Spidey Sense

8/7/11

1:30pm
Back at it today. We’ve just finished our first practice, followed by a brief pool session and lunch. Recovery is one of our keys to performance, and we’re really focusing on that leading up to our next match (making sure we’re getting plenty of water, cooling down, getting the proper nutrition, etc). We have just two days to prepare for South Africa, and we want to be as effective in doing that as possible.

Right now, I’m waiting on some laundry to dry and listening to the musical, “The Drowsy Chaperone.” To digress for a moment, I strongly recommend seeing this musical if it’s ever performed near you. For all of you Virginians, last year, Charlottesville’s Live Arts put on a production. I never got around to seeing that production, but I saw students from the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School perform it.

“He was the one who drank himself to death at his chateau, in Nice. Remember? It was five days before they found the body, and by then it had been partially consumed by his poodles.” (just a little quote from the musical…now, you really want to see it, don’t you?).

10pm
After our second practice of the day, we all enjoyed some red velvet belated birthday cake (for my birthday), and then some of us listened to our own flyhalf/pianist tickle the ivories. I got some good video of this, but I won’t post it unless I get permission from Sadie, the pianist. Unfortunately, she didn’t know “American Pie,” and nobody requested “Free Bird,” but there is some quality ivory tickling in the vids.

Not only do we have musically talented players on this team (quite a few ladies play instruments), we also have spider experts. Post-dinner activities also included a “nature watch.” A few of us got the chance to see spiders weaving their webs (I also got video of this). Dowty is an expert on the web weaving process. She can literally watch a spider’s movements and tell if that spider is “tightening” the web or “tying it off.” And, Kim had some interesting spidey facts, and she insured us that the web was not, in fact, spider poop.