Round 2 vs Kifisia

Kifisia has been the thorn in our heel this season.  Our first meeting with them in our home gym was probably our worst match of the season as we lost 1-3.  After the game is when our head coach and assistant coach decided to leave the program.  Since then Freddy has taken over and done an amazing job.

Kifisia is in Athens.  The team has made a few changes since the first round with their line up.  They came out in the first set ready to play and it seemed like every ball was going their way...didn't feel like a lot was going right on our side.  One of their left sides and their opposite killed us.  Their middles were touching everything which made it easy for their defense.  They just plain beat us in the first set.  The second set was much the same.  A lot of smiles on the other side of the net without a lot of worries.

After the second set our morale was pretty down.  I spoke with our captain, Kravarik, and told him it is just not our day but we have to keep going so we might as well continue to fight.  We came out blazing as a team in the 3rd set.  We got a lot of productivity out of Zenia who came in for Ryan towards the end of the second set.  He was blocking balls and putting away some important ones.  Rodrigo has a really sore shoulder so we weren't able to use him as much as we like to.  In the 3rd set our middles got really involved and we started to gain confidence.  The momentum swayed our way and we took the 3rd and 4th sets with conviction.

The 5th set is always anybody's game.  The game was back and forth with Kifisia leading in end 12-10 or something like that.  We fought back to take the lead 15-14 but Kifisia took it right back.  In the end we lost 20-18 where we got stuck in one of our worst positions...Rotation 1 :/  I failed to put the ball away twice...on the second chance the libero made a mediocre dig but they somehow managed to pop the ball up on the 10 ft line where their OH hit the ball of his elbow for a kill and the game.  It was pretty hard to lose that match after we fought so hard to come back but this is sports.  Kifisia played better than us and they deserved the win.

On to the next vs Olympiakos.  Gonna be a battle.

American Idol 2011 Chris Medina

Inspirational 

Round 2 Game 1 vs Lamia

We've begun the second half of the season with a 3-1 win over Lamia.  We knew this match was not going to be an easy one as Lamia had knocked off some of the other top teams and was on a winning streak.  I don't think we are going to have any easy matches the rest of the season to be honest.

Freddy, our head coach, put together a good game plan and our team executed it pretty well.  We lost the first set 25-23 as we got stuck in one rotation twice.   Lamia's setter has a pretty difficult jump float serve and I think both times he went back to serve their team ran us up for 4 or 5 points.  That and the fact that our team prob had 6 mistakes in attack was the difference in the set.

In the second set our captain, Kravarik, came out on fire from the service line and we never looked back.  We gave them a good smack down and regained our confidence.  Didn't get stuck in any rotations and our setter really ran a solid offense.

The 3rd and 4th set looked a lot like the 2nd.  We served well and Kostas, our setter, really ran the show.  Our middles and left sides were blocking balls like crazy and it didn't seem like Lamia could do anything against us.  It was a very good win for our team and now on to the next in Athens vs Kafisa...the beat us 3-1 last time we played so we have to bring our A game.

Here are the standings after the 12th week.  Iraklis is still in first but only by a small margin of 4 points

Natalie Portman Laugh (extended)

Brandon Frazier is the best in this clip.  Well done College Humor.com

Jimmy's Starbucks Standoff

Starbucks refuses to ban fire arms from their stores.  May be old news to some or most but this is news to me.  I guess it would make more sense in a State that allows civilians the opportunity to walk around with registered firearms but even in those states business' are aloud to ban guns in their stores.  

Check out the video below.  Pretty f-ing funny!

Student wants refund from Vegas Hooker!

Hubert Blackman, a New York college student, ordered a stripper to his hotel room while staying in Las Vegas.  Apparently, the stripper was hired for 1 hour and they agreed to a lap dance as well as some sort of sexual act.  The stripper/hooker from Las Vegas Exclusive Personals left after only a half hour and Mr. Blackman called the police.  Prostitution is ILLEGAL in Nevada!  This idiot is now suing the hooker for the money he paid her and is asking the company to pay $1.8 million!!!!  HAHAHAHA!  Good luck Hubert.

To read the full story click 

HERE! Or google search it on YAHOO!

