Monday...? Again....? Didn't we have one of these last week?

So....I'm starting to run out of creative titles for posts...

Anyways, this post isn't going to have all that much to it. Last week wasn't exactly the norm but it had one main event and that was pretty much it. Start from the top? Why not...

We started the week with your average Monday, lectures and boredom aplenty. Tuesday however was....different to say the least. As you know I'm a forensic science student so of course we do mock crime scene practicals to show us what work in the field is like. I'm sure I've mentioned them once or twice. This year we are studying Anthropology (that's bones and stuffs for those who don't know) and one of our lecturer's has done a lot of work in Guatemala and other countries working on mass graves. Meaning that we'd naturally have to investigate a mock mass grave scenario. It was your standard out door crime scene scenario just with lots of (fake) bones scattered about the place. Sam, Ant and Sarah formed the team, me playing photographer as always, Ant as CSM leaving Sam and Sarah to dig up stuffs. There's not really all that much to say about this part of the day. We dug stuff out of the ground, laid them out and then documented what we had found. Then we broke for lunch. Lunch is good.

Now comes the disgustingly fun part. Dead pigs! Yeah, you read that right. Dead pigs. To simulate a decomposing body we used pigs. They're dead, they decompose the same way a human corpse does so this one's actually pretty accurate....aside from the fact they're pigs...but shhhhhhhh. Practical being on Tuesday was a blessing really, we got to investigate the pigs to collect maggots and flies and the like when they were still relatively fresh. The smell wasn't all that bad actually which was quite disappointing if I'm honest. I mean I was expecting it be like a wall of smell but it really wasn't that bad. Probably helped by the fact that it was outdoors so the smell dissipated and was really quite bearable. Don't get me wrong is wasn't pleasant but it wasn't all that bad. If anything, visually they were a lot worse. One pig was in the bloat stage of decay and had swollen to the point that it looked like it would explode and coat everyone in horrible pig bits and stuff if you so much sneezed at it. Another one was producing some kind of weird yellow foam, I don't want to know how or why (which I probably should....) but it was there and it was disgusting. They were all laying in a horrible brown pool of stuff (three guesses what "stuff") and all of them were covered in writhing masses of maggots. They all had flies buzzing around them which we had to try and capture and recover so that we could investigate what they were to determine how long they had been there. This proved almost comically difficult to do. At one stage there were three of us all stood around trying to catch one damned fly....in the end? The fly pretty much caught itself by landing on a net and staying there while we caught it. I kinda think it felt bad for us and decided to let us have it....little did it know that we were going to kill it by gassing it so we could examine it with a microscope. Poor bastard...

Aside from that? The week has been fairly standard really. I went to the doctor's to find out what's wrong with my finger, turns out I have some minor tendon and ligament damage. The doctor suggested that I rest it and take anti-inflammatories for a month...regionals are this weekend coming...that's really not going to happen. Maybe afterwards? Still no. Lex has a tournament on in Lincoln, be rude not to play that! The week after that I'll start resting it. Should be back to fighting fit in no time!

That's pretty much it for now folks. Hopefully next week's post will be full of tales of victory from regionals!

Catch ya later folks

The old stomping ground.

Anyone remember me talking about Sheffield beginners? Nah probably not, was before I started writing this so it might not have come up...a brief summary goes like this:

Sheffield beginners tournament. I went in my first year at Uni, we played some awesome frisbee all weekend and it got me hooked on playing ultimate! Absolutely fantastic time out there, learnt a lot and had a helluvalot of fun!

We didn't enter a team last year for reasons I either don't know or don't remember (one and the same really...). This year however we did. It was a bit touch and go as to whether or not we'd be going as two/three days before the tournament we didn't have enough beginners willing to attend. Luckily by Thursday night we had enough people say "Yeah I'll definitely be there!" And so we went. This time the freshers didn't have to Iron-Man the weekend the lucky buggers.

We got the train down on the Saturday morning and I spent most of the journey either telling stories or explaining things about how the game works and how the weekend is going to run...pretty sure everyone was getting sick of hearing my voice, but if someone asks me a question I can barely ignore them can I? Anyways we arrived in Sheffield, got changed and played our first game of the weekend. We were against Liverpool and managed to bring home a 10 - 0 win. Some might say it was luck and they might be right but judging by how the rest of the weekend went we had a team of naturals with us. We may have gotten a little too relaxed after that match as our first of two games against Huddersfield was an incredibly tough game! They really made us work. For a team of all beginners, their most experienced players having played 1 match previously before summer an another who had only played for about a year, they were fantastic! They put up a brilliant fight and our freshers rose to the challenge quickly and matched them fantastically! We came out of that match with a 3-3 win, someone, possibly Chris, scoring the Hail Mary equaliser at the end of the match. As a team of pretty much all beginners they have massive potential! We seemed to bond quite well with them over the weekend and hopefully we'll be seeing them around more often! 

We then went on to play York, sadly York had suffered a number of drop outs and couldn't field a full beginners team.  Luckily the lovely folks at Sheffield Hallam donated some of their beginners to help them out as pick ups. Again we faced a really tough match as to be expected from York. I can't remember the shoreline but I know we won the match and had a nice friendly chat with York afterwards as always. Before the match though we were warming up and one if our freshers, Melissa, was demonstrating how her forehand is a lot stonger than her back hand and subsequently nearly killed one of the York players by hitting them in the back of the head. This prompted us to call her Brick. If you've seen anchorman you'll understand why. 

