Dear Diary: The Holiday Season
1/5/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Now that Christmas has come and gone, the holiday season really feels like it is over. Since classes don’t start again until Jan. 18, the team has three weeks of basketball, and only basketball.
This time away from class is giving us the opportunity to really focus on improving our game as well as spend some more quality time together. During break we usually have practice at 10 a.m., which allows us to sleep-in to a decent hour, but still gets us out of the fieldhouse with some of the day left.
With no homework to do, I have been surprisingly bored. Not that I’m complaining that I don’t have class, but there is only so much you can do in the dorms by yourself. The six of us that are staying in the dorms end up watching movies together or going to Wal-Mart together a lot. Our teammates that live off campus have also been great by opening up their homes to us and letting us come spend the afternoons away from campus.
After the holiday season I find myself missing home more than ever. That’s another reason I’m so grateful for my teammates, they really are my family away from home. I love just spending time with them and talking about random things, like our favorite fruit or pinecones.
We also turn to each other for advice. While Christmas season was in full swing, we all asked each other for advice about what to buy various friends and family. We would toss gift ideas around the locker room. Everything from cologne and clothes to electronics and video games were suggested. We would also have to laugh about the commercials we saw that suggested gifts.
I think the worst idea we ever saw was on a billboard in Salt Lake City. The billboard was advertising laser hair removal as a great gift for your loved ones. After a brief discussion, we all agreed that the statement “Merry Christmas, you’re hairy” is probably not the message you want to be sending this holiday season.
Now anytime you have a group of people together it makes sense to divide and conquer tasks.
A common way of assigning these tasks is the last one to say “Not it” has to do the job. But since we are suffocated college students we have adopted a much better way to assign tasks, it’s called the nose game. It works a lot like saying “Not it”, except you simply touch your nose instead of saying “not it.” The best thing about this game is it is easy to recognize when it’s being played. You don’t even have to hear what job is being assigned to get in on the nose game. Anytime we see someone on the team touch their nose, the rest of us are quick to follow. Because we are all so quick to notice and jump in, it seems that anytime someone touches their nose, even just to scratch it, we all assume that some un-desirable job is being dealt out and quickly touch our noses. This usually leads to five minutes of everyone asking what we were playing the nose game for, causing confusion until the person that first touched their nose explains that they simply had an itch.
I love going on road trips just to experience the adventure called “follow the directions.” Now I’m sure you have all used Map Quest or a similar site to get yourself from point A to point B, and I’m sure you all know how those directions can be a little off sometimes. It seems that no matter where we are, it always takes us 20 minutes longer to get to where we are going than it should. All the vans try to stick together, but you know how it is with traffic and stop lights, we always end up separated. It usually ends up that the van that got left behind at the stop light is the first one to the destination. Somehow the van that gets left behind always has more luck in finding the correct way and ends up at the destination 10 minutes before all the other vans. I’ve come to expect these little navigational adventures and have learned to just take them in stride and enjoy the extra 15 minutes of listening to the radio.
This time away from class is giving us the opportunity to really focus on improving our game as well as spend some more quality time together. During break we usually have practice at 10 a.m., which allows us to sleep-in to a decent hour, but still gets us out of the fieldhouse with some of the day left.
With no homework to do, I have been surprisingly bored. Not that I’m complaining that I don’t have class, but there is only so much you can do in the dorms by yourself. The six of us that are staying in the dorms end up watching movies together or going to Wal-Mart together a lot. Our teammates that live off campus have also been great by opening up their homes to us and letting us come spend the afternoons away from campus.
After the holiday season I find myself missing home more than ever. That’s another reason I’m so grateful for my teammates, they really are my family away from home. I love just spending time with them and talking about random things, like our favorite fruit or pinecones.
We also turn to each other for advice. While Christmas season was in full swing, we all asked each other for advice about what to buy various friends and family. We would toss gift ideas around the locker room. Everything from cologne and clothes to electronics and video games were suggested. We would also have to laugh about the commercials we saw that suggested gifts.
I think the worst idea we ever saw was on a billboard in Salt Lake City. The billboard was advertising laser hair removal as a great gift for your loved ones. After a brief discussion, we all agreed that the statement “Merry Christmas, you’re hairy” is probably not the message you want to be sending this holiday season.
Now anytime you have a group of people together it makes sense to divide and conquer tasks.
A common way of assigning these tasks is the last one to say “Not it” has to do the job. But since we are suffocated college students we have adopted a much better way to assign tasks, it’s called the nose game. It works a lot like saying “Not it”, except you simply touch your nose instead of saying “not it.” The best thing about this game is it is easy to recognize when it’s being played. You don’t even have to hear what job is being assigned to get in on the nose game. Anytime we see someone on the team touch their nose, the rest of us are quick to follow. Because we are all so quick to notice and jump in, it seems that anytime someone touches their nose, even just to scratch it, we all assume that some un-desirable job is being dealt out and quickly touch our noses. This usually leads to five minutes of everyone asking what we were playing the nose game for, causing confusion until the person that first touched their nose explains that they simply had an itch.
I love going on road trips just to experience the adventure called “follow the directions.” Now I’m sure you have all used Map Quest or a similar site to get yourself from point A to point B, and I’m sure you all know how those directions can be a little off sometimes. It seems that no matter where we are, it always takes us 20 minutes longer to get to where we are going than it should. All the vans try to stick together, but you know how it is with traffic and stop lights, we always end up separated. It usually ends up that the van that got left behind at the stop light is the first one to the destination. Somehow the van that gets left behind always has more luck in finding the correct way and ends up at the destination 10 minutes before all the other vans. I’ve come to expect these little navigational adventures and have learned to just take them in stride and enjoy the extra 15 minutes of listening to the radio.
Wednesday, June 10
Friday, March 27
Monday, March 23
Friday, March 13
