Moving...Check!!

I finally moved into my new place!! I am living with two of my teammates, Lucy and Patricia in a nice flat in a lovely little area called Isleworth. Obviously, it’s pretty easy for me to move considering I only have what was allowed of me on the plane which is roughly equal to the weight of one of the Olson twins. My flatmates, however, had a more in depth move.

Both Lucy and Paty have full time jobs so the only option was to move in the evening. Terry, our coach, volunteered one of his friends, Jack, who has a large van to help with the big ticket items, beds, tv’s, all that good stuff. Honestly, by the look on Jack’s face I don’t think he realized exactly what he signed up for, but he was a trooper considering we really didn’t know him. We packed the first load into the van, drove across the city and arrived at our new place around 10pm. We tried to be quiet and not be the rude new neighbors in our building (where there are about 6 other tenants), but trying to be quiet while moving a bigscreen TV up 2 flights of stairs is almost impossible. I kind of felt like a robber in reverse. Instead of taking stuff from somebody’s place in the middle of the night, we were moving stuff in and trying to be as quiet as possible to not wake up the neighbors. Luckily, we weren’t the rude new tenants because no one woke up to tell us we were too loud. At least now I know if this whole basketball thing doesn’t work out, I can always find work as a bandit.

All that moving reminded me of my sophomore year in college. Now, if you are interested in unique methods for cruel and unusual punishment go ahead and write this down. Make someone lift as much as they can, as many times as they can (max out) with both their arms and legs. Then, immediately force them to move all their crap out of a dorm room without an elevator. This is what my basketball coach decided to do that on the last day of school. She wanted to see how much we could lift in the weight room so she could tell how much we improved over the summer. Fair enough, but Megan and I still had to move ALL of our stuff into a storage unit. Of course we did our duty in the weight room and walked back to our unpacked dorm room with jelly legs and arms. Have your legs ever been so dead that when you walk down stairs you have to literally have no control over the depth that they bend so you end up flailing your body as fast as you can down the stairs just hoping that your feet will at least stay under you when you get to the bottom? Yeah…me too…well, imagine you’re holding a 36” TV as well…


I had my first day coaching at a primary school on Tuesday. When I spoke with the woman who was in charge of assigning coaches she told me that I would probably get about 20 kids or so. That’s a good number for a group, but she then casually threw in another important bit of information, that I would only have 1 BASKET!! 1 BASKET?? Are you kidding? 1 basket+ 20 kids= too many kids standing around!! Luckily, I had a chance to collect some ideas from a couple people as well as tap into my right brain to get creative. I felt like the basketball MacGuver or something…and had to make a bomb out of a toothpick and a bobby pin. Thankfully, things went just fine.

We had a game this weekend against the London Towers, our cross city rivals!! Not really, but it sounds like it would be a rivalry considering we are the only 2 London teams. We started off really strong in the first quarter and jumped on them 17-2 in the opening minutes. But then we had a few fouls called and the next thing we knew they were on the free throw line and we were only up by 7 going into the 2nd quarter. We played well in the 2nd and were up by about 18 at halftime. Well, our usual 4th quarter woes came a bit early this game. In the 3rd, we couldn’t score and they rallied to within about 6 points I think at one time. It was not pretty and I think we only scored 8 points total that quarter. In the 4th we picked it up slightly and ended up with a W, winning by 12 or so. Thank the Lord because we need a win to break our 4 game losing streak.

Life at the new flat is good, but I’m still getting used to the transportation aka buses that I need. The 267 bus is my go-to bus. It pretty much gets me everywhere I need to go, yoga, the train station- wherever. But this thing is never on time. NEVER!! It’s not the driver or the bus’s fault, but the route it takes always has traffic. I was late meeting Helen, the woman I paint with by 1 ½ hours this week which made me feel horrible. I can’t stand being late. Ever since then (and the time I had to wait out in the cold for 40 minutes after yoga with wet hair) I have this overwhelming desire to flip the bird at the 267 whenever I see it. Obviously I’m not chasing the bus down giving it the finger, but for some reason just thinking about giving the bus the bird makes me laugh and usually shed some needed light on the situation.