Our last game of the day was against Aberystwyth and was another hard fought and close match. We won this one and finished the day with 3 wins and 1 draw. We hit the showers and then headed off for a team dinner (minus the newly named Brick) before venturing over to where we were staying the night. Whilst in 'Spoons we discussed the first day and then came up with the beginners new frisbee names except Jamie, but we'll get to his later. Amanda became Triple D thanks to her last name, Sam became Sam-wise since he was sat next to the previously named Dildo Baggins by Petey and Co. Lewis became Huey/Newis (Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?) and Jamie was briefly called Scott because he looks like a Scott....this changed very quickly though.

We took two attempts to find our accommodation for the night, a local scout hall in the centre of town, where we prepared our beds for the night. I ended up teaching Sam-wise how to make a makeshift pillow out of all our jumpers and hoodies, after all we have to take care of the old guy. We got ready to head to the party and began our journey. We got lost and ended up in the wrong place but after some swift googling by our navigator Dan, ended up in the right place. Not that we were there long, a fire alarm interupted the evening and forced us all outside, this is where Jamie's nickname begins to form. Once outside in the dreary northern rain with Jamie, Samwise and Triple D we formed our little group and stood talking. Jamie was quickly approached by two girls who said "You look cold, come stand with us." and dragged Jamie off. We informed Tom and Dan when they arrived and leaving Tom to make sure Jamie didn't get hurt we took the chance to go to bed. 

Jamie turned up again the next morning at 10.40 at the sports centre after spending the night with Gabby, leading to us dubbing him Gabby! 

We began our day by facing off against the lads from Huddersfield once again in the battle for 4th place. Another hard fought and tight match left us all breathing hard and when the match ended 7-3(?) to us we breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The change in the level of their play and ours between the two days was astounding, we got lucky they made some unfortunate drops otherwise things would have been a lot closer!

Our second match of the day was against 1st - Sheffield Hallam A. We knew they were going to be a tough team having seen them play on Saturday, so went into the match expecting to be fiercely challenged. True to form they didn't disappoint, they came at us hard and fast but our freshers came out and matched them holding then off for a long 12minute point. Our attack was as strong as their defence and vice versa. We had some unlucky drops as did they but ultimately (pun slightly intended) they came away with a 5-2 win.

Our last game of the weekend was the battle for 3rd against Hallam B, another strong team that gave as good as they got and I think the exertions of the weekend had finally started to take their toll, leading to them being able to pull away and take the win.

We started the weekend 14th out of 16 beginners teams and ended up walking away 4th! An absolutely fantastic achievement in my opinion and I couldn't be more proud of the freshers! They performed fantastically and only got better as the weekend went on. Sam, Chris and Lewis were making incredible interceptions throughout the tournament, Melissa and Jamie were pulling off awesome passes with Amanda always managing to find the perfect space just when it's needed. As a team they played together brilliantly from the get go and only seemed to get better! They gave it their all out there and hopefully they're as proud of themselves as we are!

I've got an all day practical tomorrow that's going to be a regular laugh riot. Considering I don't enjoy either Anthropology or Entomology, it's set to be a good day.

Catch ya later folks

Back into the swing of things

Well last week was the first week of lectures and it's good to be back in the swing of things.

I had my first dissertation meeting on Thursday and have got quite a few ideas to play with and develop, hopefully come up with something pretty interesting to investigate. Sadly I won't be getting to investigate ballistic damage on clothing fibres but hey ho. Guess I'll just have to come up with something else. I've also written the first 200 words of my introduction too. Not sure if they're any good but I'll probably end up going back and rewriting them a couple times but that's the nature of the work.

Been a pretty awesome week with the Frisbee family, we've got a lot of new members who seem really quite interested in joining properly and carrying on with it! We've also got a couple beginners tournaments coming up, the first of which is this coming weekend in Sheffield. I'm going to be co-captaining the team with Dan and Tomo when we get there which should be awesome! Beginners tournaments are always a lot of fun and you learn a helluva lot from them. I'm really quite looking forward to going back there for this one! We've also got Manchester coming up next weekend, for which we're returning champions. Then the weekend after that we've got Regionals! It's looking to be a busy month for us but hopefully it'll be an awesome one! Really looking forward to it! Hopefully my hand heals up before Sheffield, it's mostly healed now so it should be good to play in time! As for Regionals who knows? Can always hope I make it on one of the teams but if not then I'm not surprised, I've hardly been on top form so far this season.

This morning was a bastard. Not sure if anyone has read my post from a couple months back about the hell that is Sleep Paralysis, if not and you're interested then you might want to give it a read. I'm not going to re-iterate everything I said in that post but I nearly forgot how terrifying it is to wake up unable to move or shout. This time was one of the more vivid and intense ones...I could have sworn I felt a hand on my shoulder and hear a voice in my ear. I can't remember what I heard but it scared the living hell out of me...I also distinctly remember a heavy pressure near the base of my spine...The worst part though? Once I could move again I rolled over only to be woken up by another attack of it. The second one wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as the first but still...it's one of, if not the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced. It's been so long since my last attack and I still have no idea what causes it...

Looks like I've got some more research to do later but for now I'm going to chill out and relax before my lecture. Then probably do some more Dissertation work when I get in.

Catch ya later folks