I have new songs on my YouTube page! I feel good about the Damien Rice one. The others are decent. It's all about recognizing when my voice goes flat, which is most of the time. I have to concentrate on every note I sing, which then takes my mind away from my guitar playing. Watching myself is a hrad thing to do, but as it's making me better, it's also a good thing to do.
What a horrible game of bowling last night. I was in danger of not breaking 100 on the last game. Seriously. After opening with two spares and two strikes, I then proceeded to have NINE consecutive open frames. A lot of my strike balls looked good, but so many of them broke too much, hitting the head pin dead on and creating splits, which I couldn't convert. I limped home on the first game with a 131, tying the prior week for my worst game in quite a while... but I wasn't done yet.
In the second game, I had at least four splits and finished with a 136. It was torture. By the end of that game, it felt as if I had no idea how to bowl. I felt weak, my muscle memory completely wiped out. I couldn't do everything on my checklist. And when I thought I did, I'd pull the ball, as I did on three consecutive frames that offered easy spares. I pulled all three.
The thing was that many people struggled last night. Not as much as me, perhaps, but there were a lot of games lower than the typical average. The first survivor game cut-off was 205, meaning that, if your hancapped score was 205 or higher, you were in the top half and advanced to the next round. In general, the survivor score should be 220, and it usually is around that mark. 205 was a steep decline.
Our opponents also sucked, however. It looked like a bunch of guys that really didn't know what they were doing up there. And boy, I was hitting a new low with my last game, in danger of not breaking 100. When I finally converted an easy spare in the ninth frame, I figured out that I needed at least three pins on my first ball to get 100, and I had no confidence that I could get it.
But I finally threw the ball I had been waiting for all night. On my 36th and last frame, I threw the perfect ball, which nailed the pocket perfectly and sent all ten pins to the deaths. "Yeah!" I yelled. "Hot Damn!" I yelled even louder. Man, that felt good. The next two balls were nine (standing five) and a pick-up. And that fantastic ending left me with a final score of 124.
One twenty-frickin'-four. Ugh. My series didn't even break 400. Again, how in the hell did I bowl a 641 series last month? But hey, we won the last game, thanks to my strong finish. If we would've lost by a small amount because I finished as poorly as I had bowled all night, I would not have been able to contain my emotions. As it turned out, I couldn't contain them anyway. Hot Damn!
Practiced today for eight games and could only break 200 once. Still, take out the first game and the last game, where I worked on hitting the 7 and 10 pins for the last half, and I was in the 170's. I only realized on the way home why I was missing left on the 7s and on the 10s: the lane, she's dry! No oil. That place is starting to go downhill. When I went to wash my hands, the soap dispenser was empty, just as it was the prior night. On the sheet that hangs on the wall and shows that they've been there every half hour... they hadn't been there to restock and check for cleanliness in over 48 hours. Since Dave left, it's been getting a little seedy. Dave's now in River Grove, too far a hike for bowling. Oh well. I should e-mail him and get together for lunch, per his suggestion. He's one of the few friends I've made since moving here. Life is lonely for Margie and me these days. Thank God we have each other.
Funny how I come here to talk about bowling. Well, I guess it can be an art of sorts.
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