Back to my Life

Well soccer season is over.  I've made it through another fall season.  This season I didn't referee as many games as I have in the past, however most all of them were college level games and far more intense.  Thankfully I'm in a place now where I have nothing to do and a good mental defrag can finally occur.  It's time to get my life back in order now.

Once Thanksgiving is over, it's time to actually see friends.  Hang out at Capitals games or at the bar.  Catch up on what I've missed over the past couple months.  Start reading the Bourne Trilogy and rewatch the movies one by one.  Get out and complete my holiday shopping, although completing the thought of what I'd like to get for important people in my life is probably a good first step.  It's also time to look into my house hunting ventures ... hopefully I'll have a new place to call my own in the near future.

So, the transition begins however not without a bit of time to sit and relax.

It's been a long October

So, I've noticed that my blog has gone to the wayside once soccer hit full stride.  I know that's not an excuse in any way, shape, or form ... however I'll still used it.  Plus I mentioned in the first post that this thing would probably be used sparingly throughout it's life cycle.

As soccer season winds down (I have 4 more games on my schedule, for now), I have some thoughts to throw out to the masses:

1)  I should end up the season with close, if not more than 250 miles logged in 54 games from August 17th to November 4th.  Not a bad haul for the fall season.

2)  I'm looking forward to hanging out with friends, siting on my couch, starting to read the Bourne Identity (I have Supremacy and Ultimatum too), watching Caps games, and going to Caps games ... probably not all at the same time, but you get the point.

3)  I tend to lose the concept on what children really get from sports.  I'm truly starting to believe that sports teach children some of the best and some of the worst traits that come from society.  I wonder if people, in their jobs, are able to blame missing reports or missed deadlines on others being "terrible" or "the worst _____ ever".  Or if they're able to curse out a boss when they don't get a promotion or something else that they "deserved".  I almost wonder if it was all this way when I was a kid, and I was just too young/naive to notice.

4)  Although a lot of Caps fans are not happy with how the team has started the season, they're 2 points behind the record breaking pace they set last season.  I'd trade a more "team oriented" game for a win here or there any day of the week.  I don't expect a team to win every night, maybe give themselves a chance to win, but there's no need to win every game.

5)  I'm digging the Caps Winter Classic jerseys.  By the way, for all the people that dislike them, please feel free to realize that the Washington Capitals are not here to recreate your youth.  Go find a jersey from the 80's, if you like them so much.  I appreciate the fact that they look close to same, without being the same jerseys.

6)  I'm really looking forward to getting my pair of Face Off Hockey Shoes in the mail.  That will be this year's referee "gift" to myself.  After a long season, it's nice to use some of the money now, while saving the rest for later.

7)  I'd like to get back into marketing the Face Off Hockey Show much more.  New Products, new sponsorships, money coming in, setting up a website to sell draft pictures, and whatever I can really do.  If nothing else, at least this helps with our marketing in the future.  Although some new gear and some money has never hurt anyone.

A GPS Watch and refereeing

Toward the end of last year I picked up a new Garmin Forerunner 405 w/ Heart Rate Monitor on eBay.  I wanted to start road cycling again, however found out that my old cycling computer had died.  It had been years since I was able to ride my bike, so I wasn't surprised to find it not working any longer.  I decided to pick up this Garmin watch in order to keep track of where I went, distances, heart rates, calories burned, speed, and even get me home if I took a wrong turn somewhere.  Once I got it though, I noticed it connects directly into Google Earth and that I could zoom down to show exactly where I was riding.  It was so precise that I could actually see if I cut through a parking lot instead of going all the way around the corner.  At that point I realized that this watch could be used for refereeing soccer games, and used really well to keep track of where I was on the field and how far I ran.

Middle of a women's DIII match between #1 Messiah & #8 Johns Hopkins.

This fall, I've started using the Garmin 405 for almost every game that I've refereed (and for the ones I didn't wear it, I estimated what I would have run).  Through 27 games I've refereed this fall, in both the Referee and an Assistant Referee position, I've run 114.46 miles.  That ends up to be approximately 4.25 miles per game that I've refereed so far this fall season.  If I continue that pace for the rest of the season, I'll have run 216.75 miles within the 10 weeks of fall ... or basically running from Baltimore, MD to White Plains, NY.  I never knew that I ran that much throughout games, and this includes games that I'm running through the middle of the field (like in the picture) and games that I'm running on just one sideline the whole time.  When I'm in the middle, I average just about 6 miles for the game.  The highest total so far was 6.57 miles, in this Hopkins v. Messiah game.  When I'm on the sideline I average just about 3 miles for the game.