COMING SOON!

Hercules is getting his own blog.  Come on over and add hims as a friend at WWW.BABYCUZIMAPUG.BLOGSPOT.COM

sneak peak

Utah Jazz bear vs Cleveland Cavaliers Fan

This is pretty funny but in my opinion I think the bear deserved to get throttled.  I think the sign says it all.

Pug Life!

If you're not a pug fan...I hope you will be after seeing these pictures.

Season update

After finishing half the season our team is on top of the leader board with 28 points with a 4 point lead on the 2nd place team.  For those of you who don't understand how the point system works it is as follows.  The team that wins 3-1 or 3-0 is awarded 3 points and the losing team is awarded 0 points.  If the match goes to tie break, the team that wins 3-2 is awarded 2 points as the losing team is appointed 1 points.

Only the top 4 teams make it to playoffs this season so we have to keep our focus and play better in the second half.  Here are the standings after 11 matches minus the match between Olympiakos and Panallenios.

Golden Globes 2011 - Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais pissed of a whole lot of people with the truth.  I thought he was hilarious but I suppose it wasn't all that appropriate for the time.  He hit it on the head with all his remarks though.  He just said what all of us are thinking.  Respect!

Check out his opening monologue of the show:

Epic failure but Hilarious

Airball! 

Kobe Bryant - Greatness Personified

Even though they lost last night to the clippers here is a little bit of what selling your soul to the devil will do.  I could watch this video all day.  As Snoop and The Game would say "Purp and Yellow!"

Game 11 - Alexandroupolis

A little update about life here in Greece.  Our team just finished the 1st half of the season last night with a 3-0 win on the road vs a decent team from Alexandroupolis.  It was about 4 hours away and we hadn't played since the 29th of Dec.  The long break was a blessing in disguise.  I had a pinched nerve in my back, very similar to what happened to me my senior season at San Marcos, and wasn't able to train in the past 2 1/2 weeks.  Then to top it off I got a stomach virus that landed me in the hospital for an IV drip to give me a little hydration.  Needless to say, I didn't train but one day in that 2 1/2 week span.  We don't have a 2nd opposite at the moment and our team new that this was not going to be an easy match.  I was feeling much better leading up to the match but I had no energy (and not a lot of confidence in my self).  The morning of the match I used the hotels sauna to loosen up my back and sweat out a little toxins.  After lunch and a long nap I felt pretty good.  Our coach told me we will see how it goes in warm ups and make the decision based on how I felt.  It was go time and we had to win...I felt that it was better for me to start for the moral of the team.  I ended up making it through the entire match and actually felt pretty good...maybe I should never train ;)

Enough about me though...The real story of the night was how well all our young players played.  You can read the website entry to our website www.bluearena.gr and if you type that website into your google translate it will come up in English.  Our setter Kostas played great last night as he ran a very solid offense...played with everyone and got the job done.  He is a lot of fun to play with!  

We sit at the top for another week

We are still a little back on our payments.  I've received about 4 salaries out of 6 but we just signed on with some new sponsors and are awaiting more money.  It will be a relief to all the guys on the team when they finally catch up on our salaries.  I know the Greek players have only gotten 2 or so.  I will be very worried if I leave Greece without all of my money but I have a good feeling about the rest of the season and another championship to add to my portfolio.  It would be a nice accomplishment for sure.

Rainy day playlist

Its a rainy day here in Thessaloniki.  Spending a nice afternoon in bed with baby Herc and BBQ listening to music and browsing the web.  

Heres today Jams

White Arrows

One of my good friends, Mikey Lennon, turned me on to a new band.  White Arrows is a band you need to learn if you don't already know them.  I just bought the White Arrows EP album and can't get enough of it.  Stationed out of LA this group has a sort of Franz Firdinand inspired twist.  Perfect for summer pool parties and back yard BBQ's.  Looking forward to seeing a few of their shows this summer!

Check out a remix of their hit song Coming or Going!

Home - Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros Acoustic Cover (Jorge & Alex...

This just put a smile on my face...A nice song to start the day

Homeless Man with the Golden Voice!

