5 Things on a Friday: A New Kind of Star Wars

It’s a lot of entertainment news this week.  I’ll do my best to keep it quick.

A Few Thoughts on Indie Publishing

A friend of mine is looking to start his own blog, mostly covering fantasy sports.  He asked me for some thoughts as he gets his ideas together, and so we've been exchanging emails.  The one below talks a bit about what's it's been like for me over the past decade-plus, and I figured I'd share it in case anyone else out there has some of these same questions.

For what it's worth, I really like my buddy's ideas, and I'm quite looking forward to seeing what he eventually puts together.

Go Army Sports!

As we noted yesterday, Army Sports had a big day.  The day started with Women's Lax vs. Bucknell.

Recap and stats from today's game vs. Bucknellhttps://t.co/nC3wp2Uy3k pic.twitter.com/W2vJ0CxBaR

— Army WP W.Lacrosse (@ArmyWP_WLax) March 25, 2017

Saturday News & Notes: the AHCA & Army Sports

Happy Saturday, folks!

There's a lot of Army sports on TV today, but first, it'd be impossible not to mention what happened to the AHCA yesterday.  In the end, the House didn't even call their bill to a vote because it became clear that it was not going to pass.  Freedom Caucus members thought it was "Obamacare Lite," a fair charge if you ask me, and moderates in historically Democratic districts thought it cut benefits too much.  Also a fair charge.

In the end, the AHCA was a piece of shit that no one liked, and it went down because, well, no one liked it.

5 Things on a Friday: In Search of Happiness

We took a couple of weeks off, but now we’re back.  I hope you missed us.

Happy Friday!

4-Star Swimming Workout

Last night's workout was a four-star affair not because it was so super-awesomely creative but because I just felt really good in the water.  Great days like that are too common to remark upon when you're a teenager, but at forty-three, they've become rare and precious.

I was on point last night, putting in 3800 yards in exactly one hour.  It helped that the water at the YMCA was a little cooler than it has been and also that I have a new suit with noticeably less drag.  I'd put up a picture of it, but honestly, it's so tight as to be nearly obscene.

Army Football Preview: 6 Questions for Spring Football

Army opens its spring football schedule today, and while I don’t want to make too big a deal about this, Black Knight fans have a few burning questions heading into the 2017 season.  The spring schedule itself isn’t too overly daunting, but given that the team played almost a month more football than normal due to their bowl schedule in 2016, I would expect them to head into its offseason training program looking substantially sharper than they did at this time last year.

The spring practice schedule is as follows:

Spring Ball starts Tuesday

Full Schedule 👇 pic.twitter.com/nFUo3zj2aF

— Army WP Football (@ArmyWP_Football) March 17, 2017

What are you hoping to see out of spring practices?  Your mileage may vary, but my top six questions are as follows.

Strolling thru Twitter

Actually pretty excited to go back to school. SPRING BALL IS HERE!

— Jeff Ejekam (@JeffEjekam) March 19, 2017

Can't remember ever feeling like this.  Good for you, Jeff.

Thinking about Iron Fist

A lot has been said about the casting of Iron Fist.  Ultimately, I think Marvel decided to cast a white dude to play Danny Rand, so that they could make Rand dumb.  This is often the way he comes across in the comics.  But the choice appears to have frustrated most reviewers, and while I get that, I still see what Marvel was thinking.  Which is to say that if you’re Marvel, and what you really care about is the inevitable Power Man & Iron Fist Nteflix team-up show, you kind of need Danny to be dumb, and I can’t see how that works with an Asian dude playing the role.  

The dragon of Kun-Lun has symbolized the Iron Fist for
ages uncountable.

Like, “Why is this Asian dude constantly getting scolded on the ways of the street by Luke Cage?” 

Early Season Preview: 2017 Bridgeport Bluefish

The 2016 campaign saw my Bridgeport Bluefish get off to a decidedly slow start before bouncing back with one of the stronger showings in the Atlantic League in the season’s second half.  This was not quite enough to get them out of the AL’s Liberty Division basement, but it made going to games a Hell of a lot more interesting.  I’m no baseball expert, but signing Mets’ legend Endy Chavez certainly seemed to help, and for whatever it’s worth, I thought Chavez was the club’s best player whenever I saw him on the field.  He clearly had the team’s best statistics—.345 average with 55 runs and 39 RBIs on 132 hits.  But 2017 is a new year, and the Fish have a new General Manager, Paul Herrmann, who was promoted up from his previous position as assistant general manager and director of baseball operations.  

What does this mean for the coming season?

There is a Star in the Darkness

A girl sits in the window,

Watching a city drenched in cold air.

She doesn’t know,

She’ll never know,

How it came that she was here and they were there.

The people run and walk,

They know they are safe, free.

The girl gawks,

But she can never talk,

Of this place she calls a mystery.

They call it Estrella City,

The girl calls it her heart.

Never a rotten tree,

Not in a century,

But it wasn’t always safe from the start.

Forgotten, until the girl used her eyes,

But she took it for granted.

Open to dusty skies,

It was her demise,

A new seed shall now be planted.

Now Estrella’s colors are true,

It provides shelter from the rain,

It’s the inspiration, too,

For me and you,

Now the girl sees her gain.

Her heart, full it was once not,

Her soul now a budding tree.

The girl never forgot,

Who she was, and who she ought,

She never frowned again, and never shall she.

A girl sits in the window,

Watching a city drenched in cold air.

She doesn’t know,

She’ll never know,

How it came that she was here and they were there.

Saturday's Workout: Yoga / Swimming / Weights

After getting cut short with last week's workout, I made sure to leave myself plenty of time yesterday.  I also switched it up a little bit, running on Thursday during the week, which allowed me to add weights back into my weekend routine with the implication that I now have to run at some point later today as well.

I spent the first part of this workout doing yoga, trying to get the kinks out of my neck and lower back.  Then I hit the pool.  I finished with a light weight session and then taught a swimming lesson.  So yeah, that was kind of a long morning.

If She Were More

Lays in boxes
Strewn across the floor
Waiting
To be packed up and
Moved again.
You speak of promises,
I wait, wait, wait.
I do a lot of wait.
I cry.
Silently,
In the blackness of the night.
I had everything,
I took it away,
Accidentally.
It's gone.
We're spent
Of money,
Of tears,
Of time.
Done waiting.
We saw light at the end of a tunnel,
Didn't know
It was a fire,
The ruthless destroyer.
I watched it burn,
Stood idly by.
Now,
I'm still waiting

For your promises.

Swim / Run Brick (Tempo Intervals)

As the weather has gotten a little nicer in Connecticut, I’ve been moving away from being as exclusively swim-focused as I was over the winter, into a more balanced multisport training approach.  I don’t know that this means I’ll necessarily race a lot this summer, but since the sun is out, it seems like a shame to spend my time in an indoor pool.

I got this past weekend’s main workout from Runner’s World and decided to do it twice, once in the pool and once on the treadmill.  The original set was written for the track:

 3 x (4 x 440 @ :30 res), 1:00 between sets

With adaptations and time constraints, my workout went like this:

Poll the Audience

I posted the following on Twitter.  If you have a moment, I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks.

Thinking about the upcoming racing season. Where should I focus?#triathlon #duathlon #swimming

— Danno E. Cabeza (@Dan_T_Head) March 2, 2017