Plus the Garmin 405 is great because you can set "Advanced Workouts" on the computer.  Basically I set up the timings for entire games, high school games and college games separately since they're different timings, and I'm able to scroll through to the "workout", press "do workout" and I have everything there.  I recently had a high school game that went all the way through 2 overtimes and the score was still tied.  The watch did everything I set it up for and went through the entire game without a problem.

Oh, and in case you're wondering ... I've been able to ride my bike 6 times since I've bought the watch.  I've ridden 138.83 miles in 9 hours 11 minutes 5 seconds, for an average speed of 15.1mph.  So yes, I do actually use the GPS watch for what I bought it for in the first place.

Are clothes sizes getting bigger?

Ok ... I might be losing it, but I'm not certain.  I referee soccer games, I mentioned that before, so I went out before the season to get some new referee shorts and a couple new jerseys.  A new color that everyone seems geeked to wear because it's the new cool thing to do.  I don't understand why the other 4 colors of jerseys weren't good enough, but I digress.  So I head to the website to get my new refereeing gear for the season.  I order all the normal sizes for shirts and shorts.  I get everything and both shirts and shorts are huge.  I mean they almost feel like they're not even the same size that I've been wearing since college.  Is it possible that I'm getting smaller?  Maybe.  I guess I could be losing the muscle I acquired wrestling through college, and I'm replacing that with fat.  However I always thought that muscle weighed more than fat, and I'm not losing any weight.  I guess I'm replacing it with a lot of fat?  Or could sizes of clothes be changing?

I have a full set of NCAA refereeing jerseys that are larges, and they fit me pretty normally.  They might be a little bit big but I'd rather have that than get something that's too small.  I have a full set of high school jerseys that are larges and fit me pretty closely to my NCAA jerseys.  But this new one, I feel like I'm swimming in it, and don't get me started with the medium shorts that are almost down to my knees.  It's a damn good thing they have a fantastic elastic, kindof grippy, waitband.  Everything just looks big on me, but I guess I can't do much about it.  It's not like I can return any of it ... like I said, people are geeked to wear the new color.  So 2 days after I got the jersey in the mail, I was already wearing it to referee high school scrimmages.  So much for returning it.

However this brings me to the thought I had above.  Are sizes of clothes changing?  Could it just be that people in the United States are getting fatter but want to think they are wearing the same size still?  I guess I'll let you know once I go back out and buy a new wardrobe of smaller polo shirts to wear to work.

Where to start?

I have friends, and said friends have blogs.  They blog about anything and everything ... raising a child, life, amusing experiences, hockey, P90X, and almost anything in between.  Most likely I won't get close to anything that other people write about.  In all honesty, this "blog" is more or less a place to put thoughts onto paper ... umm a screen ... and get them out of my head.  Hell, I'm not even sure who will end up knowing this is even here, and I actually quite like that.

See, the reason I started this now is because soccer season is coming up.  I'm an NCAA and high school soccer referee in the area.  This basically means that from August 21st to just about Thanksgiving, I have no life outside of working all day long and heading to referee, my "second job".  I use quotations because referee soccer games isn't really a job to me ... I'm being paid to run, work out, and be at some really high level soccer games.  It's still a job though because it takes a lot of time.  Already, for the coming season, I have 44 games scheduled in 10 weeks ... or basically refereeing 4-5 times a week.  Also, becoming a National Level NCAA referee means that I'm doing more NCAA games (and at higher levels) than I ever have before in my refereeing career.  Don't get me wrong though, the pay is amazing and like I said, I barely see it as a job (most of the time).  Refereeing is something that I really have fun doing and it'll be the reason that I'm able to buy a house, on my own, in the near future.  It may also be the reason that I'll be living by myself, for the first time in my life, and that I fear that I could end up living my life with a ton of acquaintances around me, but nobody that really knows me at all.

So, I guess we'll see where we go from here.  I have no clue how often this will be used or what I'll even write about.  Most likely it'll be haphazard on both accounts.  As for now though, I need to make sure my team is set for the Vuelta a España.  The addition of some Spanish cyclists, that I don't really know, should really round my team out nicely.