I'm sure this is old news to most of you but I cant stop watching or thinking about this guys story and how inspiring he is.  He has been offered jobs by the Cleveland Cavaliers, MTv and the NFL.  Seems like a very genuine dude and deserves a second shot.  

Kind of looks and talks like Obama too

Wish you all the best Ted Williams!

For the full article check it out HERE!

2011 USC Men's Volleyball Preview

Listen to what coach Ferguson has to say about the 2011 season.  Looks like we have another great year ahead of us!  The Trojans are co-favorites to win the MPSF title.  

Donald Suxho and I had a chance to get in the gym with the team last season.  A real class act program with a lot of big kids on the team.  

Murphy Troy - good chance to be player of the year this season!

Court of the Galen Center

2011 Schedule

One game at a time boys...See you in May!  FIGHT ON!

Lebron Calls The Heat "The Heatles"

"The Heatles"? There's no Heatle mania over here! Can't even sell out a home game...I'm sure the Beatles could of sold out Liverpool! HAHAHA more like the Back Street Boys

Bed time story for Brett

When I was in the 5th grade I lived with my best friend Johan and his parents Eva and Gary for the school year.  My mom was living in Hermosa Beach with my younger brother James while going to Dental Hygiene school and my sister Summer was living with her best friend.  I have a lot of fond memories of this year but I want to share one particular story that will stay with me forever.

Eva was from Sweden and it was customary to take our shoes off at the front door and leave them on the porch.  No shoes inside policy.  Gary or "Mr." as he used to make us call him was one of those dads that liked working on stuff out in the garage and always had lots of toys like bb guns and sling shots.  Eva was a nurse and Mr. was an abalone diver.  I loved their house up in the hills above the Mesa in Santa Barbara and I loved their family.  We used to have Mr. chase us around the house as we would call out "Gary, Gary, Gary, etc..."

Anyhow, we started to notice that some of our shoes were missing from time to time.  But the strange thing was that it was not the pair of shoes but maybe one shoe from each pair.  For about a week we kept noticing that our shoes were going missing so Mr. decided to set a trap.  He made a buzzer that would sound off if the pressure was removed from it.  We laid the buzzer underneath a shoe and if it was picked up the alarm would go off.

Now Johan and I shared a room with the window facing the porch.  We armed our selves with bats near the front door as Mr. had one of his guns.  Needles to say in the 5th grade, 10 years old, thinking that we were going to stop a person from stealing stuff off our porch was pretty scary.  After Johan and I were sound asleep we were woken by the alarm.  We heard Mr. run down the hallway to the front door so we followed with our bats in hand.

With all the lights turned on and the 3 of us standing their in the front drive way looking for the thief but baffled of how we could of lost him.  We searched the side of the house, the ivy in the neighbors yard, with still no sign of anybody.  Mr. piled us in their truck and started driving through the neighborhood looking for any suspicious people...really any people at that time of the morning.

Up the street we saw a figure running down the middle of the road with two beady eye's.  As we closed in on it we noticed it was a fox and it had a shoe in its mouth!  We found the culprit!!!  We followed the fox as far as we could but it tailed off into the open fields behind their house.  Mr. Told us we would come back the next day and search the field.

Red Fox

The following morning Johan, Mr. and I raided the open area where we chased the fox.  We new the area pretty well because we used to ride our bikes in there all the time.  Turns out there were lots of fox families living here and Mr. noticed a lot of fox holes that could act as a fox den. Sure enough we found some shoes.  But they weren't our shoes!  We probably scavenged the field for a week and found over 1000 shoes including our own eventually.

fox den

Now, I didn't know this many people left their shoes out on the porch but it turns out people from the entire neighborhood were missing shoes and some of them were pretty expensive as they had pricey custom insoles.  We gathered all the shoes and put them on the drive way so people could come and get their belongings.  Some of them were pretty torn up however.

The news paper got whiff of the story and came and took a picture of Johan and I in front of all the shoes.  I have the picture somewhere and will have to scan it but it was one of my first times in the paper.  I tell this story to Brett as a bed time story and each time it brings a smile to my face.  Thought I'd share it with all of you!

(I was thinking of making this story into a children's book and have Brett draw the animation part of it for our future children)