Bucking trends

I don't know what got into me last night. I didn't play anything from the Eighties at Vaughan's. I only got three songs, and I opted for "Open Up" from Dispatch, which I barely remembered, "If I Can't Change Your Mind" from Sugar, which was actually the first time playing that in front of people, and it showed, and Radiohead's "Karma Police," which was much much better than the first time I played it, which was actually my first time doing the open mike thang. Tonight, I realized that I probably can add "Murder By Numbers" from The Police to the set list, complete with entirely fucked-up Andy Summers jazz chords. God, that's a great song.

Aside from spacing some chords later in the evening, the day was a net positive. One phone call that was solicited, and one that wasn't, the latter being a fairly good job opportunity through a recruiter. I would now say that I've got three good prospects in the pipeline, although one of them still is still a bit nebulous in that I haven't actually made personal contact with the person or persons doing the hiring, but I know someone at the company. I'm cautiously optimistic that I could have something lined up before the unemployment benefits run out, and that's not counting the likely extension when Congress gets back in 2003, but it will be nice having that to fall back on.

All that and a 9-0 loss in indoor soccer that we actually felt good about. This team has had some problems with possession and passing, and we were a lot better in that regard this time around. That always seems to happen to teams I'm on when we're forced to play shorthanded, this time because we only had one woman of the requisite two for the co-ed league. Adam also suggested I start getting a bit more physical on the field, and he was right. I'm not small by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't take advantage of that often enough. So I was able to muscle some people off the ball, both offensively and defensively, and it felt good. I think I tend to poke at the ball too much, rather than standing up to a challenge. That could be a defense mechanism to protect my knees, or an artifact of typically being late to make a play due to my appalling lack of speed, but whatever it is, I managed to get over that hump this week. Of course, playing every two or three days for two weeks helps.

I left one bit unexplained in there, but it's staying that way. Don't want to jinx it.