I both love and hate when I win racquetball tournaments based on the fact that only one person in my gender and division bracket shows up. It's a cheap sense of accomplishment. I guess what I'm going for here is an expensive sense of accomplishment. Close enough.

Strange, though, how this is the only sport I could see myself playing long term. I used to join sports teams for half social reasons and half I-should-get-in-shape reasons, only to discover that I dreaded practice nights, where we would run long distances (horror) do drills (at which I would suck) play out in the cold (brrr!) and then go out for drinks afterwards (yawn). Even though racquetball practice follows the exact same schedule, minus the playing out in the cold part, I look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays, where I kill myself running, crunch my core to death, then spend an hour hitting an evasive bouncy ball into the wall. Somehow, this has become fun. Fun enough that I will likely travel to Missouri in the spring (Missouri. By car. On I-70. Through Kansas) to play it against other colleges.

I used to be fascinated by how it might feel to have one of those nerve disorders where you don't feel pain. As I get older, I feel pain less and less (like everyone else, I assume). Or rather, it bothers me less and less. Sometimes I'll wake up, or look over, to a bruise whose origins I can't even guess about. I have a nasty one on my knuckle I could have only gotten by smacking myself in the hand with a racquetball racquet, but you'd think that's something I would remember having done.

Also, sometimes I bite Dan on the arm what I think is lightly and he'll howl in agony and so I bite myself on the arm with the same force and I can hardly feel it. But yeah, there are teeth marks, so it must have happened.

Maybe it's because I have an increased fight-or-flight response and therefore have pain-numbing endorphins released into my blood constantly. Or not!