 1: Jam
We go up 6-3. Offense was flawless. Defense got breaks, but we never really created a turn, Jam just dropped a lot. Then there came the timeout. Jam decided to stop sucking. We decided otherwise. They went on to win 15-6 if I’m not mistaken.

Game 2: SubZero
Zero got rid of some scrubs, got rid of some old guys, and took the top half of the College Champion Wisconsin Hodags team. They were solid, and we came out like chumps. Another spanking.

Game 3: Revolver
We finally got acclimated to the mile high air. We finally got pissed off at our piss-poor performance. We decided to hurt on Revolver. Offense was literally FLAWLESS. It was beautiful to see. Defense decided to put a hurt down and got some sweet layout D’s with breaks to boot. Fun game.

Game 4: Boston Ultimate
The combo Dog/Twisted team has had a rough start so far this season. Lots of big names still. Tight game the whole way through with us trailing most of the way. At the end, Boston is up 13-12, and straight to 14. Offense scores. 13-13. We pull, Mini gets a layout D and then puts up a perfect flick to Joel Wooten streaking into the endzone. Game. First time Chicago beats Boston.

Saturday overall: 2-2. Started roughly with us craving EPO more than Floyd Landis. Ended beautifully. We got our pizza, tried to watch the showcase game b/t Rare Air and Ozone, but got rained out.

Went back to the hotel (Boulder Outlook..awesome), and jumped in the pool/hot tub with Nemesis. Well, everyone did but me. I like the first shower.

Team dinner at some restaurant that wasn’t memorable, and then most of us are too bushed from the day and the lack of oxygen to do anything that night. Except for Hens. He parties it up with the Ambush ladies and says that Jam was out in full force that night also. I hate those guys.

Sunday

Game 1: Johnny Bravo
First time I felt like a team had a bunch of dudes who just plain outran us. And I’m not talking about Beau alone. Home fields, the entire team, and acclimated to crazy thin air…recipe for success. I’m not sure what was with us either, but we were NOT ready for this game. We came out flat and timid. 15-6 or something embarrassing like that.

Game 2: Truck Stop
TS came off losing to Boston on universe point. This was our game to win. We ended up losing on universe to them. I can’t describe how disappointing this game was to us as a whole. We should have crushed this team.

Game 3: Condors
Once again a slow start buries us. To be honest I don’t remember much from this game. Offense wasn’t looking good. Defense was getting the turns but crashed and burned when it came to converting. Looking forward to a very cold Boulder Brewery beer near the end of this game.

Thoughts from the weekend (basically the real stuff that I paid attention to):

1. Mike Shiel is awesome. I mean AWESOME. Best player in Midwest?
2. Mini. Man I’m glad we stole this kid from Briefcase.
3. New guys. Awesome. Ed, Andy, Denis (and Mini, Mike S.) Made contributions all weekend. Are gonna be pivotal come Regionals/Nationals.
4. We were missing some of our BIG names…Timmy, Bill F., Kolb, Gary, Cash, IU boys (Dave Campos and Gravy). Could this have been a completely different weekend?
5. Bjorn Gunderson. He’s starting to love grass again. It ain’t all beach in his world anymore.
6. Joel Wooten. He’s good. Like better than Mike Shiel good.
7. Will I stop turning the disc over?
8. Are we doomed without a small, squirrely Asian handler? (Cho-bot and Tyson are both gone this season)
9. I’m pretty confident about this team. I think we will be better than last year. (I realize this weekend’s results are not reassuring..but trust me). However, I wonder if we can break into quarters/semis? Playing Bravo (not so much Jam) was a real awakening. These guys are solid top to bottom. And I mean SOLID.
a. Beau Kittredge. A lot of us talk about how we are athletes, etc etc. The truth is most club players are still at most, really good ex-high school athletes. (Hens is also an exception). Beau is the real deal. That dude is an ATHLETE. On 2 different occasions I saw him run down hucks where he was the 4th dude. He outran THREE guys ahead of him (including his own teammate) in a span of like 40 yards. That is nuts. I am by no means the first person to notice this, but I guess it really struck me this weekend (I was pretty drunk during semis last year at Natties…you can hear Bill and I arguing on the UV disc during the game about who is better…Beau or Alex Nord).
10. As you can tell..I have crushes on many dudes in ultimate.
11. Machine. Cooler, CHC, Sectionals, Regionals, Natties. Not much time, but I am confident that things are gonna fall in place real quick. A tourney like this creates a massive learning curve. I’m glad we started out with such intense competition; we know what we need to do now to get to the next level. Watch out Bravo. I don’t plan on ever feeling like I did after that game against you in Boulder. You’re on the shit list.

hey happy hour tonight chitown peoples! if you’re reading this then you already know… well probably be at lemmings with cans in our hands to start out… 6ish so holler.

i love you
frank

so some of you probably know that there are some big changes coming to our little blog. lots of our friends have moved our of chicago this year and onto other things and sadly next week ms. ultimate will join the herd of people leaving town. shes headed off to grad school on the east coast and so we had to think… what is the future of casual ultimate? with ms. ulty busy hitting the books and miss casual having no life lately we knew we needed something new.. different.. something exciting.

so we thought hey its not just about us and our quest for ultimate and law and order reruns but about all of us..together! so we are bringing new bloggers on board to talk about ultimate, etc. itll be like the casual ultimate center for kids who blog good and want to learn to do other stuff good too.

you will probably recognize the all star team coming on board if you follow the blog at all. from the west coast we’ll get updates from chuck daniels and dr. welsh. from the dirty south well be hearing from beckhoe. here in the chi we have miss casual (mai oui) who will be joined by gunder the viking, pbgipper our lawyer, bk our chef, akira, brown bear, tbrizzle, and team paulina. also well still be hearing from the lovely and talented ms. ultimate from out east. it should be fun and not just a little dangerous which is how we roll at cu.

so casual ultimate lives on albeit in a new form. if you want to be a blogger or guest post for us email us at casualultimate@gmail.com

otherwise sit back and enjoy.